On this first day of October, as I write this, I can look out of my studio window and see - nothing. The world is enveloped in mist and our house seems to float in a space between the worlds - all sounds muffled, everything cloaked in a dense, white dampness that seeps through the slightly open windows to settle on those of us tucked away indoors, making the air feel heavy and cool and somehow unsettled. I love days like this when the world closes in. It makes me want to drive out on to the moor where usually the vistas are huge and you can see range after range of hills and on to the sea itself twenty five miles away. On days like this you can see no further than a few yards on the road ahead. The grass along the edge of the road is very clear, shining with drops of rain and looming out of the mist in sharp detail against the whiteness behind it. You would never know that there was anything beyond the road and the grass edging it. There could be anything there. There could be another world. Beyond the mist the world of Faerie may lie waiting. I know that all I would need to do is get out of the car, step off of the road and into the mist beyond the verge. What would I see on the other side of that wall of mist? Would it be the familiar moor that I know so well or would it be a land that exists just out of reach and out of time, close enough finally to enter. I'm tempted. I really am. I think that if I ever heard a pipe playing in that mist, I would go. I would follow it. But not today. Today I'll stay tucked up safe in the house and look at the mist through the window. Buster stares out through the newly installed cat flap but even he doesn't venture out today. He'll stay dry indoors and catch spiders instead. Still, it's an enchanted time - the turning of the seasons when the barrier between the worlds is thin. It's tempting to think of crossing that barrier and adventuring in strange, new places but instead I'll finish this message, look over the collection of dolls I've just finished and start packing our suitcases for a rather more worldly adventure to New York and Philadelphia for FaerieCon. Dartmoor will be here, Faerie will be here and they will both be waiting for when we return in a few weeks time. I'll see you at FaerieCon if you're there and you'll know me by the curls of Dartmoor mist that will be trailing behind me.

Wendy Froud
October 2007

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