Lucy Christopher Quotes

And it's hard to hate someone once you understand them.

There were tiny stars behind my eyelids, a whole galaxy of tiny, spinning stars.

Ty?" I said, trying out your name, liking the way it sounded. "So what's it like anyway? Australia?"
You smiled then, and your whole face changed with it. It kind of lit up, like there were sunbeams coming from inside you.
"You'll find out," you said.

The land wants you here. I want you here," you called. "Don't you care about that at all?

If there'd been an astronaut on the moon right then, I'm sure I could have seen him. Perhaps he could have looked down and seen me too ... the only one who could.

Because it's magic, this place ... beautiful. And you're beautiful ... beautifully separate. It all fits.

Nobody's bought this land. And no one's going to want it either. It's dying land, lonely land."
"Like me, then," I said.
"Yes, like you." You chewed the corner of your lip. "You both need saving.

It's funny, isn't it?" you started quietly. "How you look up there and find a city, and I look at London and see a landscape?"

I frowned, glancing back at you. "What do you mean 'landscape'?"

"Just everything underneath, I guess." You rubbed your fingers against your beard, thinking. "All that earth and life, always just under the concrete, ready to push back through the pavement and take over the city at any time. All that life beneath the dead."

"London's more than just a pile of concrete," I said.

"Maybe." Your eyes glinted in the dark. "But without humans, the wild would take over. It would only need a hundred years or so for nature to win again. We're just temporary, really.

You saw me before I saw you

Listen," you said.
"To what? There's nothing."
"There is. Maybe not shopping centers and cars, but other things ... buzzing insects, racing ants, a slight wind making the tree creak, there's a honeyeater up there, scuttling around, and the camels are coming.

"To what?" title="Lucy Christopher Quotes: Listen," you said.
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I wrapped my arms around me as tightly as I could, and stared up at the stars. Had I not been so cold and wanting to escape so badly, I could have stared at them forever: They were amazingly beautiful, so dense and bright. My eyes could get lost up there if I left them looking long enough. [ ... ] They swallowed me up. They were like a hundred thousand tiny candles, sending out hope.

Right at that moment it was as if we were the only two people left in the world. And I don't mean that to sound corny; it just honestly did. The only sounds were the droning crickets and chip-chips of the bats, the farawy wind against the sand, and the occasional distant yowl of a dingo. There were no car horns.No trains. No jack-hammers. No lawnmowers No planes. No sirens. No alarms. No anything human. If you'd told me that you'd saved me from a nuclear holocaust, I might have believed you.

You nodded towards the cup. "Want
more?"
I shook my head. "What about the car?"
"Didn't find it. You were heading back towards me when I
found you."
"Towards ... ?"
You nodded. "So I reckoned the car had probably got stuck
or died somehow, and you were just coming home."
"Home?"
"Yeah." Your mouth twitched. "Back to me.

When I write this in bed, I can almost hear the echo of the wind over the sand, or the groans of wooden panels around me. I can almost smell the dustiness of the camel, taste the bitterness of saltbush. And when I dream, your warm hands cover my shoulders. Your whispers carry stories and sound like the rustle of spinifex. I still wear that ring, you know ... at night, when no one is watching.

Lets face it, you did steal me. But you saved my life too. And somewhere in the middle, you showed me a place so different and beautiful, I can never get it out of my mind. And I can't get you out of there either. You're stuck in my brain like my own blood vessels.

I love you," you said, simple as anything.

The sand stretched out gray and ghostlike and illuminated, a column of light leading forward. It was like something a dead person would see, a tunnel leading toward heaven.

But without humans, the wild would take over. It would only take a hundred years or so for nature to win again.

Who says I'm not Superman?" You were looking at me with one eye closed against the sun. I shrugged
"You would have recued me by now if you were Superman." I said quietly.
"Who says I haven't?
" Anyone would say you haven't.
Anyone's just looking at it wrong then." You pushed yourself up a little, onto your elbows."Anyways, I can't steal you and rescue you. That would give me multiple personalities."
And you don't have them already?

It was like I existed in a kind of parallel universe, thinking thoughts and feelings that no one else understood.

You know, maybe if we'd met as ordinary people, one day, maybe ... maybe things might have been different. Maybe I could have loved you.

Where are you going?" I asked.
"The middle of nowhere."
"I thought this was it."
"Nah." You shook your head. "This is just the edge.

You're right, he's a killer," you said. "A rooster with some serious issues.

There is no need to put your heart in a bottle, then you will die.
- Ty from Stolen

Don't do that again," you said.
I blinked.
"You'll hurt yourself."
"Does it matter?" My voice was only a whisper.
"Of course.

I called the rooster Dick, after you.

I can't save you like that, Ty.

It didn't make me glow. I felt more like I was fading away, like the world had forgotten me.

I could hear you, talking to the daffodils and tulips, whispering to the fairies that lived inside their petals. Each separate flower had a different family inside it.

When the darkness gets easier, you know you're sinking deeper, becoming dead yourself.

I want you to see that the person I glimpsed running beside the camel, running to save my life, is the person you can choose to be.

The sun was bobbing on the horizon, just peeking over. Its light shimmered on the sand behind you, making your body look like it was glowing ... like it had a kind of aura.

You moved too much like a hunter, padding silently next to the row of plastic plants as you made your line toward me.

Ninja chicken isn't he?" You grinned at me, rolling your sleeves up."We'll see about that."
You reached into the cage. Instantly Dick was onto your hand, clawing at you, biting chunks with his beak.
"Godamn rooster!

It was like I'd stepped out into an afterlife. Only there were no angels.

You'd picked me up, so gently, as if I were a leaf you didn't want to crush. You'd carried me somewhere. And I'd curled into your arms, tiny as a stone.

I made it," you said, gruffly, "for you."
You shoved it onto my finger. It was roughly carved, shaped from a lump of something colourful and cold ... a ring made entirely from a gemstone. It was beautiful. It glinted emerald greens and blood reds over my skin, and had tiny flecks of gold catching the light. I couldn't stop staring at it.
"Why?" I asked.
You didn't answer that. Instead you touched the ring gently and looked piercingly at me, unsaid questions in your eyes.

Everyone will look. Even if they think it's impolite, still they will look.

I'd seen you before ... somewhere ... . But who were you? My eyes kept flitting back to your face.

I can't save you like that Ty.
What you did to me wasn't this brilliant thing, like you think it was. You took me away from everything - my parents, my friends, my life. You took me to the sand and the heat, the dirt and isolation. And you expected me to love you. And that's the hardest bit. Because I did, or at least, I loved something out there.
But I hated you too. I can't forget that.

The dark eyes are for the villains ... the Grim Reaper,the Joker, zombies. All dark.

You moved my head so that it was lying in your lap.
"Keep your eyes open," you said. "Stay with me."
I tried. It felt like I was using every muscle in my face. But I did it. I saw you from upside down, your lips above my eyes and your eyes above my lips.
"Talk to me," you said.
My throat felt like it was closing up, as if my skin had swollen, making my throat a lump of solid flesh. I gripped your hand.
"Keep watching me, then," you said. "Keep listening.

You carried it in your hand like it was the most precious thing. It reminded me of what I used to be like, when I lived out here ... It reminded me of finding something wild and knowing it was important somehow, to something." You drew another circle over your knee, then filled it in with specks. "It made me realize where I belonged ... not in a city park with cheap store-bought spirits, but out here in the land I knew, with the real ones.

Doesn't that hurt?" I said. "Yep." "How do you keep them in there?" "I'm stubborn." You grinned. "Stubborn as a waddywood. And anyway, pain means it's healing." "Not always.

Maybe when it all ends, it will be us and the desert oaks," you murmured, "battling it out.

A sign that a person could do something different ... that they could be hooked by a drug more wild than alcohol.

Everyone wanted answers I wasn't ready to give.

You saw me before I saw you. You had that look in your eyes, as if you wanted something. Wanted it for a long time.

It's hard to hate someone once you understand them. It felt so mixed up.

But what else can I do, other than to plead with you like this? Other than to write down my story, our story, to show you that what you've done ... to make you realize that what you did wasn't fair, wasn't right.

One day they'll let you out of that dry, empty cell. You'll return to the Separates, and you'll feel the rain once more. And you'll grow straight, this time, toward this sunlight. I know you will.

You told me once of the plants that lie dormant through the drought, that wait, half-dead, deep in the earth. The plants that wait for the rain. You said they'd wait for years, if they had to; that they'd almost kill themselves before they grew again. But as soon as those first drops of water fall, those plants begin to stretch and spread their roots. They travel up through the soil and sand to reach the surface. There's a chance for them again.

I didn't want the person standing there, beside the bed, to have the same face I'd found so attractive at the airport. But you were there all right: the blue eyes, blondish hair, and tiny scar. Only you didn't look beautiful this time. Just evil.

The deep blue of your eyes had secrets. I wanted them.

I ate the roll, and forced down some more sparkling wine. When your eyes closed against the sun again, and I had nothing else to look at I glanced quickly at your chest, curious, really. I'd only seen chests like that in magazines. I wondered if that's how you'd got all your money ... modeling. I looked down at my stomach. I grabbed at it, seeing how much fat I could lift up in a roll.
"Don't worry," you said, one eye open again like a crocodile, watching me. "You're beautiful." You tipped your head back again "Beautiful," you murmured. "Perfect."
"You wouldn't know. You're built like some sort of supermodel." I bit my lip, wishing I hadn't complimented you like that. "Or a stripper," I added. "Prostitute."
"I wouldn't want you to think I'm repulsive," you said, half smiling.
"Too late."
You opened your other eye to squint at me. "Will you ever give me a break?

I mean, that star over there is blinking at me madly now, but for how long? An hour or two, or for the next million years? And how long will we sit here like this? Just another moment, or the rest of our lives? You know which one I'd prefer ...

I was surprised at her gentleness, her willingness to give in.

I remember the lights turning into blurs of blazing fire. I remember the air-conditioning chilling my arms. The smell of coffee smudging into the smell of eucalyptus.

My eyelids are heavy as stone. But when I sleep, I'll have that dream again. I haven't wanted to tell you about it, until now.
I'll be in the Separates, and I'll be digging with my bare hands. When I've made a hole deep enough to plant a tree, I'll place my fingers inside. I'll slip off the ring you gave me. It will catch the light and glint a rainbow of colors over my skin, but I will take my hands away, leaving it there. I'll sprinkle the earth back over it, and I will bury it. Back where it belongs.
I'll rest against a tree's rough trunk. The sun will be setting, it's dazzling color threading through the sky, making my cheeks warm.
Then I will wake up.
Good-bye, Ty,
Gemma

I thought you wanted to catch a camel," you tried again.
"No."
"I want to."
"Well, you go then."
You laughed. "I want your beautiful face where I can see it

It was so big, that view. I'll never remember it properly. How can anyone remember something that big? I don't think people's brains are designed for memories like that. They're designed for things like phone numbers, or the color of someone's hair. Not hugeness.

How would she find her herd? How would she find you?

I remember that feeling of skin. It's
strange to remember touch more than thought. But my fingers
still tingle with it.

There were tiny rainbows in that glass. I turned it so a rainbow danced across my hand.

Anyway, it's easy to be what people want: give them something to stare at, nod and smile, tell them they're gorgeous.