The Kitchen Accords

A brief recounting of a kingdom making peace.

Seedrah is a kingdom unique among kingdoms.

 

That the same family has ruled for generations is no surprise. The word dynasty wouldn’t exist without the concept of rule by lineage. MacDonnell Angus came across an ocean more than a century ago and built an empire on top of an existing city, integrating into it, conquering it through force of will, and force of money, rather than the usual force of arms.

 

Not being a ruler of force, MacDonnell Angus won the people over with ideas and commerce, and he taught his progeny well. So well, in fact, that even the fourth generation of children after him was naturally expected to inherit the kingdom, such was the family’s genteel and noble spirit.

 

No kingdom, however, remains without dispute. Sinister forces came, some internally, and some from across the ocean, to threaten the life and livelihood that Angus had built for the people there. The Rogers clan, whose banner wore upon it the sinister cockatrice, attempted to move in on the Angus kingdom. As vicious as their herald implied, the Rogers clan would peck away at the foundation MacDonnell had laid his kingdom upon.

 

Minor skirmishes with local merchants and guilds occurred. Shops and public houses were destroyed and burned.

 

The vilest of the Rogers clan enforcers was a once high-ranking military officer, now just muscle for the clan. He bore the name Nalrah, a title earned for his exploits as a mercenary ship captain. His presence so threatened the kingdom that MacDonnell Angus marshalled his son and his grandson under the banner of the golden star and set to war with Nalrah and his Rogers clan backers.

 

The two forces met on an island just off the main coast. It would be a fitting battlefield, as it was also an island of immigrants to this new world that Angus had come to. The dream that each family that settled here after crossing the ocean would be a dream that died, as the streets ran red with blood. That’s what the criers would say from the street corners, and the markets themselves expected doom in the wake of the island’s neighborhoods being razed.

 

That never happened, though. And that’s what makes the kingdom of Seedrah so different.

 

MacDonnell Angus knew that even the Rogers clan had the same dream as he did: to begin new lives and establish new kingdoms in this new world. So, they came to a truce.

 

The whole of this new world would still be ruled by MacDonnell, but he would carve fiefdoms and baronies for these newcomers, each given the opportunity to live and build in the kingdom according to their dreams.

 

The feared ship commander Nalrah was given a commission in MacDonnell’s army, raised to the rank of colonel, and given domain over the inland plains.

 

The Rogers, suitable to their hardscrabble mascot, were awarded the opportunity to build along the coastline, stretching to the far south where the land extended into tropical waters.

 

No war was ever had, no blood was ever shed, but the results of two fortnights spent in fierce debate, where passions burned as hot as any furnace, were known as the Kitchen Accords. The name was also due, in part, to the celebratory feast laid out on tables in the streets of the immigrants’ island, where all the families and clans shared and dined together, now brothers in spirit.

 

In spirit, if not in name. Nine months after the Kitchen Accords, the evidence of many smaller accords between new friends, and even newer families, arrived.

 

The kingdom of Seedrah disappeared, though, and rather suddenly, one cold day in February. The idyllic land of compromising kings and knights who never had to raise their blades vanished abruptly. All were lost, for a time, to the whims of the divine powers that granted those men the ability to carve out and rule the land.

 

The kingdom of Seedrah was lost as Jake Berman exited his word processor, closed his school-issued laptop, and left his room in the apartment two floors above the butcher shop, responding to his mother yelling " over his father and grandfather yelling at each other, over God-knows-what-now " that it was time for dinner. It turned out his sister had been nice enough to bring something back from the Golden Arches, the only real peacemaker from the entire MacDonnell clan.

 

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Written for: “Alternate Worlds” contest on WritersCafe.org
Contest was conducted by: Devi
Contest dates: 2016-Feb-12 to 2016-Feb-16

Author's Note

This entry was not submitted to the contest. The submission date changed, and I missed the deadline. I took the extra time to add a little polish on what would have been the actual submission.

(UPDATE: 24-Feb-2016) Devi has opened a new "Alternative Worlds" contest, and this piece has been submitted.

(28-Feb-2016: Winner of "The Silver World" in the "Alternate Worlds 2" competition.)

Reviews

[Al Javier]

That was absorbing, I was really imagining this near-ideal world without dispute and phony rulers.

But the ending, I absolutely loved that ending. I like to think we are all divine rulers of countless worlds ourselves, as writers. This isn't an ad right? Kidding aside, good work.

I'll be off to recommend this to my pals.

[A Shared Narrative]

Thank you for the high praise.

It's not an ad at all. It was calling on the experience (and trope) of, "I need a name. Let me look around my room for one I can steal." It was something that helped bring the piece together for me, as I was writing it.

The most relatable characters are the ones I've already been sometimes.

[Devi DM]

This was actually quite wittingly a funny story. I quite liked it. Never knew it would end the way it did. Loved it.

[A Shared Narrative]

I'm always happy to give a reader something they didn't expect. Glad you appreciated it.