The most difficult thing to read is time. Maybe because it changes so many things.

Her father picks different names for her as they change locales, but he uses Miranda often, presumably because he knows how much it annoys her.

And then he tells her stories. Myths he learned from his instructor. Fantasies he created himself, inspired by bits and pieces of others read in archaic books with crackling spines.

A woman I should like to think I know rather well and a woman I had always considered a mystery, are in fact the same person.

This is, in part, why there is less magic in the world today. Magic is secret and secrets are magic, after all, and years upon years of teaching and sharing magic and worse. Writing it down in fancy books that get all dusty with age has lessened it, removed its power bit by bit.

...have a theory that she is in love with the dream of someone and not an actual person.

I binge write. I think it's because I started seriously writing by participating in National Novel Writing Month, an online-based challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days.