(urth) Marble on Urth

[James Wynn]

>  "Enormous darkness high overhead, blotting the sun-drenched field, 
> the straggling line of servants in which she had stood, and the 
> soldiers' precise column. She had seen it descend from the sky, at 
> first a fleck of black that had seemed no bigger than a flake of soot; 
> [...](CALDE, 285)
>
>
> Mo Holkar:
> the "it" that descends from the sky is the "enormous darkness", the 
> subject of the previous sentence (ie. a ship above them, which first 
> appeared high up as a fleck of black but is now enormous), not the 
> line. A line of which she was herself an element couldn't appear to 
> her like a fleck. Also, if talking of a line of chems of which she and 
> the soldier are elements, they wouldn't say "it" was dirty.

One other thing...the "enormous darkness" is not the subject of this 
sentence. In fact it is not a sentence at all, but a sentence fragment. 
The enormous darkness carries no more weight than the "straggling line 
of servants" and "the soldier's precise column".

But at the least the line and the column are closer to the pronoun "it" 
than the the darkness. The lines are "descending" from the skylands 
until it disappears into a little dot. Possibly that dot was the opening 
from which they entired the cargo area. Perhaps not.

J.