Anatomy of a Story

So I was working on Brothers again today, and ran into a problem; how, exactly, does one ride a freakin' winged horse? By which I mean, where does one sit? Well that rather comes down to the anatomy of the beastie, doesn't it? Which brings us to- how, exactly, is Pegs put together? Which brings us to (drumroll, please)...

Research time! Woo!

Not research on winged horses, per se (because of course all I've go to go on are other people's potentially illogical imaginations) but rather on horse anatomy, swan anatomy, and how I, personally, shall the interface the twain. Which (in my case) means not just looking things up on the interwebs, but also literally drawing them out. Me being the visual person that I am, I need to see it to really understand it- and drawing helps me do that. I am definitely grateful for my ability to put pen to paper and churn out what I need (although truth be told I probably could have just written the scene and never even mentioned it- but it was bugging me). It also gave me some insight that may never actually show up in the written version of this, but I'll share it (and some other tidbits) with you here just because...

Species-wise, Pegs is kind of a cross between a 'gray' Arabian-esque stallion (but with a larger, more powerful chest, for obvious reasons) and a mute swan (yes, that is an actual breed, not just a description of his inability to vocalize). He is larger than your typical Arabian, and his skeletal system is more like a bird's (complete with air-filled bones and a keel). The wing structure is tweaked just a smidge in that I gave him a cross between the swan's wings and a bat's. Yes, bat. Pegs is a mammal- it makes sense for his wings to have mammalian traits. He has a sort of short skin-sail underneath all those feathers, which is part of what made it a little awkward to place Chrys on his back. But we're working it out...

(I feel like I need to add one last point- Pegs also has divine/monstrous blood flowing through his veins, which gives him that extra little oompf which allows him to fly in spite of it not technically being possible. It also explains the ability to sort of delicately hover without any more effort than a wing flutter- not something you'll see any mortal avian do...)

So anyway, that's what a lot of today's "writing time" went toward. Hopefully me explaining this sort of thing is entertaining rather than annoying. <=)