Roof Flashing Quotes

Sometimes, Gansey forgot how much he liked school and how good he was at it. But he couldn't forget it on mornings like this one—fall fog rising out of the fields and lifting in front of the mountains, the Pig running cool and loud, Ronan climbing out of the passenger seat and knocking knuckles on the roof with teeth flashing, dewy grass misting the black toes of his shoes, bag slung over his blazer, narrow-eyed Adam bumping fists as they met on the sidewalk, boys around them laughing and calling to one another, making space for the three of them because this had been a thing for so long: Gansey-Lynch-Parrish.

A BIRTHDAY Something continues and I don't know what to call it though the language is full of suggestions in the way of language but they are all anonymous and it's almost your birthday music next to my bones these nights we hear the horses running in the rain it stops and the moon comes out and we are still here the leaks in the roof go on dripping after the rain has passed smell of ginger flowers slips through the dark house down near the sea the slow heart of the beacon flashes the long way to you is still tied to me but it brought me to you I keep wanting to give you what is already yours it is the morning of the mornings together breath of summer oh my found one the sleep in the same current and each waking to you when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see.

For the briefest moment, they came face to face. Their eyes locked. Then he broke the stare, swiveled, sank into a sitting position, chains clanking, with his knees up. She watched him speechlessly as he set a cooler bag between his boots, like he was settling down to a picnic or something. An image of the contents as hospital blood bags, complete with juice straws, flashed through her mind. Unfolding her legs, she made herself as comfortable as she could on the cold outer edge of the sill. An intangible and unnameable charge electrified the space between them, and at first, neither of them said anything. [...] Finally she heard him unzip the bag and watched him pull out a small cylinder. "I thought you might like some crappy ice cream," he said.

What about a device that knew everyone you knew? So when an ambulance went down the street, a big sign on the roof could flash DON’T WORRY! DON’T WORRY! if the sick person’s device didn’t detect the device of someone he knew nearby. And if the device did detect the device of someone he knew, the ambulance could flash the name of the person in the ambulance, and either IT’S NOTHING MAJOR! IT’S NOTHING MAJOR! Or, if it was something major, IT’S MAJOR! IT’S MAJOR! And maybe you could rate the people you knew by how much you loved them, so if the person in the ambulance detected the device of the person he loved the most, or the person who loved him the most, and the person in the ambulance was really badly hurt, and might even die, the ambulance could flash GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU! GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU! One thing that’s nice to think about is someone who was the first person on lot’s of people’s lists, so that when he was dying, and his ambulance went down the streets to the hospital, the whole time it would flash GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU! GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU!

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds; While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow, Gave a lustre of midday to objects below, When what to my wondering eyes did appear, But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer, With a little old driver so lively and quick, I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blixen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!" As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the housetop the coursers they flew With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too— And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack. His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight— “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Love, she felt, ought to come all at once, with great thunderclaps and flashes of lightning; it was like a storm bursting upon life from the sky, uprooting it, overwhelming the will, and sweeping the heart into the abyss. It did not occur to her that rain forms puddles on a flat roof when the drainpipes are clogged, and she would have continued to feel secure if she had not suddenly discovered a crack in the wall.

Of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method, but you have to select your sill or ledge very carefully so as not to hurt yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recommended even if you cannot swim, for wind and water abound in weird contingencies, and tragedy ought not to culminate in a record dive or a policeman's promotion. If you rent a cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959, in a tall business centre hotel browing the star dust, and pull up the window, and gently - not fall, not jump - but roll out as you should for air comfort, there is always the chance of knocking clean through into your own hell a pacific noctambulator walking his dog; in this respect a back room might be safer, especially if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far below where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. Another popular take-off is a mountaintop with a sheer drop of say 500 meters but you must find it, because you will be surprised how easy it is to miscalculate your deflection offset, and have some hidden projection, some fool of a crag, rush forth to catch you, causing you to bounce off it into the brush, thwarted, mangled and unnecessarily alive. The ideal drop is from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off - farewell, shootka (little chute)! Down you go, but all the while you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow motion like a somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-padded life, with the earth's green seesaw now above, now below, and the voluptuous crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord.

Encounters between people, it often seems to me, are like trains passing at breakneck speed in the night. We cast fleeting looks at the passengers sitting behind dull glass in dim light, who disappear from our field of vision almost before we perceive them. Was it really a man and a woman who flashed past like phantoms, who came out of nothing into the empty dark, without meaning or purpose? Did they know each other? Did they talk? Laugh? Cry? People will say: That's how it is when strangers pass one another in rain and wind and there might be something in the comparison. But we sit opposite people for longer, we eat and work together, lie next to each other, live under the same roof. Where is the haste? Yet everything that gives the illusion of permanence, familiarity, and intimate knowledge: isn't it a deception invented to reassure, with which we try to conceal and ward off the flickering, disturbing haste because it could be impossible to live with all the time. Isn't every exchange of looks between people like the ghostly brief meeting of eyes between travellers passing one another, intoxicated by the inhuman speed and the shock of air pressure that makes everything shudder and clatter? Don't our looks bounce off others, as in the hasty encounter of the night, and leave us with nothing but conjectures, slivers of thoughts and imagined qualities? Isn't it true that it's not people who meet, but rather the shadows cast by their imaginations?

American circumstances and Chiese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it's no lasting shame. You are first in line for a scholarship. If the roof crashes on your head, no need to cry over this bad luck. You can sue anybody, make the landlord fix it. You do not have to sit like a Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business on your head. You can buy an umbrella. Or go inside a Catholic church. In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you. She learned thse things, but I couldn't teach her Chinses character. How to obey parents and listen to your mother's mind. How not to show your own thoughts, to put your feelings behind your face so you can take advantage of hidden opportunities. Why easy things are not worth pursuing. How to know your own worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best.

Maddy shook her head, as if the movement could somehow shake the reality away. She simply couldn’t believe it. That by saving her he had actually, knowingly put himself in line for a consequence this severe. So much was kept hidden about the Angels, about how they handled their internal affairs—brutally, it turned out. All the while they put on a smooth, clean exterior for the public and the media. “What can I do?” she said finally. Jacks looked at her through the deluge. “Come with me.” There he stood in the pouring rain, the image of shirtless soaked perfection. He stood before her offering her a choice just like he had the night they went flying. She was at another crossroads. She knew she could just leave. Knew she probably should. But they were going to take his wings, and it was all her fault. Her fault for going to the party, her fault for trying to follow through with her plan, her fault for leaving and insisting on walking home. Could she really leave him now? Before she had even decided, her mouth opened. “Yes,” she said. Just like when he had invited her to the party. It simply came out, as though her true desires could no longer be repressed. Jacks smiled a dripping, radiant smile. A flash of lightning lit the roof, followed closely by a bark of thunder.

Bright flashes of memory sparked through Kaz’s mind. A cup of hot chocolate in his mittened hands, Jordie warning him to let it cool before he took a sip. Ink drying on the page as he’d signed the deed to the Crow Club. The first time he’d seen Inej at the Menagerie, in purple silk, her eyes lined with kohl. The bone-handled knife he’d given her. The sobs that had come from behind the door of her room at the Slat the night she’d made her first kill. The sobs he’d ignored. Kaz remembered her perched on the sill of his attic window, sometime during that first year after he’d brought her into the Dregs. She’d been feeding the crows that congregated on the roof. “You shouldn’t make friends with crows,” he’d told her. “Why not?” she asked. He’d looked up from his desk to answer, but whatever he’d been about to say had vanished on his tongue. The sun was out for once, and Inej had turned her face to it. Her eyes were shut, her oil-black lashes fanned over her cheeks. The harbor wind had lifted her dark hair, and for a moment Kaz was a boy again, sure that there was magic in this world. “Why not?” she’d repeated, eyes still closed. He said the first thing that popped into his head. “They don’t have any manners.” “Neither do you, Kaz.” She’d laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.

Thinking! Thinking! The process should no longer be merely this feeble flurry of hailstones that raises a little dust. It should be something quite different. Thinking should be a terrifying process. When the earth thinks, whole towns crumble to the ground and thousands of people die. Thinking: raising boulders, hollowing out valleys, preparing tidal waves at sea. Thinking like a town: that's to say: eight million inhabitants, twelve million rats, nine million pints of carbon dioxide, two billion tons. Grey light. Cathedral of light. Din. Sudden flashes. Low-lying blanket of black cloud. Flat roofs. Fire alarms. Elevators. Streets. Eighteen thousand miles of streets. 145 million electric light bulbs.

I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it’s no lasting shame. You are first in line for a scholarship. If the roof crashes on your head, no need to cry over this bad luck. You can sue anybody, make the landlord fix it. You do not have to sit like a Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business on your head. You can buy an umbrella. Or go inside a Catholic church. In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you. She learned these things, but I couldn’t teach her about Chinese character. How to obey your parents and listen to your mother’s mind. How not to show your own thoughts, to put your feelings behind your face so you can take advantage of hidden opportunities. Why easy things are not worth pursuing. How to know your own worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best.

He is on his way to her. In a moment he will leave the wooden sidewalks and vacant lots for the paved streets. The small suburban houses flash by like the pages of a book, not as when you turn them over one by one with your forefinger but as when you hold your thumb on the edge of the book and let them all swish past at once. The speed is breathtaking. And over there is her house at the far end of the street, under the white gap in the rain clouds where the sky is clearing, toward the evening. How he loves the little houses in the street that lead to her! He could pick them up and kiss them! Those one-eyed attics with their roofs pulled down like caps. And the lamps and icon lights reflected in the puddles and shining like berries! And her house under the white rift of the sky! There he will again receive the dazzling, God-made gift of beauty from the hands of its Creator. A dark muffled figure will open the door, and the promise of her nearness, unowned by anyone in the world and guarded and cold as a white northern night, will reach him like the first wave of the sea as you run down over the sandy beach in the dark.

What was he doing during the trip? What was he thinking about? As he had during the morning, he watched the trees go by, the thatched roofs, the cultivated fields, and the dissolving views of the countryside that change at every turn of the road. Scenes like that are sometimes enough for the soul, and almost eliminate the need for thought. To see a thousand objects for the first and last time, what could be more profoundly melancholy? Traveling is a constant birth and death. It may be that in the murkiest part of his mind, he was drawing a comparison between these changing horizons and human existence. All aspects of life are in perpetual flight before us. Darkness and light alternate: after a flash, an eclipse; we look, we hurry, we stretch out our hands to seize what is passing; every event is a turn in the road; and suddenly we are old. We feel a slight shock, everything is black, we can make out a dark door, the gloomy horse of life that was carrying us stops, and we see a veiled and unknown form that turns him out into the darkness. (pg. 248)

Who are you?” Aaron demanded roughly. TK didn’t speak. “Why did you help my son?” Nothing. “Where did you come from? Did you know my wife? I—” His chest hitched as his voice broke. “You helped Nicky. I saw it. You’re telekinetic. Like him. Like she was. How did you—” “Aaron,” TK said, voice heavily modulated. And just like that, Aaron knew. He knew. He sank to his knees there on the roof as TK bowed his head. TK’s hands went to his helmet, and he lifted it off slowly. Not he. She.

He came cripping slowly back up the driveway - when an African remembrance flashed into his mind, and near the front of the house he bent down and started peering around. Determining the clearest prints that Kizzy's bare feet had left in the dust, scooping up the double handful containing those footprints, he went rushing toward the cabin: The ancient forefathers said that precious dust kept in some safe place would insure Kizzy's return to where she made the footprints. He burst through the cabin's open door, his eyes sweeping the room and falling upon his gourd on a shelf containing his pebbles. Springing over there, in the instant before opening his cupped hands to drop in the dirt, suddenly he knew the truth: His Kizzy was gone; she would not return. He would never see his Kizzy again. His face contorting, Kunta flung his dust toward the cabin's roof. Tears bursting, from his eyes, snatching his heavy gourd up high over his head, his mouth wide in a soundless scream, he hurled the gourd down with all his strength, and it shattered against the packed-Earth floor, his 662 pebbles representing each month of his 55 rains flying out, ricocheting wildly in all directions.

He felt that he had unwittingly stuck his hand into The Great Wasps' Nest of Life. As an image it stank. As a cameo of reality, he felt it was serviceable. He had stuck his hand through some rotted flashing in high summer and that hand and his whole arm had been consumed in holy, righteous fire, destroying conscious thought, making the concept of civilized behaviour obsolete. Could you be expected to behave as a thinking human being when your hand was being impaled on red-hot darning needles? Could you be expected to live in the love of your nearest and dearest when the brown, furious cloud rose out of the hole in the fabric of things (the fabric you thought was so innocent) and arrowed straight at you? Could you be held responsible for your own actions as you ran crazily about on the sloping roof seventy feet above he ground, not knowing where you were going, not remembering that your panicky, stumbling feet could lead you crashing and blundering right over the rain gutter and down to your death on the concrete seventy feet below? Jack didn't think you could. When you unwittingly stuck your hand into the wasps' nest, you hadn't made a covenant with the devil to give up your civilized self with its trappings of love and respect and honour. It just happened to you. Passively, with no say, you ceased to be a creature of the mind and became a creature of the nerve endings; from college-educated man to wailing ape in five seconds.

The gem, which he had supposed colorless, caught a ray of sunlight from the god-gate in the roof and flashed a watery green. For some reason, it reminded him of her eyes. He put it to his lips, his thoughts full of things that could never be.

One day, soon after her disappearance, an attack of abominable nausea forced me to pull up on the ghost of an old mountain road that now accompanied, now traversed a brand new highway, with its population of asters bathing in the detached warmth of a pale-blue afternoon in late summer. After coughing myself inside out I rested a while on a boulder and then thinking the sweet air might do me good, walked a little way toward a low stone parapet on the precipice side of the highway. Small grasshoppers spurted out of the withered roadside weeds. A very light cloud was opening its arms and moving toward a slightly more substantial one belonging to another, more sluggish, heavenlogged system. As I approached the friendly abyss, I grew aware of a melodious unity of sounds rising like vapor from a small mining town that lay at my feet, in a fold of the valley. One could make out the geometry of the streets between blocks of red and gray roofs, and green puffs of trees, and a serpentine stream, and the rich, ore-like glitter of the city dump, and beyond the town, roads crisscrossing the crazy quilt of dark and pale fields, and behind it all, great timbered mountains. But even brighter than those quietly rejoicing colors - for there are colors and shades that seem to enjoy themselves in good company - both brighter and dreamier to the ear than they were to the eye, was that vapory vibration of accumulated sounds that never ceased for a moment, as it rose to the lip of granite where I stood wiping my foul mouth. And soon I realized that all these sounds were of one nature, that no other sounds but these came from the streets of the transparent town, with the women at home and the men away. Reader! What I heard was but the melody of children at play, nothing but that, and so limpid was the air that within this vapor of blended voices, majestic and minute, remote and magically near, frank and divinely enigmatic - one could hear now and then, as if released, an almost articulate spurt of vivid laughter, or the crack of a bat, or the clatter of a toy wagon, but it was all really too far for the eye to distinguish any movement in the lightly etched streets. I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord.

It was in December. I stood in the back of the tram, all the way in the back. It drove through the country and stopped and started again, it took hours, the countryside was endless. And the sky got bluer and bluer and the sun shone until it seemed like flowers would have to start sprouting out of the country bumpkins. And the red roofs in the villages and the black trees and the fields, most of them covered with straw, had it nice and warm, and the dunes sat bareheaded in the sun. And the road lay there, white and smarting, it couldn't bear the sunlight, and the glass panes of the village streetlamp flashed, they had trouble withstanding the glare too. But I got colder and colder. And the tram ran as long as the sun shone. It's a long ride from Hillegom to Leiden and the days are short in December. By the end, a block of ice was standing there on the tram staring into the big stupid cold sun that was flaming red as though the revolution was finally starting, as though offices were being blown up all over Amsterdam, but still it couldn't bring a spark of life back to my cold feet and stiff legs. And it kept getting bigger and colder, the sun, and I got colder and stayed the same size, and the blue sky looked down very disapprovingly: What are you doing on that tram?

Love, she believed, had to come, suddenly, with a great clap of thunder and a lightning flash, a tempest from heaven that falls upon your life, like a devastation, scatters your ideals like leaves and hurls your very soul into the abyss. Little did she know that up on the roof of the house, the rain will form a pool if the gutters are blocked, and there she would have stayed feeling safe inside, until one day she suddenly discovered the crack right down the wall.

Suddenly there was a huge flash of lightning that shone all the way inside the place, illuminating the people on the dirt floor. And just then a clap of thunder sounded , ready to crack the roof. Surprised, he stood up, and the crowd of people at the entrance turned as one to face him. Then he saw that theirs were the faces of animals— dogs or foxes, he wasn’t sure— and the animals all wore clothes, and some of them had long tongues hanging out, licking around the corners of their mouths.

From Flood, Flash, and Pheromones--coming soon: In the torrential downpour with water swirling that threatened to pull her down, she didn’t see the voice’s owner. The hurricane had blessed the entire city with a surprise drenching. All weather reports had predicted it to pass over with sporadic rainfall but that didn’t happen. The storm settled over Houston as if it had no intention to move on. Cassie flailed in panic as the roof of her car disappeared under the water twenty feet beyond. She prayed once more that the container in it was watertight. And that she’d see her car again. Then she concentrated on living. Where had the voice come from?

Sometimes, Gansey forgot how much he liked school and how good he was at it. But he couldn't forget it on mornings like this one--fall fog rising out of the fields and lifting in front of the mountains, the Pig running cool and loud, Ronan climbing out of the passenger seat and knocking knuckles on the roof with teeth flashing, dewy grass misting the black toes of his shoes, bag slung over his blazer, narrow-eyed Adam bumping fists as they met on the sidewalk, boys around them laughing and calling to one another, making space for the three of them because this had been a thing for so long: Gansey-Lynch-Parrish. Mornings like this one were made for memories.

He had stuck his hand through some rotted flashing in high summer and that hand and his whole arm had been consumed in holy, righteous fire, destroying conscious thought, making the concept of civilized behavior obsolete. Could you be expected to behave as a thinking human being when your hand was being impaled on red-hot darning needles? Could you be expected to live in the love of your nearest and dearest when the brown, furious cloud rose out of the hole in the fabric of things (the fabric you thought was so innocent) and arrowed straight at you? Could you be held responsible for your own actions as you ran crazily about on the sloping roof seventy feet above the ground, not knowing where you were going, not remembering that your panicky, stumbling feet could lead you crashing and blundering right over the rain gutter and down to your death on the concrete seventy feet below? Jack didn’t think you could.

Look,’ said Giovanni, as we crossed the river. ‘This old whore, Paris, as she turns in bed, is very moving.’ I looked out, beyond his heavy profile, which was grey—from fatigue and from the light of the sky above us. The river was swollen and yellow. Nothing moved on the river. Barges were tied up along the banks. The island of the city widened away from us, bearing the weight of the cathedral; beyond this, dimly, through speed and mist, one made out the individual roofs of Paris, their myriad, squat chimney stacks very beautiful and vari-colored under the pearly sky. Mist clung to the river, softening that army of trees, softening those stones, hiding the city’s dreadful corkscrew alleys and dead-end streets, clinging like a curse to the men who slept beneath the bridges—one of whom flashed by beneath us, very black and lone, walking along the river. ‘Some rats have gone in,’ said Giovanni, ‘and now other rats come out.

Julie Seagle stared straight ahead and promised herself one thing: She would never again rent an apartment via Craigslist. The strap of her overstuffed suitcase dug into her shoulder, and she let it drop onto the two suitcases that sat on the sidewalk. It wasn’t as if she had anywhere to carry them now. Julie squinted in disbelief at the flashing neon sign that touted the best burritos in Boston. Rereading the printout of the email again did nothing to change things. Yup, this was the correct address. While she did love a good burrito, and the small restaurant had a certain charm about it, it seemed pretty clear that the one-story building did not include a three-bedroom apartment that could house college students. She sighed and pulled her cell phone from her purse. “Hi, Mom.” “Honey! I gather you made it to Boston? Ohio is missing you already. I can’t believe you’re already off at college. How is the apartment? Have you met your roommates yet?” Julie cleared her throat and looked at the flat roof of the restaurant. “The apartment is…‌airy. It has a very

Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup If the wind's got you sideways with with one hand holdin' on And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long And you start walkin' backwards though you know its wrong And lonesome comes up as down goes the day And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin' And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin' And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin' And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin' And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin' And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin' And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm And to yourself you sometimes say "I never knew it was gonna be this way Why didn't they tell me the day I was born" And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin' And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet And you need it badly but it lays on the street And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear its beat And you think yer ears might a been hurt Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush And all the time you were holdin' three queens And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean Like in the middle of Life magazine Bouncin' around a pinball machine And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying That somebody someplace oughta be hearin' But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed And no matter how you try you just can't say it And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth And his jaws start closin with you underneath And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign And you say to yourself just what am I doin' On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin' On this curve I'm hanging On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm taking In this air I'm inhaling Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard Why am I walking, where am I running What am I saying, what am I knowing On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin' On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin' In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin' In the words that I'm thinkin' In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin' Who am I helping, what am I breaking What am I giving, what am I taking But you try with your whole soul best Never to think these thoughts and never to let Them kind of thoughts gain ground Or make yer heart pound ...

If loneliness or sadness or happiness could be expressed through food, loneliness would be basil. It’s not good for your stomach, dims your eyes, and turns your mind murky. If you pound basil and place a stone over it, scorpions swarm toward it. Happiness is saffron, from the crocus that blooms in the spring. Even if you add just a pinch to a dish, it adds an intense taste and a lingering scent. You can find it anywhere but you can’t get it at any time of the year. It’s good for your heart, and if you drop a little bit in your wine, you instantly become drunk from its heady perfume. The best saffron crumbles at the touch and instantaneously emits its fragrance. Sadness is a knobby cucumber, whose aroma you can detect from far away. It’s tough and hard to digest and makes you fall ill with a high fever. It’s porous, excellent at absorption, and sponges up spices, guaranteeing a lengthy period of preservation. Pickles are the best food you can make from cucumbers. You boil vinegar and pour it over the cucumbers, then season with salt and pepper. You enclose them in a sterilized glass jar, seal it, and store it in a dark and dry place. WON’S KITCHEN. I take off the sign hanging by the first-floor entryway. He designed it by hand and silk-screened it onto a metal plate. Early in the morning on the day of the opening party for the cooking school, he had me hang the sign myself. I was meaning to give it a really special name, he said, grinning, flashing his white teeth, but I thought Jeong Ji-won was the most special name in the world. He called my name again: Hey, Ji-won. He walked around the house calling my name over and over, mischievously — as if he were an Eskimo who believed that the soul became imprinted in the name when it was called — while I fried an egg, cautiously sprinkling grated Emmentaler, salt, pepper, taking care not to pop the yolk. I spread the white sun-dried tablecloth on the coffee table and set it with the fried egg, unsalted butter, blueberry jam, and a baguette I’d toasted in the oven. It was our favorite breakfast: simple, warm, sweet. As was his habit, he spread a thick layer of butter and jam on his baguette and dunked it into his coffee, and I plunked into my cup the teaspoon laced with jam, waiting for the sticky sweetness to melt into the hot, dark coffee. I still remember the sugary jam infusing the last drop of coffee and the moist crumbs of the baguette lingering at the roof of my mouth. And also his words, informing me that he wanted to design a new house that would contain the cooking school, his office, and our bedroom. Instead of replying, I picked up a firm red radish, sparkling with droplets of water, dabbed a little butter on it, dipped it in salt, and stuck it into my mouth. A crunch resonated from my mouth. Hoping the crunch sounded like, Yes, someday, I continued to eat it. Was that the reason I equated a fresh red radish with sprouting green tops, as small as a miniature apple, with the taste of love? But if I cut into it crosswise like an apple, I wouldn't find the constellation of seeds.

Rider scooped Willow into his arms and carried her outside to the nearest tree, Miriam right behind him. Awkwardly shifting his burden, he sat in the shade and settled Willow in his lap. "Mrs. Brigham, could you lend me a hand?" he asked anxiously. "I think we should loosen her clothing or something." Rider propped Willow's limp form over one arm, giving Miriam access to the back of the girl's dress. As the corset came into view, he snorted in disgust. "Unlace that contraption, too. No wonder she fainted; she can't breathe." Miriam looked aghast. "Oh, but I can't do that! It wouldn't be decent." "She's wearing something under it, isn't she?" "Well, yes, but--" "Good God, I'll do it myself!" His free hand produced a small knife from his pants pocket. The blade flashed and before Miriam could stop him, the corset ribbons were severed. Immediately, Willow inhaled deeply. Rider shifted her back into the bend of his arm and gently patted her cheeks. "Come on, little girl, open those big blue eyes." Inhaling another deep breath, Willow gradually came around. She blinked at the leafy roof overhead, then focused a confused gaze on Rider's smiling face. "What happened? How did I get out here?" Glancing around, she impatiently brushed a few errant strands of hair from her eyes. "Oh, my dear, you fainted," Miriam fussed. "Fainted! I've never fainted in my life. I'm not the fainting kind." "Maybe not under normal circumstances," Rider contradicted, "but you did faint. And it's little wonder, trussed up in that ridiculous corset. Wearing that thing in this heat is insane!" "Really, Mr. Sinclair." Miriam scowled. "I hardly think this is an appropriate subject in mixed company." "I'm sorry, Mrs. Brigham, but it's the truth." "I don't care what either one of you says," Willow broke in. "I did not faint." Rider grimaced in disgust. "Just dozed off again, huh?

Broadway lit up just as crazy as ever, and the crowd thick as molasses. Just fling yourself into it like an ant and let yourself get pushed along. Everybody doing it, some for a good reason, and some for no reason at all. All this push and movement representing action, success, get ahead. Stop and look at shoes, or fancy shirts. The new fall overcoat, wedding rings at 98 cents a piece. Every other joint a food emporium. Everytime I hit that runway toward dinner hour, a fever of expectancy seized me. It's only a stretch of a few blocks from Time Square to 50th street, and when one says 'Broadway', that's all that's really meant. And it's really nothing, just a chicken run, and a lousy one at that. But at 7 in the evening, when everybody's rushing for a table, there is a sort of electrical crackle in the air. And your hair stands on end like antennae, and if you're receptive, you not only get every flash and flicker, but you get the statistical itch. The quid pro quo of the interactive, interstitial, ectoplasmatic quantum of bodies jostling in space like the stars which compose the Milky Way. Only, this is the gay white way. The top of the world with no roof above and not even a crack or a hole under your feet to fall through and say it's a lie. The absolute impersonality of it brings you to a pitch of warm human delirium, which makes you run forward like a blind nag, and wag your delirious ears. Everyone is so utterly, confoundedly not himself, that you become automatically the personification of the whole human race. Shaking hands with a thousand human hands, cackling with a thousand different human tongues, cursing, applauding, whistling, crooning, soliloquizing, orating, gesticulating, urinating, fecundating, wheedling, cajoling, whimpering, bartering, pimping, caterwauling, and so on and so forth. You are all the men who ever lived up until Moses, and beyond that, you are a woman buying a bird cage, or just a mouse trap.

She didn't say it. But it was there in her eyes. Right there with that uncontainable arrogance when it came to her work. This was only about the surgery to her. He thought about backing away, but he was sick of backing away from fights. So sick of it. "And doing your job well is sending her home where she can't be monitored, where she can't be treated? For what? To teach her a lesson? Put her in a corner until she comes around to where you need her to be? So you can prove your skill?" She took a step back, but she didn't look away. "I don't need to prove my skill. But you seem to need to find someone to blame. Maybe you should try stepping up instead, and try finding a solution?" Once again, was she bloody joking? He'd been stepping up and finding solutions for problems since he was twelve years old. Feeding his family, putting a roof over their heads. Real problems, not challenges he sought out to prove his skill. "I'm not blaming you for what's happened to Emma. Hell, I couldn't appreciate your skill more. But pardon me for wondering if this is about Emma at all for you, or if it's only about what you can accomplish." A combination of emotions flashed in her strangely colored eyes; in the end, disbelief at being contradicted shone brightest. "Do you always judge people without knowing one damn thing about them? Or is it just me?" He almost laughed. The woman had called him the hired help without giving it one thought and she thought he judged people? He turned around and looked at the idyllic white stucco home nestled into a a row of other idyllic homes, at the Tesla parked in the driveway, at the ease with which she had worn those rumpled scrubs at Ashna's and still looked like a bombshell. He wanted to ask her what the hardest thing she'd ever been through was, but he couldn't bring himself to. "I guess that would make two of us judging each other then, wouldn't it?" Her cheeks colored. But this back-and-forth was useless. He wasn't here to bring down mighty egos.

LXXII In sooth, it was no vulgar sight to see Their barbarous, yet their not indecent, glee, And as the flames along their faces gleam’d, Their gestures nimble, dark eyes flashing free, The long wild locks that to their girdles stream’d, While thus in concert they this lay half sang, half scream’d: Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy ’larum afar Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war; All the sons of the mountains arise at the note, Chimariot, Illyrian, and dark Suliote! Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote, To his snowy camese and his shaggy capote? To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock, And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock. Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live? Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forego? What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe? Macedonia sends forth her invincible race; For a time they abandon the cave and the chase: But those scarves of blood-red shall be redder, before The sabre is sheathed and the battle is o’er. Then the pirates of Parga that dwell by the waves, And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves, Shall leave on the beach the long galley and oar, And track to his covert the captive on shore. I ask not the pleasure that riches supply, My sabre shall win what the feeble must buy; Shall win the young bride with her long flowing hair, And many a maid from her mother shall tear. I love the fair face of the maid in her youth, Her caresses shall lull me, her music shall soothe; Let her bring from her chamber the many-toned lyre, And sing us a song on the fall of her sire. Remember the moment when Previsa fell, The shrieks of the conquer’d, the conquerors’ yell; The roofs that we fired, and the plunder we shared, The wealthy we slaughter’d, the lovely we spared. I talk not of mercy, I talk not of fear; He neither must know who would serve the Vizier: Since the days of our prophet, the Crescent ne’er saw A chief ever glorious like Ali Pasha. Dark Muchtar his son to the Danube is sped, Let the yellow-haired Giaours view his horsetail with dread; When his Delhis come dashing in blood o’er the banks, How few shall escape from the Muscovite ranks! Selictar, unsheath then our chief’s scimitar: Tambourgi! thy ’larum gives promise of war; Ye mountains, that see us descend to the shore, Shall view us as victors, or view us no more!

And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb—on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost—climb upon some elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then, all at once, behold!—for it seems at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,—behold, rising from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations. Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries. You can follow the dialogue, by turns grave and shrill, of the treble and the bass; you can see the octaves leap from one tower to another; you watch them spring forth, winged, light, and whistling, from the silver bell, to fall, broken and limping from the bell of wood; you admire in their midst the rich gamut which incessantly ascends and re-ascends the seven bells of Saint-Eustache; you see light and rapid notes running across it, executing three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing like flashes of lightning. Yonder is the Abbey of Saint-Martin, a shrill, cracked singer; here the gruff and gloomy voice of the Bastille; at the other end, the great tower of the Louvre, with its bass. The royal chime of the palace scatters on all sides, and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes from the belfry of Notre-Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer. At intervals you behold the passage of sounds of all forms which come from the triple peal of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Then, again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. Below, in the very depths of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the interior chanting of the churches, which exhales through the vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs. Assuredly, this is an opera which it is worth the trouble of listening to. Ordinarily, the noise which escapes from Paris by day is the city speaking; by night, it is the city breathing; in this case, it is the city singing. Lend an ear, then, to this concert of bell towers; spread over all the murmur of half a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forests arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, like immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish, as in a half shade, all that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central chime, and say whether you know anything in the world more rich and joyful, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes;—than this furnace of music,—than these ten thousand brazen voices chanting simultaneously in the flutes of stone, three hundred feet high,—than this city which is no longer anything but an orchestra,—than this symphony which produces the noise of a tempest.

And there they were, the Foreign Returnees, in wash'n'wear suits and rainbow sunglasses. With an end to grinding poverty in their Aristocrat suitcases. With cement roofs for their thatched houses, and geysers for their parents' bathrooms. With sewage systems and septic tanks. Maxis and high heels. Puff sleeves and lipstick. Mixy-grinders and automatic flashes for their cameras. With keys to count, and cupboards to lock. With a hunger for kappa and meen vevichathu that they hadn’t eaten for so long. With love and a lick of shame that their families who had come to meet them were so... so... gawkish. Look at the way they dressed! Surely they had more suitable airport wear! Why did Malayalees have such awful teeth? (134)

Then, a pea shoot and foie gras wheel with a small butter knife. Michael Saltz and I stared at it, confounded by how it worked. It stood on its side like an ancient monument, with various crinkly and crackly things at its base. "Just cut it," the waiter said kindly. He looked like Pascal Lite, not as exotic or statuesque, but with a bit of Pascal's twinkle and good-boy-with-a-lot-of-tattoos edge. I slid the knife down. At first nothing happened. The foie gras clung to itself, until it peeled apart sleepily and a green, milky liquid bled out. "Wow," I said. "Wow," Michael Saltz said. I took a soft forkful of foie gras and dragged it through the pea shoot sauce and the brown crumbles and white flakes. I rubbed the foie gras against the roof of my mouth, and it stuck there with a sticky stubbornness, then melted away. The taste coursed through my body, a slippery, moody, gutsy smoothness that slithered and pushed and screamed down my throat. Oh, Pascal, I thought. If I couldn't be with him, this came close. I flashed back to three nights ago and the pleasure cascaded through me once more.

We strolled to the end of the platform. We came to a man with a signal lamp and I saw that as he passed us he looked at a conductor standing on another platform and made a drinking movement with his hand near his mouth. We stopped past the end of the roof and looked at the sun. "You see the sun, Koekebakker?" The sun was especially clear, right in front of us, close by, bigger and redder than I had ever seen it. It almost touched the rails, it didn't flash brightly on things anymore, there was a dull glow only on the frosted windowpanes of the train shed to the right of the track. "You think I'm drunk?" I did indeed. "It doesn't matter, Koekebakker, when I'm sober I don't understand anything anyway." "Do you understand what the sun wants from me? I have thirty-four setting suns leaning against the wall, one on top of the other, all facing the wall. But every evening it's there again." "Unless it's cloudy," I said. But he wouldn't let himself be distracted. "Koekebakker, you've always been my best friend. I've known you since--how long has it been?" "Thirteen years. That's a long time. You know what you need to do? Do me a favor. You have a hatbox?" I didn't say anything. "Put it in a hatbox, Koekebakker. In a hatbox. I want to be left alone. Put it in a hatbox, a plain old hatbox. That's all it's worth." Bavinck blubbered drunkard's tears. I looked around helplessly. A man in a uniform with a yellow stripe on his cap came up to us and spoke to me. "I think it would be better, sir, if you took the gentleman home.

The light sprang up again, and there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, tense, erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone. 'Master!' cried Sam. Then Frodo stirred and spoke with a clear voice, indeed with a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoil of Mount Doom, ringing in the roof and walls. 'I have come,' he said. 'But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!' And suddenly, as he set it on his finger, he vanished from Sam's sight. [...] And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the power in Barad-dúr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door of that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom was hung. From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were forgotten. The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with overewhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the Nazgúls, the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards to Mount Doom...

All the world she needs is here, under this canopy—the densest biomass anywhere on Earth. Steep, steely streams scour through rickles of rock where salmon spawn—water cold enough to kill all pain. Falls flash over ridges turned jade by moss and tumbled with shed branches. In the scattered openings, shot here and there through the understory, sit secret congregations of salmonberry, elderberry, huckleberry, snowberry, devil’s club, ocean spray, and kinnikinnick. Great straight conifer monoliths fifteen stories high and a car-length thick hold a roof above all. The air around her resounds with the noise of life getting on with it. Cheebee of invisible winter wrens. Industrial pock from jackhammering woodpeckers. Warbler buzz. Thrush flutter. The scatterings of beeping grouse across the forest floor. At night, the cool hoot of owls chills her blood. And, always, the tree frogs’ song of eternity.

Prestos jogged back to the edge of the pit, lifting a whistle to her lips. A huge timer appeared high up above, glittering with magic as it readied to count down from five minutes- was that all? Before I could ask Sofia for more information, Prestos's whistle screeched and Darius swung a fist right into the Starlight Captain's face. As he lurched sideways I saw the name Quentin on the back of his shirt alongside the position of Earthraider. “Oh my god,” I gasped as Darius lunged to pick up the ball, only to receive a knee right to his chin. Darius was ready, lurching back and throwing a kick while the entire stadium bellowed in encouragement. Quentin took the blow to the stomach, stumbling away and Darius grabbed the ball which looked pretty damn heavy. The second he had it, the two teams charged forward. Geraldine roared like she was going into battle, magically tearing up the ground beneath the feet of the Starlight team so they stumbled wildly, unable to get their hands on Darius. He made a beeline for the Pit as the four Keepers grouped in around it. “Go on!” Orion roared from my right, rising to his feet as more and more people stood up all around us. ... Max tried to knock her aside with a blast of water, but stumbled to a halt before he could cast it well enough, clasping onto his neck and rubbing like mad. “Ahhh it burns!” Tory and I fell apart into laughter as I noticed his skin was turning blotchy with violent purple patches. “Ahhhh!” “Rigel! What the fuck is going on?” Orion bellowed just as a blaring BUZZZZZZZZ announced Starlight getting the ball into the Pit. A scoreboard lit up above the stands, showing Starlight had scored one point but then words in red flashed beside it. ... “Now it's round two. Every round lasts five minutes. After an hour, it'll be half time then they play for a final hour. Just watch, it's about to get seriously intense.” She pointed to the four corners of the pitch. “There's only one ball in play per round, it'll be fired into the pitch randomly from the four Elemental Quarters. A Fireball is scorching hot, an Earthball is seriously heavy, an Airball is light and will be shot far up toward the roof and a Waterball is freezing to touch. If no one gets the ball in the Pit before the five minutes are up – boom!” She mimed an explosion with her hands and my mouth fell open. “Holy shit,” Tory breathed and I nodded in absolute agreement of that. “If the ball is dropped at any point in the game, including just before it explodes, the team loses five points. So everyone on that pitch is prepared for the injuries they'll get if it goes off,” Sofia explained. “That's insane,” I breathed. “Nope.” Diego leaned forward from his chair with a manic gleam in his eyes. “That's Pitball.” (darcy)

At the most terrible moments of man’s life, for instance when he is being led to execution, he remembers just such trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has flashed past him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross—that he will remember.

Are we going tit for tat on proving that? Or am I going to be getting off alone in my room?” I flashed him a sexy smirk. “Just like every other night I’ve spent under this roof since I’ve been back.” “What did you just say? Are you telling me that you’ve been across the hall, touching yourself this whole time?” “Course not. Toys are much more effective at getting the job done.” “You always were a smartass.” His voice was husky and low. “Let me rephrase my question. Who were you thinking of when you came, baby?” There was no use in lying, so I told him the truth. “You. It’s only ever been you, Jenner.

Time slowed and Kat’s heart raced as Beckett slowly leaned in. By the time her mind shoved through the haze of surprise and lust to react, his lips were brushing hers. Just a brush of skin on skin, amazingly soft and tentative. So surprising given his size. The world froze for a long moment, but then that little bit of contact set off a flash fire in Kat’s blood. And apparently Beckett’s, too. Because the kiss turned instantly and blisteringly devouring. On a groan, his tongue invaded her mouth, and she sucked him in deep. Their hands pulled one another closer and their bodies collided. Their height differentiation was so great that Kat had to push onto her tiptoes and Beckett had to lean way down. Kat wasn’t sure if she pulled herself up or Beckett lifted her, but the next thing she knew her legs were wrapped around his hips and his hands gripped her ass. They stumbled into her room and Beckett kicked the door shut behind them. Kat moaned as her back came up against the wall and his erection ground against her core. With his tongue in her mouth and his hands roaming her body and his hips pressing maddeningly against the center of her need, Kat was possibly more overwhelmed than she’d ever been in her life. Beckett Murda was all she felt, saw, smelled, tasted. Her mind was on a repeating track of Wait . . . wait . . . omigod . . . what’s happening? But her body had totally left the station. Whatever small part of her wanted to pull back or slow down gave way to the more urgent need to let go. Let go of worrying about Cole. Let go of the fear she felt for her brothers. Let go of the horrible images she carried in her mind of the Hard Ink roof collapsing and Jeremy going down with it, which was the scariest thing she’d ever seen. So she did. Kat let it all go in favor of letting Beckett pull her under the waves with him.

Six heads erupted from the water with fangs flashing and mouths roaring. On the neck of one of them was Asherah, riding it like a steed. She pointed down at the approaching form of Mikael. The monster focused on the angel as a target. The sound of gurgling from deep within its bowels warned Mikael. He had been caught by this attack before, at the beach of Mount Sapan. He was not going to let it happen again. He dove behind a huge boulder as a stream of fire poured out from the dragon head and blackened the entire area of stone. Another head reached down and Dagon leapt onto it, pulled away before Uriel and Gabriel could reach him. Ba’alzebul and Molech dashed headlong at the seven heads. Ba’alzebul’s muscular form launched an amazing thirty feet to catch one of the gaping jaws as it swung past the rocks of the beach. Molech was not so glorious. He could only make a good twenty feet. It was not enough to reach his target. He landed in the water in a belly flop. Uriel and Gabriel could not help but look at each other, smirking. One of the dragon heads reached down and picked Molech out of the water with its teeth and placed him on the back of another neck. The head that Ba’alzebul had caught had a sword stuck in the roof of its mouth, the hilt sticking out of its head. It was Gabriel’s sword, from their confrontation at Sapan generations earlier. Ba’alzebul pulled it from the creature’s mouth and swung around to mount its neck. He raised the sword high in victory, as all seven heads plunged back into the deep, carrying its four riders away from the grasp of the angels. Mikael stepped down to the shoreline to stand by Uriel and Gabriel as Raphael and Raguel helped the trapped angels get free from the rocks. They looked out onto the frothing, swirling waters left behind by the exit of the gargantuan and its riders. There was no way the archangels could ever chase that chaos monster. “You have to hand it to that Asherah,” said Uriel. “She is one goddess with chutzpah, taking her chances with enchanting Leviathan.” Gabriel added, “And I thought Ashtart was gutsy.” “Ashtart cut your gut in half back at Mount Hermon,” said Uriel wryly. “If I had not found your legs in the waters of the Abyss you would have been a paraplegic until the Resurrection.

You have rightly surmised I brood and paw and snort at times for show, Mrs. Seaton. It keeps His Grace from getting ideas, for one thing. But make no mistake on this point: I will defend my brother’s interests without exception or scruple. If I find you are playing him false in any sense or trifling with him, I will become your worst enemy.” Anna smiled at him thinly. “Do you think he’d appreciate these threats you make to his housekeeper?” “He might understand them,” St. Just said. “For the other message I have to convey to you is that to the extent you matter to my brother, you matter to me. If he decides he values you in his life, then I will also defend you without exception or scruple.” “What is it you are saying?” “You are a woman with troubles, Anna Seaton. You have no past anyone in this household knows of, you have no people you’ll admit to, you have the airs and graces of a well-born lady, but you labor for your bread instead. I’ve seen you conferring with Morgan, and I know you have something to hide.” Anna raised her chin and speared him with a look. “Everybody has something to hide.” “You have a choice, Anna,” St. Just said, her given name falling from his lips with surprising gentleness. “You either trust the earl to resolve your troubles, or you leave him in peace. He’s too good a man to be exploited by somebody under his own roof. He’s had that at the hands of his own father, and I won’t stand for it from you.” Anna hefted her basket and flashed St. Just a cold smile. “Like the duke, you’ll wade in, bully and intimidate, and jump to conclusions regarding Westhaven’s life, telling yourself all the while you do it because you love him, when in fact, you haven’t the first notion how to really go about caring for the man. Very impressive—if one wants proof of your patrimony.” She

Everett didn’t hesitate to bring Lucetta’s fingers to his lips, but unlike most gentlemen, he didn’t linger, earning a nod of approval from Lucetta. “This is a pleasant surprise, Lucetta, finding you in Newport.” “Thank you, Everett, and I’m sure you’ll be absolutely delighted to learn I’ll be skulking around Seaview for the next few weeks—although you needn’t look so worried. I won’t be staying under your roof, but at Abigail’s. I thought I’d help Millie out with the children a bit, at no cost to you, of course, but . . . speaking of Millie—have you been given the pleasure of kissing her hand yet today?” For just a second, something interesting flashed through Everett’s eyes, but it was gone in the next, replaced with something . . . cold. “I don’t normally make a habit of kissing the nanny’s hand, Lucetta.” “And I don’t normally make a habit of telling people they’re complete idiots, but . . . there you have it . . . you’re an idiot, Everett,” Lucetta said as calm as you please, not even batting an eye as she delivered her insult. A vein began throbbing on Everett’s forehead, but instead of responding to Lucetta, he turned on his heel, stalked over to Millie, and grabbed hold of her hand. Bringing it to his lips, he pressed a kiss on it that lasted barely a second, before he dropped her hand as if it had burned him and turned back to Lucetta again. “Does that make you feel better?” “Hardly, since no woman likes to be kissed by a man who scowls at them, but . . . it’s a start.

He drifts the luffa lower and lower until he has to take a knee. Then he knows he’ll be in a perfect position to... Then streaks of lightning flash all around them. Along with thunder, that's rumbling louder and brighter than before. A feeling of dread fills her and her eyes grow wide. Cassie grabs Rob’s arm and slams him against the wall of the shower. Seconds later the trunk of a giant tree crashes through the roof and the bathroom wall. Rain splatters over them and branches rake down her back. Cassie cries out but keeps herself glued to Rob’s body. She shields him with a deep spell that allows the branches to brush lightly against his skin. When

A SNIPER FIRED into Bravo Company’s ranks. Crack! A marine fell. Then again. Crack! He was dead. The marines pulled his body as they ran for cover. They chose an abandoned Iraqi National Guard building that fronted Highway 10, the main road into Falluja. Twenty guys ran up to the roof. They set up their machine guns and waited. The sniper fired again. He was in the building across the street, fifty yards away, on the second floor. The flash of a shadow. The marines opened up with everything they had. Aimed, fired, raked and sprayed. Ten seconds. Three thousand shots. Bullet casings in smoking piles. The quickened pulses of young men. Smoke oozing from barrels. “I don’t see him,” one of them said. Minutes went by. Cigarettes glowed. Crack! A bullet zinged across the rooftop. A shadow passed by a window. Western side of the building this time, someone said, third floor. The marines opened fire again. They held their guns steady on the ledge of the rooftop as they let them fly: M-4 s, M-16 s, SAWs, 240 s, M-203 grenade launchers. A blazing symphony. The building across the street shook and smoked. A fire began on the second floor. The sniper fired. Crack, crack. A muzzle flashed. “Goddamn you!” someone shouted as the marines fired again. “We got one guy moving back and forth,” Lieutenant Eckert, one of the platoon leaders, said calmly. “We may have found him,” another marine said, but everyone kept firing where they were firing. Eckert stood back from the wall on the roof to get a wider view. “The idea is, he just sits up there and eats a sandwich, and we go crazy trying to find him,” he said. The

Wednesday- Use Your Powers for Good   We all stayed inside the tower last night, eating cake and listening to the rain. We could hear all kinds of mobs outside, but so high up and all of us being together, we never felt in danger.   A few times Courtney noticed the Weather Master had wandered off and was sitting by himself. She always brought him back to the group. Eventually he stayed with us. Once he even smiled.   I snuck away from the group as soon as the sun began to rise. If we were going to stay here, we needed shelter. All of us trying to share the tower wasn’t going to work…Charles snores.   “What are you doing up and about so early?” the Weather Master asked me as he approached from behind. I had already started gathering wood from nearby trees. Courtney and Charles and Dog had come down a little while after me and were off searching for more.   “Building myself a tree house,” I said. “Give me a hand?”   He hesitated. “I’m not sure I could be of much help…”   “I meant stop the rain,” I corrected. “Just for a little while, until I finish the roof.”   He didn’t look like he liked that idea very much. “I’m not sure…”   “Hey now,” I said, putting down my ax and looking him in the eye. “The whole reason we said we’d stay is so we can help you learn to use your powers for good…not evil.”   He thought about that long and hard. “You really think someone like me could learn to use a power like this to…help people?”   “Everybody has something to give,” I said, shrugging. Just then, Charles and Courtney emerged from the trees, both carrying wood and sugarcane, a few small slimes bouncing along behind Courtney as she walked. “Go on. Give it a try.”   We watched through the rain as the Weather Master bounced back up to the top of the tower. Slowly the rain stopped, the clouds cleared, and the sun shone down on us from above.   “Well?” Courtney said. “What are we waiting for? Let’s get these tree houses built before the sun goes down.”   And we did. We’re all sitting in our own houses now, since it’s mostly dark out. The rain hasn’t come back yet, but I can tell the Weather Master is still up there messing with the controls. Lightning flashes across the sky, I realize, in patterns. A light show before bed. For us.   Have you ever crafted something so big and complicated and awesome that you just stand there afterward, in awe of what you have just created with just the materials around you? I have. But definitely nothing as cool and bright as this.   I never thought a slime could change my life, but it did. It brought me and my friends here. We turned a monster into someone good.     How awesome is that???

she’d grown up but she couldn’t spot her parents’ home among the jumble of roofs. On the gentle rise across the river the homes were statelier; here and there swimming pools flashed

Prayer is spending time with God. ~ Sharon Espeseth         Covered     “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Ephesians 6:18).     Looking back, I recall the many times that I had done stupid things, yet somehow I didn’t get hurt. Specifically, I remember my university days as being full of stupidity. For instance, one cold November evening I decided to leave a house party and walk home. This wouldn’t have been so bad, however, it was 2:00 in the morning, I hadn’t told anyone I was going, and I had to walk 45 minutes to get home. When I think back, I shudder. Any number of bad things could have happened to me.   I made some poor choices, and although I suffered the consequences I sometimes felt as if the consequences were not as bad as they could have been. It recently occurred to me that I was being watched over and protected. I now know that my family frequently prayed for me.   Although I wasn’t serving God at the time, I was being covered in prayer by those who were. I am now led to believe that people I didn’t even know were praying for me. I make this assumption, not because I now know these people, but because I witnessed people praying for complete strangers.   In church and at Bible studies, prayer requests are often made for those we do not know. As part of a Christian writer’s group, I receive prayer requests via email for people I may never meet in my lifetime. Listening to Christian radio stations, prayer requests are voiced for others throughout the country and the world. As a member of many Christian associations, I receive newsletters and phone calls requesting prayer for strangers.   More recently, I witnessed first hand the outpouring of love for strangers through prayer. I was traveling east with a van full of women. We were excited about the conference we were going to together. However, on our drive we saw a slowdown of traffic on the opposite highway. There were police cars, ambulance, and fire truck lights flashing. In the centre of it all was a car, overturned on its roof. Another car was near with a smashed front end. The accident scene looked horrible. We automatically stopped our chatter and took a moment to pray aloud for the victims in the accident. We prayed for complete strangers. Although we may never know who they were, we followed Jesus’ directive to love our neighbours.   It’s comforting to know that my family and I are being prayed for. And I will continue to pray for people I don’t even know.       Prayer is my "alone" time with God. ~ Ruth Smith Meyer        

The rays of the moon shone down through the skylight. She scooped up some water and gazed at it floating in her hands. It made her smile. It was because she took pleasure in things like this that she could live so cheaply. She got out of the bath and put on her nightgown, then went up to the roof to enjoy the lukewarm breeze in the cool of evening. A shooting star flashed in the distance, and she thought of making a wish, but realized there was nothing left to hope for.

We were entering New York City now, via some highway that cut across the Bronx. Unfamiliar territory for me. I am a Manhattan boy; I know only the subways. Can’t even drive a car. Highways, autos, gas stations, tollbooths—artifacts out of a civilization with which I’ve had only the most peripheral contact. In high school, watching the kids from the suburbs pouring into the city on weekend dates, all of them driving, with golden-haired shikses next to them on the seat: not my world, not my world at all. Yet they were only sixteen, seventeen years old, the same as I. They seemed like demigods to me. They cruised the Strip from nine o’clock to half past one, then drove back to Larchmont, to Lawrence, to Upper Montclair, parking on some tranquil leafy street, scrambling with their dates into the back seat, white thighs flashing in the moonlight, the panties coming down, the zipper opening, the quick thrust, the grunts and groans. Whereas I was riding the subways, West Side I.R.T. That makes a difference in your sexual development. You can’t ball a girl in the subway. What about doing it standing up in an elevator, rising to the fifteenth floor on Riverside Drive? What about making it on the tarry roof of an apartment house, 250 feet above West End Avenue, bulling your way to climax while pigeons strut around you, criticizing your technique and clucking about the pimple on your ass? It’s another kind of life, growing up in Manhattan. Full of shortcomings and inconve-niences that wreck your adolescence. Whereas the lanky lads with the cars can frolic in four-wheeled motels. Of course, we who put up with the urban drawbacks develop compensating complexities. We have richer, more interesting souls, force-fed by adversity. I always separate the drivers from the nondrivers in drawing up my categories of people. The Olivers and the Timothys on the one hand, the Elis on the other. By rights Ned belongs with me, among the nondrivers, the thinkers, the bookish introverted tormented deprived subway riders. But he has a driver’s license. Yet one more example of his perverted nature.

Steep, steely streams scour through rickles of rock where salmon spawn -- water cold enough to kill all pain. Falls flash over ridges turned jade by moss and tumbled with shed branches. In the scattered openings, shot here and there through the understory, sit secret congregations of salmonberry, elderberry, huckleberry, snowberry, devil's club, ocean spray, and kinnikinick. Great straight conifer monoliths fifteen stories high and a car-length thick hold a roof above all. The air around her resounds with the noise of life getting on with it

It’s going to need repairing before leaf-bare.” Brackenfur looked up. Squirrelflight followed the old warrior’s gaze and saw holes in the roof of the elders’ den. Sunshine streamed through them, dazzling her. She looked away. “I’ll organize a patrol to fix it,” she promised. Graystripe stuck his head through the entrance. “Are you going to patch up that roof?” “Of course,” Squirrelflight told him. “She’s going to patch it up!” Graystripe called over his shoulder to Millie, who was lying outside in the sunshine. “She’s going to what?” croaked Millie. The old she-cat was growing increasingly deaf. “Patch it up!” Graystripe yowled. “Who with?” Millie sounded confused. “Has she been quarreling again?” Alarm flashed in Squirrelflight’s chest. Did the Clan know about her spat with Bramblestar? They must have noticed she hadn’t slept in his den last night. “The roof!” Rolling his eyes, Graystripe headed outside.

What, she wondered, could be the reason for such persistent attention? Had she, in her haste in the taxi, put her hat on backwards? Guardedly she felt at it. No. Perhaps there was a streak of powder somewhere on her face. She made a quick pass over it with her handkerchief. Something wrong with her dress? She shot a glance over it. Perfectly all right. What was it? Again she looked up, and for a moment her brown eyes politely returned the stare of the other’s black ones, which never for an instant fell or wavered. Irene made a little mental shrug. Oh well, let her look! She tried to treat the woman and her watching with indifference, but she couldn’t. All her efforts to ignore her, it, were futile. She stole another glance. Still looking. What strange languorous eyes she had! And gradually there rose in Irene a small inner disturbance, odious and hatefully familiar. She laughed softly, but her eyes flashed. Did that woman, could that woman, somehow know that here before her very eyes on the roof of the Drayton sat a Negro? Absurd! Impossible! White people were so stupid about such things for all that they usually asserted that they were able to tell; and by the most ridiculous means, finger-nails, palms of hands, shapes of ears, teeth, and other equally silly rot. They always took her for an Italian, a Spaniard, a Mexican, or a gipsy. Never, when she was alone, had they even remotely seemed to suspect that she was a Negro. No, the woman sitting there staring at her couldn’t possibly know. Nevertheless, Irene felt, in turn, anger, scorn, and fear slide over her. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of being a Negro, or even of having it declared. It was the idea of being ejected from any place, even in the polite and tactful way in which the Drayton would probably do it, that disturbed her.

What if, it came to me in a flash, instead of attacking Iraq and since then killing nearly a million people, what if Bush had said to the Iraqis, Look, it’s going to cost America about two trillion dollars to do this war, so why don’t we divide the money instead, and each get a trillion? I’ll give you a trillion for marvelous new schools and fantastic hospitals, solar panels on every roof so everyone has good power, good roads, lots of environmental restoration, all those good things? And I’ll keep our trillion from going further into debt? And no one dies. How could everyone not have agreed?

Something hit him in the back and he went forward, face on the cold floor, thinking, This is it, I’m dead, but he wasn’t dead, he could feel the dampness of the stone against his cheek and when he rolled over he saw that an explosion had brought the ceiling down: a big explosion, judging by all the rubble and the dust, and he would have expected it to make a noise, but he hadn’t heard anything, and he still couldn’t hear anything, even though quite large chunks of the roof were coming down and people were flailing about waving torches and shouting with their mouths wide open, no, there was just a whine and a whistle and a buzz going on somewhere inside his skull, and when he sneezed it made no sound, but small, hot fingers closed around his hand and tugged at him and he looked up and saw Hester, white in the sweep and flare of a torch-beam like a floodlit statue of herself except that she was mouthing something at him, tugging and tugging him and pointing towards the doorway, and he scrambled out from under the thing that had fallen on him, which turned out to be Sathya, and he wondered if she was badly hurt and if he should try to help her, but Hester was pulling him towards the door, stumbling over the bodies of men who were quite definitely dead, stooping under the remains of a heat-duct which was all twisted open and smoking as if it had exploded from inside, and as he looked back somebody fired a gun at him and he saw the flash and felt the bullet flick past his ear but he couldn’t hear that either.

As creative channels, we need to trust the darkness. We need to learn to gently mull instead of churning away like a little engine on a straight-ahead path. This mulling on the page can be very threatening. “I’ll never get any real ideas this way!” we fret. Hatching an idea is a lot like baking bread. An idea needs to rise. If you poke at it too much at the beginning, if you keep checking on it, it will never rise. A loaf of bread or a cake, baking, must stay for a good long time in the darkness and safety of the oven. Open that oven too soon and the bread collapses—or the cake gets a hole in its middle because all the steam has rushed out of it. Creativity requires a respectful reticence. The truth is that this is how to raise the best ideas. Let them grow in dark and mystery. Let them form on the roof of our consciousness. Let them hit the page in droplets. Trusting this slow and seemingly random drip, we will be startled one day by the flash of “Oh! That’s it!

Slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, plowing it up like gunfire. The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat. The walls, streaked with moss, had grown soft, and bulged a little with dampness that seeped up from the ground. The wild, overgrown garden was full of the whisper and scurry of small lives. In the undergrowth a rat snake rubbed itself against a glistening stone. Hopeful yellow bullfrogs cruised the scummy pond for mates. A drenched mongoose flashed across the leaf-strewn driveway.

sheltered spot on the cove. As she headed toward the spot, Cara mentally compared the evidence photos in the police database to the lay of the land. Images flashed in her head—a hand half-buried in the sand, and the boot, covered in grime,

Like a black shadow a priest stole across the square. Above him the cross on the church glowed like a live cinder, flashing its reflection along the purple-slated roof from the eaves of which a cloud of ash-gray pigeons drifted into the gutter below.

Just as they were reaching the wall of the building, Justin spoke urgently. “Hostiles on roof!” But it was too late!! Two figures had thrown off their protective heat shields and jumped from the roof of the building onto the backs of the CIA agents. Trey fought hard. His attacker was standing behind him with his hand around the agent’s throat. Stone elbowed his attacker in the face and bit hard on his hand. Howling, his assailant let go of Trey’s esophagus, but punched him in the kidney and slammed his foot into Trey’s groin. He unleashed a flurry of punches into the back of the agent’s head, knocking him to the ground. In a flash the hostile had zip-tied Trey’s ankles and wrists.

their belts – or at least Leo thought they were weapons. Then the Boreads switched them on, and Leo realized they were flashlights with orange cones, like the ones traffic controller guys use on a runway. Cal and Zethes turned and swooped towards the hotel’s tower. Leo turned to his friends. ‘I love these guys. Follow them?’ Jason and Piper didn’t look eager. ‘I guess,’ Jason decided. ‘We’re here now. But I wonder why Boreas hasn’t been kind to visitors.’ ‘Pfft, he just hasn’t met us.’ Leo whistled. ‘Festus, after those flashlights!’ As they got closer, Leo worried they’d crash into the tower. The Boreads made right for the green gabled peak and didn’t slow down. Then a section of the slanted roof slid open, revealing an entrance easily wide enough for Festus. The top and bottom were lined with icicles like jagged teeth. ‘This cannot be good,’ Jason muttered, but Leo spurred the dragon downward, and they swooped in after the Boreads. They landed in what must have been the penthouse suite, but the place had been hit by a flash freeze. The entry hall had vaulted ceilings forty feet high, huge draped windows and lush oriental carpets. A staircase at the back of the room led up to another equally massive hall, and more corridors branched off to the left and right. But the ice made the room’s beauty a little frightening.

J-Just m-my throat,’ I stuttered, my lips quivering from the cold. ‘Let's get you out of here, then,’ Marcel said. He slid his arms under me and lifted me without effort-like picking up an empty box. His chest was bare and warm; he hunched his shoulders to keep the rain off me. My head lolled over his arm. I stared vacantly back toward the furious water, beating the sand behind him. ‘You got her?’ I heard Sam ask. ‘Yeah, I'll take it from here. Get back to the hospital. I'll join you later. Thanks, Sam.’ My head was still rolling. None of his words sunk in at first. Sam didn't answer. There was no sound, and I wondered if he were already gone. The water licked and writhed up the sand after us as Marcel carried me away like it was angry that I'd escaped. As I stared wearily, a spark of color caught my unfocused eyes-a a small flash of fire was dancing on the black water, far out in the bay. The image made no sense, and I wondered how conscious I was. My head swirled with the memory of the black, churning water of being so lost that I couldn't find up or down. So, lost… but somehow Marcel… ‘How did you find me?’ I rasped. ‘I was searching for you,’ he told me. He was half-jogging through the rain, up the beach toward the road. ‘I followed the tire tracks to your truck, and then I heard you scream…’ He shuddered. ‘Why would you jump, Bell? Didn't you notice that it's turning into a hurricane out here? Couldn't you have waited for me?’ Anger filled his tone as the relief faded. ‘Sorry,’ I muttered. ‘It was stupid.’ ‘Yeah, it was really stupid,’ he agreed, drops of rain shaking free of his hair as he nodded. ‘Look, do you mind saving the stupid stuff for when I'm around? I won't be able to concentrate if I think you're jumping off cliffs behind my back.’ ‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘No problem.’ I sounded like a chain-smoker. I tried to clear my throat and then winced; the throat-clearing felt like stabbing a knife down there. ‘What happened today? Did you… find her?’ It was my turn to shudder, though I wasn't so cold here, right next to his ridiculous body heat. Marcel shook his head. He was still more running than walking as he headed up the road to his house. ‘No. She took off into the water-the bloodsuckers have the advantage there. That's why I raced home- I was afraid she was going to double back swimming. You spend so much time on the beach…’ He trailed off, a catch in his throat. ‘Sam came back with you… is everyone else home, too?’ I hoped they weren’t still out searching for her. ‘Yeah. Sort of.’ I tried to read his expression, squinting into the hammering rain. His eyes were tight with worry or pain. The words that hadn't made sense before suddenly did. ‘You said… hospital. Before, to Sam. Is someone hurt? Did she fight you?’ My voice jumped up an octave, sounding strange with the hoarseness. Marcel’s eyes tightened again. ‘It doesn't look so great right now.’ Abruptly, I felt sick with guilt-felt truly horrible about the brainless cliff dive. Nobody needed to be worrying about me right now. What a stupid time to be reckless. ‘What can I do?’ I asked. At that moment the rain stopped. I hadn't realized we were already back at Marcel’s house until he walked through the door. The storm pounded against the roof. ‘You can stay here,’ Marcel said as he dumped me on the short couch. ‘I mean it right here I'll get you some dry clothes.’ I let my eyes adjust to the darkroom while Marcel banged around in his bedroom. The cramped front room seemed so empty without Billy, almost desolate. It was strangely ominous-probably just because I knew where he was. Marcel was back in seconds. He threw a pile of gray cotton at me. ‘These will be huge on you, but it's the best I've got. I'll-a, step outside so you can change.’ ‘Don't go anywhere. I'm too tired to move yet. Just stay with me.

He said her name out loud and it tasted like chocolate on his lips. Chocolate with something sharp and hot beneath, like a dessert with a good slug of brandy. He imagined his own name on her lips. He saw her neat white teeth flash as she formed the long-ee sound, and then heard the noise of her tongue tuck in against the roof of her mouth. Like the smallest, softest kiss.

They circle; now dense like a polished roof, now disseminated like the meshes of some vast all-heaven-sweeping net, now darkening, now flashing out a million rays of light . . . a madness in the sky

I can’t remember if this is the fifth or sixth proposal,” he said. “It’s only the fourth.” “I asked you yesterday. Are you counting that one?” “No, that wasn’t really ‘will you marry me,’ that was more ‘will you come down off the roof.—” One of Leo’s brows arched. “By all means, let’s be technical.” He slid a ring onto the fourth finger of her left hand. It was the most breathtaking ring she had ever seen, a flawless silver opal with flashes of blue and green fire hidden deep inside. With every movement of her hand, the opal glimmered with unearthly color. It was encircled by a rim of glittering small diamonds. “This reminded me of your eyes,” he said. “Only not nearly as beautiful.” He paused, looking at her intently. “Catherine Marks, love of my life … will you marry me?