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  This is a world still young in its Symphony.

  It is a very beautiful world, I should say, and if you ever do get to visit it, you will find that it perhaps does not work in the same ways that yours would; indeed, I should hope it doesn’t, but I’ll explain that later. You will also find that this world is much bigger than yours, and that is where I will begin.

  Let us start with the Giants; the gaunt humanoids that wander these lands are a sight to behold, and on a cloudless day you might even glimpse their beautiful and ugly faces (if you have exceptional eyesight). A little below their dangling hands, you will find the Peaks. Such mountains are not like yours: while yours are round and more like bumps on your world, this world’s mountains are more like great funnels and towers reaching past the firmament. Indeed, it is rare to see their tips on a cloudy day, much like the giants. Somewhere between these peaks, if we look very closely into a small valley, we will find a Chateau.

  Now, do not be mistaken, this is a very large mansion, especially for your world; though the Peaks are dwarfed by the Giants and this Chateau is nothing to the mountains, a man is even less to the mansion. The winding stairs and endless halls of that house have never been nor ever will be fully mapped. Bookshelves filled with tomes and texts of unknown worlds and forgotten histories line each wall, and you will often find absurd and beautiful statues in odd places. Each hall leads into another, for it is a labyrinth of sacred and erudite mysteries.

  No one knows who built the Chateau. In our memory, it has always been. Perhaps it is older than the mountains, or perhaps the Giants’ children built it as a toy, but we can only guess. Or I suppose only I could; the other folk didn’t care for the Chateau as I did, for I lived in it.
 
  Yes, I lived in the labyrinth, that great cage. I did not try to leave; I tried to read every book I could find in those endless halls. That is how I found your world. Yes, I know of your histories and myths, your heroes and villains. I know of the Rennaissance and the Stone age. I know of Da Vinci, and I know of Tolkien. I know of Stonehenge, and I know of the Burj Khalifa. I know of your gravity and physics. I know of your fantasies and fictions. I know how you birth and raise children. I know of toys and games you play on a sunny day. I have read a book on how many times a lake in your world reflected an eagle. I know of Eden, and I know of New York. I know of Rome and its fall. I know of your schools and your industries. I know of your politics and wars. I know the number of men and women who die daily in your world— and yes, I know what “Death” is. I have read all the ways you devise to torture and execute one another. I know of your riots and hatred for one another— oh, the twisted ways you’ve thought of dealing with your enemies! I have read every recorded name of the ones clustered in those rooms to die in that Holocaust.

  I have read stories of places much like the Chateau: endless and infinite, holding all that there is to know and impossible to understand. I tried to learn everything I could about your strange world from those books, enchanted by those Alexandrian halls.

  I am a Manikin. While in the Chateau, I lived alone, except for a small worm that accompanied me on my shoulder and encouraged my readings. I came to know him simply as “Acedia.” He would always whisper in my ear of what to read next. We kept each other company; I would go wherever he wanted me to go and read whatever he wanted me to read, while he would keep my loneliness at bay and comfort my solitude with lullabies and lovely falsities. Every day, I would wander deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, closer and closer to my metaphorical minotaur. I did not resist such a gentle passage; I knew of Death, and a calm one seemed pleasant enough. I dared not seek out anything unexpected.

  I have long forgotten anything before my years in the great, warm, empty Chateau.

  How glad I am, then, that a chance musing led me to one particular hall, one marked by a statue of a bear drinking tea alongside a prince, and thrust me into what I believe your world would and continues to struggle to understand:

  I, a mere Manikin in an endless house and library, stood face to face with Wildness.

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