Jan 27, 2014, 2:27:40 PM

Ending a story can be a tricky thing. What I was writing was both a prologue and epilogue for an unwritten story, so it was even trickier. There is no way to prove a story has its own reality. It does not challenge the reality we live in to say I could return to myself after escaping my daily life by pursuing my dreams in fiction. It was ironic that the combined age of the two characters I became was roughly equal to my own age. I would not have planned that.

Assuming I get to write the entire epic, I’ll be much older when it’s done, but that’ll just be recapitulation. It took me as long to comprehend the story as it would have taken to live it. So, the story is a work of fiction with an odd sort of truth. I created the world it was set in, but the characters my protagonist encountered made the world their own. Her life allowed me to explore questions and options I did not have in my own. As part of me, she gives me a new perspective on things.

“I can certainly say this,” she interrupted, to share her opinion, “your world isn’t ready for me. It’s barely ready for you to share our odd little dream. This glimpse you’ve offered is a bit like a dream. It jumps through something bigger and leaves you wondering what you’ve actually seen. So, some may just write you off as being crazy.”

“That’s okay,” I assured her. “I do have a knack for crazy. I’m an artist, so it’s to be expected, I guess. It’s ultimately up to the reader to decide what to make of the story. That can never happen if I leave it unwritten. It’s more important that they be able to relate to you, and what you experienced in the context of the story. Me being completely transparent about the creative processes that went into creating the story does not diminish its worth as a story.”

“And what about your dream?” she asked.

“You mean, finding a way to fit the real me into reality?” I clarified. She nodded. “We’ll just have to see. The story addresses how my problem was solved using magic. There is even a point where the same type of problem was addressed using a more advanced technology.” I shrugged, “I already know that anything is possible in the mind. The question that really needs to be asked is: How is anything possible outside of it?”

“Um… that’s not a rhetorical question, is it?” she frowned.

“It’s a legitimate question,” I assured her. “I can’t give up at impossible. I have to learn the right questions to ask. Then I have to answer them.”

Original author’s note: Well, it turns out that the FictionPress word-count was padded a bit, so I was actually about 460 words short of 30,000. So, here they are… just enough to get the ending I hoped for.