He led me to the spot and I gasped. "Alex...did you seriously build this?"
"For us." He took my hand and I blushed softly. "You didn't have to do this."
"I wanted this to be special."
"What?"I looked into the eyes of my long-time boyfriend as he got down on one knee. "Claire...will you marry me?"
My hand that wasn't holding his covered my mouth as I felt my cheeks grow hot and my heart beat faster. "Y-yes...yes!"
He stood up again and slipped a small ring onto my hand before kissing me softly. "I love you."
"I love you...
As I gazed across the lake at the empty gazebo, I realized I wanted to be there. To stand in the center, surrounded by it's beauty, it's superiority. I felt a strange pull, like I belonged there. "Come to me..." I paused, Morgan was calling me, it was time to join the rest of the class, but the gazebo... I wondered what was over there, and why it wanted me, just an American schoolgirl come to visit. Suddenly, I realized that the snake on roof was moving. "Come to me". I couldn't tell if the voice was in my head...
The dock at his grandfather's pond always reminded him of Imladris, the land known as Rivendell in Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It was a beautiful place, almost magical in its pristine loveliness. He used to play here every summer, fishing off the edge, diving into the water, and climbing the nearby trees in his search for the One Ring and the forces of Sauron, who were constantly hunting him and the Ring of Power.
He journeyed beside Aragorn, fought with Gimli and Legolas, sang songs with Thorin Oakenshield and his merry band of Dwarves.
Work...
It was midnight in the Temple of the Light, the sun was shining, and the Guru Akiva was smiling up at the man with the gun.
"Go ahead, child. Do it."
The man glanced around. Nobody to see him, tall, trench coat, barrel of the revolver pointed at the serene little monk as he sat, lotus-style, in the pavilion.
"Nothin' personal, old-timer." he managed to grunt. He didn't usually speak to the mark, but this guy, well, he figured the old man deserved an explanation. "The Council wants war, you see. The Temple, yer planet, it's... uh..."
"Sacred. Yes. You...
"Pegodi? Pogado?"
Sneering, Jess looked at Adam and asked waht the hell he thought he was doing.
"That thing there, out on the water. What's it called?"
They both turned and stared out across the man-made lake. No more than two feet deep, and even less than that if you counted the layers of garbage and duck shit on the bottom.
"That building," Adam said, pointing. As if it wasn't obvious enough, sitting on the dock, the second man-made structure in view.
Jess exhaled and told him it was a pagoda. He snapped his fingers.
"That's it. Wow," he said,...
When represented on a flat surface, a right angle can appear acute or oblique.
When represented on a flat surface, a right angle can appear acute or oblique.
White sky. The sky was so white. Sky-white. Sky-writing white smoke in the white sky.
But the bayou was blue. I'm humming it now. Bayou-blue. The snapped crayon read "you-blue."
I wanted to say something. What do I want to say. I raced through my mind looking for a word. Where is it?
What is it?
Sky-white? Bayou-blue. Nah, neither of them. I want to say "succumb" or "parse". Maybe "grenadine"?
I peeled the surface of the bayou up like a t-shirt transfer. But too soon. The corner wrinkled.
The sky went blue
He looked into the surface and his heart stopped a beat, two beats then three at what stared back. His chest caved inwards as a slow smile stretched and rippled across a paler face than his own. The eyes were grim and long and dead and they beat him into submission with a starving stare before he kicked his own ankle and fell to the ground, dirt scraping pits into the palms of his hands. He licked his lips and looked above about him. The roof of the hut looked like the inside of a boat falling from the sky...