Destiny

Written by Neil Gaiman

There is a man with a book, walking through his garden.

The man is blind.

The Garden is a maze of paths that divide and branch and recombine.

There are statues in the garden . Huge statues. If they move, as some claim they do, it is too slowly to be easily perceived.

Now his path takes him into his dwelling, a place of corridors and halls.

The painting in Destiny's hall show his brothers and sisters as they might wish to be seen (although the wish and the thing are so close in the realm of the Endless that you cannot get a thin-bladed knife between them).

You will spend time in the realm of each of his siblings- you will dream, despair, desire, destroy, delight and otherwise, and eventually, die- but you were his from the very first page, and only he will read how your story comes out, a long time from now.

He is chained to the book, or it is chained to him. It is a book of many pages. It cannot be stolen; he cannot give it away.

It contains your life. Every detail of your life. Everything that has happened to you. Everything that will happen one day.. The things you've forgotten.
The things you do not believe.

It contains everything that has happened, or will happen, to anyone you've ever met.

Anyone you've ever heard of.

Anyone you've never heard of.

The histories and the dreams and triumphs of the dead are there.

The meaning of patterns of the sports of each leopard is written there, along with the truth of the shapes of clouds, and the strange, funny song-lives of the bacteria-folk and the secrets the wind whispers when there is no one there to listen.

Everything is in there, from the beginning of time to the end.

He did not create the path you walk.

But the movements of atoms and galaxies are in his book, and he sees little difference between them.

It is all in his book. One day he will lay it down, when the book is done, and what comes after that is still unwritten.

A page turns.

Destiny continues to walk......

He is holding a book. Inside the book is the Universe.


From the pages of The Sandman: Endless Nights