The edge of the cloud was barely six inches from her hand.

Our witch's mind overflowed with the thought of invasions and the coming in of tides.

It seemed that all her life she had been living on a narrowing shore.

She remembered all her dawns as precarious footholds of peace on a threatened rock, and all her evenings as golden sands sloping down into encroaching sleep.

She realised Everything as a little hopeless garrison against the army of Nothing.
She clutched a pinch of cloud nervously, and it broke off in her hand.
She recalled her senses with a devastating effort.
"Do you mean to say," she said, after a moment, "that poor dear Germany really believes that she is right and we are wrong?
I suppose, when you come to think of it, a man-eating tiger feels the same way.