http://www.sonic.net/mary/WIPS2005/belt-Nov20.doc
Trying to arrange these notes and make some sort of outline here.

(Looking through this again Tues, may add something.)

Some talk about 'fantasy' vs 'fancy' vs 'fairy tale' has got me thinking. The classic fairy tales are really pretty low in magic. Snow White: magic mirror, things that kill oddly; glass coffin is unusual (except for Lenin) but not magical; dwarves aren't magic, tho happy ones are; kiss that revives. The magically-preserved corpse and the odd killing and the kiss all sort of cancel each other out: she wasn't really dead. The mirror is nice, but the story would be just as much a fairy tale and almost as good if the Queen got the news some other way. Most of it is very plain objects: comb, dress, apple.

Cinderella doesn't really need the pumpkin coach: it would be the same story if she walked (in a cloak) to the ball. The dress doesn't need to be magic, the godmother could have borrowed it. (In other versions where Cin works at the prince's castle, all she needs is the beautiful dress she brought when she ran away from home, and her private room to change in.)

Sleeping Beauty had more powerful magic -- but not as spectacular. Sleep is a plain thing; the oddity is in it being prolonged (and the people being healthy through the years it took the shrubbery to grow).

Hm, maybe at least SW and Cin are complete stories even without the magic. I wonder if there's any way I can get some simple plain story base for this story.

There's a hollow anchor with figureheads, and special bees living in it. Why a hollow anchor? Well, someone could have gypped a shipmaker by selling them a cheap anchor; that's why it's used as decoration with figureheads on it instead of as a real anchor. Maybe the inside rusted out because it wasn't the right metal. But a gyp and an odd anchor isn't simple. Still with the epistolary form, there's room for the explanation, as a LMM kind of anecdote.

So what do we have, maybe? Someone (obviously the Grandfather now ghost) retired the anchor when he found it was hollow inside. Maybe to remind himself not to take any more wooden anchors, he set it up as decoration in his yard; along with the figureheads from a ship that sank because of the anchor? Reasonable that one figurehead would resemble him.

Maybe he made it into a beehive. Maybe the cat is his cat, lost from home in the recent storm. So maybe the anchor marks the location of his home, the destination. Maybe his home was buried under a sand dune by the storm.

An anteater is odd, but maybe it was part of a retired captain's household, like a parrot or monkey?

This is starting to resemeble Dr. Doolittle, which is ok. He's public domain, and this is epistolary, so the style doesn't need to sound like Lofting's. Something that's a recognizeable shape/mannerism in a different form, is quite traditional: Disney's talking crows, Ursula, Dopey really a dog, etc.

Ok, what about the Psammead, does he fit in? A golden warm creature who likes to ride on or in one's belt. Could be also part of the captain's zoo? A Psmeadd-monkey? Hm, there ought to be a creature that really puts out warmth....

The bees must have been making some special kind of honey, that needed some inspection at the figurehead. Perhaps by some little servant? Small to fit in the figurehead, but otherwise very normal, very expected? Some perfectionist-chef kind of figure, or assistant to? -- But not a magic or complicated kind of honey (or not very magic), a perfectionist cook is simpler.

[adding - Hm, maybe when the honey (or mead?) is good enough, the ants would take it down to the wine cellar. But the Villain doesn't want them to go down there any more. So he has set up some hoax to keep telling them their honey/mead isn't good enough to take down! ]

So here's a story of someone thought lost, coming back to reclaim his home. The home too, buried under the dune, is thought lost, thought swept away to sea, with only the anchor decoration left to mark where it had stood. (Hm, is it guarded by the bees, that's why the villain left it alone? But he's trying to get the anteater to eat the bees so he can get the anchor?)

Hm, thinking cartoon here.... I'd like a villain that keeps coming up with rubegoldberg devices, trying different things. (And heroes too, for that matter.) Hard to describe such things in words, tho.