Quills: the Rise of the Northern Matriarch-Chapter 65: New Northern 3

Leilanna reflected upon her childhood and her behavior years ago towards her brothers and their friends. She could see why they were so withdrawn from her. She decided things needed to change and felt bad that it took having a son to want to change. If someone touched her son like she did to Kadir and Cerez. She would want her death. She did not blame them for leaving the room when she entered, or for the lack of greeting. She felt so much guilt. She wished that she could go back in time and shake herself before she treated them like that. If her spouses knew what she had done, she was sure that they would become even more emotionally distant. Leilanna thought to herself that she needed to speak with Janel to work this out. Janel kept her confidentiality. She knew she could speak to him about her feelings of guilt for what she did and how to make amends. But what about the changes she wanted to see for men? There were powerful Matriarchs that she knew would not be keen to change.

'Could I protect my family if I suddenly became a target if she started to advocate for men?' Leilanna thought and sighed inwardly. She was too mixed up with herself,

'How could I make this a better world when I cannot even deal with my own,' Leilanna thought sadly.

She was always sad these days. She flicked open her Interface and sent an appointment request to Janel. She had some free time with Daven being taken care of by her brother's family. She was glad that Liem was amenable to rebuilding their relationship since she started to work on her issues. Her relationships with her spouses had been steadily improving now that she had set boundaries, and they discussed their feelings in counseling with Janel.

After they fed Daven, they ate as a group. Nora laid down for a nap exhausted. Kadir was still working on programming a new application for the Interface software as he heaved a huge sigh of frustration. He needed to find a way to make a popular enough change to the Interface to encourage downloading by the masses in the future. This change would disable the kill switch inside all of their heads and needed to be untraceable to them. The code was ready, but it seemed like they would have to expose themselves to retaliation if they did not come up with a way to deploy the change. With this, no one, even including the government, would be able to remotely kill them.

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Peacekeepers could render anyone with the code installed unconscious and use their other punishment tools. Peacekeepers very rarely had to kill. It would take enforcement a long time to figure it out. It had to seamlessly integrate into the Hudai Technologies programming undetected and then disappear afterward. Kadir rubbed his temples, leaned his head back. Cerez looked at Kadir's tired face. It was supposed to be a rest day for him.

"Just set it aside for now. Not much is solved well in one day." Cerez said in an inconspicuous manner."Let's have some fun and review all the new learning material Nora has created for us. New Northern seems really interesting. Especially if we can learn everything she says," Cerez said. Kadir felt a rush of competitive energy. They used to do this as boys, take a test to see who was the best at the end. Whether it was games, learning, sports or fighting as life-long friends, they challenged each other. Cerez started pointing at objects using the poster that Nora created. He sounded out the vowels and consonants pretty well with the phonetic-like sound explanation below. "It is pretty impressive that she is able to translate sounds from another language to universal common language. Her writing is really pretty and accurate." Cerez said as he looked at the chart she had created for him with care.

"Do you think she will test us and reward us?" Kadir said with a big smile. As he picked up the chart, he saw Liem giving him a look.

"I want to talk about that." Liem said.He noticed that her back, shoulders and neck were hurting. He felt really empathetic to her pain. He remembered when they first started to train themselves when they were younger and how sore he felt. "Do you remember the name of the product that we used when we were in physical training for muscle soreness?" Liem asked. The oil that was used at home was used for the physical component of their relationship and not best for muscle aches and pains.

"Amlat Cream, I believe Allari manufactures it.?" Kadir said with a smile on his face. "There will be some of my hygiene items in the closet if you need them?" Kadir said. Liem was such a glutton for knowledge that he would forget stuff when he was distracted from the monotony of his corporate existence.

"Ha ha. You know how I get when I am studying", Liem said. Kadir was an adept learner. He was not as quick as Nora was.

Cerez laughed and said "We are all trying to impress 'Instructor Nora'. Huh?". "She is the prettiest Instructor I have ever met except for myself." he continued, getting eye rolls from the two of them. Nora awoke a couple of hours later. She left the bedroom and went into the main room to find Cerez and Kadir setting up their meal and Liem was already feeding his nephew in his arms, smiling. It was such a nice scene to walk into.

Nora sat down and began to eat her meal, absorbing the scene. She felt a belonging with them. For the first time in her life she felt accepted completely. She was happy.. It was very weird at first having multiple spouses, but felt natural to her now. She felt like they were all very compatible with each other. A lot of the time that they were together they were learning or working. After she saw Daven's toys she was thinking about all the fun games she could bring to this world. Chess would be interesting to adapt to this world. There were no religious figures, as they had long stopped worshiping any type of deity.

'I want everyone to be able to play the games I replicate. The toys need a major upgrade as well,' Nora thought as she watched them quietly. That and the crisis that shook this world meant that there was peace.

'What can I use to symbolize each of the chess pieces? It could possibly be offensive to people of the lower Class to use Matriarchs. I had better check with Janel and his partner.' Nora contemplated carefully.

Checkers and Othello would be easy games to duplicate. Card games would be the easiest with the material at hand. She could create a beautiful deck of cards. She knew the rules for many of them. Her spouses would not object to her relaxing and making the suits that would be composed of a symbol for each suit and descending numbers to denote the value of the cards. Using the upper class as her art would be very tasteless and inexplicable to the set-up of most families. She would, however, pay homage to each member of her family's clan's main business. Quill would be a feather or bird shape. Allari would be a cross for medicine, Halid would be a leaf for agriculture and Sedai would be a star for research. Nora finished eating and waited for the others to finish beginning the review of what they had been learning today. She grabbed a satchel of caramels that she had made as a reward for the right answers and prepared to test them.

"Are you guys ready to try to identify the glyphs based on their sounds?" Nora asked as she sat down. She set down the caramels and the stack of large glyphs she had printed on the stiffer paper she had received. Nora kneaded the small of her back with her knuckles. She was consistently sore, the days were passing by so quickly, they had everything that was needed, there was going to be so much help. Nora could not help to feel unprepared as the due date approached. All she could do was to keep busy. Depending on how they did, they could probably learn what they needed to say in Korean quickly. Nora loved learning as much as she loved teaching and would teach them beyond that so they could fully communicate their feelings out in the open for now without anyone else knowing what they were saying. Nora groaned a little as she rose from her sitting position. Before she was able to get to where they were sitting, she was stopped by Liem with an odd-looking tube of cream.

"This will make you feel less sore," Liem said. Nora smiled softly, he always seemed to know what she needed.