The Cage & The Key is a sexual coming-of-age story, and stripped of Tolkien's universe and characters it would still be one (though I'd have to write a lot more of the interstitial plot I was able to leave out of this version). I started it knowing it had to have an end, and the point I chose seemed like a reasonable one...Éowyn's journey from trapped innocence to libidinous freedom is complete...but of course there are many stories yet to be told. Most of them are already rather extensively outlined, and I could easily pick one of them up and give it a go.
I don't know if they will be told, though. (I don't know that they won't, either.) As seems sadly inevitable, the stories that most interest me are the longest ones, and taking any one of them on is a commitment I'd like to step away from for a little while. Also, I'd like to avoid writing in someone else's universe until I've done something in my own.
On the immediate horizon is a slightly less lengthy tale - the current outline estimates it at about 25 chapters, but I remain dissatisfied with said outline and it may be whittled down - in an original, modern, real-world setting. As with the previous story, I won't publish until the content is settled and it's ready for a final editing pass. The most optimistic possible timeline puts that several months into the future (I'm working on chapter 7 right now), but we'll see.
To the extent there's a point, it's this: there may be relative silence from this account for a while. Or I may write one of the shortest codas, just for fun and to have something published: the tale of the day Faramir finally told Éowyn that he's always known everything that's going on. But my primary attention will be on the new story. And another project will be going on behind the scenes: a complete re-edit of The Cage that will fix some cosmetic errors and reduce the number of cliffhanger chapter breaks (a last-minute choice that proved extremely unpopular). That'll happen all at once, in the space of a single day, but if you suddenly wonder where 10 of that story's chapters went...that's where.
In any case, I'd like to thank both those who read, voted, and especially those who commented. I know the story didn't go where all of you hoped it might - as I said to one correspondent, one of the disadvantages of posting completed stories is that you already know how much you're disappointing some of your most enthusiastic readers - but, in the end, I think it went where it needed to. Most of all, I'm happy with the outcome.