Hoarfrost Quotes

Her heart—it had been meant for her heart. And he had taken that arrow for her. The killing calm spread through her like hoarfrost. She’d kill them all. Slowly. They reached the second bridge just as Aedion’s barrage of arrows halted, his quiver no doubt emptied. She shoved Rowan onto the planks. “Run,” she said. “No—”. “Run.” It was a voice that she’d never heard herself use—a queen’s voice— that came out, along with the blind yank she made on the blood oath that bound them together. His eyes flashed with fury, but his body moved as though she’d compelled him. He staggered across the bridge, just as— Aelin whirled, drawing Goldryn and ducking just as the Wing Leader’s sword swiped for her head.

A Robin said: The Spring will never come, And I shall never care to build again. A Rosebush said: These frosts are wearisome, My sap will never stir for sun or rain. The half Moon said: These nights are fogged and slow, I neither care to wax nor care to wane. The Ocean said: I thirst from long ago, Because earth's rivers cannot fill the main. — When Springtime came, red Robin built a nest, And trilled a lover's song in sheer delight. Grey hoarfrost vanished, and the Rose with might Clothed her in leaves and buds of crimson core. The dim Moon brightened. Ocean sunned his crest, Dimpled his blue, yet thirsted evermore.

It was an overcast late November morning, the grass splintered by hoarfrost, and winter grinning through the gaps in the clouds like a bad clown peering through the curtains before the show begins.

There were so many miracles at work: that a blossom might become a peach, that a bee could make honey in its thorax, that rain might someday fall. I thought then about the seasons changing, and in the gray of night I could almost will myself to see the azure sky, the gold of the maple leaves, the crimson of the ripe apples, the hoarfrost on the grass.

床前明月光 疑是地上霜 举头望明月 低头思故乡 《静夜思》 Moonlight spreads before my bed. I wonder if it’s hoarfrost on the ground. I raise my head to watch the moon And lowering it, I think of home. “REFLECTION IN A QUIET

It was one January morning, very early—a pinching, frosty morning—the cove all grey with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones, the sun still low and only touching the hilltops and shining far to seaward.

On Monday, when the sun is hot I wonder to myself a lot: “Now is it true, or is it not, “That what is which and which is what?” On Tuesday, when it hails and snows, The feeling on me grows and grows That hardly anybody knows If those are these or these are those. On Wednesday, when the sky is blue, And I have nothing else to do, I sometimes wonder if it’s true That who is what and what is who. On Thursday, when it starts to freeze And hoar-frost twinkles on the trees, How very readily one sees That these are whose—but whose are these? On

A whole summer ahead to cross off the calendar, day by day. Like the goddess Siva in the travel books, he saw his hands jump everywhere, pluck sour apples, peaches, and midnight plums. He would be clothed in trees and bushes and rivers. He would freeze, gladly, in the hoarfrosted ice-house door. He would bake, happily, with ten thousand chickens, in Grandma's kitchen.

She was perhaps seventeen when it happened. She was in Central Park, in New York. It was too warm for such an early spring day, and the hammered brown slopes had a dusting of green of precisely the consistency of that morning's hoarfrost on the rocks. But the frost was gone and the grass was brave and tempted some hundreds of pairs of feet from the asphalt and concrete to tread on it. Hers were among them. The sprouting soil was a surprise to her feet, as the air was to her lungs. Her feet ceased to be shoes as she walked, her body was consciously more than clothes. It was the only kind of day which in itself can make a city-bred person raise his eyes. She did. For a moment she felt separated from the life she lived, in which there was no fragrance, no silence, in which nothing ever quite fit nor was quite filled. In that moment the ordered disapproval of the buildings around the pallid park could not reach her; for two, three clean breaths it no longer mattered that the whole wide world really belongs to images projected on a screen; to gently groomed goddesses in these steel-and-glass towers; that it belonged, in short, always, always to someone else.

A Blackberry Winter by Stewart Stafford Pond ice beneath the hawthorn tree, Reeds grasping from the frigid sculpture, Freezing fog clinging to land and foliage, Nature hindered but still in amelioration. Horses in crunching frosted footsteps march, To break the water trough's thick glaze, And drink thirstily in raw, jagged gulps, Until the thaw smoothes itself upon milder days. A swan slips and skates on the icicled river, Hoarfrost-encrusted rocks a guard of honour, The Anatidae ascension, maladroit but effective, Sure to pluck better days from its plumed reign. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

It will be fine,” Christine clapped Griffin encouragingly on the arm. “If it comes to it, you and I are hardly helpless against the otherworldly. Iskander comes from an entire line of monster hunters. And Whyborne is a monster himself.” “Excuse me!” I exclaimed. “I don’t appreciate these slurs against my ancestry.

I thought of many an autumn I had known: Seemly autumns approaching deliberately, with amplitude. I thought of wild asters, Michaelmas daisies, mushrooms, leaves idling down the air, two or three at a time, warblers twittering and glittering in every bush ('Confusing fall warblers,' Peterson calls them, and how right he is): the lingering yellow jackets feeding on broken apples; crickets; amber-dappled light; great geese barking down from the north; the seesaw noise that blue jays seem to make more often in the fall. Hoarfrost in the morning, cold stars at night. But slow; the whole thing coming slowly. The way it should be.

Few things trigger old memories so quickly as authority figures from our youth. I’m not saying those memories are necessarily good ones; they’re simply old and tend to cast us back into roles we thought we grew out of long ago. Sometimes the memories are warm and blanket us like a mother’s love. More often, however, they have the sting of hoarfrost, which bites at first, then numbs and settles in the bones for a deep, extended chill.

It’s a dark night, sang the kettle, and the rotten leaves are lying by the way; and, above, all is mist and darkness, and, below, all is mire and clay; and there’s only one relief in all the sad and murky air; and I don’t know that it is one, for it’s nothing but a glare; of deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind together; set a brand upon the clouds for being guilty of such weather; and the widest open country is a long dull streak of black; and there’s hoar–frost on the finger–post, and thaw upon the track; and the ice it isn’t water, and the water isn’t free; and you couldn’t say that anything is what it ought to be; but he’s coming, coming, coming!—

The world that morning was coated in a layer of hoarfrost, and the brother was late to the task of feeding Answelica because he had stood for too long admiring the light of the rising sun shining on the blades of grass and the branches of the trees. The whole world seemed lit from within.

For many months there day and night, at the morning and the evening checks, innumerable execution orders were read out. In a temperature of fifty below zero [Fahrenheit] the musicians from among the non-political offenders played a flourish before and after each order was read. The smoking gasoline torches ripped apart the darkness…. The thin sheet on which the order was written was covered with hoarfrost, and some chief or other who was reading the order would brush the snowflakes from it with his sleeve so as to decipher and shout out the name of the next man on the list of those shot.

On a clear night in blacked-out countryside, in between bomber runs, when the tracer fire ceased and the searchlights went dark, the stars did not fill the sky so much as coat it like hoarfrost on a windowpane. You looked up and saw The Starry Night, he told me; you realized that Van Gogh was a realist painter.

Now that Dad was gone I was starting to see how mortality was bound up in things like that cold, arc-lit sky. How the world is full of signs and wonders that come, and go, and if you are lucky you might see them. Once, twice. Perhaps never again. The albums on my mother’s shelves are full of family photographs. But also other things. A starling with a crooked beak. A day of hoarfrost and smoke. A cherry tree thick with blossom. Thunderclouds, lightning strikes, comets and eclipses: celestial events terrifying in their blind distances but reassuring you, too, that the world is for ever, though you are only a blink in its course.

It was morning again and the air was light and sweet. Silver hoarfrost cloaked golden leaves, and cobwebs were wreathed upon dewy grass and shrubs. There was a hint of snow on distant hills on the moor-side of this place, and to both sides of the slim river that moved between the harvested fields bloomed winter flowers.

Spilt, glistering milk of moonlight on the frost-crisped grass; on such a night, in moony, metamorphic weather, they say you might easily find him, if you had been foolish enough to venture out late, scuttling along by the churchyard wall with half a juicy torso slung across his back. The white light scours the fields and scours them again until everything gleams and he will leave paw-prints in the hoar-frost when he runs howling round the graves at night in his lupine fiestas.

When, after a long life, it falls out That he takes on a form he had sought And every word carved in stone Grows its hoarfrost, what then? Torches Of Dionysian choruses in the dark mountains From when he comes. And half of the sky With its snaky clouds. A mirror before him. In the mirror the already severed, perishing Thing.

Lunar Paraphrase" The moon is the mother of pathos and pity. When, at the wearier end of November, Her old light moves along the branches, Feebly, slowly, depending upon them; When the body of Jesus hangs in a pallor, Humanly near, and the figure of Mary, Touched on by hoar-frost, shrinks in a shelter Made by the leaves, that have rotted and fallen; When over the houses, a golden illusion Brings back an earlier season of quiet And quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness— The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.

so cold a man, that his head, instead of being grey, seemed to be sprinkled with hoar-frost. Immense

May I please tell you something, Highness? You’re very cold—” “I’m not—” “—very cold and very young, and if you live, I think you’ll turn to hoarfrost—” “Why do you pick at me? I have come to terms with my life, and that is my affair—I am not cold, I swear, but I have decided certain things, it is best for me to ignore emotion; I have not been happy dealing with it—” Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high.

At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one doesn't want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains.

Everyone tensed as he leaned in, head dipping, and kissed her. Nesta's lips were chips of ice. But he let their coldness sting his own, and brushed his mouth against hers. Nipped at her bottom lip until he felt it drop a fraction. He slid his tongue into that opening, and found the inside of her mouth, usually so soft and warm, crusted with hoarfrost. Nesta didn't kiss him back, but didn't shove him away. So Cassian sent his heat into it, fusing their mouths together, his free hand bracing her hip as his Siphons nipped at her hand once more. Her mouth opened wider, and he slid his tongue over every inch- over her frozen teeth, over the roof of her mouth. Warming, softening, freeing. Her tongue lifted to meet his in a single stroke that cracked the ice in her mouth. He slanted his mouth over hers, tugging her against his chest, and tasted her as he'd wanted to taste her the other night, deep and thorough and claiming. Her tongue again brushed against his, and then her body was warming, and Cassian pulled back enough to say against her lips, 'Let go, Nesta.' He drove his mouth into hers again, daring her to unleash that cold fire upon him. Something thunked and clinked beside them. And when Nesta's other hand gripped her shoulder, fingers now free of stones and bones, when she arched her neck, granting him better, deeper access, he nearly shuddered with relief. She broke the kiss first, as if sliding into her body and remembering who kissed her, where they were, who watched. Cassian opened his eyes to find her so close that they shared breath. Normal, unclouded breath. Her eyes had returned to the blue-grey he knew so well. Stunned surprise and a little fear lit her face. As if she'd never seen him before. 'Interesting,' Amren observed, and he found the female studying the map. Feyre gaped, though, Rhys's hand gripped tight in her own. Caution blazed on Rhys's face. On Azriel's, too. What the hell did you do to pull her out of that? Rhys asked. Cassian didn't really know. The only thing I could think of. You warmed the entire room. I didn't mean to.

Rhys looked at the menagerie of water-animals I'd crafted and said, 'What else?' Perhaps it was the cold, perhaps it was his story, but hoarfrost cracked in my veins, and the wild song of a winter wind howled in my heart. I felt it then- how easy it would be to jump between them, join them together, my powers. Each one of my animals halted mid-air... and froze into perfectly carved bits of ice. One by one, they dropped to the earth. And shattered. They were one. They had come from the same, dark origin, the same eternal wall of power. Once, long ago- before language was invented and the world was new.

Romance Sonambulo" Green, how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches. The ship out on the sea and the horse on the mountain. With the shade around her waist she dreams on her balcony, green flesh, her hair green, with eyes of cold silver. Green, how I want you green. Under the gypsy moon, all things are watching her and she cannot see them. Green, how I want you green. Big hoarfrost stars come with the fish of shadow that opens the road of dawn. The fig tree rubs its wind with the sandpaper of its branches, and the forest, cunning cat, bristles its brittle fibers. But who will come? And from where? She is still on her balcony green flesh, her hair green, dreaming in the bitter sea. —My friend, I want to trade my horse for her house, my saddle for her mirror, my knife for her blanket. My friend, I come bleeding from the gates of Cabra. —If it were possible, my boy, I’d help you fix that trade. But now I am not I, nor is my house now my house. —My friend, I want to die decently in my bed. Of iron, if that’s possible, with blankets of fine chambray. Don’t you see the wound I have from my chest up to my throat? —Your white shirt has grown thirsty dark brown roses. Your blood oozes and flees a round the corners of your sash. But now I am not I, nor is my house now my house. —Let me climb up, at least, up to the high balconies; Let me climb up! Let me, up to the green balconies. Railings of the moon through which the water rumbles. Now the two friends climb up, up to the high balconies. Leaving a trail of blood. Leaving a trail of teardrops. Tin bell vines were trembling on the roofs. A thousand crystal tambourines struck at the dawn light. Green, how I want you green, green wind, green branches. The two friends climbed up. The stiff wind left in their mouths, a strange taste of bile, of mint, and of basil My friend, where is she—tell me— where is your bitter girl? How many times she waited for you! How many times would she wait for you, cool face, black hair, on this green balcony! Over the mouth of the cistern the gypsy girl was swinging, green flesh, her hair green, with eyes of cold silver. An icicle of moon holds her up above the water. The night became intimate like a little plaza. Drunken “Guardias Civiles” were pounding on the door. Green, how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches. The ship out on the sea. And the horse on the mountain.

You talked but after your talking all the rest remains. After your talking—poets, philosophers, contrivers of romances—everything else, All the rest deduced inside the flesh Which lives & knows not just what is permitted. I am a woman held fast now in a great silence. Not all creatures have your need for words. Birds you killed, fish you tossed into your boat, In what words will they find rest & in what heaven? You received gifts from me; they were accepted. But you don’t understand how to think about the dead. The smell of winter apples, of hoarfrost, and of linen. There are nothing but gifts on this poor, poor Earth.

At noontime in midsummer, when the sun is at its highest and everything is in a state of embroiled repose, flashes may be seen in the southern sky. Into the radiance of daylight come bursts of light even more radiant. Exactly half a year later, when the fjord is frozen over and the land buried in snow, the very same spirit taunts creation. At night cracks in the ice race from one end of the fjord to the other, resounding like gunshots or like the roaring of a mad demon. The peasants dig tunnels from their door through the drifts over to the cow shed. Where are the trolls and the elves now, and where are the sounds of nature? Even the Beast may well be dead and forgotten. Life itself hangs in suspension - existence has shrunk to nothingness. Now it is only a question of survival. The fox thrashes around in a blizzard in the oak thicket and fights his way out, mortally terrified. It is a time of stillness. Hoarfrost lies in a timeless shroud over the fjord. All day long a strange, sighing sound is heard from out on the ice. It is a fisherman, standing alone at his hole and spearing eel. One night it snows again. The air is sheer snow and the wind a frigid blast. No living creature is stirring. Then a rider comes to the crossing at Hvalpsund. There is no difficulty in getting over­ - he does not even slacken his speed, but rides at a brisk trot from the shore out onto the ice. The hoofbeats thunder beneath him and the ice roars for miles around. He reaches the other side and rides up onto the land. The horse — a mighty steed not afraid to shake its shanks - cleaves the storm with neck outstretched. The blizzard blows the rider's ashen cape back and he sits naked, with his bare bones sticking out and the snow whistling about his ribs. It is Death that is out riding. His crown sits on three hairs and his scythe points triumphantly backward. Death has his whims. He takes it into his head to dis­mount when he sees a light in the winter night. He gives his horse a slap on the haunch and it leaps into the air and is gone. For the rest of the way Death walks like a carefree man, sauntering absentmindedly along. In the snow-streaked night a crow is sitting on a wayside branch. Its head is much too large for its body. Its beady eyes sparkle when it sees the wanderer's familiar face, and its cawing turns into silent laughter as it throws its beak wide open, with its spear-like tongue sticking far out. It seems almost ready to fall off the branch with its laughter, but it keeps on looking at Death with consuming merriment. Death moves on. Suddenly he finds himself beside a man. He raps the man on the back with his fingers and leaves him lying there. There is a light. Death keeps his eye on the light and walks toward it. He moves into the shaft of light and labors his way over a frozen field. But when he comes close enough to make out the house a strange fervor grips him. He has finally come home - yes, this has been his true home from the beginning. Thank goodness he has now found it again after so much difficulty. He goes in, and a solitary old couple make him welcome. They cannot know that he is anything more than a traveling tradesman, spent and sick. He lies down quickly on the bed without a word. They can see that he is really far gone. He lies on his back while they move about the room with the candle and chat. He forgets them. For a long time he lies there, quiet but awake. Finally there are a few low moans, faltering and tentative. He begins to cry, and then quickly stops. But now the moans continue, becoming louder, and then going over to tearless sobs. His body arches up, resting only on head and heels. He stares in anguish at the ceiling and screams, screams like a woman in labor. Finally he collapses, and his cries begin to subside. Little by little he falls silent and lies quiet.

Romance of the sleepwalker" Green, as I love you, greenly. Green the wind, and green the branches. The dark ship on the sea and the horse on the mountain. With her waist that’s made of shadow dreaming on the high veranda, green the flesh, and green the tresses, with eyes of frozen silver. Green, as I love you, greenly. Beneath the moon of the gypsies silent things are looking at her things she cannot see. Green, as I love you, greenly. Great stars of white hoarfrost come with the fish of shadow opening the road of morning. The fig tree’s rubbing on the dawn wind with the rasping of its branches, and the mountain cunning cat, bristles with its sour agaves. Who is coming? And from where...? She waits on the high veranda, green the flesh and green the tresses, dreaming of the bitter ocean. - 'Brother, friend, I want to barter your house for my stallion, sell my saddle for your mirror, change my dagger for your blanket. Brother mine, I come here bleeding from the mountain pass of Cabra.’ - ‘If I could, my young friend, then maybe we’d strike a bargain, but I am no longer I, nor is this house, of mine, mine.’ - ‘Brother, friend, I want to die now, in the fitness of my own bed, made of iron, if it can be, with its sheets of finest cambric. Can you see the wound I carry from my throat to my heart?’ - ‘Three hundred red roses your white shirt now carries. Your blood stinks and oozes, all around your scarlet sashes. But I am no longer I, nor is this house of mine, mine.’ - ‘Let me then, at least, climb up there, up towards the high verandas. Let me climb, let me climb there, up towards the green verandas. High verandas of the moonlight, where I hear the sound of waters.’ Now they climb, the two companions, up there to the high veranda, letting fall a trail of blood drops, letting fall a trail of tears. On the morning rooftops, trembled, the small tin lanterns. A thousand tambourines of crystal wounded the light of daybreak. Green, as I love you, greenly. Green the wind, and green the branches. They climbed up, the two companions. In the mouth, the dark breezes left there a strange flavour, of gall, and mint, and sweet basil. - ‘Brother, friend! Where is she, tell me, where is she, your bitter beauty? How often, she waited for you! How often, she would have waited, cool the face, and dark the tresses, on this green veranda!’ Over the cistern’s surface the gypsy girl was rocking. Green the bed is, green the tresses, with eyes of frozen silver. An ice-ray made of moonlight holding her above the water. How intimate the night became, like a little, hidden plaza. Drunken Civil Guards were beating, beating, beating on the door frame. Green, as I love you, greenly. Green the wind, and green the branches. The dark ship on the sea, and the horse on the mountain.

WHEN on the Magpies' Bridge I see The Hoar-frost King has cast His sparkling mantle, well I know The night is nearly past, Daylight approaches fast. The author of this verse was Governor of the Province of Koshu, and Viceroy of the more or less uncivilized northern and eastern parts of Japan; he died A.D. 785. There was a bridge or passageway in the Imperial Palace at Kyoto called the Magpies' Bridge, but there is also an allusion here to the old legend about the Weaver and Herdsman. It is said, that the Weaver (the star Vega) was a maiden, who dwelt on one side of the River of the Milky Way, and who was employed in making clothes for the Gods. But one day the Sun took pity upon her, and gave her in marriage to the Herdboy (the star Aquila), who lived on the other side of the river. But as the result of this was that the supply of clothes fell short, she was only permitted to visit her husband once a year, viz. on the seventh night of the seventh month; and on this night, it is said, the magpies in a dense flock form a bridge for her across the river. The hoar frost forms just before day breaks. The illustration shows the Herdboy crossing on the Bridge of Magpies to his bride. A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (The Hyakunin-isshu), tr. by William N. Porter, [1909],

All this colossal hoarfrost, which could be compared in intensity only with tropical vegetation, was an alternative, nonbiological life-form.

Now that Dad was gone I was starting to see how mortality was bound up in things like that cold, arc-lit sky. How the world is full of signs and wonders that come, and go, and if you are lucky you might see them. Once, twice. Perhaps never again. The albums on my mother's shelves are full of family photographs. But also other things. A starling with a crooked beak. A day of hoarfrost and smoke. Cherry tree thick with blossom. Thunderclouds, lightning strikes, comets and eclipses: celestial events terrifying in their blind distances but reassuring you, too, that the world is for ever though you are only a blink in its course

When the superior man has free course with his principles, that is what we call his success; when such course is denied, that is what we call his failure. Now I hold in my embrace the principles of righteousness and benevolence, and with them meet the evils of a disordered age; where is the proof of my being in extreme distress? Therefore, looking inwards and examining myself, I have no difficulties about my principles; though I encounter such difficulties (as the present), I do not lose my virtue. It is when winter's cold is come, and the hoar-frost and snow are falling, that we know the vegetative power of the pine and cypress.

The horizon blushed pink to the east, but the sky had the beginnings of a baby-blue color. The snowy landscape lay before her covered in an early morning hoarfrost. The weeping branches of the willow tree looked like it had been coated in an egg wash and dipped in raw sugar.

Cambridge... the place bowled me over. Leeds, where I had been born and brought up... but though I was not blind to its architectural splendours... I was famished for antiquity. I had never been in a place of such continuous and unfolding beauty as Cambridge and, December 1951 being exceptionally cold, the Cam was frozen and a thick hoarfrost covered every court and quadrangle giving the whole city an unreal and celestial beauty. And it was empty, as provincial places in those days were.

A strange landscape stared back at her. Delphine gasped and let the tree support her weight as she slowly took in the sight of of the forest drawn tight around the ring of moss surrounding the linden. The trees were skeletal and pale as bone, branches gnarled and twining in complicated knotwork that might have been intentionally woven or might have been the wild striving of trees reaching for the sky. There were no leaves, but a thick hoarfrost of silver coated every branch, every twig, every barren bud. Bracken grew tangled at the roots of the trees; it, too, was layered in sparkling pale beauty. The ground was covered in the same thick silver, which Delphine slowly appreciated was not cold at all, but still as fragile and sharp as frost. No grass grew on the ground, only a thick carpet of the same moss surrounding the tree. The silver didn't pass through the circle, fading to a film near the green encircling the linden tree.

If this isn’t real, he whispered, I’m better off with your knife in my chest. Yes, I’d marry you, a million times, over and over again. I’d do anything to make you happy. Or to just take some of your pain away. You think I’m important to you? You’re the center of my fucking universe. You’re the sun, Frankie. And fuck the rest of the world, because for a little while I got to look at the sun every day, I got to touch her and hold her and make her laugh. If you don’t think I see you, you’re not paying attention. Because I don’t see anything else. Murray, J.L.. Hoarfrost (Blood of Cain Book 2) (p. 178). Hellzapoppin Press. Kindle Edition.

Bryce said, arms crossing. Hoarfrost crept across the floors. “You’re not rattling the Northern Rift?” “The lesser princes do that—levels one through four,” Aidas said, head angling again. “Those of us in the true dark have no need or interest in sunshine. But even they did not send the kristallos. Our plans do not involve such things.” Hunt growled, “Your kind wanted to live here, once upon a time. Why would that change?” Aidas chuckled. “It is dreadfully amusing to hear the stories the Asteri have spun for you.” He smiled at Bryce. “What blinds an Oracle?” All color leached from Bryce’s face at the mention of her visit to the Oracle. How Aidas knew about it, Hunt could only guess, but she countered, “What sort of cat visits an Oracle?” “Winning first words.” Aidas slid his hands into his pockets again. “I did not know what you might prefer now that you are grown.” A smirk at Hunt. “But I may appear more like that, if it pleases you, Bryce Quinlan.

Clearing On these mornings still beneath hoarfrost I observe how the deer never follow the path we made how the small hound keen on a scent steps precisely along the cobbled line of river stones how they move oblivious to us as minor prophets awaiting an opening like the wind willing to risk any turn in constant yearn of a clearing.

The new politicians resembled hyenas and foxes. In both hemispheres, the people quickly forgot. Compassion and rage shared the fate of autumn flowers, upon which settles hoarfrost: they had faded, withered, then died under the weight of rent, prices, inflation, soap operas and talk shows, family life, victories and defeats in stadiums.

The trail, such as it was, brought us at last to a place where the river became a frozen waterfall cascading down from the heights. "We`re not getting the dogs up that", Griffin commented. "No," Jack agreed. He pointed to the sheer slope of the ravine cut by the waterfall. "Fortunately there`s a trail we can use." "A trail?" I exclaimed. "For what - mountain goats?

Now truly crimson, she thrust out what was possibly the ugliest scarf I`d ever seen. Its color could only be described as puce, and it appeared to have been knitted by a drunken spider.

Whyborne is a monster himself.” “Excuse me!” I exclaimed. “I don’t appreciate these slurs against my ancestry.

faith that the man in the pulpit speaks for God, when most such men would condemn us to eternal torment for loving one another?

Crystal All's calm. And many withered leaves here lie like brown gold dipped in sunshine. The sky is very blue white clouds are rocking by. Hoar-frost blows brightness on the pine. Firs are standing fresh and green lofty tops rising into the height. The red beeches, slender and keen, listen to the eagle calling in his flight and dare go ever higher as heaven were. Lonely benches standing here and there and here a patch of grass, now half-frozen, the sun as its own darling had is chosen. (December 8, 1940) p. 5

I was out every day, and often all night, sleeping but little, studying the so-called wonders and common things ever on show, wading, climbing, sauntering among the blessed storms and calms, rejoicing in almost everything alike that I could see or hear: the glorious brightness of frosty mornings; the sunbeams pouring over the white domes and crags into the groves end waterfalls, kindling marvelous iris fires in the hoarfrost and spray; the great forests and mountains in their deep noon sleep; the good-night alpenglow; the stars; the solemn gazing moon, drawing the huge domes and headlands one by one glowing white out of the shadows hushed and breathless like an audience in awful enthusiasm, while the meadows at their feet sparkle with frost-stars like the sky; the sublime darkness of storm-nights, when all the lights are out; the clouds in whose depths the frail snow-flowers grow; the behavior and many voices of the different kinds of storms, trees, birds, waterfalls, and snow-avalanches in the ever-changing weather.

I grabbed the front of his coat, hands fisting in the thick leather. “I’d watch the world burn if it meant keeping you safe!

Ice and frost are described, wonderfully, as hare hildstapan, ‘hoary battle-marchers’. The word har is a colour, white or grey, so a good word for ice and frost; it’s from this that we get the term ‘hoar-frost’.

We have the geometry of billows as prayer, the fen- nel-scented sky, hoarfrost.

The darkness is expanding—sixty days of night looming on the horizon—so I step out onto my porch and take a deep breath, the cold air burning my nostrils and making my lungs ache. There is so much to do, so much pain to repurpose into the void. I rub my hands together to warm them, already dressed in layers—long thermal underwear over boxers, two pairs of wool socks—with more to come. The morning is brisk, hoarfrost sparkling across the snow-covered ground, but I know I can’t stand here for long. I inhale again—juniper, salt, a whiff of fish, my own musk—and take in my humble abode, knowing that the season is upon us, preparing for what will come. It is both invigorating and daunting at the same time. (Opening paragraph, first chapter.)

It was cold. The trees and bushes, coated with hoarfrost, glowed in the darkness as if they were watching him. He might have found Nature at that moment uninviting. But he did not. He wanted to soak up whatever he could of this world. He might not have another chance.

Her heart—it had been meant for her heart. And he had taken that arrow for her. The killing calm spread through her like hoarfrost. She’d kill them all. Slowly.

They rode horses as white as hoarfrost. Snow and star and dark whipped around one another to etch a fine-boned face, eyes of night and crystal fire. Their mantles were of dark wind and snow; their wild hair caught snow and falling stars. The boy watched them, too, longing for their beauty, their mastery over cold and storm. Come to us. This is not your true home. You belong elsewhere. You belong with us.

Hoarfrost spikes sprung out overnight like the hairs on my chin.

I didn’t know what to say, and my attempts at small talk generally failed miserably and made social situations even more awkward.

But he was so very sad about the boy who didn’t see. Now that Dad was gone I was starting to see how mortality was bound up in things like that cold, arc-lit sky. How the world is full of signs and wonders that come, and go, and if you are lucky you might see them. Once, twice. Perhaps never again. The albums on my mother’s shelves are full of family photographs. But also other things. A starling with a crooked beak. A day of hoarfrost and smoke. A cherry tree thick with blossom. Thunderclouds, lightning strikes, comets and eclipses: celestial events terrifying in their blind distances but reassuring you, too, that the world is for ever, though you are only a blink in its course. Henri Cartier-Bresson called the taking of a good photograph a decisive moment. ‘Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera,’ he said. ‘The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone for ever.

I long to see all the world has to offer. To sing on every stage in front of hundreds of people. To bear witness as the sun hits the highest peak of The Hoarfrost Mountains or lie beneath the glittering stars over the flatlands. But sometimes, all I want is the familiar scratch of my quill against parchment. Here, the world fades and words spring to the surface. Words have always been easy. They’re both the bridge and the great divide. Words bring me into stories—into worlds I might never have known. They give me strength—a shield against what lies out there. Behind words, I can disappear until all that remains is a faint whisper. A flicker of a story spoken in hushed tones.

[Rex:] "What about a rubber? How about a whiskey? Which of you chaps will have a big cigar? Hullo, you two going out?" "Yes, Rex," said Julia. "Charles and I are going into the moonlight." We shut the windows behind us and the voices ceased; the moonlight lay like hoar-frost on the terrace and the music of the fountain crept in our ears; the stone balustrade of the terrace might have been the Trojan walls, and in the silent park might have stood the Grecian tents where Cressid lay that night. "A few days, a few months." "No time to be lost." "A lifetime between the rising of the moon and its setting. Then the dark.".