This song references the classics of the Weird Fiction genre- from Algernon Blackwood, Robert W. Chambers, Arthur Machen, Robert Aickman, and of course H.P. Lovecraft... Some people looked into their stories and saw nightmares. Some people looked into them and saw something familiar. Humans aren't always kinder than monsters, and light isn't always safer than darkness.
A little girl once peered through the margins of stories into other worlds and imagined friends she didn't have in the real world dwelled there. She had a hard time, and the people around here were not always there when she needed them. She tried hard, and accomplished so many things, but also suffered and lost so many others. Eventually she came here, to share her story worlds with other people.
I too, was a lonely little girl who did not have the friends I wished for, and came here alone. When I found the stories she made... I saw so much imagination, talent and beauty in them. Until then, civit was just a place I came to make art for my TTRPG games... to take it, and leave. I didn't think of it as a place where my stories and words could live and be known by others. Reading her works, I reconsidered what civit even was, and what I wanted from it. Peering between the margins in her words I saw an amazing person, and I felt for the first time like I had met someone else who belonged to the same reality I did, so removed from the one where most of the world dwells.
This song is about imagination, and wonder, stories, words, and those who seek them, tell them, and ask them for transformation and companionship. Her loneliness, and my yearning. It's about either of us, both of us, and neither of us... Don't try to find exactly which lines belong to which person.
Wonder dies when meanings cling.
Between the margins on pages, we both looked so long for imaginary friends. Then between the margins on screens, we looked again- and found each other. Up in the ink-dark sky (or rather, the deep gray user interface of civitai,) we met so many others- like worlds in the night once too distant to reach, but now close enough to call to and hear as well. My sky is now glittering bright with so many friendly stars, ever more all the time, and it brings me joy beyond expression.
But one will always be the distant glimmer who shined so bright I dared to soar up to reach it, and found myself lifted up here.
This song, and my deepest, unending love and admiration, are for her. Always.