Children were huge, wild creatures full of promise and hope and dirt and mischief.

Stay with me. I’ll show you things that’ll make you laugh in delight, scream in passion, cry for the sheer joy of it.

I promise I will repay you.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked, looking at him, with his bare feet and plain, dark clothes. “With what?”
The smile stayed on his lips. “Jewels, lies, slips of paper, dried flowers, memories of things long past, useless quotations, idle hands, beads, buttons, and mischief.

When he put the old-fashioned mechanical toy on her palm, she stopped breathing. It was a tiny representation of an atom, complete with colored ball bearings standing in for neutrons, protons, and on the outside, arranged on arcs of fine wire, electrons. Turning the key on the side made the electrons move, what she’d thought were ball bearings actually finely crafted spheres of glass that sparked with color. A brilliant, thoughtful, wonderful gift for a physics major.

“Why magnesium?” she asked, identifying the atomic number of the light metal. His hand on her jaw, his mouth on her own. “Because it’s beautifully explosive, just like my X.

The longer you live, the more mistakes you make. And the more sorrows you carry.

How long have you been with Raphael?”
“You ask a lot of questions for a dead woman.”
“What can I say? I prefer to die well-informed.”
-Venom and Elena