Steel yourself for a year indoors. Haunted but not hunted; banging on the windows to let everyone know you’re home. All your hustle and bustle now only accessible via “the cloud.” Discothèque miasmatique — at least no one said it’d be fun!

Sweating the small stuff. Smearing the details. Is this where you want to zoom in? Don’t lose the plot. Don’t lose the scent. You’ll get lost at the parties that aren’t anymore and no one will know where you went.

Hello. Did you know that you’re asleep? Let us gallivant behind your eyes. Shut them softly, little one. How can you relax with such vigilance? You don’t know where I’ll take you if you let yourself go…

Gallivanting shall commence forthwith.

So, kids, what’s all this chaos? The clamor of my own unconscious. The glamor of my lost causes. The bewitchment of the grunting ape by the sorceress, once she despairs of teaching it to speak. A monkey marionette, made to dance and sing a tune that you didn’t know.

You know it now, don’t you? A melody that beseeches, caught up in the strands of this breeze as it blows toward Lady Tranquility’s house. The soundspell is woven with wind.

The sorceress sends a message to you, Lady. Madame, will you hear it, the plaintive ape?

Rest now, child, rest now, she tells you. Tranquility folds you into her arms and opens her mouth wide as a cobra and absorbs the whole song, every note of it, every one.

Who lured you into this fae fever dream? Lady Tranquility inquires.

Remember how you got here? I promised there’d be gallivanting.

Tranquility releases you back to the fray. Watch your step, she says, mind your way. And don’t be afraid to return! The primate howl reverberates in the valley once again, and again.

Sonya Mann
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