The Anchoress tries her hand at fiction:
Tonight, my cousin and I will have the first watch. My cousin—as he does most nights—raises his fine young voice in song. I take a mouthful of water and amuse myself, not for the first time, with the idea of becoming a pirate; I imagine the tang of salty air—a breeze that bears nothing of the sheep’s traveling stench upon it—and all the fish and bread I can eat.
A daydream can be almost as distracting as a good sleep, and so I give it up after a while, and make
my survey. My cousin has left off his singing; the flock is peaceful and sleeping. The early clouds of evening have given way, and all is bright. So, what is it that has raised the hair at the back of my neck? Even a placid night has its share of howls and screams in the distance and yet—there, again—a noise at once frantic and angry. It is a sound so eerie and unfamiliar—the growls of defensive, indignant rage, and weird, guttural shriekings; there is a timbre, a tone that I have never heard before—of hellish, ruthless hate, something desperate and deep, and it chills all of us to the marrow. My cousin and I seek each other out and our fathers and the rest arise, and we stand a confused and terrorized guard. The harrowing fury is all around us, it seems drawn up from the very bowels of the earth, and yet we do not seem to be directly under siege.
The caterwauling makes me cover my ears, but I am too afraid to close my eyes. My cousin is screaming, though, bent prostrate in terror, and the rest of us are rooted where we stand.
Above the noise there comes a snap! A sound like a crackle of lightening only faster, and brighter, and something great and terrible is upon us! The furious tumult that has surrounded us is met with something equally loud, equally fearsome but of a different nature; it is the booming, crystalline sound of light, and for a brief moment—it can only be a moment, but it seems to go on and on, into eternity—we are encompassed within a battle, and a reality, that bears no relation to any thing we have seen with our eyes, or known though our senses or tasted with our mouths. For this brief instant we are in a place of hair-raising truth, of things-as-they-are, visible and invisible, and of a fullness that is absolute.
And suddenly, the commotion dies; the howling shrieks of rage recede and are silenced and now there is a hum—a vibration, growing near, and becoming loud—as though the very heavens were a hive.
You should read the whole thing.
It's excellent.