erika, your eye for the telling detail reminds me of Clyde Edgerton, who's one of my favorites largely because he can nail a sense of place or character with one pithy, gently biting phrase.

Oh, my. Sap?

If sap can be had--too bad they're not in the state of my birth, though I don't think any amount of passion would make me stupid enough to have sex against a loblolly pine.

But yeah, I'm trying to make it good and obvious what a nice little abandoned romp in the woods Our Heroine has been having, so it'll be a sufficient comedown from the sublime heights of sexual ecstasy to realize the bitch cousin all but witnessed it.

It almost makes me wish Lucy was mean enough to mentally go "HA-ha! In your face, coz!"

A few days later she more or less does, and not just mentally. Bitchy cousin is just married to an aging, rather stupid earl who badly needs an heir, and is miserably regretting it, and really quite jealous of Lucy. The cousins meet accidentally, bitchy cousin tries to twit Lucy for her common behavior, but Lucy realizes she no longer needs to fear her as she did when they were growing up, and says something like, "It appears to me that we have each made our beds, and now all that's left for us is to lie in them. I bid you a good day, my lady."

That was a very fun scene to write.

"...and some beds are far more pleasant than others..."

Hey, Deb. You ever sign/read at a store in San Diego called "Mysterious Galaxy?" I think you'd go over well, if you're still looking at places to sign. (And of course, my saying 'you need to sign in Worcester' can just be read as understood. :)

Also, newest part of Nihilist Chic is up, in which more unfortunate things happen to our heroine. And Cooter's back!

[link]

Gronk. Victor, me for more Chic in the morning. I just realised that I'm so tired, I literally can't open my mouth wide enough to yawn properly.

There is ice cream and meds, followed by a loud kerthunk! in my immediate future....

San Diego? I like this idea....

I think birch is a New World tree, but you could search and see if it and/or the myrtle had been imported to England by the date of your story.

Some kinds of birch are New World, but silver birch goes back here to before the Romans arrived, I'm fairly confident. That would leave curls of white bark on her back and probably in her hair as well. Um... otherwise, oak is classic, and in a damp woodland one side (the sunnier side) sometimes gets covered in a kind of green lichen or algae (I don't know what it is; I just know that if you lean on it, it leaves bright green smears down your back). Does any of that help?

erika, I wish you were in my writing class. This is good, good stuff.

That definitely helps. Thanks, Am-Chau!