“her spine was the crease on a piece of paper, her bones no more than diagonal folds on a bit of origami”

“After all these years, still a spot within her fluttered at his touch, and his voice, throaty and hushed in her ear, tickled along her spine. Naked, they walked to the bedroom. Beneath the covers, they fumbled with each other’s bodies, arms and legs, backbones and hip bones, until they found the familiar, tender lines like the creases in an old map that has been folded and refolded over the years.”

“He looked like a man who was turning into paper, folding himself into origami angles, fragile and friable and prone to crumple.”

“Don't bother her, don't try to talk to her, don't even look at her, or I'll fold you in half so many times you'll look like a tiny little origami werewolf.”

“Each morning, before Jackie started her studies, she wrote on a clean piece of paper: Tarde venientibus ossa.To the latecomers are left the bones.”

“And then he tells her stories. Myths he learned from his instructor. Fantasies he created himself, inspired by bits and pieces of others read in archaic books with crackling spines.”