The idea for the story came to me after reading William Wordsworth's Ode to Immortality. In his ode, Wordsworth tells how in our youth we have a keen sense of immortality that deteriorates as we grow older. In childhood, every common sight seems apparelled in celestial light but this vision is lost with age. I had not yet read Carl Jung's ideas about the anima - a female component in a man's psyche that can die away as he grows older. The anima is responsible for his aesthetic appreciation of life. With its demise, life transitions into mere existence. I thought it might be interesting to tell a story involving a young man and a companion who is actually part of his psyche - a part that I would later identify as his anima. John Donne's Anniversary elegies had some influence. In them he mourns the death of Elizabeth Drury, a fourteen year old girl who died in 1610. With her demise, the world is seen to be degenerate - to have undergone a transition similar to those perceived by Wordsworth after his childhood vision has altered and by Jung with the loss of the anima.