DrabbleWriMo 9: Host
10 November 2021 01:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeNot so happy with this one. Too much infodump without really managing to clarify to whom he can't tell what.
Also, it turned out the Abbé didn't actually get to celebrate any Mass *at all* in canon, quite apart from being unexpectedly derailed from saying his Mass for the dead, which of course made it even harder to include the prompt...
[Edit: I've just located the 'yellow poppy'/'petal' passage in the novel, and it's *much* later on than I'd remembered, all the way down at the start of the final section (Book IV). Which means that if I use that one for Day 15 I then end up with fully half the prompts remaining but only the remaining one-quarter of the book with which to cover them. Not to mention the enormous amount of plot that lies between page 200 (the abortive Mass) and page 329 (the yellow poppy), from which I could only select four scenes, whereas I'd have to fit fifteen into the equal amount between page 329 and page 439 (THE END)...
Insisting on doing this chronologically really is stupid :-(
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps there might be some way to go back and make some of the later prompts effectively flashbacks, and I can't immediately see how to do that, given that the Comte de Brencourt (who is at the centre of a lot of the plot in this section and would be the only character likely to be morbidly mulling over it afterwards) vanishes from the story on page 309, i.e. before the yellow poppy scene takes place.]
Also, it turned out the Abbé didn't actually get to celebrate any Mass *at all* in canon, quite apart from being unexpectedly derailed from saying his Mass for the dead, which of course made it even harder to include the prompt...
The Abbé took up the Host and wine in hands that still trembled slightly. He could not celebrate without sacrilege the funeral Mass she'd requested — not when he knew her husband was alive. And yet, sworn to silence as he was, he could not without permission reveal that truth... and the Duchesse's own miraculous survival lay barred from speech beneath the seal of the confessional. He had promised her a Mass in hope of reunion; it was as much as he dared do.
When the doorbell rang furiously below, he laid down the wafers with a sense almost of relief.
[Edit: I've just located the 'yellow poppy'/'petal' passage in the novel, and it's *much* later on than I'd remembered, all the way down at the start of the final section (Book IV). Which means that if I use that one for Day 15 I then end up with fully half the prompts remaining but only the remaining one-quarter of the book with which to cover them. Not to mention the enormous amount of plot that lies between page 200 (the abortive Mass) and page 329 (the yellow poppy), from which I could only select four scenes, whereas I'd have to fit fifteen into the equal amount between page 329 and page 439 (THE END)...
Insisting on doing this chronologically really is stupid :-(
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps there might be some way to go back and make some of the later prompts effectively flashbacks, and I can't immediately see how to do that, given that the Comte de Brencourt (who is at the centre of a lot of the plot in this section and would be the only character likely to be morbidly mulling over it afterwards) vanishes from the story on page 309, i.e. before the yellow poppy scene takes place.]