Dreamstone - the test post!

"Things there are in the world which have never loved Men, which have been in the world far longer than humankind, so that once when Men were newer on the earth and the woods were greater, there had been places a Man might walk where he might feel the age of the world on his shoulders. Forests grew in which the stillness was so great he could hear stirrings of a life no part of his own. There were brooks from which the magic had not gone, mountains which sang with voices, and sometimes a wind touched the back of his neck and lifted the hairs with the shiver of a presence at which a Man must never turn and stare."

[C.J. Cherryh, The Dreamstone, (c) 1983 in The Dreaming Tree anthology by DAW Books 1997]

If I am to write a test piece and feel unimaginative, I can at least write something of a book I adore!