1
Is that sex talk?" she asked uncertainly." It is."" Why don't you just say sex then? It's always chalice and appetite and artifice with you. I never know what the hell you're saying.R. Lee Smith
2
Aisling tumbled out, his gold eyes going wild about the room to take in all of them. His beak clicked as he worked it in silence. Then, as the breaking of ice may bring a cascade of water from winter’s falls, the griffin’s voice–no longer that small shrill copy of Taryn’s, but his own true voice–poured plaintively from him. “Mom! ”Taryn jerked around, her mouth dropping open. Aisling bounded toward her and she swept him up into a tight embrace. He clutched at her shoulders with his talons, burying his head under her chin, and cried, “Mom! Yoo…rrrrr…oh…kay! ”“Great gods, ” Antilles heard himself say and he shot Tonka a startled glance. “He cannot be speaking?! ” The horseman merely smiled. “And why not?” he murmured, resettling himself on his padded bolster. “For has he not been a miracle from the very first?”“ You’re talking, ” Taryn cried, true delight painting itself over the grief that had seemed to mask her since the dawning of this terrible day. She was radiant once more, burning with a joy and a healing light all its own as she hugged her griffin close. “Oh, my fierce prince! My big boy! ”“ Yoo…rrrr… Ai-sing, ” whispered the griffin. His raptor’s eyes flicked to Antilles and his naked wings fluttered. “Tilly. Yoo…rrrr…sun-shy?”Taryn giggled, her face pressed to fur.“ Aye, lad, ” Antilles said, tossing his broken horn. “My sun and my moon and all my starry skies.R. Lee Smith
3
I had but one love and it is gone and now there is nothing and I tell you, that is the most awful feeling in the world.R. Lee Smith
4
Men may perish, but the world will neither celebrate nor mourn. It will go on.' His smile thinned. 'Would you like to know how?'' No.'' Animals will swell to fill the void left by men, " he told her. 'And over-swell it, perhaps. There will be other extinctions and other recoveries. The sky will clear, but those who see it will not marvel at its many colors. Those ruins will collapse, burying treasures like this-' He waved at the walls. '-and this-' He picked up the spoon from her coffee tray and tossed it down again with a clatter. '-forever, but the world will go on. Years become centuries so easily when no one is there to count them. Centuries become millennia. The forests will reclaim the lands that Men have razed. Rivers will carve canyons across the scars left by this fallen cities. Mountains will rise up, trapping seas to dry under and uncaring sun and leaving the bones of whales to bleach in the newborn deserts for no one to find, no one to be inspired by thoughts of giants and dragons. And still the worlds will go on, and I will go on with it through ages that can only be measured by the coming and going of glaciers. The stars themselves will shift in the heavens and no one will be there to invent names for their new alignments or remember the stories of the old ones, no one but me. In time, the sun itself will begin to cool. Here on Earth, the world goes on and on as its remaining life passes through its last changes and dies away. It will be quiet. And lonely.' His mouth curved into a bitter line. 'But I'll live.'' Stop it, ' Lan whispered through numb lips.' I read once that the sun will someday swell and engulf this world before it burns itself out. Perhaps I will finally die with it. Or perhaps I' will continue to endure.. my ashes pulled eternally apart through the frozen vacuum of space, and I with no more mouth to scream.. still alive. .R. Lee Smith
5
There were no words, no capacity to form them, but there were thoughts swelling huge in her head and he was in every one of them, even deeper than he was in her body, because he didn't want to lose here. He didn't want to lose her. And maybe, that death-dark voice whispered to her aching heart, maybe he should.R. Lee Smith