Checkpoint

Let's put everything together in a checkpoint piece. Here's the original snippet:

The light slants down funny on my desk from the lamp Dad fixed up there on the wall. I should be doing Burke and Wills. They don't seem very bright blokes. Instead I'm listening to the night coming across from the forest – all small sounds like the birds heading for somewhere to stay the night, the sound of the creek tinkering low when everything gets quiet, the chooks making that maw-maw sound they do when they're beginning to sleep all wing to wing up under the tin roof of the chookhouse. Sometimes in the night I can hear their poop hit the ground it's so quiet. Sometimes it's so quiet, Dad says you can hear the dieback in the trees, killing them quietly from the inside. At night the sky blinks at us, always looking down.

The sounds of night aren't really what's keeping me from Burke and Wills, though. It's Dad. He's not back. But I'm not worried.

That Eye, the Sky(1986)

Here are the examples we've been building:

My right heel rubs painfully inside the fake Nikes that Imani bought for my birthday. I should be cleaning the office. That place is never clean enough. Instead I’m walking through Kenyatta Market looking for food—spiced sausages spitting on a grill like fat brown eels, fries bubbling in vats of oil that smell of home, mama fish tossed in a wide black pan as if the cook doesn’t want the flesh to ever touch the metal but just stay in the air spinning above the fire. Sometimes in the market I feel overwhelmed by the flood of people it’s so crowded. Sometimes it’s so crowded, Imani says we will all exchange souls, our bodies crushed and our spirits pressed from one body to another. All around the city grinds us together, like an ocean grinds sand.

But while I'm looking for food I am not really hungry. Imani. She has not returned. I'm sure she is fine.

Snow falls outside the kitchen window, slowly filling the tracks left by Grandma and her pony. I should be churning the butter. We need it for dinner. Instead I’m watching night fall upon the woods—the sun glowing dark orange like a dying ember, the air filling with violet mist, the trees losing form and detail as the darkness floods them like ink soaking into ragged paper. At twilight the world drops its smile and puts on a mask. With its mask, the world becomes a villain in one of grandma’s old fairytale books, with predatory eyes and a wolfish grin. At twilight a curtain parts and dark story begins.

But in truth, it’s not the drama of twilight that is keeping me from preparing the butter. It’s Grandma. Is she home safely? She wouldn’t have been so calm if there were any real danger.

And below is your version, joined together. You might need to delete some excess paragraph breaks.

Is there anything you want to edit? This is your last chance to make improvements before we conclude the lesson!

Do you:

use resonant words and images that evoke the mood you're trying to create?
repeat and link ideas?
keep the victim in the reader's mind?

Delete excess paragraph breaks and polish your scene.

First person in That Eye, the Sky 3: Sounds of the night