“It was the end of summer. The butterflies were gathering. The cicadas had lifted up their nocturnal tambourines, had been heard, identified, and commented on, and then absorbed into a thrumming darkness that could be ignored and slept through. There were other sounds, of course, a breeze in the pines, a freight train in the distance, the soft beat of the waves against the shore. There was the sound of their limbs moving on the sheets as well, so subtle it was like a finger moving over paper. And there would have been the occasional random illumination, a quick glance of radiance from the lighthouse on the point, the moon between two banks of clouds. A single lamp might have been burning in the bunkhouse where someone who could not sleep was writing a letter destined to be read in a kitchen in a faraway country.”
Urquhart, Jane. “Sanctuary Line.” McClelland & Stewart.
