once-smooth

• “Those around her misread it as joy—such is the ruin that time has made of her once-smooth skin.”

  Simon & Schuster: Fire The Sky

• “Yet I can tell most of the lines on her once-smooth complexion are due to stress.”

  Simon & Schuster: Thirst No. 3

• “The beautiful hair I see in those old pictures is now flecked with gray at least until I make it to my hair colorist, and wrinkles are taking over my once-smooth skin.”

  Simon & Schuster: Chicken Soup for the Soul: Devotional Stories for Women

• “Others are inspired by wives who have had successful procedures--or are kind enough to ask why their husbands' once-smooth brows now appear permanently furrowed.”

  Forbes: Most Popular Plastic Surgery for Men

• “The black of dirt and old blood caked under the nails and in the tiny creases in the once-smooth skin.”

  Hard Truth

• “What was happening instead was that the once-smooth lines of the ship were bending and distorting as Angelmass traced out a leisurely path of destruction through bracing girders and supporting bulkheads, twisting and tearing them out of line and crumpling them like thin foil.”

  Angelmass

• “His once-smooth shoulders were now adorned with tusks hollowed out to inject scorpion-fish poison in anyone he fought.”

  Time Streams

• “As the wind whispered through the evergreens, clumps of snow splattered around them, leaving pockmarks scattered on the once-smooth white surface, depressions that the wind seemed to begin to fill immediately with feathery white powder that scudded along the snow.”

  Fall of Angels

• “The Griffin, up close, bears its own scars: gouges in the once-smooth railings, patches on the single sail still unfurled, and an unseen and lingering sense of chaos.”

  The Towers of the Sunset

• “His carefreeness was gone, and his once-smooth face was creased with permanent worry lines.”

  Simon & Schuster: The Trellisane Confrontation

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