One evening they were upon the township road winding around the meadowy hill above the Sobieskis’. Below lay their hollow, the thick trees surging over their red roofs. They were now higher than the Strassers’ ridge and the sun was setting over it. There was trouble somewhere, a warning. Something not yet unwound but waiting lay complete under the green stuff in the valley bottom. On this upland the air was easy to breathe; there was still golden light. They started back again, almost with regret. A dead swallow, which had been for weeks dangling in the telephone wires, had now turned to skeleton and hung still. The descending road turned south and caught the Dilleys’ track which turned west. The sky was sapphire. Looking at it before they went down to their burrow, they saw one cloud forming, one cloud only in the whole sky, in the west directly over the sun going down. It came out in flecks and wisps, became suddenly one curled gold feather, and so stayed, as if beaten out of metal; marvellous, and the only thing in the sky and like an eyebrow right over the sun in the green sky.

—Christina Stead, The Rightangled Creek