Once upon a time - for that is how all stories should begin - there was a boy who had forgotten how to love. He had, in truth been forgetting for a long time now. To him it felt like a sickness that ate away at him from the inside, slowly consuming the light within so that him eyes shon a little less bright each day, and his skin a little more pale.
When Jason was younger, his mother had often told him that stories were alive. They weren't alive the way that people were alive, or even dogs or cats. People were alive whether you chose to notice them or not, while dogs tended to make you notice them if they decided that you weren't paying them enough attention. Cats, meanwhile, were very good at pretending people didn't exist at all when it suited them, but that was another matter entirely. Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by torch light beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. They lay dormant, hoping for a chance to emerge. Stories wanted to be read, Jason's mother whispered into his naive eight year old ears. He didn't quite understand this at the time.
