And Then I Woke Up

by Malcolm Devlin

Isn’t it beautiful how stories can work like that? The subtle way they help the teller, the subversive way they reach the listener, how they creep inside you like waking dreams.

When the narrative has taken hold, it brings with it a constricting of focus; a tendency to only see what is perceived to be true at the expense of everything else.

They liked the weapons she had forged herself; they couldn’t stand the way she chose to wield them.

But sometimes, there are books I re-read. That I’m drawn back to. You can never re-read a book for the first time, and it’s never really the same reading it when you know what will happen. But . . . sometimes that’s what you want, isn’t it? Certainty. There’s comfort in that kind of familiarity.”