* * *
The morning is alive with sounds I cannot name. The city roared, but the Hinterland whispers, and each new noise is soft and clear.
Timid breezes poke their heads through gauzy curtains, stirring the sunlight. I lean against the headboard, sip blackberry tea, and marvel that I have just been served breakfast by a goat. She’s a kind old nanny with a ruffled apron and soft brown hide cross-hatched by faded surgical scars. Her name is Gerta.
I hear her rattling about in the kitchen below, bleating instructions to the household: Bertrand the dwarf must go cut more wood for the cook fire; Elsa the elfen housemaid is dispatched to beat the rugs; Professor Shinnegal is off searching for mushrooms, but he’ll be wanting his tea when he returns, so Liam the dray horse must purchase honey from the neighbors (who are, according to Gerta, a flitter-witted collection of fairies).
Elves and fairies? I close my eyes. Yes, perhaps I dream. Perhaps I still lie in the wreckage of my craft. Perhaps I was arrested by the police bot and am adorning my jail cell with boundless mad fancy.
Perhaps I am dead.
If any of those possibilities are true, I am in no hurry to return to reality. Opening my eyes, I drink the rest of the tea, eat every piece of toast dripping with butter, and spoon up all of the strawberries floating in thick cream. None of the half-organic, half-synthesized meals in Spectra’s finest restaurants could ever compare to this. No, indeed.