A Battle Unseen

[Doc]

Wilson House, Personal Offices of Her Imperial Majesty
Mid May, 8:35pm

The Empress sat at her desk reading the latest reports from her various ministries.  Kalistani imports are slowly dwindling as the Embargo cuts deeply into world trade volume, slowing global trade from Artania and wiping out a fairly major source of imports to Kalistan.  Ship production has slowed in Kaliburg and there are fewer orders for shipping containers in Sulari.  Despite the reopening of the Trans Seleyan Railroad, there has not been increased cargo coming into Addisjah.  Things are slowing down.  Internationally, the embargo is having no real effect on the Kundratis:  some of the ministers and chief aides have gone missing...  who cares...  what's another dead fascist in the grand scheme of things.  Some new friends, fewer old ones...

She stared at the clock and the hands seemed to slow to a crawl.  Here she was sitting at her desk, while others lived their lives.  She was trapped in her palace while Kalistanis were out going to restaurants, going to the movies, going to concerts.  All things she used to love before she was Empress.  All things her mother warned her would disappear when she became Empress.  She lived in a gilded cage.  She had the power to actually manifest her very will, and yet was not free to get onto the metro and go to a burger joint if it wasn't scheduled two weeks in advance.  At some point she was the freest woman in the world, and on another point, she had the same freedom that a person who lived on a desert island had:  She could do as she pleases but so what?  

Her children were growing up while she worked.  Her husband was growing old while she worked.  The world spun while she worked.  And few cared, or really even knew what she did with her hours.  How many friends had she lost?  How many people had spun away from her because she was too busy with life?  Her life was a life of work, not a life of leisure.  Her life was a life where others expected things from her, and yet refused to allow her to do anything for herself.   She had servants who drew baths for her, she had servants who drove her everywhere, and cooked all her food, and her own son's tutor saw her children more hours in a day than she was able in a week.

And yet, she felt lucky to be allowed to make her own tea in evenings like this.  She had begun adding a dash of opium to her tea, as her mother had for years.  The heat of the tea would melt the powder and dissolve it, and while the powder wasn't enough to produce sleepiness or euphoria of any kind, it did add a subtle sweet and full flavor to her Earl Grey tea which more enhanced the Bergamot than overpowered it.  The servants don't put opium in the Empress' tea.  If they would be caught doing that, the government would accuse them of trying to assassinate the Empress.    But The Empress herself was free at least to flavor her tea as she pleased.  And there is not a single person alive within the Empire who could tell her that she couldn't.

As she sipped the tea, the Empress would walk to the window.  She was growing grey:  some permanent wrinkles could be seen:  She had grown up in this job:  How long had it been?  Twenty Years?  No, it had been only 13 years.  It felt like 30.  Carolina...  Carolina was tired.  She was more tired than anything:  Was it too much to ask a single woman to do this job?  Will the wins become too far apart to feel like wins anymore?  Will the losses come faster and faster?  She was starting to understand why it is that the Emperors and Empresses before her all abdicated as soon as they could.  She envied her father, for just a second, and felt a new form of pity for her mother, who had to do all this by herself without any of the training that Carolina has received, because her mother realized just how important it was for Carolina to start early.  There was so much to learn, and none of it prepared her for the job itself, the enormity of the job.

But, almost as if a switch flipped--perhaps it was the tea-- the mood changed in the room.  An oppressive cloud that had covered her thoughts for weeks seemed to evaporate in an instant.  Her life was hard, but it didn't have to be.  She was the Empress of the Anantonese Empire, the single most powerful woman to walk upon Terra at this exact moment.  Her word was law.

She could just--leave.  Not the job, of course.  But, why did she have to be at work at 8:30 pm while her children were growing up at home?  She did not have to be her mother.  She did not have to be Nicolette, either the First or the Second.  If she could be anyone, why shouldn't she be more like her adopted father and the only dad she had even known?  He seemed to have a natural ease about him that masked a sense of deep loss.  But he always used to make her smile with his stupid jokes or magic tricks that he spent time learning and practicing to amaze her when she was a little girl.

She could be more like him.  She could just walk out of her office, turn off the light, put the reports down, and spend time with her family.  They were always saying that they wanted her to.  She took another gulp of tea and decided that her work day shall never go past 4:30 again, unless it had to, and then she wanted her children near her.  It was a small step, the Empress knew.  Just a small step.  but that step could lead to other small steps.  Perhaps it would lead to her and her family going into town more often for concerts or movies, or going to fast food restaurants?  Who knew.  But it wasn't too late for her to keep her life from passing her by, to try to find joy again.  Life didn't have to be a drag and it didn't have to be oppressive.

Swallowing the last drop of tea, she set the tea cup on the saucer and set it onto a small table near the side lamp...  and then, she decided in a moment... she would take the teacup and saucer to the kitchen herself, rather than allowing the servants to come in and clean up after her.  She'd do it herself for once.  And who knows:  She might like it so much that she does other things for herself too.