Tasting your words

As a writer we are supposed to engage all the senses in a reader. To make the words drip from their minds as honey from their tongues, and make them feel and see, hear and taste, along with us the rich environment we are creating along with our characters.
In McKillip's book, Winter Rose, she does a pretty good job of that. I felt more engaged visually than with any of the other senses but that's okay since she did a really good job with that. I did get lost a bit sometimes in what was really, actually, going on, but it was still a good beacon to light my writing and make as many words as I can evocative and useful, in the best of ways possible. Not a bad thing, huh?
So Denise, until I can get to some of more cheerful ditty files, this one's for you. ;)

From Winter Rose by Patricia A. McKillip –

….at the end of a breathless day when the air seemed so heavy and full of molten light, everyone sweated drops of gold instead of brine…

…each evening the clouds on the horizon turned the color of bruises, or overripe plums; the air seemed to listen, as we did, for rain….

…The sky was still cloudless, but its blue had darkened; twilight rode hard behind the wind.

Summer ended between one breath and another, it seemed. One morning the first golden leaves appeared among the green. Then a tree flamed into crimson. The fields were stubbled gold, morning mists hanging over them, burned away slowly by the sun. Hot, blue summer sky slowly turned the deeper blue of autumn, as if it reflected, from another country, cold northern lakes and storms that did not touch us yet. I found great cobwebs everywhere, hung like chandeliers with prisms of dew…. Two weeks later, we stood..…while trees burned all around us against a clear sky that held within it all the shadowy blues of winter…

…Clouds of gold and red and brown sailed along the wind….

…As fast as I moved, dusk raced me there. Night’s season had begun; the days took what light was left them….

“The winter nights grow old and thin and threadbare very fast, when you’re alone.”

…This village, like the hall, echoed with past. He had come to change an echo. ….

…Outside Anis’ thick window panes the distorted sky hung low and dove’s wing-grey; the intermittent rains felt icy, and the wind had a sharp, testy mutter to it. …

…cold snow…. He molted snow as he stood at the fire…

…I found my father chewing memories and his unlit pipe beside the fire….