There's a night every year, always a different night, when you can look out of the window at the top of the tower in Alder House, and you can see Things.

As the sun sinks low behind the craggy mountains - teeth of jet, growling fiercely behind the great blazing orb of red - the fiery creature rages against its death. Its spectacular fury is splayed all across the sky in crimson, orange, and pink at his tumultuous demise. It is as if the perishing sun, in one last burst of defiance, paints the drab blue sky in raucous shades never before worn by man nor beast, twig nor flower.

And such you may see from Alder House.

At the fading of the day, tiny lights from the village below wink on one at a time. As if once in hiding from the angry sun, these timid little beasts, fireflies of man-made combustables, venture hesitantly out into the darkening grayness. At first they appear singly. Then in pairs, Emboldened by the emergence of their fellows until the darkened valley is decorated with a shimmering sea of diamonds. Then, as if parroting the manmade firmament below, as if inspired by the sad efforts of lesser beings to instruct and impress, as if the grey, then purple, then jet black sky above displays a thousandfold the poor efforts of humman-kind in its own giant, celestial mirror, the gems of heavan wax slowly into an infinite field of gentle, sable velvet.

And such you may see from Alder House.

As the twinkling, brilliant beasts from below and above shimmer and shine their silently spinning nocturn of lights, the Lady of the dance, the crown jewel among rhinestones, rises slowly from behind far distant hills. Not so brash as the garish sun, the placid Ruler of the kingdom of night lends but a little to the beautious reel. Unlike the sun so garish and bold, blotting every other light and flicker from the sky, lording his majesty over the cowering world of day, gentle Lady Moon instead revels in the dances and jigs of all her subjests, contributing her own pale regality to this gorgeous astral display.

And such you may see from Alder House.

There's a night every year, always a different night, when you can look out of the window at the top of the tower in Alder House, and you can see Things.