Dry Crystals

"Within a few kilometres of home, the night caught up with her.

"The full moon became an opalescent smear upon the sky, then darkened into black. In the beam of her headlamp, a few random snowflakes drifted and gleamed like
dustmotes, then increased to block her view in a blinding tunnel of cold stars.

"She stepped down from the bike, turned off the headlamp, and found herself in a bone-grey world with a hint of solid darkness on the left, where the mountainside formed
a rampart of ghostly aspen trunks. To the right, open fields vanished into nowhere. The only sense of life and motion came through the trudging of her boots, the sliding unsteadiness of the bicycle at her side, the cold melting kisses on the unprotected circle of her face."

From "The Vast Impatience of the Night."

But when I went out this evening, I felt as if grains of sand were being tossed at my eyes -- a shame, because the tiny dry crystals formed columns of light that swayed under the streetlamps, and they were beautiful to see... when I could see.