“Lines of gulls standing on glassy blue patches of wet sand.”

“The wind blustered in from the sea, setting the horses’ manes streaming sideways, and the gulls wheeled mewing against the blue-and-grey tumble of the sky; and Aquila, riding a little aside from the rest as usual, caught for a moment from the wind and the gulls and the wet sand and the living, leaping power of the young red mare under him, something of the joy of simply being alive that he had taken for granted in the old days.”

“Desert which is immense and from above light brown or red vast rivulets of sand with no human life. As the only land. What land is. Running alongside it and then forward is the deep blue Red Sea — with the edges of the land in very light turquoise blue rim, it is the rim. A very beautiful rim. The people are in the air. There are patches of sand in, as it goes in, the endless sea, the very light turquoise rimmed. So it could be sky, which has white rainless clouds. In the sky or it could be in the sea.Whatever is darker as shadows could be just in the air. Only in the air. Sand patches, rimmed or with the very light blue shallower sea. But only if one's there.”

“So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.”

“At the dune line, just before the whispering stands of sea oats and dune grass began, the sand was as damp and cold as the skin of a snake under my feet.”

“There was a single blue line of crayon drawn across every wall in the house. What does it mean? I asked. A pirate needs the sight of the sea, he said and then he pulled his eye patch down and turned and sailed away.”