Liv in a Life Well-Lived

I see you making your way to the middle of this country you’ve recently discovered. You believe it is in your own world and you alone have found it. But others have come before you, each of them thinking they were alone and that they were the first. You have met the citizens of my country. In your world, you have called them fictional characters. But here, they exist. The fairies and the imps, the ryls and the knooks, the pixies and the nymphs, the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit, the hobbits and the elves, the assassins and the mercenaries, the unhinged geniuses, the golden-locked maidens and un-maidens, the sorcerers and enchantresses, the dark and the bright ---- they all exist. You have followed a convoluted path through the regions of my realm. Now, I feel you coming closer to my tower. I can sense your very human energy pulsating like a star in the dark. I can almost taste your lifeblood --- earthy and metallic. You do not know it yet, but you have come for me. You understand not...

It was a vacation that was planned to be unplanned and I was soaking up the spaces of each free second. I was quite unabashed about hogging the balcony table that overlooked the splendid mountains. My notebook, pristine and white, was opened and awaiting the first word. My pen was held upright and poised at the edge of a potential good story. Oh, I was getting there. I was reaching out for the first word, pushing my imagination beyond the porous boundaries of time, almost there when... the gruff voice spoke and ruined it all for me. "Are you a writer?" a Caucasian man asked. His voice must have it's own bass-enhancer -- it was booming. Accented. Familiar. Annoyed by the distraction, I gave him a tight smile. "Sir, I just write." I thought that was enough to push him off. Another aspiring writer --- we're everywhere. I turned back to my notebook and scribbled the first words: "Since time..."Then I stopped when I realized the man was actually leaning...