Sandy Claws Quotes

Five years ago, I said vows. And I believe in vows. I meant them, and not just when I said them out loud for an audience to hear but as a motto and a life choice. For as long as we both shall live. I hadn't anticipated the sandy flow of feeling, the yin-yang of love and dread, or the residual buildup of grievances and the slow draining of the benefit of doubt. In good times and in bad. Yes, sure, but in my naivete, I interpreted this as external; we would support each other when the world imposed and intruded. No one tells you that it's the internal that's the real challenge: those moments of decisiveness equal to taking a vow, when you feel the clawing grip of your pormises.

Water was not my element. It dragged at my clothes as I swam. A little farther, I told myself. I could hear him coming, his arms stronger than mine from a lifetime of lifting marble. I felt the water shiver near my foot where he had grabbed and almost caught me. I looked back, and saw how close he was and how far the shore behind. Then his hand seized my ankle and yanked, pulling me to him like a rope, hand over hand, and then he had me up and by the throat, his face pressed to mine. I think he expected me to fight and claw. I didn’t fight. I seized him close around the ribs, holding my wrists so he could not get free. The sudden weight pulled us both under. He kicked and flailed back to the surface, but I was heavier than he had thought, and the waves slopped at our mouths. Let it be now, I prayed. At first I thought it was just the cold of the water. It crept up my fingers and my arms, which stiffed around him. He struggled and fought, but my hands were fused together and nothing he tried could break them. Then it was in my legs too, and my belly and my chest, and no matter how he kicked, he could not haul us back up to the air. He hit at me, but it was watery and weak and I felt nothing, just the solid circle of my arms, and the inexorable drag of my body. He had no chance, really. He was only flesh. We fell through the darkness, and the coolness slid up my neck and bled the color from my lips and cheeks. I thought of Paphos and how clever she was. I thought of her stone sister, peaceful on her couch. We fell through the currents and I thought of how the crabs would come for him, climbing over my pale shoulders. The ocean floor was sandy and soft as pillows. I settled into it and slept.

I say is someone in there?’ The voice is the young post-New formalist from Pittsburgh who affects Continental and wears an ascot that won’t stay tight, with that hesitant knocking of when you know perfectly well someone’s in there, the bathroom door composed of thirty-six that’s three times a lengthwise twelve recessed two-bevelled squares in a warped rectangle of steam-softened wood, not quite white, the bottom outside corner right here raw wood and mangled from hitting the cabinets’ bottom drawer’s wicked metal knob, through the door and offset ‘Red’ and glowering actors and calendar and very crowded scene and pubic spirals of pale blue smoke from the elephant-colored rubble of ash and little blackened chunks in the foil funnel’s cone, the smoke’s baby-blanket blue that’s sent her sliding down along the wall past knotted washcloth, towel rack, blood-flower wallpaper and intricately grimed electrical outlet, the light sharp bitter tint of a heated sky’s blue that’s left her uprightly fetal with chin on knees in yet another North American bathroom, deveiled, too pretty for words, maybe the Prettiest Girl Of All Time (Prettiest G.O.A.T.), knees to chest, slew-footed by the radiant chill of the claw-footed tub’s porcelain, Molly’s had somebody lacquer the tub in blue, lacquer, she’s holding the bottle, recalling vividly its slogan for the past generation was The Choice of a Nude Generation, when she was of back-pocket height and prettier by far than any of the peach-colored titans they’d gazed up at, his hand in her lap her hand in the box and rooting down past candy for the Prize, more fun way too much fun inside her veil on the counter above her, the stuff in the funnel exhausted though it’s still smoking thinly, its graph reaching its highest spiked prick, peak, the arrow’s best descent, so good she can’t stand it and reaches out for the cold tub’s rim’s cold edge to pull herself up as the white- party-noise reaches, for her, the sort of stereophonic precipice of volume to teeter on just before the speaker’s blow, people barely twitching and conversations strettoing against a ghastly old pre-Carter thing saying ‘We’ve Only Just Begun,’ Joelle’s limbs have been removed to a distance where their acknowledgement of her commands seems like magic, both clogs simply gone, nowhere in sight, and socks oddly wet, pulls her face up to face the unclean medicine-cabinet mirror, twin roses of flame still hanging in the glass’s corner, hair of the flame she’s eaten now trailing like the legs of wasps through the air of the glass she uses to locate the de-faced veil and what’s inside it, loading up the cone again, the ashes from the last load make the world's best filter: this is a fact. Breathes in and out like a savvy diver… –and is knelt vomiting over the lip of the cool blue tub, gouges on the tub’s lip revealing sandy white gritty stuff below the lacquer and porcelain, vomiting muddy juice and blue smoke and dots of mercuric red into the claw-footed trough, and can hear again and seems to see, against the fire of her closed lids’ blood, bladed vessels aloft in the night to monitor flow, searchlit helicopters, fat fingers of blue light from one sky, searching.

Two amber eyes watched from the woods. Blinking against the sunshine, Thunder unsheathed his claws. He smelled tom. Tasting the air, he detected the odd scent of frost and stone. This cat wasn’t from around here. He narrowed his eyes, glimpsing the dark shape of a black cat, and growled as the stranger’s gaze flicked toward the sparrow. “Catch your own prey,” he warned. “That was my prey.” The tom padded forward, his paws clumsily scuffing the sandy earth as he stepped from the trees. Thunder’s pelt pricked. “What do you mean?” “I was stalking it when you caught it.” Unease flashed through Thunder. He hadn’t even realized he was being watched. He needed to be more careful on this new territory. But the tom did not seem angry. Thunder suddenly saw how his pelt hung off his skinny frame, and how his shoulders jutted like twigs beneath his fur. He recognized the look of hunger hollowing the cat’s eyes and glanced guiltily at the sparrow. “I didn’t realize.” Should he give up his catch? What about Thistle and Clover? They were hungry too. “Where are you from?

At dusk in the Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica, Melissa Overton barely heard the constant sound of crickets chirping all around them. Prowling through the dense, tropical rainforest as a jaguar, she listened for the human voices that would clue her in that her prey was nearby. Waves crashed onto the sandy beaches in the distance as she made her way quietly, like a phantom predator, through the tangle of vines and broad, leafy foliage, searching for any sign of the poachers. Humans wouldn't have a clue as to what she and her kind were when they saw her - apparently nothing other than an ordinary jaguar. And she and her fellow jaguar shifters planned to keep it that way. Her partner on this mission, JAG agent Huntley Anderson, was nearby, just as wary and observant. The JAG Special Forces Branch, also known as the Golden Claws, was only open to jaguar shifters and served to protect both their shifter kind and their jaguar cousins....

Like a tiger clamping down and shaking a deer's throat, the wind bit and clawed at the forest. It swam through the trees by night and down the beach at dawn. It swept across the beach, working up a dusty blue storm, and the ocean took a deep breath to hold back its anger. New tracks appeared where the wind had been. Living, breathing life could be found at the end of these traces. On the sandy beach as clean as the beginning of time, a single line of flower-shaped paw prints appeared.

Having left the previously heavily dredged area for a few years, marine life has been slow to return, allowing the Welsh Asssembly to conclude that a sandy underwater desert is the natural state of our cosatal waters. But along with the scallops, the metal claws have ripped out all the sea life: mussels, anemones, sea fans, sponges, seaweeds, all manner of fish, a marine world that cannot recover in a handful of years, but will take decades, centuries even. The exact marine life that dolphin mothers feed on when their calves are young and slow moving.

We soon arrive at the sandy trail that leads to the caretaker’s cabin, and the red wolf intern directs people to the parking area. People file out of their cars silently and gather around Kim. She waits till everyone is there and then explains that she is going to walk about a quarter of a mile down the trail to Sandy Ridge, where she’ll howl at the wolves inside. She tells us that sometimes it takes a few howls to get them interested, but we should hold tight and hope that they’ll howl back. Last week, she says, people heard one of the pups howl back. She sets off down the dark path with her flashlight aimed at the ground so as not to spook the wolves. We stand in a pool of weak, wobbly light cast from people’s flashlights and head lamps. The forest darkness encircles us. A few minutes later, we hear Kim’s call pierce the night air. The buzz and drone of insects create a background of uneven noise that I strain to filter out. I hear Kim howl again, and everyone around me seems to be holding their breath and trying not to move. We listen and wait for an answer. Nothing. Kim tries again. No response. I wonder what the people in the crowd are thinking. Is this all just a sham? Just another tourist attraction? Kim makes a fourth howl, and then it starts. A lone howl rises, forlorn and low. It meanders through a few octaves and claws higher and higher. It trails into a thin high-pitched note, and then a second and a third howl pick up at lower pitches. People in the crowd gasp, some lean forward straining to hear. Within thirty seconds, a parade of howls sings loudly from the dark woods. It is hard to believe the wolves are a few hundred yards away. They sound much closer, perhaps less than a hundred feet. Kim walks back to the crowd, flashlight downturned on the ground. Howls waft from somewhere behind her, persistent but not aggressive. The wolves sing. They sing to each other as much as they sing to us. One pitch stands out from the others, higher, thinner, and much lighter. It must be the pup. I imagine him standing next to his parents, watching them throw their heads back and open their jaws wide, letting loose with a call that says, “Here we are! Where are you? Here we are!” And the pup joins in, calling, “I’m here too! I’m here too!” I don’t know exactly what these wolves are saying, of course, but it is difficult to imagine the howling being anything other than a communication to locate other packs or individuals, a way to call out to the night and exclaim: I am here, and I know how to take care of myself so well that I’m going to let you know that I’m here! And my mate is here, and my kids are here. We are all here together in this place that is ours.

The boy pointed to a large grey monster with horns and claws on the cover. “That looks like you,” he giggled. “Yeah,” Big Sandy grunted. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, took the book from the boy and started to read.