Heather's Library

Earth’s Children #5:
The Shelters of Stone
by Jean M. Auel

p.21 Suddenly Ayla was reminded of Iza, the woman of the Clan who had been like a mother to her. Iza also knew many secrets, yet, like the rest of the clan, she didn’t lie. With a language of gestures, and nuances conveyed by postures and expressions, they couldn’t lie. It would be known immediately. But they could refrain from mentioning. Though it might be understood that something was being held back, it was allowed, for the sake of privacy.

p.76-77 Ayla had grown up among the Clan thinking of herself as big and ugly because, although she was thinner-boned than the women of the Clan, she was taller than the men, and she looked different, both in their eyes and her own. She was more accustomed to judging beauty in terms of the stronger features of the Clan, with their long broad faces and sloped-back foreheads, heavy overhanging brow ridges, sharp, prominent noses, and large, richly colored brown eyes. Her own blue-gray eyes seemed faded in comparison.
     After she had lived among the Others for a while, she didn’t feel that she looked so strange anymore, but she still could not see herself as beautiful, though Jondalar had told her often enough that she was. She knew what was considered attractive to the Clan, she didn’t quite know how to define beauty in terms of the Others. To her, Jondalar, with his masculine and therefore stronger features and vivid blue eyes was far more beautiful than she.

p.139 She had met so many people, it was hard to remember them all, but Jondalar was right: most people were not bad. I shouldn’t let the few who are unpleasant--Marona, and Brukeval when he behaved like Broud--spoil good feelings toward the rest. I wonder why it’s easier to remember the bad ones. Maybe because there aren’t many.

p.257 “When a child is born, it is filled with élan, the Vital force of life,” the One Who Was First said. “When a child is named, a Zelandoni creates a mark that is a symbol for that spirit, that new person, and paints it or carves it on some object--a rock, a bone, a piece of wood. That mark is called an abelan. Each ablean is different and is used to designate a particular individual. It might be a design made of lines or shapes or dots, or a simplified form of an animal. Whatever comes to mind when the Zelandoni meditates about the infant.”

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