Previous Post These events take place sometime between Untold Tales #322 and #325, just after the Parody War.     Marie Murcheson carried a bowl of freshly cut flowers into the administrator’s office. Since she’d been brought back to life, the nineteenth century ex-banshee had tried to do what she could to pay back the hospitality of the Lair Legion in providing her with shelter and comfort. Every day she arranged flowers for the major rooms in the Lair Mansion.     Marie was startled to find somebody else was up this early (people from the future were so used to their electricated lighting that they slept in till eight or nine o’clock; hardly any rose with the dawn). The green skinned girl going through the desk jumped and slammed it shut guiltily. “I wasn’t doing anything,” said Kaara of Jaaxa.     Marie blushed, as she always did in the presence of the scantily-clad Caphan women. The green-skinned former pleasure slaves from some distant world amongst the stars rarely wore much more then metal-mesh bikinis and some bangles. Marie still felt wicked if she left off her outer corset. “Of course you weren’t,” the Victorian agreed hastily. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”     Kaara swallowed hard and came from behind the writing desk. “All right. You caught me. I am guilty. I confess.”     Marie blinked in surprise. “I just brought some flowers. Geraniums, for Asil’s office. Winter-blooming from the hothouse.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know you must report my fault. Tell housemother Hallie of my sins. I will accept whatever punishment she ordains.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But I don’t know what you’ve done,” Marie pointed out. “I just brought geraniums.”     Kaara looked around as if checking for eavesdroppers, then leaned towards Marie conspiratorially. “Sister,” she whispered, “I have been writing.”     Marie’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Writing?”     Kaara cast her eyes down and nodded. “A letter,” she admitted, showing the sealed white envelope she’d concealed behind her back. “I… someone showed me how to do it. I’m sorry.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sorry you wrote the letter?” This was the longest conversation Marie had managed with a Caphan. She was wondering if their command of English was all that good. “Do you really mean a letter?” she asked, clearly and loudly, trying to make herself distinct. “Perhaps you have the wrong word?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why are you shouting, sister?” puzzled Kaara. “I will confess everything to Mistress Hallie. There is no need to summon guards.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We have guards?” asked Marie. “Do you mean Sergeant MacHarridan? He’s a very nice man, for a hippopotamus.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I knew it was wrong, even as I was writing it,” Kaara confessed. “Miiri writes all the time of course, and some of the others. Deeela even knows the mysteries of the internets. But it is not considered proper for a Caphan pleasure slave to read or write. We must be attentive to the needs of our masters, holding in our memory the songs and stories which it is proper to tell.”     Marie was uncomfortable with the idea of Caphans having masters. They didn’t really resemble Negroes much. Their looks were more Arabian than Nubian, and Marie had never liked the idea that slaves might be expected to attend to their owner’s carnal urgings. She shuddered at the thought of her own maid Polly being forced to such horrors.     Of course, Polly had been dead for a hundred years, she had to remind herself.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There are no slaves here any more,” Marie reported. He recited by rote the lessons she’d received from Hallie and Asil. “Between 1861 and 1865 there was a civil war in our union, provoked in part by questions of slavery. The northern states were in favour of a more binding…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Excuse me,” Kaara interrupted, but with a polite genuflexion to show she meant no insult, “but I have had this lesson from Mistress Hallie and Mistress Asil also. And from Mistress Ebony and from Master Shoggoth himself. At least I think Master Shoggoth tried to teach it. We all fled the chamber before he finished explaining what he was trying to tell us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Shoggoth is somewhat alarming,” agreed Marie, trying to maintain the polite discourse that young ladies should always aspire to, no matter what the station of those they were addressing. Marie was unsure what the Caphan’s status was, really. As freed slaves that made them mere commoners, but it was impossible to know the nine refugees from the stars and believe them to be common in any way. “I was trying to express that you do not need to fear writing here. There is no slave master to abuse you or scorn you for using your intellect.”     Another bow. Kaara was uncertain how to speak to a girl who had previously been a spirit, a ghul or djinn, and who was so obviously nervous of her. “It is not that I fear a master’s correction,” she explained. “But I have been raised to the traditional beliefs of my people, so the skills more usually reserved for lemans or craftwomen are a guilty pleasure. And I expect soon to return to Caph, where I shall be a slave once more, so I must remember my duties.”     That surprised Marie. “Going back? But you escaped! You are free now!”     Kaara had dimples on her cheeks when she smiled. “I was rescued from a terrible master and brought safe here. But I hope one day to return to my world and be owned by a master who is kind and good, to be his best beloved and the mother of his sons.”     Marie blushed some more. She knew that Caphans did not believe in marriage, but she had difficulty with the idea of unwed mothers. “You hope to be in the… the troupe of the Emir?” she asked. “He seems young and handsome, and they say he is a good man. And that when he was visiting our world he…” Marie couldn’t find a delicate way of saying it.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Prince Kiivan was heading to mortal danger and he was the last of his line. He had to secure his dynasty before he went to war. Ohanna of Raael asked it of us, and Deeela, Sayaana, Philaana, Losiira, and Luuma went to his bed. Philaana, Losiira and Luuma have quickened and will gain much honour by bearing the first of a new generation of the Emir’s house.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But not… not you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Miiri said… she said each of us must decide whether we wished to bear our Emir’s offspring. Noona prefer’s Losiira’s company to that of men if she is given choice, while Odoona aches for a different master, and I… there is only one man whose sons I yearn to carry.”     Marie didn’t want to admit that most of the Caphans looked alike to her, so she hadn’t been able to work out until now which of them had swollen bellies (which they left proudly exposed). “Your world is very different from mine,” Marie admitted. “And from this one.”     Kaara had been trained in observation. She caught the catch in Marie’s voice. “There is some sorrow in your heart, tent-sister.”     Marie turned away and tried to retain a proper posture and attitude. “This is a very strange world for me too. I don’t think I cope with it too well.”     Like all Caphan pleasure slaves, Kaara had been trained to read body language. “It is more than that. There is a wound that has not healed.”     Marie allowed herself a genteel snort and fussed over the flowers.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I would be honoured if you would share that hurt with me, Lady Marie,” offered Kaara. “I have wept often into my silken pillows for loss and shame, expecting no comfort or hope. But I discovered that true friends can be a solace even in the worst hour, and that hope springs unlooked for in the darkest depths.”     The former banshee bit her lip. “I think that maybe things are different on… on Caph. It sounds like a fairytale world, with quests and battles and such, such burning desires. My own life has been somewhat… smaller.”     Kaara bowed to Marie. “My lady, you were the guardian spirit of the House. There is much honour in such an existence.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I died here and haunted here because I had no choice. I was going to be sacrificed to an elder being as his… his bride. The man I was betrothed to, the man whose bride I thought I’d be, he was the one who gave me to the monster.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That is a cruel master,” admitted Kaara.     Marie looked to the ceiling for a moment to gather her courage and went on with a hushed voice. “There is more. Worse. Those sins were other people’s. But on the night when I died, just before they caught me and brought me to their altar… I was eloping. I was running away with another man, my fiancée’s brother.”     Kaara’s brows rose. “You were running off with a man who was not your master?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was fleeing with a man I’d come to love. It was mad. It was desperate. It was shameful and it would have been ruinous to us both. And yet I wanted it so badly, I was so in love, that I’d have thrown away everything, my reputation, my virtue, my honour, to be with him.”     Kaara moved forward and caught Marie’s hands. “Sister, that is the very definition of passion. I… I too have known it. I too once offered to run away, to break all bonds of duty and devotion, if my man demanded it. Your shame is mine too, that we love too much, beyond reason or knowing.”     Marie tried to pull away. “Well, my William is long dead now. After I died – a long time after – he found another wife and he lived a long happy life I hope. I still see him, sometimes, mirrored in the features of his descendent Nats. It is hard, sometimes, being near to Nats.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sister Uhuna says Nats has his good point,” Kaara offered.     Marie tried to pretend she didn’t understand what the Caphan was talking about. “Well, I’m just being silly,” the former banshee said. “The truth is I’m just a shadow now of that girl I once was. My love is lost. My world is gone. This second life I’ve been granted is brief, to be counted in months rather than years they say. So I hold on and do the proper things. I cut flowers for the Mansion and I try to serve.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If your life was measured in a day it would be worth having,” Kaara told her. “And even then it can be sweet. I once looked for death, but in the night Miiri held me and promised me that one day there could be joy I never expected. If I died then I would never know it. If I lived and suffered then I might also live and smile. And I did. And now… Marie, my love is not dead! And I have known bliss with him, and he has promised me that somehow, one day, I will be his to have and to hold. He has fought worlds for me. He has looked upon me in all my dirty fallen ugliness and made me clean and fair again. So if I can find such an end, or just hope for it, then so can you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t think finding a… a gentleman would solve my problems, Miss Kaara.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There are all kinds of ways for life to be sweet,” suggested the Caphan. “The right song, the right story, the right food, the right sunset, a friend’s smile, a child’s laugh, sharing in the joy of others’ good fortune, the satisfaction of a hard duty finished well. Or if gentlemen are no longer your taste, then perhaps Noona or Odoona or even I could…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No, that’s not necessary,” stammered Marie, blushing deeply. “Sunsets will be quite sufficient, thank you.” She looked honestly at the green-skinned alien girl. “I mean that. Thank you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I hope your heart will ease. You are not alone.”     Marie glanced down at the white envelope clutched guiltily in Kaara’s hand. “Who are you writing to anyway?”     Now the Caphan blushed. “It… is to the Daily Trombone paper of heralding,” she confessed. “The master of that publication wrote a thing called an op-ed, in which he said some untrue things about my sisters and I. Hurtful things, and slanders about Master Viisionary that made us angry. So Miiri said…” She glanced about the hall to check nobody was listening, “Miiri said if we wished to we were allowed to tell Master Jaameson why we thought his editorial was wrong. She said that it was an Earth tradition. So I… wrote.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My father wrote to the papers a great deal,” remembered Marie. “I think you are doing the right thing. We must speak up for our friends and we must all correct slanders made by small men of little understanding.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Even us?” ventured Kaara.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Even us. In the years since I died so many things have changed in my country. Women now own property, work at jobs once reserved only for men. They may vote for elected officials – or be elected officials! They may be doctors, or lawyers, or, or superheroes! They may lead teams of superheroes. There are no slaves. Nobody has to be second class unless they let themselves be.” She clasped the Caphan’s hand again. “So we do not only have the right to speak for ourselves and our loved ones, we have the duty to do it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then I should send this missive to Master Jaameson?”     Marie glanced at the adamantine front door of the Lair Mansion. Beyond lay the whole of Parody Island and beyond that the long bridge over to mainland Paradopolis. “We should deliver this missive to Mr Jameson,” the girl decided. “We should take it to him and tell him to his face how wrong he is.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We should?” Kaara glanced over the water to the shining city. “Without permission?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We should. Miss Kaara, this is twenty-first century Earth. It is hard and cruel and bitter, but as you reminded me it can be sweet and glorious too. Let us go and face it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I will come with you then, tent-sister.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I shall go and fetch my bonnet.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I will go prepare my houri daggers.”     Kaara and Marie were going on a road trip. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2010 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2010 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

It's actually a really great little character piece, and I especially like the way it fleshes out more of Marie through her reactions to the Caphan and their mirrored challenges to adapt. Plus, who doesn't like fresh flowers in a room?

As I mentioned to Jason, I fear I yanked continuity out from under this one with my own efforts on the Caphan's literacy. That sucks. Especially since it robbed the board of the opportunity to imagine the faces down at the paper's complaints department.