Once Upon A Time

“Once upon a time,” says the storyteller. People in our world hear the phrase and know it means “a long time ago,” or “before things were the way they are today,” or “in the beginning.”

In The World, “once upon a time” was last week, and everyone’s still watching the story unfold on the evening news. In The World, legends weren’t just made back in the day before video cameras and the internet. They’re striding down the streets downtown right now, and #TeamTezcatlipoca is trending on Twitter. In The World, nobody disputes the wisdom of knocking on wood to ward off malignant spirits, because malignant spirits spew out of the Axis Mundi next door all the time. Inhabitants of The World wake up to just a little more wonder and a few more omens every morning.

That’s not to say the curtain between the mundane and the divine is shredded daily, or even often. Most people never see a God in the flesh. They work, party, study, travel, and make love without any overt interference from mystical forces nine times out of 10. But mystical forces live in their neighborhoods, and that 10th time could be the one to tangle a person’s Fate up in something much bigger than herself.