Thursday was the new moon.
The sky was clear. The sun had just set. But there was no sign of it. Try as I might from behind the wheel on the commute home, peer as much as I might try at the darkening sky in the west, I could see nothing, not even a thin, thin crescent.
Friday, on the same commute, the crescent was there. Having wandered in one day far enough to the eastern side of the setting sun, it took no peering. There is was. Hanging in the sky above hills. A thin crescent moon descending into the west. With Mercury trailing behind.