constance | from the livejournal of luthien

Pick passages from five of your favorite books. The first book’s passage should come from the fifth page, the second from the tenth, the third from the fifteenth, the fourth from the twentieth, and the fifth from the twenty-fifth. Do not give the titles and see if your flist guesses the books.

See, what did we have that was any different from what we'd had before? Squeaky voices, but a squeaky voice doesn't do much for you, really--it makes you preposterous, not desirable. And the sprouting pubic hairs were our secret, strictly between us and our Y-fronts, and it would be years before a member of the opposite sex would verify that they were where they should be. Girls, on the other hand, quite clearly had breasts, and, to accompany them, a new way of walking: arms folded over the chest, a posture which simultaneously disguised and drew attention to what had just happened. And then there was makeup and perfume, invariably cheap, and inexpertly, sometimes even comically, applied, but still a quite terrifying sign that things had progressed without us, beyond us, behind our backs.

It took some planning to walk out of the parlor, his back washed with the hum of their voices, open the heavy double doors leading to the dining room, slip up the stairs past all those bedrooms, and not arouse the attention of A and B sitting like big baby dolls before a table heaped with scraps of red velvet. His sisters made roses in the afternoon. Bright, lifeless roses that lay in peck baskets for months until the specialty buyer at Gerhardt's sent the janitor over to tell the girls that they could use another gross. If he did manage to slip by his sisters and avoid their casual malice, he knelt in his room at the window sill and wondered again and again why he had to stay level on the ground. The quiet that suffused the doctor's house then, broken only by the murmur of the women eating sunshine cake, was only that: quiet. It was not peaceful, for it was preceded by and would soon be terminated by the presence of C.

"We mustn't bore D with our worries," said E, quickly. She hates anything which casts a reflection on father.

D said that nothing to do with our household could possibly bore her--I know she thinks our life at the castle is wildly romantic. Then she asked, very diffidently, if she could help us with any advice--"sometimes an outside mind..."

I suddenly felt that I should like to consult her; she is such a sensible little woman--it was she who thought to get me the book on speed-writing. Mother trained us never to talk about our affairs in the village, and I do respect E's loyalty to father, but I was sure D must know perfectly well we are broke.

"If you could suggest some ways of earning money," I said.

It was quite clear to all the magicians that F and G had handled the thing very ill and upon one subject at least--that of H's wonderful library--they did seem remarkably stupid, for they were not able to give any intelligible report of it. What had they seen? Oh, books, many books. A remarkable number of books? Yes, they believed they had found it remarkable at the time. Rare books? Ah, probably. Had they been permitted to take them down and look inside them? Oh no! H had not gone so far as to invite them to do that. But they had read the titles? Yes, indeed. Well then, what were the titles of the books they had seen? They did not know; they could not remember. G said that one of the books had a title that began with a 'B', but that was the beginning and end of his information. It was very odd.

And I walked on, while they shrieked and laughed and shouted and the woman stood on the porch and laughed.

J, said K, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh, no, said J, you'll poison me.

Their tongues will burn, I thought, as though they had eaten fire. Their throats will burn when the words come out and in their bellies they will feel a torment hotter than a thousand fires.
"Goodbye, J," they called as I went by the end of the fence, "don't hurry back."

"Goodbye, J, give our love to K."

"Goodbye, J," but I was at the black rock and there was the gate to our path.