Inch Marks Instead Of Quotes

The tapping grows insistent, and I turn, intending to tell off the Cadet. Instead, I'm faced with a slave-girl looking up at me through impossibly long eyelashes. A heated, visceral shock flares through me at the clarity of her dark gold eyes. For a second, I forget my name. I've never seen her before, because if I had, I'd remember. Despite the heavy silver cuffs and high, painful-looking bun that mark all of Blackcliff's drudges, nothing about her says slave. Her black dress fits her like a glove, sliding over every curve in a way that makes more than one head turn. Her full lips and fine, straight nose would be the envy of most girls, Scholar or not. I stare at her, realize I'm staring, tell myself to stop staring, and then keep staring. My breath falters, and my body, traitor that is, tugs me forward until there are only inches between us. “Asp-aspirant Veturius.” It's the way she says my name—like it's something to fear—that brings me back to myself. Pull it together, Veturius. I step away, appalled at myself when I see the terror in her eyes. “What is it?” I ask calmly.

A smartphone allows you to choose your own adventure. So be a hero, not a villain. Don’t be your own worst enemy. No wasting time… No training your brain not to remember things, losing the skills necessary to read a fucking map… No trolling. Don’t make snarky remarks on comment threads or internet forums or social media. Just do good. Help others. If you’re out in the world and bored, which you shouldn’t be anyway, but still, if you feel like you need to get on your phone, be useful. Answer questions, offer advice. Look only for question marks when you scroll through your Facebook news feed. Log on to Reddit and comment on something you have firsthand knowledge of and real insight about. Give far more than you take. Never text and walk. And stop googling things as you think of them. Instead, write it down and look it up later. If you can’t remember to do this, then you didn’t deserve to know the answer. This will keep your mind active, agile; clear to really think. It will keep you sharp. Using the internet for information or socialization should be an activity, something you sit down for—it should not be used while out and about. You should not refuse the beauty of what’s in front of you for mere pixels of red, green, blue on a 3.5-inch screen. Otherwise, you’ll lose yourself. An abyss of ones and zeros will swallow you whole. Don’t be a dumb motherfucker with a smartass phone.

We should check the— What, damn it?” The tapping grows insistent, and I turn, intending to tell off the Cadet. Instead, I’m faced with a slave-girl looking up at me through impossibly long eyelashes. A heated, visceral shock flares through me at the clarity of her dark gold eyes. For a second, I forget my name. I’ve never seen her before, because if I had, I’d remember. Despite the heavy silver cuffs and high, painful-looking bun that mark all of Blackcliff’s drudges, nothing about her says slave. Her black dress fits her like a glove, sliding over every curve in a way that makes more than one head turn. Her full lips and fine, straight nose would be the envy of most girls, Scholar or not. I stare at her, realize I’m staring, tell myself to stop staring, and then keep staring. My breath falters, and my body, traitor that it is, tugs me forward until there are only inches between us. “Asp-aspirant

Jack took two steps towards the couch and then heard his daughter’s distressed wails, wincing. “Oh, right. The munchkin.” He instead turned and headed for the stairs, yawning and scratching his messy brown hair, calling out, “Hang on, chubby monkey, Daddy’s coming.” Jack reached the top of the stairs. And stopped dead. There was a dragon standing in the darkened hallway. At first, Jack swore he was still asleep. He had to be. He couldn’t possibly be seeing correctly. And yet the icy fear slipping down his spine said differently. The dragon stood at roughly five feet tall once its head rose upon sighting Jack at the other end of the hallway. It was lean and had dirty brown scales with an off-white belly. Its black, hooked claws kneaded the carpet as its yellow eyes stared out at Jack, its pupils dilating to drink him in from head to toe. Its wings rustled along its back on either side of the sharp spines protruding down its body to the thin, whip-like tail. A single horn glinted sharp and deadly under the small, motion-activated hallway light. The only thing more noticeable than that were the many long, jagged scars scored across the creature’s stomach, limbs, and neck. It had been hunted recently. Judging from the depth and extent of the scars, it had certainly killed a hunter or two to have survived with so many marks. “Okay,” Jack whispered hoarsely. “Five bucks says you’re not the Easter Bunny.” The dragon’s nostrils flared. It adjusted its body, feet apart, lips sliding away from sharp, gleaming white teeth in a warning hiss. Mercifully, Naila had quieted and no longer drew the creature’s attention. Jack swallowed hard and held out one hand, bending slightly so his six-foot-two-inch frame was less threatening. “Look at me, buddy. Just keep looking at me. It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you. Why don’t you just come this way, huh?” He took a single step down and the creature crept forward towards him, hissing louder. “That’s right. This way. Come on.” Jack eased backwards one stair at a time. The dragon let out a warning bark and followed him, its saliva leaving damp patches on the cream-colored carpet. Along the way, Jack had slipped his phone out of his pocket and dialed 9-1-1, hoping he had just enough seconds left in the reptile’s waning patience. “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” “Listen to me carefully,” Jack said, not letting his eyes stray from the dragon as he fumbled behind him for the handle to the sliding glass door. He then quickly gave her his address before continuing. “There is an Appalachian forest dragon in my house. Get someone over here as fast as you can.” “We’re contacting a retrieval team now, sir. Please stay calm and try not to make any loud noises or sudden movements–“ Jack had one barefoot on the cool stone of his patio when his daughter Naila cried for him again. The dragon’s head turned towards the direction of upstairs. Jack dropped his cell phone, grabbed a patio chair, and slammed it down on top of the dragon’s head as hard as he could.

Both of you are going to suffer. If you give in first, Kereseth, you will tell me what you know about the fated chancellor of Thuvhe. And if you give in first, Cyra, you will tell me what you know about the renegades, and their connections to the exile colony.” Ryzek glanced at Vas. “Go ahead.” I braced myself for a blow, but it didn’t come. Instead, Vas grabbed my wrist, and forced my hand toward Akos. At first I let it happen, sure my touch wouldn’t affect him. But then I remembered--Ryzek had said to see if Akos was “weak enough.” That meant they had been starving him for the days I had been in the prison; they had weakened his body, and his gift. I strained against Vas’s vice-hand, but I wasn’t strong enough. My knuckles brushed Akos’s face. The shadows crept toward him, even as I silently begged them not to move. But I was not their master. I never had been. Akos moaned, his own brother holding him in place as he tried to flinch away. “Excellent. It worked,” Ryzek said, coming to his feet. “The chancellor of Thuvhe, Kereseth. Tell me about her.” I pulled my elbow back as hard as I could, twisting and thrashing in Vas’s grip. The shadows grew richer and more numerous the more I struggled, like they were mocking me. Vas was strong, and there was nothing I could do to him now; he held me steady with one hand and pushed my palm forward with the other, so it lay flat against Akos’s throat. I could imagine nothing more horrible than this, Ryzek’s Scourge turned against Akos Kereseth. I felt the heat of him. The pain inside me was desperate to be shared; it moved into him, but instead of diminishing in my own body the way it usually did, it only multiplied in us both. My arm shook from the effort of trying to pull away. Akos screamed, and so did I, so did I. I was dark with the current, the center of a black hole, a shred of the starless fringe of the galaxy. Every inch of me burned, ached, begged for relief. Akos’s voice and mine met like two clasped hands. I closed my eyes.

The all-pink doily The all-pink doily, some five inches in diameter resembles fine lace. It is semi-perfect, with a slightly off-balanced ending row, a question mark its ending coda. The sunlight peers through it when I hold it up to the window on an August afternoon. Perhaps it is ‘ama’s signature at 90 and a half years of age. I prefer to think it is that instead of an error in counting rows. My sister-in-law, bent on perfection, wants her to make another row to even things up. I protest—silently. We leave it be. 'Ama’s way is Picasso’s: invented on purpose, and all the rest.

The incidental camouflage provided by his ashen coat against the tile flooring ‒ likewise denoted as being a series of twelve inch gray slate squares by all of them again ‒ save for Nate’s mother ‒ in concert with his current focus on the mixer and its hypnotic, simultaneous whir; which drew his visual attention to the blue pearl granite countertop directly in front of him and induced his total disregard for the feline's entrance. He therefore failed to observe that it was marked by an inordinately determined gait ‒ itself relatively less peculiar than the paradoxical lack of conviction in his clenched jaws, out of which a visibly dispirited common brown rat was loosely dangling by the nape of its neck. Upon shutting off the mixer and sensing a presence, Nate glanced intuitively downward ‒ just as Zero had raised his head sharply and looked up with eager, widened eyes ‒ then becoming struck by a sense that it appeared in the moment as if the incongruous mouser had been instead transporting an itsy-bitsy newborn kitten. Then in the next, he casually dropped the rodent at his owner's feet. Being sufficiently emboldened by its youthful size and appearance to first crouch and then kneel to the floor for a closer look, Nate endeavored to roust the lethargic rodent with a toothpick. He was taken aback to discover a set of tiny ‒ though notably bulging ‒ coal black eyes returning his gaze. Their vacant helplessness inspired him toward an appreciably more sober contemplation of its plight than he’d undertaken upon witnessing Zero capture and kill a field mouse behind his apple tree the previous spring. An instance whereby he had caught but a fleeting glimpse of its limp body as his typically passive, then suddenly feral tomcat clamped down on its entire neck just prior to seeking a more private spot in which to consume his prey. Nate realized that if he'd intended to eat this latest catch, his since neutered pet would have remained outside and carried it in a similar manner; so being the softhearted sort, while possessing a firm understanding that upon his mother's imminent arrival in a chic skirt with matching heels, the tragic scene of a dying and worse yet ‒ possibly bleeding ‒ brown Norway rat on her Montauk Blue tile flooring would be ill-received, he suffered the burden of understanding that this rodent's fate might be in his hands.

I take it these insects are poisonous,” Akos said. His Adam’s apple bobbed with a particularly hard swallow. “Very,” Yssa said. “We keep them here because they are very bright when they fly.” “And they avoid anything that is a particularly strong conduit for the current,” Pary added. “Like…people. Most people.” Akos’s eyes closed. Frowning a little, I stepped forward. Pary grabbed my arm to stop me, but he couldn’t stand to touch me; his grip slipped, and I kept walking. Inching closer, and closer, until I was right in front of Akos, his warm breath against my temple. I lifted a hand to hover over the beetle on his face, and, for the first time, thought of my currentgift as something that might protect instead of injure. A single black tendril unfurled from my fingers--obeying me, obeying me--and jabbed the beetle in the back. The light inside it flaring to life, it darted away from him, and the others went with it. Akos’s eyes opened. We stared at each other, not touching, but close enough that I could see the freckles on his eyelids. “Okay?” I said. He nodded. “Stay close to me, then,” I said. “But don’t touch my skin, or you’ll turn us both into poisonous insect magnets.” As I turned around, I made eye contact with Sifa. She was giving me an odd look, almost like I had just struck her. I felt Akos behind me, staying close. He pinched my shirt between two fingers, right over the middle of my back. “Well,” Eijeh said. “That was exciting.” It was the sort of thing Ryzek might have said. “Shut up,” I replied, automatically

Inching closer, and closer, until I was right in front of Akos, his warm breath against my temple. I lifted a hand to hover over the beetle on his face, and, for the first time, thought of my currentgift as something that might protect instead of injure. A single black tendril unfurled from my fingers--obeying me, obeying me--and jabbed the beetle in the back. The light inside it flaring to life, it darted away from him, and the others went with it. Akos’s eyes opened. We stared at each other, not touching, but close enough that I could see the freckles on his eyelids. “Okay?” I said. He nodded. “Stay close to me, then,” I said. “But don’t touch my skin, or you’ll turn us both into poisonous insect magnets.