Shadows And Silhouettes Quotes

Just let me wait a little while longer, Under your window in the quite snow. Let me stand here and shiver, I’ll be stronger If I can see your light before I go. All through the weeks I’ve tried to keep my balance. Leaves fell, then rain, then shadows, I fell too. Easy restraint is not among my talents, Fall turned to Winter and I came to you. Kissed by the snow I contemplate your face. Oh, do not hide it in your pillow yet! Warm rooms would never lure me from this place, If only I could see your silhouette. Turn on your light, my sun, my summer love. Zero degrees down here, July above.

The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy. Even at night, as if on purpose, the development held no looming shadows and no gaunt silhouettes. It was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves … A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place.

her fire was roaring, her silhouette raising showers of orange sparks with a hammer made of shadow.

She was incomparable in her inspired loveliness. Her arms amazed one, as one can be astonished by a lofty way of thinking. Her shadow on the wallpaper of the hotel room seemed the silhouette of her uncorruption.

We've turned off all the lights in the living room to make hand shadows. We've got this big flashlight aimed at the wall. I make the silhouette of my hand into a duck. Robin makes his into a rabbit. Now my duck kisses his rabbit And-POOF!- it turns into a turkey. And for some reason this strikes us as hysterically funny. But you probably had to be there.

Ghosts Take shape under moonlight, materialize in dreams. Shadows. Silhouettes of what is no more. But ghosts don't bother me. The day brings bigger things to worry about than flimsy remains of yesterday. No, spooks don't scare me. Gauzy apparitions might prank your psyche or agitate your nightmares, but lacking flesh and blood they are powerless to hurt you-cannot hope to inflict the kind of damage that real, live people do.

In The Republic, Plato imagines human beings chained for the duration of their lives in an underground cave, knowing nothing but darkness. Their gaze is confined to the cave wall, upon which shadows of the world are thrown. They believe these flickering shadows are reality. If, Plato writes, one of these prisoners is freed and brought into the sunlight, he sill suffer great pain. Blinded by the glare, he is unable to seeing anything and longs for the familiar darkness. But eventually his eyes adjust to the light. The illusion of the tiny shadows is obliterated. He confronts the immensity, chaos, and confusion of reality. The world is no longer drawn in simple silhouettes. But he is despised when he returns to the cave. He is unable to see in the dark as he used to. Those who never left the cave ridicule him and swear never to go into the light lest they be blinded as well.

I looked up through a scatter of fluttering leaves silhouetted against the rosy autumn sunset.

Shadows of what you'll become. Silhouettes.

I think of him so often I would recognize even his silhouette if he were only a painted shadow on the wall.

It's kind of interesting you're driving a car big enough for a wolfhound and a mastiff to get in the back of today," I said. "And a greyhound, a dark brown bear, and a brindle utility vehicle," said Jill. "Greyhounds don't take up much room," I said. "They're like dog silhouettes.

The sun kept dipping down into the ocean and the lights came on at the harbor, casting sudden shadows on the ground, illuminating the faces that were just a second ago silhouettes. The sky was golden and purple, the ocean a darker shade of violet.

I looked back to see if she was looking back to see me look back. She didn’t. Suddenly a thick layer of mist covered her and I only saw a silhouette in black moving away from me. Slowly it turned into a shadow and then a dot. Strong wind blew the fog. She had gone from my life like the way she came.

I'd wander for days in the fog, scared I'd never see another thing, then there'd be that door, opening to show me the mattress padding on the other side to stop out the sounds, the men standing in a line like zombies among shiny copper wires and tubes pulsing light, and the bright scrape of arcing electricity. I'd take my place in the line and wait my turn at the table. The table shaped like a cross, with shadows of a thousand murdered men printed on it, silhouette wrists and ankles running under leather straps sweated green with use, a silhouette neck and head running up to a silver band goes across the forehead. And a technician at the controls beside the table looking up from his dial and down the line and pointing at me with a rubber glove.

The lightness returned. That airless sensation of his body evaporating. Darline and Paris were fading, too. They were becoming distant longings, silhouettes, shadows fading on the ground. There are loves that outlive lovers.

A man walked in long strides through the darkness toward them. Nothing but a dark silhouette, shadow against shadow, he walked down the alley with the grace of a predator.

There are just traces of me and not a shadow left… Without the traces of your iridescence to make my silhouette.

But in the moonlight they were little more than silhouettes. A reflection of her life. A mere shadow of what she’d expected it to be.

Long shadows of evening creep up the walls, inching closer. Gradually, they reach fully across us, holding us in the stillness that only night can bring. In the hazy gloom of dusk, we are silhouettes of ourselves, reduced to our very essence. The night grows bolder. Unafraid, it opens its mouth and swallows us whole.

Who knows? Maybe everybody's end isn't the day they actually die, but the last time anyone speaks of them. Maybe when you die you don't really disappear, but you fade into a shadow, dark and featureless, only your outlines visible. Over time, as people forget you, your silhouette gradually fades into darkness until the final time anyone says your name on this planet.

Silhouettes Shadows are step-children to the sun visited from time to time by the moon

There were other, more subtle artistic effects. The slow shift of the light through each day caused shadows to drift, shorten and lengthen, producing constantly changing silhouettes. The summits of mountains, which might be pink in the mornings, turned violet and amaranth in the afternoon. ... Like music, (these phenomena) created a feeling that was not there before

The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his breast, his arms hanging, his legs rigid, appeared to await nothing now but a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone.

The old house had a thousand doors in it. All old houses do. You can see them if you know how to look: the noontime shadow of a windowpane crawling with intent across a floor; unmeasured angles of wall meeting wall; fireplaces grown chill with unused years. Archways with unseen contours you can trace with a finger in the cracks as brick grinds against brick in settling walls. Some nights, and some houses are doorways entire, silhouettes against the evening's last light black on black like an opening into a darker sky. You just have to look. An eye-corner glance will do, if you don't turn and stare and explain it away.

How is it that men create such lovely silhouettes, such shadows of the corporeal, capturing things in their most wraith-like moment and yet they are not content with honing such divine talent? Instead, they opt to dissect the cadaver of that which cast the shadow.

Did you know, that one night; one moonless, clear, shining night; with the shadowy silhouettes of trees crisp against the star-filled sky – I, on the high, level terrace of my flat, stretched out my hand! Against all odds and possibilities of unbelief and grief – a life of searchings, discontent, and a nagging sense of unreality… A spider-web intuition of a spread-out, intricate illusion that wilfully withheld the truth from me.

There is something dead about a lawn which has never been shadowed by the swift silhouette of a dancing kitten.

He had memorized the entire Qur'an and lectured on the nature of evil, which, like a shadow, cannot exist independently of the good silhouettes.

Dad once noted (somewhat morbidly, I thought at the time) that American institutions would be infinitely more successful in facilitating the pursuit of knowledge if they held classes at night, rather than in the daytime, from 8:00 PM to 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. As I ran through the darkness, I understood what he meant. Frank red brick, sunny classrooms, symmetrical quads and courts--it was a setting that mislead kids to believe that Knowledge, that Life itself, was bright, clear, and freshly mowed. Dad said a student would be infinitely better off going out into the world if he/she studied the periodic table of elements, Madame Bovary (Flaubert, 1857), the sexual reproduction of a sunflower for example, with deformed shadows congregating on the classroom walls, the silhouettes of fingers and pencils leaking onto the floor, gastric howls from unseen radiators, and a teacher's face not flat and faded, not delicately pasteled by a golden late afternoon, but serpentine, gargoyled, Cyclopsed by the inky dark and feeble light from a candle. He/she would understand "everything and nothing," Dad said, if there was nothing discernible in the windows but a lamppost mobbed by blaze-crazy moths and darkness, reticent and nonchalant, as darkness always was.

The sun was soft honey and rose colored along the horizon; the old trees were deep black silhouettes against it, with long purple shadows sliding out from their earth-slippered feet.

Continuing up Rennes. Dodging little Saabs and Renaults. Loving walking here. Sun alternately streaming. Obliterating physiognomies. No longer nouns. But movement. Disappearing. Now heavily raining. Sitting out anyway. Over drain smelling of beer. Metro. Sewers. Fetid breath of Paris. Two cold coffees. Watching shadows lengthening. On la Gaite opposite. Where Colette once performing. Having walked in old boots across city. Drawing mole above lip. Rice-powdering delicious arms. Paris a drug. P saying on phone. Yes Paris a drug. A woman. And I waking this a.m. Thinking there must be some way. Of staying. Now my love’s silhouette of rooftops eclipsing. Into night. Cold heinous breath. Blowing on privates. Through grille underneath.

Logan glanced at the clock on the cooker: nearly five minutes fast. The room was bathed in the pale orange glow of the overcast sky, the back garden a jungle of silhouettes and shadows through the window. He filled the kettle, then poured half of it out, before sticking it on to boil. The growing rumble drowned out the babble on his Airwave handset as DI Bell got his firearms team into place.

As we drifted away from the Tower Bridge, I saw a single silhouette standing against the bright lamplight. Even now when I was nearly asleep, I could recognise her. Her shoulders were hunched up as if she was upset. Whether she was upset that she had nearly killed me or that she had let me get away, I was unsure. Then she turned around and walked to join the other silhouettes standing in a group farther back. Now I could not see which one was Rose – they were all joint together to make one.

We were quiet beneath the old light above us. i was thinking about how the sky - at least this sky - wasn't actually black. The real darkness was in the trees, which could be seen only in silhouette. The trees were shadows of themselves against the rich silver-blue of the night sky.

Opening the door quietly, I slipped in without switching on the light. From the entrance hall, I could see the dining room at the end of the corridor, the table still decked out for the party. The cake was there, untouched, and the crockery still waited for the meal. I could make out the motionless silhouette of my father in his armchair, as he observed the scene from the window. He was awake and still wearing his best suit. Wreaths of smoke rose lazily from a cigarette he held between his index and ring fingers, as if it were a pen. I hadn't seen my father smoke for years.

I count the stars," she says softly. "To help me sleep." I roll my head toward her, watching her silhouette stare up into the sky. Awe laces each word from her soft lips. "I always wondered how something could shine so bright, even while being swallowed in darkness." My eyes run over the shadowed outline of her face. "I've been trying to figure that out myself." "I hope they know how admired they are up there," she murmurs. "I mean, I count them before bed every night." I shake my head at the sight of her admiring something far duller than she. "I'm quite sure that even the stars are envious of you.

It turns out, then, that a shadow is a fitting representation of this reality. A shadow casts a two-dimensional silhouette of a three dimensional object. In essence, it is a darkened and flattened facsimile of a luminous, multifaceted world—a world that cannot be directly perceived by those condemned to see in shadows.

Ieronym took hold of the cable with both hands, curved himself into a question mark, and grunted. The ferry creaked and lurched. The silhouette of the peasant in the tall hat slowly began to recede from me--which meant that the ferry was moving. Soon Ieronym straightened up and began working with one hand. We were silent and looked at the bank towards which we were now moving. There the "lumination" which the peasant had been waiting for was already beginning. At the water's edge, barrels of pitch blazed like huge bonfires. Their reflection, crimson as the rising moon, crept to meet us in long, wide stripes. The burning barrels threw light on their own smoke and on the long human shadows that flitted about the fire; but further to the sides and behind them, where the velvet ringing rushed from, was the same impenetrable darkness. Suddenly slashing it open, the golden ribbon of a rocket soared skywards; it described an arc and, as if shattering against the sky, burst and came sifting down in sparks. On the bank a noise was heard resembling a distant "hoorah." "How beautiful," I said. "It's even impossible to say how beautiful!" sighed Ieronym. "It's that kind of night, sir! At other times you don't pay attention to rockets, but now any vain thing makes you glad. Where are you from?

The shadow of your cheekbones Amidst the moonless sky The constellations shape your face The stars, your contoured lines Galactic eyes stare into mine Entranced, I trace your face Lost inside the orbit Of star-crossed, twisted fate Outlined in the exosphere The diamond studded abyss Your stellar silhouette Has left my soul eclipsed.

Hana starts off down the road. I’m tempted to watch her go. I get the urge to memorize her walk—to imprint her in my brain somehow, just as she is—but as I’m watching her waver in and out of the fierce sunlight, her silhouette gets confused with another one in my head, a shadow weaving in and out of darkness, about to walk off the cliff, and I don’t know who I’m looking at anymore. Suddenly the edges of the world are blurring and there’s a sharp pain in my throat, so I turn around and walk quickly toward the house. “Lena!” she calls out to me, just before I reach the gate. I spin around, heart leaping, thinking maybe she’ll be the one to say it. I miss you. Let’s go back. Even from a distance of fifty feet, I can see Hana hesitating. Then she makes this fluttering gesture with her hand and calls out, “Never mind.” This time when she turns around she doesn’t waver. She walks straight and quickly, turns a corner, and is gone. But what did I expect? That’s the whole point, after all: There’s no going back.

A small boat made its way back to the shore, a black shadow weaving quietly along rivulets of molten sky, disappearing as mud and stone blended together in the low rays of the last reflected light. A mist began to lift as the air turned silver and night blue, the reeds becoming dark silhouettes against the line of the pebble bank and the dimming sky.

Something intrigues me about shadows. They reduce the three-dimensional into the two-dimensional. At night time there are two separate lights shining from behind a person, two elongated shadows at the feet, two black silhouettes crossing over each other creating a dividing line of symmetry. One person of three-dimensions becomes two ground dwelling entities of two-dimensions.

Neanderthal graves. Bones beneath her feet, perhaps. The rocks in the garden would’ve once been larger, bright and shadowed with early-human firelight, and the land around them would’ve seemed empty and forever. There’d have been no concept of oceans. No awareness of planets. And here, right before her, are those same silhouettes of mountains, the same spikes of peaks. A shared view, glimpsed across time.

“He’s already been found, like I said,” Jeb answers, his attention on the hand pressed at my neck. He narrows his eyes, and with a subtle flick of his fingers, Morpheus’s shadow rises from the floor and wrestles Morpheus away from me. Growling, Morpheus shoves the dark silhouette aside, then glares at Jeb. “Amateur. Cheap parlor tricks.” Jeb gives him a vicious grin. “A pupil is only as good as his tutor.”

Blue water extends in rows of gentle ripples to a thin line of barely visible cottonwoods on the far side. The wind dies to a whisper and it's quiet, almost perfectly still except for the snap of grasshoppers leaping from the weeds. To the west the mountains rise suddenly, almost violently from the sandy brown of the plains, layered silhouettes of blue and green and gray rising to a turquoise sky. My heart is filled with the beauty of it all.

The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars.

Who knows. maybe everybody’s end isn’t the day they actually die, but the last time anyone speaks of them. Maybe when you die you don’t really disappear, but you fade into a shadow, dark and featureless, only your outlines visible. Over time, as people forget you, your silhouette gradually fades into darkness until the final time anyone says your name on this planet. That’s when your very last feature—the freckled tip of your nose, or the heart-top bubble of your lips—fades for good.

Do you know where we are?” he whispered. “Surely that is Baker Street,” I answered, staring through the dim window. “Exactly. We are in Camden House, which stands opposite to our own old quarters.” “But why are we here?” “Because it commands so excellent a view of that picturesque pile. Might I trouble you, my dear Watson, to draw a little nearer to the window, taking every precaution not to show yourself, and then to look up at our old rooms--the starting-point of so many of your little fairy-tales? We will see if my three years of absence have entirely taken away my power to surprise you.” I crept forward and looked across at the familiar window. As my eyes fell upon it, I gave a gasp and a cry of amazement. The blind was down, and a strong light was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair within was thrown in hard, black outline upon the luminous screen of the window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to make sure that the man himself was standing beside me. He was quivering with silent laughter. “Well?” said he. “Good heavens!” I cried. “It is marvellous.” “I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety,” said he, and I recognized in his voice the joy and pride which the artist takes in his own creation. “It really is rather like me, is it not?” “I should be prepared to swear that it was you.” “The credit of the execution is due to Monsieur Oscar Meunier, of Grenoble, who spent some days in doing the moulding. It is a bust in wax. The rest I arranged myself during my visit to Baker Street this afternoon.

A story, I had learned, through my own constant knitting and reknitting of remembered words, can lead us back to ourselves, to our lost innocence, and in the shadow it casts over our present world, we begin to understand what we only intuited in our naivete--that while all else may vanish, love is our one eternity. It reflects itself in joy and grief, in my father's sudden knowledge that he would not live to protect me, and in his determination to leave behind a part of himself--his spirit, his humanity--to illuminate my path, give light to my darkened world. He carved his silhouette in the memory of the sky for me to return to again and again.

The theosophy of Light suggests the metaphor of the mirror and the shadow. But "shadow" must not be taken to imply a dimension of Satanic darkness, an Ahrimanian antagonist; this shadow is essentially a reflection, the projection of a silhouette or face in a mirror. Our authors even speak of a "luminous shadow" ( in the sense that color is shadow in the context of absolute Light: Zill al-nur as opposed to Zill al-zulma, dark shadow). And that is how we must take the following state- ment: "Everything we call other than God, everything we call the universe, is related to the Divine Being as the shadow ( or his reflection in the mirror) to the person. The world is God's shadow.

Even more important, however, was how the silhouettes and shadows of the pyramids appeared to an observer from the skies. As this aerial photograph shows (Fig. 155), the true shape of the pyramids casts arrow-like shadows, which serve as unmistakable direction pointers. When all was ready to establish a proper Spaceport, it required a much longer Landing Corridor than the one which served Baalbek. For their previous Spaceport in Mesopotamia, the Anunnaki (the biblical Nefilim) chose the most conspicuous mountain in the Near East—Mount Ararat—as their focal point. It should not be surprising that out of the same considerations they again selected it as the focal point of their new Spaceport.

The wiry man scratched his head, looked the two inquisitors up and down and cleared his throat softly. “We must be quick.” He turned to go, pulling his cloak over his head and shuffling through the door into the moonlight. The two inquisitors moved with impossible silence behind, floating across the straw-covered floor like the cats on the walls outside the hut. The cats froze at the disturbance before scurrying noiselessly into the shadows as the three silhouettes crossed the ten yards of grass before the blackness of the forest swallowed them. No fires flickered at this time, when the full moon was highest in the cloudless summer sky, and the three were the only waking souls in the hamlet.

The Luxembourg is within five minutes’ walk of the rue Notre Dame des Champs, and there he sat under the shadow of a winged god, and there he had sat for an hour, poking holes in the dust and watching the steps which lead from the northern terrace to the fountain. The sun hung, a purple globe, above the misty hills of Meudon. Long streamers of clouds touched with rose swept low on the western sky, and the dome of the distant Invalides burned like an opal through the haze. Behind the Palace the smoke from a high chimney mounted straight into the air, purple until it crossed the sun, where it changed to a bar of smouldering fire. High above the darkening foliage of the chestnuts the twin towers of St. Sulpice rose, an ever-deepening silhouette.

You’re so much stronger than I am,” said Altan. Then he let her go. She shook her head frantically. “No, I’m not, it’s you, I need you—”“Someone’s got to destroy that research facility, Rin.”He stepped away from her. Arms stretched forward, he walked towardthe fleet.“No,” Rin begged. “No!”Altan took off at a run.A hail of arrows erupted from the Federation force.At the same moment Altan lit up like a torch.He called the Phoenix and the Phoenix came; enveloping him, embracinghim, loving him, bringing him back into the fold.Altan was a silhouette in the light, a shadow of a man. She thought shesaw him look back toward her. She thought she saw him smile.She thought she heard a bird’s cackle.Rin saw in the flames the image of Mai’rinnen Tearza. She was weeping.The fire doesn’t give, the fire takes, and takes, and takes

Rhysand opened his mouth, but then the silhouettes of two tall, powerful bodies appeared on the other side of the front door's fogged glass. One of them banged on it with a fist. 'Hurry up, you lazy ass,' a deep male voice drawled from the antechamber beyond. Exhaustion drugged me so heavily that I didn't particularly care that there were wings peeking over thier two shadowy forms. Rhys didn't so much as blink toward the door. 'Two things, Feyre darling.' The pounding continued, followed by the second male murmuring to his companion, 'If you're going to pick a fight with him, do it after breakfast.' That voice- like shadows given form, dark and smooth and... cold. 'I wasn't the one who hauled me out of bed just now to fly down here,' the first one said. Then added, 'Busybody.' I could have sworn a smile tugged on Rhys's lips as he went on, 'One, no one- no one- but Mor and I are able to winnow directly inside this house. it is warded, shielded, and then warded some more. Only those I wish- and you wish- may enter. You are safe here; and safe anywhere in this city, for that matter. Velaris's walls are well protected and have not been breached in five thousand years. No one with ill intent enters this city unless I allow it. So go where you wish, do what you wish, and see who you wish. Those two in the antechamber,' he added, eyes sparkling, 'might not be on that list of people you should bother knowing, if they keep banging on the door like children.' Another pound, emphasised by the first male voice saying, 'You know we can hear you, prick.' 'Secondly,' Rhys went on, 'in regard to the two bastards at my door, it's up to you whether you want to meet them now, or head upstairs like a wise person, take a nap since you're still looking a little peaky, and then change into city-appropriate clothing while I beat the hell out of one of them for talking to his High Lord like that.' There was such light in his eyes. It made him look... younger, somehow. More mortal. So at odds with the icy rage I'd seen earlier when I'd awoken... Awoken on that couch, and then decided I wasn't returning home. Decided that, perhaps, the Spring Court might not be my home.

Sovereign King of Detachment and Renunciation, Emperor of Death and Shipwreck, living dream that gradually wanders among the worlds ruins and wastes! Sovereign King of Despair amid splendours, grieving lord of palaces that don't satisfy, master of processions and pageants that never succeed in blotting out life! Sovereign King risen from the tombs, who came in the night by the light of the moon to tell your life to the living, royal page of lilies that have lost their petals, imperial herald of the coldness of ivory! Sovereign King Shepard of the Watches, knight errant of Anxieties traveling on moonlit roads without glory and without even a lady to serve, lord in the forest and on the slopes, a silent silhouette with visor drawn shut, passing through valleys, misunderstood in villages, ridiculed in towns, scorned in the cities! Sovereign King consecrated by Death to be her own, pale and absurd, forgotten and unrecognized, reigning amid worn-out velvets and tarnished marble on his throne at the limits of the Possible, surrounded by the shadows of his unreal court and guarded by the fantasy of his mysterious, solidierless army. (...) Your love for things dreamed was your contempt for things lived. Virgin King who disdained love, Shadow King who disdained light, Dream King who denied life! Amid the muffled racket of cymbals and drums, Darkness acclaims you Emperor!

In the Metro, one evening, I looked closely around me: everyone had come from somewhere else . . . Among us, though, two or three faces from here, embarrassed silhouettes that seemed to be apologising for their presence. The same spectacle in London. Today’s migrations are no longer made by compact displacements but by successive infiltrations: little by little, individuals insinuate themselves among the “natives,” to anaemic and too distinguished to stoop to the notion of a “territory.” After a thousand years of vigilance, we open the gates . . . When one thinks of the long rivalries between the French and the English, then between the French and the Germans, it seems as if each nation, by weakening one another, had as its task to speed the hour of the common downfall so that other specimens of humanity may relay them. Like its predecessor, the new Völkerwanderung will provoke an ethnic confusion whose phases cannot be distinctly foreseen. Confronted with these disparate profiles, the notion of a community homogeneous to whatever degree is inconceivable. The very possibility of so heteroclite a crowd suggests that in the space it occupies there no longer existed, among the indigenous, any desire to safeguard even the shadow of an identity. At Rome, in the third century of our era, out of a million inhabitants, only sixty thousand were of Latin stock. Once a people has fulfilled the historical idea which was its mission to incarnate, it no longer has any excuse to preserve its difference, to cherish its singularity, to safeguard its features amidst a chaos of faces.

was laughable. An aisle stretched down the middle of the ballroom, defined by candelabras topped with more pale orbs, their light flickering like little flames. The aisle runner was black and set with rhinestones in mimicry of the night sky. Or, the always sky, as it was here on Luna. A hush fell over the room, and Kai could tell it was not a normal hush. It was too controlled, too flawless. His heart pounded, uncontrolled in its cage. This was the moment he’d been dreading, the fate he’d fought against for so long. No one was going to interfere. He was alone and rooted to the floor. At the far back of the room, the massive doors opened, chorused with a fanfare of horns. At the end of the aisle, two shadows emerged—a man and a woman in militaristic uniforms carrying the flags of Luna and the Eastern Commonwealth. After they parted, setting the flags into stands on either side of the altar, a series of Lunar guards marched into the room, fully armed and synchronized. They, too, spread out when they reached the altar, like a protective wall around the dais. Next down the aisle were six thaumaturges dressed in black, walking in pairs, graceful as black swans. They were followed by two in red, and finally Head Thaumaturge Aimery Park, all in white. A voice dropped down from some hidden speakers. “All rise for Her Royal Majesty, Queen Levana Blackburn of Luna.” The people rose. Kai clasped his shaking hands behind his back. She appeared as a silhouette first in the lights of the doors, a perfect hourglass dropping off to a full billowing skirt that flowed behind her. She walked with her head high, gliding toward

Inching into the room, it’s clear something is wrong here. There’s a tingling sensation up my legs and back before I can even really focus on the parlor’s details. There are silhouettes of people, but I can see through them. It’s like shadows were cast and left behind to do as they please. Lost in the surreal sight of them for a moment, I inch further into the room without noticing that some were now moving behind me. There is no warning. I’m suddenly in the air, and moving backward rapidly toward the wall. It’s almost a full second before my body registers the actual pain of the blow my stomach just took. Being hit by a car doesn't even compare to this, and I didn't even see it coming. “For a shadow, you hit like a sledgehammer!” The words barely escape before something else slams into the base of my skull embedding most of my upper body in the wall and all but removing my head. These things are like Lucy; the disembodied dead who haven’t moved on. I've never met others that can actually touch things physically, they must be fairly potent. I pull my face out of the hole it had been planted in, letting plaster dust fall, coating my chest and legs like snow. Looking around quickly I try to gauge my surroundings. I can’t see them, but I know they’re there. Is one easy night, without a huge dry-cleaning bill, too much to ask for these days? I only have time to dwell on it a moment before my head is bouncing off the hardwood floor; once, twice, and then a third time in quick succession. Now ‘pick splinters out of my forehead’ can be added to my Saturday night to-do list. Damn it, this is not going as planned.

... - the Age of Anxiety, dating from around August 1945, is twenty three years old this very month - and her daily life is in essence a sandbagging operation against its seas and their tides. But this is worry and it is a little different from anxirty: Particular rather than pervasive, it arrives unannounced, without anxiety's harbingers, dread and forboding, the fearful tea in which we steep awaiting oblivion. Instead, worry turns up on the door step, the overbearing, passive aggressive out-of-town relative who insists he "won't be any trouble" even as he displaces every known routine and custom of the house for days and weeks on end; as he expropriates the sofa, the bathroom, the contents of the liqour cabinet and cigarette carton, and monopolises the telephone and the ear of anyone within shouting distance. Worry displaces the entire mood, the entire ethos of the house - even if that mood hitherto consisted largely of anxiety - and replaces it with something more substantive, more real than mere mood. You would be mightily pleased to have ordinary anxiety back in residence, for under worry there is no peace whatsoever, not even the peace of cynicism, pessimism or despair. Even when the rest of the world is abed, worry is awake, plundering the kitchen cupboards, raiding the refrigerator, playing the hifi, watching the late show until the national anthem closes the broadcast day; then noisily treading the halls, standing in your bedroom door, wondering if by any chance you are still up (knowing that of course you are), breathing and casting its shadow upon you, the silhouette of its slope-shouldered hulk and towering black wings.

Reaching the bottom of the ladder, she turned around, but had only taken a few steps down the swaying passageway when her path was blocked by a large, formidable silhouette: Rohan stepped out of his cabin and stood waiting for her. He loomed in the darkness ahead as she approached, his angular face cast in shadow, his black shirt hanging open down his sculpted chest. Kate felt an instantaneous awareness of him in her most primal core, but she hesitated before the fevered intensity in his stare. "I-I thought you went to bed." "Can't sleep." She did not need to ask why. Who could sleep after the night he'd had? She stopped in front of him, wondering what to say. His hungry gaze stayed fixed on her, and something in his silvery eyes made her heart begin to pound. "What did you think of what my father said?" "I don't want to talk." As he reached out and cupped her cheek, Kate swallowed hard, but she hardly had to ask what he wanted to do. She could feel the heat of his need coming off him in waves. She drew in her breath as he ran his hand down from her cheek along the side of her neck. He threaded his fingers into her hair, moving closer as he drew her toward him. He bent his head and claimed her mouth, his lips, burning, silken, against hers; she quivered with temptation as he consumed her tongue. The fierce demand in his kiss threatened to overwhelm her. "I want you," he whispered, breathing heavily. His bold advance jarred her somewhat back to her senses. "You must be joking," she uttered, yanking away from him and trying to hide her mad desire behind a mask of self-possession. "I'm not your harlot anymore." "You said you love me. Prove it," he murmured. He captured her hand and brought her palm to his loins, making her feel the massive evidence of his sincerity. She bit her lower lip, striving to reason against passion. Letting her palm linger on his rigid shaft a heartbeat too long, she withdrew her touch, determined to get around him. "Rohan." "Sleep with me," he ordered in a whisper, too proud to beg, but then again, he'd never have to.

And then, with a shock like high-voltage coursing through me, the phone beside me started pealing thinly. I just stood there and stared at it, blood draining from my face. A call to a tollbooth? It must, it must be a wrong number, somebody wanted the Information Booth or-! It must have been audible outside, with all I had the slide partly closed. One of the redcaps passing by turned, looked over, then started coming across toward where I was. To get rid of him I picked up the receiver, put it to my ear. 'You'd better come out now, time's up,' a flat, deadly voice said. 'They're calling your train, but you're not getting on that one - or any other.' 'Wh-where are talking from?' 'The next booth to yours,' the voice jeered. 'You forgot the glass inserts only reach halfway down.' The connection broke and a man's looming figure was shadowing the glass in front of my eyes, before I could even get the receiver back on the hook. I dropped it full-length, tensed my right arm to pound it through his face as soon as I shoved the glass aside. He had a revolver-bore for a top vest-button, trained on me. Two more had shown up behind him, from which direction I hadn't noticed. It was very dark in the booth now, their collective silhouettes shut out all the daylight. The station and all its friendly bustle was blotted out, had receded into the far background, a thousand miles away for all the help it could give me. I slapped the glass wearily aside, came slowly out. One of them flashed a badge - maybe Crow had loaned him his for the occasion. 'You're being arrested for putting slugs in that phone. It won't do any good to raise your voice and shriek for help, try to tell people different. But suit yourself.' I knew that as well as he; heads turned to stare after us by the dozens as they started with me in their midst through the station's main-level. But not one in all that crowd would have dared interfere with what they mistook for a legitimate arrest in the line of duty. The one with the badge kept it conspicuously tilted in his upturned palm, at sight of which the frozen onlookers slowly parted, made way for us through their midst. I was being led to my doom in full view of scores of people. ("Graves For The Living")

Yatima found verself gazing at a red-tinged cluster of pulsing organic parts, a translucent confusion of fluids and tissue. Sections divided, dissolved, reorganised. It looked like a flesher embryo – though not quite a realist portrait. The imaging technique kept changing, revealing different structures: Yatima saw hints of delicate limbs and organs caught in slices of transmitted dark; a stark silhouette of bones in an X-ray flash; the finely branched network of the nervous system bursting into view as a filigreed shadow, shrinking from myelin to lipids to a scatter of vesicled neurotransmitters against a radio-frequency MRI chirp. There were two bodies now. Twins? One was larger, though – sometimes much larger. The two kept changing places, twisting around each other, shrinking or growing in stroboscopic leaps while the wavelengths of the image stuttered across the spectrum. One flesher child was turning into a creature of glass, nerves and blood vessels vitrifying into optical fibres. A sudden, startling white-light image showed living, breathing Siamese twins, impossibly transected to expose raw pink and grey muscles working side by side with shape-memory alloys and piezoelectric actuators, flesher and gleisner anatomies interpenetrating. The scene spun and morphed into a lone robot child in a flesher's womb; spun again to show a luminous map of a citizen's mind embedded in the same woman's brain; zoomed out to place her, curled, in a cocoon of optical and electronic cables. Then a swarm of nanomachines burst through her skin, and everything scattered into a cloud of grey dust. Two flesher children walked side by side, hand in hand. Or father and son, gleisner and flesher, citizen and gleisner... Yatima gave up trying to pin them down, and let the impressions flow through ver. The figures strode calmly along a city's main street, while towers rose and crumbled around them, jungle and desert advanced and retreated. The artwork, unbidden, sent Yatima's viewpoint wheeling around the figures. Ve saw them exchanging glances, touches, kisses – and blows, awkwardly, their right arms fused at the wrists. Making peace and melting together. The smaller lifting the larger on to vis shoulders – then the passenger's height flowing down to the bearer like an hourglass's sand.

In the Metro, one evening, I looked closely around me: everyone had come from somewhere else . . . Among us, though, two or three faces from here, embarrassed silhouettes that seemed to be apologising for their presence. The same spectacle in London. Today’s migrations are no longer made by compact displacements but by successive infiltrations: little by little, individuals insinuate themselves among the “natives,” too anaemic and too distinguished to stoop to the notion of a “territory.” After a thousand years of vigilance, we open the gates . . . When one thinks of the long rivalries between the French and the English, then between the French and the Germans, it seems as if each nation, by weakening one another, had as its task to speed the hour of the common downfall so that other specimens of humanity may relay them. Like its predecessor, the new Völkerwanderung will provoke an ethnic confusion whose phases cannot be distinctly foreseen. Confronted with these disparate profiles, the notion of a community homogeneous to whatever degree is inconceivable. The very possibility of so heteroclite a crowd suggests that in the space it occupies there no longer existed, among the indigenous, any desire to safeguard even the shadow of an identity. At Rome, in the third century of our era, out of a million inhabitants, only sixty thousand were of Latin stock. Once a people has fulfilled the historical idea which was its mission to incarnate, it no longer has any excuse to preserve its difference, to cherish its singularity, to safeguard its features amidst a chaos of faces.

Light shone through a large crack in the wall of the maze ahead of us. A slim, slender silhouette cast a shadow against the passage floors. Der Erlkönig. I did not marvel then that I knew the shape of his body as well as my own reflection. I watched the Goblin King's shadow play his violin, his right arm moving in a smooth, practiced bowing motion. Käthe tried to pull me away, but I did not go with her. I moved closer to the light, and pressed my face to the crack. I had to look, I had to see. I had to watch him play. The Goblin King's back was turned to me. He wore no fancy coat, no embroidered dressing gown. He was simply dressed in trousers and a fine cambric shirt, so fine I could see the play of muscles in his back. He played with precision and with considerable skill. The Goblin King was not Josef; he did not have my brother's clarity of emotion or my brother's transcendence. But the Goblin King had his own voice, full of passion, longing, and reverence, and it was unexpectedly... vibrant. Alive. I could hear the slight fumblings, the stutters and starts in tempo, the accidental jarring note that marked his playing as human, oh so human. This was a man- a young man?- playing a song he liked on the violin. Playing it until it sounded perfect to his imperfect ears. I had stumbled upon something private, something intimate. My cheeks reddened. "Liesl." My sister's voice sliced through the sound of the Goblin King's playing like a guillotine, stopping the music mid-phrase. He glanced over his shoulder, and our eyes met. His mismatched gaze was unguarded, and I felt both ashamed and emboldened. I had seen him unclothed in his bedchamber, but he was even more naked now. Propriety told me I should look away, but I could not, arrested by the sight of his soul bared to me. We stared at each other through the crack in the wall, unable to move. The air between us changed, like a world before a storm: hushed, quiet, waiting, expectant.

A last red ray lighting up that stern soldier-like head, on which the tonsure lay like a cicatrised wound from the blow of a club; then the ray faded away and the priest, now wrapped in shadow, seemed nothing more than a black silhouette against the ashy grey of the gloaming.

It is eerie and uncanny how Luca has the ability to read my mind. “Will you go back now to London, Violetta?” he asks, his black brows lifting, his expression concerned. “Italia has not been good to you. Maybe you think you should go home, where these bad things do not happen.” “Do you want me to go?” I ask, feeling very insecure. I couldn’t blame him, I realize with huge sadness. We’re in a real mess. Perhaps the best thing would be for me to go away and never come back. Luca’s lips tighten into a hard line. Slowly, he shakes his head. “It’s hard to know what’s best,” he says. “But I do not want you to go.” “I don’t want to go either,” I say in a whisper. He takes in a deep breath and lets it out again. We stand there silent, because we don’t know what more to say. I realize that shadows are stretching across the terrace. The air is milder, an evening breeze blowing softly. There’s a rustling sound from the cypress trees in the garden below, and we look over to see the first few bats emerging from the branches, circling slowly in the darkening sky. I think we’re both grateful to have something else to concentrate on. We walk across the terrace and lean on the stone balustrade, elbows almost but not quite touching. And we watch the black shapes rise and fall, the red streaks of sunset fading from the sky, and a clear white curve of moon rising slowly behind the dark silhouettes of the trees.

Millet's Sower is an invented sower who is burdened with the artist's thoughts; he is but a creeping shadow on a ploughed field which is only a field of the imagination. Another peasant ploughs near the horizon with his oxen, or rather there is a silhouette plough with motionless animal silhouettes, in front of a sky of canvas in which birds cut out of paper attempt to flap their immovable wings. In Vincent's picture a peasant strides across his field, you can feel the very substance of the air. The strength of his motion carries you with him. Hundreds of sowers were embodied in one figure. He strides along, not for you, not for art, not for Van Gogh, but for his work, with every nerve stretched to its purpose and every limb and every rag on his body forming part of his action. The field is ready to receive the seed. There he ploughs, here he sows, and in the background the ploughing still continues. Not a detail in the action is left obscure or isolated. The animals, the earth, the man, everything is but a part of growth, and the air is heavy with the coming harvest. He strides there, not for to-day or to-morrow, but as he strode a thousand years ago as a peasant of Provence, as a Greek, or as a tiller of the soil of Egypt. Sowing is the symbol of eternity.

I expand, so that my shadows and silhouettes could, for once, hold my hand.

~Infernal Serpent ~ Winds are venomous these days. Masked under a dark silhouette, their smile parades the fossil roots of deceit. Nibbling wings, of which they learnt to fly. Hands blemished red Have you slaughtered a rose lately? The face bleached in dismay tongue weakened. I ain't, the fear following you Like a cloud passing above your shadow. Run!! How far? There is no path across the desert. Fright of a nomad creates mirage in distance Standing in silence, I want to witness the snake shedding its skin again.

After the dancers leave in music schools, you continue to hear the music in the silence and watch the silhouettes of the dancers in the shadows of the darkness!

Old foliage ignores the anxious sun / since dismal winds convince each brittle branch / to hold no moment closely or too long / now shadows spread and all turns silhouette. / But then she smiles, reviving life with light, / and hope may spring eternal one more night. (from April, Autumnal)

...she spotted his silhouette in the shadows, the sea behind him churning with smoke and dragons and night whispers. A thrill raced through her veins, the drug of endless possibilities. The evening was hers to claim, and claim it she would.

I move the sun to the west, and as the angle of the light shifts, the dewdrops on the seedlings in the field glisten like countless eyes suddenly popping open. I dim the sun so that dusk arrives earlier; then I stare at the silhouette of myself on the distant horizon, in front of the setting sun. I wave at the silhouette; the silhouette waves back. Looking at the shadow of myself, I feel young again. This is a lovely time, just right for remembering.

As a response, she turned toward him with her phone, took a shot. The flash was off - she didn't like the flash, it was too garish, too bold - and what resulted of him in that photo was this half-dark shadow. But it showed his shape, and she liked that. A silhouette she enjoyed.

Dr. Zendre Joshu has no clue what to do once he’s inside the next kingdom to be in transpose. It’s the Deadly! The howling wind and intermittent thunderclap are perceptibly loud and every time sparks of thunder skip through, entities of malevolence in shadows and silhouettes awaited him to step into. At first glance of the inside, a very striking disgust painted his face! He was about to enter when his wife halted him from his back, holding his shoulder. Mia is calm, unlike Dr. Zendre who is tense turned to face his wife expecting he might get a specific answer from her. Zendre saw the glow in her face looking at the next kingdom that has transposed inside the realm door, she pointed at it. It’s the Predators’ kingdom.

Most of the Times, Life shows us how difficult this journey is, only at Times when the sun clears we see the Sunshine, but the rain often washes away the clouds and both the clouds and the rain dampen our weary hearts, only to let us see a glimpse of a distant rainbow, once in a while. I guess it's always about the Time, the guardian of this Journey that we have to wait and persevere, that we have to remain resilient in the resolve to walk ahead, to find some way to hold on to the voyage, to not let the ship sink in the hollows of a mirage, to just live. And that is what Life is about, perhaps to know that Gloom and Melancholy is a distinct part of our journey, and actually something that occupies the most part of our journey, and it doesn't have to be a deep Grief it can simply be the mundane sorrow of carrying on this existence knowing that Life is just a short frame holding dark colours as much as the bright ones, sometimes even more of those blackness only to bring out the whites a little bit more. And while all of this goes on, somewhere our heart would know that there is One who is beyond this frame of Life and the space of Time and Cosmos; who is always holding your hand giving you the breath to walk ahead. May be He doesn't take away the blackness but throughout stays firm in your path, holding your shadow and your soul ever so gently to make you become the Light that you could only possibly be by embracing all of your Soul's journey. He doesn't perhaps change the potholes in your way, but He does ensure that even when you tumble you don't end up falling and if you do fall, He makes sure that you rise all over again from the flames of Life's fire with the fury of a phoenix. He doesn't end your suffering but lets you see that throughout your pain He is partaking in an even greater portion of it, alongside you. Simple, He doesn't let you see that He is God, because He shares your Life as a companion, walking beside you hand in hand, to make you live all that your soul had contracted before this journey began and even when He is beyond Time, He lets Time be your friend in a journey that is bound in human flesh and guarded by the tick-tock of that guardian. So when I asked my Soul, what is that troubles me the most, I heard my Soul, Smile in a safe knowledge, when I have Him, need I let my troubles concern me? My heart knew, He has already tucked my mind in the tranquil world of Life's paint-brush and a rainbow is just around the corner. A distant yet distinct rainbow. A rainbow that is churned in Love, the love that only He can provide, the Love that is always lurking on the edges of those clouds and rain, in the silhouette of a rainbow forever promised on the other side of a thunderstorm. Love & Light, always - Debatrayee

ombre /ɔ̃bʀ/ I. nm (poisson) grayling II. nf 1. (ombrage) shade • 30° à l'~ | 30° in the shade • rester à l'~ | to stay in the shade • à l'~ d'un figuier | in the shade of a fig tree • l'arbre (nous) fait or donne de l'~ | the tree provides shade • tu leur fais de l'~ | (lit) you're (standing) in their light; (fig) you're putting them in the shade • à l'~ de qn/qch (fig) (tout près) near sb/sth; (protégé par) under the protection of sb/sth • rester dans l'~ de qn | to be in sb's shadow 2. (forme portée) shadow • faire/projeter des ~s sur le mur | to make/cast shadows on the wall • avoir peur de son ~ | to be scared of one's own shadow • suivre qn comme une ~ | to be sb's shadow • n'être plus que or être l'~ de soi-même | to be the shadow of one's former self voir aussi: proie 3. [liter] (pénombre) darkness 4. (anonymat, clandestinité) • peintres réputés ou dans l'~ | renowned or obscure painters • laisser certains détails dans l'~ | to be deliberately vague about certain details • agir dans l'~ | to operate behind the scenes • rester dans l'~ | [manipulateur] to stay behind the scenes; [poète] to remain in obscurity; [détail] to be left vague • combattants de l'~ | underground fighters 5. [liter] (trace) hint • une ombre de moustache a hint of a moustache • l'~ d'un reproche/d'un accord | a hint of reproach/of an agreement • une ~ de regret/tristesse passa dans son regard | a shadow of regret/a look of sadness crossed his/her face • sans l'~ d'un doute | without a shadow of a doubt • sans l'~ d'une preuve | without the slightest shred of evidence 6. • l'~ (procédé) shading [u] • faire des ~s | to shade 7. (silhouette indécise) shadowy figure • le royaume or séjour des ~s | the Kingdom of the Shades III. Idiomes 1. mettre qn/être à l'ombre○ | (euph) to put sb/be behind bars (familier) 2. marcher à l'ombre○ | to keep out of the limelight 3. l'homme qui tire plus vite que son ombre | the fastest gun in the West 4. passer comme une ombre | to be ephemeral 5. courir après une ombre | to chase rainbows 6. il y a une ombre au tableau | there is only one thing wrong 7. jeter une ombre au tableau | to spoil the picture (fig) 8. la seule ombre au tableau | the only snag

The men, who a moment before had been cursing and cumbersome creatures clambering down the clay bank into the clumsy boats, were mysteriously transformed into warrior silhouettes, spiky with weapons, who glided silent and noble through the vaporous night toward the misted shadows of the enemy shore.

Now he was cutting through monumental project towers, his silhouette distorted by what he was carrying, a burdened figure moving steadily across the great barren landscape of giant shadows and building structures and cold lights filtering down.

The hedges and driveways were black and silent, but he imagined the silhouette of a jacket hood could move into view at any time, skimming past the light of a window like a shark's fin.

When he placed a candle on the shelf across the room from him and lit its wick, he came to realize that in fact everything he saw was a flat surface, like a screen – that in fact dimension was an illusion. Everything was a flat surface and the pinpoints of light, whether from a candle on the shelf or a gaslamp above the street, were punctures in that surface – gashes made by somebody behind the screen. He realized then that beyond everything he saw there was an entire realm of blazing sunfire, and that colors were only the silhouettes of people in that realm – walking, eating, dancing, doing whatever they were doing behind the screen. “It astonished Adolphe that everyone failed to realize they were just figures on a tapestry, the shadows of something else. He was therefore amused by the conceit of women, for instance, who who admired the creamy color of their skin when in fact it was only the haze of some other woman behind the vast screen staring into a mirror. Adolphe could explain all of this to himself but he could not explain Janine: Janine wasn't the same as the others. Janine was like their mother; and Adolphe decided Lulu was from this place beyond the surface, and she had, perhaps when she was a little girl, slipped through. “Adolphe wondered why Lulu hadn't told them about this, and then realized she probably would when she thought they were old enough to understand it. He could see it wasn't something one would want to tell a child too soon.

The silhouette of the mountains and hills whisper great secrets, mystery plays in the hidden shadows behind the looming tree-line. Quietly I gaze at the rich colours and place the scene within words of my books.

Suddenly, the window swung open and a man’s silhouette appeared against a flash of lightning. The candle was blown out by the wind, leaving the room in semidarkness. Elizabeth blinked, not certain if she had really seen the man or not. “Is someone there?” “Eliz-a-beth.” A shadow detached itself from the darkness and moved toward her. Her heartbeat quickened. “Cain?” “I told you I would come for you, Eliz-a-beth.

a shadow looming in that silhouette.

Lily was nearly asleep when a large shadow filled the space between the fire's light and her bedroll. She gasped and sat up before she recognized Cade's silhouette in the darkness. "What are you doing here? Are we going home?" "After I sleep with my wife." And with that extraordinary statement, Cade sat down, put his arms around Lily, and pulled her to the ground as his mouth found and ravished hers.

Les feuilles d’oranger luisaient comme des larmes d’argent, et le chant de la fontaine serpentait sous les arcades. Je scrutai la cour d’un regard déjà chargé de déception et peut-être aussi d’un lâche soulagement. Elle était là. Sa silhouette se découpait devant la fontaine, assise sur un banc, les yeux tournés vers les arcades du cloître.

Patience drifted in the garden, her dress draping softly off one shoulder and her hair falling across her back like blood in the shadows. She saw his tall silhouette first as he stood at the screen. She stopped, her bare feet sparking against the gravel path. Henry saw the blue-green lights around her, his brain searching to name them. He settled on fireflies although he smelled brine and seaweed and wanted to say phosphorescence.

Two strong lights are burning, yet the figures are like shadows—I saw father; no, not he, but his silhouette moves towards my bookshelf, father is looking for some books. He picks up a book on Japanese mythology, bound in blue silk with a figure embossed in gold. Father opens it and tears off the first page—Mircea presented this to me. Then one by one he gets out all the books and tears off the pages where the two names are written —the giver and the taker of the gift. He could not find that page in Goethe's Life—it remained stuck to the cover—so that's all that remained as Mircea's memento. Father slowly tears the papers into shreds and flings them out the window. In any other house the books would have been destroyed. But that cannot be in our house. We also have a Genghis Khan. Only he does not burn books. He can burn human beings but not books. The book is his God.

Dusk settles over the bayou, and the black silhouettes of cypress trees stand knee-deep in the murky water, like a painting, set against the burnt orange and pink sky. Twinkling fireflies add enchanting animation to the surrounding stillness. The Spanish moss slung over branches, reaching down for the glassy surface below, is mirrored by its reflection, like looking at a parallel, upside down world. “As above, so below.” “What’s that?” “I don’t remember where I heard it. It just makes me think of the duality of things, sometimes. Good and evil. Black and white.” “Balance.

I reconstructed the first page, the paragraphs, the paler lines where my fingers had gone numb as they typed, Tabriz, the poplars' shadow over icy ground, the passing silhouettes of scoundrels in caps, coming to the Armenian café to drink away the money from their shady deals. That whole steaming, darkened, irretrievable winter, written down by gas lamp or on tables in the bazaar where partridges fought in their cages, by someone I no longer was.

And I reached the center, and the world went suddenly quiet, save for a rhythmic beat: the beating of a heart. There, at the core of Reshaye’s magic, was a formless, pulsing mass. I closed my fingers around it. It wasn’t just one core, one heart, I realized — it was pieces of many. They were warm, throbbing in time with my own heartbeat. “…We carry many stories…” I glanced up, through all of this rushing magic, and saw the faintest outline of a figure standing with me. Blurry, faint, the shadow of a shadow of a shadow. “…So many stories, you and I…” The thunder roared. The sky flashed. Reshaye’s wordless screech filled my ears. The pain grew so intense that I could barely think. I was being torn away, but that shadowy slip of a figure reached out and grabbed me. “…It was never meant to be this way…” it whispered. “…Take it, please, take all of it, take it away…” It shoved that heart into my hands — that mass of magic and power and broken memories. And in that same moment, I looked up through a vicious thunderclap to see two silhouettes engulfed in blue and red, burning in silent flames, locked in a kiss.

In the forgotten corners, a dark shadow emerges from the hard and often frozen earth. Like a secret, long hidden in the abyss, a mysterious silhouette emenates from the cataclysmic gloom.

In the forgotten corners, a dark shadow emerges from the hard and often frozen earth. Like a secret, long hidden in the abyss, a mysterious silhouette emenates from the cataclysmic gloom.

I glanced over to the mountain photo and nodded, offering reverence for being part of the plan.

He swung back around. “Why did you call me Marble Man?” Oh, crap. Lie. “Well, when you landed you made an awful loud thud, you know, like a marble boulder falling.” I cringed at my words. “Why did you call me Rattlesnake?” “Hmm.” He made a V-like shape with two fingers and thrust them toward me like fangs. Okay. This was how it was going to be.

You wanna know the one thing that really pisses me off?” I whip my head around to see who’s speaking and, standing in the bottomless shadows of the hallway by the bathroom door, is a small, squat silhouette. Its voice is gravelly, low, and poisonous. Smilingly hateful. Even though it’s rendered almost featureless by the gloom, I can still make out the outline of a fake flower in its hair. “The fact that I had a goddamn genuine paranormal entity in my house and you never fucking told me.

She held her breath, her eyes roving over the dark corners of the room, unable to see the silhouette of the devil in the shadows, one who was both the bane and the blessing of her cursed existence.

In the forgotten corners, a dark shadow emerges from the hard and often frozen earth. Like a secret, long hidden in the abyss, a mysterious silhouette emenates from the cataclysmic gloom.

Thank you for coming with me.” She knew it was no small thing. Dom was Monarch of Iona now, the leader of an enclave shattered by war and betrayal. He should have been at home with his people, helping them restore what was nearly lost forever. Instead, he looked grimly down a sand dune, his clothes poorly suited to the climate, his appearance sticking sticking out of the desert like the sorest of thumbs. While so many things had changed, Dom’s ability to look out of place never did. He even wore his usual cloak, a twin to the one he lost months ago. The gray green had become a comfort like nothing else, just like the silhouette of his familiar form. He loomed always, never far from her side. It was enough to make Sorasa’s eyes sting, and turn her face to hide in her hood for a long moment. Dom paid it no notice, letting her recover. Instead, he fished an apple from his saddlebags and took a noisy bite. “I saved the realm,” he said, shrugging. The least I can do is try to see some of it.” Sorasa was used to Elder manners by now. Their distant ways, their inability to understand subtle hints. The side of her mouth raised against her hood, and she turned back to face him, smirking. “Thank you for coming with me,” she said again. “Oh,” he answered, shifting to look at her. The green of his eyes danced, bright against the desert. “Where else would I go?” Then he passed the rest of the apple over to her. She finished the rest without a thought. His hand lingered, though, scarred knuckles on a tattooed arm. She did not push him away. Instead, Sorasa leaned, so that her shoulder brushed his own, putting some of her weight on him. “Am I still a waste of arsenic?” he said, his eyes never moving from her face. Sorasa stopped short, blinking in confusion. “What?” “When we first met.” His own smirk unfurled. “You called me a waste of arsenic.” In a tavern in Byllskos, after I dumped poison in his cup, and watched him drink it all. Sorasa laughed at the memory, her voice echoing over the empty dunes. In that moment, she thought Domacridhan was her death, another assassin sent to kill her. Now she knew he was the opposite entirely. Slowly, she raised her arm and he did not flinch. It felt strange still, terrifying and thrilling in equal measure. His cheek was cool under under her hand, his scars familiar against her palm. Elders were less affected by the desert heat, a fact that Sorasa used to her full advantage. “No,” she answered, pulling his face down to her own. “I would waste all the arsenic in the world on you.” “Is that a compliment, Amhara?” Dom muttered against her lips. No, she tried to reply. On the golden sand, their shadows met, grain by grain, until there was no space left at all.