“The light was blinding. There was a great whistle and chatter — as though a hundred steam engines were running fast and close — and the floor seemed to tremble beneath his feet.”
Update: It just struck me that today’s dramatic sketch unintentionally mirrors religious imagery depicting a divine being’s interaction with — or focus on — earth-bound mortals. (In the west, at least, there’s a near-reflexive tendency to read the top of a vertically-oriented image as “up” or “sky” and the bottom as “down” or “ground” — I imagine the same holds true wherever gravity is practiced).
(It’s not an entirely inappropriate association in this case. If you’re a child obsessed with engineering and machinery and you encounter an ancient entity exhibiting some sign of these practices, how else would a first encounter appear?)