Memorable Trip With Friends Quotes

Catarina hooked her hand around Magnus’s elbow and hauled him away, like a schoolteacher with a misbehaving student. They entered a narrow alcove around the corner, where the music and noise of the party was muffled. She rounded on him. “I recently treated Tessa for wounds she said were inflicted on her by members of a demon-worshipping cult,” Catarina said. “She told me you were, and I quote, ‘handling’ the cult. What’s going on? Explain.” Magnus made a face. “I may have had a hand in founding it.” “How much of a hand?” “Well, both.” Catarina bristled. “I specifically told you not to do that!” “You did?” Magnus said. A bubble of hope grew within him. “You remember what happened?” She gave him a look of distress. “You don’t?” “Someone took all my memories around the subject of this cult,” said Magnus. “I don’t know who, or why.” He sounded more desperate than he would’ve liked, more desperate than he wanted to be. His old friend’s face was full of sympathy. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “I met up with you and Ragnor for a brief vacation. You seemed troubled, but you were trying to laugh it off, the way you always do. You and Ragnor said you had a brilliant idea to start a joke cult. I told you not to do it. That’s it.” He, Catarina, and Ragnor had taken many trips together, over the centuries. One memorable trip had gotten Magnus banished from Peru. He had always enjoyed those adventures more than any others. Being with his friends almost felt like having a home. He did not know if there would ever be another trip. Ragnor was dead, and Magnus might have done something terrible. “Why didn’t you stop me?” he asked. “You usually stop me!” “I had to take an orphan child across an ocean to save his life.” “Right,” said Magnus. “That’s a good reason.” Catarina shook her head. “I took my eyes off you for one second.” She had worked in mundane hospitals in New York for decades. She saved orphans. She healed the sick. She’d always been the voice of reason in the trio that was Ragnor, Catarina, and Magnus. “So I planned with Ragnor to start a joke cult, and I guess I did it. Now the joke cult is a real cult, and they have a new leader. It sounds like they’re mixed up with a Greater Demon.” Even to Catarina, he wouldn’t say the name of his father. “Sounds like the joke has gotten a little out of hand,” Catarina said dryly. “Sounds like I’m the punch line.

Did I ever tell you that we used to keep our horses where your house is?” “Yeah,” I mumbled. She continued her story, “My brothers used to get up early every morning and go across the street, well, there wasn’t a street there yet. It was just a dirt road, and they used to get up and clean the stables and feed the horses every morning. I would go over there once they had finished and give the horses a brush, even though none of those horses were mine. I had always wanted my own horse, but I never got one. When my father got older, he got rid of the horses and sold the land, all but this yard here." She spread her hand over the yard as she said this. "I grew up and got married and had to move away. My husband and I lived in an apartment above a bread store. And it was so cramped, let me tell you. There was nowhere to move around and no yard to take care of. It was terrible. I’m not saying I wanted my husband to die. I’d never have wished that in a million years. But I was so relieved to come home after two years, and I've lived here ever since." I had stopped raking, turned and looked at her. "I know why you don’t want to leave this street," she said, "You’ve been in that house your whole life, just like me. And no matter where you go it’s not going to seem like home. But just like me, you’re going to come back. You have to remind yourself of that. And I did hate being away from home, but it was the most memorable time in my life, being away. It was an adventure as much as it was scary. But when I came home, I learned to get out more. I went to beauty school and got a job at the salon and took trips with friends. I like to get away from the house so that I can come back and still appreciate it. And you will too after you come back.” I nodded at Violet. What she was saying made sense. “I’ll go,” I said, “Tell them I’ll go.” - The Stable House

On the other hand, if what you really want to get out of the trip is a nice, slow, meandering crawl through an endless column of bumper-to-bumper traffic that winds through a garish wonderland of T-shirt stores and fast-food joints, and you like to stop in the middle of the road now and then so you can gape at some roadside sign and memorize the words to tell all your friends back in Ohio, while everyone in all the cars behind you swelters in the July sun that no air-conditioning can ever overcome, and all the drivers of those other cars stare anxiously at the needle on the temperature gauge of their car as it climbs steadily into the red and they snarl at you through the blinding glare of the windshield and wish you would simply burst into flames and disappear from the face of the earth even though there are a thousand cars filled with people just like you on the road ahead waiting to take your place and start the whole hideously slow crawl all over again—if that is your idea of a dream vacation in the Promised Land, come to the Keys! Paradise awaits!