The Right Answers

I completed the edit of The Anchorite.  In the end I wrote about seven hundred more words and deleted about the same amount.  I'm very happy with it; 3,000 quality words.  I've started work on another story tying together the Bear of the House of Cornus strand with an older story called The Old Woman and the Soldiers that's felt a bit isolated from the rest in terms of content, though structurally it's right at the heart of matters.  I've got a stunning opening (stolen from a mobile phone advert!) and some quality middle but I'm not sure where it's going.  A couple of night's dreaming should solve that one.

Part of me wants the old woman to stab the warrior with her kitchen knife; but that goes against everything I'm trying to say, against her character and is a terrible thing to do with an aspect of a work you're having trouble with.  I think the best thing is just to say "I don't know" and put it in my folder of fragments and unfinished bits.  Either it'll make sense in the future or it won't.  One possible solution would be to somehow have the soldier and the old woman go to church together which would set them up for the finale.  But what might the old woman do in the finale?  There are answers to the questions, but to find the right ones will take time.