"They are but words," she insisted to just about everyone. "Nothing but words. They are empty, hollow, futile syllables that have been molded into what sounds pretty. They are my own imaginings written down, mapped out by daydreams and nightmares. They are feelings I've never felt, but am sure that others truly do experience. The words I weave are fiction—fiction, and nothing more."

"But how," they would ask, "how can it be that you capture such emotions, those you've never even experienced, so well?"

She would only smile, or shrug it off. And her heart would whisper lies.