An Enchantment of Ravens

by Margaret Rogerson

Then it happens to you, and you understand you aren’t any different from those girls after all. Oh, they still seem just as absurd—you’ve simply joined them, in quite a humbling way. But isn’t absurdity part of being human? We aren’t ageless creatures who watch centuries pass from afar. Our worlds are small, our lives are short, and we can only bleed a little before we fall.

But I’d hardly known him, even though in my feverish infatuation I’d felt as though we’d been confiding in each other for years. Could you really love someone that way, when all they were to you was a pleasant illusion?

Frankly, I had no idea how anyone knew if they were in love in the first place. Was there ever a single thread a person could pick out from the knot and say “Yes—I am in love—here’s the proof!” or was it always caught up in a wretched tangle of ifs and buts and maybes?