L.D. Oxford’s story “The Girl Who Drew the World” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 22 July 2022. 
I remember the exact moment when the seed of this story implanted in my brain. My husband and I were driving through western Montana on the way home from backpacking in Glacier National Park. Glacier is a primordial place; you can literally see the titanic forces that shaped the earth. I looked out the passenger window in awed reverence at this ancient, new-to-me land. It was morning, and we were in a mind-bogglingly green valley framed by metamorphic rock formations. The sun made them glow in a way that seemed other-worldly. And yet, amazingly, they were not other-worldly—they were right here, on this beautiful gem of an earth we get to live on.
From there, my brain went down some rabbit-holes. Could humans ever actually imagine something new? Or was it all inspired by the world around us? And if that were true…what about dragons? What about mermaids and puca and all the other things people have “made up”?
Sara and her story took shape from there. I wrote the entire first draft by hand, in dribs and drabs over the span of a few months. Six years and countless revisions later, “The Girl Who Drew the World” definitely counts as the most challenging story I’ve written. And I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
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