Managed to get a seat by the Singapore River today that wasn't entirely boiled by the sun. It was really really lovely, even the heat radiating from the black seats (black seats! What kind of sense do they have!). I simply leaned back, with the hot side of the seat warming the back of my legs, and stared blankly over the Singapore River. The water's always moving, and you can bright flecks of the sun slipping over the water, like someone broke an kailedoscope of brightly shining mirrors, or lit underwater candles that get buffeted by the water currents.
And now I understand why Neil Gaiman chose the sound of beating wings for Death; you literally forget to breathe and almost feel carried away when a flock of birds burst into flight around you, their wings making a "tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-ta-tat" sound as they flap swiftly away. And leaves really do rustle: there's no other word to describe the sound of hundreds of leaves rubbing against each other when the wind makes the branches sway from side to side. It's a distinctly different sound from the rustle of papers though... perhaps the 'rustle' of paper should be the 'shuffle' of paper, since it lacks that distinctly chaotic yet layered sound that the rustling of leaves seems to have.