Inside the grain store

Original fiction extract.

The storekeeper led me to a window above the receiving floor. Outside, the lorry driver waited while a worker checked the paperwork. Through the glass, I could see only an empty bay and the dust-coloured walls. The storekeeper pointed towards the chute. A moment later, the building changed its sound.

Grain came down in a thick golden rope which unravelled before it reached the floor. The first kernels scattered with the sharp impatience of hail; then the growing heap took the blows and softened them. Its sides slipped continuously, making small landslides which erased themselves as they formed. Dust lifted into the light, a pale weather trapped beneath the roof. From the window, the movement looked almost calm, but the floor below answered with a deep, busy roar. The storekeeper’s mouth moved beside me. I saw the words without hearing any of them.

The flow stopped as suddenly as it had begun. A few kernels clicked down the chute, separate and countable again. Below us stood a new hill, its crest leaning slightly towards the place where the next load would fall. The driver climbed back into his cab.

Choose three powerful words or phrases from the extract above. Analyse how the writer uses language to present the arrival of the grain in the store.

Write about 200 to 250 words.