Her sister always got the nicest things because she screamed loudest.

I put my hand to my chest—my heart was going nutso.

The vegetables were okay, but the soup was nothing to write home about.

Other beasts, too, roamed at their graceful will across the landscape: the ox and the wide-horned aurochs, the slouching camelopard, the corkindrill — each animal as fat as a burgher and similarly complacent.