A smaller rocket cut across the sky, trailing smoke. It exploded in a red heart. "Awwwww!" said the crowd. "Upside down," said Sean. The heart was, indeed, upside down. It grew and grew, upside down, until it's lights trailed and faded. A bigger rock...
Generally ‘training’ went something akin to this: “So what you have to do is—“ “Understand?” Sin stared at the man blankly before raising his own weapon and unloading his entire clip into the paper target. He didn’t speak and didn’t...
Abruptly, Elliot startles us all by standing and pulling his chair back so it scrapes across the tile floor. All eyes turn to him. He gazes down at Kate for one moment and then drops to one knee beside her. Oh. My. God. He reaches for her hand, and s...
Don't you remember what your grandfather used to say? That thing about pots and people?" "That pots were like people," Alex replied flatly, thinking back to his grandfather carrying a tray of wet freshly thrown clay pots across the studio in ancient ...
You are your mother's trueborn son of Lannister." "Am I?" the dwarf replied, sardonic. "Do tell my lord father. My mother died birthing me, and he's never been sure." "I don't even know who my mother was," Jon said. "Some woman, no doubt. Most of the...
The man who did the shouting at the P.S.U.C. post down on our right was an artist at the job. Sometimes, instead of shouting revolutionary slogans he simply told the Facists how much better we were being fed than they were. His account of the Governm...
Who're you going with, then?" said Ron. "Angelina," said Fred promptly, without a trace of embarrassment. "What?" said Ron, taken aback. "You've already asked her?" "Good point," said Fred. He turned his head and called across the common room, "Oi! A...
An inn, of course, was a place you came to at night (not at three o'clock in the afternoon), preferably a rainy night—wind, too, if it could be managed; and it should be situated on a moor (“bleak,” Kate knew, was the adjective here). And there...
Simon turned to Jordan, who was lying down across the futon, his head propped against one of the woven throw pillows. "How much of that did you hear?" "Enough to gather that we're going to a party tonight," said Jordan. "I heard about the Ironworks e...
Human beings across every culture I know about require such stories, stories with cool winds and wood smoke. They speak to something deep within us, the capacity to conceptualize, objectify and find patterns, thereby to create the flow of events and ...
I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. R...
Kiss me," he growled. "I shouldn't—" "I. Don't. Give. A. Damn." Well hell. My lips touched his—barely. I pulled back and looked at him—unfamiliar, dangerous, and so exciting. I devoured his mouth without thinking. Don't think, just touch. I ran...
The Catholic chruch as threatened your life - do you not want revenge? Have you not sold your hatred to the Pretestant cause to work against the church that has hunted you?" "No," I said simply. "I hate no one. I want only to be left in peace to unde...
You monosyllabic Neanderthal, I am not some little helpless female who can't walk across the brewery." He shrugged. "I did what was needed." "What the what?" She dropped the clipboard from beneath the hoodie and shoved her arms through its sleeves be...
She always used to suspect that the price for happiness, the price for enjoying the company of a person you loved, was the steadily increasing risk of losing them, and at times, when she considered the possibility that she might lose Isabel or Clancy...
I breathe in the soft, saturated exhalations of cedar trees and salmonberry bushes, fireweed and wood fern, marsh hawks and meadow voles, marten and harbor seal and blacktail deer. I breathe in the same particles of air that made songs in the throats...
I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible as I lay the sausage against my ear. Abruptly, my cell phone went dead. A drop of grease dribbled into the dead center of my ear, creeping like a worm down onto my neck and below the collar of my shirt. A gr...
Life is the most effective school ever created. Once upon a time they made children bow their heads and read books. It would take ages to get anything across." He taps his head. "But we have widgets and datapads now, and we Golds have the lower Color...
How small and neat and comically serious the other men looked, with their grey-flecked crew cuts and their button-down collars and their brisk little hurrying feet! There were endless desperate swarms of them, hurrying through the station and the str...
Rest in Peace?’ Why that phrase? That’s the most ridiculous phrase I’ve ever heard! You die, and they say ‘Rest in Peace!’ …Why would one need to ‘rest’ when they’re dead?! I spent thousands of years of world history resting. While ...
I didn't know what to think, but what I felt was magnetic and so big it ached like the moon had entered my chest and filled it up. The only think I could compare it to was the feeling I got one time when I walked from the peach stand and saw the sun ...
