Dust--Chapter 7, PG-13

[librarian_7]

I'm actually well along in chapter 8, I promise...it's been too long, but I keep getting sidetracked, with other stories!

Lucky

[Lucy]

I'm actually well along in chapter 8, I promise...it's been too long, but I keep getting sidetracked, with other stories!

Lucky

I understand. I am just glad to know it is on your mind.
L

[Phoenix]

Slade seemed to reach a final decision, wiping a hand over his mouth as he looked at little Sally Watkins. He might be able to walk away from this man, but she needed his help. And if he’d never cared before what anyone thought of him, it occurred to him that he was tired of being nothing but a disappointment to everyone. He nodded to Josef. “When?” he asked, with a feeling he’d assented to his own execution. What the hell, he thought. Life was wildly overrated, at least the way he’d been doing it.

Josef smiled like a spider regarding a freshly-caught fly. “Nightfall,” he said. “Come back at nightfall.”

May I just "say"

[wollstonecraft61]

Again, the beautiful imagery. I can close my eyes and see this sunrise on the horizon, and it is comforting somehow.

The light was growing, the low clouds streaking the dawn sky with bands of color, orange, purple, pink against the graying expanse.

Truer words were never spoken.

He’d seen this type in two varieties. The decadent sort lolled obscenely on a throne, dreaming opium fueled dreams of grandeur and conquest. Those were usually hereditary nobility, men born to the purple who carried their self-importance as a taint in their inbred blood. The others, like this one, were more up-through-the-ranks, the ones burning with the zeal of some vision, the ones who claimed divine sanction for whatever holy madness they undertook.

It didn’t really matter, Josef supposed. Either type was capable of extreme violence. Their ends, they felt, justified any means, whether the goal was personal power, or the kingdom of God on earth.

[Shadow]

Josef's thoughts about the Colonel, and the men he has known before who are like him, really gives a feel of his true age.

Sally must be wondering what his plan is for tonight! Me too .... looks like Josef has won over Slade, a nice touch.

[redwinter101]

At re-read, it was still this line that grabbed me most:

“Ah.” He gave her an enigmatic smile. “I’m a creature of whim, Mrs. Watkins. And my whim, now, is to be opposed to senseless slaughter of innocents. I haven’t always been so nice. But there you are.”

Just perfect.

Although I confess, I had been enjoying the suspense and uncertainty about all of their futures and that really was spoiled for me by finding out that Slade reappears in later stories, but it's still a delightfully tense and gripping story.

Red