Marsha > Recent Status Updates

Jordan watched from the deck as Baron vanished into the trees. She'd expected him to at least understand.
Just as bad as Peter.
The wind blew through her, fanned her anger like flame. He would not last long, crashing through the forest alone and unarmed in the middle of the night; who knew but that Chay's wolf already had its nose to the ground.

His fatigue sharpened into a headache as they made their way through the bowels of the ship, past men groaning out of bed or sprinkling Dust on wounds in various stages of healing. Jordan greeted them as if they were already old friends--"That's Ellis," she murmured in his ear, "and Rien, and Koro, and Nilam, and Sander"--but Baron was even more out of his body than usual, his limbs gone leaden and uncooperative.

Valerians tended to marry cousins. Love was dangerous, but heirs were necessary. There must always be a duke to defend the land.
Valerius women were mousy as protective camouflage, but a generation ago a distant cousin was a beauty. The young duke, Marius's father, was struck at first sight.
Struck, fell, smitten. All words for love were violent and Marius knew why. The beauty was found with her neck broken.

"I acted as if I was the only real person in the world. That's what a villain is. I'm sorry, Mari--my lord. I'll stop."
It was almost impossible to disbelieve that voice and utterly impossible to believe this man.
Fury bit hard as a panicked animal. "You blackmail me for years without remorse, but expect me to trust your sudden crisis of conscience?'
"Right," murmured Popenjoy. "...Great point."

The Lullaby Library is quiet, an after-hours kind of silent. Everyone's gone home for the night, to rest their eyes and minds.
Yet we walk in silence down the center of the library, my mind still burning at the thought of what they did: Destroying the grove, trying to trap me here for good. It feels as deceitful as Dr. Finkelstein locking me in my room, making me a prisoner.

Six months or so after we got together, my sister got married. The date she had chosen was my former anniversary. She'd asked me if it would be weird and I had said "I guess not"--by instinct, mostly, because I was still so accustomed to ignoring any emotions that might deform the space around me, anything that might bring down the room. My boyfriend knew better. He showed up with a box of candy.

Mulan frowned. She hadn't come all this way to be ignored.
Shishi was clearly thinking the same thing. The lion had furtively taken a few steps closer to King Yama's throne and Mulan sidled up next to him.
"Don't think I can't see you," King Yama muttered.
Mulan's body snapped up. "Sire, I--"
"Return to the back of the line," King Yama said, scribbling furiously. Ink stained the ends of his long emerald sleeves.

The boat slipped along the dark sea, fast and nimble. I sat at the bow and watched the sky spreading above us, the stars glittering so bright, Prata waning, Drao in first quarter and Broe a sliver of a crescent, almost an afterthought.
Solentine's people came to get us. Everard and I boarded the small vessel, the sails went up and a few minutes later we slipped out of the city and headed into the open sea.

That Shakespeare does not mention Marlowe by name is entirely in keeping with the pastoral setting of the play: As You Like It is a story of shepherds and shepherdesses int he Forest of Arden. But it also captures something of the ambivalence in Shakespeare's relationship with Marlowe, an ambivalence that may have gone back to the first time they met to work together on plays for Henslowe.

Among the many additions that Marlowe made to the play's literary source, perhaps the most startling was his depiction of a passionate relationship between the magician and the devil. If a homoerotic element is playfully half-concealed in the scene with the boy who played Helen, it is far more open in Faustus's bond with Mephistopheles. "Lo, Mephistopheles, for love of thee / I cut mine arm."

Lord Grey de Wilton, the lord deputy of Ireland under whom Ralegh served, succeeded in driving the expeditionary force into a fort and then mounted a siege. The fort lacked water and after three days, Sebastiano di San Giuseppe, the troops' leader, surrendered and ordered his men to throw down their weapons. The terms of the surrender remain in dispute, the but resulting action does not.

The reservations that any prudent person might have had about trusting such a cruel trickster evidently did not keep Marlowe from spending time with Watson. And after all, Watson too would have had to set prudence aside to spend time with Marlowe. Each of them might have felt strangely safer to see certain of his most sinister qualities reflected int he cracked glass of the other.

Present among the mass of playgoers were men who had returned home from one of the overseas wars in which England had become involved. These were not wars of short duration or with clear and points; they were more like the interminable wars in which America and its allies have become entangled post 9/11. From the mid-1580s onward, there were constant levies of troops, initially for the bloody ongoing struggles.

News of Thurzo's raid would have already begun circulating; he had to make sure his version of events, of catching Elizabeth red-handed, was also circulating. When dozens of people repeated the same story about Andreas Doczy being a serial killer, this was described as being "a sign that [the accuser] has told his theory to everyone and that this very interesting story has had time to form on the lips of the public."

Martin Luther had advocated for the abolition of "such popish abominations as vigils, masses for the dead, processions...and all other forms of trickery on behalf of the dead." The most radical interpreted this instruction literally and began to bury one another without the usual service and hymns, without even a pastor being present. One clergyman complained that "the dead are buried without a cross or candles."

Elizabeth's tour of the rest of her estates proceeded much less eventfully. As soldiers marched out of their forts and serfs and hajduks wound their way down from their mountain hideouts, Elizabeth recorded and mourned her losses. Although the Countess had managed to save the Nadasdy family seat with the help of the mercenaries she had hired, most of the villages surrounding the castle had been burned down.

The long war with the Turks was draining the imperial coffers, along with the Holy Roman Emperor's generous patronage of the arts and sciences. Rudolf II's vast collections included bright minds and silver tongues--painters, poets, artisans, philosophers, mathematicians and scientists of every ilk. Obsessive, secretive and syphilitic, he shut himself away, surrounded with every bright and shiny thing imaginable.

The book was taking matters into its own hands. The pages rippled to the charm for spinning straw into gold and a nearby goblin unravelled into fibrous strands. Spells she had not mastered flowed from the book as if she had studied them all her life. All around her, goblins changed from one form to another. With a single word, she turned twelve goblins into geese, which flapped away into the skies.

Avra detoured to the hotel's kitchen to beg for a tray or a large plate and trudged upstairs. The two suites Black Garda had lent them took up half of the top floor of the hotel. On the door of one, the crew had hung a sign that read QUIET PLEASE! THIS ROOM IS FOR SLEEPING ONLY (with a doodle of a bed and an angry shushing face for those of the crew who could not read), so Avra let himself into the other suite.

"You're popular," Viyan commented. "I hadn't realized, somehow."
"I pay my bills on time and I tip generously," Avra said. "And I'm a very easy customer. Sometimes I just ask for a cuddle and have my hair petted. Sometimes I get a handjob and then cry."
Viyan blinked at him and Avra remembered suddenly that they were not in fact part of the crew but a respectable member of society. He forced out a raucous laugh.

It was difficult for Jackson to take things so slowly. Or seriously! But eventually, Eva strung the moves together, showing him what they hoped would work for him.
"This is Sissy dancing, remember," they said. "Imagine she's the one moving your body."
"Like...She's a Muppeteer, and I'm Fozzie Bear?'
"More like Miss Piggy. The diva."
"Whoa. Now, she's a lot to live up."

He went to the freezer and pulled out the bottle of vodka he had stashed there the day he'd arrived. It was the good sh**, distilled in small batches and impossible to buy outside of Russia. He grabbed two glasses and carried them and the bottle outside.
"Is maybe a good time for this," he said, holding up the bottle.
Shane turned warily and snorted when he saw the vodka.

Sane was going to come. The realization hit him suddenly, and, in a panic, he jerked his hips off the bed to remove any friction against his aching cock. Unfortunately, the move also caused him to smash Ilya in the face with his a**.
"Aah! What the f**k, Hollander?"
"Sorry!"
He turned to look over his shoulder, and Ilya was rubbing his jaw and scowling.
"I'm sorry!" Shane said again. "I didn't want to come yet."

"It's..." Shane grimaced. "It's not just me, right?"
"Not just you?"
"I mean...you feel it too, don't you?"
"Feel what?"
"God. You know what I mean! The last time we were...together...it was...different."
Ilya shrugged and looked away. He knew it was the wrong reaction, but he felt a horrifying swell of emotion that he couldn't let Shane see.
"Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about," Shane said angrily.

The Olympics were bulls**t.
Ilya had been on edge all week. It had been days of smiling for the Russian media and mingling with government officials who made his skin crawl. Men and women who supported their country's leader without question and who expected Ilya to do the same. Ilya hadn't had any time to enjoy himself; he'd barely had time to focus on his game.
And it showed.
The Russian men's team was a mess.

He led them up way too many stairs, to the top floor and then used a key to unlock another door. It opened to reveal a large loft apartment, only partially finished. The walls looked like they had been freshly plastered and hadn't been painted yet. There was a ladder leaning against one wall and an open box of tools beside it. The kitchen area had a brand-new countertop and cupboards, but no appliances.

Rozanov ran a hand through his damp hair in a move that was more interesting to Shane than it should have been. Rozanov was so...masculine. Shane was baby-faced and short and couldn't grow proper facial hair and barely had any chest hair. Rozanov was almost exactly the same age as him, but he looked like he had crossed over a magical line to adulthood.
Shane quickly turned his gaze to the floor.

Frex won't come from the other room to recognize his authority. "My calling is from the above, not from you," he shouts.
"I have no doubt," says the well-upholstered official. "But it is I who have come calling, not the 'above.' I have jurisdiction over the citizens here and also the visitors. We need to discuss the recent upsets happening in this community. Words are being spoken."

Elphie will never remember if she and Nessa went down to the edge of the lagoon the next day, or perhaps a week or two later.
Either way, it's early on in their stay in Ovvels, to be sure. One of those moments that stick, though not in sequence, exactly.
Frex and Nanny are on the prowl for a venues to hold an impromptu faith convocation. Told to stay home, the children light out. Lei Leila'ani can't stop them.

Year in and year out, the Quadlings fail to grasp the rationale behind Frex's mission. They've never invited him to convert them in the first place. But then, they're by nature a polite people.
It seems unchanging, the exercise of his calling. He rereads the texts of the unionist fathers. He sermonizes and delivers advice, asked for or no. He smells like citrus peel and beeswax. He stalks about with presence.