bending_sickle | One day I just woke up and the wolves were all there.*

Today, for the first time all month - the great month of Roman exodus, when 90% of the city's populations takes for the ~~hills~~ beach and almost everything is closed - even, yes, the cinema - we went out somewhere. We didn't even go out on the long weekend a while back, so it was high time we did something besides staying in every single weekend.

Unfortunately, we hadn't decided where to go, so Dad took it upon himself to drive. And drive. And drive some more. At noon, an hour into our trip, he got off the highway, because, as he later informed us, he'd decided to get off the highyway at noon. But he still had no idea where he wanted to go. So we ended up doing another hour and a half zig-zagging up an endless mountain. At least, I think it was a mountain - I was too busy trying to fight the growing car sickness. (In fact, I can feel an echo of its headache coming on right now.)

We ended up in a ski-resort little town which did not at all deserve our having done two and a half hours to get there. There was nothing to do there, and I was swaying with headachey nausea. I staying in the car while mom was angry at the map, showing us what a stupid path we took to get there, not that we'd ever wanted to get there, and Dad up and took off walking and, apparently, looking where to have lunch. It was too early to have lunch, but we'd just done an hour and a half through the mountains and there was no way we were leaving without eating but there was nothing to do until it was Decent Lunch Hour.

Anyway, eventually we did go round to a restaurant, which, despite informing us that it was all booked and it would only be free by two pm, managed to give us a (officially reserved) table. It was beside another reserved table which never ended up getting people and there was another table for ten that also was reserved but never saw any action. Lunch was good - lovely grilled vegetables, rabbit swimming in grease, profiteroles stuffed and encased in a delicious mascarpone cream.

We took a walk down a hill a bit into the countryside and also around town, hopped into the car for another town which was preparing for a Medieval clothing parade (oh, the sweet smell of horseflesh!)

Then once back home, mom and I watched Precious, which I'd already seen, with me sometimes explaining what the people had said to mom (because her English is good, but not Harlem-in-the-1980's good). It's a great movie, but it's one of those that you never, ever want to see again and you'd rather cut out your heart and feed it to the blender because it'd be quicker and less messy than a second viewing.

Then I flipped through my Giant Folder of Fic Scribbles and organized a few together, because all day I'd been thinking of what I could write for the title Time for Wolves, which I expanded to Time the Wolves Came Home, mainly because

capn_mactastic squeed at it and got me thinking.

So I now have a lot of small scenes and images - I'd scribbled some descriptions which I'd titled Pristine Snow back in 2004 or 2005 - but still no idea about the plot. It's all about snow and wolves and darkness and magic and hauntings and curses and aggressive sheep and blind rabbits and fire-bombing owls. There may even be some Ragnarok in there. Hell, maybe even some werewolves, which is what started the whole thing.

The annoying thing is that I can see it mixing in the with Nit story, which was about the personification of the dark and a little girl and the doubt whether Nit was good or evil, and which I'd always summed up by the poem excerpt I'd read in the Globe and Mail's "Books" section years before, which was, Stripped of harp, halo and wings / and sent hurtling into darkness. So the Wolves story mixes in with the Nit story, except one is all wilderness and snow while the other is all modern house and flashlights.

But then, it gets worse, because these mix in with the Servants of the Dark series of drabbles I keep swearing to string into a story about the pact between upworlders and those who live below, which is also themed around darkness and magic and strange people - I seem to have some issues with darkness. But they mix and yet they don't mix and I can't see how to put them together.

ETA: I can't believe I couldn't see how they came together because the flippin' title says it all. They're servants of the dark, that's how they fit in. Argh.

And to make matters worse, The Last Wild Angel, in a way, could tie in with the Servants of the Dark - to say nothing of Time for Something Biblical - in that the angels are forces of light and fire, countering those underground which are sources of darkness and cold.

But I don't know how to expand these stories beyond what little I have, and all I have are pieces. Putting the pieces from the different stories together is even more impossible. I suppose I have to tackle it as a series of one-shots and see whether the universes meet up together round the back. It's certainly better to do that than to declare that I am going to write a huge, massive, all-encompassing and all-including novel.

Of course, this coming from the person who has more fic ideas than actual fics, and whose works-in-progress have gotten tired of crying out for attention. I will finish those stories, I swear I will. Just not anytime soon. One small project at a time, Sickle, and for gods' sake, try not to get distracted by shiny new half-formed ideas.

And of course, in looking for a header quote, I've discovered a vast number of songs about wolves, and they all seem to fit the half-formed world I've got in my head - see this post - and this is not helping. Images and atmosphere are all very well and good, but I need a plot. Or a person. Although reading the lyrics, I'm clinging to particular ideas and patterns, so that's a start.

* Josh Ritter, "Wolves"