title: Shadows After Dark
author:  Ouida Crozier 
description: A tender, gracefully written, and richly poetic novel which will echo in your memories long after you have read the last page.
zlib_text: ## Prologue
  
  
  BLINKING INTO MOLTEN SILVER sunlight, Aileea dinAthos emerged from the ranch
  house to find her father sitting on the afterdeck, clad only in khaki shorts.
  A cup of black chai steamed in his hand. A white eyeshade shielded his face
  from the glare of tiny Eris, burning a hole in the blue-white sky to the east,
  not far above the ocean that was their world. She stood on tiptoe, stretched
  arms high above her head, hand locked on wrist, back arching. She wore just a
  white thong swimsuit bottom and a sidearm belt. Eris light fell on her bare
  brown skin like a rain of needles. The sky was clear but for a bloated gray
  worm of smoke sprawled across the southern horizon and a bank of slate-colored
  clouds to the northeast. That would probably not last past noon, but like any
  true Vare she was prepared to enjoy the moment to the fullest. She came up
  behind her father then, making no more noise than she customarily did, which
  was none, despite the light fall of volcanic ash that dusted