He reached into nowhere, and took a gold coin from the air. It was a normal sort of gold coin. It couldn’t bring back the dead or heal the sick, but it was a gold coin sure enough.

‘And that’s all there is,’ he said, displaying it between finger and thumb. ‘That’s all she wrote.’

He tossed the coin into the air with a flick of his thumb. It spun golden at the top of its arc, in the sunlight, and it glittered and glinted and hung there in the midsummer sky as if it was never going to come down. Maybe it never would. Shadow didn’t wait to see. He walked away and he kept on walking.

Neil Gaiman. American Gods.

It doesn’t matter how many times I read American Gods. I feel sad and lonely every time I get to the end. It’s a good sort of sad, and an ok sort of lonely. Like I’ve just waved someone off at the airport I shan’t be seeing for a long time. I don’t want to go back to the beginning of the book, because I know that won’t help. The story is done, for now. And I’m just stood there waving and crying and hoping that next time around will come soon enough and I’ll just make do and enjoy the fact of its existence until then.