The Ambassador's Turnabout

I spent too much time with the spirits as a kid. I still do.

'Too much' not by my standards, never by my standards, but by the standards of The World At Large. For some reason introverts are frowned upon, particularly introverts that play video games and read fantasy.

These things are my life's blood. They are what makes the difference between living and just existing.(Of course, there's Ash. But she's not always there, through no fault of her own...And the spirits were first.)

Once I desired nothing so much as to leave this world for the world of spirits. Tuatha de Danaan, I called them; the everyoung, the lovely ones, Danu's children. A name borrowed from Celtic mythology.

These days I have things worth living for in this world, old muddy Thulcandra. But still...

...the silent planet doesn't do it for me, really. Too quiet. I want to hear the music of the heavens.

Back then I picked my penname; Ambassador Garnet Leona Alexander. Garnet and Leona from a boy with a gunblade and a girl without a horn, spirit people that I loved. Alexander from the eidolon mighty, defender of men. And Ambassador. Because I hoped to be an ambassador to that world.

Thing is, though, this girl wanted so much to be Tuatha, she got her wish. Yeah, my body's still Milesian...but I've spent too much time hobnobbing with spirits to be totally Milesian. And was I ever Milesian, down in my soul? I am as nervous and uncomfortable and halting with the people of my blood as I am expansive and cheerful and at ease with the little spirits with whom I speak.

(In the context of Thulcandra, within one little world, they used to call that sort of thing 'going native'. They sneered. Maybe some of 'em were jealous.)

Ambassador, I named myself, and ran away to Tir na n'Og, and oh how I hated Thulcandra's soil. Oh, how I hated her people. It was blood hot hate. It was the hate of the smart kid stuck with the mean jocks, taking refuge in pride.(That deadly sin.)It was the hate of a fox fleeing baying hounds. It was the hate of the panther with the collar chafing his neck. Ambassador, I said. But was I?

Ambassador brings part of England to France, part of France to Germany, Germany to America, and so on, you get the drift. Ambassador speaks for his country and brings it to the foreign place. Ambassador has a tiny, tiny bit of his native land to live in, a detached speck, and as soon as he steps out the front door he's Abroad again.

I didn't do that. I didn't want to bring any of Thulcandra into Tir na n'Og. I wanted to purge Thulcandra from myself. Let no speck of it taint the faerie world.

Which was really not fair to any of the parties involved. Thulcandra, Tir na n'Og, or myself.

Anyway. I was no Ambassador. Not then.

But now I look at that pen name, and I think. Maybe it's time I turned it about, flipped the situation on its head and did the (w)right thing by all parties.

Why shouldn't I become Tir na n'Og's Ambassador to Thulcandra?

It is right. I can tell. It is.

But it will be so hard. For an Ambassador is a diplomat. I must be fair and just and polite and understanding with Thulcandra, with the Milesians, with the world and the people who I still have to remind myself not to hate. I will have to make allowances for them when they don't understand me! I am not allowed the luxury of blind hate!

But then, no-one is, ultimately.

This is the right thing to do, and I must do it, and keep reminding myself to do it.

I am Ambassador of the fairy realms to Thulcandra.(Embassy still pending construction.)