An Unfound Door, Chapter Sixteen
Apr. 16th, 2024 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingFhiad reflects on the uncanniness of the empty castle as he leads Agnes to his room. The study has been preserved, but the bedroom has been overgrown by plants and flowers. Fhiad is overcome by a sense of loss, and Agnes suggests that they rest and eat before continuing. After describing Erdbhein before the war, Fhiad talks about his three sisters, all of whom were highly competent administrators. He tells Agnes that he got his talent at magic from his mother, and that his dream was to build monumental stone structures aboveground to complement the stonework in Erdbhein’s mines. While leaning on Fhiad’s shoulder, Agnes falls asleep against him as he talks.
.
This chapter is about Fhiad processing his grief. It would be the perfect opportunity for an exposition dump, but Fhiad really isn’t the sort of character who’s capable of delivering exposition. He only talks about what he cares about in the moment, which is missing his family.
While he’s talking, I hope the reader gets the sense of Fhiad being a part of a much larger story. He’s never going to be able to live that story, and the reader isn’t going to get to hear more about it, either. For instance, Fhiad mentions spending time in Erdbhein’s underground city, and says that he went to university to study architecture because he always dreamed of building something equally grand aboveground.
That’s an intriguing detail, I hope. It adds another layer of foreshadowing for Agnes and Fhiad’s final destination (the underground reaches below Faloren Castle), but the reader is never going to encounter another reference to the city under Erdbhein. That’s what it means for an entire culture to be destroyed; all the possibilities it represents are destroyed along with it.
I think about this sort of thing all the time in reference to real life. In the next chapter I’m going to allow a third character to get angry about it. I’m not going to call this character the villain, because like Ganondorf, she is not wrong.
Fhiad’s own anger has decreased alongside his sense of agency. At the beginning of the story, he was furious and hostile and scary, but he’s become more chill and introspective as the reality of his situation becomes clear. He’s starting to give up.
Fhiad’s monologue in this chapter mirrors Agnes’s monologue at the beginning of the novel about being the exact wrong person to handle the situation. Agnes was doing something stupid – bringing a demon back to Faloren – because she felt that she had no power to halt her kingdom’s decline on her own. Fhiad is likewise attempting to do something stupid – turning back time – because he sees no other way to address what happened in the past. Fhiad knows that any one of his sisters could have been effective in restoring his kingdom, but he feels that he himself doesn’t have the power to do anything. And honestly, he’s right.
I think that’s a hard lesson to learn, that sometimes you’re just not the right person to fix a messed-up situation. Not everyone can be a hero. But at the same time, if a broken situation can’t be fixed by normal people working together and trying their best while using the tools at their disposal, then perhaps the situation isn’t worth fixing.
In The Demon King, the novel I was working on before putting it on hold to write An Unfound Door, the main character, Ananth, finds himself in a very similar situation to Fhiad. Ananth is going to succeed by virtue of being ten years older and completely unhinged. Fhiad is going to fail, though. His failure isn’t without sadness, but it’s also going to be the best thing that ever happened to him. So this chapter is about grief, but it also has a lot of flowers.
But really, because I am the person writing this story, this chapter is about having a nice little date with delicious food and tea in a handsome ruined castle overgrown with bioluminescent plants. This is how I imagine Fhiad’s study, by the way:
.
This chapter is about Fhiad processing his grief. It would be the perfect opportunity for an exposition dump, but Fhiad really isn’t the sort of character who’s capable of delivering exposition. He only talks about what he cares about in the moment, which is missing his family.
While he’s talking, I hope the reader gets the sense of Fhiad being a part of a much larger story. He’s never going to be able to live that story, and the reader isn’t going to get to hear more about it, either. For instance, Fhiad mentions spending time in Erdbhein’s underground city, and says that he went to university to study architecture because he always dreamed of building something equally grand aboveground.
That’s an intriguing detail, I hope. It adds another layer of foreshadowing for Agnes and Fhiad’s final destination (the underground reaches below Faloren Castle), but the reader is never going to encounter another reference to the city under Erdbhein. That’s what it means for an entire culture to be destroyed; all the possibilities it represents are destroyed along with it.
I think about this sort of thing all the time in reference to real life. In the next chapter I’m going to allow a third character to get angry about it. I’m not going to call this character the villain, because like Ganondorf, she is not wrong.
Fhiad’s own anger has decreased alongside his sense of agency. At the beginning of the story, he was furious and hostile and scary, but he’s become more chill and introspective as the reality of his situation becomes clear. He’s starting to give up.
Fhiad’s monologue in this chapter mirrors Agnes’s monologue at the beginning of the novel about being the exact wrong person to handle the situation. Agnes was doing something stupid – bringing a demon back to Faloren – because she felt that she had no power to halt her kingdom’s decline on her own. Fhiad is likewise attempting to do something stupid – turning back time – because he sees no other way to address what happened in the past. Fhiad knows that any one of his sisters could have been effective in restoring his kingdom, but he feels that he himself doesn’t have the power to do anything. And honestly, he’s right.
I think that’s a hard lesson to learn, that sometimes you’re just not the right person to fix a messed-up situation. Not everyone can be a hero. But at the same time, if a broken situation can’t be fixed by normal people working together and trying their best while using the tools at their disposal, then perhaps the situation isn’t worth fixing.
In The Demon King, the novel I was working on before putting it on hold to write An Unfound Door, the main character, Ananth, finds himself in a very similar situation to Fhiad. Ananth is going to succeed by virtue of being ten years older and completely unhinged. Fhiad is going to fail, though. His failure isn’t without sadness, but it’s also going to be the best thing that ever happened to him. So this chapter is about grief, but it also has a lot of flowers.
But really, because I am the person writing this story, this chapter is about having a nice little date with delicious food and tea in a handsome ruined castle overgrown with bioluminescent plants. This is how I imagine Fhiad’s study, by the way:
