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It seems obvious at first, so much so that you're terrified of your new role: Being a queen is very different from being a postal worker.
The carriers of the mail are a trusty and steady force. They cannot do just anything; they can do one thing, very well.
Yet they will work ceaselessly to bring that one task to fruition. They endure rain and snow, stifling heat and chaotic winds. You remember the strange, howling planet where the sky was choked by dark clouds. You crossed swaying, unsteady bridges over rivers of oil. You fell in once or twice, the murky sludge tugging at your colorful robes.
But the White Queen trusts you. She saw that mail was what your fellow exiles needed, and yet not what they needed from you. Her strong confidence inspires you like a beacon of hope from a far-off civilization. There's a long, hot desert and a lot of hardship between your small band of renegades – subjects – and that future. But if you can act as the monarch for now, then later you can reach that beacon. Everyone has an important job to do.
Someone has to set the boundaries. Someone has to declare which couriers serve which regions of the sovereign state. They have to raise their hand high, whether or not it bears a ring, and bring it down with the decisive force of half an army.
(The Dersite with the yellow tape is hurrying about and readying the old ships. They will be your escape plan, to flee into a safe world, and then the portals will be closed behind you with dynamite. As the Aimless Renegade rigs the ships to explode, he works not just with ease but with a sort of mania propelling him. You wonder how different your life would be if you found order in leveling buildings and not transporting packages.)
For now, you cannot be the Parcel Mistress. It was the hand of cards you were lucky enough to be dealt on Prospit, but those days are long gone, and you've drawn so many new cards since then; you doubt you're even playing with the same deck. Certainly the game has changed.
You wonder if the Queen of Prospit had wanted the monarchy, the way you always wanted the mail. Did she love it, the aura of ruling others? Was she basking in its glow rather than shrinking from authority?
You watch her and wonder what she is planning with the Writ Keeper, what more she possibly has to do.
~
Flying into exile gave you a lot of time to read.
There were a few interesting books on the ship, in the middle of a lot of boring dreck. Books about old cities and human lovers and the biology of unfamiliar bodies littered the shelves – but over time you found four tomes, one very thick book and three slimmer ones, all about the mail.
You dove in, and read them cover to cover. You realized that Earth truly was fascinating, just as you had imagined from the vague whispers you'd heard of the exile planet. And with all the importance that mail delivery seems to have played in the formation of their society, the people of Earth can't be all that bad.
One of the slim books was about a human structure called the Internet, which was really just an invisible, sprawling mail-carrying system. Mail is all about communication, getting one person's message to another person miles away. A system of nigh-instant conversation, where that message can travel in seconds and not in days, sounded a bit wondrous and a bit frightening to you.
At the end, humans must not have needed your kind of mail much, and the thought of it made you sad.
It was almost enough to make you long for the Land of Wind and Shale, with its illogical post terminals and carved tablets and creatures dropping random shoes into the system.
Then you remembered the human with the big glasses (you believed them to be a human girl, although you couldn't be sure before you set off), and her excited scribblings, her little drawings of who and where her delivery should take you. She needed you. She needed the mail.
And now your Queen needs you. As the former White Queen stands on the warm sands looking towards the horizon, her gaze shifting towards the temple for a moment here and there, she needs you. She needs you to take up the mantle and rule.
All the books you read, all the duties you carried out on Prospit, even fetching the scepter and ring for that loathsome Dersite, couldn't have prepared you for this. It's the hardest task you can imagine. Dying would be much easier. Giving up and failing your newfound friends, your rulers, and your subjects, would be the simple way to go.
The job of a mail carrier is difficult, though. You know that is one similarity linking you and the Earth – the postmen and postwomen are tireless workers. Neither wind, nor rain, nor snow, nor heat will keep you from completing your appointed rounds.
Just for now, you will be the Monarch. You gave a promise when you were handed this responsibility by your Queen, and you intend to deliver.
~
So when the moment comes, you cannot hesitate. You hold the ring carefully like it will burn you, and slip it on.
At first it feels like nothing has changed. The Dersite abomination, Jack the archagent, the Sovereign Slayer, is long gone by now. You're alone now, just you and your dying friend, surrounded by corpses. And you think, briefly, “I'm sorry, my Queen, my King, my fellow exiles.” You have failed them.
Then the ring glows, each of its orbs shining, and the change hits you. It's immediate and intimate like a punch to your gut.
Your head is on fire. Your heart is on fire. Your whole body is – THE UNIVERSE IS ON FIRE.
A sudden rush of green obscures your vision of the temple, blocking it from view. Then green is everywhere, obliterating every other sight, confusing your other senses. You are drowning in green, and for half a second – a moment that seems to stretch towards infinity – you are convinced that Jack has finally killed you, that soon all this green will fade to black...
IT DOES NOT FADE.
A voice, warm and comforting, calls out, “it's the Green Sun; it will help you be strong!!!” The ring glows and
EVERYTHING IS CHANGING.
You can see, billions of lightyears away, an enormous cloud of dust and gas, gathering together, heating to near-impossible temperatures, glowing bright emerald. It is your beacon. The Green Sun whispers power across the universes, into Earth. You embrace it.
At first there's a sweeping sense of possibility crackling inside you. You can transport something almost anywhere – like the mail. Your vision flashes from the desert to the Sun, and to a million places in between.
There is a girl named Jade, visible from very far away. You think you recognize her – and then you feel like she's your best friend! Yes, she is your close friend and loveable mistress, even though you have hardly met before. Arf!
All your senses flare, bringing you back to the present and the ruins. Everything sounds so much richer, and your nose is flooded with the smell of hot blood spilled onto the sand. A long nose has emerged from your face, and a muzzle with sharp teeth replaces your small, ordinary mouth. You feel a sudden compulsion to chase an Earth animal called a cat, complete with visuals and sounds and smells. Then, all at once, you feel you are a cat. This is the most confusing moment of your life.
Just when you've accepted your head changing shape, the sword appears. It grows out of the center of you, like another limb. It would pierce a half-dozen vital organs if your organs did not know how to twist themselves out of the way. Wings develop – huge, feathered wings that could carry you for miles. The bones within them are hollow.
You have long, wiry tentacles as well, that hang down at your side. If you want, they will fade away into nothing, just another weapon in your reserves. They remind you of the yards of caution tape your friends used to set up the explosives, ordinary things turned into weapons.
One of your arms falls. It's severed in an instant, leaving a quick, blunt wound. Then another flash of pain removes your vision in one eye. You are still ready. You could see the world perfectly now without light, just smells and sounds.
Suddenly, you realize again that the air is saturated with blood; the metallic stench of death from your fellow exiles is overpowering. Your new paws twitch violently.
The final clarity rushes in, and you can tell that the Sovereign Slayer is close again. Close somehow across a vast span of time and space, but neither of those mean anything if you cannot find the monster who killed your people.
In seconds, you take your fellow survivors to the heart of the temple. The smell of metal is everywhere now, and the air is thrumming with power. That energy can deliver you like a letter to another sphere of existence. Standing in the radioactive heart of the temple and summoning all the Green Sun's power, you try to focus your mind. This power is exhilirating, terriying, so you concentrate on guarding the Mayor and Serenity, on your royal duty, and on flight. You follow Jack.
It's over in less than a minute, the impossible distance from inside a universe to outside of it. Everything familiar around you, save for your passengers, has vanished. You stand in the void and stare up at the monster floating above.
You challenge the Sovereign Slayer with a ferocity that goes beyond just duty. Instincts are going wild, anger is bubbling up still, and at your core, there is a wellspring of righteous hate. With a single thought, the sword through your middle vanishes, and then in an instant you are holding it up. It fits in your hand perfectly, just as deadly a weapon as Jack's. The long, straight blade is not light or curved like your regisword, but somehow this ring-bearing body knows the sword and understands how to use it in combat.
Before the Great War, you couldn't have imagined being a soldier on the battlefield. Now, your sole mission revolves around battle; your highest cause is death, killing to prevent others' deaths. You are war.
You don't even need to speak, to open your new, strange jaws; he knows the message. And for the first time, you smell fear. It's accompanied by the curious smell of surprise. Then you issue your decree.
Noir.
The Sovereign Slayer stays suspended, still, his eyes huge and apprehensive.
I know you, and I do not fear you.
The Slayer tightens his grip on the dark sword. You are terrified, but you know this is your most important task.
I gave you the package, back on the dark planet when you still looked like a proper carapacian. I helped make you what you are now, Noir. I delivered the rabbit. I delivered the ring and the scepter.
You are the Queen. You are your own army, an entire justice system, and the interim mayor of Can Town.
And now I will deliver you justice.