PASSION FOR TINION (WIP Novel 120,000 words)
© Cupideros, October 21, 2006
CHAPTER 17: AKYRIA'S GIFT
© Cupideros, November 26, 2006
Distraught Akyria returned to the Lord Tweezer's Palace. Her Galan rug in Turkish design felt good under her feet--better than dry, irritating sand anyway. She entered her room and removed her shoes shaking the sand into a nearby box specifically for this purpose. She removed her insulating socks and shook them free of sand too. She lay back on the bed staring at her water lily motifs, ponds, and birds. She unleashed her brunette ponytail. "I'll never wear my hair long again, she vowed." Her back lay awkward on the pillows. She reached back, wrenched one free, and flung it on the floor. “No need of pretenses now. I'm going to wear pants all the time." Akyria accepted the possibility she'd never fulfill her purpose as a woman. No and now she was a woman alone, and then her tears flowed.
But after fifteen minutes, she composed herself, wiping tears from her eyes, "If my family is good. Then I'm going to make good count for good." Barefoot she went to the east wall. She stared at the red-armour-clad female knight on her horse kissing her standing husband before she road into war. She stared at it. Her eyes rejected art long ago although she studied a bit. Her art eyes returned. This oil painting showed superb craftsmanship. She ran her fingers lightly over the brush strokes. True love and desire went into this painting, she thought.
The painting lingered in her family for more than three generations. Akyria touched the old wood. She got a good feeling from it. She estimated the paintings probably two-to-three hundred years old. No one wanted it because it came from Anel.
Anel moved to the Quodarian side long ago. She's kind of a family urban legend. She ended up discovering the Ancient Pharaohs lineage came from Africa's interior, African descendants. From what family members described, Anel complained of a "glass ceilings" and not being allowed to practice her DNA Geneticist degree. Akyria grabbed the painting. She hefted it in both her hands. The painting length covered half, Akyria’s height. Again she found craftsmanship marvelous.
"Well I can see why Lord Tweezer didn't want me. What guys wants a woman who is the knight?" Akyria laughed, "Anel, the crazy-black sheep in the family. No wonder the painting never found a permanent home. Whatever happened to you Anel? How did you come to get such a odd painting?" Akyria flipped the painting over and saw a note signed on the brown cardboard backing.
"Anel, Happy, Fufilled."
Akyria's family possessed latent ability in psychometry. An image flashed before her. A girl studying in class. Akyria traced her hand along the brown edges. She pried a bit, the backing snapped off. A cloud of dust flew everywhere and Akyria coughed twice. She waved her hand, blowing the dust away. On the painting back, she saw a handwritten letter.
Hi Sister Belathien,
I'm doing fine. I'm so happy! I've found DNA work at private university. We're experimenting with little white mouse and how they think under stress. The job pays well and my boss is a woman. Can you believe that! Yes. She's very talented. I'll be working with a couple of assistants; Legawend is one of them.
Quodarian life is so different. Here girls are treasured; girls are expected to rise, to perform jobs outside the home. It's not a token thing like in Galan. You work hard though. The girls here are obsessed with science. Especially in during their fourteenth and fifteenth year, they’re science crazies.
Girls don't just boil water to cook dinner. Laughs. No, they transform H20 from its balmy state into a heated state changing the molecular structure separating the gas from the water in the form of bubbles. The gas escapes into steam that also can be used to cook. And that's just cooking.
They analysis everything from a scientific perspective. You don't read a book: you fire electrons from one brain cell to the next and if its a very creative process they fire across corpus callosum and these cells then chain react with other cells located in various sectors of the brain’s memory, mathematics, language, sensory areas and even the lymphatic animal brain granting you an answer to your question in the form of an Aha-digital print out to the auditory muscle in the mouth. You got to see them to believe it. Any girl who doesn't think or express herself in scientific terms is cast out; she's like glass-tube cell in old Earth’s earliest computers.
Swordfighting isn’t just swordfighting. It’s compressing air by the swift motion of your sword so that the air waves shoot forward toward your opponent hitting her with the sound before you strike with your blade.
There is an urban legend I know is true. It's about a fourteen year old girl who upon hearing from her male teacher tutoring her after class say she didn't have a math brain. The enraged fourteen-year-old girl reached across the teacher's desk grabbed him by his white shirt collar and said, "You're going to teach me physics if it kills me and you!" The girl went on, became a physicist, and has one or two discoveries named after her.
These girls graduate form high school, carrying the equivalent of Galan third-year college education!
They are forced to give up Barbie dolls and plushies of any sort at fourteen. The hardest is not reading and rejecting romance novels. Quodarian join these little clubs. Yay! I joined one. They had special clubs signups for thirty-year old spinsters or moms like me. One club I joined, the Flying Doves. The Flying Doves change the graduating gift every generation or so. Makes each woman special to do it that way. In my generation, each woman received a replicated painting. A year later during vacation, I took the time to do an oil painting celebrating joining the Flying Dove. You're holding what I hope is an excellent oil painting of their replicated copy award. The club is nationwide in Quodarian. They couldn't afford nor would they want to give out individual oil painting copies.
The Flying Does makes you appreciate being a woman. The highest women in the country are members. Moms, daughters, nieces, aunts, female cousins, senators, CEOs, banking magnets, you name the post they're members--even the Queen is a member. Any female can join. Being willing to experiment loving and respecting yourself no matter what the situation or circumstances describes the Flying Doves. All kinds of fun things we get to do. I can't tell you all, and the club not entirely a secret from men, but no men can join it.
I know little cousin Akyria join up at the speed of light; given her propensity for debate and politics, science, speaking her mind and wanting badly to work with the Tweezer Royal Family and all. I'm confident one day her efforts will pay off and the Akyria line will occupy the Vice Chancellor’s chair!
Well time to go. I'm being inducted into another spiffy little club Quodarians started in year 10 After Destruction of old Earth.
Take care,
Love Anel.
More tears saturated Akyria's eyes as she realized she'd fulfilled Anel's prophecy. She didn't like going by Akyria IV. Her great-grandmothers wormed their way into supporting the Tweezers. They didn't know one Tweezer would launch this Eternal war. And now, Akyria thought--what a mistake they had made.
She carefully put the painting back together and vowed never to tell a soul the painting's history. She further vowed to be a source of good. A guy's best female friend never marries him, but she could protect him.
end chapter 17
