“Herk threw up the mouse, the hamburger he'd eaten for lunch, and some pasty glop that looked like tomato soup. He was just starting to ask his mother what was going on when she threw up. And there, in all that puke, that old dead mouse didn't look bad at all. It sure looked better than the rest of the stuff.”

“Cameron threw her hands up in frustration. “What is this so-called ‘look’?” Whatever it was, she was going to have to start taking extreme measures to guard against it.Amy grinned. “You know the Tom and Jerry cartoon where Tom hasn’t eaten for days and he imagines Jerry looking like a ham? Kind of like that.”

“She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.”

“It looks like Vegas threw up on a flock of vultures.”

“As I was walking up the stairs to dad's old room, and I was looking at the photographs, I started thinking that there was a time when these weren't memories. That someone actually took the photograph, and the people in the photograph had just eaten lunch or something.”

“My darling," she said at last, are you sure you don't mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?""I don't mind at all" I said.It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you.”