As Roran watched, the man's arms, neck, and chest shriveled, and his bones appeared in sharp relief-from the bowlike curve of his collarbones to the hollow saddle of his hips, where his stomach hung like an empty waterskin. His lips puckered and drew back farther than they were intended to over his yellow teeth, baring them in a grisly snarl, while his eyeballs deflated as if they were engorged ticks being squished empty of blood, and the surrounding flesh sank inward.
Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things__ike composing a fresh metaphor, but on a more complex scale. One night in Hiroshima it occurred to me that the moon behind a certain cloud formation looked very like a painkiller dissolving in a glass of water. I didn__ work toward that simile, it was simply there: I was mugged, as it were, by the similarity between these two very different things. Literary composition can be a similar process. The writer__ real world and the writer__ fictional world are compared, and these comparisons turned into text. But other times literary composition can be a plain old slog, and nothing to do with zones or inspiration. It__ world making and the peopling of those worlds, complete with time lines and heartache.
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Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things__ike composing a fresh metaphor, but on a more complex scale. One night in Hiroshima it occurred to me that the moon behind a certain cloud formation looked very like a painkiller dissolving in a glass of water. I didn__ work toward that simile, it was simply there: I was mugged, as it were, by the similarity between these two very different things. Literary composition can be a similar process. The writer__ real world and the writer__ fictional world are compared, and these comparisons turned into text. But other times literary composition can be a plain old slog, and nothing to do with zones or inspiration. It__ world making and the peopling of those worlds, complete with time lines and heartache.
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In March of 1915, all three of Lord and Lady Chetwynd-Pitt's sons'd been gassed, blown up or machine-gunned in the very same week at the battle of Neuve-Chapelle. All three. Imagine that: On Monday, you've got three sons, by Friday you've got none. Lady Albertina had just, y'know, caved in. Physically, mentally, spiritually, brutally.
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What if the differences between social strata stem not from genomics or inherent xcellence or even dollars, but merely differences in knowledge? Would this not mean the whole Pyramid is built on shifting sands?" I speculated such a suggestion could be seen as a serious deviancy. Melphi seemed delited. "Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' consciences; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding up the mirror." I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves. Melphi relplied, "History suggests, not until they are made to.