Mixed Bag Rag

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 690 words.  Bringing Fiery Younger Sister's gruelling scene to boiling point.  FYS is reminding me of one of those cartoon characters who produce massive offensive weapons out of thin air at the drop of a hat.  She can't do that physically, but she can pull out of thin air a way to use anything offensively, because she really Just Does Not Care.

There's a limit to how much of that scene I can stand at once, so I skipped ahead for the rest of my wordage to put in the description of Secondary Villain's stronghold: Castle Carrowglaze, the Green Rock of the Blue Boar.  It's kind of a dump, but the setting ought to be worth something to a discerning buyer.

The Popinjay: 340 words.  Bright Young Thing is a very bad person.  A very good bad person.  This is probably why the family's sparkling cynic is also the only one of them who takes her religion seriously instead of piously and conventionally.  Not that the priests could appreciate that - or that Beauty does now.  Because Bright Young Thing is being a very bad person.

Lob Lazy at the House of Silence - 180 words, skipping ahead to the passage of chorus-like fairy-tale linkage between Second and Third Sons' Quests.  More fun with King Dead and Queen Rotten.  And I think this has given me the glory-and-trumpets linkage to follow Third Son's eventual... achievement.  Kateverse history does crop up in strange guises!

Part of the present productivity boom seems to depend on always having something to write opportunistically when the main line is too difficult or too harrowing to speed.  This hasn't worked before, and I'm thinking it has to do with the obvious failure mode: writing everything up to the difficult bit, until all yarns are tangled at once and choke off together.  But slow slogging progress on what's bogged down, with relief writing to keep the flow free elsewhere, may prosper better.  Slog the key, and play the oil for the lock?

Lore of the Nameless North

Lob Lazy at the House of Silence: 480 words, writing the ritualistic fairy-tale linkage between eucatastrophe and dénouement while it's hot. Or, in this case, while pleasantly crisp and chill.

This has been giving me some interesting insights, not only into the Kateverse's alt-Scandinavian cultures, but into the things they know that maybe I don't. This linkage stuff, for instance, strikes a seam in their folklore that... well. There are Deep Mysteries in this world that Katy Elflocks knows about, and the gods and the Elvish Court and suchlike; but here's plain proof that at least one other mortal once learned them too. Likely in more detail than Katy, who has other cares and interests she considers much more wholesome.

I wonder now who this world's Woden-figure really was. If he wasn't exactly Mercury after all, but knew something of the god's ways... and didn't mind screwing around with some heavy necromantic crap... Oho!  He could be my ultimate source, and plenty more.   I wonder whether I'll ever get to develop any of that. Not in anything I'm writing at present, either way.

And here, as a special bonus because it is gibbering away in my head, is a little riddle-chant those healthy hearty Nordic nannies like to teach their children.

Old King Dead, his drink is red:
He'll sup you up from your sleepy bed.
Old Queen Rot, she's on your slot:
She'll suck you down to her creepy grot.
Young King Cold is stark and bold:
He'll stoop for steel and spurn at gold.
Young Queen Clay is fair as day:
She'll steal the gallant and the gay.
Dead or Rot or Cold or Clay,
Who will take your time away?
Rich or Low or Rude or High -
Who will have your soul for aye?
 

There is probably a reason that all the Nordic-descended cultures seem to have drifted towards bland mainstream neo-Olympianism.