Owner	Pose
Donna Troy	Themyscira is a remarkably egalitarian sort of a monarchy. While the queen may be absolute, there are republican (and theocratic) elements in the way things are run, and being queen comes with responsibilities. One of those is that she makes regularly makes herself available to any Amazon who wishes to consult with her, make suggestions, complaints, or requests. The days she sits in state are sometimes quite exciting, but more often long and a bit boring. This has been one of those latter days for Hippolyta.     Even the most tedious tasks eventually come to an end though, and when Callisthene is done with an unnecessarily long-winded request to build a new theater overlooking the sea on the north of the island, the guards indicate there's only one more person to see before Queen Hippolyta is done with her duties for the day.     The doors open to reveal this last consultant to be Troia. She smiles up to her mother from the length of the room and exchanges a few hushed words with the guards on the door, a friendly hand on the arm of the lochargos. The two guards turn to Hippolyta and salute her before exiting the chamber and closing the doors behind them. It's not the most formal of courts, after all.     Once the guards are gone, Troia looks back to the throne and gives a salute of her own, before approaching. "/Matera/," she says with a smile of greeting - not the formal '/wanassa/' she had used when Caitlin had first arrived in court, so soon after Doomsday, but months have passed and the agrieved formality Troia had felt at the time has faded.     She mounts the steps to the throne and sits herself down on the step immediately below - a spot she had sat in many times before, when she was much younger, and couldn't be kept away. "I know these days can be hard on you, I hope today was not too unpleasant. Can I persuade you to stay a little longer for one final supplicant?"
Hippolyta	"/K6ri/," as Troia takes her old, accustomed place by the steps, her face grows softer and more relaxed, the hint of a smile appearing, "Whether the day has been long or not, there's no day that can be long enough that I would not listen to my own daughter." She glances around the room, as if surprised that the time has grown so late, and so many amazons have passed through the room already. Gathering the folds of her tunic in one hand, the queen of the Amazons slides gracefully from the throne to sit at the top step, immediately above Troia's. "And I have not yet grown so worn by time." She smiles more now, reaching out to touch Troia's hair lightly, brushing a dark lock out of her face.
Donna Troy	Troia smiles up at the touch, but her eyes jerk quickly away again. "I have not come to ask you for anything - except your forgiveness. I have been... distant these last few months." She interrupts herself with a soft sigh. "The guarding of Doom's Doorway is a sacred charge, but I will never believe that it should take precedence over compassion, simply because our traditions say it must. They are our traditions. Your traditions. You founded them, you can change them. Traditions can, and should, be changed. But you felt bound by those traditions and would not break them for me, to allow me to return to America in time to say my final farewell to my friends who had died, because you believed it was the wrong thing to do. "     "Maybe because I am your daughter that made it harder for you to consider changing the traditions, not easier. But you did what you felt was right. I know that. I know you would never do anything else. So however much I disagree with the decision you made, I should not resent you making that decision. You are the queen and you have the weight of all your people on your shoulders. I apologize for making that weight heavier."     She looks up again, smiling a little sadly. "One day I shall return to America and find some way to say my farewells to them in my own way. I guess in some ways I already have. Today my heart is heavier that Caitlin has flown back to America and that I will not see her for... some time. I am used to knowing I will never see Kole and Dove again. I will see Caitlin again, but her absence is fresher. It's strange..."
Hippolyta	"Ah, Troiaki mou," the queen sighs softly, "believe me, I understand your grief more than you know." It is now the queen's turn to look away from Donna and straight ahead, her eyes acquiring a distant look. "You know the history of how we came to be on this island, but what we do not speak of is of the ones that were lost. They were not lost to the weapons of man, Troia. Not all of them. There came a black day on our history when I had to surrender my sisters to the world of men, to choose to remain with our sisters who sought to stay faithful to the bequest of our Patronesses." The Queen's usally serene face is struck by an old grief, evidenced by the downward curve of her lips. "To abandon the way of the Amazons, to turn your back on your Patronesses, it is to embrace the fate of men and their mortality. On that day I knew that I would never see my sisters on this Earth again." Her voice grows quiet, "While my heart cried in agony for many years, called out to them, I knew that there was a greater right that made demands upon me, for the sake of all of our sisters." She closes her eyes briefly, and exhales slowly. When her eyes open again, some of the old serenity has returned.
Donna Troy	Troia reaches up to rest her hand on Hippolyta's, joining her in silence for a little while. "There's a price to our gifts," she says after a while. "To immortality. There will be a day where I will be saying goodbye to Caitlin, knowing I will not see her again this side of Lethe. Diana and I... the time we have spent in World of Men, the friends we have made there - some will live long, perhaps even longer than we do. Most will not. We did not share the separation that our older sisters did, all those centuries ago, to be cut off from the rest of the world by the gift of immortality. But we understand it nonetheless."     She sighs softly and shuffles around, resting her back against the side of the throne. "Mother? I... when I was very young, before Diana returned to us, I heard so many stories about her. From you and from the others. About how wonderful she was, how talented, how kind. But Magala told me a different story. When I was perhaps eight, barely started my training, one day she warned me of the dangers that come with the gifts we are granted. That Diana was not always as kind as she eventually became. That when she started her training and learned that she was... that the goddesses had given her greater gifts than any other Amazon, Diana became arrogant. When she returned to us I was fascinated and nervous. I didn't know if my sister would be a hero everyone had promised, or a monster. I asked her, a few years later, and she told me that Magala was right. That she fell in love with her own power, became arrogant. That it took her years to learn to be - to be herself. To be the Diana who is so kind. "     "I think about that a lot. And I can't help wondering if it was the same for you. For all of you, at the beginning. When you were first granted the gifts of the goddesses, and went from being victims to being the powers of the Earth, able to topple any kingdom you deemed deserving of it - did that make you arrogant? Did all of you have to learn the lesson that Diana learned?"
Hippolyta	Hippolyta nods slowly, "Diana's growth was... difficult." The smile is very much a mother's smile- half fond recollection, half bittersweet memories, "But we, too, had our own arrogance. Believing ourselves the favored of our Patrons, we couldn't countenance the notion that strife would come from within our own ranks- we who thought of ourselves superior to the ways of Patriarch's World. Although we were given power and freedom, wisdom is something that comes from experience. It was only after the second loss that we gained wisdom, infinitely more painful for it came not from the betrayal of Herakles but it was by the discontent of our own sisters that we lost them." "When loss came to you, my heart cried out for you and I considered recalling you from your duty." She remains silent for a few seconds, before retaking the thread again. "And then, as I considered my course in my chambers, it seemed to me that the shadows of my sisters rose around me, glancing upon me with sorrowful eyes. It is then that the sacred duty came to my mind and I asked myself: would the Patronesses forgive the foresaking of a sacred duty? Or would they punish you, my daughter, with the fate that befell my sisters, abandoned in the world of man? I did not consult the oracle, for it did not seem appropriate for our sisters to know that her queen was considering bucking tradition for the sake of a princess- and it was in that moment of reflection that the answer seemed clear to me." She turns to face Troia now, the faintest hint of a glimmer in her eyes, "And so it was that, although I proceeded to act as queen, it was perhaps the mother who sought to spare her child. The bracelets we wear, we wear in remembrance of our bondage and the price of our freedom. And the cost that started us in the search of wisdom." She squeezes Donna's hand in her own. "Perhaps it was the arrogance of a queen and mother who, also, would not see her daughter lost that made me so unyielding in tradition. Since that day, I have searched my heart and I find it conflicted as to which part of me made the choice, and why. I only hope that it was indeed the correct choice and that the gods forgive me. And... that you forgive me, my Troia." Her voice grows very quiet at the end of the sentence.
Donna Troy	Troia listens closely, but by the time Hippolyta's speech comes to an end, she's shaking her head. "No... mother, no. I won't forgive you because there is nothing to forgive. I came here to ask your forgiveness, not to offer mine. You acted as you felt was best. I should never have blamed you for that, but I did because I was hurting and... and there was nobody else I could blame apart from myself. Caitlin helped me realize how much I have been blaming myself and how unhelpful that was. But part of the blame I alotted to you because it was convenient to do so, and for that I am the one who must ask forgiveness."     Troia shuffles around from the corner of the throne kneel before it facing Hippolyta, and reaches out to hold both her hands. "Whatever I was born to was lost to Poseidon's hunger, and everything I have you gave to me, mother. And yet... I often ask myself why the goddesses favored me so much. If they had granted me just so much as the least of our sisters, would I fit in here any less than I do? Had they granted me twice that, would the millennia of training I lack have held me back? But they granted me more. I am stronger, faster than any but Diana and perhaps yourself. I can even fly. Magala's warning was well heard, and I always held back. I could have defeated even Philippus by the time I was sixteen if I did not hold back, but I knew it would not serve me to rely on those gifts when there was more to learn. Why take pride in something I have not earned? But still those gifts were there. Why? Caitlin said she thought the goddesses must have seen something in me that called for it, but that makes no sense, because what there was in me was washed away by the waves and what I am is what you have made me and what I have made myself. They didn't grant me these gifts because of what they saw in me, they granted me these gifts because of what they ask of me."     "Doom's Doorway is one duty, mother, but there are others beyond our shores. I am your daughter and I am an Amazon, but I am also a Titan." It might, for just a moment, be a very worrying thing to hear Troia say, but there is context to relieve that worry, however naggingly worrying that oddity of names may be. "That's why I had to go to Patriarch's world. I think perhaps you knew that too, that you let me go so young. America has shaped me too, and given me a cause. With my friends there I fought for the things we Amazons exist to fight for, and there those gifts the goddesses gave me make so much sense."     "Mother, Diana is right - the things she has asked you for, the changes she has suggested. We guard the gates of Tartarus, but there is much of Hades in Partriarch's world and yet so many innocent lives who do not have a door to protect them from it. Perhaps the gifts the goddesses gave to me, the gifts that make so much more sense out there than they do here at home, perhaps they are a gift to you too, to help you see tha there are other doors we could be guarding. I wish you could have seen what we did in America, mother. The Titans... we did so much good. We embodied so much of what the Amazons are supposed to embody. You have had a chance to come to know Caitlin, and you must surely see her heart is the heart of a true Amazon."     "Let us guard the World of Men from themselves, the way you and our sisters did in the days before Herakles' betrayal. Doom's Doorway is a sacred duty, but is America any less of a sacred duty? Would the goddesses have granted me such gifts if they did not want me to stand guard there too? "     Troia squeezes Hippolyta's hands and smiles a loving smile. "I may be the youngest of us, but if you will listen to my advice mother - grant Diana her wish. Let her open an embassy to Patriarchs' world. It does not have to be a sudden change, but both your daughters stand on the threshhold of that door already - is it not time the rest of the Amazons joined us?"
Hippolyta	Holding Troia's hands, Hippolyta listens. When her youngest daughter makes a plea for Diana's idea, the Queen is silent for a few moments, and then smiles with a certain melancholy. "We have remained steadfast in our ways for so long that one might think we already have attained our eternity. You are right- I knew that there would be a change in you upon leaving, as there was in Diana. From the unchanging shores to an ever-changing world. And both of you have become so noble, so worthy of being called an Amazon." The queen stands up, as if stretching her legs after remaining sitting for so long, and paces a space across the room. "It dawns on me that we came to this blessed island having already lived in the world, and perhaps we have been remiss in remembering that. Even though we left Patriarch's world behind, Aphrodite's laws cannot long be ignored." And then she intones something long comitted to memory- "The heart in agony cannot heal, The passion betrayed will not forgive, Thus lend your ear to all and and strive to be A balsam to assuage the violence of the soul. For that is Eleos, and in its fulfilment you shall find your purpose." The closing lines of the laws of Aphrodite Ourania, the last lines spoken at the Feast of the Five that honors the patron goddess of Themyscira. Hippolyta remains still for a moment, and then smiles, looking back at Troia, "It does seem as if the goddess has been speaking to me through my daughters, and I have been reticent to embrace the changes required of us merely for the reason that we have remained unchanged for so long. And yet, we were all changed when an island where no-one grows old and there are no children saw two beautiufl daughters." She nods slowly, "So be it. Tomorrow we will speak of the Embassy and we will set ourselves in motion to grant Diana's wish. That shall be well for tomorrow... but for tonight, perhaps you will tell e of all you have seen. Unlike some might say, I am not capable of seeing /all/ that transpires on Patriarch's World." she smiles and holds her hand out to her daughter. "I requested of Akathna to prepare some loukoumades and leave them in my chamber. We can share them and you will patiently instruct me in what you have learned." A pause, "But let us not speak of installing the... Way Fay... that you have mentioned earlier. I am not ready to embrace change /that/ violently."