"you've spent nearly as much time here as i have," he shrugs, turning the rock over in his hand. he passes the rock back to her, and though she kneels to place it back against the stone wall, she hesitates, pocketing it instead. the lump is even more visible in the side of her leggings as she stands, defying the request to replace the sentiment. "i think i could use an extra bit of kindness today. do you think marilyn would be pissed off if i made one of my own to put back instead?"


"what'd you paint on yours?" he asks, peering across the table. he doesn't need to rise onto his toes to see, but he does regardless, laughing and returning to flattened feet as she forms a dome with her hands to block his view. "it's a secret," she says in a low voice, still tinged with good humour. "if you know now, it'll ruin the surprise if you're the one to find it. that's the point, isn't it? see if the universe lets you stumble across what you need, when you aren't really looking for it?

1 i scheduled as many as i could for this morning so i don't miss the wolves play city. i -- hope that's okay?

2 i think it has merit, but i doubt such a limited scope will make a sufficient return on my investment. you have until friday to sort it out.

3 mrs sutcliffe had them bring her peleton, but i dunno, it just isn't as nice as doing it outside properly. if you're ever in the mood to be outrun, i go at half four.

4 liking any of them isn't a requirement, andrew. you didn't like victoria when she first started either. the real question is one of competency.

5 i didn't mean to eavesdrop, but you mentioned that you were having trouble finding something for one of your mates' birthdays, and i ... had an idea?

6 if your father had learnt to cook as well as you can, we might've been married longer.

7 it's silly, but it seemed a waste to let them sit in a packet for another year.

8 haunted? hardly, but my brother - your uncle - seemed to think so when we were children. he said that the ossaert lived there.

he was able to shut his eyelids once more, but now he know that he would not wake, that he was awake, that the marvelous dream had been the other, absurd like all dreams; a dream in which he had ridden the strange avenues of an astonishing city, with red and green lights that burned with neither flame nor smoke, with an enormous metal insect that buzzed beneath his legs. in the infinite lie of that dream they had also lifted him from the floor, someone had also cut him with a knife in his hand, with him lying face up, face up with his eyes shut in the midst of the fires.

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