A tourist in the waking world

Happy Birthday @pollysthings

for spillbo

one day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again.

“As for admiration, it was always very welcome when it came, but she did not depend on it.” - Northanger Abbey

# part one

Home is behind, the world ahead, and there are many paths to tread through shadows to the edge of night, until the stars are all alight.

Was everyone else really as alive as she was?…If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was.

I don’t understand.

- Her feelings? - She rushed out in front of the angry mob and saved you. Or are you telling me I imagined that? You think none of the servants saw it? Do you think it’s not become the tittle-tattle of Milton?

- Tell me what to do. Gabriel? - Do what is right.