An angel, maybe, Cochran thought, but one with a harpoon rather than a harp. — Tim Powers

He wondered if she had actually read his mind or simply knew him well enough to guess his thoughts.

White seagulls, luminous in the new daylight, were circling high overhead against the blue of the clean sky, whistling and piping in the open, unechoing air as if calling out the news of the soon-returning spring.

Cochran recalled that during the French Revolution they had even re-named all the calendar months; the only one he could remember was Thermidor, and he wondered what the others could have been. Fricassee? Jambalaya? Chowder?