Long ago, there lived a king and queen in a house of dreams, and there they quietly tended to their ghosts and knew all the shadows by name. The house was vast. Sometimes the king or queen got lost. When that happened, they would hold each other’s hands and say— It was once upon a time. That was all it was. A prayer and a promise in one. A single page composed of the past. Eventually, what was once softened to a palimpsest of lost words and snowfall, starlings and sparrow wings and blue ink. In this way, the king and queen crafted a tale of their own. In the end, they lived.
