Chimaea
09-02-2005, 05:29
OOC: I made this rather tongue-in-cheek. It probably shouldn't be regarded as an in character event... but I guess it can, too. It's a commentary on Nationstates... obviously. Hope you like it.
Existential Nationstates
Lady Bryce had been working late. As the situation in Syskeyia hotted up, the economy took its usual stumble and people were demanding more bilingual policies, Lady Bryce found herself working well into the night and getting six hours of sleep—if she was lucky. There were decisions to be made, policy to be defended, Parliament to be faced. The Commonwealth looked towards her to know everything, be everywhere. Being Governor was a job that had made people mad before. Lady Bryce hoped she wasn’t going to be the latest in a line of unfortunates.
The logs on the fire shifted and crackled, sparks rising up into the ruddy brick of the fireplace. The old house creaked settled slightly. The best thing about being Governor was that she could chose not to live in the official Governor’s residence in New Sydney—her father had also chosen to forego the official residence in favour of the Bryce mansion in Bella Esmeralda. It was an icy wonderland, like living in a fairytale. As a little girl, Lady Bryce used to love exploring the magical fields of snow and watch the gardeners and landscapists fashion beautiful shapes from the ice. There was an old ice maze, built in the 1800s. The ice was so old in the middle, it had turned a pearly green. The maze sprawled through three fields and there were some parts even the landscapists didn’t dare venture into.
This was also the place where her father had spent his last moments. Lady Bryce wondered for the umpteenth time how he must have been feeling. He’d lost his wife, he’d lost friends, he’d been in a job responsible for the lives of billions for more than eight years. A head full of bad memories and a gutful of power and disillusion.
Lady Bryce shook her head as if to dislodge the thoughts, then concentrated on reading the report in front of her. The ticking of the clock was loud in the silence.
***
The next morning she woke up well into the morning, feeling panicked. She waited for a moment, eyes tightly closed, as the rapid beating of her heart died down. She often woke like this, the shadow of forgotten nightmares etched into her mind. She could never remember them but sometimes there were… holes with shape in her psyche. An aftertaste, as it were. She could feel it now; she could taste it in her memories. What was it? Vague shapes rose in her conscience like an iceberg, then slid under the surface once more. Words in the sky. A presence, looming over everything, looking down. She couldn’t place an emotion on it and every time she tried to think about it her thoughts skidded around it.
Sighing, she went through her morning routine. She had a lot of paperwork to do before flying to New Sydney the next morning. Briefings to read, figures to calculate, tasks to delegate. She slid her hairbrush through her golden hair, strands of which fell across her face in soft waves. She was proud of her hair; she’d had to keep it short when she was in the Marine Corp but she’d let it grow as Governor. It went to her shoulders and did everything she wanted it to. It was about the only thing in the way she looked that she really liked. It was good hair.
She looked at herself in the floor-length mirror of her bathroom. There was something wrong about the way she looked—no, not wrong. Different. She mentally checked herself. Everything seemed to be in place, at least. She looked hard at herself. What was it?
Something flickered. She looked into her own eyes. They were oddly coloured—there was green and blue and a hazel which looked like yellow in certain lights. Her father had the same eyes, she could remember his gaze. She looked closer at her eyes, leaning towards the cold glass. There. Something there. Something in her eyes… no, something behind her eyes, looking out. She sighed and looked away. She wasn’t even certain there was something there… just a feeling.
Without even realising it, she was putting on a heavy coat and gloves above her sensible jeans and sweater. Stuff the paperwork, she decided belatedly. She felt restless, unable to concentrate, a growing need for something more than dry reports.
***
It was cold outside, as usual. Bella Esmeralda was an arctic tundra for most part. A beautiful place, cold, frozen in time. It was far removed from the sprawling metropolis of New Sydney or the stiff formality of Parliament House. It was quiet here, the only sounds being the far-off cry of a hunting bird and the rustling and cracking of snow falling from branches.
Lady Bryce watched the tops of her boots as they crunched through the snow. She liked walking through the snow, even though the gardeners cleared paths through it every morning. She liked the way the snow crystals powered and packed as she walked on them. She kicked a small mound of snow and watched the powder explode into the air. Lady Bryce found herself giggling.
When she came to the maze half an hour later, she was walking more sedately. She didn’t feel tired; she always kept the same level of fitness as from her Marine days. It felt good to be fit and she liked working the tensions and frustrations of her job out in the gym she’d had renovated. Her father hadn’t been one to work out, it seemed. She didn’t realise they’d had a gym until she’d thoroughly explored the old mansion when she first settled in.
The maze was enormous and the walls of the maze were higher a good six and a half feet tall. It wasn’t a maze to play around in—this was made for giving people the slip in. No-one had a complete map of it anymore and she’d never had the heart to order photos from the air. It would ruin the mystery. Sometimes schools from Bella Esmeralda would ask permission to visit the grounds and the maze and she made a point of trying to meet them at least once. It made her feel more human and less of a figurehead. Children tended to make her nervous, though. They seemed fascinated by the old stories of the maze and they seemed even more fascinated by the security personnel on the grounds and the mansion. The security guys always carried submachine guns openly these days, with the possibility of war so close to home.
The entrance to the maze closest to her was a simple rectangular hole in the wall. The main entrances were grandiose affairs with concrete and ice complementing each other in architectural brilliance. Lady Bryce preferred the small entrances. She slipped through the entrance into a long curving corridor. It felt odd to be walking in a place with walls but only the blue, cloudless sky for a roof. She followed the curve of the corridor randomly, enjoying the strength of the moment. She felt more alive than ever, the crisp, cold air burning into her lungs, bringing out a flush to her face. If only all of life was that simple.
The corridor ended abruptly into a small chamber, with four passages leading away in four different directions. She frowned. She’d been this way before and could have sworn that there were only three passages—two to the right, one to the left and a statue of an angel on a plinth in the middle. The angel was still there but behind it was another passage. She cautiously approached the angel, half expecting it to fly off the plinth into the sky. It wasn’t a cute angel by any means—this was a muscled man, wearing armour, two huge wings stretching from his shoulders. In one hand he held a sword, in the other a stone globe as a representation of the world. She’d never been able to find out who’d made it and why. There were a lot of things like that in the maze and in Bella Esemeralda in general.
Lady Bryce stepped past the statue and headed determinedly into the passage behind it. When her back was turned, the stone head of the angel turned slowly on its neck to watch her go.
***
The passage was straight and led towards the heart of the maze. It was an odd expression, Lady Bryce thought as she walked on. People often talked about the hearts of buildings and ships and other man-made things. Lady Bryce had never really understood that.
A few times she was certain that the passage should have been intersected, or even completely blocked, by other passages she knew criss-crossed the maze but it wasn’t. The passage was straight, unbending and seemed to go on for ever. She was growing tired, too—sometimes it felt like she was walking through jelly. She must have been letting her fitness go, what with all the paperwork piling up on her desk these days. If it wasn’t for the army of aides that surrounded her in New Sydney, she’d never get on top of it.
There was a flicker of movement at the edge of her vision and she turned quickly, braced against an attack. There was nothing there, just her reflection staring distortedly back at her through the ice wall. She frowned then whirled around again, to the other side, catching another glimpse of movement. Again, there was nothing. She knelt heavily against a wall, rubbing her forehead. What was happening? She stared at the distorted reflection of herself, remembering the feeling that there was something in her eyes. She stepped away from the wall she was leaning against and approached her reflection, staring into her eyes. The ice distorted it even more as she got closer.
Strange, distorted, odd eyes looked back at her. Her nose was centimetres away from the ice. And there was something there, somehow made clear by the pale reflection. She backed away from the wall, closing her eyes tight, then lifting her face to the sky overhead. She opened her eyes and the bright, deep blue infiniteness of the sky hurt them but she kept them open.
“Who are you?” she demanded out loud. She dropped her face again and frowned. “And why am I talking to the air?”
She continued on through the passage. The ice had become darker here, less carved and neat. Some places in the walls were jagged and oddly shaped. Even though there was no roof, the passage appeared to be getting gloomier as she progressed. She looked up at one point and was astonished to realise that the bright blue sky overhead had been replaced by a storm-cast sky of boiling, dark clouds. She stared up in amazement. Even for Bella Esmeralda, this was weird weather. She had a nasty suspicion that if she turned back and walked out of the passage, the blue sky would gradually return.
Lady Bryce was not going to be cowed by mere sky, however, and kept on walking. Soon the only light was a weird white glow coming off the ice walls and the occasional thunderless lightning from the sky above. The wind whistled eerily through the maze, though she couldn’t feel it. Finally, the passage dipped suddenly and opened out.
The chamber beyond had no other exits. It was made of ice which glowed brightly like a B-movie depiction of radioactivity. The floor, oddly enough, was no longer packed snow but slabs of flat cobbles with moss in between them. Lady Bryce’s gaze, however, was not on the floor or the walls but what the chamber contained.
In the middle of the chamber was a person, sitting in a simple wooden chair, writing into a notebook. The person was fairly nondescript, with black hair and an expression of concentration on his features. What grabbed Lady Bryce’s attention was not the person, though, but the scene behind him. Hovering at head height above the floor was a feathered quill which was slowly writing words in the air. As each word was finished it glowed for a moment before bleeding into the darkness behind the quill, only to be replaced by another word.
Lady Bryce stared at this for a moment, before her mind rebelled and dragged her eyes to the person in the chair. He finished whatever he was writing, opened and closed his hand a few times, then finally looked up at her. His dark eyes were intense, with an emotion she couldn’t place.
“Hello, Tanya.” He said, the words written by the quill behind him as he spoke. His voice was slightly gravely with an accent she couldn’t place. She stared at him for a moment, her mind and memory curiously stirred.
“I know you, don’t I?” she asked slowly.
He stretched in the chair, his arms straightening and rising out to his sides. He gave a little sigh as he completed the stretch, then stood up. He was dressed in dark jeans and a lose black polo-necked undershirt. He smiled at her and appeared to consider the question for a moment.
“In a way, yes, you’ve known me all your life. In another way you’ve never met me before.”
Lady Bryce was in no mood for word games. “In a more accurate sense I’m shortly going to have you arrested for trespassing on private property. How the hell did you get past security?”
He chuckled and walked slowly towards her. “Ever the woman of action, Tanya. Ready to launch into what needs to be done as quickly as possible. It’s the way you hide your insecurities.”
Lady Bryce stared for a moment, before scowling. “Look here…”
“You’re a beautiful woman who thinks she’s ugly as sin. You don’t like Elves much because you think they’re beautiful and act perfect and they hold it over you. You don’t realise your own power sometimes and you’re surprised when you get complimented; you think people are just trying to suck up or annoy you.”
Lady Bryce stepped back as if she was physically attacked, before her expression turned from a scowl into full blown anger. “Fuck you!”
The man stopped walking towards her. He looked at her for a moment and she felt like she was being studied instead of watched; he was looking at the planes of her face, how the white glow reflected her golden hair. There was an expression of quiet pride on his face.
“Lady Tanya Bryce,” he said slowly, as if savouring the words. “Afraid of dying so you put yourself in danger to prove to yourself that you won’t let fear rule you. You look fragile and delicate and you use this to your advantage; people are always surprised when you show your strength. You tear yourself up on the inside because you care for people but you have to do what needs to be done. Even if it means hurting others. Lady Tanya Bryce,” he repeated, “My greatest creation.”
***
Lady Bryce could feel the blood rushing in her head. She tried to calm down but the shock and anger of the moment was difficult to punch through. She stepped towards the man and snarled, “You sick fuck, how the hell…”
The man didn’t step back. “How do I know you so well? I made you, Tanya. You and the rest of Chimaea. I was there when you were born, I will be there when you die.” The words sounded arrogant but the tone wasn’t. It was delivered in a matter-of-fact way, as if he was trying to explain an abstract concept to her.
Lady Bryce stared at him. He sighed and thought for a moment. “Have you ever gotten the feeling that the whole world was just a stage? A play being enacted by puppet masters in a puppet theatre.” He smiled at her. “I know you have. You dream about me, sometimes, but you always forget. Well Tanya, I’m one of the puppet masters.”
Lady Bryce had an incredulous look on her face. The man walked towards her until he was standing inches away from her, then leaned his mouth close to her ear and said softly, “Everything is just part of a game, dear Lady. A game in every sense of the word.”
She knew she should feel uncomfortable and frightened at his proximity but oddly she didn’t feel any different at all. She could feel his breath on her hair yet it was almost like he wasn’t there at all. She had an irrational urge to try to see if her hand could go through him.
He leaned back until they were face to face. “I wouldn’t try it,” he said, apparently reading her mind. He grinned when he saw her expression. “This must be a shock to you. Come and sit down.”
The wooden chair had disappeared, replaced by a wrought-iron garden bench. He went and sat at one end and looked expectantly at her, so she found herself sitting beside him. There was a moment of silence for a moment as they both watched the feathered quill writing into oblivion.
“I didn’t want to do this,” he told her, “But for some reason you noticed me. You picked up on the fact that the world is different, weird, odd. Like a story. Everyone reacts oddly to things. Whole fleets of ships take less than a few days to get from one place to the other…” he held up a hand. “You’re not meant to notice these things. I’m sorry, I truly am.”
Lady Bryce crossed her arms and hugged herself. The man watched her compassionately. “I think I detailed you too much. Ever heard of someone say characters in a story ‘leapt out of the page’? It’s something like that.”
“So what,” Lady Bryce muttered dubiously, “I’m supposed to believe everything I’ve ever known was a lie, just a stupid story?”
The man stretched out his legs in front of him. He was wearing white shoes. “You know it to be true.”
That was the problem. What he had said had cleared some part of her mind and she knew, she just knew that it was true. But she didn’t have to like it. “You’re an asshole. You killed my father, put me through war, lost me the only chance of happiness that ever presented itself and put me into a position where I have to sign the deaths of my own people. You fucking asshole! How… how dare you…” she tailed off, almost speechless.
The man considered her words for a moment. “You’re right,” he said eventually, “Your life has been hard. That’s why you lead the nation though.”
“It’s all a game to you, isn’t it? You don’t know what it’s like. Why don’t you just re-write the story? At least give me back John.”
He looked away. “No, I don’t know what its like. You’re not supposed to be here or know any of this. And that’s my gift to you, Tanya… When this is over, you’ll never remember.”
“Then what’s the point? What’s the meaning in my life? It’s all a fucking mockery. I live to serve your purpose. What about all those dead Chimaean soldiers? What about their families? All this… all this is just nations and states to you, fighting for your amusement!” She suddenly realised that she was crying. After a moment, the man gently but awkwardly put his arm around her shoulders.
“I really am sorry,” he told her. Everything was greying out in her vision now, the edges of the room blackening and melting away into the darkness. She felt his lips on her cheek, briefly, and she felt oddly comforted.
“But what about me?” she asked but her voice sounded distant and hollow in her ears as the world fell away until all there was left was the small area around them.
“You’ll find your happiness. Now, Tanya, forget…”
Then there was only darkness.
***
Lady Bryce opened her eyes, then closed them again as the last rays of sunlight streaming through her windows blinded her. She moved her head slightly and pushed it up from her desk. She had been sleeping on a report by a Rear Admiral in the Chimaean Navy in Syskeyia. Something about analysing bio-mines.
She blinked owlishly at the clock. It was nearly six in the evening. She dragged herself from her seat and stumbled into the small bathroom in the office and splashed cold water on her face. She felt awful, like she’d been crying, but she couldn’t remember crying about anything. She’d just been working on some briefings and fallen asleep at her desk. Typical.
As she raised her head to look at her face in the mirror, she has the strangest feeling she ought to see something else there. She looked close at her features. No, there was nothing… and yet… wasn’t there something… something she should know?
She stood looking at her reflection for a moment, then shook her head. Probably overwork. She should take a day or two off, let the Prime Minister take over things for a bit. General Garrison had commented on that very fact when he last visited. Heaven alone knew she needed it.
Well she would make an early night of it after finishing the report on her desk. She nodded to herself in the mirror, stuck out her tongue at the reflection, then went back to her desk, grinning. For some reason she felt a lot better as she sat down and went back to reading.
As the eye of narrative pulled away from her, the room seemed to get darker and darker, the electric lights overhead slowly blacking out until the scene was lit only by the light of the setting sun. From the distance, Lady Bryce’s dimly-lit figure seemed stiff, almost wooden and her clothes and features looked glazed as if they were painted on. She appeared slumped, almost, all the details in the scene washed out and miniature, glowing a blood red.
And then there was only darkness.
Existential Nationstates
Lady Bryce had been working late. As the situation in Syskeyia hotted up, the economy took its usual stumble and people were demanding more bilingual policies, Lady Bryce found herself working well into the night and getting six hours of sleep—if she was lucky. There were decisions to be made, policy to be defended, Parliament to be faced. The Commonwealth looked towards her to know everything, be everywhere. Being Governor was a job that had made people mad before. Lady Bryce hoped she wasn’t going to be the latest in a line of unfortunates.
The logs on the fire shifted and crackled, sparks rising up into the ruddy brick of the fireplace. The old house creaked settled slightly. The best thing about being Governor was that she could chose not to live in the official Governor’s residence in New Sydney—her father had also chosen to forego the official residence in favour of the Bryce mansion in Bella Esmeralda. It was an icy wonderland, like living in a fairytale. As a little girl, Lady Bryce used to love exploring the magical fields of snow and watch the gardeners and landscapists fashion beautiful shapes from the ice. There was an old ice maze, built in the 1800s. The ice was so old in the middle, it had turned a pearly green. The maze sprawled through three fields and there were some parts even the landscapists didn’t dare venture into.
This was also the place where her father had spent his last moments. Lady Bryce wondered for the umpteenth time how he must have been feeling. He’d lost his wife, he’d lost friends, he’d been in a job responsible for the lives of billions for more than eight years. A head full of bad memories and a gutful of power and disillusion.
Lady Bryce shook her head as if to dislodge the thoughts, then concentrated on reading the report in front of her. The ticking of the clock was loud in the silence.
***
The next morning she woke up well into the morning, feeling panicked. She waited for a moment, eyes tightly closed, as the rapid beating of her heart died down. She often woke like this, the shadow of forgotten nightmares etched into her mind. She could never remember them but sometimes there were… holes with shape in her psyche. An aftertaste, as it were. She could feel it now; she could taste it in her memories. What was it? Vague shapes rose in her conscience like an iceberg, then slid under the surface once more. Words in the sky. A presence, looming over everything, looking down. She couldn’t place an emotion on it and every time she tried to think about it her thoughts skidded around it.
Sighing, she went through her morning routine. She had a lot of paperwork to do before flying to New Sydney the next morning. Briefings to read, figures to calculate, tasks to delegate. She slid her hairbrush through her golden hair, strands of which fell across her face in soft waves. She was proud of her hair; she’d had to keep it short when she was in the Marine Corp but she’d let it grow as Governor. It went to her shoulders and did everything she wanted it to. It was about the only thing in the way she looked that she really liked. It was good hair.
She looked at herself in the floor-length mirror of her bathroom. There was something wrong about the way she looked—no, not wrong. Different. She mentally checked herself. Everything seemed to be in place, at least. She looked hard at herself. What was it?
Something flickered. She looked into her own eyes. They were oddly coloured—there was green and blue and a hazel which looked like yellow in certain lights. Her father had the same eyes, she could remember his gaze. She looked closer at her eyes, leaning towards the cold glass. There. Something there. Something in her eyes… no, something behind her eyes, looking out. She sighed and looked away. She wasn’t even certain there was something there… just a feeling.
Without even realising it, she was putting on a heavy coat and gloves above her sensible jeans and sweater. Stuff the paperwork, she decided belatedly. She felt restless, unable to concentrate, a growing need for something more than dry reports.
***
It was cold outside, as usual. Bella Esmeralda was an arctic tundra for most part. A beautiful place, cold, frozen in time. It was far removed from the sprawling metropolis of New Sydney or the stiff formality of Parliament House. It was quiet here, the only sounds being the far-off cry of a hunting bird and the rustling and cracking of snow falling from branches.
Lady Bryce watched the tops of her boots as they crunched through the snow. She liked walking through the snow, even though the gardeners cleared paths through it every morning. She liked the way the snow crystals powered and packed as she walked on them. She kicked a small mound of snow and watched the powder explode into the air. Lady Bryce found herself giggling.
When she came to the maze half an hour later, she was walking more sedately. She didn’t feel tired; she always kept the same level of fitness as from her Marine days. It felt good to be fit and she liked working the tensions and frustrations of her job out in the gym she’d had renovated. Her father hadn’t been one to work out, it seemed. She didn’t realise they’d had a gym until she’d thoroughly explored the old mansion when she first settled in.
The maze was enormous and the walls of the maze were higher a good six and a half feet tall. It wasn’t a maze to play around in—this was made for giving people the slip in. No-one had a complete map of it anymore and she’d never had the heart to order photos from the air. It would ruin the mystery. Sometimes schools from Bella Esmeralda would ask permission to visit the grounds and the maze and she made a point of trying to meet them at least once. It made her feel more human and less of a figurehead. Children tended to make her nervous, though. They seemed fascinated by the old stories of the maze and they seemed even more fascinated by the security personnel on the grounds and the mansion. The security guys always carried submachine guns openly these days, with the possibility of war so close to home.
The entrance to the maze closest to her was a simple rectangular hole in the wall. The main entrances were grandiose affairs with concrete and ice complementing each other in architectural brilliance. Lady Bryce preferred the small entrances. She slipped through the entrance into a long curving corridor. It felt odd to be walking in a place with walls but only the blue, cloudless sky for a roof. She followed the curve of the corridor randomly, enjoying the strength of the moment. She felt more alive than ever, the crisp, cold air burning into her lungs, bringing out a flush to her face. If only all of life was that simple.
The corridor ended abruptly into a small chamber, with four passages leading away in four different directions. She frowned. She’d been this way before and could have sworn that there were only three passages—two to the right, one to the left and a statue of an angel on a plinth in the middle. The angel was still there but behind it was another passage. She cautiously approached the angel, half expecting it to fly off the plinth into the sky. It wasn’t a cute angel by any means—this was a muscled man, wearing armour, two huge wings stretching from his shoulders. In one hand he held a sword, in the other a stone globe as a representation of the world. She’d never been able to find out who’d made it and why. There were a lot of things like that in the maze and in Bella Esemeralda in general.
Lady Bryce stepped past the statue and headed determinedly into the passage behind it. When her back was turned, the stone head of the angel turned slowly on its neck to watch her go.
***
The passage was straight and led towards the heart of the maze. It was an odd expression, Lady Bryce thought as she walked on. People often talked about the hearts of buildings and ships and other man-made things. Lady Bryce had never really understood that.
A few times she was certain that the passage should have been intersected, or even completely blocked, by other passages she knew criss-crossed the maze but it wasn’t. The passage was straight, unbending and seemed to go on for ever. She was growing tired, too—sometimes it felt like she was walking through jelly. She must have been letting her fitness go, what with all the paperwork piling up on her desk these days. If it wasn’t for the army of aides that surrounded her in New Sydney, she’d never get on top of it.
There was a flicker of movement at the edge of her vision and she turned quickly, braced against an attack. There was nothing there, just her reflection staring distortedly back at her through the ice wall. She frowned then whirled around again, to the other side, catching another glimpse of movement. Again, there was nothing. She knelt heavily against a wall, rubbing her forehead. What was happening? She stared at the distorted reflection of herself, remembering the feeling that there was something in her eyes. She stepped away from the wall she was leaning against and approached her reflection, staring into her eyes. The ice distorted it even more as she got closer.
Strange, distorted, odd eyes looked back at her. Her nose was centimetres away from the ice. And there was something there, somehow made clear by the pale reflection. She backed away from the wall, closing her eyes tight, then lifting her face to the sky overhead. She opened her eyes and the bright, deep blue infiniteness of the sky hurt them but she kept them open.
“Who are you?” she demanded out loud. She dropped her face again and frowned. “And why am I talking to the air?”
She continued on through the passage. The ice had become darker here, less carved and neat. Some places in the walls were jagged and oddly shaped. Even though there was no roof, the passage appeared to be getting gloomier as she progressed. She looked up at one point and was astonished to realise that the bright blue sky overhead had been replaced by a storm-cast sky of boiling, dark clouds. She stared up in amazement. Even for Bella Esmeralda, this was weird weather. She had a nasty suspicion that if she turned back and walked out of the passage, the blue sky would gradually return.
Lady Bryce was not going to be cowed by mere sky, however, and kept on walking. Soon the only light was a weird white glow coming off the ice walls and the occasional thunderless lightning from the sky above. The wind whistled eerily through the maze, though she couldn’t feel it. Finally, the passage dipped suddenly and opened out.
The chamber beyond had no other exits. It was made of ice which glowed brightly like a B-movie depiction of radioactivity. The floor, oddly enough, was no longer packed snow but slabs of flat cobbles with moss in between them. Lady Bryce’s gaze, however, was not on the floor or the walls but what the chamber contained.
In the middle of the chamber was a person, sitting in a simple wooden chair, writing into a notebook. The person was fairly nondescript, with black hair and an expression of concentration on his features. What grabbed Lady Bryce’s attention was not the person, though, but the scene behind him. Hovering at head height above the floor was a feathered quill which was slowly writing words in the air. As each word was finished it glowed for a moment before bleeding into the darkness behind the quill, only to be replaced by another word.
Lady Bryce stared at this for a moment, before her mind rebelled and dragged her eyes to the person in the chair. He finished whatever he was writing, opened and closed his hand a few times, then finally looked up at her. His dark eyes were intense, with an emotion she couldn’t place.
“Hello, Tanya.” He said, the words written by the quill behind him as he spoke. His voice was slightly gravely with an accent she couldn’t place. She stared at him for a moment, her mind and memory curiously stirred.
“I know you, don’t I?” she asked slowly.
He stretched in the chair, his arms straightening and rising out to his sides. He gave a little sigh as he completed the stretch, then stood up. He was dressed in dark jeans and a lose black polo-necked undershirt. He smiled at her and appeared to consider the question for a moment.
“In a way, yes, you’ve known me all your life. In another way you’ve never met me before.”
Lady Bryce was in no mood for word games. “In a more accurate sense I’m shortly going to have you arrested for trespassing on private property. How the hell did you get past security?”
He chuckled and walked slowly towards her. “Ever the woman of action, Tanya. Ready to launch into what needs to be done as quickly as possible. It’s the way you hide your insecurities.”
Lady Bryce stared for a moment, before scowling. “Look here…”
“You’re a beautiful woman who thinks she’s ugly as sin. You don’t like Elves much because you think they’re beautiful and act perfect and they hold it over you. You don’t realise your own power sometimes and you’re surprised when you get complimented; you think people are just trying to suck up or annoy you.”
Lady Bryce stepped back as if she was physically attacked, before her expression turned from a scowl into full blown anger. “Fuck you!”
The man stopped walking towards her. He looked at her for a moment and she felt like she was being studied instead of watched; he was looking at the planes of her face, how the white glow reflected her golden hair. There was an expression of quiet pride on his face.
“Lady Tanya Bryce,” he said slowly, as if savouring the words. “Afraid of dying so you put yourself in danger to prove to yourself that you won’t let fear rule you. You look fragile and delicate and you use this to your advantage; people are always surprised when you show your strength. You tear yourself up on the inside because you care for people but you have to do what needs to be done. Even if it means hurting others. Lady Tanya Bryce,” he repeated, “My greatest creation.”
***
Lady Bryce could feel the blood rushing in her head. She tried to calm down but the shock and anger of the moment was difficult to punch through. She stepped towards the man and snarled, “You sick fuck, how the hell…”
The man didn’t step back. “How do I know you so well? I made you, Tanya. You and the rest of Chimaea. I was there when you were born, I will be there when you die.” The words sounded arrogant but the tone wasn’t. It was delivered in a matter-of-fact way, as if he was trying to explain an abstract concept to her.
Lady Bryce stared at him. He sighed and thought for a moment. “Have you ever gotten the feeling that the whole world was just a stage? A play being enacted by puppet masters in a puppet theatre.” He smiled at her. “I know you have. You dream about me, sometimes, but you always forget. Well Tanya, I’m one of the puppet masters.”
Lady Bryce had an incredulous look on her face. The man walked towards her until he was standing inches away from her, then leaned his mouth close to her ear and said softly, “Everything is just part of a game, dear Lady. A game in every sense of the word.”
She knew she should feel uncomfortable and frightened at his proximity but oddly she didn’t feel any different at all. She could feel his breath on her hair yet it was almost like he wasn’t there at all. She had an irrational urge to try to see if her hand could go through him.
He leaned back until they were face to face. “I wouldn’t try it,” he said, apparently reading her mind. He grinned when he saw her expression. “This must be a shock to you. Come and sit down.”
The wooden chair had disappeared, replaced by a wrought-iron garden bench. He went and sat at one end and looked expectantly at her, so she found herself sitting beside him. There was a moment of silence for a moment as they both watched the feathered quill writing into oblivion.
“I didn’t want to do this,” he told her, “But for some reason you noticed me. You picked up on the fact that the world is different, weird, odd. Like a story. Everyone reacts oddly to things. Whole fleets of ships take less than a few days to get from one place to the other…” he held up a hand. “You’re not meant to notice these things. I’m sorry, I truly am.”
Lady Bryce crossed her arms and hugged herself. The man watched her compassionately. “I think I detailed you too much. Ever heard of someone say characters in a story ‘leapt out of the page’? It’s something like that.”
“So what,” Lady Bryce muttered dubiously, “I’m supposed to believe everything I’ve ever known was a lie, just a stupid story?”
The man stretched out his legs in front of him. He was wearing white shoes. “You know it to be true.”
That was the problem. What he had said had cleared some part of her mind and she knew, she just knew that it was true. But she didn’t have to like it. “You’re an asshole. You killed my father, put me through war, lost me the only chance of happiness that ever presented itself and put me into a position where I have to sign the deaths of my own people. You fucking asshole! How… how dare you…” she tailed off, almost speechless.
The man considered her words for a moment. “You’re right,” he said eventually, “Your life has been hard. That’s why you lead the nation though.”
“It’s all a game to you, isn’t it? You don’t know what it’s like. Why don’t you just re-write the story? At least give me back John.”
He looked away. “No, I don’t know what its like. You’re not supposed to be here or know any of this. And that’s my gift to you, Tanya… When this is over, you’ll never remember.”
“Then what’s the point? What’s the meaning in my life? It’s all a fucking mockery. I live to serve your purpose. What about all those dead Chimaean soldiers? What about their families? All this… all this is just nations and states to you, fighting for your amusement!” She suddenly realised that she was crying. After a moment, the man gently but awkwardly put his arm around her shoulders.
“I really am sorry,” he told her. Everything was greying out in her vision now, the edges of the room blackening and melting away into the darkness. She felt his lips on her cheek, briefly, and she felt oddly comforted.
“But what about me?” she asked but her voice sounded distant and hollow in her ears as the world fell away until all there was left was the small area around them.
“You’ll find your happiness. Now, Tanya, forget…”
Then there was only darkness.
***
Lady Bryce opened her eyes, then closed them again as the last rays of sunlight streaming through her windows blinded her. She moved her head slightly and pushed it up from her desk. She had been sleeping on a report by a Rear Admiral in the Chimaean Navy in Syskeyia. Something about analysing bio-mines.
She blinked owlishly at the clock. It was nearly six in the evening. She dragged herself from her seat and stumbled into the small bathroom in the office and splashed cold water on her face. She felt awful, like she’d been crying, but she couldn’t remember crying about anything. She’d just been working on some briefings and fallen asleep at her desk. Typical.
As she raised her head to look at her face in the mirror, she has the strangest feeling she ought to see something else there. She looked close at her features. No, there was nothing… and yet… wasn’t there something… something she should know?
She stood looking at her reflection for a moment, then shook her head. Probably overwork. She should take a day or two off, let the Prime Minister take over things for a bit. General Garrison had commented on that very fact when he last visited. Heaven alone knew she needed it.
Well she would make an early night of it after finishing the report on her desk. She nodded to herself in the mirror, stuck out her tongue at the reflection, then went back to her desk, grinning. For some reason she felt a lot better as she sat down and went back to reading.
As the eye of narrative pulled away from her, the room seemed to get darker and darker, the electric lights overhead slowly blacking out until the scene was lit only by the light of the setting sun. From the distance, Lady Bryce’s dimly-lit figure seemed stiff, almost wooden and her clothes and features looked glazed as if they were painted on. She appeared slumped, almost, all the details in the scene washed out and miniature, glowing a blood red.
And then there was only darkness.