notes: @neilhimself says, in his experience, stories arise from confluence: werewolf lore collides with what we know of goldfish, say — or with chairs — what if a werewolf bites the chair in which you are sitting? What would next seem useful to have in such a story? Gaiman suggests, maybe snow? So the reader may be mystified by tracks of chair legs leading away from a dead body… I can get that far — but only that far. I’m not the sort to follow chair tracks off into a winter night. I would stall there, sitting by that dead thing in the snow. Given the choice, I usually opt to sit down and take inventory right where I find myself. And this is not experience. This is not story. This is explication.

When we are warm enough, safe enough, alone enough, what is not-us may even be rendered invisible.