At that instant the hag's noisy breathing stopped and with it all other sound. Her eyes opened, showing only whites - milky ovals infinitely eerie in the dark root-tangle of her sharp features and stringy hair. The gray tip of her tongue traveled like a large maggot around her lips.
The pieces of the puzzle are visible, but not the grand design. Images flicker and dance like memories, hinting at events to come. They scatter the moment I reach for them only to re-form to taunt me. I who never truly possessed them, nor may I ever.They do tell me this: a time of great change approaches and it’s not enough to watch. We must act. We can’t count on others to do our work for us or all may be lost.- Oracle Lilian’s Diary, Winter of 3765
You can tell the future?''More like the future mugs me from time to time.' Rachel said'I speak prophecies. The oracle spirit kind of hijacks me once in a while, and speaks important stuff that doesn't make any sense to anybody. But yeah, the prophecies tell the future.
In his mind, Inman likened the swirling paths of vulture flight to the coffee grounds seeking pattern in his cup. Anyone could be oracle for the random ways things fall against each other. It was simple enough to tell fortunes if a man dedicated himself to the idea that the future will inevitably be worse than the past and that time is a path leading nowhere but a place of deep and persistent threat. The way Inman saw it, if a thing like Fredericksburg was to be used as a marker of current position, then many years hence, at the rate we're going, we'll be eating one another raw.
Being the soothsayer of the tribe is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
The tears were there, waiting to make their escape. But she wouldn’t let them. Not this time. She couldn’t. Because if there was one thing she had to do now, it was be strong and brave. She just had to be strong and brave for one week. That was no time at all. And when the week was over and Milo had found his true mate, she would disappear.