61
" What do you call yourself?" the Fawn said at last. Such a soft sweet voice it had!" I wish I knew!" thought poor Alice. She answered, rather sadly, " Nothing, just now." " Think again," it said: " that won't do." Alice thought, but nothing came of it. " Please, would you tell me what you call yourself?" she said timidly, " I think that might help a little." " I'll tell you, if you'll come a little further on," the Fawn said. " I can't remember here." So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arms. " I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. " And dear me, you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed. "
62
" The thing about the Lexington International Bank ladder was that it was very long, and climbing it was very exhausting, and so Andrew Brown didn't have a lot of time to think about whether he really wanted to get to the top of it—and besides, since so many other people were climbing too, the view from the top must be worth it.
So he kept going. He worked hard. He put his heart and mind and soul into it. There was an opening for a position half a rung higher than he already was. With a promotion, he might get two hours a week of a secretary's time. He'd go to more important meetings, with more senior people, and have the opportunity to impress them, and if he did he might be promoted again and then... well, of course eventually he'd be running the whole office. It's important to have a dream: otherwise you might notice where you really are. "
― Naomi Alderman , Doctor Who: Borrowed Time
64
" It was so stupid, and random, but at that second, with the morning sun hitting her auburn hair, and her huge brown eyes fixed on him, the lock flew off the “do-not-allow-yourself-to-even-think-about-it” portion of his brain, and every feeling he ever had for her—feelings he never even realized he had for her—flooded over him like a tidal wave. Love, tenderness, desire—it hit him so hard he had to excuse himself, go to the men’s room, rest his forehead against the cool metal of the bathroom stall, breathing heavily, wondering what the hell had just happened. It left him exhausted and spent, as if he’d just run a hundred miles.And almost a year later, he was still exhausted, spent, frustrated … and madly in love. "
65
" Spare parts lay scattered, every turn wrought with twisted dread, all over the ground, the rooftops, and they were still. Some moving, twitching, enough to almost see. Half cracked and shattered, but still visible and eerie, smiles spread wide and thin, teeth decayed and not, paralleled by hollowed, some missing or in other places, eyes of shades green and blue and some brown with red, but no white, just color portrayed, even if it may be dampened in every way. The beauty in the frivolity, the polished shining gears and cracked glass illuminated so brightly, create a portrait of terror and wonder, significance of a different sort, that only human eyes can see and human minds can feel, but all this is something only dreams, the ethereal concepts that fuse and mince chaos and order into a more paradoxical state, can create and fathom and fashion and make. And yet, doubts upon anxious contradictions, my fingers can feel the brokenness of what can be witnessed, an abyss within a void where deeper within the still lies a glow, a half pulse of a flutter, a vein of mimicry of the reverse of all I see, with concave eyes lost in the magnitude of image whole. Massive and monumental, my feet dragged behind me, cuts in the dirt and spiraling tracks. And then I awoke, half my world disappeared. So much empty within the whole, holes of sizes big and small and all between, the loss of, what it was to be called, my dream. And then my life ended, the holes and tears and cracks complete, empty eyes can still see so clearly, the nothingness that everything has become, shadow and matte a combination of dark on black, in the nothingness that all has become, it is all complete in a way opposite of what I know, a world different in every way and stretch I see, vision upon view of different and strange, only when empty eyes, longing for purpose dreading its meaning, gaze upon their own reflection will the last piece fall into place, a round puzzle of pieces triangular and square, the completeness in the nothingness can be seen, mind flooded with wonder, envisioning the antonym of a dream, and what, in this new beginning, this all could mean. With a blink it all changes, incomplete images appear, holes are wide and seen because you are back now, between death and dream, interwoven as an integral part of this necessary in between seam, and when you touch, worry creases the brow, their faces, half real and the other untouchable, your hand passes through their skin, penetration of the most intimate sort, holding their hearts as if for sport. The warmth, the beating, the crimson piercing blood, so beautiful, the engine that we run, pumping and pumping only to cause the most dreaded flood. Now I drown, and I see you drown too. Together, we are, for split seconds few, we are torn apart and disappear in this vast blood red hue. "
67
" Look," Peter said.To the north was a series of vast grassy plains, and there, just looking like specks at first, was a herd of horses, a species that in Neverland had never been tamed. They were beautiful, flashes of brown and black and tan, their coats gleaming. There was no reason for them to be running that Tiger Lily could see. It was likely that they just loved to run." That's what I want my life to be," Peter said, staring down at the horses.Tiger Lily sank against him and watched the herd, and thought that was what she wanted too. "
69
" After a moment or two a man in brown crimplene looked in at us, did not at all like the look of us and asked us if we were transit passengers. We said we were. He shook his head with infinite weariness and told us that if we were transit passengers then we were supposed to be in the other of the two rooms. We were obviously very crazy and stupid not to have realized this. He stayed there slumped against the door jamb, raising his eyebrows pointedly at us until we eventually gathered our gear together and dragged it off down the
corridor to the other room. He watched us go past him shaking his head in wonder and sorrow at the stupid futility of the human condition in general and ours in particular, and then closed the door behind us.
The second room was identical to the first. Identical in all respects other than one, which was that it had a hatchway let into one wall. A large vacant-looking girl was leaning through it with her elbows on the counter and her fists jammed up into her cheekbones. She was watching some flies crawling up the wall, not with any great interest because they were not doing anything unexpected, but at least they were doing something. Behind her was a table stacked with biscuits, chocolate bars, cola, and a pot of coffee, and we headed straight towards this like a pack of stoats.
Just before we reached it, however, we were suddenly headed off by a man in blue crimplene, who asked us what we thought we were doing in there. We explained that we were transit passengers on our way to Zaire, and he looked at us as if we had completely taken leave of our senses.
'Transit passengers? he said. 'It is not allowed for transit passengers to be in here.'
He waved us magnificently away from the snack counter, made us pick up all our gear again, and herded us back through the door and away into the first room where, a minute later, the man in the brown crimplene found us again.
He looked at us. Slow incomprehension engulfed him, followed by sadness, anger, deep frustration and a sense that the world had been created specifically to cause him vexation. He leaned back against the wall, frowned, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
'You are in the wrong room,' he said simply. `You are transit passengers. Please go to the other room.'
There is a wonderful calm that comes over you in such situations, particularly when there is a refreshment kiosk involved. We nodded, picked up our gear in a Zen-like manner and made our way back down the corridor to the second room. Here the man in blue crimplene accosted us once more but we patiently explained to him that he could fuck off. "
― Douglas Adams , Last Chance to See
