Liner Notes for Swift Tail

 

Liner Notes for my story Swift Tail

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I needed another elf. I needed someone for Cat Step Walker to talk to. Someone for him to mentor, to explain things to. All the stray thoughts about immortals and elves, and all the deep bones of what I’d figured out. I wanted to put them in his mouth and tell someone about them.

Hence Swift Tail.

Swift Tail is like her grandfather and her cousins, Walker and Decider, and not like her parent. Much to everyone’s discomfort. Elves like to find square holes for square pegs, but if they can sand off the corners to make them fit the round holes, why so much the better for all. So much easier all round. So much less strife and angst, especially for the clan leaders and officers and those who find themselves set I authority.

So much the worse if Swift Tail is the most powerful elf of her generation and her shape is one that has never been seen before.

Apart from this I finally give you Decider and Walker’s house. Their secret lair. It’s long tall and narrow, because that’s fun. Both of them have rooms for the various passions and interests they’ve had over the years. Decider’s is generally tidier, which is why Swift Tail prefers Walker’s eclectically stacked storerooms and workshops. Tools, knives, writings, half-finished and roughly finished projects.

This draws together and possibly ties off a few ongoing threads of the series. I can’t say it has a throughline, and the stories are deliberately out of internal chronological order. If there is a throughline, it’s the one where Walker encounters a gorgon, loses his powers, and slowly comes to terms with that, while also recovering. That comes to it’s conclusion next month in Ten Thousand Ghosts. This story gathers some of the bits that hang loose from that tale.

It's a bit slight if you’ve not been following along. And even if you have, are these the loose ends you wanted tying up? Well they have been anyway, and hopefully next month you’ll get a fine closing to the series.