Grrrr, Argh
I'm trying. I really am. To write that is. I have over 6.000 words of Chapter 19 of TQSiT and I like only about half of it and will use even less. In despair over the last chapter, chapter 18 of TQSiT, and deciding that people would really rather read about Harold and Morgan instead, I started on another chapter of that, which ended up being a really long security report in which Master Roblang the Arms Master and Lady Jina the Hound dissect Morgan's many personality shortcomings. It amused me but there was nothing about the Beaver Jezebel. I know Jezebel is a very pretty and vain little thing, and she combs her fur a lot to make it shiny and she talks very sweet and will eat those Willow saplings in nothing flat if given a chance. She needs a good strong Beaver Buck around the Lodge of course, because life is hard for a little ole Beaver gal out on her own.
Oh, and in the NFFR Give the Pevensies a Friend Spring Challenge, I started writing friends for all of them, and it involved the book Little Women, dissection in biology class, vomit, and the Cambridge library.
So, no update this week and probably, alas, nothing for Harold and Morgan in honor of the US Tax Day, April 15 (maybe Morgan will get an extension for late filing because a goat ate the return).
I have been carrying the following around in the laptop, which is now probably going to be in the story itself and not presented as a fake "intro":
As the birth and life of Narnia’s many beings are different, so too are their deaths. Creatures of the air prefer that their bodies be burned and ashes spread on the winds. Centaurs have long, windy chants, burial mounds, and great celebrations afterwards. Our woodland Beasts likewise wish for burial and solitary Beasts prefer to die as they lived, alone. Red Dwarfs lie on beds of stone; as to Black Dwarfs, I will not speculate. Naiads slowly drain away, only to be reborn elsewhere when they fall to the land as rain; Dyrads die as their Trees do. As to the Fauns and Satyrs, even they are not sure.
Narnians are united in their belief that upon death, each travels to Aslan’s Own Country. How we have come to believe this is long lost, but believe we all do, for it is a story told often, in tree, den, pool, glade, and cave. Every child reared by a parent has heard, "And if you are not good, you shall not pass through the gates to Aslan’s Country.”
How one travels to Aslan’s Country, upon death, is a matter on which there is no unanimity. I do ask whether it really matters as the Narnian who has died has already departed, indeed has already arrived, and the deceased really has nothing to say on the subject.
This brings me to the thesis of this Monograph. The rituals by which we lament and farewell a Narnian, as varied as Narnians themselves, are for those who remain, not for the deceased.
Pliny the Elder’s Botanica and Animalia, Chapter XXIII, Dying and Death, as revised and updated by Hystricopocrates, Physician, Cair Paravel
The reference to the Centaur burial process is courtesy of and borrowed from Ilysia's Singing Paeans to the Stars. So, I'll continue to press on. Really. The will has been lacking.
PS- Thanks to Dublin's Eveline! I did think JJ was Abrams for a moment...