Once autumn set in, almost every day in this city was overcast, and he could no longer see the stars in the night sky. The temperature dropped, and a pattern began in which days of continuous rain alternated with days of dry. The low air pressure gives him frequent headaches. The birds hugged the ground as they flew. The sun began to set at around three o'clock in the afternoon, and by four it was utterly dark.
He fixed his eyes to the afternoon sky as he walked, a black that his homeland knew only at night, his mind turned to thoughts of nebulae. To the thousands of stars like grains of salt whose light had streamed down to him, those nights at his parents' home. Clean, cold light that had bathed his eyes, scouring his mind of all memory.