So I guess, long story short, I got away from them, but my writer says that's not a proper ending. She says people will want to know why I was running in the first place, but damnit, I don't even remember all of it. I know the facts, of course, but not what it felt like, and she says nobody will care unless they can really experience it along with me. And I'm not sure I want to do that and besides, she says flashbacks are bad writing, but I don't know how else to tell people the story.

The people I'm talking about are the Grehti, the priests of the Mother, and they're seriously scary ****. They get you when you've fourteen summers, everybody, it's a whole ritual where they scare you nigh to death and put their hooks in your brain so that you'll never question them. If they find out you have magic, like I do, then they take you for special training, which is more like killing your spirit, even though they're supposed to be teaching you to join the Mother's dance. It was only by impossible luck that I got away the first time.

I certainly don't, and my son's gotten into all kinds of trouble because of it. The mess at Eilieah... tell me, if you're looking after a four summers' old boy, one with more magic than any kid twice his age ought to have, one who's been hurt an inch from his life already because I wasn't a good enough swordsman to defend him... You're damn right I'm going to teach him to use his own power to defend himself.

I just thank the Mother he doesn't understand what he did. If he knew, his mind... he'd be totally crushed by it, he'd grow up thinking he was utterly horrible, and he's not, I know he's not, he's my son.

There are plenty of places I've gone to escape the Grehti. It was fate and luck that drew me back. It's been years. But you know what? I really don't know what could be done about them.

I go around accusing my friends of running away forever instead of doing the honorable thing and turning around to fight. But I've been doing it too. There are so many things I could do to harm them. There's a guy in another thread here who's writing out scriptures in the common people's language. My people don't write, but they sing, and they talk, and some of them even talk mind to mind. The Grehti are fricking cowards, they've secluded their little world so much that nobody even knows there are other places, and there's a huge wonderful multiverse out there. Think what would happen if the gate were open to all and sundry.

Ha! I opened it once, with all of them after me with swords and claws and fangs and mind traps. I bet I could fricking do it again. Their magic is very strong, when they all unite together in ritual. But I've got lots of friends now. If I found enough people, I bet I could open the gate and hold it open. And then what would they do?

Where did you meet these friends? What happened to you after you ran away? How long have you know these friends for? Any body you're attracted to?

What about your parents? Do you ever miss them?

What sort of magic do you have, besides opening the gate? What else can you do?

- Motivation: what do you want abstractly?
- Goal(s): what do you want concretely [specifically]?
- Conflict: what prevents you from reaching this goal?
- Epiphany: what will you learn, how will you change?

- Do you help make a couple of disasters happen in trying to reach your goal?
- Ending: will you achieve your goal?

Source:
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php

EDIT: It was really bugging me that this huge problem was set up but with no resolution in sight. This idea popped into my head this a.m. Perhaps it will spark some new ideas for you. What if Fiona does something that results in the boy being captured? What challenges would she face trying to get him away fom the Gehdi? And more to the point: Could she find another world in the multiverse where the Gehdi were chased out of long ago? One of their mages could "unhook" the boy, and then offer to send a few of their people to her world to start freeing folk, if she can but open the gate... Grist for the Mill.

What about your parents? Do you ever miss them?
I don't have parents. That's a thing from your people. There are the mothers, they take care of the village babies till their fourteenth summer and shapefinding. But I haven't seen them since the Grehti took me and I can't ever go back anyway, so there's no point in missing anyone, huh?

What sort of magic do you have, besides opening the gate? What else can you do?
I don't even know. Some fire magic, and I can set wards, and talk between minds. But it's all bits scrabbled here and there.

What do you want concretely [specifically]?
I wanted the Grehti dead, the ones who were going to kill me. But that didn't happen how I'd dreamed it at all. So now I have to pick something else. I want to see the priesthood be torn apart from the inside and collapse. I want to show people that not all is what it seems. I could do that by opening the sealed Karn gate, I think.
But then there's Sha. He needs help badly and I'm the only person he listens to. There's one person who wants to teach him, but he's from Ua'lin's world and the place is as stifling as what the Grehti do. He wants to block off Sha-wolf and make him just be a little boy. And that's as wrong as him being stuck as a wolf! The Grehti would know how to teach him balance, the same way they do for any new-shapefound kid. But only if there were one who wasn't corrupt.
So I guess what I want is a home for Sha and for me.

What prevents you from reaching this goal?
There's noplace Sha belongs and no one but me to raise him. I could help him, I learned that much from the Grehti before I ran, except I'm... sick myself. And it makes me not a good enough mother.

What will you learn, how will you change?
I guess I need to get better, so I can help Sha. But here's where it gets thorny. See, my people are... shapeshifters. That's how I knew Sha was really part wolf, and not just playing with magic, when suddenly there was a cub with his legs splayed out like a newborn, that day at Eilieah, and not just a panicking kid. That's how I know that if the people from Ua'lin's world get him, and say he can't be wolf, he'll end up as sick as I am.
Cause see, I have a shape of my own, but there's no place for shifting, out in the civilized multiverse. What am I gonna do, sink poison teeth into the next guy who accidentally bumps into me in the street? Strangle my friends when they don't do what I want? I don't just need a home, I need a cause worth fighting for, a place where I can shift and have it be good... and that's why I'm wondering about opening the portal.

Do you help make a couple of disasters happen in trying to reach your goal?
*wry laugh* Yes. Well, the one big one. That part, I've got covered. It's just the last bit that I need to do now.

Will you achieve your goal?
I damn well better. If I don't, I'll probably lose touch with that writer out there. And I want this story told.

*** "that writer out there" intervenes :P ***

I looked up the snowflake method and actually I think it's a pretty brilliant model. I'm too caught up in details - I need to zoom out and look at the whole fractal. So.

One-sentence summary: A girl and her adopted son seek to heal the corrupt magic overrunning both their worlds.

Paragraph summary (whew, this one was harder): Fiona's world is turned upside down when a little boy appears in her merchant's tent, wreaking havok with his wild magic. When his pursuers poison them both, Fiona grabs him and flees, only to discover two of her companions are also on the run from the same magic thief chasing the boy. Fiona guides them all to sanctuary on the home world she left years ago. It lasts until she comes face to face with the priesthood who once branded her a demon. Her revenge plans are thwarted by the little boy's magic. On the run again, they narrowly evade the boy's pursuers, but neither his world nor hers promises safety. In order to heal her new adopted son and build a home for them, she and her companions must free both her son's world and her own from the corrupt magic that has overrun them.

I guess I don't quite understand how the magic is corrupt, exactly.
It's like this. Your shape is the Mother's gift. It's like the color of your soul. And the Grehti, they guide you through learning to control it. But what they do, it - it's hard to explain. They have to train you harsh, or you'll turn shapesick and run off into the wild and never change back to nok - that's the word for human. But it goes wrong so much of the time. I was at Eilieah, I saw the initiates and I saw what they turn into. There were Grehti who hurt people just for the sake of it. They sink their teeth into your head and play with you like a sarkoth catching stripefurs. You're on the ground, halfway through the shift, your bones squeezing themselves into your shape, and instead of just grabbing your mind by the scruff and pulling you through, they - tweak you so you want to give them gifts, or so you cower and feed their ego, or so you get clumsy and lose a fight to one of their favorites.
So it's not the magic that's corrupt, I think, it's what they do with it.

That's Karn. On Ua it's different. People aren't even supposed to kill each other there! They're all gentle and nice, and they don't have shapes, any of them. Except for Sha, Gillian and Puma. Instead of calling on the Mother for magic, they put people into boxes. The boxes give magic. They don't let you out for forty summers, and when you come out you're the same age you went in, and sometimes they don't let you out at all.

Where did the corruption come from?
I wish I knew. I think it's been like that forever.

Do you, Fiona, have any ideas? It might help you figure out how to achieve your goal. Do you have a sense of what magic should be like, if it weren't corrupt?
Yes... kind of.... Have you ever been close to the Mother? It's like knowing what your shape calls you to do, and doing it, just like that, no hesitation, and having it go right. That's how I knew to jump through the portal. The Mother called me. And it's the same way in a Grehti ritual. Everyone's minds are linked, and so they don't need words, they just together know what the Mother wants.
But when you're shapesick, you can't hear the Mother, and when they help you, they tangle their voices in with the Mother's so you can't tell which is which anymore. I don't know how to stop them doing that. But it's not right. So I want to see their precious traditions fall apart.