BigBadQDaddy wrote:In the room full of evil children monsters...
Alain stays around the corner from the dim fire light long enough to draw his sword. Once at the ready he slowly makes his way around, already quite sure the light of his spell has given away his position.
The child-things have retreated into the deepest shadows of the room. Alain cannot see them, but he does spot the occasional blur of motion, here and there in the gloom.
Slipping around and through the partly open door [it opens inward, not outward] and thus leaving the dark room with the creatures in it, Alain finds himself stepping into an alleyway. It is nighttime, and fog swirls knee-deep over the cobblestones. A light misting rain falls noiselessly from the cloudy sky. The air is cool and humid, but not unpleasantly so.
To Alain's left , the alleyway ends in a low fence after running about ten paces, beyond which he can see little more than the vague outlines of some large building and a row of trees fronting it. To his right about ten paces is the open mouth of the alley. There, standing at the intersection of the narrow alley and the broader street, a man leans his back against the wall of the building from which Alain has just emerged. A glowing oil lantern hanging from a pole is propped against the wall between the man and Alain. The fellow is chatting with someone Alain cannot see, or else he's talking to himself.
To his invisible partner [perhaps concealed by the dense fog, or maybe lurking around the corner of the alley mouth?] the stranger says-
''- told him that the ships came in today at about noontide. He lost two coppers to me over that! Ha, I....hey, did you hear something just now?''
The stranger slowly turns to look back down into the alley, in the direction of Alain and the door...
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)
