caper_est | Revision Scene 3: Kate Was a Beggar That Housed on the Hill

We know a song about that, don't we? Unfortunately, the folk song is about as accurate as folk songs usually are, and Golden Kate is about as qualified to be a beggar as I am to shoot ogres through the heart from horseback. This turns out to be an issue, since in the first draft her stint as an impoverished hermit appears to require several tools she can't make for herself in the wilderness, and I'd forgotten to allow her any truly useful interactions with other human beings. She is a ridiculously good woodswoman for an aristocrat, but nobody is that good. Her circumstances are accordingly rejigged to fit (i) plausibility, and (ii) the tone of the rest of the book.

Several other changes have been made, all according to the principle that everything that is complete cobblers when you think about it twice has got to go - however fine the prose it made, and however prosaic its replacement. Sacrifices have occurred. Boo hoo!

Two more scenes, one of them very short, to fix on Sunday if I want to make my quota.