An earlier draft of this story took place in a bar where two sisters habitually met after work to vent and commiserate. During this sororal conference, they would show each other the strange letters they'd received, each identical down to the ink blots, and they would argue over the communiques' provenance. The draft had problems, of course—that's practically what "first draft" means—and, as it turned out, all of them were in search of a single solution, that of moving the scene from a random Friday afternoon at the bar to a very particular Sunday in a cemetery.
In the Sandman story "A Game of You," a character outlines the classic fantasy of little girls: "Their parents are not their parents. Their lives are not their lives. They are princesses. Lost princesses from distant lands. And one day the king and queen, their real parents, will take them back to their land, and then they'll be happy for ever and ever." But it's never really that simple, not even when the fantasy comes true. Especially not even then.
Cover art includes public domain photography sourced from Pixabay.
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Or You'll Be Late for School (excerpt)
Short StoryAgain she saw thick stone walls in her mind's eye. Her mind's ear reported trumpets, a royal fanfare.
