Chapter Fourteen Notes
Ananda: Wow... yeah. I have no real comments, beyond VIOLENCE IS NOT THE ANSWER, and go write some letters or e-mail for Amnesty International now, alright? (Btw, they don't intercede on behalf of anyone who's used violence, so D'rai woulda be punished, but they're against the death penalty and torture, and *for* fair trials - so Daphne might've been saved...)
Laurel: I'm doing this in paragraphs, because I've got a lot to say. *g* Anyway, I'm amazed at how well this chapter turned out. This is definitely the best Applebus chapter I've done yet, and is among my best writing work ever, I think...and the thing is, I'm not usually one to be up on the politics between feuding groups, be it a religious or political struggle. (I tried to understand the politics between the Kosovo people and all that, and had a hard time...but I guess a struggle is easier to understand if you're the one concocting it. *g*) I wasn't sure at first if this was that great a test. I mean, think about it--all Daphne has to do is walk into the room, and everything else follows. She doesn't know why she can't get out once she enters, as the scroll tells her she can't--she doesn't bother testing it--she just sort of accepts that she can't. I guess I did the test the way I did, though, because I've always been afraid of being hurt while helping someone else. I don't know why, but I used to have--and still sort of have--this unreasonable fear that to get a person out of trouble, someone's got to pay in some way, and I was always afraid that I would be that person. Even praying for stuff sometimes, especially when I was younger: "Please let this happen...but please, not in such a way that I'd get hurt..." So I decided that I--in the form of Daphne--needed to get over that, at least fictionally. To Daphne, the true test probably would be just to open the door, because she is offered a way out, and she knows that if she goes to D'rai, it's going to cost her. Maybe there'll come a time when I'll need to draw on this story. If not...well, I can have fun reading it.