It has been a long, long while since I’ve stayed up until the world wakes up. Until the sidewalks by my window are lit by something other than the flickering streetlight. For a confused hour or so I thought the birds were simply background noise from the TV in the other room, and then the cardinal got into a screaming match with the mockingbirds and I knew it was real. No one uses angry birds as background. I felt like Watson with that dim Aha! but there was no one there to pat my head and tell me how very bright I was after so little sleep. I felt cheated.

But there were stories there, in the long late hours after midnight, so many stories.

A man too old for names who collects the broken children yearning to be Lost, but who are long ago too old for Neverland.

A golden clockwork bird, created by the last dying god of Seventhrall that can sing death or life to those that hear it. Of the brother and sister who set out to find it to save a horse that isn’t quite a horse.

A woman who is given the choice to see or not to see, to step into the story or out of it.

A taste of might-have-beens, those shadowed dreams that haunt the waking hours of everyone who’s ever made a choice.

And a few other things that may or may not turn into something else. I have a lot of opening lines and I don’t know what’s beyond them. It’s fun to world-build when I’m sleepy, things make more sense, grow faster, further than in waking hours.

But my sentence structure still drives everyone nuts…