Angelica Lost and Found

Chapter 1. I, Volatore

Who, you may ask, is this that speaks? It is I, Volatore the hippogriff, yes! I, Volatore. I have outlived the man who imagined me into being. I have outlived centuries of little mortals who are born and die. While there are printed books and when there will be only the memory of books I shall live. What reality can compare to that? Mountains crumble, the sea is poisoned and the air but I live, Volatore, the flyer! Those others born of Ariosto’s pen, Orlando, Astolfo, Ruggiero — they live also. And Angelica. Angelica! But I alone have broken through the membrane of literary reality into that of mortals. And there again I find Angelica, chained to the rock of her beauty.

Reality! What is it? Who can define it? Not those who are in it. Flying over a village I saw a little boy sitting in a toy wagon. Reaching behind him with his hand he tried to push the wagon in which he sat. When it didn’t move he shook his head in disbelief.

Some have called reality a dream. The dream of reality? Who or what is dreaming it? Is it the primordial blackness that dreams reality with its colours and motion, its joys and its pains? Its sorrows? Does the blackness sleep?