Blood & Chlorophyll Ch. 06 - Reflection

I actually rewrote the beginning of this chapter a couple times. At first, my plan was to completely revisit the scene at the end of the last chapter, with the same dialogue and everything, but instead seeing everything from Kat's point of view. However, after getting through about half of this, I decided there wasn't enough interesting material to warrant this approach.

As it stands, I do a little min-montage to sum up Kat's thoughts, and I think this worked out really well. It lets us get to camp quicker, but we also get to see how different Kat's thoughts on the city are now that she's visiting it with Alicia.

Inside the camp, we finally get to start bringing in some more characters! We start with Kevin the Owlkin, and I had a lot of fun with him. I almost never write characters with specific accents, but made an exception here because it fit so well. The most important part of this exchange, on a meta level, was to establish how expensive delving can be. It's absolutely a profession that's high risk, high reward, and it's difficult to just dip your toes in. We also get some understanding of the exchange rates between Dungeon Coins and USD, which I think helps ground the setting a bit more.

Now, one downside to the way I've constructed everything, is that Alicia can't really just visit the Dungeon Camp whenever she wants. It's expensive on every front: emotionally, physically, and literal money. I'll admit, I've got fun ideas for interactions that could happen at the Camp, and I'm not sure if I'll ever get a chance to use those. Still, I think limitations breed creativity, so I'm not complaining (that much).

Another fun part of this chapter is seeing more of the world, specifically the city of Chicago. I love that the Bean has become this symbol of progression that everyone is eager to restore, and I'm happy I got to show it here.

Our girls talk with another new character, Samir the Panther Beastfolk, and he decides to alert the entire camp to the girls' discovery. Shockingly, it doesn't go that well, but it helps establish quite a few things for the plot. Some of them are more immediately apparent, and some might not show up for a bit.

The scene continues on, the crowd disperses, and Kat clears up the paperwork needed. They get a bunch of names of possible delvers they can call for help, and then they're on their way. Nothing too much to say about this section, I'm happy with how it came together.

The most exciting bit, at least for disaster lesbians like myself, is the whole last section. Alicia returning home, Kat's conflicting feelings about no longer needing to provide support, and seeing the Dryad literally jumping for joy when she reaches her Heart Tree. The last two chapters, more or less, had Alicia traveling away from her tree, and I was so happy to see her make it back.

She's laughing, smiling, and leaps into Katrina's arms for a totally, 100% platonic expression of affection. Absolutely no subtext here. Just two gal pals, longingly staring into each other's eyes, fighting the urge to whisper their feelings to each other. Like good friends do.

Moments like these are so satisfying to put to paper, and I'm so happy with how it turned out. Hopefully y'all are just as exciting about my little gay cryptids!

Nyx <3