"The viau were at their finest; they always were, he thought, when someone was seeing them for the first time. They could be seen from land, but never so well as in the open. He'd heard that they were not visible away from the Wide Seas, that people elsewhere could only see a handful of shooting stars, not the actual, proper viau, the great schools of white-and-gold streaks and sparks that lit the sky once or twice a decade across the whole breadth of the ocean, and more often than that if you were in the right part of the sea."