103 This is more or less just what it sounds like. One feature of Dantrovian biology that I've never had a worthwhile opportunity to show on-screen is that Dantrovian females' monthly cycle is brutally unpleasant. For about 24 hours at the peak of the cycle, they cannot objectively be considered sapient, and so, especially when living among offworlders, they tend to sequester themselves for that time. The Song for the Moon of Blood is a meditative exercise intended to mitigate the psychological effects somewhat and give the sufferer a mental anchor to hasten the return of her faculties once the worst has passed.

104 Practicing the telepathic exercises taught him by his unnamed mentor.

156 I feel bad for poor Kala - created already dead for dramatic purposes. It seems a rather cheap trick; I probably should have at least given her a couple of scenes in the preceding pieces, except that I never really had a window to show Corwin's life away from his visits with the Duelists until later on. If I had, it would've given away the fact that something was in store.

178 MacCready's Chili & Burgers, which will appear later.

186 Utena's key metaphor, stated with unusual baldness.

202 The one that will turn white later.

277 Corwin has no way of knowing it, but he's literally correct.

305 I thought it was important that Corwin explicitly not be a pretty boy, after so many of the men in Utena's prior life had been - not least Akio himself.

354 There, he said it. Now, as the poet said, all that's left to do is everything.

394 Such is the cultural power of Andrés Cantor that people quote him in the 25th century (even though most people in the 25th century haven't the faintest idea what the hell soccer is).

405 Henceforth, Corwin and Utena are Not Dating, in much the same way that Arthur Dent has No Tea in the Infocom Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game.

408 A friend of mine and I retired to the Highland Street Friendly's after a long, long evening in 1992; this is in honor of that. Alas, the restaurant's not there any more in real life. Not that this one's in the same spot either, since I stuck T-Sam's there in A Question of Faith...

432 The story of Interlude at Bancroft Tower No. 1 is an excellent example of how stuff runs away with itself sometimes. Despite its position in the First Symphony's arc and the release timetable, it was the second Symphony story I finished. It more or less exploded out of my head in a single frantic evening while I was mostly engaged in working on the superstory that was eventually broken up into the Second and Third Movements, and what happened in it - Corwin and Utena falling in love and being unable to entirely acknowledge it - would color the entire Symphony canon henceforth. Amusingly, when I finally got things to the point where I could release the story, some readers took the ending at face value and assumed that the piece was a dismissal of the potential relationship between the two characters, not realizing that it was really the beginning of their arc in earnest.

Hereby hangs another tale, as well, since - as her credit suggests - this is the piece that brought us Janice "Ardaniel Sumhenner" Barlow as a Suspect. We'd been exchanging emails for a while and I'd concluded that she was pretty cool. It was the middle of the night when I finally completed Interlude and the usual Usual Suspects were all unavailable, but I had a desperate need to run it by someone and make sure I hadn't spent the last several hours helplessly banging out a piece of useless crap, so I mailed the draft to her. She was fully on staff within days, and yes, that means her appearances in the movements preceding Interlude were written afterward.

It's a strange, strange thing sometimes, the creative process.

I seem to recall you saying somewhere, in a comment on this story, that it was an allegory. Would you care to elaborate on that?

- Sean
"All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true.'"
-- Terry Pratchett, from _The Last Continent_