The terrible silence

And so, on Day 5, the Author scowled and tossed 7,700 words aside to the waste bin of his mind and looked anew at the story of a Boy and a Fox and thought: this will be more fun. I will do this. And on day 6, approaching 5000 words, he knew his choice to be Right and Just .

Or: Bird & Jester died. Redoing/fixing the first chapter was a Hint. Getting rid of all the back-story chapters was a bigger hint. The final one was that I just wasn't getting a proper voice for the MC: she just didn't feel distinct enough, and Wren wasn't working at all. In retrospect, some of the built-in parts of the setting too away more narrative tension than they should have; I should have left healing magic in, for one thing. Ah well. We live. We learn. 

As for Boy & Fox, it no longer bears the 'Falling Toward Sky' moniker at all, as the real world main plot/goal no longer exists at all. When the story first began, it was about a Boy from our world entering another, and trying to follow his dead grandmother into the land of the dead: he doesn't find her, loses his memory, and tries to find out who and what he was with the help of a fox and a werewolf. 

Both Boy, Reynard Fox and Bess remain. Nothing else of that plot does. The story has altered itself, plots have shifted and it's less directly a fairy tale and not an allegory for this world at all now. In some ways it's a pity, in other ways I'm looking forward to finding out where this story takes me and if Boy can finally meet the King.