-I'm going to kill the kid. - Barrons says faintly. Ryodan makes a burbling sound like a bodly laught. -Get in line

I am a kite in a tornado, but I have a long string.

I figure if there is a God, he or she isn’t paying attention to what we build or if we follow some elaborate rules, but copping a ride on our shoulders, watching what we do ever day. Seeing if we took this great big adventure called life and did something interesting with it.

When he'd pushed inside me and I'd feel him begin to penetrate, it had turned me into a wild thing-hot, wet, and desperate for more of him. With every kiss, every caress, every thrust, I'd just needed more. He'd touched me, I went nuts. The world dwindled down to one thing: him.

He stepped into the morning feeling more alive than he'd felt in months. Hold fast and believe in me, love, he whispered across the centuries. Because love and belief were serious magic in and of themselves.

Although love could grow in times of peace, it tempered in battle. Daddy told me once - when I'd said something about how perfect his relationship with Mom was - that I should have seen the first five years of their marriage, that they'd fought like hellions, crashed into each other like two giant stones. That eventually they'd eroded each other into the perfect fit, become a single wall, nestled into each other's curves and hollows, her strengths chinking his weaknesses, her weaknesses reinforced by his strengths.

Lose the pessimism, Ms. Lane. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.