My creator likes riddles, and so, in some roundabout way, do I. So here's a riddle for you. Try and see if you can work it out.

I exist for a finite moment of time, but can live on forever. I can be hated, and I can be loved. I can be redesigned and remade a million times over, and yet I may never be finished. I can stand alone, or be an intrinisic and essential part of a group. I can spring forth full grown, as Athena from Zeus, or I may only develop in dribs and drabs, taking years to become. I am torturous. I am the created, and I am the creator. Who am I?

Some of you may already have guessed, even before I finished the riddle. Who am I? A story, of course.

I exist for only a finite moment of time. In the time I am written, I am a living breathing thing, taking shape under my creator's fingers. When I am read, I come to life and tell tales to the reader of whatever my creator sought fit to weave into me. But if I am not read, or am not written, I am nothing. I live on forever, as data on a hard drive, or a dusty book on a shelf, but without a reader, I am nothing.

The rest of the riddle is rather self-explanatory. I can be hated by some readers, or I can be loved by them. I can be written by my creator, and yet she may never consider me finished. For someone who represents her ideas as skeins of yarn, I suppose that in some part of her mind, a story represents a tapestry, with ideas woven through it. Some of my kind merely resemble simple needlework samplers, while others seek to rival the Bayeux tapestry in complexity. She holds me in her hands and says "What a pretty story," unpicks the threads and reweaves them, each time creating a more elaborate and fascinating work. Yet, she may never make the final stiches that end my creation, may never consider me complete enough to show to others. Sad, in a way.

I can stand alone. A single story, telling a single tale. Or I may be part of a long line of stories, telling part of a tale. If I'm lucky enough, maybe I'll be the last of them, the grand finale, the apex of the piece. If I'm lucky. I may spring from the muse to the creator to the page fully developed, needing only to be given form to exist, to be thought of a little, and to be made. On the other hand, I may only be a little thread of an idea, that needs constant attention to grow, and to blossom into a full story, and I may torment and torture my creator (with her muse's assistance) until she gives me that attention.

I am the created. I am the creator. Without me, what are fictives but the uncreated? Without a story, they are nothing. Without me, they will be consigned to be wraiths, waiting for a story to tell their tale. Playing God is so much fun, wouldn't all writers agree that? Especially that when I demand it, a character's role in me must end. It annoys them, but for me, it is irrelevant.

Still like riddles? Here is another one:

Notes: Okay, this was sort of an idea that came to me when I was explaining to someone why I'd taken the step of killing off a rather major character in a recent part of one of my fics, a character that had seemed essential to the plot. I explained to her that, in my mind, if the story requires a character to die, then the character dies. That got me thinking...what if a story was alive? I'm not sure where this fits into the whole Subreality thing, but it seems to, in a way. Bonus points to anyone who can figure out the last riddle!

Jewels