Passage of Night

[rejectomorph]

First, there was moonlight revealing the facades of houses across the street. They were gradually swallowed by the shadows of their eaves. Then, for a while the light dazzled the damp street, making it glow like a polished dance floor deserted by its dancers, echoing to no music. It darkened as the moon settled behind the trees to produce a series of images like Japanese prints. Finally subsiding below the horizon, the moon's last, oblique light dusted the undersides of thin clouds so that they glowed brighter than the shadowed woods, and the sky seemed more real than the earth my feet felt. No sooner had the moonlight dissipated than wind arose and swept the sky clear, and starlight as icy as the air deepened the sky and shrank even the tallest trees to slender blades humming the wind's song.