I was playing Skyrim again and having fun reading all the books. It sort of clicked in my head that maybe what this story was lacking was the “in world” texts . . . so I started with one, and then it just expanded wildly from there and the connected narratives of identity and representation and connection all gelled in my head. Also, I have always wanted an excuse to write a video game cut scene.

Alas, this story originated with life and death. You can see that I am the viewpoint character, and that the drama taking place in the foreground is the events concurrent with the sudden illness and untimely death of my wife Judi. I wish the story hadn’t originated, but we can’t always get what we want. It is the second, and I hope final, story specifically driven by this loss.

When I was about thirteen, a group of us went camping in someone’s cow pasture. There was a murky pond where we swam and fished. I waded deep into the dark, fish-reeking water, up to my throat, when my feet touched something sharp in the mud. I stepped back, but I found more hard edges, coated in slime. Probing around with my feet, horror and disgust broke over me when I realized where I was.

I backed a Kickstarter with a reward level that included working with Maurice on a short story. We’d both written airships, and I had friends who had lots of great things to say about Maurice as a person, so I thought that would be a fun experience. I was a little nervous, because a previous attempt to co-write a story didn’t go well. But that was a novel, and this would be a short story. I hoped that I’d have a better experience.

I love stories where characters find their person(s) through adventure, magic, and hardship. Before writing this story, I was also daydreaming epilogues for my favorite Hayao Miyazaki films. I thought, “What happens when the main characters grow old? What happens when one of them loses their partner in life? How do you process that grief when you’re jaded by the world and have magical abilities?” I was still processing my own grief and anxieties while writing it, and for a time I wasn’t sure how it would end.