The stinging slap against her cheek whipped her head sideways. Her hand reflexively went to her burning face. "I told you no," Tobe said, barely above a whisper. Daphne had no words. He'd never so much as hinted at touching her in anger before. She n...
The minute you had kids you closed ranks. You didn't plan this in advance, but it happened. Families were like individual, discrete, moated island nations. The little group of citizens on the slab of rock gathered together instinctively, almost defen...
I want to tell you a story, Alex." Alex nibbled on his bottom lip, waiting. Wondering now if Mr. Today really understood that Alex was turning him down. "Simber." The old mage said. Alex automatically turned to the door, expecting to see the beast. M...
This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in ...
She remembered how it had felt and tasted, that slowly descending depression, like a thick glass jar that closed around you, sucking away the air you needed to breathe, creating a barrier between you and the world. The hell of it was that she'd been ...
Now the twelfth canto of Book II is an almost literal translation from Tasso description in the Jerusalem Delivered of the island of Armida. That poem was not printed till 1582. It is likely enough that Spenser may have seen part of it in manuscript,...
Sam hadn't left New York with Claire, he'd just arrived at the hotel that morning, checked in, put a few things away in his room and went downstairs to the extensive gift shop and saw the beautiful bouquet of island flowers and knew Claire would love...
There was Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn… Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be...
Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of ...
By the time I had finished my coffee and returned to the streets, the rain had temporarily abated, but the streets were full of vast puddles where the drains where unable to cope with the volume of water. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you would think ...
[...] The alpha-wolf has hurt himself [...]." "What happened to the alpha-wolf?" "LEGOs." "Legos?" It sounded Greek but I couldn't recall anything mythological with that name. Wasnt it an island? "He was carrying a load of laundry into the basement a...
As soon as the rocky coast line of the island came into view, I ordered one of the ropes to wrap around Annabeth's waist, tying her to the foremast. "Don't untie me," she said, "no matter what happens or how much I plead. I'll want to go straight ove...
I told her the clitoris is like a Bonsai tree that needs constant tending and the g-spot is an unexplored island waiting to have a flag pinned on its peak. She laughed and said I should be a poet. Then we went to bed and crossed the sheets as if it w...
Three,' reckoned the captain, 'ourselves make seven, counting Hawkins, here. Now, about honest hands?' Most likely Trelawney's own men," said the doctor; 'those he had picked up for himself, before he lit on Silver.' Nay,' replied the squire. 'Hands ...
I was moving in a narrow range between busy distractedness and a pervasive sadness whose granules seemed to enter each cell, weighing it down... I ghosted between islands of anxiety... a fatigue that dulled my zest, decanted it. Sorrow felt like a ma...
The waitress serving the wedding party was a short young blonde. She took their orders efficiently and delivered everyone’s food correctly. "If only she knew my story," Melora mused. then she thought again, "Better yet, maybe she’s in the middle ...
By journey's end the brides were much better acquainted with their grooms and more or less pleased with the matches. Sybil Bingham wrote in her diary, thanking God for answering her prayer for filling "the void" with a husband like Hiram, a "treasure...
Time, Eddie had decided during this period, was in large part created by external events. When a lot of interesting shit was happening, time seemed to go by fast. If you got stuck with nothing but the usual boring shit, it slowed down. And when every...
There's something different about you," he says. "I've started styling my hair differently," I laugh. "Oh. I thought it was that you were three feet taller, a hell of a lot broader, look like a werewolf, and are naked expect for that bit of cloth aro...
The coolness of Buddhism isn't indifference but the distance one gains on emotions, the quiet place from which to regard the turbulence. From far away you see the pattern, the connections, and the thing as whole, see all the islands and the routes be...
Brant had said my embellishing constituted a disservice to history and its players. But I believed the opposite. Marooning them on the forlorn island of Only What We Know, a place whose boundaries were determined by the scant information provided by ...
