John Crowley: Little, Big

Choose a door, take a step. Mushrooms have come out in the wetness, the walled garden is full of them. There are further lights, there in the twilit bottom of the garden; the door in the wall is open, and the silvery rain sifts over the Park that can just be seen through it. Whose dog is that?

One by one the bulbs burned out, like long lives come to their expected ends. Then there was a dark house made once of time, made now of weather, and harder to find; impossible to find and not even as easy to dream of as when it was alight. Stories last longer: but only by becoming only stories. It was anyway all a long time ago; the world, we know now, is as it is and not different; if there was ever a time when there were passages, doors, the borders open and many crossing, that time is not now. The world is older than it was. Even the weather isn’t as we remember it clearly once being; never lately does there come a summer day such as we remember, never clouds as white as that, never grass as odorous or shade as deep and full of promise as we remember they can be, as once upon a time they were.