Introduction: Hi, I'm Pan, and I'll pounce on literally any opportunity to talk about my LMS novel, so here I am!
Story Description: Hildegarde Sneal has lived at Penbrook House for as long as she can remember, together with her twin brother Dante and a tangle of other children. The water runs cold, the beds are hard, the matrons are harsh, and Hildegarde has never felt at home there. But she knows it isn't a forever thing. One day, she'll leave to become a posie - a beloved assistant to a masked, mysterious degas, a creature of magic and high society.
Yet when the time comes, she isn't quite ready for it. Wrenched from her brother and ferried to a lavish estate in York, she must find her place among the degas of the Matreau clan. The family is warm, their gifts are lavish, the outings are exciting, but motes of doubt hang like dust in the air. Why do the other posies speak so little? Why won't Dante respond to her letters? What secret lies in the tower upon the lake?
Biggest of all is the mystery of Daisy, the older girl who dines every night with the Matreaus but is posie to none of them. As Hildegarde's reality grows ever more fractured, and as countless truths unfold, the two girls develop a bond that may save both of their souls.
Story Genre: Somewhere between fantasy and magical realism.
Story Setting Britain, but the time period is deliberately undetermined. It's basically England, But Weird.
Link: A Pocketful of Posies - Chapter 1.1
Preferred type of question: Worldbuilding is probably what I need to focus on the most, but I'll gobble up any question you want to ask. If my answer gives major plot deals away, I'll put it in a spoiler.
A Pocketful of Posies
16 posts in this topic.
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Quick question - why isn't the girl who dines with the Matreaus a posie?
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Ooh, thank you for the question. ^.^ The answer to this one is actually a pretty big plot point, so I'll stick it in a spoiler.
Spoiler
Daisy actually is a posie, just not to any of the Matreaus that Hildegarde has met. Daisy's degas, Kesecmatreau, is comatose, and has been concealed in the tower upon the lake ever since somebody almost killed him. Parismatreau, the degas that Hildegarde is to become a posie to, has spent the last year consulting magic to try and revive him, but nothing has worked.
The Matreaus conceal Daisy's true position from Hildegarde to (a) avoid questions that have no easy answers and (b) keep from unnerving her. They tell her that Daisy is going to be (or maybe already is; I haven't decided yet) a posie to a family friend who is currently abroad, but Hildegarde quickly starts to doubt that explanation. -
Interesting! I feel like I remembered reading this in the thread for your novel, but what exactly is the true purpose of a posie?
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Sorry I took such an age to respond to this. Big spoilers ahead.
Spoiler
Posies are human beings who have been 'entangled' with degas. Of all the things that degas are capable of, feeling is not one of them. Their emotional range is limited and blank, leaving them devoid of passion, enthusiasm and genuine curiosity. The only way they can abandon this hazy existence is to entangle a human soul with their own, siphoning off their ability to feel and leaving the human husk-like in their place.
In order to perform the entanglement, the degas must lure the human into a close and trusting bond. The more the human cares for them at the time it is performed, the clearer the connection will be. This is why young children are so frequently selected to become posies. They're easier to manipulate and easier to win the trust of. -
Don't worry about it!
Yeah, that would be pretty spoilerly. I'm not sure if you've figured this out yet - or if you ever will - but what's the story behind the degas? How were they created in the first place? -
What happens to Dante?
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@Saen - that's a great question and one I really need to answer lol. I have a vague idea, but it's not really solidified in my head. I know that degas are made rather than born, and that the first of them were created by people. One of the big distinctions between humans and degas is that the latter can communicate much more directly with magic, and I think humans made them for that purpose. How is a more uncertain point. Some kind of alchemy that I don't expect I'll delve into.
But they're not easy to make, which is why they were reserved as advisers to monarchs and emperors and suchlike - handy to have a creature of magic at your side when dealing with politics and war. Over the centuries, though, I imagine that degas became more numerous, gained more political power of their own, and set up their own 'families'. Rather than being made by human alchemists, degas now create their own successors as and when they feel the need - I imagine the original human method has been lost or destroyed. They're also integrated in politics for their own benefit, though their long-standing connections to royalty remain strong. In Europe, degas make up a relatively minor portion of the population, but almost all of them sit at the peak of the social ladder.
As for when entanglement came into common practice among degas, I'm unsure. I wondered if the process was originally designed for human benefit (entanglement has the effect of giving humans the 'ear for magic' usually unique to degas) but has shifted focus to benefit degas. It might be that their acquisition of posies was instrumental in their decision to split off and become independent from humans. But I'll have to think more about that.
@TheWeirdoFromBeyond - Dante is sent to Cornwall, pledged to become a posie to a degas called Hevalisc. He remains there for the rest of the story, pretty much, though he does keep in touch with Hildegarde via letters. Until he stops responding to her. -
Why does he stop responding and what is Hildegrade's reaction to that?
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Spoilers abound...
Spoiler
He hasn't really stopped responding - it's just that Hildegarde's degas is privately confiscating them, as well as burning any letters she tries to send in return. It's a deliberate act to make Hildegarde feel more isolated, and thus more reliant on the individuals within the house - i.e., her degas, who is pretty much her only source of comfort.
When Dante stops responding, Hildegarde is confused and hurt, and starts to worry that Dante is so content in his new life that he doesn't need her anymore. When she eventually discovers that her degas is burning her letters, however, that sparks one of the biggest turning points in the story. -
Oh cool! What is the turning point?
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This sounds so cool! No wonder your LMS chapters have been in the features, the plot sounds amazing.
So what do your characters look like? Also, you didn't give a direct era to your novel but would you say they wore modern clothes and had cars? For some reason, I have Victorian era styles stuck in my head XD -
@TheWeirdoFromBeyond more spoilers!
Spoiler
It's a turning point in that it's the moment where Hildegarde stops trusting the degas she's living with. She ends up turning to Daisy, who she's been hostile towards for weeks, to find out the true explanation behind what posies are for.
@occymay thank you so much! So, character appearances:
Hildegarde is a gawky little kid with a big nose (like me) and frizzy brown hair, the kind of girl whose clothes are always covered in stains. Her brother, Dante, is neater, but he's smaller and got these little owl glasses and the same curly hair as her.
Degas as a 'species' all tend to be far taller than humans, thinner and more angular. They're always completely covered and masked, but their dress sense varies - lots of them are pretty extravagant-looking, and they always use human tailoring. I've not fully decided what they look like under the masks.
Daisy is a beaut. Sandy blonde curls, green eyes, skin like marble, looks like an antique doll. Doesn't smile. Wears green a lot, often goes around with bare feet. Her hygiene isn't great, which sometimes mars her prettiness, but it's always there.
Re: the time period, I've been....deliberately vague on that. It's not modern. There's electricity, but it's not used universally. There are cars, but they're slower and less numerous. Clothes aren't modern. It's not quite Victorian (I mention the Second World War at one point in the story), but it isn't anywhere close to the 2000s. Then again, the whole novel is a twisted shadow of Britain, so I hope I can get away with not setting it in a particular period. Mostly because I hate having to fuss about historical accuracy.
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What's one of the coolest things about the universe your story is set in? (Basically, what's some fun worldbuilding stuff that hasn't come up yet in the thread?)
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Tell me more about Daisy's character and her role in the novel.
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