These words we twist and turn to weave some fantasy to present for your favourable attention. We the masters of the page the pen have wriggled out first our handwriting. Our desire to speak, to you the emptiness, the reader, come from we know not where to vanish as you came. Beware our mastery, our editing. Our revisions of our view of us. Masters of the muse, the tune. We are but old men at heart, folktellers at a festival, got up in dresses of importance. Robes of ancient philosophers crowned with garland wreath. It is a cry of pain, modified for public consumption. For, to another without affection, pain provokes but disbelief and ill attention. It is happiness we seek, with friends, to fill time pleasantly. Life holds back the tale of happiness and joy. Clear, distorted not by horror and aggression. Oh fly that buzzes my room is it emptiness you display in the apparent aimlessness of your peregrinations? I have watched you. Random hope of … is it escape? An irritated contentment. Can you not think escape will take some thought? Fishface awoke. He had been dreaming. Maps. He needed to make maps. Said this before? He wondered. Maps of how maps, of what maps. Realising then that it was not morning but sometime deep in the night into which he awoke, returned to sleep. Probably again to dream.