On Friday August 26, I published the second episode of A Goblet of Bone in two parts to Wattpad. It’s still 43 in FantasyCreatures…

This episode diverges from Bartram’s point of view to another character, Renata of House Latenta. There’s a couple of things that I wanted to illustrate here.

1. The upside-down garden reflects Brigantia’s differences from contemporary fantasy settings, as I mentioned in my last post.

2. It’s also Renata’s life upended and turned upside down.

3. I wanted to introduce the character, her baby, and her friend, and kick off their arc in the story.

4. I wanted to tie in Creighton of House Brix and her relationship to him.

Renata is the sister to the Archon, now first in line to Ascend, and her newborn daughter is the center of a coming political change.

I wanted to play with a dreamscape in the 3.1 episode and try to turn the prose into a disjointed dream. I’m not entirely sure that I’ve succeeded; I ended up re-writing it three times. I’m still not sure I’m happy with it but I wanted to illustrate the character’s relationship with her mother without actually talking about it. I wanted to kind of describe it through the dream.

I also wanted to introduce the character’s central conflict which is how motherhood arrested her life’s plan; the dream sequence ends with an image of the baby in iron tongs. Seeing your baby in dreams … I think one could interpret that as change, or her subconscious unable to reconcile the change the baby’s introducing. Either way, I wanted to say all of this in a different way than just narrative and dialogue.

This episode also introduces another character, a mystery creature hanging out in the upside-down garden. Those who play D&D might recognize the critter as a Kenku.

Who is this mystery character? Why is he in the upside-down garden and watching Renata? Or the baby? Or both Renata and the baby? Well, you’ll just have to keep reading to find out!

Thanks for reading!

R