Border, KS

Morgan, unsurprisingly, regained her composure very quickly. She pulled out a kleenex from the box on Walter’s end-table, a necessity in a house with teenagers, and neatly folded it back up. “Needless to say that is not well known, among any circles—and I don’t tell a lot of people.” She said with a little bit of a sigh.

“I didn’t expect to see a Faerie Queen crying tonight.” Siobhan admitted, giving a little bit of a sheepish smile to the woman. Morgan looked at her for a moment, as if she was trying to decide whether or not that was a dig—and for many people it probably would have been. Apparenly Morgan agreed that it wasn’t, as she gave a sad smile.

“Crying for the loss of your home isn’t weakness. If you cannot shed some tears for losing that, then what will you sorrow for?” Morgan asked formally, with a shake of her head as she settled back down on to the couch. “I fear someone who cannot weep for that.”

“Do you always get Shakespearean when you’re sad?” Antigone asked curiously. Walter snorted, shaking his head as Morgan blinked and then laughed.

“Yes.” Morgan said with a smile. “I tend to. It’s a professional hazard, when you’re written about by Mallory. Next it will be rhyming couplets for when I’m pissed off. But for now, I think I am probably back to normal.”

“So what do we do?” Walter asked in the following silence, meeting her eyes. “To stop him, I mean. I don’t think any of us want him to win, if he’s willing to do all of this.”

“And why didn’t you just kill him?” Siobhan added. “If you did manage to beat him and banish him, why not like…permanently banish him. Mortal coil, shuffling thereof, and all that.”

Morgan looked at Siobhan, and now it was her turn at the head shaking. “It is not easy to kill your own father, even if he is a tremendous dick. But beyond that, we couldn’t.” When she saw that Siobhan and Antigone both were going to ask why, she held up her hand to keep them at bay. “Oberon had done great service in the wars, and there were a not insignificant number of our people who wanted to try to come to a peaceful resolution with him.” She explained. “And more than that, as part of winning those wars he had to banish our enemies as well. And he contained those banishments within a part of himself. If he dies or removes them, then they are free to attack our lands again.”

That brought a new bout of considering silence as they all thought about that. Walter spoke first, meeting Morgan’s eyes again. “So…what do we do?” He asked again. “If we can’t kill him and you’ve already banished him from your lands, what do we do?”

Morgan sighed, running a hand back through her dark hair. “I don’t know.” She answered honestly. “I wish I did, I wish I knew what we needed to do. I think that we’re going to have to find some way to kill him, if I’m honest—no matter what the cost is, no matter if it plunges us back in to war.” Morgan turned for a moment to look out the window and consider it. “Oberon’s anger is legendary. If he takes back Faerie, then all those who stood against him will suffer. The blood will run through our lands an apple deep, and people we are sworn to protect—who we went in to this exile of ours to protect—will suffer.” She sighed, and then laughed. “And of course Tania and I will be dead. Or worse than dead.”

Everyone in the room who wasn’t Morgan looked like they wanted to ask about that, but wisely they did not. Instead they looked at one another, trading glances back and forth. “And what will happen to the city? To our world?” Antigone asked.

“One of the reasons we deposed him was that Oberon thought it ‘supremely unjust’, his words, that the immortal Sidhe should sit side-lined from the world of mortals. He especially felt during his attempt to re-take our lands that industrialization’s effects on the natural world showed just how much mortals could not be trusted with stewardship of the world.” Morgan explained sadly. “If he is in full control of Faerie and unfettered in his power, then he will seek to right that wrong.”

Walter’s face hardened at that. “I’m not thrilled with the thought of some immortal a-hole telling me what I can’t do in my own world. Even if we are doing a pretty good job of wrecking it.”

Morgan rolled her eyes. “He has a point only so far that if you ruin your world then Faerie, which is its transposed image in the mirror as we understand it, will probably unravel as well. But no, I have no desire to watch my father wage way on the mortal world. I like the mortal world. They let me get doctorates, and we didn’t invent pizza, the cheeseburger, or the offensively named ‘Irish Car Bomb’.” Morgan explained with a smile. “That’s his problem, I think. He is the next best thing to immortal, and has never been particularly connected to the mortal world. There is so much joy in this world, so many wonderful things.” She laughed.

“I thought immortals weren’t supposed to like modernity.” Walter asked in response, drawing a laugh from Morgan.

“I snuck in to a library when I was a girl just to marvel at the books.” Morgan explained. “I now have a device in my pocket that makes the libraries of Oxford when I was born look like a redneck outhouse’s lending library. I llove it.” She said genuinely, smiling. “And that’s why we have to save it. So that’s the answer, Walter…what do we do?” She repeated his questions. “We get ready to go through that scary chalk circle. And we train to kill a god for when we do.”