And I develop one thing and another, and in due course, she sets out to seek her fortune with a maidservant as her companion.
And there's a love-interest out there -- a king whose backstory is an amalgam of "The Singing Bone" and the Greek variant "The Singing Bagpipes." Some part of my mind niggles that maybe the maidservant needs a love interest too, since I don't want to drop her into oblivion like the maidservant in "Maid Maleen."
But first things first. What do they come to next?
Whereupon the muse comes burbling about the maidservant's backstory. Which as it happens solves her love-interest problem. BUT -- it's not what happens next. It's backstory (and where am I going to fit it in? Maybe when Esmeralda taunts hers up front -- and she could remember it as they walk along -- but not for long. Something's got to happen.
sigh started to brainstorm. Maybe if I have a hundred or so ideas one of them will spark.