Thick, heavy flakes drifted, scything and twirling through the icy night air. They settled on the bare branches of trees and sopped up the pools on the ground. As they touched your face, they feathered gently at your eyelashes, melted and slid down your cheeks and nose. Caught in your mouth, they disappeared into water and the dissolved magic of lost space. Within their spidery crystals, they inhaled all sound and sucked in all colour, leaving a skeleton world created by their own sacrificed mortality. He awoke, his head trapped in a pool of moonlight, panting for water like a dog lapping at a puddle, his mouth dry, his head heavy. Someone had thrown grit in his eyes. Barechested, Pilchard rose and reknotted his chequered sarong, his normal sleeping garb in a bachelor household. Downstairs was water. He padded down the darkened stairs and was surprised to find light in the sitting room, one of the oil lamps turned down low. In two armchairs, pulled together, perched Post and Catchpole, facing the fireplace, a brickbuilt deliberate irrelevance since the British did not know how to sit in a room without the focus of a fire that could never be lit.
