Trying, trying, always trying. Trying was my life. I was guaranteed nothing.

Returning my voice to a conversational level, I called back, “Nora, I’m not
attempting to embarrass you or single you out. I know you’re capable. But stay behind Chas, okay? You die, you d i e permanently, and for various reasons that we’ve already gotten angsty about together, I don’t want that to happen.”
“Okay, okay,” she sighed.
“Angsty?” Chas asked. “Ooh! Later, details!”
“Yes, later.” With that, I waved the team forward.

No, not really. But …” Okay, I couldn’t help but gloat a little. “She likes me.”
Samedi didn’t even look at me. “Well of course, you’ve had that bloody uniform on all day. I was half ready to tell you how much I liked you.

The fact that she made this beeline for me both warmed my soul and made me want to turn around, walk out the door, and find a cliff to fling myself off of.

Hope is something that can never be taken from you unless you allow someone to take it. If you never lose hope, you will never truly be poor.

It all seems so worthless. Such a waste of lives. We've spent hundreds of years since the Return buffering the Dark City and trying to maintain it - scraping out a life that will soon be wiped out.

And what of the rest of the world that's already fallen? Stars blinking away, their light slowly fading? Somewhere out there a star's just dying and we'll never know about it. Somewhere another's being born whose light we'll never see.

The Earth will spin, the stars will rearrange themselves around one another and the world will crawl with the dead who one day will drop into nothing ness: no humans left for them to scent, no flesh for them to crave. Everything-all of us-will simply cease to be.