11: The Unfinished Task

Just don’t go.

More perplexed than ever, Alexandrie did not want to talk to her grandmother. If Grandmère made a contract, it was not with La Chanson. If she was being kept from telling Alexandrie anything about her task, it was likely to do with L’Autre Chanson - the one that frightened Kazsra, the one that took them into Spider’s memories - or Spider’s past.

Why? Why did it keep doing that? What was it trying to gain?
And why had people broken into Alexa’s house?
What if they weren’t breaking in to hurt or steal? What if they were breaking in to leave something? But why her? Was this another attempt to find or get a Praetorian? Why were they trying to have her be the figurehead for revolution? Why not Spider - or Lucas - or even Re’mmi’ki - who had performed and almost caused a riot?

The half elf sighed into her tankard. She would know soon, she supposed. They were going into the sewers to have a meeting with people who either wanted her dead or wanted her to most certainly do something for them.

Beyond anything, Alexa found it insulting that anyone who wanted to use her image as the face for their uprising would think it appropriate to have meetings in the sewers. Had they not learned anything of her before deciding to use her likeness? And they had not been careful - she had seen things they had written on the walls herself.

No Progress with the Confederacy,

A smart thing to write but a little obvious. Besides, Alexandrie was not going to be staying. She had a task to complete, and that task was not here. Her eyes settled on Spider. She knew that if he didn’t like what he heard, Spider would kill everyone in that meeting without a second thought. By the same token, she knew that if there was a meeting and the Luonkon knew about it, they would also systematically kill every person in the meeting, too. As much as she didn’t want to go - didn’t want to be in the sewer, she had to be if the rest of the party were going to be there.

Besides, what would she do if she stayed behind? Spend the evening with Genofeva? Make more birds?

Perhaps.

Just don’t go.
They’d all said it at some point, as though Alexandrie truly had a choice whether to go and do what La Chanson asked or not. As though curiosity wouldn’t get her there just as surely as happenstance. As though she wouldn’t end up there even if Genofeva decided to try to kill her, or someone kidnapped her, or L’Autre Chanson overcame La Chanson and became the voice in her mind.

She would go. There was a distinct difference between not wanting to do something and not doing something, and she had dreamed of helping put right what Grandmère had not since… she couldn’t remember anymore. She spent a lot of time talking about not going - about going the other way, about doing something different, about being someone different - but she was who she was, she was what she was, and if it was her blood that also made her what they wanted, or needed, how was she to change that enough that she would ever be safe to do whatever it was she could conceive of doing that was not this? Return to court life?
No - she was not Sinrou at heart, just by breeding.
Marry and settle?
No - if the travel had taught her anything, it was that there was a lot more of the world to see, and…survey?
Create…something?
Perhaps - but again, Alexandrie couldn’t hide from her own blood. She would be found. She didn’t fit in, after all.
It seemed she had been born for a very specific purpose, and until that purpose was carried out, she could do nothing else - could be no one else.

Alexandrie was as tethered to her fate as Kaszra was to Cliffspider with her illusion of freedom: a broad wingspan to fly high and far, but only so high or far as others dictated.

She fit in the world the way Mysel did: Accepted on face value by some, tolerated by others, feared by many and hated for all the things she represented. She had not lived a millennium - but sometimes, when she observed the world around her, it felt as though she may as well have, for how much she understood their lives, their language, their reasoning.

And she was as unsure as Spider: the expectations of others written in her blood with the precision Spider used for his tattoos, hoping they would affirm his identity before time ran out.

Her thoughts drifted to Maman: Maman, who likely faced the same choice and decided instead to pass it to her - the unfinished task she did not wish to complete. Maman who tried to tether Alexandrie to the life she herself deemed worthy. Maman who fit in as best she could and accepted the expectations of others rather than tell them they were wrong to underestimate her.

Maman who taught Alexandrie the importance of responsibility.
She et Maman shared blood that came from the same woman.

Was there a choice then? Did the choice become less and less of a choice the more it passed down?
If so, how could that be a choice?