I originally wrote this last year over an evening as a birthday gift for my friend Becky Lowe. I printed it in a small booklet I designed especially for her. It’s an extended riff on an in-joke we had about Becky’s enthusiasm for karmic gains via snail rescue.

I see your point about that paragragph, Will, by the way.

I didn’t know this was coming up this week, which made it all the sweeter.

You have a style, Mister Wood. That’ll hurt a writer who manifests a style that isn’t solid, isn’t steady.

Yours, however, is. Totally solid. Totally steady.

– c.

Aside from some slight smoothing, here and there, I have only one real note, which is I’d lose the paragraph beginning, “In some stories, this would take a sinister bent…” You’ve already got us thinking that. The conflict here is between the storybook quality and the obvious, sinister turn we expect. When it doesn’t come, that’s charming. I think you can show us the same expectation defied just through Rebecca’s expectations, without backing all the way out of the story for it.

And, this bit? I loved this:

“— But I made you up, she says.

— Maybe.”

Great piece.