Bellowing, angry roar.Smell of blood and evergreen.

She had never been tried in fire. Now the trial was upon her, not fire but ice, and she would not be allowed to sleep through this.

She was an excruciating throb of pain from one end to the other.

As Wendy watched them they burst into a chord of tinkling, girlish laughter. She felt a smile touch her own lips; not one of them could be under sixty.

I like you," she whispered, and he thought that her scent was like lilies, secret and hidden in cracks furred with green moss—places where sunshine is short and shadows long.

His face was all eyes.

Red flashes of light leaped in front of her eyes like ballet dancers.

As his mouth flooded with that horrible sweet purple taste, he could actually see those grapes dull, dusty, obese and nasty, crawling up a dirty stucco wall in a thick, syrupy sunlight that was silent except for the stupid buzz of many flies