Well, my kids are putting me to shame, so here's another part of my novel...

The Sundering of Illetai

Illetai is divided into many parts, though the number of parts is known and probably certain and unchanging, no rational rat worthy of that distinction can ever state that number as representative of reality. There is only one Copula Bridge, although each other bridge is a necessary connection.

The dream is of one reality. Reality may indeed be several dreams. The dreamers may be several.

Write the words that speak of your heart. Crouched, hunched-over within the inarticulateness of your great masquerading mind. The over-balance of Time has made a mockery of your silence. The account will be empty and dim, lost to prideful fear. The works, the res gestae, the ledger of assessment empty as my vanished vanity. The layers of the trash heap, not geologic in permanence, will fade and blend and take your grand schemes with it.

The world of Illetai is a small one, assuming that one is not a rat. It might resemble (to non-rat eyes) a large set of cages, each attached by long tubes of plastic, of varying, but festive, colors. It may seem to be, rather than floating majestically through space, but sitting, instead, upon bureaus, tables, nightstands, shelving units, chest-of-drawers, armoires, dressers, buffets, chiffoniers, cupboards, and wardrobes. It would fill several rooms, true, but it would be a small world, a tiny portion of a very large universe.

If one were a rat, however, Illetai would be all. It would be all that there is or ever would be. Illetai would be a lovely maze of separate lands, a warren of possibilities.

If one were a rat, so I'm saying, one would never think the world a limited proposition, a prescribed, many-time ambulated circuit. In short, if one were a rat, one would never imagine Illetai a cage. It is for that reason that the rat-philosophers of Illetai or, at least, those worth their chewing-sticks, are dismissive of any attempt to rigidly define external reality.

And, as harmony, a strange sort of disbelief is typical of these philosophers. Not an atheism, mind, for the gods (a former pantheon with much literature to back them up), are now silent to rat-prayer.

It is not really the rats' fault that the gods became so non-existently unresponsive. No--that honor remains a gift, exclusively, of human-kind. The fumigators and screamers, the trap-setters and crushers. The big, huge consumers of provender the gods had, in gone-by, hopelessly forgotten, ancient days, repudiated, and reserved a small portion of affection for rodent-kind. A general, objective history of human shenanigans has yet to be written. Suffice to say, their crimes are manifold, and are the reason the gods are, if not dead, than rather moribund.

Such an extremity of reality! That is precisely why the more learned of the rats deny it. For to affirm the external is to invite discord.