Dear Noctules:
To meet your doppelgänger is to meet your certain demise. To face your shadow is to be enveloped by it. Consumed. Ruined beneath the weight of sinister, insatiable, unearthly designs.
At least, that’s what we usually hear.
Although that’s how doppelgängers are traditionally regarded in folklore and media, the editors of Novel Noctule sensed that April’s issue might have something different to bring to the reading room. Something more that we couldn’t quite place our fingers on until it materialized in our inbox, demanding to be known.
Doppelgänger's stories are profoundly reflective in nature—spiritual, even—and they conjure insight and sentiment beyond our traditional understanding of the mirrored self, the double-walker; the writers here bring forth from within us that which we would most like to keep hidden.
In a world that leaves little room for excavations geared towards unearthing the dark self —a planet where people exist so delicately on the tipping point of all things, gazes fixed toward peripheral dangers— this issue asks:
Do we dare to meet our own shadows at the place that tethers them?
Cheers,
Jacqueline Dyre
Publisher | Editor-in-Chief
Artwork by Novel Noctule team.