Dead Songbirds
There seemed to be almost nothing left of Lalitha; she was breaking up on him the way dead songbirds did in the wild...
Behold your future, Cavendish the Younger. You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the world's.
I felt a moment of awe, a recognition that life on earth was fragile and delicate, and owed everything to the sun. I turned around and looked at the universe and shivered because it was so vast and essentially empty.