A crow. Hopping down a branch over her head. Staring at her with one black eye. Then another. “Hello, cousin.” She straightened up, boots firm beneath her. “What’s the word?” “Craaahhk!”

T Thorn Coyle, Alighting on His Shoulders: Ten Tales From Sideways Worlds

Consider also:

  1. “the rest of us have been fighting an unconscious war in order to buy time. We have been losing, but losing as slowly as humanly possible. “
  2. “Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, her war, her taking on a symbol and a reality that outweighed her. Now my insurance rates will go up, she realized as she climbed from her car. In this world you pay for tilting with evil in cold, hard cash.”
  3. She had just, through dwelling on the shite of modern life, taken her seat in the waiting room for death. She spat on the ground and swore under her breath.
  4. RIDE
  5. “Not a clichéd horned jinn, you understand, but a daunting, invisible entity that defied the laws of physics: it could slip in and out of time, could swap its senses, hear out of its nostrils, smell with its eyes. It could even fly like the tales of yore said.”