You changed the subject." "From what?" "The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy." "You know." "Know what?" "That I only have eyes for you." Laila swooned inside. She tried to read his face but was met by a look that was indecipherable: the cheerful, cretinous grin at odds with the narrow, half desperate look in his eyes. A clever look, calculated to fall precisely at the midpoint between mockery and sincerity

I'm gladly doing my own thing for the time being.

sometimes the shifting of rocks is deep, deep below, and it's powerful and scary down there, but that all we feel on the surface is a slight tremor. Only a slight tremor.

Gone. Vanished. Nothing left. Nothing said.

When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color.

If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing.

You changed the subject." "From what?" "The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy." "You know." "Know what?" "That I only have eyes for you." Laila swooned inside. She tried to read his face but was met by a look that was indecipherable: the cheerful, cretinous grin at odds with the narrow, half desperate look in his eyes. A clever look, calculated to fall precisely at the midpoint between mockery and sincerity