The Story is all that exists, winding as a great ribbon of light and shadow through the expanses of the universe. It is not stationary but flows as a boundless river throughout time and it carries with it all the whispers of myth and belief since the beginning; before the World of Men, before the ancient wanderings and insidious plots of the Sheelie Court, before even the angels sang their first hymns of thankfulness to their Creator, the Story was there.
It was the reverberation of the Word, resounding with the force of creation and remembrance until it held all of the known and unknown within it's endless borders. And even with all the magnificence that was the Story, it continued and grew and furthered itself as time began; and it remembered everything for indeed it lived and breathed, not as a person, but as an entity of such might and expansive consciousness that perhaps only the Speaker of the Word could comprehend it in entirety.
But there are those who, in their miniscule lives, would devote themselves to the Story; in their humble caves at the borders of dead seas or in their great libraries and temples so vainly luxurious that they burned for sheer shame, in this world these lesser beings would take up their scratching quills, their stylus's, their glass inking pens and brushes, and attempt to recreate the Story on hide, clay, and parchment.
In flickering torchlight they would blind themselves as they read from crumbling tombs, and rewrite what they thought they found there in their own cramped scripts in their own tombs, which would then turn to dust and blow away on the winds of time.
These, they who call themselves scholars, are not but fools. It is creatures like these that belittle the Story, not make it clearer or greater; they are the one's who make such phrases such as "once upon a time" seem foolish. They make it symbolize myths, legends, things that could never have been, let alone be again. They are the ones who labor to end Dreams, which are an integral part of the Story; they cannot begin to understand the importance of imagination, of belief.
Without these the Story would cease. An end to Dreams would be the end of the world and more. But Dreams persist, imagination flourishes even in times of great cynicism and cold logic, when there is thought to be no room for either, a story will be told, beginning with an ancient phrase--
Once upon a time.
There is a reason that the Story oft begins anew with such a phrase, for indeed it had happened, once, upon a time; and as all things happen, so are they destined to renew themselves, to reoccur, for the circumstances to realign the characters caught in the never-ending web of the Story, and bring them back to the kernel, the truth, the heart of the tale. Thus the Story never ends.
Thus the Story is always beginning.
Thus Dreams never die, but are reborn.
And so shall we begin the Story; for though the Story does not start here, it has been here and it knows this place intimately, like a beloved child growing surer as the years pass, and here, the Story shall sing once again its beloved and true phrase: Once Upon A Time.