Flight On Avalon And Peace On Esperance

The People Of The Wind, III.

Poul Anderson imagines the experience of an intelligent flying being. Eyath and Vodan are in flight. Feeling a downdraft, Eyath moves to catch it, then glides down toward the Stormgate peaks, glimpsing trees and a shining pool, feeling the air as it rushes past before she stops and flies back up, every muscle fully alive. Seeing and entering a thermal, she spreads her wings and hovers. Because of her closeness since childhood to Arinnian, Eyath wonders in some ways what it would be like to be human but realizes that she would not want to give up either flight or Vodan. (Arinnian, of course, envies Ythrians their power of flight and what he sees as their purity.)

Meanwhile, on another planet, Anderson treats us to three senses in a single sentence:

"The air was warm, blithe with birdsong, sweet with green odors that drifted in from the countryside." (p. 471)

The odors are not green but are of green growth. The immediately preceding sentence presents the sense of sight:

"The sun Pax was still above the horizon, now at midsummer, but leveled mellow beams across an old brick wall." (ibid.)

And, in the immediately following sentence:

"A car or two caught the light, high above; but Fleurville was not big enough for its traffic noise to be heard this far from the centrum." (ibid.)

A peaceful scene while Terra and Ythri prepare for war.