She wants you to be a god," I told him. "I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.

He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?

and her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon.

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

. . .nothing could eclipse the stain of his dirty, mortal mediocrity.

I lay back and tried not to think of the minutes passing. Just yesterday we had a wealth of them. Now each was a drop of heartsblood lost.

I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?