They chase us down in the middle of the night and we wake up, breathless and sweating, asking, “What happened?” and “Why?”

They sneak up on us while gazing out an apartment window at the young couple shuffling around in the apartment below saying, “This life, too, is odd.”

They beg to be told, nagging and pleading and throwing themselves at our feet until we give in and sit down and compose them and send them out into the world.

They define who we are and what we want and why we are here. They attempt to order the chaos. They make beauty and magic where once there was only the mundane.

They take us on journeys to the far edges of the multi-verse and deep inside us to the depths of our being.

We live in stories like fish live in water and stories are the wildest things.