[Fic] "To Calormen and the South" -- Chronicles of Narnia

[edenfalling]

It's NFE reveal day! So I can now say that I wrote two stories: my original assignment and a pinch hit. I will talk about each in a separate post.

-----

To Calormen and the South (1207 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sallowpad (Narnia), Susan Pevensie, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Golden Age (Narnia), Calormen, Spies & Secret Agents

Summary: How Sallowpad came to travel in the lands south of Narnia.

-----

This was my original assignment, written for marmota_b. As I said in the author's note, I basically threw up my hands and gave up on anonymity for this one, because it gets really tiring to reinvent the wheel and also this was a great way to work in some backstory for the original character mentioned in the tags... who is, of course, the Lady Eena Flyflick first encountered in The Courting Dance as the junior ambassador to Archenland, but whose other role is basically coordinating Narnian intelligence about Calormen.

I am very pleased with what I wrote! I think it works well. :)

What I am less pleased about is how short the posted story is. It wanted to be a novelette, or perhaps a novella, but I could not make the necessary plot points between this opening and a couple of later scenes (mentioned in the concluding author's note) come clear between the posting deadline and when the archive opened. Sometimes my brain just refuses to cooperate, and I have learned over the years that not all stories can be forced with a judicious application of deadline adrenaline. (When that trick works, it works amazingly. When it fails... well, the results, shall we say, are not pretty.)

But anyway, I do like Sallowpad's decision to set out on a scouting (*cough* spying *cough*) mission, Susan's approval and choice to maintain plausible deniability, and Eena's own motivations for joining the expedition. And someday, fingers crossed, I will return to this setup and figure out how to get from point B to point K, as it were.

Comments

[marmota_b]

I have, so far, managed to maintain my anonymity (marvellously so this year it turns out *villainous laughter*), but I know exactly why you gave up on it! The mind just refuses to let go of what it's used to working with. :-) Had I actually gotten around to publishing the original version of this year's story, there would have been a suspiciously Methosian Peridan present in the mix. :D (Most likely nowhere near enough so to give away my identity, but still...)
ETA: Come to think of it, though, the fact that most of my worldbuilding is happening in the confines of a loooong and slooow WIP obscure crossover is probably playing into my hands in terms of anonymity... because I totally did slip in a mention of an episode from that story I haven't gotten around to publishing yet.

And THANK YOU, even truncated that story is a delight.

[edenfalling]

Ha! Yes, obscurity is definitely an aid to anonymity.

Setting is also important. I would also be a lot more anonymous if I wrote something set around the PC-VDT-SC era, and really anonymous if I wrote something around TLB or during the gap between SC and TLB... provided I stayed away from anything to do with Calormen. *wry* Calormen is a dead giveaway, and I think at this point my Golden Age worldbuilding is also relatively distinctive.

[marmota_b]

Yeah... I'm leaning into the Calormene side myself, but nowhere near enough as you, and of course there's the specific problem of a lot of my worldbuilding still being in my head and my computer rather than online. (Actually, I can very specifically blame your Calormene leanings for mine.)

[edenfalling]

Calormen for the win! \o/