189

Stone and moss lay cool against her check, the tears warm from her eyes.  Despite the tears, Maggie still thought rationally, and she knew that this frustration was only making it worse.  The magic wouldn't come and thinking about how the magic wouldn't come bound up her magic even more.  Maggie turned her forehead into the dustiness of the dry leaves and pounded her fist into the ground with a vaguely satisfying thump, again and again, until the thumping sound was what mattered.  Thump and a slight crunch of leaves.  Dull thump that vibrated the packed earth just a little bit.  Her fist's thump that carried up her arm and smudged her pinky finger with dirt.  Thump, thump, thump, until the tears stopped and Maggie didn't notice because her mind was on the thump, thump, thump and the sound and the feel that it made.  Thump, thump, thump, like her heart and the world and the life and suddenly the magic was back because Maggie finally stopped thinking about magic and only thought about the rhythm of her fist and the earth.

188

The panic rose again in Tessa, bubbling up and making her lungs empty.  Tears stabbed the corners of her eyes and she her face was warming up to the idea of a full-fledged crying session.  She didn't want to cry again, and for such a stupid reason.

187

The New Year's Eve party was a smashing success in that no one died, which was much better than previous years.  The clean up was still going to be extensive because of the fights and alcohol poisoning, but, still, guests in Intensive Care were not guests in the morgue, hence the long awaited positive checkmark.

186

The smallest events can change your whole life.  Not that you could point back to the event itself because it becomes lost in seemingly more important events along the way, but is was, nonetheless, the snowflake that began the avalanche.

In Cecil's case, it was smaller than the Orange Julius at which he grudgingly worked.  It was smaller than the particular day on which he was at work.  It was smaller than the Mango Pineapple Julius, size medium, on which he was working.  It was, in fact, a pen.

185

Celia worked for minimum wage in a relatively new nursing home, serving and clearing meals.  It was tiring, on-your-feet work, but more than that, it tired her brain.  She didn't like thinking about death, and it hung about the place like cobwebs on forgotten boxes in the corner of an attic.  Celia thought she didn't like death, but, in truth, she didn't like the ruin of the body and the draining of the mind.  It made her remember her own grandmother, which always made her sad.  Every day she wondered why she ever went in to the place, and every day was another day still there until weeks and months had passed.

She found the residents simultaneously frightening, pitiful, and unbearably strong.  They stayed alive in bodies she would have abandoned long ago.  They lived on without hope, which Celia thought would have killed her in itself.  Perhaps she had it wrong, though, and a knock on a dinner table hinted at her misconceptions.

184

A chill breeze gusted through the kitchen window.  Maggie, on her way to the bathroom for what seemed like the tenth time that afternoon, shivered as it raised the hairs on her arm.  Detouring, she went to lower the sash, but paused, her throbbing bladder taking a backseat to the scene in her neighbor's driveway.

183

Long ago and far away there was a land that is no more.  Its location is not marked on maps.  Its name is not written in the history books.  The bloodlines of its people is scattered and thin.  But every so often, there is a thought.  A tiny thought bubbles up in the mind of a person whose blood contains those thin markers of the people of that land, and that thought is a breeze on his skin, or a color in her eye, or a name on the tips of their tongues.