caper_est | Chapter Accidents (Reply)

Yesterday I failed to notice that what I was doing wasn't so much finishing a chapter, as fissioning one. The main characters' recent habit of out-thinking me has rather changed the nature of the episode involved.

So before this chopped chapter is truly finished, I need to bring forward one of Luke's scenes, in which he must beat a force of heavy cavalry that he cannot outrun and dare not engage. Topically in Real Life, the best laid plans of mice and men get the blazes blown out of them by the weather. Especially in England, and countries inspired by it. I'm now debating whether to be tactically cruel and have him driven over the pass by close pursuit, or morally cruel and have him draw his pursuers that way on purpose, for lack of any remedy less desperate.

Minor but really annoying problem: the old title is now completely inappropriate for either of the new chapters. The second new chapter clearly ought to be called Cockshut Time, since that is the bit where all the traps and counter-traps snap shut, and all that remains to be seen is who were the hunters and who the woodcocks. Also it's thematically proper, since it directly precedes the Rising arc's long-planned climax, which was always called The Grey Wolf in the Red Gloaming. But what of the first chapter?

I'm currently working with New Braidings along Allwater - 'many-braided Allwater' is the great river of Allingdale, and a stream notoriously of the opinion that more channels are better. I guess that describes it well enough, especially considering the effect of Luke's actions now moved here; but did ever anything so blithely advertise A Chapter of Transitions? Bleh.

It is beginning to sound a bit better than when I invented it this morning. And yet, yet...

I have no cat and I must vacuum.