you know, some of that stuffy ou picked out and analysed was dialog snippets that came to me out of the blue. which jsut shows how it sometiems seems to flow naturally in my head (i'm startign to wonder if i'm pinning the stuff inbetween quotes down because ican't see people and concentrate more on what I hear...) but wow, I"m glad I worked Percy out in a good way. it was tough to try some good shades of grey. i was mostly trying to project some kind of immense load of shame without makign it a caricature of someone prayign on their knees begging for forgiveness. and now i'm off to read the other stories *bounce*