I know a place where lacquered wood and iron industry collide with the untrammeled hinterlands. Along this divide, there is a trail unpaved, drifting into an autumn choked by mist, where tears of scarlet and gold cling to the twisting branches, but fail and fall like shadows of waking dreams. It is here that I walk, side-by-side, with you. We wait and wander and listen with our bare feet to the moans of the earth, who wants nothing more than to cast off her husk of mire and fly. Can we, do you think – if we close our eyes and jump without fear of falling? We can only wade in cold twilight, as mist takes flight with the wings of swans, and shadows float with the laughter of fairies. Here do moons awaken to nightfall, freezing in shards of ice like stars akin to fireflies because they shimmer too brightly. Across the lake, a unicorn dips her fragile head and beckons us onward, as if we exist in this world of glass. She shatters like quicksilver, but we walk on, etching a spoor of ash in our wake. swaying to the call of sirens, and knowing that if our heels relinquish the earth, we would become as elves, dancing in crowns of fox fire. I squeeze your shoulder, and you smile, because nothing to be touched can faze us as we step outside the threshold of contrast, our bodies drifting away like smoke on a lake of glass. Argent winds lift us up to frolic amid the arms of trees, who break their roots and reach for the unreachable skies, where white moths brush our eyes with specks of cloud, and crows, robed in starlight, sing and spread their wings like the wings of dragons. Do dreams come true only in dreams? Ahead, whispers of the sun weave seams of ash, stitched with the stench of roads paved in plastic. We dont want to walk away, but we do, back into that veil of autumn, soft with daybreak, where we feel, beneath us, the earth stirring in her blanket of scarlet and gold. Swans arch their necks through feathers too light to be mist, that parts as we follow our footsteps down the trail unpaved, along the collision of iron and hinterland. Behind us, there lingers an echo of dragonsong, because dreams come true only if we dream.