Done for Libba Bray's wonderful contest.

I met her at my school once, and she's absolutely lovely! I talked to her about my Circus book and she was all for it. It made me very happy.

The picture itself is on a huge piece of paper, thus I had to make a run to kinko's (which proved to be an interesting adventure, which I shall tell you all about later in greater detail) to get it on a bigger scanner. Part of the side didn't fit so I drew in the rest of the letters on paint.

I drew the picture and wrote the poem alongside it because of inspiration from the eternally fantastic "A Great and Terrible Beauty" (Pretty much the Gemma Doyle series).

Here's the poem because it's hard to read my chicken scratch:

In shadows, magic, death and lust
I knew not what would become of us
The realm, once such a gentle place
Had shed that guise and showed true face
A mother lost, but friends were found
My feet held firm against the ground
But uprooted each time we gathered with delight
To read from diaries aloud, against the night
We’d lost another to that gate
The realms had murdered happy fate

But I have found a great new world
You would not know it, you have not heard
One must see it with their own eyes
What use have I to tell you lies?
I’ve touched paradise with spectral hands
And you thought only Alice had a wonderland?