A Letter to the Reader

Welcome, dear reader. Take a seat for a moment and enjoy the quiet as we arrive together at our little town.

The year is 1994, and we are just about five miles from the Divide.

The Divide is not an ordinary forest. It is an ever-spanning woodland that continues to grow, year after year, mile after mile, as if the earth itself slowly remembers how to dream. The trees there are older than most maps, older than the roads that lead to them, and certainly older than the comfortable homes of our town.

But the Divide is not merely a forest.

It is, in a strange way, a home for stories.

Within its deep green shadow live the sorts of things one might hear whispered about in bedtime tales and old storybooks. The woman who lived in the shoe, the goose that laid golden eggs, the wandering spirits that once filled the pages of the Brothers Grimm, and the pale, wandering Spirit of Winter who drifts between snow and moonlight. Old wives’ tales, nursery rhymes, half-forgotten folklore—all of it, somehow, finds a place beneath those endless branches.

The forest listens to stories.

And in its own way… it keeps them alive.

Naturally, such a place has earned its share of fear.

For more than a hundred years the Divide has slowly crept outward, its trees stretching farther into the world like quiet fingers. The maps change every decade or so. A road disappears here. A clearing vanishes there. Entire hillsides grow thick with new timber where none had been before.

Many towns worry that one day the forest will simply keep growing until it swallows them whole.

Deep Lilac Town is no exception.

Some say that if the Divide ever reaches the edge of town, strange things will begin to happen. Mortals, like you and me, are not meant to live too close to such places. The stories claim that people begin to… change. That something inside them—something ancient and untamed—awakens.

They say that the worst parts of a person can grow claws and fangs of their own.

A grotesque metamorphosis, the kind that turns a frightened man into the very monster he once feared. The sort of creature that makes good folk lock their doors at night and keep torches burning just a little longer than necessary.

Of course… those are merely stories.

Rumors for explaining the unexplainable.

And Deep Lilac Town is far too peaceful a place for such nonsense.

But perhaps you are wondering about the town itself.

Deep Lilac was founded long, long ago—back in the age of knights and crusades, when the world was still young enough to believe in impossible things. In those distant centuries, mankind did not merely fear magic.

We walked beside it.

Men and women once shaped the land with their hands, coaxing rivers to bend and stones to rise. Fire could rest in a person’s palm like a warm lover, gentle and obedient. Magic was not a myth then. It was a companion.

But that age has long since faded.

Magic, like so many wonderful things, slowly retreated from the mortal world. It drifted back into the Divide, carrying with it the strange peoples who once lived openly beside humanity.

Many of them still remain there today.

The Beastfolk, as the old books called them—half animal, half man, or sometimes something stranger still. Creatures whose shapes felt like living riddles of nature.

The proud Centaurs, whose powerful horse bodies carried the upright torsos of men.
The fearsome Minotaurs, towering bulls that walked upon human legs with terrible strength in their arms.
And countless others besides.

Among them were the Britters and the Novards, ancient proto-peoples from which many animal-kind descended—creatures that walked, spoke, laughed, and lived lives not so different from our own.

Today, most of them remain within the safety of the Divide.

And the rest of the world has chosen, quite politely, to pretend they were never real at all.

But Deep Lilac Town has always been… a little different about such things.

You see, living only five miles from the edge of a storybook forest makes it rather difficult to ignore the possibility that some stories might be true.

Still, I promise you this.

The tale you are about to read is not one of terror, nor tragedy, nor the dreadful pains that so many stories seem to delight in these days.

No.

This one is something gentler.

A place to rest for a while.

Because beyond the distant tree line, past the slow country road, and beneath the warm glow of orange street lamps, sits a quiet little town where the nights smell faintly of rain on cobblestone, radios hum softly through open windows, and the world—just for a moment—feels like it might still be kind.

And if you listen carefully as we arrive…

You may already hear the piano playing somewhere down the street.
----

Before I can let you step into town, however, there is a small matter of procedure. I’m sure you understand. Every dreamer—young or old—must first be checked in properly.

And for that, we must speak with Igor.

A lovely fellow, truly. Just… try not to question his appearance too closely. It tends to make him uncomfortable, and besides, I’m not entirely certain what he is myself. Half ogre, perhaps? Or something close enough that the distinction hardly matters.

Igor is a very large creature—easily seven feet tall—and he spends most of his days tucked neatly inside a stall at the train station. Most of his body remains hidden behind the wooden counter, though one can usually see the edges of a very respectable black coat and a tidy gray neck scarf wrapped about his thick neck.

Sometimes, on special occasions, he wears a comically small bowler hat perched atop his large, smooth head.

It’s quite charming, really.

His skin is an unsettling sort of pale, the kind that makes one wonder if the sun ever quite agreed with him. His eyes are enormous—larger than a clenched fist—and they rarely blink unless he is thinking particularly hard about something.

His nose tilts sharply upward, revealing two small slits where nostrils ought to be.

And his face… well.

Have you ever seen a clay pot after the sculptor’s hands slipped for just a moment? As though the shape came out slightly wrong but no one had the heart to start over?

Yes.

Something like that.

But please, do not misunderstand me. Igor is a very sweet man. His voice is small and gentle—quite the opposite of what one might expect from a fellow of his size. He speaks slowly, and thinks even slower, so it’s usually best not to overwhelm him with too many questions all at once.

Still, he performs a very important duty.

You see, Igor is the only man in charge of admitting newcomers like us—dreamers, travelers, curious readers—into Deep Lilac Town.

Papers must be stamped, after all. Records must be kept.

Why, the town would be in dreadful confusion otherwise.

Ah—look there.

You can just barely see him now, tucked away in his little wooden box.

The box itself, by the way, is a sort of information kiosk. Inside it are letters, newspapers, and documents printed in nearly every language a traveler might speak.

Trollish? He has that.

Sylvan? Certainly.

Russkiy Yazyk? Of course.

“У него есть все необходимые вам документы.”

That roughly translates to: He has all the documents you need.

Quite convenient, don’t you think?

Now then…

Ah.

My train appears to be arriving.

I’m afraid I must leave the rest of the mystery to you.

From here on, you will follow the stories of the many villagers who call this town home. You will walk quietly among them—unseen, unheard—like a gentle ghost drifting through their lives.

And who knows what you might discover along the way?

I did hear, at one point, that a murderer lives somewhere in town.

Or perhaps it was a werewolf.

Ah well.

Rumors have a habit of mixing themselves together in places like this.

Perhaps you’ll be the first to figure out the truth.

Until then…

I tip my hat to you.

Goodbye—

and welcome

to Deep Lilac Town.