“when someone speaks he looks at a mouth, not eyes and their colors, which, it seems to him, will always alter depending on the light of a room, the minute of the day. Mouths reveal insecurity or smugness or any other point on the spectrum of character. For him they are the most intricate aspect of faces. He's never sure what an eye reveals. but he can read how mouths darken into callousness, suggest tenderness. One can often misjudge an eye from its reaction to a simple beam of sunlight.”

“whatever eyes can speak mouth nevers”

“I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. I've also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It's sure to be a phony.”

“He puts up with a lot from me, and he never gets irritated.""Yeah, cause you can be so darn irritating..." He lowered his face and kissed my eyebrow tenderly, "with those irritating cinnamon-brown eyes..." His kisses moved down to my nose. "And that irritating, tiny nose..." He paused, his mouth a mere breath away from mine, and he kissed me softly. "And those irritating, luscious lips..." The green of his eyes darkened as he gazed down at my mouth. "God, those lips..." he sighed, and his warm breath drifted lightly across my mouth as his arms tightened around me more. He kissed me long and hard.”

“Any other questions?""Just one," I say. "What color are your eyes?" I want to know what he thinks, how he sees himself - the real Ky - when he dares to look."Blue," he says sounding surprised, "they've always been blue.""Not to me.""What do they look like to you?" he says puzzled, amused. Not looking at my mouth anymore, looking into my eyes."Lots of colors," I say. "At first I thought they were brown. Once I thought they were green...""What are they now?" he asks. He widens his eyes a little, leans closer, lets me look as long and deep as I want."Well?""Everything," I tell him, "They're everything.”

“Blue is the most common eye color in Oria Province, but there is something different about his eyes and I'm not sure what it is. More depth? I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. If he seems to have depth to me, do I seem shallow and transparent to him?”