Turn 12 Fluff and Story
You decide two things in early January.
One, that living in a hotel was something you never want to do again the rest of your life.
And two, that the luxury airship you’d been on should be renamed The Love Boat, because evidently there was something in the water there. You were pregnant, again.
Wonderful.
You had long before decided to follow in the footsteps of your father with your kids and send them to school with ordinary folks, because there was no better way in your opinion for your kids to truly connect with the people they would someday be responsible for.
Jeremy was a very serious little boy, and his teachers were filled with praise about how he behaved. Evidently he actually listened to his mother when you told him that the best way to make friends was to be friendly to everybody, even those whom others had cast aside. It was something you’d learned from your father, that a rising tide lifts all boats, not simply a few chosen boats that were somehow ‘in’.
So he was acting like how you remembered your oldest brother acting when you were small, as a clique-breaker.
Everybody, after all, wanted to be friends with the heir, and if they didn’t their parents certainly wanted them to be. But instead of gathering up the toadies and ignoring everybody else, your son was doing what you’d told him to do, being friendly and open to everybody and actively seeking out those whom the ‘popular’ kids wanted to cast out.
You are very proud of your little man, he’ll be a good king someday.
The twins, well… they’re in kindergarten and are little hellraisers in comparison to their big brother. Nothing bad, just enthusiastic. Both solemnly informed you that someday they were going to be pilots just like papa, which led to you glaring at your loving husband once they were back to playing with their toys.
He’s completely unapologetic about this, and you spend hours complaining to Sergeant-Major Ngô about this.
Your daughter is in toddler princess mode these days. There are a number of kids her age around and they spend most of their time together being insufferably cute and making all this parenthood stuff totally worthwhile.
Bastet is still very much a ball of fluff and energy, even if the little grifftiger is now the size of a large dog… so ‘little’ is a rather relative term. She’s often seen at school with Jeremy and is the unofficial mascot of the entire 2nd grade.
You are quite glad of this, however, especially after she pounced on a creep who was creeping around the schoolyard taking pictures of the children and held him until the police arrived to arrest him.
Sekhmet is in a far happier place, as some of the workers on the rebuilding of the palace had noticed her distress at the loud noises and such and with plenty of ingenuity, a few determined raids on hardware and electronics supply stores, and a whole lot of duct tape made a set of appropriately scaled noise-cancelling headphones for the grifftiger to wear.
For their cleverness and helpfulness Sekhmet, of course, rewarded them with Licks and now spent much time simply watching all the construction work take place.
The beautification of the capital is proceeding, however, even as construction continues on the palace. They aren’t tearing down the dreary boxes that were everywhere, instead architects were taking advantage of the extremely wide sidewalks. Everywhere downtown you now had, instead of open sidewalks, long tall colonnades of stone-clad steel supporting arched and pierced facades turning once boring buildings into something far more visually appealing.
New construction was already rapidly adjusting to fit the emerging style, only even more so. The new buildings are designed from the start with it in mind, and sport multileveled colonnades, some practically shading porches and balconies from which planters filled with flowers add color and life to the architecture while others are purely decorative.
Part of the style is a seamless transition between intricate stone and brick facade and appearance to gleaming alloy, with plantlife encouraged to thrive in carefully controlled chaos.
One of the architects involved described it to you as a blending of past and future, with the modern futuristic architecture of the upper stories seemingly growing from and supported by the best of the classical past, all with nature being invited in for a cuppa.
You had to look that last word up. English is a strange and wonderful language sometimes.
The search for an appropriate national anthem has hit a minor snag. You’ve fallen in love with Ode to Joy and find yourself humming it regularly. However as a national anthem you discover something lacking. As your loving husband pointed out… “Ummm, what are the words?”
You pout a bit before a solution hits you. You summon Dr Young and blithely tell her to have her young protege figure out appropriate lyrics to the music you’ve settled on.
You get back a rather indignant response that of course it has lyrics! Along with a lyrics sheet.
For a religious hymn.
You send it back with a note. “No, lyrics appropriate for a National Anthem, not for church. Now write them.”
You figure you are being a bit tough on the poor kid, but you want a real national anthem. You absolutely love the musical arrangement, but people need to be able to sing to it freely.
You hear from Dr Young that her assistant is now sulking but teams of lyricists are on the case. She appears just as amused as you are by the entire situation.
You get back lyrics praising the muse of joy. You look them over… you can’t sing this, you are certain your kids can’t sing this…
You send them back “Something that somebody who isn’t a trained singer can sing. I am not paying for singing lessons for the entire planet just so people can sing their own national anthem.”
Dr Young tells you that he is now extremely grumpy about this all and has set the lyricists back to work.
You forward a list of your preferences for the unit commanders back to General Wolf, and take the time to be present for each of the command ceremonies to meet them, look the men and women who will be leading your people into combat in the eye, and shake their hands before they take their loyalty oaths.
You watch the parades and frown a bit during the review of the 1st Armored. 2nd Battalion is at full strength with the proven Phalanx tank, however 1st Battalion is only at a single company in strength and is operating the older and less capable Hoplite model. You speak with General Wolf about this and he informs you that they’ve been considering either upgrading the Hoplite company to Phalanxes, or to a heavier tank that can operate in concert with the Phalanx to provide a sturdier field force.
He advocates for the latter option, as simply upgrading 1st Battalion and filling them out with Phalanxes doesn’t seem to him a very efficient use of the unit. A few days later you get a datapad with the full costs breakdown and a request to urgently begin work on the project in time for the end of the budget cycle.
Specifically, it would cost a total of 500 to finalize development of the
Legionnaire Medium Tank and have it ready for service, then 660 to replace the existing platoon of Hoplites and a further 6080 to fill out the battalion to full strength. He notes that the crown will be more than able to pay for all of this on an expedited basis due to the dividends generated by the airship company in the first quarter.
You are a bit surprised at the last and check the stock report and discover that you indeed have made just over 10k off of your investment in just this first quarter. When you had joked that the airship company was a license to print money you didn’t realize that you were prescient!
[] Go for it! We must strengthen our state, and even with this expense we still come out ahead economically
[] Money Money Money Money I Want Money Money Money Money