One Hot Mess

Today, a lost scene from Wild.

October 5^th 2007

Out in the lot, cold air hit her hard, cutting through the crimson haze of fury. The mist fell away again and doubt assailed her as she gazed at Weaver across the empty lot. The night felt cruel, the shadows creeping with violent intent. Weaver was part of it, one with the darkness. Unmoving, unblinking, he stared at her, waiting for her to make her move. His wolf form looked more powerful now that she was human, a deadly weapon.

            Lizzie suddenly felt all too human.

            She swallowed her fear. Hadn’t Harris been big and strong too? And hadn’t she fought him back over the years? She’d matched him for every blow. Maybe she hadn’t been as strong physically, but she’d never let that stop her defending herself. Never.

            Gulping down lungfuls of cool air, she slowly crossed the lot, never taking her eyes off Weaver.

            When a few scant metres separated them, she stopped. The wind whipped her hair into her eyes, obscuring her vision for a second. She hurriedly clawed her hair back in time to see him rise, moving like a living shadow across the concrete. He slunk, low to the ground, a predator’s movements. Careful. Measured. Precise. Dangerous.

            Primal fear danced down Lizzie’s spine as he approached. Deeply buried instincts told her to run, told her she was outmatched by this beast. Told her this was death, stalking towards her with deliberate menace. This was her death, eyes glowing like the embers of a dying fire. She quailed but stood her ground.

 

            If this was death, she had nothing left to fear.

 

This scene no longer exists, but Evan Weaver does. Sort of. In the original draft, he was very definitely a bad guy, as you may surmise from this snippet. But somewhere over the course of the re-writing, he morphed into a not-really-a-bad-guy-just-not-a-friend-to-Lizzie. And then he morphed into a love interest, which totally wasn't supposed to happen. So I had to rename him.

I was carrying about three years of mental association of "Evan Weaver = bad guy," and as long as he was still called Evan, the story didn't feel right to me, even though his role had changed completely. Initially I renamed him Dylan as a place-holder but that didn't feel right either. On my final sweep-through of Wild, I spent a couple of hours mulling over the right name for the character, one that fitted the kind of person he was and had the resonance I wanted. I eventually settled on Seth.

Depending where you take the name from (Biblical roots or Egyptian roots), Seth either means "appointed" or "dazzle." I felt like both worked - Seth is a favoured son of the Kurtadam werewolf, and he definitely dazzles Lizzie. But Seth was also the Egyptian god of chaos, and that works for me too, given the plans I have for the rest of the trilogy.

Tomorrow: Nome is overly-optimistic.