Slowly Fading Away Quotes

Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.

I watch with breaking heart as you slowly fade away

My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.

You forget all of it anyway. First, you forget everything you learned-the dates of the Hay-Herran Treaty and Pythagorean Theorem. You especially forget everything you didn't really learn, but just memorized the night before. You forget the names of all but one or two of your teachers, and eventually you'll forget those, too. You forget your junior class schedule and where you used to sit and your best friend's home phone number and the lyrics to that song you must have played a million times. For me, it was something by Simon & Garfunkel. Who knows what it will be for you? And eventually, but slowly, oh so slowly, you forget your humiliations-even the ones that seemed indelible just fade away. You forget who was cool and who was not, who was pretty, smart, athletic, and not. Who went to a good college. Who threw the best parties Who could get you pot. You forget all of them. Even the ones you said you loved, and even the ones you actually did. They're the last to go. And then once you've forgotten enough, you love someone else.

I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches his home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.

... there's a silent voice in the wilderness that we hear only when no one else is around. When you go far, far beyond, out across the netherlands of the Known, the din of human static slowly fades away, over and out.

Piece by piece, I slowly fade away, I slowly drift apart.

Some dreams, I'd learned, were meant to fade away. And to let go of them didn't mean to let go of myself, but to release the life I'd imagined I wanted. The loss had grieved me at first, but in its fading away-slowly, very slowly-a new dream had bloomed.

So the days slipped away, as each morning dawned bright and fair, and each evening followed cool and clear. But autumn was waning fast; slowly the golden light faded to pale silver, and the lingering leaves fell from the naked trees. A wind began to blow chill from the Misty Mountains to the east. The Hunter's Moon waxed round in the night sky, and put to flight all the lesser stars. But low in the South one star shone red. Every night, as the Moon waned again, it shone brighter and brighter. Frodo could see it from his window, deep in the heavens, burning like a watchful eye that glared above the trees on the brink of the valley.

She knew that she could not be Jem for Will. No one could. But slowly the hollow places in his heart were filling in. Having Cecily about was a joy for Will; Tessa could see that when they sat together before the fire, speaking Welsh softly, and his eyes glowed; he had even grown to like Gabriel and Gideon, and they were friends for him, though no one could be a friend as Jem had been. And of course, Charlotte's and Henry's love was as steadfast as ever. The wound would never go away... the haunted look faded from his eyes, she began to breathe more easily, knowing that look was not a mortal one.

Act that way and slowly but surely I will fade away. All the dawns and all the twilights will rob me, piece by piece, of myself, and before long my very life will be shaved away completely - and I would end up nothing.

I took him to the river and said “let’s watch something drown,” So he took a stone and I took my necklace and we threw it all together, the way I always think I will get better in July. Things will change and sounds won’t ache and I gave my heart to uncertainty so many times, and so I took him to the river, threw the necklace in the river to slowly watch it drown, or burn, or fade away like I’ve done so many times.

Weeks went by, then months. I am speaking of a far-away time - a vanished happiness. It fell to me to befriend, to console with whatever words I could find, one who had been the fairy, the princess, the mysterious love-dream of our adolescence - and it fell to me because my companion had fled. Of that period ... what can I say? I've kept a single image of that time, and it is already fading: the image of a lovely face grown thin and of two eyes whose lids slowly droop as they glance at me, as if her gaze was unable to dwell on anything but an inner world.

Ephemera Your eyes that once were never weary of mine Are bowed in sorrow under pendulous lids, Because our love is waning." And then she: "Although our love is waning, let us stand By the lone border of the lake once more, Together in that hour of gentleness When the poor tired child, Passion, falls asleep: How far away the stars seem, and how far Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!" Pensive they paced along the faded leaves, While slowly he whose hand held hers replied: "Passion has often worn our wandering hearts." The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once A rabbit old and lame limped down the path; Autumn was over him: and now they stood On the lone border of the lake once more: Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes, In bosom and hair. "Ah, do not mourn," he said, "That we are tired, for other loves await us; Hate on and love through unrepining hours. Before us lies eternity; our souls Are love, and a continual farewell.

It seems that a whole lot of people, both Christians and non-Christians, are under the impression that you can’t be a Christian and vote for a Democrat, you can’t be a Christian and believe in evolution, you can’t be a Christian and be gay, you can’t be a Christian and have questions about the Bible, you can’t be a Christian and be tolerant of other religions, you can’t be a Christian and be a feminist, you can’t be a Christian and drink or smoke, you can’t be a Christian and read the New York Times, you can’t be a Christian and support gay rights, you can’t be a Christian and get depressed, you can’t be a Christian and doubt. In fact, I am convinced that what drives most people away from Christianity is not the cost of discipleship but rather the cost of false fundamentals. False fundamentals make it impossible for faith to adapt to change. The longer the list of requirements and contingencies and prerequisites, the more vulnerable faith becomes to shifting environments and the more likely it is to fade slowly into extinction. When the gospel gets all entangled with extras, dangerous ultimatums threaten to take it down with them. The yoke gets too heavy and we stumble beneath it.

And so Gollum found them hours later, when he returned, crawling and creeping down the path out of the gloom ahead. Sam sat propped against the stone, his head dropping sideways and his breathing heavy. In his lap lay Frodo's head, drowned in sleep; upon his white forehead lay one of Sam's brown hands, and the other lay softly upon his master's breast. Peace was in both their faces. Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee--but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.

I circled the site before I came in. If there's anyone within five kilometers, I'll eat my quiver." Halt regarded him, eyebrow arched once more. "Anyone?" "Anyone other than Crowley," Will amended, making a dismissive gesture. "I saw him watching me from that hide he always uses about two kilometers out. I assumed he'd be back in here by now." Halt cleared his throat loudly. "Oh, you saw him, did you?" he said. "I imagine he'll be overjoyed to hear that." Secretly, he was pleased with his former pupil. In spite of his curiosity and obvious excitement, he hadn't forgotten to take the precautions that had been drilled into him. THat augured well for what lay ahead, Halt thought, a sudden grimness settling onto his manner. Will didn't notice the momentary change of mood. He was loosening Tug saddle girth. As he spoke, his voice was muffled against the horses's flank. "he's becoming too much a creature of habit," he said. "he's used that hide for the last three Gatherings. It's time he tried something new. Everyone must be onto it by now." Rangers constantly competed with each other to see before being seen and each year's Gathering was a time of heightened competition. Halt nodded thoughtfully. Crowley had constructed teh virtually invisible observation post some four years previously. Alone among the younger Rangers, Will had tumbled to it after one year. Halt had never mentioned to him that he was the only one who knew of Crowley's hide. The concealed post was the Ranger Commandant's pride and joy. "Well, perhaps not everyone," he said. Will emerged from behind his horse, grinning at the thought of the head of the Ranger Corps thinking he had remained hidden from sight as he watched Will's approach. "All the same, perhaps he's getting a bit long in the tooth to be skulking around hiding in the bushes, don't you think?" he said cheerfully. Halt considered the question for a moment. "Long in the tooth? Well, that's one opinion. Mind you, his silent movement skills are still as good as ever," he said meaningfully. The grin on Will's face slowly faded. He resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder. "He's standing behind me, isn't he?" he asked Halt. THe older Ranger nodded. "He's standing behind me, isn't he?" Will continued and Halt nodded once more. "Is he...close enough to have heard what I said?" Will finally managed to ask, fearin teh worst. This time, Halt didn't have to answer. "Oh, good grief no," came a familiar voice from behind him. "he's so old and decrepit these days he's as deaf as a post." Will's shoulders sagged and he turned to see the sandy-haired Commandant standing a few meters away. The younger man's eyes dropped. "Hullo, Crowley," he said, then mumbled, "Ahhh...I'm sorry about that." Crowley glared at teh young Ranger for a few more seconds, then he couldn't help teh grin breaking out on his face. "No harm done," he said, adding with a small note of triumph, "It's not often these days I amange to get the better of one of you young ones." Secretly, he was impressed at teh news that Will had spotted his hiding place. Only the sarpest eyes could have picked it. Crowley had been in the business of seeing without being seen for thirty years or more, and despite what Will believed, he was still an absolute master of camouflage and unseen movement.

Who am I, when all I’ve ever believed myself to be, is fading before my very eyes? Am I still me, or just a shadow of what I used to be? Was I just an illusion that lived only in my head? Did I paint myself as something more than I really am? And with all these changes in my life… What will be left of the woman who dreamed her dreams? When all the colors that she wrapped herself with… are slowly being stripped away… Copyright © Eeva Lancaster

Strolling around. Eyes met and I forgot. He didn't. Something deeper. Something stronger. Hands touched and I forgot. He didn't. He loved me. Slowly and gradually, he gave me all that he felt. But he didn't realise giving could mean giving it away. Gave all of it until it faded. They say energy in the universe remains constant. Now I love him. He doesn't.

Gawk? What is gawk?" he asked. "You tell me. You're the one that does it." I said... "My definition of gawking would be..." He paused as if to hold back what he was going to say. But he couldn't any longer. "...when you look at her, your heart starts slamming uncontrollably in your chest. So much that it scares you. And every other noise that surrounds you slowly fades away into absolute silence. You only hear the sounds she makes. And when she looks back at you, when her eyes meet yours, it's as if she is looking deep inside your soul. And she can see all of the hatred you're consumed in. Her eyes quench the thirst of your soul, gently soothing your damaged heart in the most alluring way... a way you could only dream of.

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen's plaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out her last. From the dim woods on either bank, Night's ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear- guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness.

Despite all the obstacles we had to face regularly, we were guided by fundamental values that made our paths less painful. Honor, faith, respect, benevolence, fellowship, and, above all, family unity were cherished tenets, deeply revered, and held their value. In today's society, they are fading away slowly, and if we don't defend them now, they will, without fail, disappear.

My definition of gawking would be when you look at her, your heart starts slamming uncontrollably in your chest. So much that it scares you. And every other noise that surrounds you slowly fades away into absolute silence. You only hear the sounds she makes. And when she looks back at you, when her eyes meet yours, it's as if she is looking deep inside your soul. And she can see all of the hatred you're consumed in. Her eyes quench the thirst of your soul, gently soothing your damaged heart in the most alluring way... a way you could only dream of. Then those magical eyes start to look away. The time-freeze you were caught in starts to wear off. And fear takes over. You want to pull those eyes to yours again so that you could once again feel the fascinating sensations of happiness. Then, when she's out of your sight, you feel empty inside. Your heart is back to normal. Only this time, it's left with an aching worse than before. But you can never tell her. You can never be with her. You are alone in your pitiful existence.

Like our bodies and our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away.

When I look over my past, I see that the stages in my life are like the phases of the moon. I've had periods where I was the waxing gibbous: fat with wealth and success. There have been other seasons when my happiness was like the waning crescent and I watched my joy fade away slowly, merging with the atmosphere around me as if it never existed. Then I felt as if I was left with nothing more than an illusion, but happiness returns in time and glows once more in corpulent fullness. It's time that makes the difference.

It all seems so worthless. Such a waste of lives. We've spent hundreds of years since the Return buffering the Dark City and trying to maintain it - scraping out a life that will soon be wiped out. And what of the rest of the world that's already fallen? Stars blinking away, their light slowly fading? Somewhere out there a star's just dying and we'll never know about it. Somewhere another's being born whose light we'll never see. The Earth will spin, the stars will rearrange themselves around one another and the world will crawl with the dead who one day will drop into nothing ness: no humans left for them to scent, no flesh for them to crave. Everything-all of us-will simply cease to be.

He waited, the trail of his words slowly fading away into the rocks and grass and dirt and trees all around them. Nothing

It is the sound of the crowd that can be heard in the second, crescendoing rush of the orchestra that follows the final verse, rising from a hum to a gasp to a shout... fusing at last to a shriek (its similarity to the sound of the crowds at Beatle concerts is surely no accident). The onrushing sound of the orchestra at the end of "A Day in the Life" has transcended more than the conventions of Sgt. Pepper's Band. It is the nightmare resolution of the Beatles' show within a show. It is the sound in the eras of the high-wire artist as the ground rushes up from below. There is a blinding flash of silence, then the stunning impact of a tremendous E major piano chord that hangs in the air for a small eternity, slowly fading away, a forty-second meditation on finality that leaves each member if the audience listening with a new kind of attention and awareness to the sound of nothing at all.

Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten.

My little brother's greatest fear was that the one person who meant so much to him would go away. He loved Lindsey and Grandma Lynn and Samuel and Hal, but my father kept him stepping lightly, son gingerly monitoring father every morning and every evening as if, without such vigilance, he would lose him. We stood- the dead child and the living- on either side of my father, both wanting the same thing. To have him to ourselves forver. To please us both was an impossibility. ... 'Please don't let Daddy die, Susie,' he whispered. 'I need him.' When I left my brother, I walked out past the gazebo and under the lights hanging down like berries, and I saw the brick paths branching out as I advanced. I walked until the bricks turned to flat stones and then to small, sharp rocks and then to nothing but churned earth for miles adn miles around me. I stood there. I had been in heaven long enough to know that something would be revealed. And as the light began to fade and the sky to turn a dark, sweet blue as it had on the night of my death, I saw something walking into view, so far away I could not at first make out if it was man or woman, child or adult. But as moonlight reached this figure I could make out a man and, frightened now, my breathing shallow, I raced just far enough to see. Was it my father? Was it what I had wanted all this time so deperately? 'Susie,' the man said as I approached and then stopped a few feet from where he stood. He raised his arms up toward me. 'Remember?' he said. I found myself small again, age six and in a living room in Illinois. Now, as I had done then, I placed my feet on top of his feet. 'Granddaddy,' I said. And because we were all alone and both in heaven, I was light enough to move as I had moved when I was six and in a living room in Illinois. Now, as I had done then, I placed my feet on top of his feet. 'Granddaddy,' I said. And because we were all alone and both in heaven, I was light enough to move as I had moved when I was six and he was fifty-six and my father had taken us to visit. We danced so slowly to a song that on Earth had always made my grandfather cry. 'Do you remember?' he asked. 'Barber!' 'Adagio for Strings,' he said. But as we danced and spun- none of the herky-jerky awkwardness of Earth- what I remembered was how I'd found him crying to this music and asked him why. 'Sometimes you cry,' Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.' He had held me against him then, just briefly, and then I had run outside to play again with Lindsey in what seemed like my grandfather's huge backyard. We didn't speak any more that night, but we danced for hours in that timeless blue light. I knew as we danced that something was happening on Earth and in heaven. A shifting. The sort of slow-to-sudden movement that we'd read about in science class one year. Seismic, impossible, a rending and tearing of time and space. I pressed myself into my grandfather's chest and smelled the old-man smell of him, the mothball version of my own father, the blood on Earth, the sky in heaven. The kumquat, skunk, grade-A tobacco. When the music stopped, it cold have been forever since we'd begun. My grandfateher took a step back, and the light grew yellow at his back. 'I'm going,' he said. 'Where?' I asked. 'Don't worry, sweetheart. You're so close.' He turned and walked away, disappearing rapidly into spots and dust. Infinity.

Have you ever wondered What happens to all the poems people write? The poems they never let anyone else read? Perhaps they are Too private and personal Perhaps they are just not good enough. Perhaps the prospect of such a heartfelt expression being seen as clumsy shallow silly pretentious saccharine unoriginal sentimental trite boring overwrought obscure stupid pointless or simply embarrassing is enough to give any aspiring poet good reason to hide their work from public view. forever. Naturally many poems are IMMEDIATELY DESTROYED. Burnt shredded flushed away Occasionally they are folded Into little squares And wedged under the corner of An unstable piece of furniture (So actually quite useful) Others are hidden behind a loose brick or drainpipe or sealed into the back of an old alarm clock or put between the pages of AN OBSCURE BOOK that is unlikely to ever be opened. someone might find them one day, BUT PROBABLY NOT The truth is that unread poetry Will almost always be just that. DOOMED to join a vast invisible river of waste that flows out of suburbia. well Almost always. On rare occasions, Some especially insistent pieces of writing will escape into a backyard or a laneway be blown along a roadside embankment and finally come to rest in a shopping center parking lot as so many things do It is here that something quite Remarkable takes place two or more pieces of poetry drift toward each other through a strange force of attraction unknown to science and ever so slowly cling together to form a tiny, shapeless ball. Left undisturbed, this ball gradually becomes larger and rounder as other free verses confessions secrets stray musings wishes and unsent love letters attach themselves one by one. Such a ball creeps through the streets Like a tumbleweed for months even years If it comes out only at night it has a good Chance of surviving traffic and children and through a slow rolling motion AVOIDS SNAILS (its number one predator) At a certain size, it instinctively shelters from bad weather, unnoticed but otherwise roams the streets searching for scraps of forgotten thought and feeling. Given time and luck the poetry ball becomes large HUGE ENORMOUS: A vast accumulation of papery bits That ultimately takes to the air, levitating by The sheer force of so much unspoken emotion. It floats gently above suburban rooftops when everybody is asleep inspiring lonely dogs to bark in the middle of the night. Sadly a big ball of paper no matter how large and buoyant, is still a fragile thing. Sooner or LATER it will be surprised by a sudden gust of wind Beaten by driving rain and REDUCED in a matter of minutes to a billion soggy shreds. One morning everyone will wake up to find a pulpy mess covering front lawns clogging up gutters and plastering car windscreens. Traffic will be delayed children delighted adults baffled unable to figure out where it all came from Stranger still Will be the Discovery that Every lump of Wet paper Contains various faded words pressed into accidental verse. Barely visible but undeniably present To each reader they will whisper something different something joyful something sad truthful absurd hilarious profound and perfect No one will be able to explain the Strange feeling of weightlessness or the private smile that remains Long after the street sweepers have come and gone.

THE WEEPING WILLOW Flowing was the water showing in its mirror the willow trees. The weeping willows in the water were washing their hair! Striking the willows with their sparkling, bare swords the red horsemen were running to where the sun sets! Suddenly like a bird as if struck in the wing a wounded horseman rolled down from his horse! He didn't shout, he did'nt call back those who go along, he just looked with brimming eyes at the shining horseshoes of departing riders! O what a pity! What a pity for him that no more he shall lie on the foaming necks of galloping horses, no more he shall play his sword behind the white armies! The sounds of the horseshoes fades away slowly, the horsemen vanish at where the sun sets! Horsemen horsemen red horsemen, their horses winged with wind! Their horses winged with... Their horses winged... Their horses... Horse... Life has passed like the wind winged horsemen! The voice of the flowing water ceased. The shadows shadowed the colours wiped off. Black coverings came down over his blue eyes, the weeping willows hung down over his yellow hair! Weep not weeping willow weep not, in the mirror of the black water clasp not your hands! clasp not your hands! weep not!

Lily exhaled, blinking slowly, pupils dilated. "I smell treacle tart," she grinned as she confessed. "And something outdoorsy, like orchard blossoms, and . . ." Her smile began to fade as she breathed in deeply again. "A . . . broomstick?" She paled, jumping away from her cauldron, bright green eyes wide.

I look at my mother, connected by a breath of glimmering hope, her red and shadowed eyes reveal that some element of our whole being has been lost and, somehow, thrown away. Sob-gasp, sob-gasp, sob-gasp. Slowly, that feeling within me fades. But wisps of it stay with you, locked in the chambers of your mind, always.

Well that ain’t so. You get babies from each other. But there’s this man, too—he has all these babies just waitin‘ to wake up, he breathes life into ’em…” Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of a gray house with sad brown doors. “Dill?” “Mm?” “Why do you reckon Boo Radley’s never run off?” Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me. “Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to…

If you wish to examine me to determine the sex of the child, you may do so.” Her chin lifted. “But as you wish me to accept yourself, for your predatory nature, you must accept me as I am. My heart and soul may be Carpathian, but my mind is human. I will not be put on a shelf somewhere because you or my husband deems it necessary. Human women moved out of the dark ages a long time ago. My place is with Mikhail, and I must make my own decisions. If you feel the need to add your protection to Mikhail’s I will be most grateful.” There was a long silence, and the red glow faded slowly from the slashing silver eyes. Gregori shook his head slowly, with infinite weariness. This woman was so different from his kind. Reckless. Compassionate. Unaware of every taboo she broke. His hand went to her stomach, fingers splayed. He focused, aimed, sent himself out of his body. His breath caught in his throat, and his heart seemed to melt. Deliberately he moved to surround the tiny being, merging his light and will for a heartbeat of time. He was taking no chances. This was his lifemate; he would ensure it with every means at his disposal, from the blood bonding to mental sharing. No one was as powerful as he. This female child was his and his alone. He could hang on until she came of age. “We did it, didn’t we?” Raven said softly, bringing Gregori back to his body. “She’s a girl.” Gregori stepped away from Raven, holding on to his composure with his great strength of will.

I like to judge people and it was clear to me that Colin’s life has been about as exciting as a cluster headache. You can tell this just from his humour tumour which runs through every conversation you have with him. I got the impression that Colin had arrived at his early fifties resenting the fact that he’s spent his entire career worshiping at the altar of Dynasty PLC. But he is now so indoctrinated by the world of corporate banking that he’s forgotten how to express the real him. This is what a life working for large corporations does to people. The workplace is a place not to be you; it’s a place to be the corporate you. The you that doesn’t really exist. We all see this corporate you and pretend that it’s a normal part of life. But we know that something isn’t quite right. We know that the real you is slowly fading away like old wallpaper. The corporate you is a myth; just like Icarus. And yet we are powerless against it. All of us are powerless against the wrath of the corporate world.

My Dearest, I miss you, my darling, as I always do, but today is especially hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together. I can almost feel you beside me as I write this letter, and I can smell the scent of wildflowers that always reminds me of you. But at this moment, these things give me no pleasure. Your visits have been coming less often, and I feel sometimes as if the greatest part of who I am is slowly slipping away. I am trying, though. At night when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me. Last night, in my dreams, I saw you on the pier near Wrightsville Beach. The wind was blowing through your hair, and your eyes held the fading sunlight. I am struck as I see you leaning against the rail. You are beautiful, I think as I see you, a vision that I can never find in anyone else. I slowly begin to walk toward you, and when you finally turn to me, I notice that others have been watching you as well. “Do you know her?” they ask me in jealous whispers, and as you smile at me, I simply answer with the truth. “Better than my own heart.” I stop when I reach you and take you in my arms. I long for this moment more than any other. It is what I live for, and when you return my embrace, I give myself over to this moment, at peace once again. I raise my hand and gently touch your cheek and you tilt your head and close your eyes. My hands are hard and your skin is soft, and I wonder for a moment if you’ll pull back, but of course you don’t. You never have, and it is at times like this that I know what my purpose is in life. I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, to protect you. I am here to learn from you and to receive your love in return. I am here because there is no other place to be. But then, as always, the mist starts to form as we stand close to one another. It is a distant fog that rises from the horizon, and I find that I grow fearful as it approaches. It slowly creeps in, enveloping the world around us, fencing us in as if to prevent escape. Like a rolling cloud, it blankets everything, closing, until there is nothing left but the two of us. I feel my throat begin to close and my eyes well up with tears because I know it is time for you to go. The look you give me at that moment haunts me. I feel your sadness and my own loneliness, and the ache in my heart that had been silent for only a short time grows stronger as you release me. And then you spread your arms and step back into the fog because it is your place and not mine. I long to go with you, but your only response is to shake your head because we both know that is impossible. And I watch with breaking heart as you slowly fade away. I find myself straining to remember everything about this moment, everything about you. But soon, always too soon, your image vanishes and the fog rolls back to its faraway place and I am alone on the pier and I do not care what others think as I bow my head and cry and cry and cry.

You hit the jackpot," I said, throwing my arms around his neck. He looked down at me, his hands slowly coming down. The slot machine lights reflected red, blue and green in his eyes. The chime of falling coins dwindled away in my ears. The entire casino faded to the background. "I did," he whispered. His hands took my face and he kissed me.

Then this is how you do it,’ and kissed her slowly, letting time fade away. And he couldn’t remember any other kiss that felt quite the same.

he sees a place where he will passively fade away, like wallpaper that gets too much sunlight and slowly loses its color. This

Sad clowns break my heart They slowly fade away From the face of the earth While making others smile.

Its been half a year since he started calling me by my maiden name... Its silently progressing. Fading away, slowly but steadily fading away...His memory of me, that is.

Time flies by, memories slowly fade away.. but sometimes, just one little moment, captured in feelings, can last a lifetime.

So I listened to Jimmy and he always had the answer. That lasted another fifteen years or so, Jimmy in my ear telling me what to do, and then slowly, he seemed to fade away.

Rain comes from the east one night We watch it come To hang like beaded curtains Till the morning sun Water dripping from our clothes You with raindrops on your nose Ask me sadly "Please don't go away now" Till the rain is done, I say "I'll stay now" Rain outside but inside we don't mind at all Shadows by the fire slowly climb and fall Kisses fade and leave no trace Whispers vanish into space The dawn will send me on a chase to nowhere Why cry as if I were the first to go there And I know I shouldn't be here Yes, I know I should go home But that eastern rain drones in my brain And I'm so all alone, so all alone Morning comes up from the east We watch it come And far away now rolls the ancient rain God's drum You with daybreak in your eyes Afraid to speak for telling lies I watch you search for some reply to lend me But when the rain is done There's no pretending "Eastern Rain" from Second Fret Sets

Now, the tourist hot spots of the city were the very parts that made it like everywhere else. Was it possible to imagine those buildings without inhaling the animal-fat stink of McDonald's or KFC? He never thought London would cease to appeal to him, but the little faded glory it still possessed was being scuffed away by the dead hand of globalization. On his down days he saw London as a crumbling ancient house, slowly collapsing under the weight of its own past.

The rains stopped and the clouds were cleaved into shifting forms, slowly disappearing, slowly fading to blue sky, bright blue sky, with the sun, and the boy stood staring until everything turned white, and the owl flew carrying the boy away to join with the moon

He bites his lip and slides closer along the bed. Reaching out slowly, he carefully pulls the hair band from my hair, releasing it from my ponytail, then he gently runs his fingers through the soft strands before suddenly snatching his hand away and looking down at the floor beneath his feet.

I suppose that's the reason I believe that as long as there is someone in charge of the household, someone who can maintain order among its members, someone who is clearly mature and established as a person, someone, in other words, like my mother, then eventually all who live under the same roof, despite blood ties or lineage, will at one point become family. Such a simple idea, but one that took a while for me to catch on to. Oh, and another thing. If the same people don't spend enough time in a home, even if they are connected by blood, their bonds will slowly fade away like a familiar landscape.

We realize, though, because we must, that remembrance is finite. It crosses only so many generations before it fades to indistinction. One man remembers his father and perhaps his grandfather and the details of the lives that were lived. But it's harder to see further back in time. I know the name of my great-grandfather, but our living time did not intersect. We did not walk the earth at the same time. Thus, to me he's a photograph; a story I heard my grandfather tell. He's not a life I remember. And my children may not know him at all, unless by chance they can find him in a book. In time, he will be forgotten entirely, just as we all will with enough revolutions of the earth around the slowly expiring sun. Each fragile heart now beating will one day stop ... We are little more than one tree's growth of leaves in hillside forest. We will enjoy our brief moment in the sun, only to fall away with all the other to make way for the next bright young generation.

When a song is ended, it leaves nothing but a feeling in those who heard it until that feeling, slowly moving backwards in time, collapses under pressure from more recent feelings and is replaced. Events become memories, unreliable stories, fade away at the ends. Unconnected and distinct from the day's experience, they become one of the millions of strata that make us who we are. We are the sum of all our experiences. We are waves on the ocean, interacting with and affected by all the other waves that move and die and are washed up on the shore. We are each a breath, a song, a flower. We are time itself, and mine has been long and I've collected many disconnected layers.

From birth to death and further on As we were born and introduced into this world, We had a gift hard to express by word And somewhere in our continuous road, It kind of lost it sense and turned. There was that time we sure remember, When everything was now and 'till forever Children with no worries and no regrets, The only goal was making a few friends. But later on everything has changed, By minds that had it all arranged To bring the people into stress, Into creating their own mess. We have been slaved by our own mind, Turned into something out of our kind Slowly faded away from the present time, Forced to believe in lies, in fights and crime. They made it clearly a fight of the ego, A never ending war that won't just go They made it a competitive game, To seek selfish materialistic fame. They turned us one against eachother, Man against man, brother against brother Dividing us by religion and skin color, Making us fight to death over a dollar. Making us lose ourselves in sadly thoughts, Wasting our days by living in the past Depressed and haunted by the memories, And yet still hoping to fly in our dreams. Some of us tried learning how to dance, Step after step, giving our soul a new chance Some of us left our ego vanish into sounds, Thus being aware of our natural bounce. Some tried expressing in their rhymes, The voice of a generation which never dies They reached eternity through poetry Leaving the teachings that shall fulfill the prophecy Others have found their way through spirituality, Becoming conscious of the human duality Seeking the spiritual enlightenment, Of escaping an ego-oriented fighting Science, philosophy, religion, Try to explain the human origin. Maybe changes are yet to come, And it shall be better for some Death's for the spirit not an end, But a relieving of the embodiment So I believe that furthermore, We'll understand the power of our soul But leaving behind all we know, And all that we might not yet know It all resumes to that certain truth, That we all seek to once conclude.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness, And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away-- Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about; Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing-- I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds.  Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen’s plaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out her last. From the dim woods on either bank, Night’s ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear-guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness.

The heavy rain clouds are moving away slowly. When the heart rains, it is cleansing the soul. When the heart rains, hurt fades away. My heart is raining, and happy days are one step in front of me. All I have to do is take that one step that will lead me to happiness and love. I do not look back. I keep my head straight and move one foot in front of the other. I just stepped into a world of happiness.

But before I got in the ring, I’d won it out here on the road. Some people think a Heavyweight Championship fight is decided during the fifteen rounds the two fighters face each other under hot blazing lights, in front of thousands of screaming witnesses, and part of it is. But a prizefight is like a war: the real part is won or lost somewhere far away from witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym and out here on the road long before I dance under those lights. I’ve got another mile to go. My heart is about to break through my chest, sweat is pouring off me. I want to stop but I’ve marked this as the day to test myself, to find out what kind of shape I’m in, how much work I have to do. Whenever I feel I want to stop, I look around and I see George Foreman running, coming up next to me. And I run a little harder. I’ve got a half-mile more to go and each yard is draining me, I’m running on my reserve tank now, but I know each step I take after I’m exhausted builds up special stamina and it’s worth all the other running put together. I need something to push me on, to keep me from stopping, until I get to the farmer’s stable up ahead, five miles from where I started. George is helping me. I fix my mind on him and I see him right on my heels. I push harder, he’s catching up. It’s hard for me to get my breath, I feel like I’m going to faint. He’s starting to pull ahead of me. This is the spark I need. I keep pushing harder till I pull even with him. His sweat shirt’s soaking wet and I hear him breathing fast and hard. My heart is pounding like it’s going to explode, but I drive myself on. I glance over at him and he’s throwing himself in the wind, going all out. My legs are heavy and tight with pain but I manage to drive, drive, drive till I pass him, Till he slowly fades away. I’ve won, but I’m not in shape. I’ve still got a long way to go. I’m gasping for breath. My throat’s dry and I feel like I’m going to throw up. I want to fall on my face but I must stay up, keep walking, keep standing. I’m not there yet but I know I’m winning. I’m winning the fight on the road . . .

Sitting on the bench, gazing towards the setting sun, she lost her mind in the cerebral convolutions, the mysterious nooks and crannies of the memory, she had gone backwards, seeking a world that made sense, losing her way among the labyrinths, slowly deteriorating, dimming, noiselessly being obliterated and then fading away so gradually that it was impossible to pinpoint the transition between the flickering little flame and the shadows.

No one paid any attention to how things looked, and as they moved faster and faster everything grew uglier and dirtier, and as everything grew uglier and dirtier they moved faster and faster, and at last a very strange thing began to happen. Because nobody cared, the city slowly began to disappear. Day by day the buildings grew fainter and fainter, and the streets faded away, until at last it was entirely invisible. There was nothing to see at all.

The official record for the fastest manmade object is the Helios 2 probe, which reached about 70 km/s in a close swing around the Sun. But it’s possible the actual holder of that title is a two-ton metal manhole cover. The cover sat atop a shaft at an underground nuclear test site operated by Los Alamos as part of Operation Plumbbob. When the 1-kiloton nuke went off below, the facility effectively became a nuclear potato cannon, giving the cap a gigantic kick. A high-speed camera trained on the lid caught only one frame of it moving upward before it vanished—which means it was moving at a minimum of 66 km/s. The cap was never found. Now, 66 km/s is about six times escape velocity, but contrary to common speculation, it’s unlikely the cap ever reached space. Newton’s impact depth approximation suggests that it was either destroyed completely by impact with the air or slowed and fell back to Earth. When we turn it back on, our reactivated hair dryer box, bobbing in lake water, undergoes a similar process. The heated steam below it expands outward, and as the box rises into the air, the entire surface of the lake turns to steam. The steam, heated to a plasma by the flood of radiation, accelerates the box faster and faster. Photo courtesy of Commander Hadfield Rather than slam into the atmosphere like the manhole cover, the box flies through a bubble of expanding plasma that offers little resistance. It exits the atmosphere and continues away, slowly fading from second sun to dim star. Much of the Northwest Territories is burning, but the Earth has survived.

I don’t see him much.” “It happens, baby. You forget all of it anyway. First, you forget everything you learned – the dates of the Hay-Herran Treaty and the Pythagorean theorem. You especially forget everything you didn’t really learn, just memorised the night before. You forget the names of all but one or two of your teachers, and eventually you’ll forget those, too. You forget your junior year class schedule and where you used to sit and your best friend’s home phone number and the lyrics to that song you must have played a million times. For me, it was something by Simon & Garfunkel. Who knows what it will be for you? And eventually, but slowly, oh so slowly, you forget your humiliations – even the ones that seemed indelible just fade away. You forget who was cool and who was not, who was pretty, smart, athletic, and not. Who went to a good college. Who threw the best parties. Who could get you pot. You forget all of them. Even the ones you said you loved, and the ones you actually did. They’re the last to go. And then once you’ve forgotten enough, you love someone else.

When he turned thirteen, we bought him a cell phone because he desperately wanted one and we wanted to make him happy. Slowly we watched him fade away. He stopped drawing maps and reading and writing, and we stopped finding poems around the house. When he was with us, I could sense his need to be there instead. So even when he wasn’t on his phone, he was gone. He was just hovering among us. His eyes changed. They became a little duller and heavier. They’d been the brightest eyes I’d ever seen, and then, one day, they just weren’t. In his phone, Chase had found a place easier to exist in than inside his own skin. That was tragic, because inside the itchiness of our own skin is where we discover who we are. When we are bored, we ask ourselves: What do I want to do with myself? We are guided toward certain things: a pen and paper, a guitar, the forest in the backyard, a soccer ball, a spatula. The moment after we don’t know what to do with ourselves is the moment we find ourselves. Right after itchy boredom is self-discovery. But we have to hang in there long enough without bailing. There is so much about phones and children that parents worry about.

The girl and Doctor Reefy began their courtship on a summer afternoon. He was forty-five then and already he had begun the practice of filling his pockets with the scraps of paper that became hard balls and were thrown away. The habit had been formed as he sat in his buggy behind the jaded white horse and went slowly along country roads. On the papers were written thoughts, ends of thoughts, beginnings of thoughts. One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made the thoughts. Out of many of them he formed a truth that arose gigantic in his mind. The truth clouded the world. It became terrible and then faded away and the little thoughts began again. ("Paper Pills")

She said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, words, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off those explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted. If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body it left behind, cold, and defenseless, is capable of providing that food. That's why it's important to keep your distance from people who have frigid breath. Just their presence can put out the most intense fire, with results we're familiar with. If we stay a good distance away from those people, it's easier to protect ourselves from being extinguished.

That was the moment Anna felt something inside her trip and fall, something come clean away from all the snares and traps and tangles of the propriety in which she’d been steeped all these years. And as he began to move, she pressed into him as he had shown her, looked up at him from beneath her lashes as he’d directed, and said, in a purring voice, “My, my, sir, how well you move us about the dance floor! One can’t help but wonder if you move as well in other, more intimate circumstances,” she said, and let her lips stretch into a soft smile. It worked. Grif’s grin faded; he slowed his step a little and blinked down at her for a moment. But that dangerous smile slowly appeared again, starting in his eyes and casually reaching his lips. “If ye were to pose such a question to me, lass, I’d say, ‘As fast or as slow, as soft or as hard as ye’d want, leannan. Pray tell, how would ye want?’” The tingling in her groin was a signal that she was on perilous ground. Anna looked into his green eyes, so dark and so deep that she couldn’t quite determine if this was a game they were playing or something far more dangerous. And her good sense, shaped and controlled from years of living among high society, quietly shut down, allowing the real Anna, the Anna who yearned to be loved, to be held and caressed and adored and know all manner of physical pleasure, to slide deeper into the circle of his arms. “I don’t rightly know how I’d want, sir, other than to say…” Her voice trailed away as she let her gaze roam his face, the perfectly tied neckcloth, the breadth of his shoulders, his thick arms. And then she lifted her gaze to his, saw something smoldering there, and recklessly whispered, “… that I’d most definitely want.” He said nothing. The muscles in his jaw bulged as if he refrained from speaking, and she realized that they had come to a halt. But then his hand spread beneath hers, his palm pressed to her palm, and he laced his fingers between hers, one by one, and with the last one, he closed his hand, gripping hers tightly. “Tha sin glè mhath,” he whispered hoarsely. Anna smiled, lifted a curious brow. “I said, that’s very good, lass. Very good indeed

The great actors of history cannot be neatly tucked between the covers of a book and filed away like so many pressed botanical specimens. Their actions cannot be explained according to a specific timetable like the coming and going of so many trains. Although scholars may designate the beginning and ending of an era with exact precision, great historical events, particularly those that erupt suddenly and violently, build up slowly, and, once having begun, never end. Their effects linger long after the action faded from view. Like the tingling vibrations of a bell that we can still sense well after it has stopped ringing, Genghis Khan has long passed from the scene, but his influence continues to reverberate through our time.

For three days and three nights, Phædrus stares at the wall of the bedroom, his thoughts moving neither forward nor backward, staying only at the instant. His wife asks if he is sick, and he does not answer. His wife becomes angry, but Phædrus listens without responding. He is aware of what she says but is no longer able to feel any urgency about it. Not only are his thoughts slowing down, but his desires too. And they slow and slow, as if gaining an imponderable mass. So heavy, so tired, but no sleep comes. He feels like a giant, a million miles tall. He feels himself extending into the universe with no limit. He begins to discard things, encumbrances that he has carried with him all his life. He tells his wife to leave with the children, to consider themselves separated. Fear of loathsomeness and shame disappear when his urine flows not deliberately but naturally on the floor of the room. Fear of pain, the pain of the martyrs is overcome when cigarettes burn not deliberately but naturally down into his fingers until they are extinguished by blisters formed by their own heat. His wife sees his injured hands and the urine on the floor and calls for help. But before help comes, slowly, imperceptibly at first, the entire consciousness of Phædrus begins to come apart — to dissolve and fade away. Then gradually he no longer wonders what will happen next. He knows what will happen next, and tears flow for his family and for himself and for this world.

Have you ever just laid down on the grass and watch as the day slowly transitions to evening? The sky flows through hues of orange and slowly fades to greys, the incredible palette of dusk. This is where the magic begins to happen. First the planets reveal themselves as bright pinpoints of light against the bleak canvas, and for a few moments they are the only thing you can focus on - they’re so bright that they draw away from anything else. When you stare at only one, when there is so much distance between it and anything else, it almost seems to be dancing back and forth in space, playing mind tricks on you. However, as you emerge from its hypnotic trance, you begin to see the less significant stars awaken from what seems like nowhere. They too earn your attention, but in a different way. You can’t look at them directly because otherwise you won’t see their beauty. You have to glance at them from the side, from the corner of your eye to really see them in their fullness. The sky is not yet completely in darkness and the universe is already showing off. Distant stars even further light years away and planets orbiting from afar being to emerge and before you know it you almost don’t know where to look, there are little grains of sand lighting up the sky from everywhere. This happens every night - a spectacular natural light show but so many people miss it. It’s sad to think that, but it makes viewing it that much more special when you get to experience it. Just you and the universe, watching itself through your own very eyes.

The waitress came over slowly, as if the effort of crossing the floor was synonymous with wading through deep snow and she should be rewarded for it. Myron warmed her up with one of his patented smiles. The Christian Slater model—friendly yet devilish. Not to be mistaken for the Jack Nicholson model which was also friendly yet devilish. “Hi,” he said. She put down a Rolling Rock cardboard coaster. “What can I get you?” she asked, trying to toss up a friendly tone and falling way short. You rarely find a friendly barmaid in Manhattan, except for those born-again waitresses at chains like TGI Friday’s or Bennigan’s where they tell you their name and that they’ll be your “server” like you might mistake them for something else, like your “legal consultant” or “medical advisor.

She opened her eyes slowly and saw that a pale lavender moth had come to a rest on the back of her hand. She watched it from her pillow, wondering if it was real. It reminded her of her husband Matt's favorite T-shirt, which she'd hidden in a bag of sewing, unable to throw it away. It had a large faded moth on the front, the logo of a cover band out of Athens called the Mothballs. That T-shirt, that moth, always brought back a strange memory of when she was a child. She used to draw tattoos of butterflies on her arms with Magic Markers. She would give them names, talk to them, carefully fill in their colors when they started to fade. When the time came that they wanted to be set free, she would blow on them and they would come to life, peeling away from her skin and flying away.

The woman [Cadsuane] looked at the battered tea things as if she had all the time in the world. “Now you know,” she said at last, calm as ever, “that I know your future, and your present. The Light’s mercy fades to nothing for a man who can channel. Some see that and believe the Light denies those men. I do not. Have you begun to hear voices, yet?” “What do you mean?” he asked slowly. He could feel Lews Therin listening. [...] “Some men who can channel begin to hear voices.” She spoke almost absently, frowning at the flattened sphere of silver and gold. “It is a part of the madness. Voices conversing with them, telling them what to do.” The teapot drifted gently to the floor by her feet. “Have you heard any?” [...] “I will ask the questions,” Rand said firmly. “You seem to forget. I am the Dragon Reborn.” You are real, aren’t you? he wondered. There was no answer. Lews Therin? Sometimes the man did not answer, but Aes Sedai always drew him. Lews Therin? He was not mad; the voice was real, not imagination. Not madness. A sudden desire to laugh did not help. Cadsuane sighed. “You are a young man who has little idea where he is going or why, or what lies ahead. You seem overwrought. Perhaps we can speak when you are more settled. Have you any objection to my taking Merana and Annoura away for a little while? I’ve seen neither in quite some time.” Rand gaped at her. She swooped in, insulted him, threatened him, casually announced she knew about the voice in his head, and with that she wanted to leave and talk with Merana and Annoura? Is she mad? Still no answer from Lews Therin. The man was real. He was! “Go away,” he said. “Go away, and...” He was not mad. “All of you, get out! Get out!” [...] Finally they were all gone, and he was alone. Alone. Convulsively he hurled the Dragon Scepter. The spear-point stuck quivering in the back of one the chairs, the tassels swaying. “I am not mad,” he said to the empty room. Lews Therin had told him things; he would never have escaped Galina’s chest without the dead man’s voice. But he had used the Power before he ever heard the voice; he had figured out how to call lightning and hurl fire and form a construct that had killed hundreds of Trollocs. But then, maybe that had been Lews Therin, like those memories of climbing trees in a plum orchard, and entering the Hall of the Servants, and a dozen more that crept up on him unawares. And maybe those memories were all fancies, mad dreams of a mad mind, just like the voice.

Dear After the rain, How are you doing today? Are you angry? Are you crying? Or are you releasing what doesn’t serves you anymore? For years now, I’ve been so angry. I know you all know me by now because there have been plenty of times when you hid my tears. Memories used to linger in the raindrops. However, today, there is something different in the air. It is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I feel the light... and it is peeking in. Soon my heart will be shining bright, filled with a downpour of love and light. I feel it in my energy that Nurse Hope's love will be drenching Kace and me from head to toe. The clouds are turning dark grey. They look very familiar. They used to be clouds of grief. As the grey clouds darken, the sky turns black, but I have no fear. The rain has cleared the air and has washed away all the fears I carried along the way. I happily and gently put my fears down because they do not serve me anymore. The thunder has shaken Kace’s and my fears—and they no longer linger on. They do not have a place in my mind anymore. As of today, the rain has washed them away. The lightning has made its mark and stuck love into Kace’s and my life. I know and have faith that it will be permanent. The heavy rain clouds are moving away slowly. When the heart rains, it is cleansing the soul. When the heart rains, hurt fades away. My heart is raining, and happy days are one step in front of me. All I have to do is take that one step that will lead me to happiness and love. I do not look back. I keep my head straight and move one foot in front of the other. I just stepped into a world of happiness. I am drenched in love and loving it.

We probably all had the dream, back then, that one day our talent would take us to the big time, and there was nothing wrong with dreaming that dream. That’s what fuels every game of shinny or back-lot baseball in the world. Of course, as you move along in your hockey career, reality begins to set in for most people. The dream begins to slowly fade away with the understanding that you will probably never be playing under the bright lights. But that’s beside the point—that’s not what childhood games are about, anyway. The life lessons we learned about competing remained with us even into adulthood. The types of competitions you engage in as an adult might be different from those you participated in when you were a child, but the rules from childhood still apply. What you learn on the frozen bays and ball fields doesn’t become less relevant, no matter where you end up.

The day he first told me he was starting to disappear I didn't believe him & so he stopped & held his hand up to the sun & it was like thin paper in the light & finally I said you seem very calm for a man who is disappearing & he said it was a relief after all those years of trying to keep the pieces of his life in one place. Later on, I went to see him again & as I was leaving, he put a package in my hand. This is the last piece of my life, he said, take good care of it & then he smiled & was gone & the room filled with the sound of the wind & when I opened the package there was nothing there & I thought there must be some mistake or maybe I dropped it & I got down on my hands & knees & looked until the light began to fade & then slowly I felt the pieces of my life fall away gently & suddenly I understood what he meant & I lay there for a long time crying & laughing at the same time. —Disappearing

Martin looked at Alejandra with a pained expression. How he detested that face of hers, her boutique-face, the one that she seemed to put on deliberately in order to play her role in that frivolous world; a face that seemed to linger on once she found herself alone with him, its abominable features fading away only very slowly, as there gradually emerged one or another of the faces that belonged to him alone, a face he waited for as one awaits a beloved traveler amid a repulsive crowd. But as Bruno said, the word person means "mask", and each of us has many masks; that of father, professor, lover....But which is the real one? And is there in fact one that is the real one? At certain moments Martin thought that the Alejandra that he was now seeing there before him, laughing at Bobby's jokes, was not, could not be the same Alejandra that he knew, and above all could not be the more profound, the marvelous and fearsome Alejandra that he loved. But at other times (and as the weeks went by the more he began to be convinced of it), he was inclined to think, as Bruno did, that all these Alejandras were real and that that boutique-face was genuine too and in some way or other expressed a sort of reality inherent in Alejandra's soul: a reality--and heaven only knew how many others there were!---that was foreign to him, that did not belong to him and never would. And then, when she came to him still bearing the faint traces of those other personalities, as though she had not had the time (or the desire?) to transform herself, Martin discovered--in a certain sarcastic grin on her lips, in a certain way of moving her hands, in a certain glint in her eyes--the lingering signs of a strange existence: like someone who has been around a garbage dump and still retains something of its foul stench in our presence.

The door opened and she came out. She was wearing a red dress. It was faded a little, and there were streaks and creases in it from having been folded away for a long time, but those were unimportant things. It was red. It was made of some soft, shiny, slithery stuff that rustled when she moved, and it came clear down to the floor, hiding her feet, but that was about all it hid. It fitted tight around her waist and hips and outlined her thighs when she walked forward, and above the waist there wasn’t very much at all. She held out her arms at the sides and turned around slowly. Her back and shoulders were bare, white and gleaming in the sunlight that fell through the window, and her breasts were sharply outlined in the red cloth, showing above it in two half-moon curves, and her black hair fell down, dark and glossy over her white skin. “It belonged to my great-grandmother. Do you like it?” Len said, “Christ.” He stared and stared, and his face was almost as red as the dress. “It’s the most indecent thing I ever saw.” “I

These things cannot be loved. The best man hates them most; the worst man cannot love them. But are these the man? Does a woman bear that form in virtue of these? Lies there not within the man and the woman a divine element of brotherhood, of sisterhood, a something lovely and lovable,—slowly fading, it may be,—dying away under the fierce heat of vile passions, or the yet more fearful cold of sepulchral selfishness—but there? Shall that divine something, which, once awakened to be its own holy self in the man, will loathe these unlovely things tenfold more than we loathe them now—shall this divine thing have no recognition from us? It is the very presence of this fading humanity that makes it possible for us to hate. If it were an animal only, and not a man or a woman that did us hurt, we should not hate: we should only kill. We hate the man just because we are prevented from loving him. We push over the verge of the creation—we damn—just because we cannot embrace. For to embrace is the necessity of our deepest being. That foiled, we hate. Instead of admonishing ourselves that there is our enchained brother, that there lies our enchanted, disfigured, scarce recognizable sister, captive of the devil, to break, how much sooner, from their bonds, that we love them!—we recoil into the hate which would fix them there; and the dearly lovable reality of them we sacrifice to the outer falsehood of Satan's incantations, thus leaving them to perish. Nay, we murder them to get rid of them, we hate them. Yet within the most obnoxious to our hate, lies that which, could it but show itself as it is, and as it will show itself one day, would compel from our hearts a devotion of love. It is not the unfriendly, the unlovely, that we are told to love, but the brother, the sister, who is unkind, who is unlovely. Shall we leave our brother to his desolate fate? Shall we not rather say, "With my love at least shalt thou be compassed about, for thou hast not thy own lovingness to infold thee; love shall come as near thee as it may; and when thine comes forth to meet mine, we shall be one in the indwelling God"?

And then, as slowly as the light fades on a calm winter evening, something went out of our relationship. I say that selfishly. Perhaps I started to look for something which had never been there in the first place: passion, romance. I aresay that as I entered my forties I had a sense that somehow life was going past me. I had hardly experienced those emotions which for me have mostly come from reading books or watching television. I suppose that if there was anything unsatisfactory in our marriage, it was in my perception of it—the reality was unchanged. Perhaps I grew up from childhood to manhood too quickly. One minute I was cutting up frogs in the science lab at school, the next I was working for the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence and counting freshwater mussel populations on riverbeds. Somewhere in between, something had passed me by: adolescence, perhaps? Something immature, foolish yet intensely emotive, like those favourite songs I had recalled dimly as if being played on a distant radio, almost too far away to make out the words. I had doubts, yearnings, but I did not know why or what for. Whenever I tried to analyse our lives, and talk about it with Mary, she would say, ‘Darling, you are on the way to becoming one of the leading authorities in the world on caddis fly larvae. Don’t allow anything to deflect you from that. You may be rather inadequately paid, certainly compared with me you are, but excellence in any field is an achievement beyond value.’ I don’t know when we started drifting apart. When I told Mary about the project—I mean about researching the possibility of a salmon fishery in the Yemen—something changed. If there was a defining moment in our marriage, then that was it. It was ironical, in a sense. For the first time in my life I was doing something which might bring me international recognition and certainly would make me considerably better off—I could live for years off the lecture circuit alone, if the project was even half successful. Mary didn’t like it. I don’t know what part she didn’t like: the fact I might become more famous than her, the fact I might even become better paid than her. That makes her sound carping.

A musical laugh sprang free, her happy smile trailing behind, and I was in heaven. “Until you,” she agreed. She squinted one eye and added, “Though you should know, I’m probably gonna be really, really bad at it.” The expression on her face said she honestly believed it, and I couldn’t wait to prove her wrong. I leaned close to her ear and whispered across her skin, “That’s impossible.” Peyton’s breath caught in a gasp, and I angled back to see her face. That’s when the moment changed. Sounds of the emptying baseball field fell away. The cool air around us kindled. The soft smile on her face faded as she looked into my eyes, shifting her gaze between them to see what I’d do next. Part of me wondered the same thing. I’d kissed dozens of girls before. Some I wanted, others purely because I was bored. But I’d never felt anything like this. Anticipation. Want. Fear. Unlike any other kiss I’d ever shared, this one needed to be epic. Girls remembered their first kiss for the rest of their lives, and I had to leave Peyton with something good to cling to later… when I inevitably screwed everything up. Gauging her reaction, I slowly lowered my head and watched her soft lips part. Adrenaline surged through my veins at the swipe of her tongue. She nodded once, silently giving me permission, then closed her eyes. Inhaling the scent of sunflowers, I kissed her.

The slow discovery of the seventh sense, by which both men and women contrive to ride the waves of a world in which there is war, adultery, compromise, fear, stultification and hypocrisy—this discovery is not a matter for triumph... And at this stage we begin to forget that there ever was a time when we lacked the seventh sense. We begin to forget, as we go stolidly balancing along, that there could have been a time when we were young bodies flaming with the impetus of life. It is hardly consoling to remember such a feeling, and so it deadens in our minds. But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned. There was a time when it was of vital interest to us to find out whether there was a God or not... Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves. All these problems and feelings fade away when we get the seventh sense. Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments, without difficulty. The seventh sense, indeed, slowly kills all the other ones, so that at last there is no trouble about the commandments. We cannot see any more, or feel, or hear about them. The bodies which we loved, the truths which we sought, the Gods whom we questioned: we are deaf and blind to them now, safely and automatically balancing along toward the inevitable grave, under the protection of our last sense.

My ice-cream is melting just as quickly as Danny’s and is dripping down my chin, across my wrist, and onto my thigh. I laugh, throwing my head back and covering my eyes so as not to be blinded by happiness, and it is in this moment of weightlessness that I am suddenly aware of the lightest touch on my skin, like the wings of a butterfly. It flutters against my thigh then lingers on my wrist, but before its delicate wings reach my face, I force my eyes open and see only fragments: pink lips, a tanned cheek, the features and lines of a face silhouetted against the bright sunlight. My nostrils draw in his scent for the very first time and it is so strong that he is not just next to me but intimately close. His smell instantly takes me prisoner, overpowering me to such an extent that I have forgotten who and where I am. I know that, moments before, Alex was using his lips and tongue to clean the melted ice-cream off my thigh and wrist and inadvertently treating me to the most ecstatic experience of my life. My body and mind are adrift in a sea of bliss, the sounds of the park suddenly fade away, and the world and everyone in it cease to exist. All I can see is a blindingly bright light and all I can feel are a man’s moist lips touching mine. Alex’s hot, passionate mouth is kissing me greedily as if there is finally enough air; as if he had been suffocating, but now he can breathe. I know that a kiss like this is neither flirting nor dating and can sense with every fibre of my being that it was a sudden impulse, unplanned and impetuous. When Alex comes to his senses and realises what he has done, I am already staring meaningfully into his eyes. He pulls away slowly and starts to apologise, but I assure him there is no need, just not to do it again. He replies that he won’t, but his eyes say otherwise: he looks as overwhelmed as I feel.

I’m standing in front of Enrique’s Auto Body, doing deep-breathing exercises to keep from being nervous. Enrique’s Camry is nowhere in sight, so I know Alex is alone. I’m going to seduce Alex. If what I’m wearing doesn’t capture his attention, nothing will. I’m giving this my all…bringing out all the artillery. I rap on the door, then close my eyes tight and pray this goes as planned. I open my long, silver satin jacket and the cool night air rushes onto my exposed skin. When the creak of the door alerts me to Alex’s presence, I slowly open my eyes. But it’s not Alex’s black eyes staring at my scantily clad body. It’s Enrique--who’s staring at my pink lace bra and pom-pom skirt as if he’s won the lottery. Ripped with embarrassment, I wrap my coat around myself. If I could wrap it around twice, I would. “Uh, Alex,” Enrique laughs. “There’s a trick-or-treater here to see you.” My face is probably beet red, but I’m determined to see this through. I’m here to show Alex I’m not going to desert him. “Who is it?” comes Alex’s voice from somewhere inside the garage. “I was just leavin’,” Enrique says, slipping past me. “Tell Alex to lock up. Adiós.” Enrique walks across the darkened street, humming to himself. “Yo, Enrique. ¿Quién está ahi?” Alex’s voice fades when he reaches the front of the shop. He looks at me with contemp. “Need directions or your car fixed.” “None of the above,” I say. “Trick-or-treatin’ on my side of town?” “No.” “It’s over, mujer. ¿Me oyes? Why do you keep droppin’ into my life and fuckin’ with my head? Besides, aren’t you supposed to be at the Halloween dance with some college guy?” “I blew him off. Can we talk?” “Listen, I’ve got a shitload of work that still needs to get done. What did you come here for? And where’s Enrique?” “He, uh, left,” I say nervously. “I think I scared him away.” “You? I don’t think so.” “I showed him what I was wearing under my coat.” Alex’s eyebrows shoot up.

To be sure,” continued Alec; “but, as you know, the most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what’s in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that. Then one day someone discovered that if you walked as fast as possible and looked at nothing but your shoes you would arrive at your destination much more quickly. Soon everyone was doing it. They all rushed down the avenues and hurried along the boulevards seeing nothing of the wonders and beauties of their city as they went.” Milo remembered the many times he’d done the very same thing; and, as hard as he tried, there were even things on his own street that he couldn’t remember. “No one paid any attention to how things looked, and as they moved faster and faster everything grew uglier and dirtier, and as everything grew uglier and dirtier they moved faster and faster, and at last a very strange thing began to happen. Because nobody cared, the city slowly began to disappear. Day by day the buildings grew fainter and fainter, and the streets faded away, until at last it was entirely invisible. There was nothing to see at all.” “What did they do?” the Humbug inquired, suddenly taking an interest in things. “Nothing at all,” continued Alec. “They went right on living here just as they’d always done, in the houses they could no longer see and on the streets which had vanished, because nobody had noticed a thing. And that’s the way they have lived to this very day.” “Hasn’t anyone told them?” asked Milo. “It doesn’t do any good,” Alec replied, “for they can never see what they’re in too much of a hurry to look for.” “Why don’t they live in Illusions?” suggested the Humbug. “It’s much prettier.” “Many of them do,” he answered, walking in the direction of the forest once again, “but it’s just as bad to live in a place where what you do see isn’t there as it is to live in one where what you don’t see is.” “Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality,” Milo remarked.

Not a comforting thought, but Bryce nonetheless popped the silver bean into her mouth, worked up enough saliva, and swallowed. Its metal was cool against her tongue, her throat, and she could have sworn she felt its slickness sliding into her stomach. Lightning cleaved her brain. She was being ripped in two. Her body couldn’t hold all the searing light— Then blackness slammed in. Quiet and restful and eternal. No—that was the room around her. She was on the floor, curled over her knees, and … glowing. Brightly enough to illuminate Rhysand’s and Amren’s shocked faces. Azriel was already poised over her, that deadly dagger drawn and gleaming with a strange black light. He noted the darkness leaking from the blade and blinked. It was the most shock Bryce had seen him display. “Put it away, you fool,” Amren said. “It sings for her, and by bringing it close—” The blade vanished from Azriel’s hand, whisked away by a shadow. Silence, taut and rippling, spread through the room. Bryce stood slowly—as Randall and her mom had taught her to move in front of Vanir and other predators. And as she rose, she found it in her brain: the knowledge of a language that she had not known before. It sat on her tongue, ready to be spoken, as instinctual as her own. It shimmered along her skin, stinging down her spine, her shoulder blades—wait. Oh no. No, no, no. Bryce didn’t dare reach for the tattoo of the Horn, to call attention to the letters that formed the words Through love, all is possible. She could feel them reacting to whatever had been in that spell that set her glowing and could only pray it wasn’t visible. Her prayers were in vain. Amren turned to Rhysand and said in that new, strange language—their language: “The glowing letters inked on her back … they’re the same as those in the Book of Breathings.” They must have seen the words through her T-shirt when she’d been on the floor. With every breath, the tingling lessened, like the glow was fading. But the damage was already done. They once again assessed her. Three apex killers, contemplating a threat. Then Azriel said in a soft, lethal voice, “Explain or you die.

Now when I say “I,” it seems hollow to me. I can’t manage to feel myself very well, I am so forgotten. The only real thing left in me is existence which feels it exists. I yawn, lengthily. No one. Antoine Roquentin exists for on one. That amuses me. And just what is Antoine Roquentin? An abstraction. A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness. Antoine Roquentin . . . and suddenly the “I” pales, pales, and fades out. Lucid, forlorn, consciousness is walled-up; it perpetuates itself. Nobody lives there any more. A little while ago someone said “me,” said my consciousness. Who? Outside there were streets, alive with known smells and colours. Now nothing is left but anonymous walls, anonymous consciousness. That is what there is: walls, and between the walls, a small transparency, alive and impersonal. Consciousness exists as a tree, as a blade of grass. It slumbers, it grows bored. Small fugitive presences populate it like birds in the branches. Populate it and disappear. Consciousness forgotten, forsaken between these walls, under this grey sky. And here is the sense of its existence: it is conscious of being superfluous. It dilutes, scatters itself, tries to lose itself on the brown wall, along the lamp post or down there in the evening mist. But it never forgets itself. That is its lot. There is a stifled voice which tells it: “The train leaves in two hours,” and there is the consciousness of this voice. There is also consciousness of a face. It passes slowly, full of blood, spattered, and its bulging eyes weep. It is not between the walls, it is nowhere. It vanishes; a bent body with a bleeding face replaces it, walks slowly away, seems to stop at each step, never stops. There is a consciousness of this body walking slowly in a dark street. It walks but it gets no further away. The dark street does not end, it loses itself in nothingness. It is not between the walls, it is nowhere. And there is consciousness of a stifled voice which says: “The Self-Taught Man is wandering through the city.” Not the same city, not between these toneless walls, the Self-Taught Man walks in a city where he is not forgotten.

In a matter of sixty short minutes, that thing could whisk Neil away to civilization, I thought. Hmm. My goodness, that was a beautiful prospect. Somehow I had to get on that chopper with him. I packed in thirty seconds flat, everything from the past three months. I taped a white cross onto my sleeve, and raced out to where Neil was sat waiting. One chance. What the heck. Neil shook his head at me, smiling. “God, you push it, Bear, don’t you?” he shouted over the noise of the rotors. “You’re going to need a decent medic on the flight,” I replied, with a smile. “And I’m your man.” (There was at least some element of truth in this: I was a medic and I was his buddy--and yes, he did need help. But essentially I was trying to pull a bit of a fast one.) The pilot shouted that two people would be too heavy. “I have to accompany him at all times,” I shouted back over the engine noise. “His feet might fall off at any moment,” I added quietly. The pilot looked back at me, then at the white cross on my sleeve. He agreed to drop Neil somewhere down at a lower altitude, and then come back for me. “Perfect. Go. I’ll be here.” I shook his hand firmly. Let’s just get this done before anyone thinks too much about it, I mumbled to myself. And with that the pilot took off and disappeared from view. Mick and Henry were laughing. “If you pull this one off, Bear, I will eat my socks. You just love to push it, don’t you?” Mick said, smiling. “Yep, good try, but you aren’t going to see him again, I guarantee you,” Henry added. Thanks to the pilot’s big balls, he was wrong. The heli returned empty, I leapt aboard, and with the rotors whirring at full power to get some grip in the thin air, the bird slowly lifted into the air. The stall warning light kept buzzing away as we fought against gravity, but then the nose dipped and soon we were skimming over the rocks, away from base camp and down the glacier. I was out of there--and Mick was busy taking his socks off. As we descended, I spotted, far beneath us, this lone figure sat on a rock in the middle of a giant boulder field. Neil’s two white “beacons” shining bright. I love it. I smiled. We picked Neil up, and in an instant we were flying together through the huge Himalayan valleys like an eagle freed. Neil and I sat back in the helicopter, faces pressed against the glass, and watched our life for the past three months become a shimmer in the distance. The great mountain faded into a haze, hidden from sight. I leaned against Neil’s shoulder and closed my eyes. Everest was gone.

When the commander of one of the brigades Gilbert had sent to reinforce McCook approached an imposing-looking officer to ask for instructions as to the posting of his troops—“I have come to your assistance with my brigade!” the Federal shouted above the uproar—the gentleman calmly sitting his horse in the midst of carnage turned out to be Polk, who was wearing a dark-gray uniform. Polk asked the designation of the newly arrived command, and upon being told raised his eyebrows in surprise. For all his churchly faith in miracles, he could scarcely believe his ears. “There must be some mistake about this,” he said. “You are my prisoner.” Fighting without its commander, the brigade gave an excellent account of itself. Joined presently by the other brigade sent over from the center, it did much to stiffen the resistance being offered by the remnants of McCook’s two divisions. Sundown came before the rebels could complete the rout begun four hours ago, and now in the dusk it was Polk’s turn to play a befuddled role in another comic incident of confused identity. He saw in the fading light a body of men whom he took to be Confederates firing obliquely into the flank of one of his engaged brigades. “Dear me,” he said to himself. “This is very sad and must be stopped.” None of his staff being with him at the time, he rode over to attend to the matter in person. When he came up to the erring commander and demanded in angry tones what he meant by shooting his own friends, the colonel replied with surprise: “I don’t think there can be any mistake about it. I am sure they are the enemy.” “Enemy!” Polk exclaimed, taken aback by this apparent insubordination. “Why, I have only just left them myself. Cease firing, sir! What is your name, sir?” “Colonel Shryock, of the 87th Indiana,” the Federal said. “And pray, sir, who are you?” The bishop-general, learning thus for the first time that the man was a Yankee and that he was in rear of a whole regiment of Yankees, determined to brazen out the situation by taking further advantage of the fact that his dark-gray blouse looked blue-black in the twilight. He rode closer and shook his fist in the colonel’s face, shouting angrily: “I’ll soon show you who I am, sir! Cease firing, sir, at once!” Then he turned his horse and, calling in an authoritative manner for the bluecoats to cease firing, slowly rode back toward his own lines. He was afraid to ride fast, he later explained, because haste might give his identity away; yet “at the same time I experienced a disagreeable sensation, like screwing up my back, and calculated how many bullets would be between my shoulders every moment.

She did not answer. Or, rather, she answered by sliding long fingers across Kassad’s chest, ripping away the leather thongs which bound the rough vest. Her hands found his shirt. It was soaked with blood and ripped halfway down the front. The woman ripped it open the rest of the way. She moved against him now, her fingers and lips on his chest, hips already beginning to move. Her right hand found the cords to his trouser front, ripped them free. Kassad helped her pull off the rest of his clothes, removed hers with three fluid movements. She wore nothing under her shirt and coarse-cloth trousers. Kassad’s hand slid between her thighs, behind her, cupped her moving buttocks, pulled her closer, and slid to the moist roughness in front. She opened to him, her mouth closing on his. Somehow, with all of their motion and disrobing, their skin never lost contact. Kassad felt his own excitement rubbing against the cusp of her belly. She rolled above him then, her thighs astride his hips, her gaze still locked with his. Kassad had never been so excited. He gasped as her right hand went behind her, found him, guided him into her. When he opened his eyes again she was moving slowly, her head back, eyes closed. Kassad’s hands moved up her sides to cup her perfect breasts. Nipples hardened against his palms. They made love then. Kassad, at twenty-three standard years, had been in love once and had enjoyed sex many times. He thought he knew the way and the why of it. There was nothing in his experience to that moment which he could not have described with a phrase and a laugh to his squadmates in the hold of a troop transport With the calm, sure cynicism of a twenty-three-year-old veteran he was sure that he would never experience anything that could not be so described, so dismissed. He was wrong. He could never adequately share the sense of the next few minutes with anyone else. He would never try. They made love in a sudden shaft of late October light with a carpet of leaves and clothes beneath them and a film of blood and sweat oiling the sweet friction between them. Her green eyes stared down at Kassad, widening slightly when he began moving quickly, closing at the same second he closed his. They moved together then in the sudden tide of sensation as old and inevitable as the movement of worlds: pulses racing, flesh quickening with its own moist purposes, a further, final rising together, the world receding to nothing at all—and then, still joined by touch and heartbeat and the fading thrill of passion, allowing consciousness to slide back to separate flesh while the world flowed in through forgotten senses. They lay next to each other.

I had the most powerful magic, and the need to use it.  Lifting my right hand, I summoned forth my Mana, converted it into magic, and spoke my own word of power.  Much to her surprise, I could still cast with my right hand, despite its missing digits.   “You aren’t really going to do this, are you?” Shart asked.  He was making his way over to me with only the barest hint of floundering. “Hoopie!” The spell pierced her barrier, turning the now useless boundary a bright blue.  Her expression was a mix of terror and amazement as the spell bypassed her defenses and impacted her.  Her ass exploded in an echoing cacophony of flatulence. It was literally the loudest fart I’d ever heard.  As someone whose mother-in-law used to regularly drive people from the room with her anal symphonies, I considered myself an expert.  I highly suspected Bashara was the kind of lady who didn’t fart in public; she must have been saving that one up all day.  She blinked several times, as she checked her status log.  It was time to execute the second part of my plan. Grabbing Shart, amidst his squawking protests, I yelled my battlecry. “Poke-Shart, Go!” Then, I flung the invisible demon straight at her head. Shart only weighed thirty pounds or so; I was more than strong enough to fling him at a pretty good clip.  His cry of “you bastard” slowly faded the further he flew.     I had hoped that being hit in the face would knock her off balance.  That would have given me a moment to pick up my sword and close.  Actually, I hoped it was possible to hit her at all; despite Shart’s ability to fly, he wasn’t very aerodynamic.  I couldn’t win a spell duel, considering I had only one good hand and didn’t know any good spells.  I was going to have to engage her in combat.  I sincerely hoped that my invisible familiar would give me an advantage. I hadn’t calculated on hitting the top of her head with Shart’s Belly Button of Holding.  Her head disappeared, completely buried down to the top of her shoulders.  Her body, however, still worked.  She was careening around, her hands furiously pushing on the demon.  The remaining bandit, coincidentally, looked at Bashara just as her head vanished.  Incorrectly assuming that I had some sort of head vanishing spell, he tried to break and run.   You can’t run away from a homicidal badger.   I managed to get within arms’ reach of Bashara, just as she had successfully begun pushing Shart off her head. She had freed her mouth and was screaming.  As she continued pushing, her nose popped free.  I felt only slightly bad when I grabbed the demon and pushed him all the way down.  In seconds, only her feet were exposed.  Then, I pushed those in as well.

There was only one thing in the room that was different. For a moment or so he couldn't see what the one thing that was different was, because it too was covered in a film of disgusting dust. Then his eyes caught it and stopped. It was next to a battered old television on which it was only possible to watch Open University Study Courses, because if it tried to show anything more exciting it would break down. It was a box. Arthur pushed himself up on his elbows and peered at it. It was a grey box, with a kind of dull lustre to it. It was a cubic grey box, just over a foot on a side. It was tied with a single grey ribbon, knotted into a neat bow on the top. He got up, walked over and touched it in surprise. Whatever it was was clearly gift-wrapped, neatly and beautifully, and was waiting for him to open it. Cautiously, he picked it up and carried it back to the bed. He brushed the dust off the top and loosened the ribbon. The top of the box was a lid, with a flap tucked into the body of the box. He untucked it and looked into the box. In it was a glass globe, nestling in fine grey tissue paper. He drew it out, carefully. It wasn't a proper globe because it was open at the bottom, or, as Arthur realized turning it over, at the top, with a thick rim. It was a bowl. A fish bowl. It was made of the most wonderful glass perfectly transparent, yet with an extraordinary silver-grey quality as if crystal and slate had gone into its making. Arthur slowly turned it over and over in his hands. It was one of the most beautiful objects he had ever seen, but he was entirely perplexed by it. He looked into the box, but other than the tissue paper there was nothing. On the outside of the box there was nothing. He turned the bowl round again. It was wonderful. It was exquisite. But it was a fish bowl. He tapped it with his thumbnail and it rang with a deep and glorious chime which was sustained for longer than seemed possible, and when at last it faded seemed not to die away but to drift off into other worlds, as into a deep sea dream. Entranced, Arthur turned it round yet again, and this time the light from the dusty little bedside lamp caught it at a different angle and glittered on some fine abrasions on the fish bowl's surface. He held it up, adjusting the angle to the light, and suddenly saw clearly the finely engraved shapes of words shadowed on the glass. "So Long," they said, "and Thanks ..." And that was all. He blinked, and understood nothing. For fully five more minutes he turned the object round and around, held it to the light at different angles, tapped it for its mesmerizing chime and pondered on the meaning of the shadowy letters but could find none. Finally he stood up, filled the bowl with water from the tap and put it back on the table next to the television. He shook the little Babel fish from his ear and dropped it, wriggling, into the bowl. He wouldn't be needing it any more, except for watching foreign movies

An upbeat song played over the loudspeaker, and everyone's attention focused on the Jumbotron above the basketball court. "It's time for the Bulls' Kiss Cam. So, pucker up for your sweetie and kiss them." The camera found an older couple in their fifties. The man pulled his wife, I assumed, in for a quick peck on the lips. "Aww. That is so sweet," Trina said. She proceeded to yank poor Owen to his seat in case the spotlight landed on them. She'd do just about anything to get on television, even if it meant not kissing Owen tonight to do so. "That is so staged," I said and sneaked a quick peek at my phone, seeing if he messaged me back. He didn’t. "Really?" she countered and slapped my arm. Once I glanced her way, she pointed towards the large screen looming above. On the screen was Sebastian and me as the camera had just so happened to find us. It stayed there zooming closer. And closer. And closer. "Come on," the announcer called out, prodding us. "Just one kiss won't hurt." He had no idea what he was asking. A kiss would initiate feelings I couldn't avoid any longer. I momentarily forgot how to breathe as the song, “Kiss the Girl” from the Little Mermaid hummed at my lips. Not the best choice, but still. Everything became much worse once my giant moved into view, smiling my favorite smile. Sebastian inched closer; eyebrow cocked to dare me."No pressure or anything." I was quiet for a moment before whispering, "Game on, buddy." My eyes closed a few heartbeats shy of Sebastian's lips meeting mine. His hands rose, cupping my cheeks to keep me from pulling away. Like that was going to happen. Sebastian’s mouth moved against mine, and I conceded, kissing him in return. He tasted sweet and minty, like the home I’d been missing. The kiss turned from soft and tame to fierce and wantingas if neither of us could get enough. And already, I considered myself a goner. Everything became a haze. My heart thumped so wildly against my chest, I swore Sebastian could hear. The crowd surrounding us was whistling and cheering us on, and it only kept gaining momentum as the moments passed. The noise quickly faded until it was as if we were the only two people in the room. We could have been the only two people on earth. "Okay, guys." Trina tapped my shoulder, garnering my attention. "Camera has moved on now." That was our cue to separate, and I slowly drew away from Sebastian. He, in turn, slipped his hand to the back of my neck, holding me here. "Don't," he sighed against my lips. I didn't budge another inch. I didn't want to. Sebastian rewarded me by deepening the kiss. Dear God. There were sparks. My stomach flipped. My toes curled. My body warmed. Every single inch of me only wanted one thing and one thing only. If this continued for too much longer, it was easy to guess my new favorite hobby: Kissing Sebastian Freaking Birch. Needing some air, I pressed my palm flat against his chest. This time he released me as we both were breathless. Sebastian's eyes carefully studied me. He kept staring as if he could read my heart, my mind. And for those brief few seconds, I honestly didn't believe there were any secrets between us. His gaze shifted as he gauged what to do next, and I had no freaking idea where we went from here. We'd done it now. We crossed that line, and there was no way of ever going back.

The opponent seemed to shift slightly in the seat. His index finger tapped a card, just a couple strokes. There it was the card that ruined his hand. Her hazel eyes release the player across from her to steal a glance registering the emotion of observers around the table then to her best friend. Sophie looks like a Nervous Nelly-she, always worries. She knows the girl will put too much emphasis on a lost hand. The striking man with his lusty brown eyes tries to draw Sophie closer. Now that he has folded and left the game, he is unnecessary, and the seasoned flirt easily escapes his reach. He leaves with a scowl; Sophie turns and issues knowing wink. Ell’s focus is now unfettered, freeing her again to bring down the last player. When she wins this hand, she will smile sweetly, thank the boys for their indulgence, and walk away $700 ahead. The men never suspected her; she’s no high roller. She realizes she and Sophie will have to stay just a bit. Mill around and pay homage to the boy’s egos. The real trick will be leaving this joint alone without one of them trying to tag along. Her opponent is taking his time; he is still undecided as to what card to keep—tap, tap. He may not know, but she has an idea which one he will choose. He attempts to appear nonchalant, but she knows she has him cornered. She makes a quick glance for Mr. Lusty Brown-eyes; he has found a new dame who is much more receptive than Sophie had been. Good, that small problem resolved itself for them. She returns her focuses on the cards once more and notes, her opponent’s eyes have dilated a bit. She has him, but she cannot let the gathering of onlookers know. She wants them to believe this was just a lucky night for a pretty girl. Her mirth finds her eyes as she accepts his bid. From a back table, there is a ruckus indicating the crowd’s appreciation of a well-played game as it ends. Reggie knew a table was freeing up, and just in time, he did not want to waste this evening on the painted and perfumed blonde dish vying for his attention. He glances the way of the table that slowly broke up. He recognizes most of the players and searches out the winner amongst them. He likes to take on the victor, and through the crowd, he catches a glimpse of his goal, surprised that he had not noticed her before. The women who frequent the back poker rooms in speakeasies all dress to compete – loud colors, low bodices, jewelry which flashes in the low light. This dame faded into the backdrop nicely, wearing a deep gray understated yet flirty gown. The minx deliberately blended into the room filled with dark men’s suits. He chuckles, thinking she is just as unassuming as can be playing the room as she just played those patsies at the table. He bet she had sat down all wide-eyed with some story about how she always wanted to play cards. He imagined she offered up a stake that wouldn’t be large but at the same time, substantial enough. Gauging her demeanor, she would have been bold enough to have the money tucked in her bodice. Those boys would be eager after she teased them by retrieving her stake. He smiled a slow smile; he would not mind watching that himself. He knew gamblers; this one was careful not to call in the hard players, just a couple of marks, which would keep the pit bosses off her. He wants to play her; however, before he can reach his goal, the skirt slips away again, using her gray camouflage to aid her. Hell, it is just as well, Reggie considered she would only serve as a distraction and what he really needs is the mental challenge of the game not the hot release of some dame–good or not. Off in a corner, the pit boss takes out a worn notepad, his meaty hands deftly use a stub of a pencil to enter the notation. The date and short description of the two broads quickly jotted down for his boss Mr. Deluca. He has seen the pair before, and they are winning too often for it to be accidental or to be healthy.

…when you look at her, your heart starts slamming uncontrollably in your chest. So much that it scares you. And every other noise that surrounds you slowly fades away into absolute silence. You only hear the sounds she makes. And when she looks back at you, when her eyes meet yours, it’s as if she is looking deep inside your soul. And she can see all of the hatred you’re consumed in. Her eyes quench the thirst of your soul, gently soothing your damaged heart in the most alluring way… a way you could only dream of.” His peaceful face started to fill with pain. “Then those magical eyes start to look away. The time-freeze you were caught in starts to wear off. And fear takes over. You want to pull those eyes to yours again so that you could once again feel the fascinating sensations of happiness. Then, when she’s out of your sight, you feel empty inside. Your heart is back to normal. Only this time, it’s left with an aching worse than before. But you can never tell her. You can never be with her. You are alone in your pitiful existence-

The memory slowly faded away. I could feel tears strolling down my snout from my eyes. I missed my father... He did what he could to save me that day.

She slowly stands up, grabbing her bag on the way out the door. She turns back at the last minute, silhouetted in the fading light from outside the doorway. “Kai?” I drag myself off the floor. The way she said my name, waiting for me to follow. I know now I would do anything to stay with her.

My mother would tell us stories about gods and demons, heroes, tales of voyages to far away places, the family lives of animals and the mysterious world of fox spirits. As I listened to my mother’s clear melodic voice, my body seemed to dissolve. The weight of my bedclothes, blankets, the smells of my siblings, the sounds of other voices in the house, and insects outside faded slowly away. Particularly when it was spring or summer, I would feel myself conveyed on the rhythms of my mother’s voice, out into the deepening twilight, and on into the world of other beings. I would fall asleep and my mother’s stories became the world of dream.

Knot Right   Tripping on thoughts caught in your web Stuck amidst knots I create in my head Keep me tangled, captured, and dangled When logic should prevail it serves only to derail Instead I’m fed a pack of lies Hiding behind fake eyes to disguise Your heart betrays the words you say Questioning why we bother to stay I discover the rope is not so tight What held us together is no longer right   The love for myself helps me to propel Back out on my own thrown alone into the unknown I will find my new way Watching what we once had fade slowly away

Before her, Triistan finished his eulogy and held out a small flask of seal-oil, slowly pouring the contents over the book and chest as he led the others in the Oath: "To sail beyond the Wind, to find that which has been Lost, and drive back the Darkness with the torch of Discovery." As he spoke, he used a taper to transfer a small flame from a watch lamp they had lit for this purpose to the chest with Braeghan's book inside, where it caught immediately. The Crone was nearly touching the far horizon now, and two-thirds of the sky had faded to a luminescent cobalt blue, as if the heavens themselves were aglow with Veheg's Fire. The sea stretched away in all directions, empty and ominous in its vastness and its secrets, deadly but beautiful, brushed by pink and gold to the west, and blending into dark infinity to the east. Several early stars had appeared in that direction, beckoning them homeward... From the upcoming RUINE series.

She remembers talking to God a lot right after everything happened with Luke. She remembers crying and asking why, over and over. Asking for help, for strength, for understanding. Apologizing for what she did wrong. Talking through everything she could have, should have done differently. Begging for the torment to stop. She remembers belief and trust slowly turning sour. Still, she kept talking to God out of habit. And because she didn’t have anyone else to talk to. At night, in the dark sanctuary of her bedroom, alone, she could say the things she’d been keeping quiet. But she stopped expecting an answer. Stopped hoping for one. After a while, God felt as distant, as uncaring, as everyone else. And her prayers faded away.

life inspires death, the world is only a playground built for you and me we are all given obsicals to encounter how much more is able for my body to be unstable this world is killing the very reason I seek to see drowning in my own soul as life slowly drifts away as I fade into darkness. I'm useless I don't have the strength I once had it used to be so simple I could help all even if it meant myself dying atleast they could stay but I would fade I'm now 16 years from life and so cold no one will pull me out of this hole. your words like bullets terring through the fabric of my heart I no longer hold the key to survive instead I find myself battleing a war that will not be one because after all how can you win when your greatest obstical is yourself.