The night before his first sexual encounter with Mona, Clark had a dream of mallards. The birds were taking flight, an eruption of sound and color that filled the sky, a funnel cloud skating across the lake and into the air, a blanket of feathers falling, floating to ground in a mass that coated the shore with its numbers. The next evening as he lay next to Mona in her bed he noticed that her comforter was comprised of images of mallards flying in formation over a body of water. He drifted off to sleep wondering if somehow he had conjured this moment into being. Was it really even happening or was he still in his dream, was it all the beginnings of some horrible storm or the omen of a change taking place inside of him, a cleansing.