Marsha > Recent Status Updates

Something touched the back of my hand. Dane. I wondered how long he'd been awake. I turned my hand to let him take it in his and a tightness clenched at my throat. For a few moments, I indulged in the thought that my whole universe was nothing more than Dane holding my hand. That wasn't true, though. Theo could turn and notice. I pulled my hand back and curled up on my seat to get some sleep.

I hadn't seen a real city since leaving Windsong, and I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd been told Exiles were militaristic people who drilled in formation three times a day. With Dane's fighting skills, I could believe it, but as we flew over Gakoa, I didn't see anything like that. The city was full of sweeping buildings made of stone, striking in their simplicity. Almost grand, in a way I'd never seen before.

But the moon is nearly full, and eventually my eyes adjust. We watch each other in the dark night. We watch each other until we explode, until nerves force my eyes shut and his face crumples and our cries turn to gasps and long, shuddering sighs.

"Did I ever tell you that I'm an asshole?" "You didn't have to." "So why did you always talk to me?" "Because you're the most interesting asshole I've ever met?" He takes a step closer to her and she stares up at him.

"Emily...you're okay, right?" Bird finds within herself a reservoir of anger, unexpected and welcome. "Do I look okay?" Whatever he sees in her expression makes him take a step back, and she is stabbed with joy and then regret, because once she almost loved him.

He paused and let the spoon fall to the tabletop with a clatter. Bird wondered what Trevor would think if he came down just then--but he must have been the one who invited Coffee in the first place. Boys like him sometimes liked playing sides like that: CIA contractor upstairs, prep school dealer in the basement, Martinis and coke lines, shaking hands and smiling politely.

"I was putting in my time in the field, hoping to earn a research position. I'd been tracking a drug called Iced Z. Powdered zombie brains. Nasty stuff. You do not want to be anywhere near a Z addict when he gets the munchies."

"Katie Rain Hill," the announcer called out. Soon I was moving through all the steps. At the end of the stage, Mr. Flannery, a teacher who had always been kind to me, was there to switch my tassel. "You look lovely today, Ms. Hill," he said. I was officially a high school graduate. Not only that, but I was the first open transgender high school graduate in all of Oklahoma.

About six months later, in the middle of my seventh-grade year, my family moved to Bixby, another Oklahoma town about an hour away. The day we left, my mom picked me up at school during lunchtime. Everyone was hanging out in the small yard between the gym and the high school and as her car pulled up, I shouted, "HEY, EVERYONE! I'M LEAVING FOREVER!" And all the kids ran over to give me hugs good-bye and wish me luck.

I was surprised to awaken to the early-morning rays of sunlight cutting across the room. My head rested on a pillow and a soft blanket lay over me. Charlie, still looking harmless and human, slept on the bench. Douglas perched over him like a feathered sentinel. A pillow had been tucked under Charlie's head as well, and a quilt had been draped over his lower half. A little color had returned to his cheeks.

Then Master Rufus brought up his hands. The first sandwich began to spread, tendrils of bologna unfurling, coils growing across the plate. Delicious smells rose from it. The bologna coalesced into a plate, a bowl, and a carafe--the bowl was full of macaroni and cheese covered in bread crumbs, steaming as though it had just come out of an oven; the plate held a brownie heaped with ice cream.

A sliver of shimmering light appeared on the horizon, and then the guano-crowned cliff began to rise from the ocean like a snow-capped ridge. Nell and the others gathered on the mezzanine deck to watch the island as it was raised. "What a wall!" exclaimed Dante De Santos. The muscular 23-year-old cook's assistant had Maori-style tattoos on his tanned arms, and jet-black hair combed back from a pugnacious face.

I didn't cry long. The emotion was too intense to maintain and quickly replaced by a different, more selfish feeling I'm a bit ashamed to admit. "Don't you want to know what's wrong?" Alex leaned back. "No." "No?" "If you want to tell me, you will." He shrugged, then smiled. "If you don't want to talk, that's fine, too." It was a simple answer.

"You come find me if you need anything, you hear? N. E. thing." That was, I realized, her name. She blew us a kiss as we walked toward the guards. "No weapons in the club," one said, and if the weapons on display were just for show, they were utterly serious in patting us down. "That's more action than I've had in months." Alex nudged James with his elbow.

"He's only staying for a little while," I told her. "Until he gets his new business started." "What does he do?" My mom looked up from the mustard she was slathering on her bread. "I...he had some sort of transportation business in Singapore." That was all I knew. "Singapore, that's every far away." She lit her cigarette. "How long did you say James knew him?" "Since eighth grade."

"So. Tell me about him." I said this to James as we lay in bed. "Who?" James sounded sleepy. "Alex." "What do you want to know?" "What's he like?" James was silent for so long I was certain he'd fallen asleep. "He's a good guy." What did that mean?

Felix was aware that he was shivering before he was aware of anything else. He realized he was sitting on snow, so he got to his feet. Everything was pearly gray and misty, as though he'd found himself in the middle of a cloud. Presumably, they were on the Andrian Divide, somewhere above the snow line, but it was impossible to see any detail and therefore impossible to recognize any landmarks.

"Griffin, you know there's a storeroom. You have to pass it to get to the bathrooms. You've been plotting this all along, haven't you?" "Maybe. Any chance my devious plan would work?" She shouldn't think about the possibility, but now she couldn't help it. If they were quiet and nobody needed anything out of the storeroom, it could work.

"We probably shouldn't meddle in this deal with Griffin. If it's meant to be it'll happen organically." "Unless she casts a spell on him." Anica whipped around to face him. "She wouldn't do that, not after seeing--" "Just kidding." He didn't look as if he'd been kidding. And she wasn't totally convinced her sister wouldn't consider trying out her magic on Griffin, either.

"Lily and I aren't making any more of the potion because Dorcas and Ambrose have told me it's pointless for you to drink that. It won't do anything." He'd been afraid of that. He typed the second question. IF NT POSHN, WHT Anica sighed. "I can't answer that. I know, Jasper. It sucks. As for your third question, what caused you to change back the two times you did wasn't the potion, but I can't say what it was."

A surge of anticipation left her quivering. If she'd ever worried that this was a fling for Marc, if she'd ever worried that he was a botanist with a girl in every floral shop, those worries were over. He wanted her to meet his sister.

Marc had seen many unusual plant behaviors in his years of botanical research, but finding a species of tropical plant growing in the snow was a first. He took some preliminary pictures with his BlackBerry, but he would come back with his digital camera later. Once he had the shots, he crouched down next to one of the plants. Marc fingered one waxy leaf. "Do you believe the woods are haunted?" "No." She hesitated.

"Were you able to find out why Leo's here?" "Not exactly. But it's no secret that his mother, queen Beryl, hasn't been happy with his behavior and is considering giving the throne to a commoner." "From what I've heard, I wouldn't give it to him either. I'm not happy that he's in the forest playing poker with the raccoons."

Gulping back her cries once again, she surrendered to the inevitable, knowing he would climax without any more prompting from her. When he did, he bucked beneath her and tossed his head from side to side, but he muffled his response behind tightly closed lips. He didn't want to wake the neighborhood, and neither did she. This was their own private moment. No one needed to know about it but the two of them.

Most of the time she longed to give that silly dragon a kick in the patoot. If he'd paid more attention to his duties as the Guardian of Whispering Forest, she and Ambrose would be off the job and headed home to Sedona by now. Instead, by order of the Grand High Wizard, they were stuck in this one-dragon town until George earned his golden scales.

The first scene on the first day was the one in which Westley leads Buttercup through the Fire Swamp, hacking away at vines while relating to both Buttercup and the audience how he came to be the Man in Black. The Fire Swamp, incidentally, is described as follows in the stage directions of Bill's script: It really doesn't look any worse than any other moist, sulfurous, infernal horror you might run across.

King Jigme addressed a crowd at the Changlimithang Stadium: Ultimately, without peace, security and happiness, we have nothing. As long as we continue to pursue the simple and timeless goal of being good human beings, we can ensure that our future generations for hundreds of years will live in happiness and peace.

Suddenly, I'm a schoolteacher with a classful of star pupils. "Madam, that's Gangchenta, the Tiger Mountain." "And that is the highest peak in Bhutan." "Madam, that is China, there. Can you see?" "In that direction, see? You can see Gasa, the only district in Bhutan with no motor roads. It takes five days trekking and you can get to the most beautiful hot springs...."

Lacking any formal duties, I'd sit around the station from very early morning till early evening, observing, offering suggestions, reading what came in over the fax, and making sure everyone ate, even though what I was feeding them was hardly food.

A young lady carrying a tray filled with steaming cups entered the front door. Ngawang talked to her urgently in Dzongkha as she served us. I could tell the faulty remote was at issue; I didn't confess that I wouldn't need it, certain that when I bothered to turn on the set, I'd keep it glued to the Bhutan Broadcasting Service. The warm cup felt good in my hands and I wandered into the tiny kitchen.