Just when I thought things couldn’t get any stranger, I was proven wrong. - Kage Baker

It was growing dusk, the blue hour when solid things take on a certain transparency and phantoms become palpable.

I looked up at several pockmarks in the nearest wall; if they weren’t bullet holes, the place had damned big hailstones.

Ah, the immortal ocean.
Consider the instructive metaphor: every conceivable terror dwells in her depths; she receives all wreckage, refuse, corruption of every kind, she pulls down into her depths human calamity indescribable; but none of this is any consideration to the sea. Let the screaming mortal passengers fight for room in the lifeboats, as the wreck belches flame and settles below the extinguishing wave; next morning she’ll still be beautiful and serene, her combers no less white, her distances as blue, her seabirds no less graceful as they wheel in the pure air. What perfection, to be so heartless. An inspiration to any lesser immortal.