This thing was what existed before life, before the first stars, before the big bang. It was the emptiness before the universe, and the emptiness that would follow.

There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman__he white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles__he work of a shell.The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries__omething between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey__ startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.

You saw what I saw, right? Adrienne doing something nice for Xarissa of her own free will. I think I did, said G.ALunette stared into the unknown. This has to be a sign of the coming apocalypse We are all going to die.

No one, none of us have rights. There is no destiny. We have responsibilities to ourselves and each other. We have responsibilities and the choice whether or not we live up to those responsibilities.

Bodies lay in the sun. Bodies stood in the sun.

When she had died, his anchor was gone and the world had burned from his untethered insanity.