More of Yagharek’s Musings

...I was once a creature of the air, and it remembers me. When I climb to the city heights and lean out into the wind, it tickles me with currents and vectors from the past. I can smell and see the passage of predators and prey in the eddying wash of this atmosphere.

I am like a diver who has lost his suit, who can still gaze through the glass bottom of a boat and watch the creatures of the upper and deeper darkness, can trace their passage and feel the tug of the tides, even though distorted and distinct, veiled and half hidden….

The air, stills with summer, is heavy with heat and now with these newcomers, these intruders, I cannot see. The air is laden with menace. My curiosity rises. My hunting instincts stir.

But I am earthbound.

Yagharek

Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

Yagharek’s Musings

“...I emerge into streets that wind like dark rivers through cavernous brick rock faces. The moon and her little shining daughters glimmer wanly. Cold winds ooze like molasses down from the foothills and mountains and clog the night-city with drifting rubbish. I share the streets with aimlessly moving scraps of paper and little whirlwinds of dust, with motes that pass like erratic thieves under eaves and through doors...”

Yagharek

Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

The Garuda

"The great creature stood more than six feet tall, on cruel clawed feet that poked out from under a dirty cloak. The ragged cloth dangled down almost to the ground, draped loosely over every inch of flesh, obscuring details of physiognomy and musculature, all but the garuda’s head. And the great inscrutable bird face gazed down at Isaac with what looked like imperiosity. Its sharply curved beak was something between a kestrel and an owl. Sleek feathers faded subtly from ochure to dun to dappled brown. Deep black eyes stared at his own, the irises only a fine mottling at the very edge of dark. Those eyes were set in orbits which gave the garuda face a permanent sneer, a proud furrow."

page 30, Perdido Street Station, China Mieville