I've been asked, why the title 'Beggars' Dust? Well... it came to me in a dream - complete with the poem at the beginning of the story. It came in that time between sleeping and waking, roiled around in my head for a while, tweaking rhymes, playing with syntax, and when I eventually woke properly, there it was.
It was not before the story had begun - there were already about seventy pages, longhand, pencil... But till then it had been musings, a story looking for a shape. After the dream, it became an entity, a living thing, writing itself almost in spite of me.
So, what is 'Beggars' Dust'? I had to ask myself. It's not the powder that falls from the old man's hands in the beginning. It is real though, in one sense, and a metaphor in the other. The reality (if a thing in a fantasy can be called a reality) is... well, you'll find out if you read it. The metaphor is all around us. It whispers that we are not good enough, not attractive enough, not young enough, rich enough, clever enough. It spreads bitterness and tells us that others are our rivals, our enemies, that they think they are better, they are laughing at us, they are out to get us...
Where does it come from, this Beggars' Dust? And how do you fight something so pervasive, so insidious? Does it infect us from the outside, or does it creep within to raise sores on our souls? As Dareth will say in the distant future, some scars only mark the body, but some cut through to the spirit and change who we are...
CG
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