Mystic Marriage: Now comes the fun stuff

I just finished drafting up Chapter 21 in which Our Heroines communicate their mutual attraction to each other. Alas, this involves significant screaming and tears. (I don't recommend this for ordinary relationship purposes, but fiction requires Drama.) Every story I write seems to have as a seed a key scene from which everything else evolves: either as necessary to set up the scene or as a consequence afterwards. Chapter 21 is that key scene. Key scenes generally make me break my rules about writing strictly in order and this one is no different. I had about three parallel partial drafts of it in my files. The exact details kept shifting but I wanted to capture the essence of the emotional interactions while they were fresh in my imagination. This morning's task was to integrate those drafts. I also succeeded in paring the key scene down to its most essential bits. After all, I can't have them go on arguing too long at this point or they might actually come to an understanding and a reconciliation and I can't have that. Not just yet. So we have equal parts accidental wounding, bewilderment, hurtful accusations, and stiff self-justification.

Jeanne now knows that Antuniet is in love with her ... and that Antuniet believes Jeanne's intent was seduction disguised as friendship (rather than friendship that developed into love). Jeanne--being very skilled at seduction but not particularly experienced at romance--has bungled the matter badly and now needs to figure out how to start over. And it's the start of a long hot summer in Rotenek....