Magical things must not be exposed to too much sunlight.

The sun, sides bulging, squashed itself between two hills. It sent up a flare of golden light. The sky, patterned with a million tiny clouds like fish scales was illuminated.

After the kiss some of it still sparkled in the air around her.

Big secrets were catastrophic. However hard you try to hide them, they bob to the surface and you must go over them again and again. They are taken out so often they become worn smooth as a river stone. You have to carry them around you like a baby. The secret grows until you feel like you are a skin that covers it, a thin skin, easily split, ripe.

I need your help,” the boy said, “to save the world.

All those days had been removed, simply and precisely, whole weeks brimming with cloudless blue skies neatly severed and discarded. We needed Beth’s name shouted not whispered.

He did not say goodbye, but she felt him leave. In the shadows of her closed eyes, she saw the forest path and saw him there. When she opened her eyes, he was gone. He had simply ceased to be.

A glimpse, a little piece of their story, flapping like ribbon in the wind.

You are loud and reckless with your thoughts.

Everyone tiptoed backward and forward past the door and looked at her sadness like it was an exhibition. A jewel in its case.