#aaugh. the readmore keeps going in the wrong place. hell and death.

[chiropteracupola]

I am on a foth kick and I would like very much to know about to keep it real and green knight, if you have things you want to share!

to keep it real is currently in a weird state where it doesn't quite know what it wants to be, since it's certainly not the fic I set out to write, but I don't want to abandon the original idea entirely. the original idea would have been a mostly plotless practice scene based on the 'his wife has filled his house with chintz' post/poem, featuring Ewen visiting Keith at Stowe House in some nebulous future, but I got a little carried away with setup, writing interactions with Francis, and attempting to research the location itself.

the trouble with houses that keep getting used is that they do very much keep getting updated, and frankly, it's a little more effort than I'd like to put in right now just to figure out exactly which ostentatious bits of architecture would have been there at the time that Keith would have been! there appears to be some kind of 3d model of the house that might get looked at later on, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around a) figuring out how the ground-plan has changed since the mid-eighteenth century, and b) the sheer scale of these gardens (for the record, I'm using a garden I'm more familiar with as a reference point for the size, and it's only a seventh of the size of this place. yikes and other such exclamations.)

due to the nature of this particular story, I'm going to want a pretty detailed interior design plan for the room, since it's the sort where I'm essentially making what amounts to a dollhouse in my head. so that's taking a while! someday I will pick this thing up again because It Compels Me, but right now I really do not know when that will be.

the green knight story is based on an idea from @tgarnsl, and is basically exactly what it sounds like - a Gawain and the Green Knight AU with Keith, Ewen, and Alison.

it's been slow going writing it, as I'm having trouble settling between my usual writing style and the more poetic, kenning-heavy style that I use for things like Rat Piper, as well as the fact that I thought it would be very funny to get it done by Christmas and that very much Did Not Happen. and then there's the fact that the name Keith simply doesn't sound right to me in the sort of quasi-medieval setting I've been working with - well, there's not really any way out of that one that I like, so that's just something that I'll have to figure out as I go along. or probably I'll just leave him there, all incongruous as he is.

and since you've read all the way through that, here's the prologue for that particular tale:

His mother’s hand is on his shoulder, and his father’s sword is belted at his side, its bright blade so, so, much lighter than it looks.

“Go and do it, won’t you, Keith?” He doesn’t need to be asked. Every eye in the hall is on him, and he steps forward, and lets one knee bend so that he can dip just far enough to take the offered weapon. His fingers are on the axe-handle — good! — and in one smooth motion, he’s up again and that shining arc of steel is cutting through the air with a sound like church-bells. In that half-second before steel meets skin, the strange knight smiles, and tips his head a little to one side, his loosened collar slipping to show a line of pale skin.

Keith strikes true.

He steps back, his footsteps crisp as if against frosted-over ground. A thick slap of meat against stone, a flare of iron-scent in the air, a gasp from the assembly. The head rolls to a stop at Keith’s feet, the seeping blood staining the toes of his shoes as the strange knight falls to his knees.

But what is this? This man so lately slain is reaching out a hand for balance, reaching out towards Keith as he slowly, slowly pulls himself upright. His head is in his hands, gold-green hair trailing over lichen-pale fingers, but his blood runs down red, red, red to splatter on the rushes at Keith’s feet. Keith looks down, the axe now heavy in his hands, and watches as the stain sinks and blurs into the shadows, red turning back to green. His hands tighten on the haft of the axe, its weight solid but not at all reassuring.

Now, Keith no longer has to look up to meet the Green Knight’s eyes, for he holds his head just at the right height for Keith to see. And for all that this man is bleeding and headless, impossible and out of place, he smiles like the sun.