Alice had this magical look about her, like she would be at home in front of a hearth, wrapped in a large quilt, telling nursery rhymes to sweet-faced forest critters.
I flick my turn signal on out of dumb habit, and because the end of the world’s no excuse for bad driving manners.
I feel like I’ve been swept up and dropped on my head in a world that looks like mine but is slightly different. Brighter, more vibrant – or at least missing some of the dust and grime that’s collected over our lives after years of neglect. I can’t tell which direction is right or wrong anymore, but I know I want to stay.
Many humans do not care about what is “unfair,” for it varies so much between them.
For the first time in years, I could see the stars that Thurmond’s monstrous lights had faded into nonexistence. They were so bright, so clear that they couldn’t have been real. I didn’t know what was more shocking–the endless stretch of road or the sky. Tears pricked at the back of my eyes.
I think there’s some part of everyone, Psi or not, that’s tuned into the memories of a place. Strong feelings, especially terror and desperation, leave an imprint on the air on the air that echo back to whoever’s unlucky enough to walk through that place again. It felt like the darkness was stroking beneath my chin with a beckoning finger, whispering to me to lean forward and know its secrets.
Would you like me to go take that violin for you? I’d gladly fight whatever angry mob rises up if it might make you smile.
I would only want to play for you.
Wonderful. They had the rarest, most bewildering power in the world, and how did her family choose to use this incredible gift? To line their pockets with cash and go sightseeing.
A man made his own future. He chipped it from whatever hardships insinuated themselves into his life; he carved out the happy, glad moments to capture his gratitude for them. It came from the simple magic of merely living. Of surviving. Seeking.
If not for the pose, the arms crossed over her chest as she surveyed the dark sea churning around her, she might have been one of the great masters’ statues brought to life. And in a thousand different ways, she was just as entirely out of his reach.
Maybe nothing will ever change for us, but don’t you want to be around just in case it does?
This is a place where we don’t have to lie,” he said, motioning between us.
I need to get through today, and maybe tomorrow will feel easier. It always gets easier as you get used to it.
Etta saw the way Sophia took a deep breathe, set her shoulders back, and moved with practiced grace on her way out – and she understood something about the other girl, truly understood for the first time. Sophia wanted it, when she was only ever sent out.
I love you.” He turned toward me, that agonized expression still on his face. “I love you every second of every day, and I don’t understand why, or how to make it stop-.
Rise and enter the lair, where the darkness gives you your stripes. Tell tyrants, to you, their allegiance they owe,” Etta read, running her finger beneath the words within the star. “Seek out the unknown gods whose ears were deaf to lecture. Stand on the shoulders of memory. Bring a coin to the widowed queen. Remember, the truth is in the telling, and an ending must be final.
One voice could be drowned out, but not a dozen. Not a hundred. Not a thousand.
Nicholas began, wondering if he looked half as diabolical as he felt.
Watercolors couldn’t have begun to capture the sky in that moment, just as it prepared to brighten for dawn. The cruelest truth about life is that it just goes on – the sun rises, gravity keeps your feet on the ground, flowers open their faces to greet the sky. Your world could be dissolving with grief or pain or anger, but the sky would still give you the most breathtaking sunrise of violet, warming to shell pink.