In article <398699BF.73DC3E4A@student.unsw.edu.NOS.PAM.au> ;, z2214076@student.unsw.edu.NOS.PAM.au says... >Jeff Huo wrote: > >

> > ["Which reminds me, m'lady; where do you call home, if any such
> > place be?"]
>
> "All places, and none. I have certain haunts of which I
> am fond, and where I keep my belongings safe - although
> most of the important ones are backed up on CD-ROM
> these days. Converting them was a nuisance but well
> worth it. I have hideouts in several cities - chiefly New
> Orleans, LA, New York, London, Seville, and Rio de
> Janeiro, and I lived for a while near Bletchley Park. But
> I go wherever business takes me, and most of the things
> I need fit in my bag or my car. Currently I'm working in
> Manila."
>
 

"Manila?" Christina bounces in, pink aura blazing away. "We never did get to Manila when we visited the Phillipines. Of course, I'm sure the locals would have been less than happy to see us, considering we had just pilliaged their compatriots on the other side of the Pacific and had our ship loaded to the gunports with Spaniard Gold...."

In response to a few of the puzzled looks, Christina smiles and explains, "It was the fall of 1579 when I was last in the  Phillipines. That was one of my favorite lifetimes...."

You can see Christina 's eyes shift to another place as she recalls. "Fifteen-fifty-eight; the year the first Queen Elizabeth came to the throne...the dawn of the glory that was to be Britannia triumphant for nearly two centuries...and the year I was reborn --into the body of a boy.  My fae seeming was still a female Pooka tigress --as it has always been --but my mortal seeming was a man." She shrugs. "Random mistakes and mutations happen in biological systems --why not Chimerical ones? I have no idea why it happened, and it has happened but once in almost forty lifetimes. But it did...and bless that it did!"

"I was orphaned by fire at the age of ten; the stress of losing my parents triggered my chrysalis. Fortunately, I was quickly found by a kindly local Boggan spell-caster, who raised me and helped me relearn the Fae Arts I had learned in previous lifetimes." Christina looks annoyed. "That's what I hate the most --having to relearn everything all over again each lifetime --tho I am grateful that I can even remember that I once knew them. Perhaps only one in one hundred thousand Kithain have clear memories of more than a handful of past lives like I do..."

"They say that Turnberry has a shade of Troll in him --honorable, courageous, calm and collected. They say for me that I must have Eshu blood --wanderlusting, daredevil, live for the moment. Certainly it is true now ,and it was true then. When I had mastered the Fifth level of Wayfare and Fae --enough to use Flicker-flash reliably and to travel the Trods-- I was off to see the world, and nothing could hold me. I said farewell to my kindly master, and signed up as a cabin boy aboard the good ship Pelican --the ship the world would later remember as the Golden Hind, under one Sir Francis Drake ."

Christina smiles warmly at the memory. "Sir Francis was the most beloved hero of his age, and well he should be! He had that personality that could convince men to willingly follow him into hell --a man who shared every hardship, shouldered every burden, shared every spoil with his men without bias --a commoner who became a hero and a knight by his own skill and daring. He was going to sail around the world --and of course I was going to join him!"

"I could cheat, of course. Sea travel is often interminably boring, but with Flicker-flash, I could be home in a friendly free-hold and return when the going got interesting again. Also, I could help the crew by bringing things back from England -- somehow, just when stores were running low, they'd mysteriously find an cask that was overlooked somehow, or the sextant everyone thought had been lost overboard in the storm turns up under a rail...maybe not quite the same color...."

"And Sir Francis! He was a Dreamer --had to be one, to even dare to sail around the world-- and he could see me for what I was." Christina stares up at the ceiling, dreamily. "There was a reason that she was Queen Elizabeth's favorite --he had a gentle, romantic way with women that could sweep even the most jaded off of their feet. And I was and am Fiona --I don't need much convincing. Offically, I was his cabin boy...but when the doors closed and he could be sure no one heard...I was his Fae Princess, his Fairy Queen."

Then she sighs. "But, like all loves of the House Fiona --this one was doomed from the start. After all, despite being a female Fae, I was a mortal boy...and such things were frowned upon then. If I had been a mortal lady...but then, if I had been a mortal lady, I would have never made it aboard ship.  He never told anyone about me--they would have thought him mad, of course, and considering he had to put down one mutiny before he even entered the Pacific, it would have been foolhardy. But it was still grand, grand adventure! And to return to England in 1580, having circled the world and come back with the holds packed with Spanish Gold and Moloccan Spice, and the Queen herself came aboard to make Sir Francis a Knight..."

"Even not-withstanding everything else, Sir Francis was married before he had set out; we both knew that our love could not last. I stayed long enough to watch Sir Francis recieve his spurs, then slipped away. Sir Francis would go on to still greater triumph in the West Indies and leading the defense against the Armada; though never again would I be a part of his personal life like I was when we sailed the world round, I joined his Sea-dogs for both battles, reveling in the midst of battle and adventure for Queen and Mother England. And when Sir Francis finally died at sea, I mourned for him, like all England did. But by that time I had again found myself swept up in the tidings of adventure, beauty and Glamour...this time as a member of a theatre company in London --the Chamberlain's Men."

"Yes, that's right, the Chamberlain's Men of Sir Richard Burbage...and Sir William Shakespeare."

 
"O Romeo, Romeo! /
  Wherefore art thou Romeo? /
Deny thy father and refuse thy name; /
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
  And I'll no longer be a Capulet."
 
Christina smiles. "I'm sorry --I just -had- to do that," she says, apolgetically. "1594 it was when we brought the house down. The -world- had never seen anything like it --and in the centuries that have passed since, few have done it better."

Wistful again. "Can you imagine what that was like? Perhaps you can, Julia --maybe you were there. But to have walked the stage...to have been the first person in all the world to have given voice to those lines, to be the first to hold an audience by the heart, to -prove- that a play can be as noble a form of art as any...."

"Okay," she admits sheepishly, "I wasn't the first. Another actor got that privelege. But at least I got to be there...desparately hoping that the actor for whom I was understudying would get run over by a horse or have his voice drop so that I could step on in...and in due time, I got my chance."

"I helped play all the female parts --all actors in those days were men, but it's not terribly surprising that my mortal male self could play women so convincingly --after all, "Christopher" could draw upon Christina 's memories and mannerisms from almost six hundred previous years...I had been with the Theatre in various roles, and when the Lord Chamberlain's Men emerged from the days of the Plague I was one of the principal players."

Christina laughs. "The best part was, there were, at our peak, six of us Kithain among the principal players of the company! The Theatre was a natural place for us Fae to seek and collect Glamour...and to have England's greatest actor, and her greatest playright, under our protection...oh, the adventures we had! We battled would-be rhapsodizers and ravagers by night, reveled in the glory of the theatre by day...fueled William's visions with Reverie and were fueled in return --a win-win-win for everyone. Poor William never really knew how to deal with us. Oh, he saw us --a Dreamer that powerful couldn't but help-- but he never acknowledged us openly...of course, A Midsummer's Night Dream was a nice touch..." she smiles.

"I'll serve this duke; /
Thou shall present me as an eunuch to him, /
It may be worth thy pains; for I can sing /
And speak to him in many sorts of music /
That will allow me very worth his service. /
What else may hap, to time I will commit, /
only shape thou thy silence to my wit."
 
" " 'Twelfth Night' --the story of Viola, a woman who lives as a man in a man's world, a comedy of errors in the pursuit of love - -if ever there was a part written just for me, this was it. I -did- premiere this one, and it was wonderful --perhaps the highest point of all of my lives so far. It was also my swan song; I was born in with the reign of Elizabeth, and I would not long outlast her. I fell to an Unseelie Redcap's blade just a few short weeks after the 1603 theatre season closed, falling in defense of our beloved Bard from those who would seek to rape this most glorious font of Glamour."

She shrugs. "All good things must come to an end; to every Spring must come a Winter. But in that lifetime I saw the dawn of that which was to become the glory of Britain reborn -- a joy that has never left me, and for however many more lifetimes I may yet live, there will always be a part of me that is forever England; as much as I know nothing made of man was or will ever be perfect, there will be a part of me that remembers when the sun never set on the British Empire...and hopes that one day Avalon shall rise again."

 
She sings, clear and proud,
 
" Land of Hope and Glory, /
  Mother of the Free, /
  How shall we extol thee, /
  Who are born of thee?
 
  Wider still and wider /
  Shall thy bounds be set; /
  God, who made thee mighty, /
  Make thee mightier yet, /
  God, who made thee mighty, /
  Make thee mightier yet! "
 
> -Julia, Lasombra
 
- Christina
  [ This post was for you, Alistair. Rule Britannia. ;-) ]