A passage of fiction is not an account of something that might once have happened in the visible world; it is not even an account of something that could conceivably have happened in that world… Such issues are irrelevant; a passage of fiction reports his or her contemplation of what did happen or what did not happen or what might have happened or what can never happen.
“Being no longer human why should I
Pretend humanity or don the frail attire?
Men have I known, and men, but never one
Was grown so free an essence, or become
So simply element as what I am.
The mist goes from the mirror and I see!
Behold! the world of forms is swept beneath—
Turmoil grown visible beneath our peace,
And we, that are grown formless, rise above—
Fluids intangible that have been men,
We seem as statues round whose high-risen base
Some overflowing river is run mad,
In us alone the element of calm!”
Ezra Pound | “Paracelsus in Excelsis”