Paper People

I'm writing in fits and stutters, but at least I'm writing. I'm working now on a story within the story. Here's a selection for today:

Consider this: a tiny pinprick floating in Miriam’s galaxy. Now it is near the center, but slightly off to the upper right. It moves slowly, ambling through its orbit. It looks much like a speck of dust floating above your bed when the moonlight comes through the window and hits it just so, so that it seems illuminated almost from the inside. A speck of dust, when viewed like this, can seem a wondrous thing, can it not? And this dust-like speck in Miriam’s galaxy is no less wondrous. Indeed, it may be more so.

This speck, though tiny from the outside, seems quite unfathomably large from the inside. It is a planet, a mass of earth and water, a home. Underneath the sea, volcanoes simmer and stutter and erupt. Some of them have coughed enough magma up to the surface and waited long enough to turn it into dirt, to form an island. The inhabitants of this island are all made of paper. These paper people have a story, and as many stories, it begins thus: Once upon a time.