You know what time it is! National France again! The girlfailure state
Why do you forget your own condition…?
Why do you fix your gaze on a world which is passing
And which as it shakes and crashes constantly threatens its lovers with collapse?
Deceitful indeed is its grace and worthless its beauty…
We should pant after the light of grace,
That the day of glory and honor may shine upon us.
Monday: the Joyful Mysteries
The cock wasn't crowing, but Épée awoke. It was so early it wasn't even bright quite yet, and she fumbled for her uniform in the dark. Hauling those baggy trousers up her legs – especially baggy, considering her size – slipping into a light jacket, and finally tying on her boots. She was nearly to the door before she remembered to grab her fez.
There was a tassel on top in gold and navy blue, which was the regulation color for shipgirls. They were some of the only people who wore them in combat contexts anymore. They were too flashy for a normal soldier, but a shipgirl? Perfectly fine, assuming it didn't offend her taste.
Light just barely crept in through the windows and arches, but Épée could already see a few of her comrades moving to their little assembly hall. Not all of them – Honneur usually chose to sleep late, Algerie and Tunisie did as well – but a fair portion. She tried to up the pace a little. Not for the sake of upshowing anyone or anything, but just to make sure she got there nice and early. Épée always tried to be early, no matter what the event was. Just not Lauds early. The difference was an hour, but it was an important hour!
Of course, there were even earlier birds than her. Épée desperately attempted to hide a yawn behind her sleeve as she walked in to see Patrie speaking with Surcouf. Surcouf didn't really do the Hours, if Épée remembered correctly, but she made a habit of informing Patrie of whatever happened at night. A submarine made a good night watchman, she supposed? (Well, that and Surcouf escaped a lot of scrutiny for her eating habits during Lent thanks to those odd hours of hers. Not that Épée would tattle!)
The rest of the girls slowly filtered in and Mirabeau prepared a light so Patrie wouldn't be squinting to read. Oh, to be like Mirabeau… well, to be like Mirabeau in being useful, not being an exile in a fortune country separated from her sister and her homeland. That sounded… bad.
But wouldn't Épée be divorced from the homeland, in her own sort of way? All she had ever known was Algiers – she was like the colonists of French descent who had been born and raised here – and while France was the end goal… she wasn't sure to expect. Home, but with a more temperate climate? Wine? Milk and honey?
"The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof: the world, and all they that dwell therein…" Patrie started the Psalms and Épée almost felt herself swoon. Her voice was too soothing! It was simply unfair…
Somebody elbowed her. "Wakey wakey," Le Téméraire whispered, grinning at her.
"Thank you," Épée murmured back, trying to shake off her sleepiness without making a major scene. Almost there. She almost wished she had a psalter to check against, to see how long was left, but she knew she'd only manage to make a mess of it, if she didn't just forget it every time she actually needed it.
Thankfully, the liturgy of the hours eventually ended and Mirabeau rolled in a cart with bread and tea mere moments later. Was there another ship helping with that behind the scenes? Or maybe one of the housekeepers. Most of the indigenes didn't have to worry about Catholic liturgy, no?
Whatever the case, Épée moved to get a portion for herself and Fleuret. "Two, please?" She squeaked.
One of the other girls gave her a questioning look – oh, she looked like such a tremendous glutton here, didn't she? – and Épée smiled awkwardly. "Fleuret, you know…" The silence stretched a bit longer, and Épée almost settled with no bread or tea at all… but she did get her double portion, alongside a suspicious look.
Slowly, carefully, she started towards her sister's room; the last thing she wanted to do was trip. Fleuret would appreciate lukewarm or cold tea over no tea, Épée knew from experience.
Tuesday: the Sorrowful Mysteries
Tuesday came with a double portion of bad news: the Germans had been handily trounced at Mulhouse and the government was instituting limited rationing. Ah, the French government. The German government was having a hell of a time with their own economy, but it was the nominally at peace Republic of France that was putting rationing into place now. Everyone knew what it meant, of course.
Admittedly, shipgirls were beneficiaries of that rationing, to some extent. They were practically guaranteed enough tea and coffee to keep them awake during missions because having them alert was so strategically important. There wasn't a better person to be drinking that coffee or tea if it was a simple matter of getting caffeine to people who would make the best use of it.
However, shipgirls were also part of a whole. Sure, they were part of the privileged community of shipgirls, but they would also sail into battle alongside normal sailors, sailors who had to suffer whatever food the government could get to them. That food could be really bad. Patrie and Honneur had won the eternal love of their crews by exposing a scandal regarding the quality of rations…
They had tremendous political power, but they had to bow to politics and perception as well. Shipgirls dining like queens with the officers as the crew languished… it wasn't a flattering image, as Syndicalist propaganda had already shown. The governments of Germany, France, and Britain had all fired back with their own insults against the character of Syndicalist shipgirls, not that Épée particularly cared to read them.
In theory, they were planning for some sort of training exercise with the Italians, but everyone knew that was a lie. If they were going to be doing anything with the Italians soon, it was shooting at Syndicalist ships, and for that hypothetical shooting and torpedo-ing they needed ammunition and fuel and all the stuff that made a ship run properly.
Épée had attempted to help with the loading about a week after her initial birth and was officially banned from helping with the loading in any serious capacity about an hour afterward. It had been terribly embarrassing and certainly didn't do much to help win her crew over. She didn't come out like Tunisie or Honneur and she couldn't even boast competence like her sisters…
So she sat on a crate and watched her men do the actual work of preparing the ship for war. Most of them would wave or say hello when they saw her, with the exceptionally bold going as far as ruffling her hair a bit, but none of them could sit and talk. They had business to do.
Suddenly, the crate she was sitting on moved into the air! "Wah?" Looking down, she could a pair of laughing soldiers who had evidently teamed up to lift the box (and her). Unfortunately, one seemed to be a bit stronger than the other… "Whaha- watch out!"
Wednesday: the Glorious Mysteries
Wednesday morning came with a bit of an ache in her legs still. She didn't get it quite as bad as the man she had fallen into the day previously, but it still felt like she was walking around funny. Épée thought she managed to hide it pretty well – she only wobbled when she was sure nobody was looking – but after lunch, she was confronted about the matter.
"Are you alright, Épée?" Mirabeau asked. Oh, she looked so competent! The glasses, the little clipboard she carried now that she was aiding Patrie in the logistics of the return to France… Not only did she look more competent than Épée, she actually was.
"Yes… there was just… an accident yesterday."
"An accident?"
"My boys were… playing a prank, you see…" Épée murmured. Mirabeau's eyes narrowed. "They lifted a crate I was sitting on, and I fell off, and then I hit one of them, and really, I'm the lucky one, all I got was a little strain in my leg…"
"Alright, just tell them to be careful. We can't have anyone out of commission, not now…" That anyone probably meant shipgirls and not humans… well, that was kind of understood. She didn't feel that much more competent than her crew, but she was apparently worth a whole lot more.
"I will…" Épée agreed, with absolutely no intent to actually do so.
Mirabeau laid a hand on her shoulder. "Just tell me if you need anything, Épée. Is your English going well?"
(Almost everyone was expected to pick up a second language for better communication with the rest of the Entente. Patrie and Honneur tended towards Italian, thanks to their origins in Trieste, while English was more popular among the destroyers and cruisers, considering so many of them were originally British. Épée had gone with the flow.)
"Not particularly…" Épée admitted.
Mirabeau checked her watch. "I might be able to help you. What are you having trouble with?"
She couldn't get any better than a native speaker, now could she? Épée just sort of wished that she wasn't learning English just to communicate with the Canadian navy (and the swarms of rebels waiting to overthrow the Syndicalist government in Britain, of course).
At times, she didn't understand what the government was doing at all. The current situation wasn't perfect, she could see that, but couldn't they try to make something of their own here? Why did they have to do so much to reclaim some country she never knew?
Well, there was a whole list of reasons: the threat of Syndicalism would never stop at France, the colonies couldn't sustain them perpetually and they needed the metropole, they were obligated to liberate the land of their fathers… She supposed that the people starting wars had no reason to explain themselves to her, a mere destroyer.
Thursday: the Joyful Mysteries
When they weren't busy with logistics and dealing with the men – guiding them or inspiring them, it varied from ship to ship and crew to crew – shipgirls also attempted to win over the public. They slotted rather conveniently into propaganda, or at least the pretty ones did. Épée couldn't pull off the elegant beauty of someone like Patrie and attempting something martial only made her seem more like a kid. The French Navy was not to be pitied!
(Well, maybe it was, if you started comparing tonnage and drydocks and their ability to actually repair and maintain their fleet to the Commune's… but that image certainly wasn't helped by sniffling Épée.)
There were dinners and speeches and all sorts of things like that. Honneur didn't have much tolerance for that sort of thing, but Honneur's schedule was stuffed to bursting with meetings and interviews and parties. Really, it was a miracle that Mirabeau had so much as a moment to spare for Épée yesterday… Maybe she hadn't, and she had wasted precious time?
Épée shook her head. There was no use worrying about that sort of thing – at least not when she was walking about, she was sure it would come back to haunt her in bed – when she could instead focus on… standing in line with a bunch of other shipgirls for a photo. Easy. Just… smile. Keep on smiling, even as the photographer reaches something like ten, even if her eyes are watering a little…
"Are you crying, Épée?" Fleuret whispered to her.
"No…" Épée said, dabbing at her eyes with her sleeve. "The flash is just bright…"
Fleuret pulled a handkerchief from somewhere and offered it to her. Épée dabbed at her eye a bit. "Thank you…" She passed it back to Fleuret, who proceeded to lodge it straight down the front of her…
"What?" Fleuret asked.
"Nothing…"
This wouldn't be the first time Épée appeared in the media, at least. While the government could do whatever it wanted with the images of shipgirls – especially a government like National France's – there was a tendency to release them. It wouldn't necessarily be a full-fledged glamour shoot or anything, but people were interested. An interview and a few photos did wonders.
(Again, Patrie showed her popularity in this department, although Honneur was a lot more comparable. Getting her to pose was a nightmare, sure, but she had some real roguish charm to her.)
Getting together to take photos like this was nice. Épée wasn't nearly lovely enough to be notable, not in that mass of brilliant figures, but even being in their presence was enough to amaze. France really had some amazing girls, didn't it? All made-up and dressed up… they were a vision.
Unfortunately, that single moment of beauty didn't last forever. They all had business to get to, and many of the girls shed the parts of the get-up they didn't care for. It was mostly small stuff, though. There had been a doomed attempt to get Honneur to wear a scapular that got everyone very heated.
("Come on," Honneur snorted. "Even I'm smart enough to know this isn't just some looks thing to them.")
Friday: the Sorrowful Mysteries
They all knew it was coming, it was just a matter of when. For those aged few who had been in Algiers from near the start of the exile, this was the moment they had been waiting for the whole of their lives. This was the window of opportunity that would see everything they lost restored to them – perhaps even Alsace, considering how the Germans were buckling – and there was just the matter of seizing destiny.
Confirmation came with the rumbling of trains from all across North Africa. The army, from native zouaves to the sons of those men who had lost France two decades ago, was on the move to Algiers, with hopes of hopping to Rome. The Communard victories in Alsace had emboldened the SRI, sparking a series of skirmishes that evolved into serious fighting on the border with the Italian government. The war in the Italian peninsula had begun, and helping there was more practical than attempting to stage an invasion from Corsica.
And there it was. War, even if the declarations hadn't been sent out yet. It would take quite some time before the army was ready to move to Italy, but the Navy would be on the move much sooner. Syndicalist submarines would have to be hunted, naval intelligence gathered, and a plan made to deliver their boys to Rome.
Even with a plan laid out for the first mission of the war, everyone seemed a little disorganized. Sure, Patrie was going through the same ceremony as usual, praying Vespers – "in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall thy hand lead me" – but there were fewer participants than usual, shipgirls wandering around the base like sleepwalkers.
Some of the girls had stopped their Lenten fasts. It was a war, after all. The years that followed would probably be penitental, in their own sort of way. The happy thought of returning to the homeland, as some distant, foggy dream, was replaced by the grim thought of winning France with lead and blood. They wouldn't be seeing the worst of it, but the fighting would be fierce.
Honneur stood away from the rest, standing at a balcony to overlook a darkening Algiers. A few trees obscured their view, but it was still possible to see people rushing about. She couldn't spot details, but Épée almost thought she heard the call to prayer from the heights of a minaret. Maybe the Algerians would be glad to finally have the French out of their hair…
"Evenin', Épée."
"Good evening, ma'am!"
Honneur frowned. "Cut it out with the ma'am stuff, would you? I'm not Patrie."
"Of course, ma- Honneur." Épée squeaked. They fell into silence for a bit, but her eyes kept on drifting from the city back to Honneur. She stood taller and straighter than Épée, a sword sleeping in its scabbard on her hip.
"Is there a reason you're starin'?" Honneur asked.
"I, ah…" Épée couldn't bring herself to look her in the eye, "You just… look so strong…" Stronger than Épée, that was certain.
"I'm glad you think so," Honneur chuckled.
"Do… you think this will all work out?"
Honneur let out a long sigh and brought a hand to her forehead for a few moments… "Not really."
Épée's stomach dropped, and whatever heat was left in the air after a spring day in Algiers seemed to vanish. "You don't…?"
"All the fighting spirit in the world can't fix a losing match. Maybe with Canada, with America, with Spain… but we don't live on maybes, do we?"
Saturday: the Glorious Mysteries
Épée had never noticed before, perhaps because she had never seen Patrie in a serious context like this, but she had a nervous tick. Perhaps a stereotypically pious one – fiddling with a rosary or going through the beads, even as she discussed matters of war or state – but it was a sign of anxiousness that Épée hadn't expected from the battleship. She was learning more about the sisters every day, wasn't she? Well, she had learned about them for a grand total of two days in a row.
The beads were… red coral, Épée thought? Honneur stood behind her sister, dressed in a similarly vibrant, aggressive red, and leaned over her shoulder to whisper advice. Fortunately for Épée, she wasn't alone in staring: the whole room seemed to be transfixed.
"The Republic of France is now at war." Patrie started. "Some might say it isn't, that such a declaration legitimizes the revolter government in the metropole…" Her fingers clenched white around red beads. "I would say we are. We sail to war with a government greater than our own. They are richer, more powerful, and more industrialized than our regime in Algiers."
The room was deathly silent. Not exactly a promising opening, was it?
"I cannot promise any of you a warm welcome in France, either. Her people have grown used to Syndicalism and their control over the workplace. The eldest daughter of the Church has grown estranged. Some will welcome us as liberators – some will see us as the same tired old despots."
"I am certain of this: these will be days of tremendous change. For some of us, I fear it will be that final change that brings us to the other side of eternity… but God willing, some of us will survive to see the fatherland, and we will have to undergo the changes of rapprochement. We will have to compromise. The enemies of today will be the allies of tomorrow."
Honneur squeezed Patrie's shoulder. "That is not to say I expect anything less than your best in the coming battles. If the homeland is to be won, nothing less than the greatest exertion on our parts will deliver us to it. We sail knowing that this struggle will spill French blood. Our blood. Because they are our countrymen still, as much as we might vilify them; France is a land, but the French are a people. I hope that we all might be merciful in this coming struggle. Every injury against a Frenchman is an injury against ourselves, a wound we must heal when we return home. If it is even a home to us, in any real sense."
"We are sojourners in Algeria. Perhaps we will be sojourners again, in France. I hope… that we might find some resting place in this long pilgrimage of ours."
Sunday: seasonal mysteries; from Septuagesima to Easter, the Sorrowful Mysteries
They were off on their first mission. It was more scouting than anything, testing the waters and trying to get a handle on the submarine situation in the Mediterranean… but command attempted to paint their departure as gallant knights riding off for crusade. It was far too glorious of an image, Épée thought.
Despite Richelieu's speech the day prior, Épée still felt afraid. She supposed there was no better time for this than Lent. Memento mori, right? How could you possibly forget death in times like these when it seemed as if all of Europe teetered above the fire? The whole world seemed ready to be swallowed up in a conflagration, and Épée had no desire for a home burnt to cinders.
Épée wanted… she wanted a home for her and her sisters somewhere. Maybe Algiers, maybe France, whichever place would lead to less of this fighting she felt so ill-prepared to handle…
Looking to her side, she could see Fleuret sailing on her left and Le Téméraire on her right. Heck, she could see the actual Le Téméraire and not just the warship: a few of her crew were watching with concern as she stood at the prow, leaning far over the railing. Her hair flew like pennants behind her, wilder than the French flag flapping above her head.
She wasn't sure about France (the area). She had never seen it, and she was sure it couldn't live up to whatever tremendous ideal the older exiles were chasing… But her sisters needed her the best she could possibly be, right?
Turning her gaze to the horizon – and some part of her mind to the instruments installed inside her hull – she stared. Stared for the enemy, whoever or wherever they might be.
Épée is such a pitiable little girlfailure I love her
Each day takes a bit of inspiration from a specific mystery of the day and the associated virtue, sometimes with a bit of subversion/pointing out the ways the French government falls short. In order: the Visitation, love of neighbor; the Scourging at the Pillar, mortification; the Descent of the Holy Spirit, wisdom; the Presentation at the Temple, purity of heart and body; Agony in the Garden, accepting God's will; the Ascension, hope; and the Crowning with Thorns, courage. I think I did my research correctly re: the mysteries, considering this was way before the Luminous were introduced.