I dreamed of a reincarnation of Tolkien. A small crowd gathered round this young lad in the middle of a cobbled street, as he gave an overly passionate speech in his elevated register about some lore point of his universe.

"Yes, Grothengorgh was chosen to lead the folk of the Boundless Valley to war! But his peculiar bloodline was not the chief reason! He was the Glistering Star of Trimaerors! He bore the sigils weaved by Faelinara the Fifth herself!" Not that, but something like that.

The crowd dismissed him as some embarrassing cuckoo, but I was enchanted. I saw it clearly then: it is impossible not to gain a great following, as Tolkien did, when you are *this* passionate about something.

We weren't in Middle-earth necessarily, but I knew it was some sort of recursion. The author became a character inside a world he created.

The crowd wafted to the blacksmith's, and I wanted to, too, and I tried to join them, but I couldn't. It was beyond my reach. I then understood why: Tolkien never described what's there.

I collapsed and cried in high-pitched wails, like an old lady who surfaced from the cloudy waters of Alzheimer's just to realize all her children are dead. This woke me up.

There's some profound sadness in the inability to zoom in to certain parts of a fictional universe—I have a better grasp of this sadness now. But immediately after I woke up I thought to myself: my dream narrator made me overreact.

Among other things, if the body of works is big enough, your dedication is strong enough, and your intelligence isn't very far behind, with a high level of fidelity you can imagine that which authors never described.