Without fear there is no progress

She did not put the pressure on. There was no point in trying to get the Court to do anything while it was trying to decide if it liked her or not. She ought to have known better than to try to take the throne then and there. Kaly honestly thought they would have been happy about it, since she was freeing them from the tyranny of a monster.

Of course, that had left her in a position of realization; she sounded an awful lot like Mistral and that sent her stomach roiling. The stupid dog had come in and truly made a mess of everything. She may have been the Queen, but that did not mean that things were going her way. However, unlike Mistral, she was willing to give it time and did not fight their anger. Who was going to fight for her then, anyway?

She had to roll it off her back, but the girl’s heart was born of the storm. She fought the urge to be the same as Mistral, to demand their love and affection. Rome was not built in a day and Kaly had to work on her various projects to keep her mind distracted and demonstrate that she was not exacting authority she did not have.

She wanted to see Abigail, who had come to her asking if she wanted to be Queen. Kaly had assumed that the woman supported her, but with the announcement of their biological connection, she doubted that there was much forgiveness to be had on that front. The family likely had enough of lies to last a generation or two.

Instead, Kalypso sat at the desk in the Hotel’s lobby, charcoal in hand as she sketched on a large sheet of bark she had actually ripped off a dead log. She had dried it until it was smooth and used it as a surface to design the houses that her packmates had suggested to her moons prior. An idea done, she started carrying it up to where she could scent her half-sister lurking. With hesitation, though, she paused. Would the woman even want to deal with her yet?

OOC: Slight PP; lemme know if not cool

IC:
Since the execution and the revelation that had managed to rock the Sadira-Stormbringer family even further than Mistral’s deeds, Abigail had been trying to make up for lost time with her young children. Ajax and Cicely had been miraculously patient for such young things, watching their Mother attend to her duties to the Court as a whole without too much complaining. Even if Abigail always returned to them after a meeting, even if those absences had been to forge them a better future, she still felt guilty for not focusing on them as much as she’d have liked. She didn’t want to be an absent Mother.

A book balanced on her knee, she read aloud to the pair of pups who lay bellies down on the bed. Ajax and Cicely were listening to Abigail but they had also become more aware of all their senses recently, more able to communicate when they noticed something in their environment. Abigail closed the book when her daughter’s nose twitched and lifted into the air.

She moved to the door of the room with paws still heavy from all they’d been through in the past few weeks. At least the rest of the Archiduchessa looked well-groomed, now, her curls in place and her white fur scrubbed.

Abigail had expected Kalypso to come to her, of course. She was still the new Reine’s right hand, and she didn’t get a sense that her newly revealed half-sister was the type to play avoidance games for too long. Kalypso seemed too straight-forward for that – but then how well did Abigail truly know the Savoy woman? They shared a Father but Kalypso had been able to keep that information from her for months.

The soft sounds of puppies jumping from the bed to join their Mother at the doorway made Abigail’s ears flick back. She was eager to get this initial ice-break over with, she realised. She poked her head around the door frame.

“There’s no need to hover, Your Majesty.”

[300+]

Kalypso started a little, blinking in surprise. She had expected the Archiduchessa to be present, mostly because she had always seemed to be. Even during the height of trouble with Mistral, she had been present, even if she was not consulted for advice as the left-hand ought to have been. Mistral had been unwise in so many ways, after all.

”Ah, I was not really hovering,” she said, though even that sounded so heavily like an excuse that she mentally berated herself. There was a sense of awkward tension in the air between them: it was no mystery what on earth that could have been caused by.

Her eyes shot down to Ajax and Cicely, who seemed relatively unharmed in the whole fiasco, but mental scars were far more often hidden and lasting than those on the surface of flesh. It also dawned on her, once more, that they were her half-niece and nephew. It was a weird world where she could properly consider those children on her father’s side her actual family.

”Okay, I think maybe we should address the elephant in the room after all this, if we want to work together properly.” She was blunt and direct, if still somewhat polite-sounding. She was trying to avoid sounded antagonistic, trying to paint herself as a fairer picture than Mistral had ever been. But it was not hard to seem more level-headed than a hormonal, pregnant dog with the penchant for screaming fits of rage.

”We are half-sisters. Is there an issue with that?” she asked directly, brows rising as she played with the edges of the tree bark.

The Archiduchessa’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. She was sceptical about Kalypso’s initial response but she supposed it didn’t matter either way if the Reine had been hovering. Sure, it didn’t seem much like something Kaly would do but Abigail had to remind herself that she didn’t know their new ruler – her new half-sister – all that well.

That would need to change, she thought.

It was only when Abigail looked down and saw her children gravitating towards the islander that she realised Ajax and Cicely saw Kalypso as a person of safety. That was a relief in a way; it would’ve been far more awkward if Abigail had had to shoo screaming children away from the young woman in order to speak with her. A child’s judgement couldn’t always be trusted but Kalypso, along with Alessan, had returned Ajax to his Mother.

After her initial start the new Reine swiftly made up for any time she might have spent deliberating over knocking. Abigail had always had a strange appreciation for Kalypso’s direct manner. It wasn’t how the Sadira woman would’ve gone about things, but then there was a reason Abigail was not cut out to be a Queen herself.

The question hung in the air for a few moments as Abigail tried to look inside herself for any part of Kalypso being her half-sister which grated on her.

“I have no issue with you being my half-sister,” she stated simply. “You cannot help where you were born or who you were born to.”

The elder sister let out a short sigh.

“I’d like to think I could trust you like I would any other sister, Kalypso - in time, maybe. Certainly, if we’re going to work together, I want to be able to believe in what you tell me.” Abigail met the woman’s vibrant blue eyes. “I don’t want to underestimate the burden you must’ve carried, knowing, when the rest of us did not. I suspect timing played a part in you keeping it from me?” She shook her head. “But I’d still like to hear it from you: why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

[350]

Kalypso sighed. It was and always would be a matter of keeping secrets. They had a time and a place, each with a purpose, but she could understand when her very righteous half-siblings would protest. They were more inclined toward the truth regardless of what good it would do. What good had it done them to know their father was incapable of a committed relationship without being watched? It was something Kaly had come to terms with but clearly not for her half-siblings.

Or perhaps it was just the fact that it was such a big secret and that they would have liked to be privy to it. There were countless reasons why, though, and she simply had to pick the best one to give to Abigail. It was not a lie, per se, more an omission of excessive details that had nothing to offer to help clarify the situation.

”Would you have come barging in, demanding to be part of what very much appeared to be a very happy family?” she countered gently, looking down at the innocent youths who came toward her feet. She had come to the rescue when Ajax had been left to return with his grandfather’s severed hand. Granted, Alessan could have been able to do the same on his own without her. That she was there was circumstantial.

”Would you have willingly broken up a family that seemed to be close? Would you have said something in my place, broken the tranquility and peace of your home, when it seemed like the issues that were the reason you were even conceived in the first place were gone?” She had not wanted to open a wound that would not heal, though it was mostly that she did not want to cause a stir without proving herself first. Clearly, she had not done a good job.

”I don’t expect the younger ones to forgive me, they knew little of true suffering and strife before Mistral came.” They knew nothing of what true sorrow was until their mother’s death.

OOC: This post is a mess. Brought to you by decaf Rat.

IC:
The elder sibling knew that the new Reine was better able than her to charm and persuade people; or perhaps she was just more open to using those charms in ways which Abigail wouldn’t consider. Abigail had always been sharp tongued when it was necessary but she was sweet to her core and now she wondered if the naivety she thought she’d left behind her was rearing its head again.

Her lips pursed.

“I was in your place,” she reminded her half-sister, her ears flattening. “When I first visited the Court our Father had another family here. Half-brothers I’d never met or even known about.” Abigail cast her mind back to those first days when she had met Pascal and Valencia, among others. “I’m no stranger to awkward revelations within this family – and in your place I did upset a happy family. I was young, and I thought I was a Princess - I don’t know if I’d do it over again, knowing what I know now.”

The woman’s brows knit together; a great deal of effort was going into voicing her thoughts in some comprehensible way. With a sigh, she moved towards the small desk and the chair and sat.

“Did you know Alessan and I were kidnapped as children, like Cicely and Ajax? And Thyri and Myrkr – they’ve suffered too. The Stormbringer name may not mean much to those who don’t bear it – but that is what we are, my full siblings and I. We can weather the things life throws at us; Gods know we’ve proven that. But understand that I would do anything to avoid my siblings having to overcome those things.”

“If you want to be my sister then I’m not rejecting you; family forgives, one way or another. But if you were here for a claim and a claim alone? Then it would make the road much longer and much harder.”

[317]

Kalypso was not one to be inclined to reveal intimate details of her nature to others, not when it had bitten her badly when she was younger. And yet, Abigail willingly shared her own without hesitation, because that was what family did. The Reine merely listened to the woman’s words, aware of some of it already from the things their father had told them, but he was not privy to all the information, naturally. She knew that it must have been a shocking sensation to watch her own children suffer the same thing she had, but Kalypso could not blame her. It was hardly her fault any of those things happened.

She debated how to phrase herself, and her own feelings on the subject. She had come for the throne, but she had also come because she had known there was family there, and a culture that she had not yet experienced. Granted, she had come wanting the throne from the start, but she had never made any prominent motions to attempt an overthrow. She was going to bully her way through experience and make them see she was right for the job.

Kaly knew how it seemed to them all; another usurper, come with claims, eager to steal the throne.

”I have had stories about the Court told to me and my brother since we were very small. But my mother was ambitious, is ambitious, and that is something she gave us. That is what the Savoy bloodline gives. Our father gave us tenacity, sturdiness, and dependability. It’s quite potent,” she added with a smug grin. They were all some form of that trait, watered down and mutated into their own variants.

Then her face fell as she knew that it would take a good showing of familial affection to properly win Abigail, but Kalypso was so hesitant. It had been her and her mother’s secret to keep.

”In the isles, a man romanced and seduced me thinking we had wealth. He and his crew wanted it. His real lover had not cared that he was traipsing around with a girl not yet a year.” Her lips grew tight as she stared at Abigail, or more accurately through her. ”I decapitated him.” She shut her eyes, shook her head, feeling the tendrils of painful betrayal circle her heart a moment. It took a few breaths to ease them away. ”And family is what comforted me after. I understand the importance of family.” Then, the Reine was silent.

Abigail couldn’t help smiling when the grin surfaced on Kalypso’s face. Though they may have been raised in different places, by different Mothers and with different names, she understood that flash of pride in the traits that had been passed down to them.

She folded her hands.

“When I was much younger the thing I was proudest of was being the daughter of a King – being a Princess. It’s funny how things change… these days the things I’m proudest of are the things I’ve worked and fought for,” she mused. Her rank, hard-earned, was a point of pride for Abigail; so were her children and the ties she’d built within the Court. “And I know you’ll work hard in your rank. That’s all we can really ask right now.”

She could not deny that there was a connection between her and the new Reine which went beyond the mere knowledge that they were sisters and gratitude for putting an end to Mistral’s tyranny. Abigail had always admired Kalypso in some ways – the younger woman was right that her personality was potent. It was the fact that she knew it and used it which separated her from Abigail.

Something in Kalypso’s demeanour changed – and for perhaps the first time Abigail realised she was learning something of her half-sister, something beyond her boldness and tenacity. Bright eyes looked through the pale Archiduchessa, recollecting. Abi knew that stare; it was the first time Kalypso had shown vulnerability to her.

The Sadira woman took a moment to appreciate what it must have taken for Kalypso to reveal this part of herself. She took a half step forward, still piecing it together.

“Thank you for telling me that,” she murmured. “I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to push. I appreciate that we’ve led very different lives; perhaps I shouldn’t have assumed...”

Her gaze flicked down.

[300+]

Kalypso's demeanor seemed changed too far beyond to return to her pleasant smiles. The frown seemed etched into the space between her eyes accompanied by a tight line of black across her maw. There was no way around her story, but she knew it was something to share with Abigail, even if it was for the sole purpose of trying to win her over. There was no real glory to the tale, and the details were as sparse as the tundra. She would not share the joys, the bliss, the lust, the affection. She would only share the bloody anger that broke her heart and steeled her soul.

Hidden within, there was warning.

"We all make a fair lot of assumptions in life," said the young Queen flatly. She was guilty of assumptions as well, but there were plenty more to make, and others to avoid. She struggled with avoiding judging people outright, but it was a habit born of pride that was difficult to break.

"Have you ever felt compelled to destroy a life before it destroyed yours?" she whispered softly, turning away from her eldest half-sister. "I have no qualms about killing if needed, truly. I've done so twice now." She seemed nonchalant as she peered into space. "Once for a broken heart. Twice for justice." Mistral had been a necessary murder. She ought to be happy in whatever afterlife the gods deemed she deserved that her bastard children continued to live. "Perhaps Mistral thought the same of her actions." Kalypso shrugged, then turned, sighing.

"But it is all in the past. We need to move on. We will be trapped in this moment if we do not." And the Court would stagnate again.