Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 37 (Patreon)

Chapter 37: Markets by Day

(Original Chapter Title: Market by Day)

My metric is so, so screwed up. I look at a 3.8k word chapter and fret that it feels super short.

Ranthia is in a real relationship (at long, long last)! And it's unlike anything she's ever experienced. She's excited and happy, but things moved so fast she feels a sort of obligation to affirm her worthiness of Avyna's trust.

Creation isn't Avyna's strongest language, which is challenging to actually do justice to while writing. She's not godsawful with it, but outside of trading with other cultures, she doesn't use it near as much as High Elvish. I've tried to always write her dialogue with this in mind—her vocabulary is solid with things that might come up in trade, but less so with more obscure words.

But she's also level 768; she can fit a lot of planning into the moments before she speaks.

I adore the subtle metagag of Ranthia finding someone remembering her name after a minor encounter—and a whole year—off-putting. But it's true, when you struggle to do something, seeing other people do it effortlessly just feels... uncanny.

I have a lot more I plan to say about certain things, but this chapter isn't the place to do it. Thus, I beg for patience. Trust me, a lot of your potential questions will be addressed by the prose as things move forward.

One thing I will say though, is that I... had never really written romance before this point. In most of the things I've ever written relationships have either been previously established—and the characters are in the comfortable stage—or they were single. I mean, I guess I knew that this story would end up causing me to write it, but it wasn't something I put conscious thought into. I cut my teeth (P.S., I've always hated this saying, why did I use it?) on Ranthia's ill-fated relationship with Hexara, but here...

Well, I just wrote the ladies as they were. I'm not exactly bereft of notions of romance myself (happily married!), but writing it is a bit of a different beast. I'm sure we can all name books that we've read that had terribly written romance arcs—for a variety of reasons. I almost feel like I kind of cheated by not getting into my own head over concerns about doing it justice, but it's more that I wrote their interactions and romance happened, as opposed to seeking to write romance. Does that make sense? (No is a valid answer.)

I know that romance can be... polarizing to readers. The loss of patreon members since Ranthia and Avyna got together on the read-ahead tier is a metric that I'm all too aware of. But, I hope that even those who have no interest in the 'mushy stuff' can bear with me. The core of who Ranthia is won't change because of love—she'll just find greater moments of happiness between her struggles. (Not that a relationship, even a healthy one, isn't occasionally a struggle in and of itself; no matter how well two people can get along, heads can butt.)

Ultimately, this is a story of Ranthia's life. And, at least to her, the moments of joy are just as important as the milestones of levels and her grandest adventures. If that's for the best or the worst is up to the reader, but I will diligent record things as they happen (even when they go against my own plans).