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Date: 25 February 2007 23:10:46
There was a sound like the murmuring sea out of the still lake Tal y Llyn, Llyn Mwyngil, and from the edge of the dark water a huge wave came travelling. It curled up high and white-topped, fringed with foam as if about to break. Yet it did not break, but swept on across the water towards them, and on its curving peak rode six white swans, moving smooth as glass, their great wings outstretched and touching wing-tip to wing-tip. They were enormous, powerful birds, their white feathers shining like polished silver even in the grey light of the cloud-hung sky. As they drew nearer and nearer, one of the swans raised its head on the curving, graceful neck and gave a long mournful cry, like a warning, or a lament.
On and on they came, towards the shore, towards Will and Caradog Pritchard. The wave loomed higher and higher: a green wave, glowing with a strange translucent light that seemed to come out of the bottom of the lake. It was clear that the birds would dive upon them, and the wave break over them and rush forward down the valley, with all the water of the lake in one long rush, sweeping farms and houses and people before it in total devastation, down to the sea.
From The Dark is Rising Sequence, Book 4: The Grey King, The Waking, by Susan Cooper.
Most of the time I find that my mind deals in concepts and words, not pictures, so I don't bother to make an effort to piece together all the aspects of a description. I find it very strange reading fiction about a place I have been to. I can picture it better and it feels more real.
This passage also reminds me of the dreams I used to have when I was little, of a great big wave coming crashing through the fields from the beach. I later discovered that Tolkien had a similar recurring dream and called it his Atlantis dream and it inspired the story of (I think) Numenor being drowned. There is more on this theme later in the sequence of Susan Cooper books.
One final thought: Talyllyn Lake = End of the Lake Lake! The hamlet at the end of the lake is called Talyllyn, so the English people in charge of mapping assumed the lake must be Talyllyn lake. Llyn Mwyngil, its original name translates, according to the books, as the pleasant lake.
* Only a touch late with this one. Sssh, I don't think anyone noticed.