Erin Lodes

The fog outside my apartment window is so thick this morning that I can barely make out the leaves of the trees in the woods behind my building. I spent a good long while staring at it, listening to the water drip from the leaves that have just started to change color, the wind rustling through them.

I imagined what sorts of creatures might come out, slowly appearing from the dense mist, their forms taking shape. Not terrifying creatures, but interesting ones, magical ones, ones that don’t exist when the sun is fully up and the fog is burned away.

But more than that, I imagined venturing into the woods myself. I imagined walking slowly, slipping between the trees, disappearing into the fog myself until the normal world of my apartment complex was behind me.

And it was easy. Easy to imagine what adventures might be waiting in the fog. In the early morning hours it’s so easy to look outside my window and feel as though I’m peering through the veil into a magical world that lies just beyond, just next to, just outside or inside, our world. A world with new peoples, with magic, with unicorns and dragons.

And that, is why I am drawn to magical realism, to urban fantasy. It was inevitable really. When the worlds beyond my own are so easy to see, how can I possibly shut my eyes to them?

Anyway that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?