Sarah Connell’s Reviews > The Outskirter's Secret > Status Update

“Outside, the night was cool and clear…The tents were faint shapes, difficult to discern; their black star-shadows seemed to hold more substance than they themselves did. Rowan passed in and out of those shadows, half expecting to feel their edges on her skin, like the touch of the water's surface on a rising swimmer's face. The fire pit was cold, with the ancient, deserted smell of dead ashes.”

“She sat in the gloom. A shaft of sunlight slanted in through the entrance, carving from the shadows a single canted block of illumination, lying across the bright-patterned carpet. Colors glowed, brilliant: sharp planes, intricate cross-lines. There seemed to be two carpets: a shadowy one covering the entire tent-floor, and another, smaller one lying before her, constructed purely of colored light.”

“The world was a swirl of red and brown, shifting and shuddering, and the air was awash with sound: an endless hissing and a patternless pattering chatter that filled her ears completely and overflowed, taking up residence in her buzzing skull. …
She came to a stop like a ship at sea and turned into the wind, sails luffing. She rocked against nonexistent swells.”

“…hills ranged, broken by two staggered ridges, then falling faintly lower as they reached out toward the horizon. A far lake sparkled silver in the distance, edged with looming dark shapes…
The air held a scent, like cinnamon and sour milk, over the freshness of departed rain. The tent beside Rowan wafted up a miasma of must and goat. Somewhere someone was roasting meat.”

Bel’s my favorite

“The silence…seemed endless, holding within it all the time needed for the mind to reach across the wide world, across time and history. She felt empty, but not diminished, as if all that lay in her heart had left her body to become water, sky, the air itself.”

Starting off with a bang