(no subject)

Here's the thing with stories.

There's always a middle. People are good at remembering the beginnings and the endings, all 'once upon a time', and 'happily ever after's', but that's not the whole of it. There's always everything else, the anything that really happens in the story. The middle is what's real. What you can't make go away, or dress up. You can sometimes leave it out, most time other people are good at leaving it out too. But it's always there, the way from one to the other. And there's no way round it.

Even when you don't say the words out loud.

So our girl, all she ever did was open a book. Oh, if you're the sort that can see the whole story through to the end, you know that isn't the whole story, that it's never that simple. That she was doing ever so much more than just opening books, and that was her real problem. Only that's not what she knew.

All she knew was that she went and lost a world. And the one she got back? It wasn't anything like anything she'd ever known before. It smelled different, for one. Earthier and deeper than anything that'd ever be found along the cement rivers that cut through where she lived. And it wasn't home either. It was cooler, and wetter, and wilder than that. But she wasn't scared. At least, not yet.

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