The world is a giant eye, staring back at the stars. When it tires, it closes its lids--just as I am doing now--and gives way to dreams, which is why the night is so much more mysterious than the day.
Look for Joy: that's God's echo, and his footprint. Happiness . . . happiness and wittiness and cleverness do not count for much when the darkness falls. Joy is tougher.
She tell many Cathy story, but I still think your daughter good girl." He nodded reassuringly to Mom. "Except for time start car on fire," he admitted. Then... little worry."
They stood in the courtyard of Swangard Palace, too cold to be comfortable despite the sun, and they looked fully on one another, knowing that they were friends, and would always be. A lot of water under this bridge too, Mark thought, with something like awe. He was growing older. Old enough to feel the current of what had been flowing under him, leading to his future. Old enough to look back over his shoulder, and see his past behind him, ..
Memories haunted the Ghostwood, brittle as the twigs that splintered like tiny bones under Mark's boots. Sifting through drooping cedar boughs, the old wind muttered of things that waited in darkness without hope. To every question the Ghostwood had but one answer, made from sorrow, and loneliness, and time.
Little Jang Li-Li, eight years old, misting the orchids in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. A bright day, sunlight pouring through transparisteel panels, Li-Li making puffs of water with her mister and shrieking with laughter as every little cloud she made broke a sunbeam into colors, fugitive bars of red and violet and green. Master, Master, I'm making rainbows! Those colors hadn't come to mean military signals, yet, or starship navigatin..
He noticed Miss Bettie was wearing a watch, a steel Rolex with diamond chips. "What time is it?" he asked. Miss Bettie glanced at him and laughed. "You do seem to have difficulty remembering, don't you? Well, then, I shall tell you. It's , Joshua Cane. Always and only now."
Grief lingers, and the ache of loss; those things don't change. But seeping into every leaf, a little guilty burns away each autumn, and falls, spinning down the river. Winter's long sleep begins, and with each spring the tree wales knowing mercifully less than it did the year before.
He steepled his fingers in monkish solemnity. "You cannot hide from Fate, my son." Sarah grunted. "People don't have fates." "No: fates have people," Jet said, suddenly serious." --
Hello?" "Ah, is this the ... Bow-shawmp residence?" There was no trace of a Texas twang in the caller's accent, nor anything of the South. "Beech-um, yes, that's us. Sorry." "Ah, yeah. Beech-um? Okay."
The sun was setting on Coruscant. Shadows ran like black water, filling up the the alleys first, then climbing steadily higher, a tide of darkness rising to drown the capital. Twilight's gloom spread over retail districts and medcenters, and crept like a dark stain up the walls of the Chancellor's residence as the sun slipped below the horizon. Soon only the rooftops were gilded with the day's last yellow light; then the shadows conquered t..
Only on a planet such as Coruscant, with no forests left, no mountains unleveled, no streams left to run their own course, could the Force have become so clouded.