After a decade of superheroics, KATE MORGAN finds herself in control
of strange and eldritch forces beyond all mortal ken -- and that
includes her own! Thus begins the

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# NUMBER 4 - "CRASH COURSE IN LEMURIAN POLITICS"#
# ------- [8F-217] ------------ [PW-61] ------- #

-------------- HOUSE MORGANA --------------------

Kate Morgan (SHIMMER), age 30. She/her.
The Queen of Cups. The ghost who never died. The darkness, reflected in light.

Pilar "Pill" Garcia, age 34. She/her.
Kate's protector. The collector. The knower. The laughter in the dark.

Melody Mapp (DARKHORSE), age 21. She/her.
Simon's lover. Kate's friend. The runner. The tower, reversed; the
pale rider, reversed.

Claire Belden (RAINSHADE), age 31. She/her.
Kate's enemy. Kate's friend. The light, reflected in darkness. The one
who borrows. The weaver of webs.

Cembalo, a kitten. She/her.
Kate's cat. The vicious teeth. The curled tail. The black in the night.

Kumari Starshell (CASCADE), age 30. She/her.
Queen of Lemuria. The storm at sea. The brave sword, the subtle knife.
Once Melody's enemy, and Claire's spy.

Terak Torvo, age 24. He/him.
King of Lemuria. The tepid pool. The prisoner. The guileless, beset by
intrigues. Once Melody's lover.

-------------------------------------------------

Kate and her protectors share a single-person cabin about the size of
her bathroom aboard the royal luxury cruiser the Blackfin. "Name
sounds familiar."

"Terry's half-brother," says Melody. "Tried to seize the throne a
bunch of times. Ran terrorist cells, raised armies. Died last August."

Kate pinches the bridge of her nose. "And they named a boat (or is
it technically a submarine?) after him?"

"They did (and it's both)," says Melody. "Time for a crash course
in Lemurian politics. When the Blackfin died, his supporters (standard
issue old-money aristocrats and 'death to the surface world'
reactionaries) added their banners to the House of Starshell. They're
the bulk of Kumari's support, and they expected when she came into
power that she'd roll back the last few decades of modernization,
bring back the ol' blood and thunder."

Kate recalls bits and pieces of this from previous conversations
with Melody. "They were just about to collapse when Terry's granddad
took the throne. Centuries of isolationism, stagnation. He opened
Lemuria up to the rest of the world."

Melody nods. "Which these jerks hated. Blackfin promised to make
all their dreams come true, and if he had ever come within spitting
distance of power, he would have. Kumari's a lot of things, but she's
not an idiot. She's not going to deliver on those promises. So
instead, she gives them symbolic victories. Like naming the boat slash
submarine the Blackfin."

"And that's enough to keep them happy?"

Melody pauses. Kate knows it's not because she has to think about
it. Melody's brain, like the rest of her body, works at superspeed.
Instead, it's to impart the proceedings with some gravitas. "No. Lots
of unrest, right-wing populism, paramilitaries, whispers of a coup.
Only thing stopping it right now is the lack of a strong candidate."

"Which is why we have to be careful," interjects Pill. "Because the
new Queen of Cups would be a hell of a candidate."

"They know about that, here? I thought this whole thing was super
hush-hush and lost to antiquity."

"It is," says Pill. "I'd wager a few of the older houses would
know, though. And the royal houses certainly would."

"And that's why I didn't tell Kumari what this little trip was all
about," says Melody. "She and Terry think it's a social call. I'm not
saying she'd try to kill you, Kate, but wait okay actually that is
exactly what I'm saying."

She wouldn't, though, Kate almost says, but then she catches
herself. That's Claire talking. One of Claire's memories, bouncing
around in Kate's skull. Kumari wasn't exactly Claire's friend; Kate's
not sure if Claire ever had a friend. But they worked closely together
to further Claire's agenda. The thing that keeps bubbling to the
surface is how absurd it is that Kate should be afraid of Kumari;
after all, it was Kumari that was terrified of Claire.

()

Kate knows they're underwater, of course. But it isn't until after the
Blackfin has docked, until she takes her first steps on Lemurian soil
and looks up to see miles of ocean pressed against its ancient dome,
that she feels a familiar knot tighten in her belly. Everything
tightens: her face, her body, everything becomes small and taut and
queasy and anxious.

She hates this. Hates being "the child of abuse", hates "the time
mom tried to drown me in the tub", hates that that's her story, that
in some ways it feels like it will always be her story. That she will
always have that knot in her belly, that she will be defined by it.
That she will always be that sad person that bad things happen to:
erased from existence, brought back (thanks Melody), kidnapped and
impersonated ("thanks" Claire), gifted some great big mystical destiny
nonsense she never asked for.

That said great big mystical destiny nonsense involves the seaside
throne is at the very least evidence that the universe has a sense of
humor, if a dark one; only a sadist would give someone who's afraid of
water an underwater throne.

But are you afraid of water?, asks the Claire in the back of her
brain, or are you afraid of drowning? Because it seems to me that
being afraid of drowning is quite reasonable. I'd be more concerned if
you weren't afraid of drowning.

Not afraid of drowning, Kate catches herself thinking in response.
Afraid of being drowned.

A distinction without a difference, at least as far as our lungs
are concerned.

(Our lungs?) But to Kate it makes all the difference in the world.
"Drowning" she isn't scared of, at least not more than she's scared of
anything else that can result in her death. That's setting aside the
fact that she's not particularly afraid of dying; it's something she
and Claire have always had in common. Both of them hope that when the
time comes, they'll choose it quietly, and with dignity. (Both of them
will be correct.)

But "being drowned" implies someone else doing it to her, the way
her mother tried to. Of hating her, the way her mother did. She's not
afraid of dying, but of being killed? Yeah, that terrifies her.

Unsurprisingly, Claire is unsympathetic, remarking that it sounds
like something Kate needs to work on in therapy.

"You okay?" Pill asks. "You just seem a little, I dunno, off."

Melody glances at Kate, asking with her eyes if Kate has filled
Pill in on the whole boring trauma baggage. Kate answers Melody with a
glance of her own (no), then tells Pill that she's just a little
tired. "But hey, it's been worse. I've only been up for, what, twenty
hours straight? Pfft. That's nothing. Stayed up for two years once."

()

As they leave the port, they're met by a six-member squad of the Red
Shields who have volunteered to escort them into the city proper.

"Volunteered?" Kate whispers to Melody as they climb aboard the hoverwagon.

The younger woman rolls her eyes. Not wanting the Shields to
overhear them, she responds in an alien language that the two of them
learned a few years back on a space adventure. Kate in turn holds
Pill's hand, and by that gentle touch casts a simple spell that allows
her to understand it. "Red Shields were palace guards way back when,
but the kind of palace guards that got real stabby with the royal
person when the crown didn't cater to their every whim. Terry's
granddad abolished them. Kumari brought them back as another sop to
the conservatives. She was smart enough to keep them out of the
palace."

"So, what do they do?"

"Officially? Nothing. Mostly they just march around being vaguely ominous."

"That sounds very stable."

"Doesn't it, though? But they'll also pull stunts like this,
'volunteering' to escort very important peeps such as ourselves. Their
way of showing Kumari that they don't answer to her."

On 2023-08-06 18:06, Amabel Holland wrote:

> She hates this. Hates being "the child of abuse", hates "the time
> mom tried to drown me in the tub", hates that that's her story, that
> in some ways it feels like it will always be her story. That she will
> always have that knot in her belly, that she will be defined by it.
> That she will always be that sad person that bad things happen to:
> erased from existence, brought back (thanks Melody), kidnapped and
> impersonated ("thanks" Claire), gifted some great big mystical destiny
> nonsense she never asked for.

huh, Mabel. You got me thinking of my own story now. Not the fiction I
shamelessly post on the Internet, but *my story*. I'll be exerting
great effort in travel this month, to show up at a clan wedding
alongside other clan elders, in my capacity as Weird Uncle Scott. I may
be talking with other elders about my story. (There's nothing too
horrible in the story, I promise. But neither is it trivial.)

So, thanks for the parallels.

(I also look forward to where Kate's own story is leading.)

--
-- (signed) Scott Eiler 8{D> ------ http://www.eilertech.com/ -------

"Your Royal Highness, instead of devoting yourself exclusively
to Minerva, should, instead, rather offer sacrifice at the altars
of Bacchus, Orpheus, Venus, and Morpheus."

- Advice to Prince Duarte of Portugal. From "The golden age of
Prince Henry the Navigator", by Joaquim Pedro Oliveira Martins.
Coming soon to Project Gutenberg.