“Fireflies winked, and the darkening bay breathed and sighed like a great dolphin and the thin pure curve of a young moon hung in the green sky...”

“A curve of silver hung amid the brighter specks; it looked to me like a curved dagger, pretty but deadly, as if it might slice the sky in two.”

“Outside, the sky was clear, stars gleaming in its ebony vastness like celestial fireflies. It was bitterly cold, and Hywel's every breath trailed after him in pale puffs of smoke. The glazed snow crackled underfoot as he started towards the great hall.”

“The stillest hour of the night had come, the hour before dawn, when the world seems to hold its breath. The moon hung low, and had turned from silver to copper in the sleeping sky.”

“The fields are black and ploughed, and they lie like a great fan before us, with their furrows gathered in some hand beyond the sky, spreading forth from that hand, opening wide apart as they come toward us, like black pleats that sparkle with thin, green spangles.”

“The only clouds are pale and thin, hung as high as they can manage, like cobwebs in the high arches of a stairwell, and the sky is a freshly scrubbed blue, as permanent-looking as the first day of the holidays.”