Her words or mine?

There is no magic left in the world.

No faith or innocence.

No-one wants to turn their face to the sun anymore; they prefer to look to the ground, see the dirt on their boots and complain about the injustice of it all.

Or that just me being old and cynical.

I am old; that becomes more apparent with every day. The winter's chill me to my core and the aches and pains multiply with every passing moment.

It's hard not to feel old when you are huddled by the fire with the candles burning low and all around me the silence of night closing in.

I feel very old and very alone.

My time has passed.

The days of valour are not the stuff of legends and seem so far away that I no longer believe that I was that girl or that woman.

She disappeared into history a long time ago and the only time that I feel young again is when he smiles at me.

It is ironic that I fought against marriage, as if having a husband would lessen me. And now I am an old woman with the benefit of marrying the man I love I am contented to see how wrong I was and how much I have grown in his company.

And all I want for my own children is that they grow old and sit beside a fire with the person they love. To think that I ever doubted his love. I am embarrassed by the recollection.

Those are the words I wrote for her over 10 years ago. I think that I was 40 at the time and that there came to me the recollection that I was no longer in the younger crowd, that was when the fear of growing old hit me.

I don't want to retire as that makes it seem like I am doing nothing except watch the years disappear in front of me and I cannot see the point in starting anything.

And that's when I realise that this whole novel has not just been about getting creative but it about the journey of my life. I may not be a princess betrayed by her family and lost from the world she knows but I am a woman who feels detached from her own and is still trying to find her way and any kind of purpose.

So, this is not creative it is a form of personal journaling. This makes me want to finish it more.