You are wounded.

That's something you’ve believed ever since you were Censored, ever since your wings were taken from you, atrophying in your long starvation.

But maybe that's not the case. Or at least not the only way of seeing it.

How Muses perceive themselves is important, you’ve learned. Scarred and bitter, that's how you once described yourself. A Muse defined by their Censorship. Defined by having their freedom taken away.

Kendrick speaks a lot about a Muse’s Identity with a capital “I”. He talks about how Muses are not just Juice, about how part of us touches the Transcendental. You were capable of extraordinary things: no matter what Vignette you were in, you carried the idea of flight with you. Kendrick says this is because while every Muse touches on their Ideal, some Muses, well, they touch on something else as well. Your wings… they never should have let you fly as freely as you did.

Kendrick thinks that when you were Censored, you lost your connection to Freedom. With that, you lost its physical manifestation.

You lost your wings.

Knowing what's wrong though, well that is only the first step… It's one thing to recognise the metaphysical source of your malediction, fixing it is quite another.

The process was long and difficult. Certainly more experimental, in the sense of not yet being finished, than Kendrick had led you to believe. But, he is a rather excitable old scientist: and you might have guessed he saw the solutions more clearly than the problems.

Eventually, however, it worked.

You soar above Spindle, not on the skeletal wings of The Birdman, but on the pearly feathers of your youth. From up here, everything looks so much brighter. Over the years Spindle has rebuilt. The damage of the storms, the Revolution and The Tarot Crisis has been reversed. More. The city has grown. The characteristic mismatch of architecture you remember has only increased in diversity. You look down and you see a people who are free, and fair, and happy.

These are good days to be a Muse.

From the clouds alongside you, a squadron of foxes fly into view. A common feature of the skies around Spindle these days. Their leader wears an aviator’s cap, and has tiny goggles over their eyes. They see you, and with a foxy grin hold a paw to their forehead in salute.

You notice it has… thumbs.

Huh.

That's not right…

Uncertainly you salute back, unable to look away from the bizarre sight. Why does it have thumbs? WHO GAVE THE FOXES THUMBS? There’s only one explanation that comes to mind.

Dammit Twist.

The Foxes bank right into the clouds and, the line of sight broken, you eventually manage to shake the disturbing image from your mind. You look out across the endless potential of Far Dream. You look down at the limitless potential of Spindle.

You see so much further than you used to.

A small group of young Muses play in the streets of Spindle. Today, as most days, their game is Muses and Concepts, in which one team takes the roles of the plucky Muses, another the evil Concepts trying to destroy Dream. They battle back and forth for a time, dueling dramatically with toy swords, occasionally slipping into characters of their own creation as young Muses are wont to do.

There is one role they all want to play though. The Muse who defeated the Trickster in single combat, who saved Spindle, no, The Mundane, no all of reality from The Concepts: Blake Skye. Everyone wants to be the hero of Dream.

Their skirmish takes them through the Hall of Opinion, drawing much appreciation from the spectators, past the local branch of the HSBC, scattering squirrels as they go, and all the way to Twisttails, where the host only looks on and smiles.

Eventually, the epic duel between Muse and Concept takes them to the fence around The Dream Vanguard’s compound in Spindle. Its walls are plastered with posters, dogged ears fluttering in the wind. “Be Like Blake”, “He killed one, we can do it too!”, “The Dream Vanguard needs you!”. A thousand likenesses of Blake Tricksterbane watch the battle, faces set in eternal determination.

One impressionable young Muse, cast in the role of a Concept, looks up to see The Ancestral Sword pointed down at them. “Be Like Blake”, the poster commands.

Me?

“So it was really just a huge misunderstanding,” says Bunny, The Fungeon Dragon.

You shake your head. The two of you sit at a table in Twisttails, one of the few bars in Spindle that can accommodate your friend's massive size thanks to the host's ability to Sculpt space into strange non-euclidean folds.

“What I don’t understand,” you begin, “Is how THE Dragon got into Dream.”

Bunny takes a sip from their Martini Maze, “So we had a lovely chat afterwards, and it turns out that there was a Muse who had been visiting The Protagonist in The Transcendental and they almost smashed them as they were playing: The Dragon was so embarrassed they wanted to apologise, but when the Muse saw them coming they got scared and ran away! They followed them into Dream and to The Pit…”

Bunny looks down a bit sheepishly, “And when I saw them flying into the battle there, I assumed because they were a Concept the Trickster had summoned them, and we got into a bit of a, um, a bit of a scuffle.”

You shake your head. So many problems that could easily be resolved by better communications, huh? There is one thing you wonder though…

“So what happened to them after the fight?” You ask.

Bunny perks up, “Well, they seemed to like it quite a lot here, and there were plenty of Squirrels to eat, so they ended up staying! We have a board game night in The Fungeon every now and again, which is admittedly a lot more fun that endlessly murdering each other. Oh, you’re welcome to join by the way!”

You think you’ll probably take them up on that offer.