Closer to creation

The power of observation to capture an almost nothing: A seventy-six word sentence neatly followed by one much shorter. Almost perfect.

In the palm of her hand was what looked at first like a shred of whitish dust but on closer inspection turned out to be a little downy feather, no more than an inch long, with a needle-thin white spine out of which grew first a nimbus of fluff and then, for about a third of an inch, neatly tapering white filaments clinging to one another with their minute jellyfish barbules to form a triangular tip. Certainly it looked closely related to dust, and by that branch of the family a cousin of absolute nothingness.

From It’s Beginning to Hurt by James Lasdun