A Most Charming Illusion

The wind drove the illumined clouds across the black canvas of the night sky beneath the constellations and the nearly full moon, but as I stood in the yard staring up at it all, nature cast a little spell, the way nature is apt to do.

The clouds slowed and froze in the sky as the conjuration took effect, and on the yawning side of a blink, the moon and the stars began sailing steadfastly over an ocean of ink, all locked collectively in a dead-ahead course, caring nothing for the cloudfalls they encountered, revelling silently in the movement into which they had been unexpectedly commanded.