We sleep, allowing gravity to hold us, allowing Earth- our larger body- to recalibrate our neurons, composting the keen encounters of our waking hours (the tensions and terrors of our individual days), stirring them back, as dreams, into the sleeping...
So Blue sat down on the path and faced Grayson, and told him all about his world. He told him about the humans, his mother and sister, and how they went away. He told him about the long nights alone in the kennel, and the sadness that seemed to come ...
Then, O King! the God, so saying, Stood, to Pritha's Son displaying All the splendour, wonder, dread Of His vast Almighty-head. Out of countless eyes beholding, Out of countless mouths commanding, Countless mystic forms enfolding In one Form: supreme...
To this I replied, "I still think that my body is not merely a sensory appearance, for surely it came from my parents, who were its cause and condition." , "If you think that your body came from your father and mother, then what are the beginning and...
To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography of a book — to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or u...
She raised the shovel, ready to plunge it into the soft soil. "I am not afraid. I am not." "You should be." A sinister, accented voice pierced her consciousness. The shovel fell from her nerveless fingers, thudding onto the cold ground. Cassandra kne...
I need to dream. I need to believe. I need to know that I have some control in my life. That if I work hard, that I will be rewarded. That life is not arbitrary. I need to believe that bad things happen to good people, for a greater reason. That dedi...
I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I'd look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don't really remember the story, or why the wrestling --just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The ang...
The boy continued to listen to his heart as they crossed the desert. He came to understand its dodges and tricks, and to accept it as it was. He lost his fear, and forgot about his need to go back to the oasis, because, one afternoon, his heart told ...
At night, my own century-old wooden floors creaked while I dreamed of her, as she looked before radiation destroyed her famously enormous hair and removed all evidence of her addiction to homemade brownies. I woke to clammy sheets and the grim remind...
But one look at Wildcard's face, and he knew there was trouble. Problem? he signaled. Wildcard responded with an obscene gesture that more than conveyed his opinion that not only was this a problem, but it was a big problem. ... "Okay". That was not ...
The vibrations he felt in his sleep had nothing to do with his soul easing out of his body as he dreamily thought; they came solely from the weight and motion of the freight train rolling north to deliver fuel, furniture and other items having no rel...
Sir Eustace was with Royce and Stefan looking over some maps when he was informed by the guard that the ladies were asking for him. "Is there no end to her arrogance!" Royce bit out, referring to Jenny. "She even sends her guards on errands, and what...
How strange, Royce thought, that, after emerging victorious from more than a hundred real battles, the greatest moment of triumph he had ever known had come to him on a mock battlefield where he'd stood alone, unhorsed, and defeated. This morning, hi...
I have often thought that Walter Mitty had it in him to be more than a hen-pecked loser. Instead of living it up as a flamboyant daredevil in his dreams, he could have chosen to be a responsible man in real life, going about his work with dignity, an...
He ran his fingers over the moist ends of her hair and across her face. Her eyes were wet. How many nights had he heard Lily crying. As some parents sleep through fire, thunderstorms, and voices at the back door only to wake at a child’s whisper, s...
For all the pain you suffered, my mama. For all the torment of your past and future years, my mama. For all the anguish this picture of pain will cause you. For the unspeakable mystery that brings good fathers and sons into the world and lets a mothe...
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke unde...
Hing hang hung! the words rang faintly through his daydream like echoes of Miz Cunningham's tart little doorbell. Then he looked again at the old woman herself. Why, she was really quite wonderful - this old fat woman! In the end, she got her hands o...
Everyone lives in two worlds,” Maggie said, speaking in an absentminded sort of way while she studied her letters. “There’s the real world, with all its annoying facts and rules. In the real world, there are things that are true and things that...
That done, I sank into an uneasy sleep wherein I dreamed of an assembly line of pale, bloodless girls walking down an endless dark street and moaning softly for help. Somewhere, toward the edge of my inner vision, a shadowy figure pursued them with l...
