5
" He saw two stars collapse against one another and a nova form; it flared up and then, as he watched, it began to die out. He saw it turn from a furiously blazing ring into a dim core of dead iron and then he saw it cool into darkness. More stars cooled with it; he saw the force of entropy, the method of the Destroyer of Forms, retract the stars into dull reddish coals and then into dust-like silence. A shroud of thermal energy hung uniformly over the world,over this strange and little world for which he had no love or use.It's dying, he realized. The universe. The thermal haze spread on and on until it became only a disturbance, nothing more; the sky glowed weakly with it and then flickered. Even the uniform thermal disbursement was expiring. How strange and goddamn awful, he thought. He got to his feet, moved a step toward the door.And there, on his feet, he died.They found him an hour later. Seth Morley stood with his wife at the far end of the knot of people jammed into the small room and said to himself, " to keep him from helping with the prayer" . " The same force that shut down the transmitter," Ignatz Thugg said. " They knew; they knew if he phrased the prayer it would go through. Even without the relay." He looked gray and frightened. All of them did, Seth Morley noticed. Their faces, in the light of the room, had a leaden, stone-like cast. Like, he thought, thousand-year-old idols.Time, he thought, is shutting down around us. It is as if the future is gone, for all of us. "
8
" I was thinking about changing into a different sort of person than the one I am. I do think about that. I read a book called The Art of Loving. A lot of things seemed clear while I was reading it but afterwards I went back to being more or less the same. What has Cam ever done that actually hurt me, anyway, as Haro once said. And how am I better than he is after the way i felt the night Mother lived instead of died? I made a promise to myself i would try.I went over there one day taking them a bakery cake - which Cam eats now as happily as anyone else - and I heard their voices out in the yard - now it’s summer, they love to sit in the sun - Mother saying to some visitor, “Oh, yes I was, I was all set to take off into the wild blue yonder, and Cam here, this idiot, came and danced outside my door with a bunch of his hippie friends - ‘
‘My God, woman,’ roared Cam, but you could tell he didn’t care now, ‘members of an ancient holy discipline.”
I had a strange feeling, like I was walking n coals and trying a spell so I wouldn’t get burnt.
Forgiveness in families is a mystery to me, how it comes or how it lasts "
― Alice Munro , Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You: 13 Stories
15
" In the darkness with no ember, cold coals bear no flaming tinder. All the shadows, man resemble. In the darkness, wise men tremble. Prodigious foes made thee for pointless sake of prosaic power. Visited upon thyself no vestige of vision by late nights hour. In the stillness of normal eve, in longing for the night's reprieve. In air and earth arise a faint and subtle shift, tis follies gift. With tremulous breath, whisper faintly from thy spirits tower. 'Woe to me!', thy soul says. Cometh nigh, The Rez. "
― Kel Kade , Reign of Madness (King's Dark Tidings, #2)
17
" The bast, dispersing in shreds in the sunset whispered " Time has begun." The son, Adam, stripped naked, descended into the Old Testament of his native land and arrayed himself in bast; a wreath of roadside field grass he placed upon his brow, a staff, not a switch, he pulled from the ground, flourishing the birch branch like a sacred palm. On the road he stood like a guard. The dust-gray road ran into the sunset. And a crow perched there, perched and croaked, there where the celestial fire consumed the earth.There were blind men along the dust-gray road running into the twilight. Antique, crooken, they trailed along, lonely and sinister silhouettes, holding to one another and to their leader's cane. They were raising dust. One was beard-less, he kept squinting. Another, a little old man with a protruding lip, was whispering and praying. A third, covered with red hair, frowned. Their backs were bent, their heads bowed low, their arms extended to the staff. Strange it was to see this mute procession in the terrible twilight. They made their way immutable, primordial, blind. Oh, if only they could open their eyes, oh if only they were not blind! Russian Land, awake!And Adam, rude image of the returned king, lowered the birch branch to their white pupils. And on them he laid his hands, as, groaning and moaning they seated themselves in the dust and with trembling hands pushed chunks of black bread into their mouths. Their faces were ashen and menacing, lit with the pale light of deadly clouds. Lightning blazed, their blinded faces blazed. Oh, if only they opened their eyes, oh, if only they saw the light!Adam, Adam, you stand illumined by lightnings. Now you lay the gentle branch upon their faces. Adam, Adam, say, see, see! And he restores their sight.But the blind men turning their ashen faces and opening their white eyes did not see. And the wind whispered " Thou art behind the hill." From the clouds a fiery veil began to shimmer and died out. A little birch murmured, beseeching, and fell asleep. The dusk dispersed at the horizon and a bloody stump of the sunset stuck up. And spotted with brilliant coals glowing red, the bast streamed out from the sunset like a striped cloak. On the waxen image of Adam the field grass wreaths sighed fearfully giving a soft whistle and the green dewy clusters sprinkled forth fiery tears on the blind faces of the blind. He knew what he was doing, he was restoring their sight.(" Adam" ) "
