The Lords, Princes, and Kings.

Chapter Twelve-

   "You have no control/Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?"                                                                  "And when you're gone, who remembers your name?/Who keeps your flame?/Who tells your story?" –Hamilton: An American Musical- Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story– 

    Marcus fell asleep, calmed by the comforting distraction. I watched his peaceful face. He looked an eerie amount like Telemachus in Angelica Kauffmann's The Sorrow of Telemachus. Though, I predicted he would form more aquiline features, and his hair would grow darker, as it already was. His father was dead, his mother was beautiful and wealthy. Hell, I had heard my mum, as well as some other of Aunt Mindy's friends, call her Penelope.

It was either an affectionate nickname, or the Fates mocking. Holding in front, the hopes and dreams of Penelope and Telemachus; all of their workmen, servants, and maids. Their villagers and soldiers.

As Sydney J. Harris once said, "History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done."

There are so many quote about history repeating itself, it floods me with a thousand levels of fear, anger, paranoia, loneliness, confusion, and stability. It would be fine. It will all fall apart. Entropy, history, humanity, biology, astrology.

Humans are forever blindsided, even when told exactly what will happen. As a friend of mine once said, "Poets can only see the past, gods can only see the future, but nobody can ever see the present." She would know. She was a poet, and so admired and... her presence, feats, and power, made her seem like a god. That's what people say. I didn't know her for long before she died.

At age 18 she became the Assistant Chief Strategist for the next president of the United States, Philippa Candace Thomson. World War Three began when she was 19, soon after she signed up for the U.S. Marine Corps. At 22, she was a famous general. PCT lost the election. At 23, led the battle that brought the Axis, officially, to their knees. 24-26, Chief Strategist for PCT's reelection campaign. 26, PCT won with her previous VP, Quincy John Madison, a name that had to have been premeditated by the gods. She held office as the president pro tempore.

At 28, Nadya Volkov, a close comrade-in-arms of hers during the war, was part of a terrorist attack at a major United Nations meeting. PCT had invited her to that meeting, as the president of Nadya's country had invited Nadya. She was spared due to getting into an argument with Volkov, who, despite her being the reason she made the deal with terrorists, didn't want her to get hurt.

She was voted in to be QJM's VP some months later.

32, QJM ran for president. She was on the ticket as VP. Unsurprisingly, they won. Flash foreward about four years, she dies. A week before the inauguration of the next ticket. Foiled an assassination attempt, allegedly aimed at QJM. The information is fuzzy. My mother stood right beside her, and she only knew what everyone else did; upon getting shot when she leapt in front of the bullet going for the president, she told secret security she was "all right" and finished the rest of the president's speak, as he was being rushed off stage. She stepped back, looked at the crowd, then weakly called out for the head of security.

Andromache Mickey Locke. Known to everyone as Andy.

My namesake. My legacy. All the nightmares, mysteries, injustices she couldn't correct. It all fell on my shoulders.

I was fine with it.

Many people with famous names and famous faces and famous titles, they thought of me as family, simply because I was the daughter of Andromache Locke's best friend and basically her sister. Not only that, but she had left me a necklace that she wore so often that most people instantly recognized it.

The necklace was silver with the shape of an eagle in flight and had a miniscule bluish green stone in the form of a heart where the eagle's heart would be. It wasn't the only physical thing she left me, just the most important.

A small chest, a gift to Andy from a Navajo tribe. She had befriended them, growing especially close to a girl about her age. The girl was killed in a hate crime, but that just made Andy closer to the tribe. It rested on the nightstand to my right, now. Peaceful, designs feigning innocence. Inside rest the necklace, in all its rebellious, moon graced glory.

Night, at last, tugged at me. Perhaps it was a gift, from Andy's gods, or the girl's. Either way, I welcomed it gratefully.