It was in December, when the nights dress early. An unruly rain had got itself entangled in an icy wind and was taking stabs at it. In a copse nearby, hunters were hiding, one knee poised on the twigs beneath them. Their migratory game in this dismal weather was a flight of panicking thrushes; the marksmen’s eyes, on these rich lands of theirs where the plots were too neatly aligned, imagined the birds at sunset, in a hurry to die.
The depths of a bed are zealous but very cold.
[MH]