Your Story

We meet in the wood between twilight and dreams, shrouded in fog, the past echoing all around us. The ground smoking, smelling of coffee and clay. I hold you close and feel you shiver, try to smother you with my warmth but you melt away like the mist. I spot a trail in the undergrowth and follow it, pushing my way through the branches and fog. Trees press all around me. Challenging me. Testing me. I will not be denied. The path ends in a wall of wood. I hear your voice calling in the distance and push into the featureless forest, fighting for the formless noises echoing all around me. The trees thin out into a clearing with a book resting on a marble altar in the middle. I walk up to the book; it's blank. Your voice all around me, pleading, whispering, ordering: “Write.” “What am I supposed to write about?” I ask. The woods don't reply. I sit cross-legged on the altar, hunched over the book, pen poised above the surface, and I think, maybe – just maybe – if I write the story well and true enough, you'll come back to me, and we'll be back in that wood where dreams can come true, the wood where you and I live happily ever after. I think of that, and I begin to write.