Before them stretched, in a westerly direction - as far as the eye could see - the large neat fields, punctuated by streams that glistened as sparkling ribbons in the morning sun.

It was a sparkling ribbon of blue beneath them, girded around with trees.

Austin stood on his deck and gazed out at the sparkling ribbon that flowed behind his house.

A sparkling ribbon of moonlight garlanded the gulf.

What seemed only an arm's length from her face, acid twisted in a sparkling ribbon, and Kira jerked a horrified look toward the stopped car above them just as it shuddered, tilted, and dropped a dozen rapid meters.

Gliding downward in a smooth sparkling ribbon, it had etched a shallow channel in the stone wall and disappeared into another crack in the floor, gone as mysteriously as it appeared.

Grim, proto-existentialist reflections strike discordant notes in the sparkling ribbons of talk, as when Hesione confesses to Ellie, "I am just wondering how much longer I can stand living in this cruel, damnable world."