“I respond, thoughts dropping away, like pebbles plopping one by one in water, sinking down, down into dark oblivion.”

“Lost?” I broke in. “Lost how? Lost like you dropped it down the sink, or lost like it walked out the door and ran off into the woods?”

“She was truly a beautiful girl. I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all.”

“You're too important, too special to throw everything away for a pure." Seth sighed, dropping his hands to mine. "Now, I brought us a movies to watch, the one that has sparkly vampires in it. I thought you'd be down for that.”

“Sinking, sinking, drinking water. When everyone in the village was fasting a long month,when not a grain, not a drop of water passed between the parched lips of any able-bodied man, woman or child over the age of ten, when the sun was hotter than the cooking pot and dusk was just a febrile wish, the hypocrite went down to the pond to duck his head, to dive and sink, to drink and sink a little lower. p. 105”

“Oh, fine.' Rochelle sprinkled some water over one of the glowstones and laid the object down in the center of their tiny camp. 'I didn't know you were afraid of the dark.''It isn't the dark I'm afraid of. It's the things hiding in the dark that I can't see.' Laura closed her eyes. 'Like ninjas.”