The palace of Ussa crumbles. Its edges worn away with want of a hand to repair them. Inside, gold still glitters where lavish meals once were taken by throngs, but now none dine there.

Years after her ‘great victory’ over Usser, Ussa’s blood, too, has grown thin.

Ussa:

What is the noise outside of my window!

Advisor, I bid thee go and see.

Who would dare to disturb me at my rest?

Advisor 1:

It is the people, my Queen.

They gather in droves.

Advisor 2:

They come to mourn!

Advisor 3:

They come to storm the keep!

Ussa struggles to sit up.

Ussa:

You are all fools!

Why should my people mourn?

I suffer only a momentary weakness that shall soon pass.

Why should my people storm the keep?

Is my kingdom not the mightiest that ever was or will be?

Tell me, advisor, there must be a reason they gather!

Advisor 1:

They stand and wait, my Queen. That is all I can say.

Ussa:

Blast your eyes!

Your cowardice is such that you should have been put to the sword long ago!

All of my mistakes and setbacks in recent years like o’er your shoulders!

Guards, seize my Advisors, take them down and slay them!

Put their heads on pikes along with the other fools.

The other fools . . and Usser’s head.

The guards come in to drag the pleading advisors away. But Ussa feels panic suddenly.

Ussa:

Guard go to the window and tell me!

Do you still see the skull of Usser?

Tell me quickly, for I . . .

For I feel my strength fading.

Guard:

The head of Usser, whose body you threw to the wolves

and whose head you placed yourself upon the rusted pike

To show all that you were the strongest and he the failure?

I do not see such a skull, my Queen.

It is gone.

The people have taken it down.

Though it mouldered and gathered dust, now they look back upon him

with a newfound fondness.

They collect to celebrate, my queen.

Because they know your strength has left you.

And soon it will be your turn to moulder.

Ussa:

Begone!

Foul wretch, how didst thou ever join my guard?

You are a traitor and you and your kin will lose their heads for your words!

The guard laughs.

Guard:

Ussa, you have no more power.

You ruled through fear.

Even I feared you and was loyal.

Like a pup licking for scraps from its mother’s jaws.

But now you die.

A new dawn has come.

And who will mourn for you?

Ussa lays back in her bed, unable to speak.

Outside, she hears people singing.

As the sun rose on a new day, her light faded.

The world sighed – in relief, not from sorrow.

----------------------------------------

Brooks sat down in the squashy armchair in his study with a sigh.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

It was his favorite chair, which he sat in only at the end of a long day, when he felt confident that he could relax. Surprises could always come, but he’d checked in with Jaya and she was still going strong, though Urle would relieve her in a short while.

“So,” Urle said. “It grew on me. By the end, I really enjoyed it.”

“Did you?” Brooks asked, leaning his head back. His nap had helped, but he was feeling very tired again.

“Yeah! I wasn’t looking forward to it, but now that I’ve seen the whole thing – I get it. It’s playing very creatively with our history, but given the paucity of data that survives on the 20th century, putting it into a quasi-mythological period before gunpowder gave them a lot of creative freedom.”

“It’s the ahistoricity that actually made me dislike it, ultimately,” Brooks said.

“Because a Qlerning is writing about human history?”

“No, that’s not it, at least not for me. It’s just that that time period was one of the most important in human history, and the simplistic storytelling of the play leaves much to be desired,” Brooks replied. “Not to mention that it was excessively bloody.”

“Well, true, I don’t remember any time in the 20th century when a world leader took the decapitated head of another and bathed in their blood.”

“Gratuitous,” Brooks commented. “But mostly – it just simplifies too much.”

“Well it’s not like we have much on the 20th century beyond the basics- Oh, Ambassador!” Urle said, startled.

The door opened for Kell, and Brooks looked up at the being, surprised to be seeing him again so soon.

“Greetings, Ambassador.”

Kell said nothing, walking in and taking up the brandy decanter on Brooks’s desk. He poured himself a drink and quaffed it.

“Getting a taste for alcohol?” Brooks asked dryly.

Kell turned, pouring another drink in the same glass and offering it to Brooks.

Who took it, but noticed that the glass felt chilled.

“It is no different to me than any other hydrocarbon. But for you it is a ritual,” Kell said.

“So . . . is this a way of saying you’re being casual?” Urle asked.

“Something like that.”

Brooks and Urle looked at each other, then the Captain shrugged. “Well, how did you enjoy the play, Ambassador?”

“It was amusing,” Kell said.

“Do you recall the time period it was based on much?” Urle asked. “I’m not sure how obvious it was, but it was based on the 20th century struggle between-“

“I am aware,” Kell said shortly.

“We have a pretty spotty record of that century, admittedly,” Brooks said. “If you were ever interested, I’m sure a historian would be ecstatic talking to you about it.”

“I would have little to say. Humans were being humans, just as they are now,” Kell said. “Details such as how you organize your labor and resources are not within my sphere of interest.”

“Do Shoggoths work much differently?” Urle asked.

“No,” Kell replied, sounding slightly bitter for a moment. “Why do you not have records of that time? I understand that was an age of information.”

“A few disasters compounding on each other,” Urle said. “The Paper Reclamation when most of the forests died meant we have few books left, and almost no paper records. Then the Digital Wipe Event from the plastic blight meant 95% of digital records ended up lost. A lot of what did survive was pretty meaningless – people’s blog posts and selfies and transaction records.”

“It’s ironic that they saved more books from older periods than those of their own time,” Brooks noted. “We know more about the deeper past than that period.”

“Mm,” Kell replied, putting the decanter down. He turned and moved for the door. “I have completed my diplomatic and social obligations. I do not wish to be disturbed for the next week.”

Brooks looked to Urle again as Kell left. Brooks couldn’t hold back the snort of almost-laughter that escaped him, and Urle ducked his head into his hands for a moment, shaking slightly.

“So all of that was just him checking some activities off his to-do list?” Urle said, finally lifting his face. “And here I thought he was about to open up.”

Brooks let out a long and slow breath as he calmed down and considered telling Urle what Kell had told him in the intermission. He decided to hold onto it for now. He was not sure why, but he felt almost that it would be jinxing Kell’s promise to speak of it. Not that he really believed in superstitions, but . . .

When it came to Kell, nothing ever seemed normal.

“I’ll be heading out, then, Ian,” Urle said. “You finally get your sleep.”

“Thanks,” Brooks said, standing up. “Though if you need it, I can take another stim and take this shift.”

“No, no – this will work perfectly for me,” Urle said. “Eight on, four off – more than enough for me – then the shuttles will be arriving.”

He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice, and Brooks felt a warmth in his chest, glad that Urle’s girls would be returning.

“All right, then. I’ll see you later.”

After Urle left, Brooks tidied his office, considering if he wanted to drink from the same glass that Kell had. There could be legitimate medical concerns from sharing something like this with another species. Shoggoths . . . in theory should be safe.

He drank the brandy. It was still cold.

----------------------------------------

“That was actually really good!” Pirra chirped, swishing her feather drapes back and forth as she walked.

Alexander made a face. She thought it was unhappy, but it was hard to tell. “What did you like about it?”

“Well, the drama, the carnage, the sheer vitriol between the antagonists! It’s all very much like a Dessei drama!” She whistled a laugh. “You know better than most how much we can hate each other!”

It was, she thought, legendary. In many Dessei myths, enemies didn’t even want each other dead – they wanted the other to keep living so they could continue to torment each other.

“It was very fictionalized,” Alexander replied flatly. “As in – nothing about it was true.”

“Sure, but it was entertaining fiction,” she commented.

“It feels weird, though,” he replied. “An artist from another species makes what is supposed to be a historical epic and changes everything? It’s not even a human story anymore, just loosely inspired by historic states that were at loggerheads over differing economic systems.”

“But the blood was so very crimson when it splattered,” Pirra said wistfully. At Alexander’s look of surprise, she hastily added; “I mean, it’s fake, so it’s okay to enjoy it!” She laughed again. “Seeing blood fly like that in real life really isn’t something to enjoy, trust me.”

But in fiction she loved it!

“I just think maybe Klezul Hoshe should have talked to some human historians before writing it,” Alexander muttered. “I mean – imagine if I wrote something like that with Dessei history!”

Pirra thought about it. “Would there be a lot of blood?” she asked.

Alexander sighed.

“Ooh, who would you cast me as?” she teased, leaning in. “A fictional princess named Lumii, perhaps?”

Alexander burst out laughing, taking her arm.

Even if he had not enjoyed the play, they had gotten a nice evening together. He could not complain about that.

----------------------------------------

Tred followed Jophiel through the hordes of people leaving the theater.

He felt crushed by their sheer numbers, but he’d long since learned how to keep his discomfort down.

It was fortunate that people gave Jophiel’s drone a wide berth. Perhaps it was because of her diplomatic credentials, or perhaps because they did not want it to roll over their feet. She had not mastered it yet, and had run over his a couple of times.

It hurt, but didn’t cause any damage, it just wasn’t heavy enough for that, so he’d not said anything.

Jophiel seemed to be leading them out of the crowd swiftly, taking the shortest path out. Once she had pulled off to the side and he had ducked over with her, he stopped to catch his breath.

“That was . . . one dramatic play,” he said, looking down at his dress uniform. Was that a red spot on it? Had the actors actually splashed him with fake blood?

“It was very exciting!” Jophiel said, her voice raising in joy. “Honestly, I did not even follow a lot of it, but so much happened! The red fluid was ‘blood’, right? It’s inside you normally?”

“Er, yeah,” Tred said, rubbing at the spot. Maybe he’d stained it earlier and not even realized, it was a lighter shade of red than the fake blood . . .

“So when Ussa let it out of people, they did not like that?” Jophiel said.

Realization dawned on Tred as her words made him understand how much the play had been alien to her.

Her people did not have land; they lived in the plasma corona of a flare star. They had no paucity of resources, as they lived on the energies of the star. They did not age, had no sexes, no children . . . no families, really. At least . . . as far as he knew.

He’d tried to read about them, how they made communities based on properties of plasma that seemed very arbitrary. Their society was extremely complex, but also fluid. It worked for them, but . . . It made them so very, very alien.

“Yes, that was an act of hostility,” he said. “In ancient Earth times, we did not always have enough for everyone. Some people who were . . . selfish would take more than they needed and that meant others didn’t have enough. She wanted everything, and while she was very powerful, it made everyone hate her. Once she was gone, no one was sad.”

“So the others did not have enough but she had too much . . . and she would let their blood out – why?”

“To kill them,” he said. “Without blood we die.”

She was silent a long time. When she spoke, her words were softer. “I understand.”

He did not know what to say after that. Her sensor unit was still looking at him, but he did not know what she was thinking – what she could even be thinking.

“So did Ussa really exist?” she finally asked.

He stumbled out. “I mean, that’s the gist of the story, but it’s also a metaphor for human history . . . or a part of it, at least.”

“So it’s not really what happened?”

“It’s . . . a creative way to talking about it without saying it directly.”

“Ah, yes! I understand. We do that, too, in our stories! I can’t imagine a species not having some form of subtle storytelling, how else can we impart knowledge?”

“Yes, I agree! Every species we’ve ever met has stories, and they always have some kind of teaching stories.”

“Do you think anyone will be upset at how Ussa was portrayed? Does she still have family left?”

Tred hesitated. Had she not understood that Ussa had not exactly existed . . . ? He thought they’d just established that.

But the translation had hitched. There seemed to be some sort of difficulty in imparting exactly what she had meant – perhaps in her own kind’s form of family there was a sense in it.

“If they were upset, they would have to talk to Klezul Hoshe about that,” he finally said. “But I think he often has controversial opinions that upset people. I think he’s said that’s just how art is.”

Jophiel’s sensors turned away, which he took as her being lost in thought.

“Thank you for this evening, Tred,” she said.

He felt warmth growing in his chest. “You’re very welcome, Ambassador.”

“There you go being formal again!” She laughed, and he laughed as well.

“I know it’s past the time when you normally sleep,” Jophiel said. “So you go on and do that.”

“Are you sure? What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I’m going to take your wonderful little drone and look around the ship more!” she said. “But don’t worry, I’ll be fine. You sleep!”

Tred hesitated, but felt like she was not just being kind, but dismissing him in a way.

“Have a nice night,” he told her.

He wasn’t sure how to feel about the dismissal, but . . .

It had been a really nice night.