"Looking up from his work, John saw a bird in the distance. Maybe a Sandhill Warbler. A lovely bird with a lovely voice. Except when a bunch of them would get trapped in a blown-out sand break (a man-deep canyon between shortgrass hills) with a windstorm howling through at double the force of what they were working in now. Sightless, spinning, unable to maneuver, the birds would sing their terror and confusion, sucking the grinding sand down their throats until their massed voices were a scratchy howl gradually fading to an airless silence as they spun slowly into the break...the sort of thing John sometimes imagined he could hear in the distance on the worst quiet nights in Central Chambers."