Marsha > Recent Status Updates

Saracen had decided he liked being a god, and was coaxed out of the warren with some difficulty and several bread crusts. Before leaving the cathedral, Kohlrabi wrapped the Cakes's blanket around Mosca so that she would not be recognized, but when they reached the street there was no sign of the Floating School children. The crowds outside were still tense and unquiet, but calm pooled around Kohlrabi like a cloak.

The smell of smoke curled through my nose and my vision went dark and then light as I stood still in the embrace. My skin tingled with small firecrackers of energy.
While I had been using magic in small ways, nearly every day, it never felt like this. It never felt like anything close to this.
The magic I had used since after the twins were born was like a whisper. This was a primal scream.

With every passing day, my heart drummed a stronger rhythm against my ribs. Time is running out. Time is running out. Above us, the moon grew fatter and fatter, until only a sliver remained darkened, and the next morning the city of Kekaya came into view.
A breathless Yudhajit met us at the gates.
"Not a moment too soon," he said. He grabbed my hand and pulled me through the palace as though we were children.

I spied a figure standing at the gates of the palace. Yudhajit. I spurred my horse forward, and the moment I saw the smile on my twin's face, all apprehension melted away. My horse outstripped the guards in front of me and as soon as we halted, I threw myself off the steed and into his waiting arms.
"Kaikeyi," he said into my hair. "I have missed you so much."
I buried my face in his shoulder to hide my tears.

The thick, royal blue rope between us was so full and solid it seemed nearly made of metal. I could sense my brother plain as sunlight. It was difficult for Yudhajit to admit that I had a talent for matters of governance. To him, the throne was merely another tiresome responsibility. He knew well how to navigate the court and create spectacles but hated the intricacies that kept the kingdom running.

AMONG THE KIRGHIZ PEOPLE age is much respected. A really wise old man is called an "aksakal." Aksakals like to sit around stroking their beards and discussing what they think is best for everybody. Of course, aksakals are indeed experienced and wise, but they often forget that younger people can be clever too. For a long time, nobody under the age of sixty could possibly be called an aksakal. Ashik changed all that.

Rose nodded, but she was frowning. "Freddie said glamours are terribly difficult," she murmured apologetically. "I don't know anything about them."
"There wouldn't be much point in me teaching you if you did," Mr. Fountain pointed out. "Glamours are actually relatively simple, but they are draining. Do you remember how you told me that Miss Sparrow lost her glamours when you attacked her?"

Baba has made ukha from tinned catfish and vegetables. Wood crackles in the hearth, and flames lick up the sides of the cauldron. The heat and the smell of fish and spices mingle with my thoughts of losing Nina, making me feel queasy.
"Tonight we'll treat the desert dead to a fish supper." Baba nods at the table. It's already laid with kvass and glasses, and bowls of food with a decidedly fishy theme.

"What sort of texts do you think are forbidden?" Ethel whispered, a glimmer in her eyes. Even Abel, who had thus far only studied to beat Tadg in the practical, quieted to listen to Mandeep's presentation.
"All three of my last apprentices went on to great universities, including the University of Al Faradh and the Meridienne College in Halois," Mandeep said. He paused as though expecting a round of applause.

By then, Ford was determined to regain control over her own account. She had decided that if anyone was going to reveal her identity to the public, it would be her. On Wednesday, she had driven thirty miles outside Palo Alto to one of the Ritz-Carlton restaurants in Half Moon Bay, where Emma Brown, the Washington Post reporter who had fielded the anonymous tip that Ford had sent to the paper, was waiting.

Sylvester knew the way to the storage room, which I was grateful for, since I hadn't been in my best frame of mind the last time I was here. The corruption had clearly spread rapidly since we left. Almost every jar contained a heart speckled with green and black; furred with mold. We walked quietly between the rows, with no sound but the faint clink and slosh as we lifted down those which seemed least affected.

The pain was a dark, emaciated figure that picked me up between its teeth and worried me like a terrier does a rat, then dropped me for a moment of relief before dancing back, laughing, to snatch me up again.
"Why is it so much worse?" I panted to Cornelius, but of course he could not answer, because I had not really spoken, but merely dreamed that I had spoken. The fever-dream Cornelius spread great bat wings.

"How did she die?" Blomkvist said again.
"I don't know," Vanger said with a troubled expression. "We didn't get Aronsson out of his car until around 5:00--he survived although he was not in good shape--and sometime after 6:00 the threat of fire was considered past. The island was till cut off, but things began to calm down. It wasn't until we sat down at the table around 8:00 that we discovered Harriet was missing."

If the succession had proceeded on a happier timeline--if the king had never gotten cancer, had lived another thirty years--Beatrice would have been succeeded by her own children, not by her sister.
No child who grew up second in line for the throne should ever become first in line. If they did, it meant that something had gone horribly, tragically wrong.
"Let's do a little practice talking to reporters."

"Oh, I texted Damien an SOS this afternoon, and he brought this by. I couldn't go out in any of my old things. They were all hopelessly out of fashion," Himari said dramatically.
Unlike Daphne--who recycled outfits as often as she could get away with it, who accepted free gifts from up-and-coming designers because she couldn't afford new jewelry--Himari had never worried about money.

"Let me tell you something. If you think this marriage is going to give you a position of power, you're wrong." Sam spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable--even the punctuation, even the spaces between the words--with terrifying care. "You'll be forced to set aside your own desires to support Beatrice. She will be in the limelight and in the driver's seat, not you."

Jonas looks a little jealous. "Maybe I should spill something on me!"
"Get your own move, mister." Ash laughs.
She laughs, too, but she can't help but think how strange it is to be flirting like this, all of them together, out in the open. This isn't like any New Year's she 's ever had--or ever imagined. Out with the old, in with the very new.

By the time she is home from her shift, Shani feels drained. She keeps looping around over what happened with Jonas. Fair? Unfair? Fair?
She texts the BB5 and tells them that Jonas found out what she'd done.
Sheree replies that this is too big for texting and starts a video chat. "What'd he do?"
"Blocked us both. On everything."
"But you brought him food!" Yanique sounds shocked.

They swept on up the steps. To Blade's disappointment, something seemed to intimidate the orchids. They only made a halfhearted snap at the woman and she did not notice. She just followed the others. The man in front behaved as if he had eighty wizards waiting for him around a huge table every day. He marched straight to the empty seat at the head of the table and sat in it, as if it was obvious where he would sit.

No answer. I couldn't even see her neon cane anymore, swallowed by the void. Like an idiot, I'd left my tote bag of supplies in the truck. And like an idiot again, I'd grabbed mostly food and toothpaste and wipes, anyway, forgetting things like flashlights or matches. I hadn't tried to think like a survivor beyond a fun of role-playing like one for a bit.
Beside me, I heard rustling. I jumped again.

And at the very moment, as Yamany is awestruck by the patches of blue on their body, they are suddenly distracted by the formation of a pattern on the fabric.
They stare, hypnotized, by the swirls that form almost as if by magic, because nothing else, not chance or coincidence or luck, could have produced it.
Never in a million years could a single word be written out in such randomness:
stay

I sank onto the tiles, the sound of the gunshot ringing in my ears. Had I been hit? A hot ache in my side pulled all my awareness to it, an intense searing pain that made me cry out.
I didn't want to die alone. I didn't want to die at all, but we didn't get to choose things like that. Forcing my mind away from the pain, my eyes took in the broken glass around me; my nose caught the whiff of chemical smells.

"That's not the new Fox Stardust Powder, is it?" I asked.
Yuki's puff paused for a fraction of a second. "So what if it is? Fox products make me feel like a million bucks."
Patty Q crossed to Yuki and put her face up tot he other girl's. "Why are you giving Otis Fox your hard-earned money?" Patty Q demanded. "He doesn't like Chinese, and I bet he doesn't like Japanese either."

"She never gossiped or complained to me, and I was her best friend."
The words hit me like little darts. "I had been Lulu's best friend. Maybe if I had been looking out for her, she would still be with us. "Did she have a boyfriend?" Lulu might not have told her mother about a boyfriend, but what about a confidante?
"Not that I knew of." She shook her head, tiny sequins on her gown spinning the light.

May floated around like she was a Goodyear Blimp, only air holding her up. The shock had been especially great for her, as she had known Lulu the best. I remembered one wretched winter when our whole family except May had come down with influenza. With us all half-delirious, May snuck out to sell some of Ba's inventory in her handbasket. Lulu, then fifteen, offered to help.

Mr Jaggers always carried the weather on his clothes. He wore a gold repeater watch on a heavy gold chain; it chimed the quarter-hours in his breast pocket, by which means he calculated the cost to his clients of his time.
'What news do you bring me of the world?' I asked him.
'That's a very wide field, I fear.'
'There are few fields in London, Mr Jaggers.'
'So we narrow the news to London news? Let me think.'

I would wake in the night, convinced at once that he was close to me, and naked, that he was a blaze on the sheets of my bed.
I reached out my hand and touched...only a very little warmth where I had been lying over on my flank.
And immediately I was ashamed of myself, and I wondered where these thoughts could have come from, how I was capable of bring them to feverish mind.
I would settle back down. I was alone.

He remembered whatever I told him. He had complete recall. It was uncanny. The memory man. He could anticipate what I was going to say next. He seemed to have read the libretto of my thoughts beforehand.
he knew things, as if I must have told him but had forgotten that I'd told him. Only Sally previously had been granted such a degree of intimacy as I realized--without quite intending it--he enjoyed now.

But I always seem to think that it is delightful to have quite a lot of girls at a party, if a girl has quite a lot of gentlemen at a party, and it is quite delightful to have all the girls from the Follies, but I really could not invite them because, after all, they are not in my set.

I am going to stay in bed this morning as I am quite upset as I saw a gentleman who quite upset me. I am not really sure it was the gentleman, as I saw him at quite a distants in the bar, but if it really is the gentleman it shows that when a girl has a lot of fate in her life it is sure to keep on happening.