Status Updates From The Lie Tree

“Our civilization has been nothing but a brief, brightly lit nursery, where we have played with paper crowns and wooden scepters. Beyond the door are the dark wastes where leviathans wrestled for millennia. We are a blink of an eye, a joke admit a tragedy.”

It tugged itself into a tighter coil, then calmed as it tasted Faith’s scent on the air…it slid up her arm with the lazy beauty of ink flourishes in water. Its scales were dry silk and leather, evening cool. The flicker of its tongue tickled her cheek.”’

“She had obediently opened a door and stepped through into blackness, without even knowing if there was a floor on the other side.”

“He sighed and lifted his shoulders in a shrug, and then lowered them again, letting responsibility slide off.”

“‘I never like to work with numb fingers and a man is best warmed from the inside out.’”