The Blue-black Grassquit Volatinia jacarina (Linnaeus, 1766), popularly known in Brazil as "tiziu", is an inhabitant of open areas, and also common near cities (Marcondes-Machado, 1988).
aquifolium grows to around 3ft, its leaves of spiny-toothed leaflets turning red in winter and the clusters of scented yellow flowers opening in spring, followed by blue-black berries.
From the top: Spiderman, stricken, on the roof of a building against a blue-black sky; Jimmy Stewart dangling from the gutter in Hitchcock's Vertigo, face distorted into a Munch-like rotten potato; a blue King Kong lying dead and monumental at the foot of the World Trade Center.
The slave woman survives and gives birth to Sapphire, "strong and slender as a reed, blue-black and smoldering with the promise of hellfire in her narrowed eyes." By age five, Sapphire is taken away from her mother and sold.