I figured out what I have to do with my story- I have to completely re write it.
I have to change a fundamental principle of the way in which the spirit realm functions, and then manage all of the changes that occur as a result.
Previously, I had imagined there being some kind of mist that separated the two regions of the spirit realm. However, now I think that's a poorly thought out idea. I don't need a clearly delineated and yet vaguely defined and poorly understood boundary.
Making this change eliminates the need for the continent of Antarctica to be connected to the southern most point of the Touzainanboku mountains, as I had envisioned earlier, as a gateway into the Kagamihara.
This eliminates the need for an encircling land route, as people can access the Kagamihara and the ocean at any point along the coast, the occasional cliffs not withstanding.
This means that there will no longer be travel across Antarctica at all, since ships setting out from Minami City will merely sail around it and into the Indian ocean.
And that, in its turn, means that every single scene with the Krigmerk will go.
Sigh.
I have to go with this. It works in every way that I need it to work, and it's logical, congruent and simple. No more stupid road, no more far fetched travel ideas.
So, the Nishi mountains will have a rice farming town high up in the foothills, with terraced rice paddies, as I have already written in, as well as a fishing community down on the coast, with a road connecting them, where the sea faring daemon will live.
This works better than the sea faring daemon living "somewhere out in the middle of the ocean," which constituted my previous idea on that point.
The road connecting the fishing and farming communities will see a lot of foot traffic, which is going to be the most popular form of overland travel by far. Your occasional samurai in service to some organization or city might have a horse, but they're rare, and they won't enter my story.
Not many will travel at all. Even sea faring daemon will usually do only coastal fishing. Anyone who must travel a long distance will do so by ship.
So. Gone are like, six characters and I don't even know how many pages of writing. None of it was truly vital to the story, except Pidguyok. He's vital. So, he stays.
But he will be met in the lower Minami City, where Gilly will mistake him for a normal dog, and he will join them from there.
Fushi will not join them. There's no point; he can't fit on the ship, and almost the entire journey will be by ship.
He'll meet them at the Minami shrine, as before, but for advice and moral support, not as a companion. Any roles that he played, Pidguyok can fill.
This is going to be a hell of a lot of work, and countless scenes will die and be folded away carefully into the discard file, never to be seen or used again.
I'm also massively changing Minami City. It will be comprised of two levels. The lower level with be a shipping port and market. The middle will be residencial and toward the top of the mountain will be the official offices, library and court, etc. At the very top will be the shrine itself.
Tenshio and Gilly will arrive by small fishing boat- maybe, maybe not- anyway, they'll arrive by some kind of boat and meet Pidguyok. He may or may not accompany them up the mountain. They may just meet him again on the way down... No, I think he comes up with them.
They journey up the mountain to the library by rickshaw, which will be used in such large cities as Minami. I have to completely change the library. It must be larger and Osamu is too young to be the master librarian. He'll have to be a junior librarian, one up from apprentice.
Tenshio will have to meet formally with the master librarian, as good manners dictates, and then meet more informally with his friend, Pidguyok and Gilly in tow. (That will be interesting.)
After their stay at the shrine, they will return to lower Minami City and book passage on Captain Kaito's schooner. They'll sail past the icy coasts of Antarctica and out into the central oceans of the Kagamihara.
When they get to Tenjiku, I must almost completely rewrite those scenes, as I only rapidly sketched my way through them. I must write the scene at the Ishii no Torii, since I simply skipped that entire scene earlier.
End of part one.
Begin part two.
I must write in scene in Minami City when Aiko has her betrothal ceremony, so the readers understands what the looks like and the implications, so they can contrast that to Gilly's relationship to Tenshio. Otherwise, they won't understand the emotional framework, or the daemon marriage rituals.
I must figure out when, why and where exactly Tenshio goes, when he goes into the Kagamihara.
I must draw out a time line so I can weave in Katashi's actions with Gilly's story, so the readers get the strong sense of something threatening building somewhere out there, in the background.
Then I have to decide if I'm going to keep Gilly's parent's story, or drop it completely.
Then I have to actually write the end of the story.
Then I have to read it through all over again, to see how well any of this worked.
Phew.
Hopefully after all this is done, when the reader enters the story, they will be able to sense the ways in which the world is smoothly functioning around them, in mysterious and yet congruent ways. Hopefully, they will be drawn irrevocably up in its strong emotional current with no jarring distractions.
One thing at a time, and the first thing is a hell of a lot of deleting.
