Release cadenceThis was supposed to be a one-time letter to myself. Then I decided to leave it here for you, too. No promises of another—but if enough wonderfully weird people ask, I might have more stardust to share.
What would you tell the version of yourself who is still waiting for life to become magical?
Aly has a few spoilers for her younger self: we still love dragons. We get weirder. We eventually stop apologizing for it.
But somewhere between imaginary worlds, uncertain health, stories waiting to be written, and ordinary days worth noticing, she discovers something neither version of her expected.
Maybe magic was never somewhere else.
Maybe we just had to learn how to see it.
A letter from Past Aly, Present Aly, and the Future Aly still waiting somewhere among the stardust.
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Health uncertainty and references to mortality
Dear Aly,
I'm not going to tell you how the story ends. First, because I don't know yet. Second, because even though spoilers never deter you, it's still fun to enter the book completely blind.
I can tell you a little, though. I'm farther into our story than you are. Not as far as I once thought I'd be by now, perhaps, and certainly not far enough to understand every plot twist, but for the first time, I can see enough of the road ahead to recognize the woman waiting there.
We'll get to her. Before we do, I should probably answer the important questions.
Yes, we still love dragons.
I know. Huge relief.
We still love anime and manga, fantasy novels, magic, monsters, video games, and worlds that couldn't possibly exist. We still think reality is vastly improved whenever someone adds something impossible to it. We still get absurdly excited over fictional characters and disappear down creative rabbit holes because one tiny idea wandered into our head and apparently decided it lived there now. We still make things simply because we think they should exist.
You're probably wondering whether we ever stop being weird.
Aly, we get weirder.
Much weirder. And somewhere along the way, something wonderful happens: we stop apologizing for it.
Not all at once. There isn't some dramatic moment when music swells and you announce to the universe that you've decided to embrace every strange little piece of yourself. Life isn't usually that considerate about providing a soundtrack. You simply begin to understand that the things that make you strange are also the things that make you you.
So keep them. Keep every single weird little thing that makes your eyes light up.
You're going to need them.
Because here's the part you don't know yet. One day, you stop only visiting other people's worlds.
You start building your own.
There are monsters in them. Obviously. There is magic and darkness and impossible places. There are people who exist because somewhere inside that wonderfully strange brain of yours, you decided they should. Some will surprise you. Some will refuse to behave the way you planned. Some will break your heart even though you're technically the person responsible for everything happening to them.
You'll sit in front of a screen, stare at words that weren't there yesterday, and realize you made a place that didn't exist before. Then something even stranger happens.
People visit.
Real people. People you've never met willingly step through the doors you built and spend time inside your worlds. They read your stories.
Not millions. Maybe never millions. That's okay. There will be a few, and someone will choose to spend part of their finite time on this planet reading words that once existed only inside your head. I don't think you could possibly understand yet how extraordinary that will feel.
Sometimes we still don't.
Stories aren't the only things you create. Those ideas that wander into your head and refuse to leave eventually become things people can hold, wear, or drink coffee from. Things that make another wonderfully weird person somewhere smile because they looked at something you created and thought, That's me. Someone you've never met will decide they want a little piece of your imagination in their own world.
You even give all those strange little things a home. You call it Star Dust Dreams.
Yes, with a space between Star and Dust.
Trust me.
It sounds dramatic until you realize you've been collecting stardust your entire life. Maybe that's what you're doing right now. Every book you disappear into. Every dragon you fall in love with. Every impossible world. Every game, anime, manga, monster, strange fascination, and creative rabbit hole.
You're collecting pieces without knowing what you're eventually going to make from them.
That's okay. You don't need to know. Some things aren't supposed to make sense while you're gathering them.
Someday, I think we'll understand why we chose stars for both names.
Star Dust Dreams. Aly Star.
Maybe some part of us already knew. Stars aren't destinations. They're how people have found their way through the dark for thousands of years.
Besides, we're made of stardust, too.
There is one thing I wish I could warn you about without frightening you. I don't know how, so I'll tell you the truth instead.
Someday, your health becomes uncertain in ways you don't understand. There will be questions without answers, and you'll become painfully aware that the body carrying you through this world is not something you can simply assume will cooperate forever. Not knowing what is happening inside your own body is scary. I won't pretend otherwise.
You'll find yourself walking an unfamiliar path with Death in his black robes occasionally visible through the trees, close enough to remind you he exists. He doesn't chase you. You aren't walking toward him. He's simply there, and knowing he's there changes something.
At first, you look at him. Of course you do. It's difficult not to stare at Death when you've suddenly realized he's walking through the same forest.
But then something unexpected happens.
You start paying attention to everything else.
For someone who has spent her whole life searching for magic in imaginary worlds, it takes us an embarrassingly long time to notice how much of it exists here.
There is so much, Aly. There is a sky capable of painting itself colors so ridiculous that if you used them in a picture, someone would probably accuse you of overdoing it. There is sunlight slipping through leaves and turning them translucent. There are trees that spend part of every year looking dead only to cover themselves in green again. There are dogs capable of experiencing a level of joy over absolutely nothing that humans should probably study.
There is your kid laughing. Really laughing. The kind that makes you start laughing too, sometimes before you even know what was funny.
There are roads you've never traveled, places you've never seen, foods you haven't tasted, books you haven't read, and people you haven't met. There are ordinary mornings when nothing remarkable happens, and eventually you understand that those might be some of the most remarkable ones.
The uncertainty doesn't make the world less frightening. It makes you want to experience more of it.
You start understanding something all those fantasy stories were trying to teach us: adventures don't require dragons. They don't require portals, ancient prophecies, magical swords, or mysterious strangers appearing at the door with quests. Sometimes an adventure is getting in the car and going somewhere you've never been. Sometimes it's taking an unplanned trip and discovering something you didn't know was there. Sometimes it's making something simply because you can, trying something new even though you might be terrible at it, or stopping because sunlight looks particularly beautiful through the trees and deciding that, for the next thirty seconds, nothing is more important than looking at it.
You'll spend so much of your life searching for doors into magical worlds. Eventually, you'll realize something.
You can build the doors yourself.
And you'll realize something else.
This world has magic, too.
You just have to be willing to notice it.
So please remember this for us: Don't become so busy looking for magic that you miss the fact that you're already surrounded by it.
I'm still learning that one.
That's something else you should know. I wish I could write to you from the end of our story and tell you I've figured everything out. I haven't. Apparently, becoming an adult does not come with an instruction manual. Frankly, that feels like an oversight.
I'm still somewhere in the middle. There are things I want that I don't have yet, places I want to see, stories I haven't written, things I haven't created, and questions I haven't answered. There are days when I know exactly where I'm going and days when I haven't got a clue.
But for the first time, I can see her.
Future Aly.
I can't tell you exactly what her life looks like because I haven't met her yet, but I know which direction she's in.
She's somewhere ahead of us, healthy and wonderfully weird. Obviously. She's probably carrying too many books and still creating things nobody asked her to make. Her kid is older, and they still find reasons to go have adventures together. The dogs come along for as many as they'll tolerate, probably leaving hair on everything she owns.
She travels. Not constantly. She doesn't need to. She simply has enough freedom to occasionally look at a place she's never been and think, I want to see that, and then find a way to go.
A few people read her stories. Maybe they wait for the next one. A few others have something she designed sitting in their homes. Maybe one of those things made somebody laugh on a day when they needed to.
She's not impossibly rich. She's not famous. She hasn't conquered the world.
She doesn't need to.
She has enough.
Enough time to go somewhere simply because she wants to see it. Enough money to occasionally say yes without doing math first. Enough health to participate in her own life. Enough readers to know her stories aren't disappearing into the dark. Enough people who understand her particular variety of weird. Enough ordinary mornings to appreciate them.
And enough imagination left to keep dreaming.
That's what success looks like from where I'm standing now. Not a finish line. Not a number. Not millions of readers or more money than we could ever spend. A life we actually have time to live. A body that lets us experience it. People we love to experience it with. And enough room left inside ourselves to wonder what we might create tomorrow.
I can't promise you every dream comes true. I don't think that's how dreams work anymore. Some change. Some disappear. Some turn into things you never would have known to ask for. Some belong to the person you are when you dream them, and it's okay to leave them with her when you become someone else.
And some wait.
Those are the ones I want you to know about.
They're waiting for us.
So keep the dragons. Keep the books. Keep the anime and manga. Keep the games and monsters and magic. Keep making things nobody asked you to make. Keep getting ridiculously excited about ideas. Keep wandering into imaginary worlds and collecting pieces of them on your way home.
Keep looking up.
Keep paying attention.
And when the world feels too ordinary, look again.
There is magic here. There always was.
You're going to need all that stardust later. I'm using some of it now. Future Aly will need the rest.
Maybe that's what I've been trying to tell you all along.
You don't have to become less strange to build a good life. You don't have to stop dreaming to grow up. You don't have to become famous for your stories to matter. You don't have to own everything to have enough.
And you don't have to become a star, Aly.
You are one.
You just have to keep following your dreams.
Yours, Mine, Ours,
Aly
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