There's a faint smell of wood smoke.
The book is set in 1917, and news of World War I reaches the Idaho high country like a faint trace of wood smoke.
He could see more and more, as if light were leaking from the patches of sky between the trees, shedding glimmers into the woods, where faint noises were reviving and becoming less faint.
The room held a faint scent of pine, the wood of which the boxes were made.
Here, in Mr. Torlen's depiction of a moonlighted, wintry wood, he plants faint suggestions of Chinese characters within the underbrush.
The letters were scratched into the wax with a sharp stylus and, though the wax had dissolved over the centuries, the words have been deciphered from the faint scratches in the underlying wood.
The faint, reassuring aroma of burning wood from a pizza oven is in the air (as is Italian opera music), stacks of firewood add a rustic touch and a spotlight illuminates the dining room's focus, a wall sculpture of a bountiful, food-filled table.
The bassist Kaveh Rastegar, composer of the piece, eventually joined him, creating a faint pulse with the drummer Nate Wood.
On a recent Sunday the apartment was an orderly shell of primed drywall and masonite-protected wood floors, with a faint scent of Verbena home perfume by L'Occitane in the air.
Bathed in gentle light, the dining room is wrapped in honey-colored wood paneling and gray wallpaper with a faint overlay of tree branches.
