He sat with the blanket around him and watched the distant dark of the sea with its shifting cape of stars where they lifted and fell. It came again, the pale ignition of a storm that shaped out the window and cast it brief and shuddering upon the farther wall. A sheet of light flaring silently over the storied sea, the thunderheads along the horizon shaped in the rim lightning and the slow leaden lap like slag in a vat and the slight smell of ozone.
