Once upon a time, there was a little girl, growing up alone. She wrapped around herself a world of words and pages, of musty library books smelling of all the minds they had touched before, of ancient, enduring wisdom, of paper and sawdust and the deep green forests that lay beyond the pages, stretching in her imagination all the way to the sea. She hid herself away in nooks and corners, behind a sofa, beneath a sheet draped over a bunk bed, weaving in her own childish way, little worlds.
