Danika Stone Quotes

It's not 1950. A girl can ask a guy out if she wants.

Alright. I'm over on the dark side. You'd better have the cookies I've been promised.

Relax, Xander. It's only two lines."
He closed his eyes and leaned into her, his arms wrapping her back. "But it's still lines in a real film, and if I mess it up-"
"They'll have you do it again. And again... and again." Liv laughed. "No big deal. Life is full of second chances.

Beside her, Rich had gone very still. It was like he'd fallen into himself and was poised under the surface, waiting to come back. The part of Lou that read interactions like this - knew these things the way she knew how an engine worked - felt the urge to push, but this time she held back. She wanted to hear his untainted answer.

The town was as barren as an empty movie set, the only movement from deer that wandered the boulevards. His eyes skimmed silent streets as he searched for the bed and breakfast. A half-grown fawn, grazing near the side of the road, lifted its head and hurried off to its mother.

And then they half-ran, half-skipped the last eight blocks to her apartment, their bodies connected by their crossed arms. Half a block away, their combined shadow looked like the wings of a single sea bird, wheeling in a bright sky. Two blocks further, and they looked like two boats, alone on an endless ocean. One block from that, and their joined bodies merged into a symbol of infinity.

Liv had made it to Dragon Con. She had people to stay with and money in her pocket. Now all she needed to do was meet Spartan and she could die happy.

This advice from a college freshman carrying a cane?"

"It's a walking stick, I'll have you know."

"Same difference."

"Hardly. It's fashion.

Xander stood at the end of the bed, hands on hips, the jacket she'd helped him sew thrown open, a gold-threaded waistcoat glimmering underneath. He was the Regency hero today, but she didn't feel like being saved.

Hormones, it seemed, we're making a much-delayed appearance in her life.

Liv was horrified.

Cole didn't see her for the rest of the weekend, and he was glad.
She wasn't in class on Monday either. That made it easier.
Tuesday she was still missing.

In his stupor, the forest had begun to change. The sounds were confusing, his eyes blurring in his exhaustion. He tugged another branch out of the way, gasping as a jagged twig poked through the palm of his hand, momentarily catching there. The pain was almost an afterthought, his fingers no longer working effectively.

He couldn't be more than forty-five, but Murray Miles was stooped, old before his time. The mountains of Alberta had the ability to bend those who lived here.
That, or it broke them.

Trapped on a school bus for an hour each morning and each evening, she devoured book after book. She explored a hundred worlds, indifferent to her peers and the passing of the universe.

Shadows stretched from one side of the street to the other, reaching up the walls like fingers as the street lamps came on. In the north, a bank of dark clouds was building above the ridge of mountains, the tops of Buchanan and Crandell already fading into misty half-light. The last pigmented bands of sunset gilded the sides of buildings in orange light, but the rattle of wind against the panes of glass brought with it a promise of rain.
Autumn was coming, but no one save Hunter Slate seemed to notice the change.

It made sense, Amanda decided. People thrived on the misfortunes of others: her mother was the perfect example of that. Can't see a car accident, she thought, for wanting to climb inside and join in.

Liv grabbed the cookie nearest her and broke it open.
"It's up to you to make your happy ending."
Liv stared at it a moment, rereading the words. Did it mean life? Because if it did, then Liv disagreed. Sometimes life was downright unfair. Bad things happened to good people.

She stared, wide eyed as glass-walled elevators shot up fifty-two floors like pods in a launch tube. Everything - from the glaringly bright carpet swirling with psychedelic lines; to the hotel's open ceiling ringed by storey after storey of balconies, the distant roof so high it made her head spin; to the people decked out in cosplay - was torn from a science fiction novel. It seemed Liv had spent the last eighteen years in search of her people, and in one sudden explosion of fate, they'd all been brought together in this place in time. Her eyes filled with tears as a sudden awareness filled her.
They were all nerds.

Ava turned to the side, staring out into the dark. In profile, her face was suddenly tired and sad, and Cole felt the urge to wrap himself around her. To protect her from whatever was dragging her down.

Thursday afternoon, the dark clouds closed in, and by Friday morning a heavy rain was falling. The mountain peaks were hazy sentinels, disappearing into misty fog that clung to the valley.

She stared at the surface of her coffee, swirling in her mug. Tiny universes rose and fell in the liquid depths as the moment dragged out into uncomfortable territory. Oh god! her mind screamed. (God didn't answer.)

Cole felt like he'd stumbled into some arcane Templar practise, his sense of ease disappearing the moment the cups were pulled from the shelf.

Sometimes," she whispered, her lips brushing his cheek, "you need to be lost in order to be found.

She scanned the Starveil posts, her mood darkening. Spartan had been a part of her life since elementary school. Losing him felt like having a piece of herself torn away. No amount of fix-it fics or alternate universes could change the fact her one true character had died.

With a calmness born from exhaustion and terror, the shaking of his body stilled, his heart slowing. The cougars were burnished gold in the moonlight, their shapes bright against the damp grey cliff. The two cubs moved across the ragged edge of the rocky outcrop, their mother a stone's throw below. Rich gasped as the female in front jumped to a lower ledge, balancing on the small precipice. She watched him warily, her head moving back and forth as if trying to ascertain what he was, and whether he was worth the bother.

In seconds an 'up' elevator came rushing toward them. The doors opened, revealing a mostly-empty interior.
"Sometimes," he said, "you have to go up to go down."
Liv followed him in, marveling at the scene below them. She could see the full scope of Dragon Con from her bird's eye vantage, the floor a living mass of bodies. Tiny toy-sized people in cosplay moved in bright splotches of color ten stories down. And it wasn't just one section. The atrium level was equally packed, the hallways leading to ballrooms around the hotel teaming with people. With an unsettling rush, the elevator sprang upward, the figures shrinking into specks. Liv's stomach contracted and she pulled back from the glass. They were incredibly high.

Make a wish," Oliver said, gesturing to the upturned cup, "and turn it clockwise three times.

Everyone puts them on a pedestal, but we shouldn't. Acting is a service industry, as much as waiting tables. An actor works for us, not the other way around.

You can do it now. You can't say you've never dated, because you have. A lot of people, actually." Xander's gave her a mischievous grin. "You've leveled up, dearest. You're an expert on dating compared to Liv of six months ago.

Over the slow pass of winters and summers, Amanda had grown to understand the cycles that made up small-town life. She knew that fewer tourists meant easier work for the staff, but fewer tips for the servers, and less chance of picking up extra hours. A busy summer kept everyone hopping and the tills full, but it also shifted the steady pace of life, tugging it into a frenetic rate.

I'm very cute, you know. And I'm not sure you've heard, but I have five thousand pounds a year. I've taken a place in Boulder for the season. Miss Dashwood and her sister will vouch for my parentage.

Cole Thomas.'
The name, like an incantation, was on her lips.

Dating' stressful. I'd have to dress up.

Her gaze darted back to the computer screen. THIS IS YOUR CALL TO ACTION. If she posted this, it needed to be real. She needed people to believe Spartan could come back. They needed to trust that he'd made it out of the ship. It couldn't just be fangirl to fangirl, writing Starveil AU's that never really happened. This would be the guerrilla warfare of character ships. The fans would have to reweave the details they had into a new explanation of those last seconds of film. They'd take no prisoners, leave no wounded fans behind. But, as in any war, that meant the intel behind the revolution had to stay secret for as long as possible.
Fandom had to believe.

The uneasy expression returned and his mouth twisted scornfully. She waited, certain he was going to say something. Lou'd heard it too many times before: a woman doing a man's work. She'd already decided how she was going to cut him down if he did. Instead, he said nothing.

She'd just thrown gasoline on the fire. Now it was up to fandom to keep it burning.

He pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the road and parked, cell phone tight in one hand, his eyes on the landscape before him. From here he could see the foothills rippling out like a blanket from the ragged edge of the mountains. They spread in loose folds until becoming the flat expanse of prairie that crossed all the way to the Great Lakes. July's bounty was a brash flare of colour: wind combed through golden tracts of wheat and sun-bright canola so brilliant he had to squint.
The truck was balanced along the edge of an invisible wall which blocked Waterton from the rest of the world. He hadn't thought about how very real that barrier was; now that his phone was reconnected, it felt like a physical presence. He wasn't quite sure what he'd find on the other side.

It was like a mask had been pulled away from his face, uncovering a monster hidden beneath his friendly façade.

She was all about the present. Paint and blood and lust. The now.

What's the point?" her father muttered brokenly the day of the funeral. In the last months his shoulders had curled like an autumn leaf.
"The point is that we're not alive unless we also die," Louise said.

If #SpartanSurvived failed in its efforts, no one would be the wiser. There was no risk to her online persona. No backlash from haters. Anonymity's cloak both protected her and kept the torch of Spartan alive. Because as much as fandom knew a fan had created the post, the faceless message held the faint promise of authenticity. And if people believed it, then the magic was real. They could change Spartan's fate, because they thought they could, and tonight's video would cast the first spell.

If you're trying to figure out why something's not working," Old Lou had explained, "just focus on the things that do work. Move through those things first and eventually you'll find the one part that's stuck.

Everyone has their own life, their own experiences. And sometimes we get pulled into the experiences of others." She glanced to the kitchen window and the faintly visible mountains beyond. She didn't want to think about Hunter's brusque phone call. "Their karma, so to speak, bumping into us... jostling us along the way. The lesson has nothing to do with us. It's their karma, not ours.

Ready for a selfie, m'lady?

Sometimes you have to wait out the night," she said quietly "Morning always comes.

You're an old soul, Ava..." he'd begun, his voice tired.
"God, Dad... Let's not do this now, please..."
"It's true. You are. But that means you have to choose your life… not just react to it.

She was determined to keep her promise of 'no fandom' to her mother. Trouble was, fandom was more than a hobby, it was a support system. Without it, Liv had no one to talk to when she was lonely. She had nothing to look forward to after school, and no outlet for creativity. Liv found herself spiraling back into melancholy.
She got up.
She went to classes.
She came home... And then did it all over again. Sleep became the escape that fandom had once been.

There were streetlights here, but they were so far apart and surrounded by trees that light dropped away to solid black between them. The skin on the back of his neck crawled as he became aware of the darkness. He didn't usually walk around after nightfall, but tonight he'd had no choice without his car. The wind lifted his hair, leaving him shivering; a voice in his mind chattered nervously.
There was someone in my yard the other night...

Lou stood at the kitchen sink, her eyes unfocused on her hazy reflection in the window. Outside the sky was fading from steely blue to indigo. The mountain range beyond was a solid sheet of black, cut out by a child's sloppy scissors.