Thanks for catching those!

On the last one, though, I think the structure of the sentence means I can get away with not writing "he had ..., but he had"; the second "he had" is implied. Unless it's insufficiently clear, in which case I'd put the second "had" in its place before "never."

... I have now spent too long on Wikipedia, trying to figure out if this is parallel construction and/or some type of zeugma or syllepsis, and if so, whether "had" is required as an auxiliary verb or not. I think I'm more confused than when I started.

"Zeugma" is a great Scrabble word, though. And "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear" by Flanders & Swann is a good song with great wordplay, whatever the grammar concepts involved are.

~Neshomeh

Given doctorlit's (and Phobos') comments on Agent!Thoth's arrogance, I'm curious about what your read on it was before this story. Anything you recall?

Either way, thanks!

~Neshomeh

I tend to think of losing one's dragon in terms of an amputation, or sudden blindness/deafness. It's permanent all right, because he's never getting back what he lost and its absence will affect him for the rest of his life, but he does have some choice in how he handles it. He'll figure that out eventually. I might revel in the angst, but somehow, despite being jaded, bitter, and cynical, I'm still an optimist at heart. {= )

Thanks for commenting! It's always appreciated.

~Neshomeh

See, a part of the takeaway from the first Lessons was supposed to be about Thoth's arrogance. He may want to connect with Derik, but he's unwilling to do it on equal terms, out of a mixture of fear and a sense of superiority, looking down on the "puny mortal" no matter how much he may respect him. He presumes Derik has ulterior motives for even attempting to form any sort of connection because... well, that's his default assumption about everyone.

While this story did show Derik changing, a big part of why this didn't end the same way as the first Lessons was because of development in Thoth: his self-reflection and his prior failure has lead him to try and approach Derik on more equal terms, and to accept the connection between them as friends more properly.

If I didn't actually show that clearly... that's an issue with my character writing, and I need to put some thought into how to make this sort of thing clearer. (Just so you know, you aren't the only one to bring this up, so... yeah).

>I'd like to see him change over time as well, though I'm not certain it's possible with his biology.

Oh, he's changing already. That's all part of it. We definitely have A Plan. Or something.

Fun fact: I started reading Pern out of an eventual need to write this scene.

I mean, I was gonna do it anyways, but...

Hmm, maybe I should put a link to the source of those summaries in the end notes. In-jokes are all well and good, but letting people in on them without making them Google it is probably better. {= )

~Neshomeh

Well, from my perspective. We enjoyed writing Thoth and Derik so much that we wrote a series of it.