This story came to me as a dream on Thursday morning, November 20, 2003. I woke up, turned on the light, turned on my computer, typed eight or ten paragraphs, and went back to sleep. The original dream only went as far as Why do you think I ran like this? and didn't include Hetty or Mam'zelle; so I added considerably, with my awake mind, to what my dreaming mind conjured up.
The actual writing was done on December 13 through 15, when I was working the night shift. I'd finished writing The Reborn Princess Caper and was working on the Glossary and the other appendices, but I couldn't do those at work. So I took out the printed copy of the stuff I wrote down right after the dream, and set to work on it.
I find it interesting that "Something" is actually a kind of blank verse. There's a definite scan to it, that actually forced word and phrase choices as if I were writing a poem. If you read it out loud, you'll see what I mean.—LDO