A few more thoughts, I guess

[rthstewart]

I always sleep very, very poorly when I post a chapter.  I go through these tremendous bouts of self doubt during the writing, the posting, and the review wherein I always discover the typos and things That Bother Me.  It does not really improve until I see some reviews, vain and foolish that I am.  I am an unbelievably poor judge of what resonates with readers.  I found Edmund's long discussion with Peter repetitive and dull, and, certain parts overwrought, certain transitions painful, etc. etc.  While I like the fact that it is lighter at night, I'll spend the next 3 weeks trying to recover my lost hour due to DST.  Plus, the laptop AC adapter died. 

But, amid everything, I did want to return to a few points.
First, based upon the timeline, you can see something that I mentioned in the last chapter.  In these days according to the timeline of August 3 (when Guy dies) and then August 21-23, Narnia is really pressing into Spare Oom.  Susan returns, in her shock and disorientation, to the habits and people of Narnia -- blood on her clothes was more common there than here, to be sure.  Then, Eustace, Lucy, and Edmund go to and return from Narnia, Peter comes to see them, Aslan visits Richard and Asim, and finally, Aslan observes his monarchs conducting the lament and farewell for Badon/Guy (a bit of world building there, where I borrowed prayers for the dead from a number of sources).

Second, I have been a bit cagey about what I intended to do with Susan's story because I knew this scene was coming with Guy dying where she reaffirms her promise to Lambert and he carries that promise to Aslan's Country.  I knew that when I was writing the end of the Palace Guard and it's one of the reasons why I did not end that story at the Lampost as I had intended.  I needed to tell Susan's story here, in TQSiT and in Part 3 to come.   Additionally, when I wrote the Christmas story with Susan and Lambert repeating their vow of fealty to one another every year, again, I knew that that vow would be one of the most important things that Susan took from Narnia.  With the pain and sundering to come, that vow really matters.

So, the stories are connected, as Narnia and and Spare Oom are connected in the vision.  Peter and Asim discuss Auchinleck's I'm not jealous of Rommel memo in Crossroads, Part 3, which Tebbitt and Fleming discuss here.  Edmund tells things to Susan in Chapter 8, Lions' Business that are very reminiscent of Tebbitt's It's not your fault statements here.  The spy suggested in The Palace Guard is a Mole here.  Tebbitt thinks on Bacchus and Silenus, whom Susan has met.  The silliness of the paint, poetry, shower and Tebbitt in the towel of chapter 16 echo here.  And Mrs. Pevensie notices more than her children realize.  Whether in Narnia or Spare Oom, cold water keeps a blood stain from setting.  There were others I thought of a I hiked about in the rain today.