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696fcd3
|
"He blinks. Touches the side of my face, near my eyes. My eyes that are blue now, not green. With oval irises. "I'm still me," I say, because my greatest fear now is that he doesn't want a hybrid Amy. He cocks an eyebrow. "You think I care if your eyes are blue or green? I just care about you." His hand slips down my arm, and he wraps his pinky finger around mine. "You came back to me," I say, my voice breaking over unshead tears of joy. "I'll always come back to you," he tells me pulling me close. Always."
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love
shades-of-earth
|
Beth Revis |
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9e151c1
|
I might have the whole world now, but it's not enough if I don't get to share it with her.
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|
elder
beth-revis
shades-of-earth
|
Beth Revis |
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088bfe6
|
The dark sky. A hundred million stars. More stars than I've ever seen before. My eyes let me see farther, but they don't show me the one thing I want to see. I would trade all the stars in the universe if I could just have him back again. Wind whistles through the trees nearby. Birdsong weaves in and out of the sound. The hybrids emerge from the communication building, heads tilted to the sky. And then we see the end. Godspeed's engine was nuclear; who knows what fueled the biological weapons. But they explode together. In space, they don't make the familiar mushroom cloud. They don't make the boom! of an exploding bomb. There is, against the dark sky, a brief flash of light. It is filled with colors, like a nebula or the aurora borealis, bursting like a popped bubble. Nothing else--no sound of an explosion, no tremors in the earth, no smell of smoke. Not here, on the surface of the planet. Nothing else to signify Elder's death. Just light. And then it's gone. And then he's gone.
|
|
universe
stars
death
aurora
nebula
elder
atu-series
shades-of-earth
burst
galaxy
sky
gone
dead
lost
|
Beth Revis |
|
b4082fe
|
"What else can you tell me?" Dad stares at me. "What have you learned while you were awake?" I learned that life is so, so fragile. I learned that you can know someone for just days and never forget the impression he left on you. I learned that art can be beautiful and sad at the same time. I learned that if someone loves you, he'll wait for you to love him back. I learned that how much you want something doesn't determine whether you get it or not, that "no" might not be enough, that life isn't fair, that my parents can't save me, that maybe no one can. "Nothing much," I mutter."
|
|
time
life
colonel-martin
shades-of-earth
unfair
nothing
dad
fragile
chaos
art
save
hard
mess
sad
|
Beth Revis |
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e97dda6
|
It Will be better to die quickly with only the taste of freedom on our lips than to live long lives pretending not to see the walls that imprison us.
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|
centauri-earth
shades-of-earth
|
Beth Revis |
|
6ea97ff
|
But of course these are scientists. Tell them to leave something alone, and all they want to do is poke it with a stick.
|
|
funny
shades-of-earth
scientists
|
Beth Revis |
|
ac1a4db
|
I've heard that when you're in a life-or-death situation, like a car accident or a gunfight, all your senses shoot up to almost superhuman level, everything slows down, and you're hyper-aware of what's happening around you. As the shuttle careens toward the earth, the exact opposite is true for me. Everything silences, even the screams and shouts from the people on the other side of the metal door, the crashes that I pray aren't bodies, the hissing of rockets, Elder's cursing, my pounding heartbeat. I feel nothing--not the seat belt biting into my flesh, not my clenching jaw, nothing. My whole body is numb. Scent and taste disappear. The only thing about my body that works is my eyes,and they are filled with the image before them. The ground seems to leap up at us as we hurtle toward it. Through the blurry image of the world below us, I see the outline of land--a continent. And at once, my heart lurches with the desire to know this world, to make it our home. My eyes drink up the image of the planet--and my stomach sinks with the knowledge that this is a coastline I've never seen before. I could spin a globe of Earth around and still be able to recognize the way Spain and Portugal reach into the Atlantic, the curve of the Gulf of Mexico, the pointy end of India. But this continent--it dips and curves in ways I don't recognize, swirls into an unknown sea, creating peninsulas in shapes I do not know, scattering out islands in a pattern I cannot connect. And it's not until I see this that I realize: this world may one day become our home,but it will never be the home I left behind.
|
|
earth
travel
discovery
life
godspeed
elder
amy-martin
beth-revis
shades-of-earth
shuttle
planet
mission
crash
home
journey
|
Beth Revis |
|
e980ccc
|
And I know what I told my father was true: let us taste the world, and we'll do whatever it takes to shape it into our home.
|
|
world
truth
centauri-earth
new-place
amy-martin
atu-series
shades-of-earth
planet
home
|
Beth Revis |
|
b3a959e
|
I would use the same word to describe both my joy and the rain: torrential. This--this--this is all I ever wanted from the world: wide-open spaces and cooling rain and the chance to run.
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|
universe
stars
rain
cooling
torrential
amy-martin
atu-series
shades-of-earth
open
run
space
|
Beth Revis |
|
e654e78
|
"What you really want to know," I say, "is how to make sure we all don't just rip each other apart, right?" The fight earlier is way too fresh in our minds. We are a powder keg; just a spark will blow us apart."
|
|
blow
bob-martin
amy-martin
atu-series
shades-of-earth
apart
fight
|
Beth Revis |
|
6f33877
|
"I just had to hope you'd find me," he says. Then he can't talk any more because I'm kissing him, and I don't think I'll ever stop. But I do. I lean back and stare into his eyes, and it's not until I see the light within them that I realize the truth of it. He's back. -- Beth Revis (Shades of Earth pg. 440)"
|
|
across-the-universe-amy
shades-of-earth
|
Beth Revis |
|
578c049
|
"I'll always come back to you," he tells me, pulling me close. Always. --Beth Revis (Shades of Earth pg. 441)"
|
|
across-the-universe-amy
shades-of-earth
|
Beth Revis |