I’m looking forward to collaborating with you guys! I’m stunned by the excellence of the work so far, and thoroughly enamored with (or repelled by) many of the characters. In the interest of catching up a bit, I have a few questions I’d like to pose.
Greenjudy, would the nature of Estelle’s illness/infestation become clearer at close range now that she’s, well, plucked? I’ve been idly googling bird parasites and whatnot today. Icky – her feather-pulling behavior makes me suspect arthropods in particular.
I’ve gone over the help file for page numbering, and it is still hopelessly arcane to me. Presumably, you find out the page number of whatever you want to precede your page and assign your page the following number. But what happens to the page that WAS following the preceding page? If you stick page 99 in after page 98, does the page that was 99 somehow get renumbered to 100? And how do you discover an existing page number anyway?
Is there a better place to post random questions and musings than here? Just want to make sure I’m rambling in the right spot.
BTW, I’ve friended everyone at my personal LJ. Just in case you want to see what (boring) things go on inside my head. I’m planning to update much more frequently, since I’m in the LJ habit now.
Goodnight, all!
OH, it was just bouncing me out. I think it was connected to the issues I was having with displaying the comments. It’s working better now – fine on my laptop, which runs Mozilla. The work PC’s (running IE) are still messed up, though. And I can’t take a screencap of that for you, because I can’t install a program on those to do it with.
Glad that made sense to everyone. I was hoping it did. ^_^
Hallo, numaari!
You know, I’m not convinced Estelle is suffering from a parasite, though that’s possible. I get the strong sense that her feather-plucking is a neurotic self-comforting behavior, sort of like what afflicts certain very bright, nervous African Greys.
Estelle has many secrets. She may not be a Kipling–developed expressly to make war–but she knows a fair bit of the inside of that operation, and has had a frightful life for someone so young.
No wonder Dia is able to make a connection.
I think she started picking her feathers when she was in the lab. She might be a wild mutation of some kind, brought in for curiosity’s sake by the company that hired Turner and sent out the bug boys.
The problem with this kind of behavior is that it becomes very entrenched. When Pen took her in, things inside Estelle improved, but now she’s relapsing, which is why Pen is sick to his stomach. He’s a not-quite-sober alcoholic, and he knows from relapses.
Why now? Why can’t Pen help?
Pen’s own sensitivity to the winds, to the coming storm, may provide answers.