Rain, drops bigger than his head, made on all sides to beat the wings that beat themselves against the wind, and his domain as every day, but briefly, was not his. A warlike warble followed the colibri to his shelter, some secret emerald cove where in his stillness he could not be seen. Rain rolled off leaves --more massive than his life, but smaller still than his daily will to flight, to fight against the largeness of the world in which he was a brilliant jewel, and almost imperceptible. Who knows how long a quarter-hour's shower stretches on inside the minute cogs of a colibri's mind?