Tucked among various boxes that are stacked neatly in a storage room in the New York Mansion with labels of 'Dublin 1902' or Madrid '1745' is a small leather-bound journal with a symbol of three argent swans emblazed over alternating stripes of azure and argent. Unlike the bundled letters, or the jumbled notes, this seems to be a personal item for Rhiannon. Opening the pages, there's entries that date back a hundred years.
I need to schedule my sleeping schedule so my dreams don't invade reality. It's an odd statement, I know, but Anna pulled some trick and now there's two of me who wander the world sharing the same mind, thoughts -- it's bizarre to be both in Cairo underneath the not-so-gentle paws of Sekhmet and in New York spending time in Anna's personal library while she works on her theory crafting and I catch myself up with the knowledge I've lost over the years.
It... was a gift of sort. It is a gift. It's a blessing that enabled me to safely do my job in Cairo, get my magazine up off the ground and then come home and have Anna, Ann, or Anann waiting for me; just like I wait for them. It stemmed from a horrible fight that Anann and I went through that wound up with pictures of me burned on the carpet of the West Wing and me wondering if I could ever talk to her again. ...the make-up sex was worth it and I think we hit a new stride. Our new stride. I've come to wonderful accords with Anna, and with Ann ... it was Anann who was so much like how we were before -- now we're on a new path as well.
Still, though I promised each of them I wouldn't be the perfect mask ... I still have the dreams where they wake up and realize they'd preferred the perfection all along. And because now that there's two bodies, one mind ... when one body sleeps, it dreams and those dreams infect my waking hours.
It's partly why I couldn't truly keep an eye on Tal during the time Sekhmet bestowed her human sculpting gift to the rest of the band. I was too busy living through nonsensical logic and heartache that when I finally snapped out of it, Bast was diving into the water, Tal was blowing our secrets and Wuyi was. ... being so fucking perfect that she took Sekhmet's attention and I was drug off into a sexual liaison that was half murder, half orgasm. Poor Wuyi got the brunt of it, but there were times that Sekhmet glutted herself on my lifesblood until the world turned shadowy and grey .. .then she restored me to full glory.
At the same time, I worked cruel puppetry to fix the mistake I made by slacking off during the barge meeting. I spoke with Tal first and it's hard to me to say how much was acting and how much was the old friendship we used to have. I... played to her own desires and needs and when that threatened her marriage with Benjamin, I made sure his focus went from what he wanted to what I want.
The dreams that night was a montage of cruel, chessboard anthologies that left me heaving my guts out in the mansion while Ann stared worriedly on. I shook it off and crawled into Anna's bed that night, feeling Ann sidle up on my other side a moment later while the sounds of Anann working some scheme or other hovered from the desk because I don't think any of the three wanted me our of their sight that night.
At the same time where, in dreams, I was dressed as the Red Queen ordering the cards of my Band to paint the roses red; we trudged through sewers and ... ... my need to be the leader came into play. I gave Ben one final choice to lead and it got us stuck in a potentially collapsing tunnel with cultists closing in on us with no real chance to escape. ... but that's a tale best left for Fiona's letters.
....Benjamin was right; I am cold and manipulative... and I don't really care. Not when it comes to anyone but Wuyi and the Morrigan. Everyone else is a piece on the chessboard and I will sacrifice them in a heartbeat if it improves my stance. I make a terrible friend...but gods protect them if they think to make me their enemy.
~Rhiannon, 2018
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