JBB, Authentic Agitation

Jawbreak Blue
by J. Ingram

Two:  October 10, 2012

It would be furthermore appropriate to hypothesize that, should the Washington Redskins remain as they are, bookie Dansel Darrons could not have been a very happy man.

He and the Cannoneer, that brave father to Miss Gyra (and it took less bravery to have been a near-revolutionary two years earlier) the young and elder man spoke over house-noises with fists stuffed into their pants pockets.

There were many footsteps upstairs, as maids were ordered about by the lady of the house. 

Dansel went, “Cannoneer, sir, I do not want to go to this next place in our conversation…”

“Fine.  You might as well go on and take me.”

“But you see, I’m owed, when your daughter is—”

“Careful with your next word, son.”

“…You have to put money right down, this time.  Vick broke his ribs, in last week’s game.  There is no way Washington will win the next one.”

“Broken?  Oh, you know that was only a cartilage tear—err, irritation, as far as I remember it.  Is that what they programmed at the Red-and-Gold Reserve for this year?  I don’t believe it, they’d never revisit 2010 like that and hurt us Washingtonians so cruelly.”  Here, the old Cannoneer’s speech was interrupted by Gyra calling downstairs, asking which parasol ‘her father’s wife’ would have wanted to take on a trip to see the whole wonder of Southeast.

“I hate to ask,” Dansel interrupted, “but where does Gyra really think she’s going next, after embarrassing—both ourselves—and ruining my business life ontop of that?  You are going to punish your daughter, aren’t you, Cannoneer, sir?”

The old near-revolutionary waved it off, white handkerchief in hand.  He might have just got through blowing his nose, but one might also argue that waving white flags had always been the way of those in his latest profession.

“Twenty-four-year-olds are well past punishment, in my experience.  Anyways, Mister Darrons, the Red-and-Gold Reserve will—in fact—become a lot lighter and respectable on their television sets, I expect.  Michael Vick’s going to be substituted out for Pete Wysocki and we’ll get a better season in that way.  Change the 1970’s team for this one.  Via injury for injury.  Or, they might make a connection on that very date we won against the Eagles in 2010 and the Pete Wysocki's own birth-date.  I don't think they put that together for the broadcast last week, on coincidence—”

“But that’s not fantasy football.  That’s not anything, Sir Mattheson.  Will you hear me out, already?  Your daughter owes me money now, and that’s ontop of what you failed to hand over in these clean hands of mine, for weeks.  Why don’t you just come off your pre-doomsday loyalties and bet against the Redskins, for once?  I’ll starve to death at this rate, I swear.”

“They’ll make the connection and set up a less bleak season than before the near-revolution, they always do.  The Taxation Without Representation Society is about lifting spirits.  I hope you didn’t think the Red-and-Gold Reserve was ever established for making money?  We wouldn’t have survived without a few good games after the stilt-bridges and that damned Beltway Wall went up, way back in 2010…”

“Do not go off on a tangent, sir.  Please, do not waste any more of my time.  I’m begging you to just pay me.  Isn’t it enough that I walked her home?”

And Gyra was still charming as ever, her raggedy singing voice coming through the floorboards from the story above.

“How about this, Dansel?” and the old Cannoneer brought five crisp folded bills from his pocket.  And this wasn’t play-money, either.  It was real-blue currency, with Marion Barry’s face on its best side.  You decide whichever that might possibly be.  “…Gyra wants to go on some fine adventure.  Take her.  Drive my black Sunday-car even, buy her some dinners…”

“Why was that plural, just now?”

“I dunno… well, you two may be gone, for more than a day.”
Dansel Darrons only stared at first, for a long time.  “Vick.  He’s injured.  Bet against the Redskins now, or I’m leaving.”

“Let me tell you something, D.D.  Around here, on the high-hill of New Uniontown, the best gentlemen don’t betray their tri-stars and doubled-stripes.  They stay loyal to the red-n-white cause.  And if I’ve got money to burn still, through some miracle of my celebrity, then it’s gonna be done on my time to win the game I know the—will--win someday.  And not just against the Eagles.  We’re gonna get another Superbowl, Dansel.  I can feel it.  It’s been more than twenty years.  How can I get there with them if I don’t work for it too?  How can any man?  Can you?  As Frederick Douglass once said, ‘People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.’”

Dansel turned, and struck polished black boot-heels all across the white marble floor.  He had a long time to exeunt and that also turned out to be the great brilliant design of the Cannoneer Mansion.  It was never long before one of the Cannoneer family caught up to escaping people. 
Gyra cried out, “Dansel, you can’t leave.  Can he leave, Daddy?”

“I’m a man with my own will, you spoiled, rotten…” Dansel’s mumbling was quickly overcome by the crack of a shotgun being swiftly re-loaded. 

The Cannoneer instructed them both.  “Take this, the money I offered, my car, and enjoy your sudden holiday, young folks.  Please Dansel, Gyra just wants time alone with her friends.  And I need time alone with my friends, too… they won’t come over when she’s not able to leave.  Young sir, I’ll add more to the deal for you later, I’ll even give you plenty of time to think up what you want in exchange for two days’ rest.  You know that it would go a long way.  She’s been through worse than most.  And mine should have been worse than even hers… I don’t know how else to convince you, Dansel, if compassion for your nextdoor neighbor means nothing.”

“I don’t live nextdoor.  I don’t come over here asking for sugar-cubes.  I barely exist, in a room you’re renting to me down the street, Cannoneer, and I’m paying too much for that, as it is!”

Gyra said, “I really do like being in the room when other people talk about me, honestly it's a likeable experience.” Gyra was carrying a ridiculous suitcase filled up when she found Dansel by the door and linked an arm with him.  White lace gloves did not help the wild blue dress and its flashing red stars stabbed into the bodice.  “I am a little off for a person, but it’s not as if my switch has been turned off.” She dropped shoulders and bowed head, as if a talking doll gone deactivated.

“Oh, stop doing the robot Gyra, I’ve been threatened enough by your personality this afternoon.  Go get your Daddy’s shotgun and we’ll go.  But only for one day.  I’m bringing my dear friend back tomorrow.  And, Gyra, wouldn’t you like to sit up front with me this time?  Didn’t your fingers cramp from setting the shotgun up from the backseat and waiting on-the-ready to peg me during the whole ride?  I swear, as if you being the way you are isn’t enough—you also have to be the worst female backseat driver known to man…”

The Cannoneer’s big black car was a Cadillac Gyra tried to slide across the hood of, like in the movies, before getting in.  But she wasn’t sliding to the driver’s side.  And she was still wearing that outrageous blue dress, and she dropped her suitcase in the process.  Dansel knew better than to laugh.  It was exactly what she wanted.  So they solemnly seatbelted and drove.

“…Dansel?”

“No.”

Gyra reached backward, but her favorite souvenir from the near-revolution was laid across the backseat.  “Dansel, I just want to know why we can’t ride horses instead.”

The only answer could have been, “What?  I don’t even… Nevermind.”

“Nevermind, what?  We’re already dressed up like The Good Ole Days, and speaking like it too.  So then, why doesn’t the Taxation Without Representation Society make us all go back to using horses, too?  They might as well.  I think you’d be dashing up on a horse.  And I could name mine Danselbiter.”

“That’s not the point, Gyra.  It’s not a choice… this is a protest.  Douglass had a vision.  We are the vision.  We see it just fine now.  It’s okay to slip sometimes, but a real Washingtonian, a true patriot stays ruthlessly true--Ugh, nevermind.  You don’t get it.  You don’t care anyways, you’re just trying to annoy me.”

Do not trouble yourself with guessing hard at when postage could have ever been so cheap.

Perhaps Gyra truly didn’t care.  She let her braided head nod to the side, and began to fidget with interest at all the things they drove by.  Two old catholic churches, Cedar Hill, the museum for African American History and Culture, the Old Birney School, and then there was an AME church which was supposed to be the oldest black church in Hillsdale … all of which should not have surprised her, when Dansel and Gyra both were more than familiar with New Uniontown already.  Dansel advised Gyra then, that she should have been an actress as a warning that his patience was dangerously thin after only an hour of their journey.

“It’s just that I really, really, really need to see new stuff—wait, look!  Dansel, oh Dansel, there’s a pretty car there, and all the people in matching colors, I love it.”

Dansel stopped their car for her, when he realized.  “Yeah, I guess.  It is a nice funeral, Gyra.  Just like your mother’s was.”

“I would have gone with a different sort of flower, though.  You know, I didn’t dare let them put a lily anywhere near my mother or even a white rose.  I had marigolds.  Nothing but marigolds.  I didn’t want her to get lost, on the way…Marigolds guide the dead, I even looked it up.  In a real life library.”

“Yes, you planned the whole thing.  You did a real good job.  Be proud of yourself.  Gyra?”

She was crying, but in the way only she did.  By leaving the world for a moment, fearing to blink wet eyes.  Holding still until the horror passed through her.  Dansel did not breathe.  He feared to even touch his troubled friend.  He turned the engine off.

Gyra rested her forehead against the cool window.  It was a big funeral letting out, just like the other one a year ago.  Whatever people were calling to each other up and down the street, back and forth, mourning in their agitated way didn’t matter.  Their voices were muted through polished steel and through whole glass.

“Why are do they look angry?”

“Maybe it wasn’t a good death…”

Suddenly, the crowd outside crumpled.  People ducked heads and went on their knees like a gargantuan nuisance yellow-jacket had buzzed over all their heads at the same time.

Gyra looked for it, too.  Whatever the instinctual terror was.  Dansel gripped his leather seat.  It creaked.  Gyra was doing the wrong thing, he sensed, looking but not listening.  “Those were gun shots, get down!”

“But we’re in a car…?  Oh God!  Drive away, D.D.  Why can’t you drive us away?”

“Dammit.  The engine won’t start again—your cheap father.  Just try to stay down, there’s a wall of steel, practically.”

The back passenger windows shattered.  Dansel yelled and forced Gyra down, down, beneath the glove compartment at least.  She got quiet, he got loud.  “The hell kind of guns do they have?  Assault rifles?”

Gyra wouldn’t let go of Dansel.  Her fingernails snagged in his tan check-coat.  So many shots.  Dansel was counting them?  One… two… suddenly, nine.  What was he doing, leaning across seats now, reaching for the shotgun Daddy left them?  She couldn’t really shoot it.  She couldn’t really do anything except point it away from people, play with blanks.  And that was Daddy’s gun.  Daddy’s was okay to play with, he said.  It was good to have a gun in these times, and look protected, with it.  But, the Cannoneers weren’t shooting off anything, anymore… unless one of them walked into the Red-and-Gold reserve while sorry-drunk.

“Please!  Stop!” It wasn’t clear whether Gyra wa screaming at Dansel, or the people outside.  Somehow, their car had become the target.

“…Have to make it stop.” Was all Dansel said, before he rushed them both out of the driver’s side of the car.  Gyra watched Dansel count again, cock gun, lean to have his last glance out at life, it looked like, then ran.  One powerful, double-barreled burst that deafened Gyra and made her see white, though nothing was that way.  Everything was real, everything was painful, and it wouldn’t stop.  Somewhere, Dansel was yelling for her to get across that sidewalk and behind a dumpster in the alley way.  She raged behind her eyes.  She didn’t want to hear any more.  No the sidewalk was not right there.  No, there was no way to survive this.  Gyra almost didn’t run away like he wanted.

More terrible shots.  Gyra felt that Dansel wasn’t there anymore, and then she peered around the green dumpster and he wasn’t.  Men were standing lined up in the street, pointing.  Shooting.  Some of them fell.  Women screamed.  The way Momma had, not because she was in pain but because she was so done with DC, there was only a hollow wild rage left.  It cracked her very voice towards the end.  That scream made Daddy go on his knees.  It had made Gyra give up on school and then sent Lucie fleeing for college.  Gyra held onto the foul metal garbage dumpster now, and cried that she couldn’t do better for herself.  No, she was not revolted.  Hadn’t it always felt like this?  People were fleeing.  Or, more people were running out onto the sidewalks to see the result of so much violence.  Gyra didn’t want to know.

In time, there were footsteps.  The sweep of gunmetal near the ground, where the long barrel almost touched it.  Out there, in the street, sirens were going off.

“It not the Cannoneers coming.  Gyra, that was a gang, out there.  Two rival ones, I think.  Fighting over a funeral.  They couldn’t even wait after… Now they’re going to need ten-times’ as many caskets.  Get up.  Let’s go.”

Gyra shut her eyes then tried looking at this stranger again.

“It’s D.D.  Did you forget already?”

“Why are you still standing… Dansel Darrons?”

Dansel finally exhaled.  He reached out a hand to help her up. "I'm fine, I'm not a ghost, Gyra."

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you.  What did you do?  Did you kill people, Dansel Darrons?  And what if they'd killed you too?"

“Calm down.  And weren't you the one shooting, and badly, at the ceiling of a crowded restaurant not long ago with this same gun?  I was defending us.  So let's get over it already, and get gone."

“I was drunk earlier at the Red-and-Gold Reserve and didn’t mean to shoot.  I didn’t aim for heads either, there were supposed to be blanks in the double-barrel—you know that when I never did honestly shoot you all those other times.  And, my father was a near-revolutionary.  Near, did you hear that?  So we almost attacked the National Guard when they came to Fort Stevens, but we didn’t really shoot first—"

Dansel swore and tugged her arm, but Gyra yanked him back down onto the filthy ground.  “What if you'd missed and there were mothers out there, Dansel?  You know that's why I'm begging you, please don't ever do it again.  Let them fire, but we can't fight back.  Better to get directly away, stay safe.”

"What help is there really gonna be, when it's 2012 already and DC is like this?"

Gyra had no answer.  She cried and hugged her stomach.  Despair did really hurt, for some people.

Dansel took off his fine coat at that moment because his best friend needed to calm down, and it was cold outside.  There was also a great deal of blood on fabric.  He quickly swifted out the winter lining and set that about her shoulders instead.  The rest, he pitched fast over Gyra’s head, into the dumpster.  “I was a gentleman, of course.  Is that what this… fine, completely silly lady needs to hear?  Now whatever you may think of my righteousness, your Daddy's car or its engine is completely shot up and we need to get walking right now.  As He once said, ‘I prayed for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.’”

“But Douglass also did say, ‘A gentleman will not insult me and not a gentleman can insult me.’  My father was a Cannoneer in the Near-Revolution of 2010, but he would never go shooting into a crowd, indiscriminate like you did, just to suit his pride.  I still say we should have called for help or waited it out.”

“Dammit, Gyra!” Dansel stood,  “‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress!’”

“'Well, a man takes his hue, more or less, from the form or color of things about him'—and you’ve always been darker than even I am.”

Dansel tossed head back and turned a circle, some exhausted military spin on his black heels.  He philosophized in quiet rage for only a moment more before an answer occurred to him.  It seized Gyra suddenly up with his work-a-day hands and shook her.  “AGITATE, AGITATE, AGITATE!”

And that was promptly the end of being so fearful as to show supine disregard for their city’s hurtful realities.

...

Next:  The journey continues beyond Southeast...

(Randitty-o-Meter:  8, for somehow combining present day urban angst with Civil War references and also... fantasy football for some strange reason?)

---

Chapters
1 The Red and Gold Reserve :: 2 Authentic Agitation :: 3 Bringing the Old Girl to Water :: 4 Message from a World of Fear, Insanity :: 5 No such thing as transitional musak after the Apocalypse :: 6 Fate and Basketball :: 7 Party in Mount Pleasant

JBB, The Red and Gold Reserve

Jawbreak Blue
by J. Ingram

One:  September 24, 2012

To begin, let us assume that, where I am, things remain exactly as they are.

If so, then Gyra could not have been a very nice girl.

When she was seven, and her little sister got a new doll, Gyra snatched it and beat little Lucie with it.  That was about the time when they first 'stilted' our bridges.  Later, when Gyra turned seventeen, she got mad, took her father's shotgun and blasted apart the biggest crystal pieces of the heirloom chandelier.  Gyra loved the way it crashed and scattered fine-dressed people down in the politicking-room.  She adored that it made them horrified, first, but then later they were thrilled to talk about it all over town.  Better!  Daddy was never thrilled, however.  Together with news that the amended Beltway Walls weren't coming back down, it finally got Daddy to cry.  Best!

Somewhere after all this, Gyra came home for summer break and then sort of forgot to go back to college.  Her mother once called it the evilest of evilness.  But only once.  After the mistake, Momma couldn't say it again.  She went away just in time, too, before Daddy said she would have needed to get a Federal District Pass.  Because people needed one of those now, to go and see Redskins games. 

Daddy stopped letting Gyra go see the DC Demoncats even though she didn't need a fed-diss-pass for it and she always did come home smelling strong enough to trick him into believing he'd left out the whiskey.  Oh well.  There was only half of a Metro Rail left, anyways, and it was above three dollars, so Gyra eventually resigned herself to playing roller derby with her sister.  But only when little Lucie wasn't looking. 

Finally, after the derby incident, little Lucie realized it was high-time she did remember to go to college, did apply for a fed-diss-pass, then threw out all the whiskey in the house before she got on a Greyhound bus and did get her smart-butt ten stories up a bridge then out of the city.  Lucie didn't write.  She didn't even Facebook.  Stupid Facebook.  

So then, at twenty-seven, Gyra walked the rough-paved, potholed streets with Daddy's shotgun again. The old dolly (she was a rag of a head) got tied to Gyra's belt by the blonde hair nobody in their family had. 

But where can bad girls even go, at twenty-four, with no sisters to pity them, no fathers with any patience left, no husband in line, nor professions to make themselves even halfway useful?

On a drunken adventure.  But first, Dansel had to come along.

Dansel Darrons, when consulted on his availability, felt it necessary to put another cigar in his mouth instead.  "I didn't come to your birthday party last week for a reason, Gyra.  So then, of course I'm not leaving the neighborhood with crazy-old-you."

"Don't you mean that you left me alone in the house, three hours last week, for a reason?" Gyra flared.

The other men in three-piece finery laughed over brandies.  Their social club nicknamed the Red-And-Gold-Reserve was one of the best places on this side of the city to watch a Redskins game, and actually like it, lose-or-lose.  A seventeen-point lead now eclipsing the Redskins in the second half made the whole place suddenly go groaning at the big screen, and ordering a fresh round of Forget.

The Red-and-Gold-Reserve was designed after another prestigious landmark in Anacostia.  We are, as of yet, still uncertain that it shall live up to what Frederick Douglass or else the Mayan Calendar perceived about modern society. September, 2012.

"Gyra, I'm begging you, please... who here can light this?  I'm looking for convenient breaks in my speech, dammit."

The other middle-high-class men in three-piece-suits with him practiced more laughter.

"You shamed me Dansel Darrons." went Gyra, "You know how hard it's been, and then you still didn't come to my party.  This time, you owe me..."

"I can't pay you anything that I owe, of course, until I finish doing business here with my friends.  Go bounce.  Hit the street real hard, Miss Gyra."

The Maitre d' came up with a good reason to interrupt, by then.  "Madam, if you please, we can hang your shotgun in the coatroom and provide a ball gown better suited..."

Gyra screamed, cocked the thing, then shot a hole through the ceiling.  Oh, were people scandalized.  Almost worse than seeing another 58 yard field goal, missed.  Now, they wanted fresh batches of hot wings and nachos.

"Dansel Darrons, I don't like you.  In fact, I hate you--"

"Yes, and I declined that unequal offer of companionship on your birthday for just that reason, excuse me..." then he whispered, "Are you bat-shit crazy, girl?  Gyra, go home!"

"...Oh, suddenly he can't talk proper-like, as a real member of the middle-high-class that can still afford to live around here.  Or, lives in splotches around the city, having bought in during the seventies then stayed on through fluffed up or failed developments, the first three rounds of property-tax hikes, or whatever Daddy cusses about." she smiled, fake and big, like that same baby-doll once upon a time ago.  She patted the sad childhood talisman at her belt.  "Come along now, darling Dansel.  Or do I have shrink your fat head first?"

He couldn't even finish his drink.  Dansel went away at gunpoint.  And just then, of course, the local football team suffered another embarrassment.  "Oh, shut up!  You know they'll be roaring right back next Sunday--Gyra, stop fooling around and tell me what it is you really want?"

By the door, Gyra tugged the Maitre'd, who still stalked them, by his lapels.  It was a wonder drinkers and diners were more distracted by the terrible game, than a lone woman wandering up and down the tables with a shotgun, or a crumbling hole in the club's ceiling.  "Would this ball gown you offered me have been... complimentary?"

"Ah, but you aren't staying here, Miss Gyra--

"D.D. and I will have a drink at the bar then.  You know where it is, just over there... and if this free dress can be a shade of Jawbreak Blue, then you know I'll LOVE it, and my Pa'll give a whole bunch more money to this place."

"I don't think your Pa," he spat in speech, "could do enough to remedy that wound you put in the ceiling."

"Don't be so sure of yourself.  Pa was a cannoneer in the near-revolution of October 2010.  He'd just come up here--drive, even--and finish that hole as a sky-light, if he ever heard ya'll were mean to me."

When they were settled with ice-in-chippers, Dansel regained his courage.  "You are a girl, a stupid girl, do you know, Gyra?  I kissed you once and you turn it into this?"

"Sillies, I was educated at only the finest local academies and out-of-state universities.  So, I am not foolish, nor am I a statistic.  I'd never be a statistic."

"I don't know about how you imagine yourself calculated, you're more calculat-ing, I'd say.  But the rest stands.  You aren't a woman, do you see?  You, Gyra, are a mess."

It hurt her more than she expected.  "I'll put the dress on right here in front of all these people if you aren't nicer to me, Mr. Darrons.  And don't you complain at me again, either.  I'm a smart, fully-functional person.  You know very well that I invented Jawbreak Blue."

Dansel hastened to have his drink, once they poured it out for him.  He realized that ice-in-chippers was not a real drink.  Previously, when Gyra ordered it, that was no shock to him.  But, that the bartender had interpreted her goof-request as some powerful sedative-in-vodka, that had him swerve a little off the barstool.  However, Dansel swerved back, when he realized there was also no point in warning Gyra about it.

Dansel sighed.  "...Is that made-up Jawbreak color from one of your drawings?  Or, your mother's?  I admit, it does sound pretty decent.  And this is pretty good, you should go on and have some."

"I only heard the word pretty, and thank you.  Blech, this tastes jive-strange."

"Drink a little more then, swish it round your mouth a bit.  I swear, it's exactly like wine-tasting... Gyra, just because the world is shit doesn't mean you can come in here and bash up one of the better places in Anacostia."

She slipped a little too, on the bar itself.  Dansel supported Gyra's arm, helped her to stand again, then took the shot gun.  "Better?"

"Mhrm..."

The Maiter'd came back, a ruffled something folded over his arm.  Dansel got his first anxiety attack seeing that, yes, it was some odd shade of blue.

Gyra snatched it, snatched Dansel, then rushed them through the front door and into the foyer.  She tripped over her black boots several times.  Then, Gyra swifted exactly by eager finger-pointing bouncers, saying she 'was gonna pee right and there if they didn't let her into the ladies' room.'

Which left Dansel wanting to get back inside the Red-And-Gold-Reserve with his friends, banging on the frosted glass, yelling, while men with shades restrained him from re-entry.  Gyra emerged after a time, re-fastening her awful belt round the waist of something with grand skirt and stitched everywhere it should not have been with plastic stars.  They looked sharp.  Dansel was not just panicked now, heart racing, but he also began to feel sick. 

"How does it look?"

"Well, it's the District's flag...urp."

"Which is always wonderful, isn't it?  Look!  Oh, Dansel, it's like the dress mommy and me wanted together.  This is perfect for journeying.  People will know we mean business--they'll think me a queen, maybe?  Can DC have a Queen?"  She put a hand on her forehead, wandered a drowsy circle.  "If University won't let me be a student, and Daddy's afraid to let me be a rollergirl, then at the least, I should be qualified to become queen of the District of Columbia..."

Dansel looked up at the scowling bouncers.  He offered to pay them anything...

The Maitre'D returned.  "Sir, Miss?  You two have been banished from the Red-And-Gold-Reserve and all its affiliates.  It's time to get out."

"...And affiliates?  For how long?  I have get back in there, it's where my living is made!" Dansel slipped and went down on one knee.  "God, sometimes I hate living DC.  Here I am, begging you to let me watch the Redskins for the price of two limbs and on a regular basis."

"The ban is for life.  And tell the Cannoneer that we've lost our last bit of patience for his daughter until he pays his tab."

"Gyra can come back in, but I can't?  She shot a hole through the ceiling!"  Dansel threw a punch, but it never landed. 

The Red-and-Gold Reserve, Taxation without Representation Society's Last Stand Bar and Grill threw Gyra and Dansel out on their asses.

...

Next week:  The Anacostia River.

(Randitty-O-Meter:  8, Yes.  I went there.  But, back when I was little.  Not in a snap-snap-neckroll sort of way.)

---

Chapters
1 The Red and Gold Reserve :: 2 Authentic Agitation :: 3 Bringing the Old Girl to Water :: 4 Message from a World of Fear, Insanity :: 5 No such thing as transitional musak after the Apocalypse :: 6 Fate and Basketball :: 7 Party in Mount Pleasant

Miraah 13, End of the Prose

Mi'Raah
by J. Ingram

Thirteen:   End of the Prose 

(Last chapter of Mi'Raah)

Mi'Raah walked in bare feet at the Jystians.  They had set him down and were stripping off his ornaments already.  She outstretched an arm, silver beads of what she was made of pooled in the webs between her fingers.  Fingernails gave wisps of white smoke, then wisps of blue, searing energy.  The air between them snapped frozen, fell away, and then she flared fingers when she was nearer, and did it again.  Now, metal lances froze and broke to crumbs, but nothing else.  Mi'Raah gave a hard look over the breathing targets before herself, calculating a third time. 

"How's that?  Is our native sun too hot, for you to take us down as well you witch!"

Hair stuck across her bare neck.  She pushed palm again.  This time, the climate of the country didn't prevent her.  Bloodied water reversing to spurt directly through pores of their skin and at the edges of their eyes, did the killing. 

"No, it was the light, your bodies' heat, together with the convection of that armor which put my numbers off.  Now that lesson's learned, I've not finished thinking through this other one!  What's the damned answer to that prose?  I saw and mourned the proof of him being mortal, but then, simply because I believed different..." And the strange immortal woman knelt again to tap chin and resume thinking, as the battle quaked around her.

...

In these fateful times, another woman with shaved-bald head found that she could also pass through the tumult and not feel so self-conscious.  Here in the Jystian Palace, people were more concerned with looting, putting down battles in the decorated hallways, or praying to a talking horse god, who, anyone faithful or no should have seen from any window, was busy at the moment chasing after pirates.

Koriandra stayed for a time, tapping fingertips along a window-ledge as she tried to understand a growing tangle of Jystian soldiers on the west brink of the city.  The white suun flared off some gold chariot fleeing.  Not far off, another pirate-fool had been stabbed through on three lances...

"Well, I hope they finally kill that lying, painted on, selfish half-twit Mi'Raah.  That's all I'm saying about it..."

The only trouble now for Koriandra, after having escaped upstairs from the dungeon riots, was finding one kindly person who might direct her as to where, in all the sea-bells, her mares could be!

She looked so ragged and gaunt that she couldn't have appeared a threat to anyone.  Though, Koriandra did have a shard of glass cramped in one of her fists.  She found the stream of marble corridors and bright day-lit rooms disorienting, after being pent-up for so long.  Where was the Grand Rampart?  Then when she reached it--what other staircase could she use to access the stables, when the Grand Rampart was covered with fighting soldiers?  At last, she thought she recognized some back service-stair, stumbled halfway down it, then raced across a desolate courtyard filled with statues of fattened horses (how cruel destiny was, to trick her eyes after everything!), toward the Royal Stable.  Koriandra grabbed her shirt in a fright, much as she had on that day some weeks ago.  No horse-sound, no stable hands mucking out or tossing bales, this time.  Bad, bad, sign.  And, the day was getting late.  Someone, anyone should have been nearby, if the animals still lived.  She ran shouting, from one opened stall to the next.

"Ina?  Kanna?" Koriandra called for the animals. "Hallowed horse shit.  Dung on my life!  I've been wasting time here dreaming about you being mine again, looking for you two... instead I could have been... running out of here, or throwing myself out of a tower window... eating when I'm so damned hungry, clearly it's all been nonsense, base instinct leading me--something else, anything other than run, hope, and stumble like this."  Nothing and no one came.  Koriandra would have welcomed the enemy at this point.  She leaned on a dirty wall, held herself, then yelled out again and sobbed wild.

What was the point?  Believe, and then bad things happen.  Suffer, and bad things keep happening anyways.  It piles up.  It hurts too much.  Koriandra squeezed the glass shard in her other hand.  She had come to the other far end of the barn, where it opened to the lonely fields against the sea-cliff.  Nothing out there, either.  Only green grass reflected against the crooked glass shard Koriandra squeezed deeper and deeper into supplicant palms. 

"Great Hunter, have mercy.  They sold my mares.  I can't even go home, when I betrayed my truest family, long ago.  And this world is crumbling down.  What will I do?  I've nothing left, and it's too painful to hope."

A voice echoed down, from the rafters.

"Daughter of the Herd.  Pledge yourself newly to me..."

Koriandra lashed around, but the stable was silent again.  No movement, anywhere.  Only the constant scent of so many lost animals.

"It is not done yet, filly.  You are like the yearling just turned out, Koriandra.  The hunter's yearling.  You are needed."

"... Odentalis?  Odeon!  You bastard, come out here--"

"No, you are mistaken.  How can you not know my voice, when I am your Fahrwandrian god?"

"But the Great Hunter doesn't..." Koriandra crept round one corner and then another.  Finally, she found a rope ladder hanging down from a hatch which opened to the hayloft overhead.  Still swinging.

"Coriander... pledge yourself to me--urp!"

In pale slashes of eveninglight going across so many stacked haybales in the narrow crawl-space, Koriandra advised a grown man to take cupped hands down from either side of his mouth.  "It's Koriandra.  And, the Great Hunter Spirit does not speak, considering... that he or she is just that--a ghost-feeling."

"Well don't stab me with that horrible, um, piece of glass.  I'm completely unarmed."

Koriandra was already crouched down, with the low ceiling.  She drew her other knee in, to sit as he did.  "I am going to guess, because you're so good at mispronouncing my name and seem to also have your... girlfriend's hair-do... that you must be that obsessive, bloodthirsty bastard who liked to send her direction on how best to torture more work and belief out of me, via gold message-bottle."

"King Arudelle of the Siren, at your service.  Yes, my soul is attached to yonder gold bottle." he pointed.

"Ho no, I'm not falling for it.  Don't bother tricking me into turning my head again."

"Damn."

"What are you doing here?  There's a war... your army is down there, fighting."

"The gold bottle, that you don't want to look at presently, was stashed up here by a dutiful servant of mine some nights ago.  Mi'Raah came down here to find Odeon, I suspect.  Good hiding place--well, I won't complain when I could have been on a ship to the Lowery Isle, in one of those nasty horse-breeding-pens.  In fact, I wonder at why Mi'Raah didn't try for that?  Oh, right, she couldn't have guessed..."

"So that's what happened." Koriandra wiped sleeve over her brow.  "It was you moving the bottle around, the whole time.  It's empty, stoppered up brain should have been my inkling, I guess."

"No, that's not exactly how it works.  I was just hoping to make you cry about breeding-pens and the Lowery Isles, but that didn't trick you either.  Double damn."

"Oh, I should gut you right now, King Arudelle, for being so simple!  Come on, if you won't say anything useful, then you're going to buy me something useful.  I'm taking you hostage."

"I just died--let's not do that again.  Here's another idea.  How about I give you the mares, because I was laying here in a daze, listening, when they packed them off, so I know where they were taken... and you pledge loyalty to the Pirate King forever and ever and fast, so that I can start making plans to take over Fahrwandur."

"WHAT?!  What in the whole known-world makes you think I'd ever aid you in destroying my homeland like you did this one?  First, the High Horse Priest sneaks and has me do it, leading the Jystian Phillies on a win, five-to-one over the Vestial Virgins... which was the beginning of the end let me tell you... but now some other immortal madman wants me to finish the job?  By asking, right to my face, for help betraying my country, you think this offer's bound to go better?  Were you really paying any attention to Mi'Raah's letters?"

"Bad time to clear this up, but it's important to know I'm not immortal, really.  Hold on--were those actual names, of the elite armies used to fight ceremonial wars in Fahrwandur?"

"That's what happens when people squeeze gold out of a foreign kingdom.  Cultural appropriation, what else?  It's all a game to them.  Come on, we going back down there, where I can grab a pitchfork or something and threaten you better."

Arudelle kept trying to explain to Koriandra about his death.  She kept wanting him to 'shut up his hail-call', whatever that meant.  Koriandra snarled more and more hunter nonsense at him, as she prodded onward with a pitchfork.  Arudelle was to walk backwards so that she could have a good aim at his innards and possess full control over his direction through the hay-strewn stables. 

"No one else, not even Mi'Raah is coming out here.  That's the ruthless genius of it, I'm trying to tell you--Arrrr matey."

"Now that just sounds like a lonesome hen.  Make a left."

"I'm going to trip and fall, damn you, woman!  Listen to me.  I was stabbed by lancers, but I also tied my soul to the gold bottle long ago.  I told her to stash it in here on the night she got free from prison to find Odeon with... that Syramon-something.  Of course, Mi'Raah has no idea why I wanted it up there--"

"Another left.  If you've gotta fall at all, Arudelle, then just don't come forwards onto the pitchfork, alright?"

"Fine.  Well, it was the cause of--you just directed me to step in horse shit."

"Heh.  A right, this time."

Arudelle took one final, patient breath as he paced backwards round another corner.  "I told Mi'Raah's sisters, before we even began the journey to Jyst, that if they did anything against us while we were away, that I would find out through that magical, indestructible bottle and have Mi'Raah killed by my entire army."

"But you need her for your conquest.  Not even Mi'Raah's kin can be that stupid."

"That's my point... Mi'Raah's sisters pledged whatever they would to my face, but then, of course, behind my back, they enchanted the bottle, essentially tying it down to a thread of Mi'Raah's immortal soul.  A bribed temple-servant told me--or was it a threatened or maimed temple-servant?  I can't recall... Anyways, they hoped it would be a way to ensure their eldest sister could never get lost in the sea of whatever's after this life.  Her spirit and her body could always be recalled, that way, as long as that bottle managed to survive.  I'm sure they must have tied themselves to it as well, to prevent--"

"Another left.  Though, I was tempted to let you fall into that water trough.  You're so full of it, Arudelle-the-whatever-you-are.  How do you even know Mi'Raah's sisters did all these things?  You actually see them do it?  Do you even understand immortal powers?"

"Seeing to believe isn't necessary, when you let the ladies hug each other and then walk off into a private room for an hour and a half to say 'goodbye.'  I know they did it, the bottle was the only thing going between them, the only way to know what was going on, so they used it.  On my end, I went off with Mi'Raah on my own for about an hour before we got on the ship--"

"I do not need the details of this.  Keep going straight."

"...To get married.  So then, my soul is tied to hers, and that of her sisters, all with the golden bottle.  Wasn't that smart of me?  Well, there's the downside of my original wife Euginnia being tangled in there as well, somewhere... but a sacrament like marriage is an outer expression of an inner spiritual transformation.  Some witches make hoodoo dolls and stick pins in them--which do work, by the way.  No matter how valuable that land is, no King really wants to have the Wild Tribesmen as subjects, ever.  And, some other holy people put rings on the fingers of lovers to bind them in matrimony.  Same thing."

Koriandra only stared.

"You'd have to kill all of us, at once, and the bottle too, in order to murder any of us.  Now, do you see?  I've expanded my life by many proportions and spread it out across the sea itself!  No one is going to get rid of Arudelle, unless he wants to be got rid of."

"Or, unless Koriandra wants to get rid of him.  Now that she understands it."

Arudelle shut his mouth, which was nice, until he thought fast, "Well, I told you all this for a good reason, but you won't listen to me.  Besides, you're never getting across the sea to my kingdom anyways."

"Wanna bet?  I survived a dungeon riot, escaped,s and came this far just for a pair of stupid, bow-legged horses.  It's not much to cross the sea, to murder several people I can't stand--who RUINED MY LIFE FOR NO APPARENT REASON!"

Arudelle grabbed the pitchfork then, and pulled hard.  He was able to yank it away from Koriandra with the jolt of weight changing between them so fast.

She darted away from him swiping at her, rolled through hay, then reached for a shovel.

"Dammit, Coriander, I'm asking you to marry me!"

Koriandra really screamed then.  As loud as her throat and skull could stand to be rattled.  "I don't like men!  I don't like your damned sea religion!  I don't like crazy people with silver hair craving to destroy the world even if they are clever or charming.  I tried it, but I didn't like it, do you hear me?  And for the last time, that is NOT even my name!"

"I promise, I won't shave my head this time.  In hindsight, this silver stuff did frighten Mi'Raah a great deal... more than I meant for it to."

She jabbed, but Arudelle lashed up with both strong arms, to parry.  "Well you can't fight me forever.  My pride is only matched by my strength, and my wit, though I may be mortal.  Everything I touch becomes a weapon.  That is why Mi'Raah nor her sisters were able to stop me.  I am one of those rare men who comes along, every century--the dazzling hero--whom fate favors.  Some will deny it to their last blasted day, but mortals can do the same things immortals can, and I'm the proof.  I've got into the blindspots of two of them so far, and earned unthinkable victories on that theory.  The Wild Tribes fell, Jyst has fallen.  I want Fahrwandur too, and so that must be next.  Koriandra, you can have a little faith in what I want to do and choose your life, or I can order my army to finish you off, once they get here.  And, they are coming.  An entire hysterical palace agrees."

Koriandra took a very good swipe at Arudelle's silver-covered head.  She was no longer sure whether she was trying to kill him, or murder his speech.  "If only I had my bow and my arrows!  I've once shot a mewing rogue-bison's tongue clear out of his petulant mouth during the mating season.  Only after, did I take my shot at its heart."

They two realized that more people were fighting nearby, and struggled to face it, even while dueling one another.  It was not clear whether the war was coming to them way out here, or if looters were rivaling with one another.  A shout for 'loyal Jystians to part', and then the rapport of a horse's hooves galloping underneath the sacred livery arch confirmed it.

Oily black Odeon came running in, riderless.  The look of that red armor was still something, but it was worse when they saw how King Baeltheon's foot was caught in the stirrup.  Odeon had somehow allowed the man himself to become a dragging dead corpse.  The talking horse whinnied, "That dumb, fat liar.  Get this dead-weight off of me!  Every single Jystian King, I swear... descended from generations of capable cavalrymen, my equine ass!  Where's help?  I called for a stablehand, I said!"

Some soldiers peeled off from fighting and tried to do some honor to King Baeltheon's ruined body, or get water and feed for the King's horse.

Arudelle stepped forward and stabbed one man and his water-bucket without another thought.  Koriandra was forced to strike at the others as well, before they might make the decision that she was with Arudelle, or else a malcontent escaped from the dungeon.  Well, she was honestly one of those, but no use taking chances.  She whacked shovel and two men went down, with banged skulls.  Arudelle finished off the last.

Odeon turned his back end, to face the far wall.  "How?  One of you was dead and the other should have been sentenced." Odeon clapped yellow teeth together.

"Watch out, Odentalis, he's going to ask you to marry him." Koriandra scowled.  Arudelle glinted her way.

The immortal stallion tossed head again, and another time, warning them not to come closer.  "Want to see how good my impression of the late King is?" But when the talking horse tried it, the royal call for help was a garbled half-spoke whinnying.  "And then, he's also dead, isn't he?  So nobody would have believed it."

"Arudelle's the real voice-thrower here, anyways.  I almost converted to a second strange horse-hunter-something-religion, I didn't know what in three sea-bells it was..."

"I want the two of you to shut up and listen." Arudelle defended his strange way of doing things. "The Kingdom of Jyst is all but taken.  This is going to become a part of my empire.  I only need a proper sword to seal the effort.  Decide now, whether you are going to side with me and prove your loyalty when it's needed, or if you just need help being thrown clear out of my way, with the chaff."

Koriandra still wasn't sure if whether liked the false High Horse Priest Odentalis, or if his horse-god form was better, or not.  But she looked to Odeon in this moment, when Arudelle's wild gaze was always so unsettling.

The large black horse lashed tail once and ceased all fighting back.  "You are going to kill me, an immortal horse, with a pitchfork?  Well that's easy, go on and end me then."

The fighting outside got louder.  Jystian soldiers fled inside the stable and, into the open livery where they were, but Pirates came fast on their heels.  Arudelle began shouting orders as soon as he saw his men, and the tide turned just as quickly for Odeon.  Koriandra stopped laughing.

Arudelle was given the armor off someone else's back, and dressed with sword and shield.  "...that really it, Koriandra?  After all our discussion, dumb gawking is your answer?  You know, I almost got kill't on the battle field, believing that I saw you, believing in your capacity to serve the next invasion.  But that proposal was not worth the risk, two times now.  Go on, men, take that one.  Your first prize of the night.  Tie up the horse, though, he's needed for breeding."

"Breeding?  Is that what this was for?  Mi'Raah said but I thought she was being simple and self-righteous as usual--Is that really all!"

Odeon's fool remarks were cut off when Koriandra dropped her shovel and raised naked wrist for them to see.  She pressed the shard of broken glass to it.  "I swear I will!"  She screamed.  "I've no reason not to.  Do you think that's how I want to end, Arudelle, with nasty pirate-men clambering all over me?  After what I already did with Prince Bonnis, after everything, I'd hate it." her voice broke.  "I'm not going to die like some swine, the way I lived."

Odeon warned, "Rider Koriandra, you are a soldier until the last.  Fight with me.  Do not lose your nerve."

"It's not my nerve that I've lost.  A mortal person can only take so much.  My shoulders, this heart, my very soul is overburdened!  Arudelle, if I'm just a stupid woman to you in the end, warm chattel not worth a thing, then at least let me run from here.  I beg you, let me live as the slime on sea-rock.  I wouldn't hurt a soul, I promise.  I just want peace."

"Yet, you wouldn't join me and live according to my cause.  So, you aren't so desperate, and, no, we don't know what you're capable of."

"You're like the devil himself.  Hearing your voice and seeing you work is like burning alive!  Again, I beg you to see your own arrogance.  Who would want that?"

Arudelle urged, and his men advanced anyways.  Strategically, it made no difference to him.  Koriandra flared open fingers of that one desperate, shaking hand, then sliced down through her own wrist.

She eased into the hay, watching it bleed.  "If she cannot be saved, unless she is first redeemed, and belief may be belief, but suffering will always be suffering, if mortals are equal to immortals, in all the evil and good they choose to do..." slipping smile, "Then what's the point of wondering?  When all I've ever done, is to believe, there is nothing more I can do."

Mi'Raah was announced over the dying woman's speech.  The pirates saluted, or didn't know to, and parted ranks.  Mi'Raah had drips of water all over her robes and flecks of white ice in her hair.  A sheet of it slipped down over her gold breastplate, more evidence of how she'd survived the battle.

"Kori!  What have you done?"

Arudelle sniped, "I happen to be alive here, as well."

Koriandra said, "There's no point, to life."

"This had better not be about those horses, again!"

"My horses are gone, because Arudelle's always been a liar.  Nor do I want to see you," she looked away.  "You and Odentalis, broke everything... and then some people really believed... Arudelle would be a good king.  Pfft!" Mi'Raah sat beside Koriandra, patted her cheek.  "...Mrm?"

"Listen to me, Koriandra.  I realized something today.  I can choose my life.  No, I can choose to live.  I can believe in order that the suffering be made less.  When there is nothing but fear around me, then what will I do?  Fear to even love?  If life is fear... then I should love anyways.  I should rejoice in the face of destruction.  I should heal, without being told.  I should rise, whether events desire for me to, or not."

She took frightened breath and went on, "Because, most often, they will not.  But, if I desire, if I believe, then I will have nothing to do with that.  Small or strong, immortal or brief, I can choose to be free.  I can free myself.  By caring about my life.  Whether or not life cares about me, that is not good enough to worry about." 

"I will live, and will others to live with me.  Sweet bald thing, I've learned... if mortals are equal to immortals, in all the evil and good they choose to do... Then I have the power to redeem myself, and the choice to save others, too.  Through my love.  Precisely, because I choose to believe."

Koriandra shut her eyes.  "That's pretty.  Maybe."

"If I believe, then there's a better chance I'll work, to set things right.  One has to see first, one has to want first, before one can make a good reach.  Please, consider it.  Forcing someone to exist when they don't want to, and for the reasons they don't want to... I don't know which is worse.  But if you care at all, if you want to try Koriandra, then please tell me so, right now!  I've killed enough.  I want you to live, but I won't have you dead on your feet, either.  I won't do that to you, anymore.  Maybe the others haven't learned their lessons but--argh, I'm so vain, even now.  Dammit, let me help you when I've finally figured it all out.  I was the cause of this, for ever choosing to aid or marry that lunatic.  And now it's my mess to clean up.  Oh, by all that is, Kori, forgive me..." Mi'Raah cried and held her.

Odeon lowered his long neck.  Arudelle said nothing.  He even turned his back.  "I want soldiers posted in the east and western wings of the castle.   As for the throne room..."

A breeze came, the sun set.  Koriandra squeezed Mi'Raah's hand.  "...Are you sure... bottle or no... you can't kill him?"

"Not until he gets old, dear.  Then, life kills him."

...

Mi'Raah's Virtue sailed east, this time.  The coast of Fahrwandur was longer than that of Jyst, but as an island, the sun was still able to touch either end of it.  Where the light kissed, the crests of mountains seemed to catch fire, or the tree-canopy glowed warm, like a jewel.

One sailor up near the prow stood in elegant profile.  The pirates were all dressed better these days, for having plundered the most monstrous kingdom in the Known Seas.  There was no longer such thing as a Jystian pirate, who could sail west and plunder a foreign coastline so well, that he needn't bother hold any fear for his proper king, or the fury of the robbed princes being held hostage.  Jystian piracy had been dismantled and put back together again.  Their home was bitten back, and hard, by the most savage of land-loving dogs there ever was.

The Sirenian drummer, decorated like any prince, began his music.

Arudelle came from the cabin, having kicked the door open.  The pirate-crew roared savage.  He bowed to them at the waist, then gestured for the captives to emerge.

Mi'Raah marched out, sneered, and twisted, to show how her wrists were bound behind her back.  Same silver robe.  Same silver hair--it had to be.  But, Arudelle's dye-job never was necessary.  He was back to muddy, fly-away tresses, as agreed.  Odeon came last, wearing a long, soiled blanket swathed about his shoulders.  He preferred to travel as a person, not a horse.  Though, it meant he was pudgy and worse than irritating again, without the sharp warhorse countenance to balance it.

"I wish you wouldn't use a stable blanket--"

"I'm the guest of honor, the breeder, I get to eat and wear whatever I please, Arudelle.  This happens to be my favorite thing in the entire world besides molichaff and females, by the way.  Anyways, don't we all have a higher purpose today?"

Arudelle pointed to the plank and drew his sword.  Mi'Raah tossed head, cussed him, the crowd whistled and jeered until she knelt at its edge.

"I have been counseled, along the long journey, mateys, that there is a far better way to abuse the vast rabble of mortality--excuse me, 'improve' is the word I'm looking for.  Long ago, some fine folks, like yourselves, decided to burn and pillage the land I was due to inherit.  And then, after some drunken diversion--I will admit that now..." and he did so, to raucous laughter, "I eventually pulled myself together and began to fight, to get the Siren back.  Others may disagree, but I still believe that fighting is a part of life.  Why?  Because life is hard.  Yes, we are going to suffer.  The dog is going to bite us, and especially if it is a Jystian dog, or a Trystian dog and its damned sunken navy," more cheering, "and now a Fahrwandrian dog--did I say that right?  Haha!  I'm not a nice man, and I'm not a fair man, and I'm not even promising you that I'm a sane man!  But, what I do offer you, loyal pirates, thieves, devils, you man-whores and friends of mine, is that this man, right here, is certainly a good damned weapon if mortals ever bore themselves one and I intend to prevent what happened in my Siren from happening anywhere else, ever again.  Perhaps it is a selfish effort, this conquest.  But, I won't have Jyst rising back up while I'm out here, nor Tryst.  So all the Known Seas are going to have to change their ways.  If they can't learn to pay homage and devote themselves to a new order, where talking horse gods and great words, not deeds, get their run of the place, well then, it's time to start over again." he bowed his head.  "And so, this time, I force Mi'Raah off the plank in memory of a good... what do you call her?  She never really helped us you know."

Odeon, as a man, was more irate than ever.  "Call her, Rider Koriandra.  That'll do just fine... you half-shod, half-wit yearling."

"This run, will be in honor of our Rider Koriandra, and the molichaff which Odeon will not be eating today.  If she had not schemed as well as she did, then we would not be here, in the correct spirit of restitution."

"Retribution."

"Yes, that."

The drumroll began again.  Seagulls cried above.  Arudelle might have prayed, for the first time in his life.

Until the ship's greatest weapon was escorted into their midst and it became clear that some people would never have to feel beholden to deities in this life, if they didn't like.  Sheer belief could do more than that.  Its sentiment gifted the willpower to do great good.

Koriandra smiled at the guards flanking her, and reached arms into the furred coat they offered.  "The corrupt chief has agreed to see me.  That is when I am going to stab him.  Here, the gold bottle confirms it."

Arudelle took the yellow message bottle and read for himself.  "This is better than we expected."

Koriandra nodded.  A woven leather headdress prevented the sun's oily reflection off her clear brow now.  "He's a snake.  A snake who hoped I'd sleep with a Prince of another kingdom wanting a coup, so that if it failed, then I could be trusted to lose my temper and kill Bonnis, quiet even my country's involvement.  But my chief, he schemed wrong.  I go in peace, but then I leave his tent in the shreds he deserves for selling so many of us out."

"Don't forget to reclaim the ancestral battlegrounds, dear." Mi'Raah called, from where she still knelt at the edge of the walking-plank. 

"You're so good, I might love you too, you know, Kori.  My offer still stands."

Koriandra slapped Arudelle, in short order.

A breath of panic.  The whole ship was doing it.  Arudelle snarled.  "Interesting.  My pride was hurt... but it wasn't broken... when you hit like a girl."

The jolly crew reacted to the opening.  Koriandra buckled and laughed unexpectedly.  "That's good enough for now, I think.  Alright, let's go." Her escort walked over near to Mi'Raah, where they were lowering a small boat into the sea.

"Arudelle?  Mightn't I ask..."

"Mightn't?"

Mi'Raah ignored him, when she was already so flushed with embarrassment.  "When she gets to arrive in a boat, why do I have to walk the plank, still?  It makes no sense."

"Well, you aren't going to be a High Priestess this time.  Koriandra is a prophet, who is going to summon you from conjured flame.  There are the spark-rocks with her things."

"People aren't going to fall for the same trick twice, Arudelle."

"We will govern them with sea-ritual and tithing, we're not going to call it worship.  You still have miracles to work, don't worry."

"It sounds like religion to me."  Koriandra shrugged, "But it's better than rape and pillage all up and down the coast." 

Pot-bellied Odeon had got a carrot from somewhere and was munching it.  With the rank ragged blanket he did manage to look animal after all.  "Better?  Best would be staying home and not bothering other people about what they believe or don't.  There's so much more to life."

Arudelle snatched the carrot away.  "Snacks?  Not for my horse--you have a proscribed diet, thank you very much."

The drumroll raised, Mi'Raah's death-look at Arudelle grew, Koriandra leaned from her row-boat and whispered, "As soon as we find a way to break the bottle... don't worry."

"Trust me, I'm on pins and needles and the edge of a very plank, waiting for the day.  I'm glad you decided to join us, Kori.  Arudelle is not easily beat.  The worst of us have no choice but to use him back.  I won't give him the pleasure but I'm truly horrified that he was so motivated to keep torturing me, Arudelle lived through even a thrice-stabbing--"

"Where I'm from, we call that a creeper."

"...Mortals are equal to immortals, indeed!  I'll be paying for my sins against so many people I crossed while letting that one run wild over my life.  Poor Syramon.  Poor world.  If only I had known the way of things, in time..."

The two women were getting far away now.  One near the blue waves, the other kneeling on a wooden plank, with back arched against a clear sky.

"But once he's elder and done so much damage to the world, won't it be too late for you to repent?" Koriandra called.  Those settling the boat onto the water for her stopped and stared.

"You didn't believe his speech?  I really think the Pirate King's heart has changed.  I'll be able to keep a better eye on Arudelle and this world he says he wants to conquer--but I believe he wants it tamed, for higher reasons than before."

"Well mortal life is damned if it truly hasn't, or you can't."

Mi'Raah braced herself against the next drumroll.  Her thoughts were hurtling to one last place.  "Sometimes, even if in an impossible situation, like having ever caught that terrible fiend's eye, the most impactful thing a person can do, I believe, is to live on... And, Arudelle--when I know you are listening, I swear I will outlive you!"

Final timber-pangs, and release!

Mi'Raah screamed and fell into the clamoring waves.  Koriandra's boat rowed gently to shore.  Arudelle's temper was relieved by the sea as his silver-headed woman-slave began to work and the water calmed.

"Fizzle, fizzle, pill.  Foam glass water again, when I'm so glad to drink.  Truly, through you, my soul feels less ill."

Odeon was the only one to make a pitiful clapping at his master's poetry.  But, somehow, it was kind enough.

-The End-

About Mi'Raah:  This two-month long novella about a silly silver-headed woman and her spiritual crises is derived from one of my unpublished novel manuscripts.  The larger work, of which Mi'Raah is not a lead part, involves several more odd talking creatures, a cataclysmic love triangle spanning The Seas, Arudelle's many reincarnated descendants and a whole other continent of dark-skinned characters with more outrageous problems than even dealing with the Black Armada. 

It's a cross-cultural fantasy-style soap opera with no point except to amuse and frustrate so many against an a-typical colonization scenario.  That said, profuse thanks for hanging in there and reading.

Next Week:  Jaw-Break Blue.  Plant-alones, some other time.