りょうりょうと風が吹き渡る夕暮れの野を、まるで火が走るように、赤い毛なみを光らせて、一匹の子狐が駆けていた

Question

I am trying to translate this sentence from a fantasy novel, but some of the grammar eludes me, and I am having trouble distinguishing between what is literal and metaphorical.

りょうりょうと風が吹き渡る夕暮れの野を、まるで火が走るように、赤い毛なみを光らせて、一匹の子狐が駆けていた。

Does the first part りょうりょうと風 mean "brightness and wind", or "a wind with (the quality of) brightness"? I am not quite in tune with this use of と.

Then, how does structure [Topic]をまるで[Subject]が[Verb]ように work? In this case, is it that the evening plains are like a fire acting in the manner of running?

Lastly, does 赤い毛なみを光らせて mean that the red wave of fur caused the brightness?

My translation was as follows.

The brightness and the wind blowing across the evening plains, is like like eloping flames, caused by the red wave of glittering fur from the galloping fox cub.

Answer 1

This sentence is indeed literary, but grammatically it's very straightforward. The three phrases, "りょうりょうと風が吹き渡る夕暮れの野を", "まるで火が走るように" and "赤い毛並みを光らせて" independently modify the intransitive verb, 駆けていた, at the end of the sentence. The main subject of the sentence is 一匹の子狐.

• I feel りょうりょう here is not 喨々 but 寥々, a rare na-adjective which means "forlorn/desolate". と turns a na-adjective into an adverb (i.e., desolately) that modifies 吹き渡る. (I don't know if you can say "wind blows desolately" in English, though)
• を in りょうりょうと風が吹き渡る夕暮れの野を marks the location where the main action of the sentence, 駆ける, takes place. See: Making sense of transitive usage of 行く and 来る - 「を行く」 and 「を来る」
• まるで火が走るように here means the child fox (not the evening planes) was like fire.
• 赤い毛なみを光らせて literally means "(while) making its red fur shine".