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Susan heard Max growling and stomping upstairs: "More food!" he roared, "I've been gone for years and years."Her husband looked at her with an amused expression and asked, "He does understand what being sent to bed without supper means, right?"Susan doesn't join in the joke – for a moment, she heard her sister's voice saying "I'm here. I've come back I'm all right" – and decided to bring him a plate of food, still hot.
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Edith tells herself that deep down, she loves her sisters, she truly does, so she's not a monster.It's just that Susan is the pretty and responsible one that Mother relies on, Lucy the baby of the family and Peter's pet, and Edith is stuck in the middle with no one (Father of course likes Peter the best and always seems confused at being surrounded by girls).So when Edith finds a magical world and its beautiful and terrifying queen who promises her the world, she doesn't hesitate.
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Edmund doesn't need to open his eyes to know he is in no longer in True Narnia but back in the Shadowlands, in England once again, because he can feel it in the bruises on his chest and in the soreness of his body.He opens his eyes anyway and sees Susan crying and smiling and saying something about railway accidents and "I'm so glad you're awake."The sun hits her hair and the streaks of wetness on her face, and he knows that Aslan was right to send them back this one last time.
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In Narnia, no matter how far astray one went, whether one sailed into the utter east or flew on the wind to the Western Wild, at the end of the journey was always Aslan’s country, and the only way to fail to find it was to refuse to look.In England, no matter what direction one went in, in the end, one always ended up where one started: home, where the answers were all along, but only after the journey was over was one transformed enough to see them for what they were.Edmund ran as far away as he could and turned his back on his family and himself, and in the end someone else paid the price to bring him to his journey’s end like the world was course correcting, and there was a churlish part of him that resented it – so when he stepped out of the wardrobe, there was a part of him that wasn’t surprised, not one bit.
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When Lucy sees the color white, she hears the tinkling of Father Christmas's bells, blue and she hears the song of mermaids, and gold, Aslan's roar – even in England, Narnia is everywhere.Betrayal leaves the taste of Turkish Delight on Edmund's tongue, as does selfishness, spitefulness, and greed, and the sweetness on his tongue still makes him sick to his stomach.In True Narnia, the fruits are sweeter, the distances deeper, hearts and limbs are stronger, so it shouldn't surprise Peter that even hearing Aslan's name makes him smell the warm scent in his nose and feel soft fur under his hands.--Susan looks at some of her students – the ones who she knows will switch to a lower level come add/drop date because they're afraid, the ones here to impress a certain boy or girl, the ones who just want to have the highest numbers on their transcripts – and wants to tell them about the literal beauty of mathematics, that the Fourier transform was not only useful and elegant and brilliant, but also pretty with the way the enthusiastic green e holds a rainbow pendent trailing after it, and the saucy red f is even bolder with his hat, and this was what opened the eyes of a girl obsessed with nylons and lipsticks to the idea that there might be more to the world, but she can't.She ought to be used to it by now, but sometimes, Susan is tired of seeing things that no one else sees, knowing things no one else knows, and she still needs to get tenure before she can tell anyone that equations are communities of bright personalities and colors living together.Once upon a time, her siblings might have understood, but they're gone, and Susan's alone, and maybe she really is crazy for giving personalities to scribbles on a page.
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The Island is one of those chinks and chasms that spans the gap between space and time, this world and that one.So if Jacob spends days and days walking through the forest with a talking lion, well, lions are slightly less improbable than polar bears, and he's been lonely since Esau left and it's nice to have someone who understands the value of cryptic words.They are gods of their own little worlds, nudging their charges onto the path they ought to take, walking that fine line between annihilation of free will and disregard for the fate of souls, because humankind is not just an experiment, not just a trial of different philosophies since the life of each individual matters.
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He does. Die, that is. John Locke dies, and Ben is sort of having a problem with that. Sure, Ben was the one who choked him and watched over his corpse, and he hadn't doubted that Locke was dead at the time, but when Ben woke up at the Hydra and saw Ben walking around, it was frightening but made a sick sort of sense.Except that it wasn't Locke. Locke was really dead, and Jacob was really dead, and Ben killed them both, all because he was angry and frustrated and jealous.Dead is dead, people don't come back to life, and Ben thinks he bought into the Smoke Monster's lies so easily because he wanted so desperately for that to be false. But Alex really isn't coming back, and Ben doesn't have his daughter or power in the end, but just the knowledge that blood is on his hands.
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It was Charlotte's idea. Charlotte, who was sensible and capable and had an inexplicable love for queens and princesses. She always blamed her namesake and the childhood bedtime stories of the Kings and Queens of a particular magical land that her mother told her.Charlotte loved them, but of course, Daniel was the one who found himself with a tiara on his head. Charlotte held out a frilly dress that luckily wasn't pink (in a serious voice, she had told him it would have clashed with his coloring), and at that he balked.Of course, Charlotte got her way. She could be a little scary when determined. (She was like her mother, who had a strange tolerance for the fantastic in such a sensible and capable scientist, and who threatened to shoot him when he first started dating her daughter). Daniel only hoped she wouldn't show the pictures to anyone.
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Daniel kept telling himself that the bomb wasn't for Charlotte, it was for the good of everyone who had died and who'd had their lives co-opted by the Island.He wasn't a terrorist and he wasn't a criminal, and he'd never thought he'd put those nuclear physics class to practical use.But, whenever he thought about the needless way she ended up, there was a part of him that wanted the world to burn.
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Summer has the strangest ideas, but Tom always ends up going along with them.They spend one day movie hopping, another playing ring-and-run, and Tom feels like a kid again, although a much cooler one than he'd actually been.It doesn't occur to him that that's not necessarily a good thing.
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Metaphors are dangerous, dangerous things: they can illuminate and explain truths, but the more Valentine uses them, the more she runs the risk of thinking that they are true.She once told Ender that he and Peter were two sides of the same coin and she the metal in between, and that was true and useful in its own way.Ender and Peter were both Great Men who changed the world with their presence, but she is more than an anchor tying them together and to the rest of humankind – she can change the world herself.
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Adam and Eve together name the animals of the garden.The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the land are all put in their places in the grand order of life.The serpent looks at this order, this perfect cooperation that he no longer is part of, and decides to introduce a little chaos.
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They followed the star for months and months, until they felt like giving up and that this was a fool's errand.There was nothing at the end, they were sure, and eventually they accepted that the goal was the journey and what they learned about themselves while on it.So when they finally came to the end and found the child, their world changed once again and they remembered what it was like to have hope.
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She was a criminal twice over – once because she saved her baby brother from being murdered, and once because when that same baby brother was a murderer, he went to her, and their whole family had to run.She lived in the wilderness, in Midian, and her baby brother gave her nieces and nephews and her other baby brother followed her uncle-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, with big adoring eyes (which were ridiculous in a man fully grown, but Aaron didn't care as long as he could talk philosophy and theology, and who knew what else with him), and wondered if she was the only one of their happy little family (their parents long dead, may they always be remembered) who wasn't quite happy with how things worked out.So she watched over the flocks of sheep, wandered with them to the far side of the desert, to Horeb, the mountain of God, and the angel of the Lord appeared to her in the flames of fire from within a bush and told her that she would lead their people out of Egypt, and somehow she wasn't surprised: she'd always known in her heart of hearts, that this was what she was born for, to save their people as she'd saved her baby brother so long ago.
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Sometimes, I visit the orchards of God. I am the only one who can, now. Or rather, I am the only one who will. (It amounts to the same thing.)Eden is truly beautiful, and it is such a shame that the cherubim who guard it day and night never turn west for a moment and feast their eyes. The foolish man and woman, even as their children die and they grow old, do not ever try to return and grasp life.It’s a shame, because it’s waiting there for someone with the eyes to see and the will to take.
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Neal prevaricates and says something about cases and earning his keep.Peter pulls rank and says it is none of their business.But in the end it is Elizabeth and her cookies and milk and distracting conversations that convince the men who track Neal's anklet that there is nothing strange about Neal spending his nights at the Burke residence.
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Neal can golf, and of course, he can golf effortlessly and skillfully, and he doesn't even golf, which is the most frustrating part.(But then, Neal's always like this – he's a criminal, bond forger, art thief, and not a FBI agent, but he's good at that too, and can do it effortlessly, skillfully, with a dazzling smile).Peter's good at golf, or at least good enough. Yes, he was four over par after the first hole, but he also hit Neal on the side and can do the innocent act as well as Neal can (or at least, he can try to).
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Criminals have their own little quirks and calling cards, or at least the stylish ones do. (Neal doesn't trust anyone, but he especially doesn't trust the ones without quirks. The ones that are normal, rational, and boring are the ones that leave the body counts, because those who aren't doing it for the thrill and fun of it do it for the money and the power.) Alex has her origami, Neal signs his best works, and Kate leaves pressed, blue flowers between the leaves of books.He never understood why Kate chose them. They were unobtrusive and common, but not easily gotten in the areas they worked in (there not being many pieces of great worth by the streams and forests of the wild and they lived too uprooted a life to plant a garden, even one left to go wild). But they're appropriate now, now when he can't get her out of his head and heart, when he pulls off books from June's shelves and expects to catch a glance of blue.
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Gawain left Camelot on All Soul's Day. He thought it appropriate. As the months went by, he felt more and more like a ghost himself, ever since the axe sliced down on the Green Knight's neck.He was sore to admit it, but for all the love he bore the court, the love which brought him into this mess (for his uncle, for his comrades-in-arms, and even for his brothers), he was glad to leave it. The months had been spent at Camelot, listening to whispers about his greatness and chivalry, as though he were already a figure in legend.But when he stepped out of the gates and took a deep breath, something inside him stirred. Adventure called, a quest awaited, and this was what he was made to do.
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Luke pieced the story together eventually. It took him a long time – everyone who knew the story was dead and few records left from the days of the old republic existed. It was difficult (difficult enough that sometimes he found himself agreeing with Leia, the past was the past, and not worth dredging up when there was so much to do in the present, but he also felt that he owed his parents one child who thought of them with something besides shoved aside anger) to discover, and difficult to understand (or at least to understand it as more than a waste).It was myths and legends that helped him understand the story. He saw the pattern in his parents' story the way he'd seen patterns in his life, in his friends', and in the fate of the galaxy. His father was the one trapped and afraid to be the sacrifice, the tithe demanded to a Force he couldn't understand. His mother was pregnant and courageous, with the keys to his freedom.But Luke doesn't understand where the story breaks down. His father doesn't ask for help, his mother dies of despair, and the Force lets it happen. He doesn't know if it had been his mother's failing or his father's, or no human failing at all.
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Being an elder brother was almost as bad as being an elder sister. True, being an only son (younger sisters optional) sometimes netted one a happy marriage – but only if one were also the crown prince and only heir to the throne. Otherwise, in the land of Ingary, an older brother's primary purpose was to display the cleverness of his younger sibling.So the Witch of the Waste did Sophie no favors when she cast Sophie under a spell. (But then the Witch of the Waste was hardly trying to, so Sophie wasn't sure what he was expecting). Sophie could hardly stay in the hat shop – Fanny was quite particular about Sophie, Lettie, and Martha seeing young men while alone, and Sophie couldn't possibly staff the hat shop without catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He closed up the shop, and went home to change into some of her father's old clothes, still in the attic. They were a little dusty, a little worn, and a lot creased and musty, but they fit well enough. Sophie was still a drab little mouse, in the browns and blues of her father's old clothes, but there were plenty of young men fitting that description in Market Chipping, and he liked being able to blend in. So he set off in search of adventure, brave and bold (or at least trying to be), in the best traditions of only sons.Sophie felt very unmannish by the time he drew up to the rumbling, smoking black castle. He was cold, tired, hungry, and out of sorts enough to bluster his way in. The young man inside tried to throw him out, but Sophie flopped down into a chair, and eventually he gave up and since sleep was too delicious for Sophie to resist for more than a moment.Waking up was less pleasant. Everyone knew that young men needed their sleep to grow, so Sophie thought whoever it was poking him should really leave him alone. He growled as much, opening his eyes a crack, but the blue blur besides him didn't give up. Sophie sat up with a groan."Who on earth are you? What's your name?" demanded the flamboyantly dressed man, who could only be the Wizard Howl.Sophie started to reply "I'm So – " and then stopped, thought about it, and decided he didn't care. "I'm Sophie." He glared at Howl, daring him to comment."Kind of prickly for someone who invaded my house, aren't you," said Howl, but Sophie refused to answer, and he wandered off.The young man, who said his name was Michael told him, "Well, we saved you some eggs. No bacon left though" and Sophie grabbed a plate and gobbled up everything left.He'd barged into someone's house, slept late, and ate everything in sight. Sophie decided he made an excellent young man.
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Mustang knows better than to bother Hawkeye while she's at the shooting range. She tells him that he's distracting, and since he has the time, didn't the general ask for a report on the Eastern army munitions supplies two weeks ago, at which point, he usually disappears for less dangerous ways of entertaining himself. But he sort of likes the way Hawkeye's aim goes a little off sometimes when he (and only he) is around. He fancies he's developed a kind of misfiring alchemy that can pry a splinter of Hawkeye's formidable concentration off the target and onto himself.Still, Mustang likes even better when she watches his back, and he can be as outrageous and provocative as he wants – her aim is true, and no one can touch him, not matter how much he might taunt his opponents.
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The Love Freak had a fire mage pupil, which is the only reason she was useful. (Her healing range was pitiful, and the only things going for her over the baby mages were a one step increase in range and slightly less squishiness).Still, when Flonne stood next to him and shouted, "Lord, grant me strength!" while blasting a zombie with a mega fire from across the field, Lharl was almost glad she was along. (The speeches about love were inoculating him against his weak points, and at least she didn't try to murder him in his sleep).