But we have seen it in the air, A fairy like a William Pear - Mervyn Peake

There was a library and it is ashes. Let its long length assemble." These words made me a writer. When I was in middle school, my mother brought home a used paperback copy of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast…Reading this at the age of 13, I understood that fantasy, the place I was looking for, is not to be found in dragons, ghosts, or magic wands. It resides in language. Fantasy is death by owls. It’s mourning through gesture. It’s music, incantation in half-light. An inverted heart.

He knew that he was caught up in one of those stretches of time when for anything to happen normally would be abnormal. The dawn was too tense and highly charged for any common happening to survive.

The lives of the Outer Dwellers had become almost normal again. Bitterness was their bread and rivalry their wine.