Kristina Briede

Nowhere

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. There wasn't always a Valley, come to think of it. Not really. But that scarcely mattered. After all, countless affairs have come to pass in places that don’t exist. They fade into murmurs. Whispers carried by the wind, or symbols suggested in tree bark; stories woven through constellations, in a twisted fairytale, on an old map. Foreign yet familiar, like the crackle of a fire. They speak of other times, in other worlds. Of the Valley where Aureliana stood, a place that wasn’t at all, and whose inexistence rippled beyond the merely tangible to stun the very threads of reality.