I wrote about half of this on Saturday and once again ground to a halt. I went to Mass extra early Sunday morning to first pray then open my mind. About 2500 words poured in.

I also – finally! – realized the way of my stupid “six month” box I’d built for myself. As you’re read here, I was wondering what will Eloise be doing for five of those months? And then it hit me, like a two-ton heavy thing, why six months? That was just a completely arbitrary time for how long Robert and Kali were gone. I still want him gone awhile, for reasons, but now it’s closer to three months. That I can work with.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

“I,” Colour began, softly, “can speak through Aurelia to make emails to my nephew.  But I need to think about what to say.  You okay being by yourself for a bit, Eloise?”

Not sure what she meant, Eloise nodded and watched her walk slowly off to the west.  Any legionary who noticed either of them would make a quick glance, shrug, and move on with their duties.

All militaries are the same in that regard.  Everyone assumes someone else knows what is going on.  She ambled back to the gate, thinking it easier to think amongst trees – like home – than inside this steel and ferro-concrete fortress.  One of the men there stopped her.

“Apologies, Lieutenant,” he said.  Do they know who I am?  Of course they do.  “If you are heading out, orders are for an escort.”

“I guess I’m a flight risk?” she asked.

“Not sures whats you means by that,” he replied, “but Texas is right there.  Their SOG is as good as ours.  Cain’t has you taken, Lieutenant.”

A war might start in two days.  It will start if I’m nabbed.

“I see.  Thank you, er,” I don’t know their ranks, “very much.  I’ll just walk around in here.”

“It’s not that far, Lieutenant,” he nodded with his chin to the north, “but Empress did have us put a little garden in.  Nuthin’ like Ma’s back home, but still purty.”

“Thanks, again.”

No more than fifteen minutes later had her in something unexpected.  It’s some strange mix of a English and Japanese garden.  The plants seem to have no particular arraignment or grouping, but everything is meticulous.  There are some trees, but nothing which would hinder line-of-sight to the battlements, another twenty meters north.

Finding a wooden bench, she sat.

“It’s as if this Livia is some modern-day Helen of Troy,” she said aloud, not caring who might be listening.  Her mother had taught her talking was clarifying.  “Not abducted this time, but still prevented from going home.  Leading to a war which was the last act of the Great Powers before the Bronze Age Collapse.  Glad I learned that online; sure didn’t in my Toronto school.  And here is a Great Power, on the Moon and Mars, about to repeat history.”

I should have brought some water.  The air is more humid than anything I’ve ever encountered, but I also never talked all that much.

“These people, even that woman from next door, Colour, seems to think everything happens for a reason,” she went on.  “That’s closer to some of Dad’s Hinduism; fatalism.  I grew up thinking I could be anything.”

Besides a “guest” of a kind of human I do not understand.

“The Regent, Aurelia, seems to think she can clever her way out of all this.” A sigh.  “From what I’ve seen, maybe she can?  Then again, she said she was talking to lots of different people.  Trying to reach, I hope, a peaceful settlement.”

“This is so stupid!  Why are the Texians holding this woman?  I know nothing about her besides she’s married to a Crown Prince.  What do they hope to gain from this gambit?”

Now almost directly overhead, the sun was warmer than anything she had ever felt in Canada.  Eloise stretched out on the bench and closed her eyes.  Maybe a nap before lunch?  Aurelia said I’m free until tonight… what is that stink?  Iron and sulfur?  Do they have a foundry around here?  Her hand gripped at the dirt…

Dirt?