attic · 1 round, 6 spokes · west sky, swallows
called an oeil-de-boeuf in the books and called the porthole by the children. set in the west gable, high above the door, where nothing built it for any reason but the proportion. the spokes radiate from a small inner ring of plain glass the size of a saucer, which catches the last light when there is last light to catch.
the view is sky alone — no garden, no roofs, no lane. you have to climb the attic ladder to see anything through it, and even then you mostly see what colour the day is ending in. swallows pass it, sometimes, in summer; the first star arrives in one of the upper quarters around eight. when there is moon, the moon does not pass through the round window because the round window faces the wrong way for the moon. the moon stays loyal to the dormer.
no catch. but the round window has an inner shutter on a length of cord, used only when a storm comes from the west; you draw the cord down from the attic floor and the shutter closes like an iris. the last person up shuts it before bed in March. the rest of the year the cord hangs and is not pulled.
field-note · gable a swallow nested in the outside ledge in 1979. she did not return; her daughter did, or her daughter's daughter — the ledge keeps no record.