Many things surprise me as I write. One of them is the structure the story seems to have chosen. I thought the party going exploring would give me a set of chapters about, well, dungeon exploration. Fighting monsters. Finding treasures. That sort of thing.

To an extent that’s happened. But what’s also happened has been that, as is often the case with exploration stories, what the explorers find is a mirror of what’s inside them. That’s worked out more than I had in mind even as I put together the plot; that is, as I work on something I find synchronicities of which I was not consciously aware. I think this is healthy, and a good sign. Although it does leave me feeling slightly foolish; outwitted by my own subconscious.

At any rate, here we have a chapter held together by how various incidents reflect on the situation of a specific character, and what it all means to her. I’m happy with how it worked out, though it took a while to get there. It’s a long one, which maybe balances somewhat the shorter Hochelaga pieces.

For the cervidwen I’ve rather arbitrarily mixed the name of the Celtic enchantress (or goddess) Ceridwen with the generic name Cervidae, referring to deer. I like the image of the stag-man, and I wanted to have an intelligent creature which was perhaps more of an ally to the explorers than even the murineans, but which was also definitely apart from them. So I expect we’ll be seeing him again.

Next time: Some straight-up fighting.