sometimes . . . (you probably don't want to read this: it might be boring)

Sometimes I wonder what the young duke Sasha even sees in Yanek, even though I made them both up. Sasha is such a shiny boy: he's always fluching and glowing and his eyes glitter from excitement or with imlied unshed tears of frustration or whatever emotion. And he's a good kid: he really tries to make Yanek's life better (though this siometimes backfires and Yanek thinks it always backfires). It's not his fault he's royalty. Probably when he is an entirely grown man he will have absorbed the whole sickness of privilege, but he's not like that now. (the way that privilege affects him is in being unaware of the great degree to which privilege shapes his life)

Meanwhile, Yanek is furtive, sullen, ungrateful, and only really warm with his sister. He generally doesn't even think of Sasha except as one of the areas in which he can make blunders and be punished for them, most of the time. He spends time with Sasha only when he feels that he has to, even though some of their time is enjoyable. For most of their childhood, whenever Sasha comes to the "old castle" (the Duke's summerhouse) where Yanek is stashed, Yanek is running off to spend as much time as possible with the much older peasant boy Bulo and Bulo's friends, under the pretext that he is needed at the harvest. Later, Yanek's excuse is that he has to attend the clerks of the Ministry of Agricultural and Natural Development, from before breakfast to after supper (which is true), and that he needs to study for the University entrance examination (which is also true). Every time Sasha lobbies behind the scenes to improve Yanek's position, Yanek fails to acknowledge or thank him.

This is the status as of Yanek being 17 and Sasha being 13. Yanek has gotten a whiff of the nature of Sasha's feelings, but he's terrified and repelled. Yanek's kind of a late bloomer in this regard: he won't really get it until he's in the army next year. I am not sure if it's related to his slower physical growth, or if it's because the only crush he's had so far he's had to deny (it was completely impossible to admit to having that kind of feelings for Bulo, for all kinds of reasons, one of them being that the person who suggested that he felt that way was Bulo's fiancee). Probably both of these things, and his outsider status.

I think if Yanek had stayed at the Palace after this instead of going back to the country and subsequently being sold into the army, he might have eventually become the sort of person who sleeps around a lot, with whoever he could find in the City of Steinbrenner (those Steinbrenners don't have a lot of imagination. It's the name of the ruling family, the city where the palace is, and the duchy). But the way his life unfolds, he's going to be serially and situationally monogamous for at least a long time.

Revision notes: I'll need to check whether I've overdone the glittering eyes and flushed cheeks for Sasha.

Also, I need to introduce a couple of things earlier: wireless radio, for one. And I need to reshuffle the events of Yanek's apprenticeship: surely he wanders out into the City beyond the Palace the first opportunity he has, and he knows his way around the city pretty well. But having no pocket money -- the traditional thing is to write a boy who cadges drinks and snacks from people, or who takes his instrument into the street and busks for spending money. But I don't think Yanek does either. I had thought that he would go busking, but every attempt to write that has resulted in "no, he wouldn't, not at that time," so I think it might just not be the thing he does. And of course, the creepy encounter with the soldier Kaspar the Youth happens earlier too, since it has to be one of his first encounters in the neighborhoods beyond the boulevards by the Palace.

Yeah, I'm not one of those writers who can't talk about a work in progress or it ruins the writing process. Apparently I'm the opposite.

On another front, my legs felt so good I forgot my exercises for a week, and guess what? Now they hurt again. Oh, well, I have the exercises to bring them back into shape.

My research, let me show you it

Where streams of base-rich water run through bog, these are often lined by strips of fen, separating "islands" of rain-fed bog.

I picture the whole duchy of Steibrenner in this way: to the south, the foothills of the mountains (bearing the rocky streams for which everything and everybody is named, almost): to the north, lowlands leading eventually to a river which Steinbrenner gets none of. But the rocky streams of the north join into somewhat larger streams running through the marshland on their way to the river. Obviously the streams don't all make it to the river. So Steinbrenner proper is fen, drained fen, carr, and a bit of semi-upland meadow and a few trees here and there. (Carr is a wooded fen).

I'm trying to figure out exactly what the natural resources survey crew Yanek is detailed to five minutes ago (but no, it's not an intruder, but while I knew he'd be doing this, I hadn't decided what they were actually doing there). Sometimes I think they're prospecting for copper. Other times coal. Other times I keep thinking about that carr, and all the juicy stuff it keeps throwing up -- maybe some plant product.

Electric guitars are preferentially made of alder wood, because of the bright tone it provides. I don't think I can use that for a backwater degraded "empire" federation of uncooperative principalities trying to get things they need for an upcoming military adventure.