[Lauchenoiria]

“Has he been in contact with you?” Carmen questioned.

“Why do you think he suddenly appeared?” Natasha asked.

“What have you been doing on those library computers?” Carmen demanded.

“Is he being put up to this?” Natasha worried.

“STOP INTERROGATING ME!” Imogen yelled, slamming her hands down on the table and standing up, her own chair falling over in her rush. The baby, Benjamin, began wailing in the next room. “I’m thirteen! How should I know?”

She turned and stormed upstairs to her room, slamming the door. Her heart rate was rather too high, and she worried that her mother or sister had managed to read the falsehood on her face. She had not technically been lying; she was not herself in contact with her father. She just knew who had been, and why. Or, at least, part of why.

Amelia Quinn had not told Imogen the entire plan. As a Kerlian, the idea of her father having custody over her was an alien notion. At first, on hearing the news, she had acted just as horrified as her mother - which, thankfully, added greatly to her ruse of not knowing what was going on. Of course, thinking it over more carefully she understood the logic. Kerlian men were much more controllable; he would be her puppet and not her guardian. The idea wouldn’t have occurred to her in the first place, however.

Her final goal was to win back her family’s seat on the Council of Kerlile. In order to do so, she would have to be at a minimum fourteen, so she had the better part of a year before any plan could be implemented regardless. Slower plans were therefore perfectly valid. But the longer she stayed in Eiria, the more impatient she became.

School bullies, in any country, will sniff out your most unique quality and find a way to use it against you. Imogen, being a gynarchist in a country of democrats, was therefore an easy target. It was unlikely any of these adolescent bullies actually cared about politics in any sort of deep way. The boys were probably not actual misogynists. But when saying something mildly sexist got such a rise out of Imogen, they would continue to do it (the girls, too).

She was constantly in trouble at school for getting into fights. She refused to dress in a socially acceptable manner, instead wearing the most Kerlian clothes she could possibly find. In opposition to the teasing, she became more and more a caricature of Kerlianness, far beyond what her own preferences were. Being thirteen, this was not a conscious choice.

Imogen was carrying out the Kerlian version of teenage rebellion against liberal parents, by becoming more conservative. It didn’t help that all the attention was going to Benjamin the baby, or that her mother and sister seemed to be perfectly accepting of their fate as exiles. Every time someone mocked Imogen’s accent, she became just a little more misandristic.

Carmen would challenge Neroli’s desire for custody. Occasional visitation was whatever, but anything further and she would take his lawyer, and raise her slightly more expensive lawyer.

If the courts bothered to ask Imogen herself, however, it would be another matter.