Night descended over Shebbetin. The sky had turned a pale azure on one end, a dark midnight blue on the other, with stripes of deep purple running across. The mountains were lying low, black and massive beneath the rising moon. A thin sickle, it showed its face in between shredded clouds and a first few twinkling stars.

A light breeze shifted the plants on the open grasslands. Blades and stems swayed softly, gently, then bowed down low under a sudden gust, a brief exclamation of urgency and demand, before the air calmed down again and relented.

High up in the domain of the wind, where no restraints of houses and walls applied, where the air rushed down freely from the heights of the mountains, flowed from snow to wood, from cliff to meadow, high up there, a black outline moved beneath the sky. Swift like a swallow, a half-moon of wings spread out wide, the shadow rose and fell, circled and returned, shot up and glided idly on the air.

And then a song came on. Only remotely related to the shrill shriek the nightling had given in her panic, this voice was high, but pure. Still. Almost inaudible, like a glass bell rung far away. A perfect sound, subsiding, returning, weaving into the dusk like another cloud, another trace of color. Another strand of beauty. There was no melody to this song; or maybe there was? It rang on, ethereal, eternal, like the voice of the stars. A prayer to the mountains and the night. A meditation on what cannot be named.

The nightling turned and danced in the sky like an imaginary being. The original bird, the shadow of a dragon. The connection between the stars, or between the firmament and the soil. She darted downward, catching her fall above the grasslands, shooting along in perfect companionship to their surface, their slopes and valleys, their hills and rises. One with the landscape of the mountains, one with the night filling the skies, the nightling danced on between heaven and earth, an image of fay, of wonder, of unfathomable life.

She rose up high again, and with one last circle let her voice grow strong, let the bell ring out loud and clear. Then she disappeared over the mountains.

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