"Rise," she commanded. The voice that emanated from her painted lips was high and cold, contrasting with her warm nature, if not her regal bearing.
The man pushed himself off the flagstone floor, pale and trembling, sweat gracing his balding head like a crystal crown. He made to wipe it away with the sleeve of his polyester blend shirt, but thought better of it, his hand settling like a bird on his belt.
"Please...." His tongue darted out of his mouth to moisten his chapped lips, reminding the teenager on the throne of a serpent scenting the air for danger. "Queen Darsellradibi-"
She cut him off with a sharp glint of fury in her flat blue eyes.
"I don't remember giving you permission to be so familiar with me, Donahue!" She spat his name. "If you will learn decorum, I am to be addressed as Ra Majesty."
He nodded hastily, his eyes polished to a quartz-white.
"Yes, yes! I- I mean no disrespect, Queen Dar - Ra Majesty, ma'am!"
Darsellradibi stayed deathly still in her seat for a largo beat, her normally animated features impersonating a statue's.
"Home-Worlder," she finally sneered, the expression sitting askew on her fair visage. "You know nothing of our culture, yet alone our laws, and still think you are justified in whatever you do."
She rose abruptly from the high-backed chair, her dress falling into place around her slender frame in a cloud of red and black velvet. The material was much too warm for the chamber and the colors too harsh for her skin tone. Darsellradibi hated the 'august' garb.
"This dimension," she continued on, glaring glacial thumbtacks upon the convict's upraised face, "is not your America. Nor your Angland, Frence, Spend, Cainda, Morko... What-have-you. No. We are ONORE."
There was no mistaking the matriarchal pride that possessed her in the name. It pulled her already vertical spine straighter and brought the sparkle back into her sapphire eyes, her chin lifted high. But just as quickly, it was gone, replaced once more by the martinet's stern bearing.
"You have, in a matter of days upon our soil, managed to desecrate a major temple, trespass onto cloistered ground, offend not one, not two, not three, but six high-ranking government officials, and nearly incite a riot in the Plaza," she ticked off his offenses on delicate fingers, recently hennaed in a bout of ennui.
He swallowed loudly, the gulp resounding in the commodious chamber and setting his Adam's apple bobbing.
"That, Donahue, is a ridiculous number of cultural faux pas. My High Priestess is demanding your gruesome death for that statue you destroyed in the sanctuary. The Orphanage Matron is demanding the entirety of your bank account in compensation for your mistaking her business for a brothel. Two of my Colony Heads want your skin for a pelerine for your disparaging remarks. The other four only ask your head. And the general public...." Darsellradibi shook her head, her chestnut mane momentarily concealing her face. "Well, they just want you dead."
At this, Donahue, already on edge, began to weep softly, pleading with the young monarch for mercy.
"Puh-please! No.... Didn't... Kn-know..."
She caught some words, but the garbled English was difficult for her to comprehend, and she was forced to dismiss the rest as gibberish.
"I have no choice," her voice cut through his histrionics like a diamond through chalk. "Robert David Donahue, on the charges of Willful Public Enragement, Willful Public Desecration, and Prostitution Seeking, you are henceforth sentenced to-"
"Dibi!"
The Ra of Onore found herself cut off in turn as a tall woman with leathery bat wings ran through the hall and immediately enfolded her in an all encompassing bear hug.
"Gach!" The fourteen year old choked out.
"It's so good to see you!" The woman burbled out, oblivious to Darsellradibi's inability to breathe in her embrace and the stare of the man on his knees. She was, as said, tall, barely dressed in cut-off denim shorts and cropped cotton top that left all but her breasts and an inch of her back bare, allowing her twelve-foot wingspan freedom. The paleness of her skin contrasted dramatically with her midnight stained wings and long auburn hair, caught up in a ponytail at the crest of her scalp.
"I've just been sooo busy!" she continued. "You've simply nooo idea! Setting up the university, convincing Vorndain that being vampiric isn't the same thing as being demonic, keeping Soronto and James from killing each other... Ugh!" She sighed, exceptionally animated for one supposedly so slammed. "God is still insisting that the highest rank I can hold in Home World is 'death angel', putting me at HIS beck and call, practically doubling my responsibilities. It's simply ridiculous! I'm a full-fledged Goddess for an entire DIMENSION. I don't have time for HIS grunt jobs! And, you know, that's not even counting all the other stuff I have to do, like come visit my favorite cousins!"
"Agch!" Darsellradibi protested, her face slowly brushing into a lovely shade of plum. "Darch! Ahghch!"
"Oh!" With a blush of chagrin, the woman released the teenager and waited with concern as she coughed and sputtered. "Are you alright, Dibi?"
"Fine," she panted, blood slowly beginning to circulate normally. "Just... fine."
"Sorry," the newcomer grimaced, a light pink color staining her ashen cheeks. "I'm just so happy to see you again after so long! You are my favorite cousin."
The teen's brows arched incredulously.
"Darcellbi, I saw you a fortnight ago."
Darcellbi spun around, her wings lifting her a few inches off the ground.
"Was it?" she asked, emerald eyes glinting in the torchlight. "It just seemed like sooo much longer." She shrugged, the picture of bubbling nonchalance. "I guess I'm just a little too busy to keep track of the time."
The younger girl suppressed a sigh. She loved her older cousin, but Dar was a creature of extremes; warm and bubbly one minute, grey and sobbing another, hot and searingly furious after that. And she had a habit of bringing those mood swings into Onore and interfering with the federal workings accordingly.
"Dar, I'm slightly in the middle of something," she hedged, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Why don't you go up to your suite and I'll be there in a few minutes."
It was not a request.
But then the winged woman noticed the man on the floor, and her green eyes shifted to a concerned hazel-brown.
"What's on, man?" she inquired of him, kneeling, her black-painted nails resting lightly on his shoulder. "Why are you so upset?"
The balding man beheld her in bewilderment. She was an angel, he decided, a messenger from God in this heathen place. Her association with the cruel Queen made no sense, but what did he know of God's ways? Surely she was a miracle.
"Thank you, angel!" he cried, pulling upright and seizing her elegant hands in his pudgy ones. "Save me from these pagan devil-worshippers!"
"Whaa...?" Darcellbi looked to her younger cousin for elucidation.
Darsellradibi merely rolled her eyes and hoped that her cousin's interference would be minimal. There was no avoiding it now.
"He touched your statue in the Temple and knocked it over, shattering it. Then, he went to the Orphanage and asked for a prostitute. After which, he went to the Place and completely disrespected Anella, Arama, Cinnai, Dratelle, Dannun, and Hesserenne, implying that they were common entertainment, Home World style. They were all with a large group of their respective Colonies. They nearly lynched him."
Darsellradibi sighed, running a hand through her hair.
"They want his blood, Darcellbi."
The Ra's older cousin knelt for a long moment, ignoring both Donahue's pleading whimper's and Dibi's expectant silence. The man was obviously just a tourist, someone who'd thought a quick jaunt to a neighboring dimension would make a solid vacation. It was not his fault that Onore was so different from Home World. How could he have known that her statue was so fragile? How could he be aware that prostitution was a capital offense? And considering the way the Colony Heads tended to dress.... He was ignorant, certainly, idiotic, definitely, but did he deserve to die for it?
She made her decision.
"Go home," she told him, flapping her wings once to pull the both of them to their feet. "Don't ever go traveling inter-dimensionally again. Learn to respect women." Her gaze swept over him with something like disgust. "Cut out the junk food, start working out, lose the polyester, and get a girlfriend." She clucked her tongue. "Prostitution solves nothing and a girlfriend is cheaper."
The man stumbled out a confused thanks and was escorted from the room by a pair of guards. He believed he'd just been insulted by the miracle, but he was alive. It was enough.
Darsellradibi rounded on her cousin.
"What was that?! They'll want his head! There'll be further riots when I can't provide it!" Her voice broke as she yelled, frustration, panic, and admiration mixing freely.
Darcellbi merely shrugged, a smile playing at the edges of her lips.
"Just tell them that I dealt with him," she said reasonably. "They'll presume that I visited some horrible torment upon him and consider it justice. No one will bother you for evidence. They'll just think that there's not enough left of him to examine with a microscope." She shrugged again, content with her solution. "You'll be fine."
The monarch of the dimension Onore deflated, settling slowly back on to her throne with all the angsty posture of an ordinary teenager. For long moments, she slumped there, resigned.
"How is it," she began, eyes slowly rising to meet the other woman's gaze, "that I rule the dimension, but you have more influence over it?"
The woman laughed, tugging her scrunchie from her hair, sending auburn waves cascading down her back.
"Easy, honey." The goddess grinned. "I created it."
A frown stole across her features.
"I might want to think about creating a guide book, too...."
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