So rare as to be considered almost legendary, the couatl is one of the most beautiful creatures in existence.

As we stood there watching, the long yellow light on the eastern horizon suddenly changed in color—first to a roseate flush, then to a warm crimson; the scenes round us, sky, sea, and land, brightened as if by magic.

Others are newer, such as the ethnocentric narrative of today’s Macedonian nation as a symbolic continuation of Alexander the Great’s empire (minimising any Albanian past within Macedonian national history) which Nikola Gruevski’s government made to pervade the built environment of Skopje through a grandiose programme of monument-building and ‘antiquitization’.

[H]e disappeared into his house much as a startled weazel makes for its hole.