Kaleidoscope Chapter: Play Nice While I'm Away

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 910 words.  Mostly Okay Genius makes his move.  My heroes aren't the only people who can play "Let's You and Him Fight!" without saying a word or copping the blame.  Also, he is better at it than they are.

The World on Maltby Edge, I now discover, is sung to a traditional tune called Riding over Alland.  Which figures.  The highly-coloured imagery seems to be inspired by it, too.  Words of that version keep intruding on my day, but I am resisting them, because I am quite earwormed enough already without encouraging it any further, and also because I suspect the totality of those lyrics would be of small interest to anybody but some future Northdales equivalent of Cecil Sharp.

I know that Riding over Alland is itself only a slight modification of some real and stirring tune in this world - I'm a non-musician and couldn't possibly compose anything half that good offhand on my morning commute, or most likely ever - but however irritatingly familiar it is, I can't quite put my finger on where I've nicked it from.

From Thug to Thought

Lazy Lob at the House of Silence: 2,000 words.  Took down Thuggish First Son, and good riddance.  Cunning Second Son is not only smarter, but - since even in a fairy-tale, I don't see any point in using ritual repetitions just to repeat myself - he's turning out to be simply more sympathetic, to the point where his necessary failure threatens to be almost tragic.  It's not that he's a bad man, only that he isn't good enough.  He's just discovered that his brother set off somewhere inadvisable.

I've received my first lessons during this as to how Norse-type cultures work in the Kateverse, where there are the Olympians, and other religions fail the reality test even when they are more sensible.  (There are two major antitheistic religions  I know about - the Northern Titanolatric one and the Southern transcendental one - but neither is in much doubt as to Whom it's supposed to be anti-.)  Making the Odin figure really Mercury with another funny hat on... changes the Nordic dynamic quite a bit, even when it's completely in the background.

The Northmen's take on Hades proved particularly entertaining when I smacked into it.