I wrote most of this.  I dreamed of staying with a friendly farmer, but so vaguely that no details stood out except that we stayed in a barn.

I didn't know how Cherone's part would all turn out until I began to write it.  In fact, even in the writing I had planned on Cherone dying, but as I recorded what happened after the destruction of Merchant Caverns, I  knew that he wouldn't after all and the story ultimately unfolded exactly as it would have.  Shortly after I wrote it, I did have a hypnagogic flash-dream of Cherone, years later, as a priest, himself, and I knew in the dreaming that both he and Father Man would eventually grace the rolls of saints in the Charadocian Catholic calendar.