01.

[shri]

FORM: Sending crystal.
SENDER: Lakshmi Bai
RECIPIENT: Anyone and everyone.
WHAT: Polite requests.
WHEN: After the recent group of rifters arrives back.
WHERE: The Gallows.
NOTES: Tired Queen is tired.

[ There's a little laugh of wonder and then - ] To think I spent all my time hungering after Tesla's machines... [ Clears her throat with the end of that wistful sigh, no time for what-ifs, and she adopts a far more even a tone. Dry, clipped and careful to not muddle her words. Not Tesla's machines, no, but she has heard plenty of poor announcements across radios, to want to make sure that she doesn't do the same. ]

Greetings. I am... Rani Lakshmibai, the, ah.. widower of the King, Maharaja, of Jhansi. [ There's a hesitation, unsure. But like the titles she just gave, she brushes over it quickly. ] I have a request for an individual, who would spend a few hours telling me of this place and its manners, so I might be a better guest of this... Inquisition. I have no more than what I am to receive you, but I can provide honest company in return for yours.

[ pause, and then a moment later. ] And where may I exchange jewels and gold for coin, find a decent cloth merchant and tailor, and whether the weapons the armies here supply are worth the metal they're made from. I prefer a shamsher or talwar, by preference, but any long, heavy blade suffices if its decent enough quality.

Comments

[shri]

Then I am at your pleasure, my lady, if you will be kind to tell me your name?

[ Invitations came easily when you didn't know anyone particularly. To act like she was not as tense, as sharp, as wary as she truly was. ]

[ipseite]

Oh, I have shed the skin that claimed my ladys, ( so lightly, ) I am only Madame de Cedoux.

[shri]

Madame de Cedoux.

[ A murmur, surprised, a little concerned perhaps - ] French, Madame? [ Her French is... not as good as her English, but she can mumble through the ins and outs of it. ]

[ipseite]

Lamorran. A similar language to Orlesian, here, though we do not share our letters, as it happened. I have such envy for those who arrived recognizing them.

[shri]

[ Oh thank god, another person she doesn't have to dodge. ] I have not heard of Lamorran. But... some of the lettering is familiar to me, but only by way of a second and third language.

[ Nothing at all looked like her own language, there was no beauty of Farsi, the elegant lettering of Sanskrit or Urdu. But she had left them behind a long time ago. Swapping them, along with her mother tongue for the languages spoken in Europe, which were as varied as those throughout Hindustan. ]

My own looks nothing like this at all. But then, none of this is very much like my homeland, so it should not be much of a surprise that the language changes too. [ Her own careful play to her own paranoia. She has seen much of Europe now. From French chateaus to German Festungs. But better to seem like she knew only so much and out of her own familiarity. This Madame might know nothing. But that couldn't be true of everyone she met. ]