The world ended when I tried to surmount it. I stood on the altar of heaven. I proclaimed my ego like power. i was the great eagle spewing cants of majesty. And when I came back down the altar of Heaven was swaying crazy lady and the world? The world lonely blinking lights and crumbled chips of paint. I called to Marissa. I whispered who are you? but the folds of the blankets revealed nothing but blankets. I had created such a world, it was so real and astonishing and convincing that I had all but forgotten it was make-believe. Until I got too tall and grandiose. I tried to stand up on a hanging dais and proclaim myself god. Because it was my world. I thought I had woken up in the dream and that made me powerful. I roared out my dominion, and then the dais swayed, almost broke. I said, “I’m not going to do *that* again,” and went about my business. But when I got back down into the warm places, the gentle folds and hills where my people were, where my nascent love had been, where the overlapping magic of city and sea had been encapsulated in the twinkling of a quirky strand of christmas lights, my heart was broken, because it was all gone. It was only blankets now, and the christmas lights worked perfectly, they blinked in perfect rhythm and cadence, flawlessly as advertised, but the magic was totally gone. In the folds of the blankets, nothing. The shepherds and the hills had disappeared. I was alone in a plain room. Again, I thought I had awoken from my dream, and I was devasted. Then I *really* woke up, and the whole experience became a story about a story. But wait.