“Their hearts must be husks, ” he sneered inwardly, as he observed the antics of the young parents around him, “shrivelled by the demands of these mewling offspring! ”
Thomasin carried in her arms a large bundle; and having by this time seated herself she began to unroll it, when a baby appeared as the kernel to the husks—dry, warm, and unconscious of travel or rough weather.
Local Glacier Growers 'breed' new glaciers by grafting together—or marrying—fragments of ice from male and female glaciers, then covering them with charcoal, wheat husks, cloths, or willow branches so they can reproduce.
They had no roots and didn't care which solid objects secured them, sand, shells, husks, or pebbles; they didn't ask their hosts for sustenance, just a point of purchase.
These vignettes shift from the present-Eva living as a social pariah, a husk of her former self-to the past, and are jumbled with the non-chronology of memory.