Robert Jordan

ALL IS ILLUSION. You think that you have seen me? You have not.

I walk the jeweled jungles of the night, rarely padding the planes of sight. Mist curls from my nostrils when I lie in my badger's cave, fog carpeting the land, cloaking the mortal world. Fog, where fireflies dance for me alone, sculpting patterns inside my skull, and uncounted unknown glowing mites take on shape and flesh. Worlds and time spin beneath my hands, and threads of myth, writhing throughout the ages, weave themselves into dreams where mortal shadows shift among the darkling flames. Ancient tales that tug at souls, reminding the eyes of things unseen yet remembered. All dreams and fears and hungers are the same, a thousand times a thousand branches spreading, kindled from the same roots. One branch for another I change, graft the alien stock to germinate untold from native, 'round and down to where myth and dreams alike are born. Into the jeweled jungle, into the fog, where the fireflies dance.

Then again, maybe I just tell stories. All is illusion.