For this recipe, the clumsier and more inexperienced the makers, the better:

Take:

- 3 cups of joy

- 2 cups of emotional sensitivity

- 1 cup of vanity

Sift it through:

- competitiveness

- an inability to take up space

- superficiality

Let it sit for five to ten years.

Now add:

- 1 tablespoon of creativity [ this should sizzle and feed the existing yeast ]

- 2 teaspoons of self-righteousness

- 1 teaspoon of anxiety

Leave the dough in a dark environment, to fester with no sunlight.

Optional:

- angsty hormonal teenagers

- angry gossiping

- a few classrooms in need of a scapegoat

A couple of years, start kneading it. Let the dough sweat and cry out. You should pummel before you leave it to rise. It will lose its misshapen beaten up look.

Now, handle it with care and place it somewhere warm, preferably on a leafy balcony overlooking the sea. Pour love and music in, and a few drops of wordy litter.

Next. Put it in a parcel and send it all over the world.

Apologies, friend. I must once again interject. Another thing about real stories is that they have meaning. Not just the meaning found at the top, skating on the surface tension of the plot. Not even the deeper meanings placed like veins of iron beneath the crust of the planet. This meaning is your meaning, the message you make using the threads of the story, braiding and twisting and knotting using the firing neurons in your own head. This story is for you, specifically. For you to pick and choose the threads you need for your own tapestry of imagination.

I am often doubted, you know. I have heard it said that none of this happened, that it was all a dream or a game. That elves don't exist and magic is just misunderstood science. I can conclusively dismiss this. I was there. Not in these scenes, exactly. I wish I'd gotten there sooner, but I was held up.

I picked their brains, these curious creatures. And each one, whether they were elf or orc or human, truly existed. Their stories are true. They left their footprints on the world. They deserve to be remembered.

Let us begin where many a greater storyteller has tied the knot on their tale. We begin, of course, with the day of the wedding. We find ourselves at the top of six flights of stairs. One woman, three men, one of which the groom, bracing themselves to carry their mother down by the handles and bars of her wheelchair.

The children lifted her down five flights of stairs, tipping her backwards so she sunk deeper. She clutched to the back of her chair. The siblings tried not to lose their footing on the narrow staircase. It did not occur to their mother to apologise, being the kind of woman who had the audacity to have developed an inability to use either of her legs.

In those days, wheelchairs were a best ignored problem. Most hotel owners adopted an out of sight out of mind approach to avoiding the dilemma. After all, if no accommodation was convenient for people in wheelchairs, then the wheelchairs would have to go. Thus solving the widespread problem of physical disability. For the Malborough hotel, this strategy had worked for over twenty-five years.

Mrs. Nicolas Bourz — oh, I fear each name may require an explanation. This was of the time when women lost their names at the same time as they gained marriage certificates. Being over seventy, Mrs. Nicolas Bourz had misplaced both birth and marriage certificate long ago, and her name, therefore, is of no importance.

The children, who were no longer children but tied to the name of childhood in their mother’s memory, smiled and clapped when they reached the ground floor. The groom, having shrunk his already slender waist to better slip into his tailored suit, peered into the neighbouring mirror to smooth down a non-existent stray hair. His siblings watched him tenderly, and the youngest son took hold of the handles on his mother’s wheelchair, a quiet indication that it was time to leave.

They of course, are allowed names in this narrative, for none of them were married, save the second eldest brother— but losing one’s name has never been a man’s vocation.

Preposition EX, from the Latin ‘out of’, commonly used in Anglophone countries to refer to goods sold direct. Special price for these, my chum, just between you and me. ex is commercial talk, leading to ex gratia payment mayhaps methinks, geographical lingo which finds its way onto many an Indoeuropean tongue. Where did it start? From the mouth of an amphitheatre watcher to the ear of a senatus attender, in one of the Roman baths, where experts met to dissect the past and future in the eternity of a steam infused present. Historical, then. Would have been as widely used in an elusory then as it is in our palpable now. BUT! Who came up with the term? What was it meant to convey, to stand for, to connote? We wind our tongue around this slippery hissing whisper kiss of a sound. Out. Of. Now, give me the bag and source out exit, excellent, exquisite, exceptional, exclusive, exotic, exciting.

Let us expand the topic. Alone, I would wager the sound passes lips quite often to refer to those who have joined the ranks of past loves—may they never recover, the wretched. Exes, after all, are exact examples of what we have crossed off the list. Shall we? Yes, let’s exaggerate their flaws and the misery caused in order to validate the existing decision, expedite recovery. We tell ourselves that the land of our souls are richer without their expat presence, their exoglossic sweet-nothing-forever-love. Be gone! we expel, exile, exorcise their every tender gesture, exonerate the power of their minds from our present. We settle back expectantly to watch the expansionisms of our minds (and bodies) without them.

For mankind is cruel, and once we realise the problems highlighted by those refugees come-in-not-so-profitable dinghies, we kick them back into the sea. We have loved but no longer, and so our land goes back to its migrantless barren waste.

But love, even defeated, is not expendable. It was, so it is, and any extra-judicial libel cannot change that fact. You never exercise the right to treat an other being as expired. Experience gives you no claim to experiment with expletives, exacerbations or explicit descriptions when referring to a person whose love ran out, even should they have revealed themselves as shameful or shameless. Your love is suspended in time, as written in the past as latin roots, not an excuse to disrespect them. You must expiate your defeated love, and dedicate yourself to the extraordinary ups and downs that life is responsible for.

Most mornings, I can feel the warm air wafting in through the window above my bed. Heat doesn’t bother me. Not anymore. I’ve spent my graduate summer at my parents, and my body’s got used to the high thirties weather.

This morning, I wake up sweltering. My face feels hairy and scratchy, pyjama bottoms tight. I know something is different the moment I open my eyes. There’s something warm and hard between my legs. When I move my arm back so I can sit up, I bang my elbow, hard, on the headboard.

‘Ow,’ I mutter, but my voice comes out like gravel. I wonder if I have a cold coming on, and experiment again.

‘Ow,’ I say, louder. Not my voice. It sounds a bit like my brother’s, but croakier. I sit up.

I feel lighter than usual. Where is the swing and weight of my breasts, coming down to settle stickily against my skin? My shoulders feel further away from me, too. My arms are hairy, my wrists thicker than I remember, with long square fingers. And there, sitting in my lap, is the infamous morning glory. I take a peek to make sure.

Dread mounting in the pit of my stomach. I look for a small hand mirror. Out of bed I stumble, I can’t remember my knees ever jutting out this much. I left the mirror lying on my desk when I checked my freshly plucked eyebrows last night.

My eyebrows are unrecognisable. My face is mine and not mine. I look a lot like my brother, but even more like myself. I recognise the nose from pictures of my father when he was young. Beneath the nose is a very bushy, unkempt, caveman beard.

I rack my brain for some explanation. Some reason for this Freaky Friday calamity. I can’t think of anyone I’ve been particularly mean to, nor can I remember an instance in which I’ve made any kind of wish in the past week which could have led to this. I haven’t even listened to the song ‘If I was a boy’ in years. I have a non-binary sibling, who I infinitely respect, I really do, so I can’t imagine that they could have cursed me with this, could they? Could they?

Everyone knows I love being a woman. I love the women I know, the companionship, the will you come to the bathroom with me?-you’re amazing friendships. The support, the kindness, the freedom and respect with which we treat each other.

The never being too threatening, playing with other people’s (adorable) kids without it ever being weirdo, the welcome and trust you get from people you’ve just met.

I love the dressing up, the dresses, the lack of judgement from your peers whenever you feel like being a different kind of woman. I love being the same gender as Virginia Woolf and Mother Theresa and Rosa Parks, and countless womxn I have met, who invited me into their homes and taught me so much, trusting me in a way they didn’t trust men, simply because I was a woman.

And, controversial—I even like being condescended to, the endless rambles of old men, because I can smile and be polite and learn a lot more, make a great impression with minimal effort, than if they’d allowed me to dominate the conversation. I love exceeding expectations, choosing to be kind over being right. I love my envelope of flesh, too, the hands with which I can caress women and children’s hair in trusted circles, the legs that take me places.

So what am I supposed to do now? Who am I, if I’m not my gender? I desperately want to shed a tear or two, but the tears won’t come out. Weird. Must be some biological tear duct thing.

I rummage through my wardrobe for clothes. The wardrobe feels as small as the ceiling is low. Everything in my room looks smaller, even my king-sized bed.

I throw a lot of my clothes on the floor, all the skirts and tank tops. I can’t find anything I can wear without looking like I’m making a political statement. The last thing I want is to draw attention to myself. I give up and take a towel to the shower room.

I decide to shave. I trim the beard first, and then I take the razor and shaving cream I normally use on my legs. I still cut myself in several places, but I manage a clean-shaven look and pat down admiringly. I slip into my brother’s room and steal a t-shirt and boxers and a pair of shorts. As a woman, I can steal any of my seventeen-year-old brother’s clothes. The t-shirt’s a little tight on my twenty-three-year-old frame.

I go downstairs. I can’t help but notice how loud my footsteps are. I try to walk lightly, on my toes.

‘Is anyone there?’ I call. No response. Thank my days.

I go into the kitchen and pour some cereal into a bowl. When I’ve finished eating, my stomach roars at me in protest. I make myself some coffee, and try to think what else I can eat. I settle for three slices of peanut butter on toast. I’m never this hungry in the mornings.

Finally, I go to inspect myself in the mirror. As a woman, I’m halfway between 5′ 6, and 5′7, or 169 cm. I get my height and broad shoulders from my mother’s side, whose father was a giant. My Grandma likes big men.

As a man, I’m huge. My shoulders are big enough to face down any rugby player, my gorilla-like arms, hanging out of my brother’s t-shirt, are the length of a short woman’s legs. For once, I’m grateful I don’t have a job to go to, or people to see. I’m not quite sure what my mother will do.

I send her a text to warn her that I’ve woken up as a man and don’t know why. She’ll think it’s a joke. I wish it were. I make some coffee while I wait, and sit back down at the kitchen table. I never noticed how small and hard these chairs were.

I’m sipping my coffee when I hear the car pull in. My mum and brother are chatting, gaily, unaware, as they start carrying groceries in. When they see me Mum stops, and my brother Simon starts laughing. He bends over and comes round to slap my shoulder.

“Did Lily put you up to this? Genius. Where is that woman?”

“No. It’s me, Lily,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah, very funny. She did a really good job on finding you though, you look almost exactly like a male version of her. Guess that’s why she did it.”

“No, no. It really is me.”

Mum is staring hard at me while Simon continues to laugh. I frown, and scratch my head. Mum puts the groceries down.

“Oh, baby,” she says, “what happened?”

“Mum, you’re not actually going to fall for this? It’s a great but it’s just a prank,” Simon says fondly.

“I don’t know. I woke up and instead of being me, I was... this.”

“Oh, honey,” she shakes her head.

“Mum this is ridiculous, he’s an actor.”

“Okay. Simon, ask me something. Something only I–Lily would know.”

“Very clever on the I/Lily there. And I’m guessing she briefed you on all of her secrets if you’re offering that.”

“Something she wouldn’t have told me, then. Ask me anything. I promise it’s me. I’m hoping I’ll have switched back by tomorrow. I don’t know.”

“Okay, what’s the one habit Mum and I find really annoying, that Lily does all the time?”

“I leave half-drunk cups of coffee and tea everywhere in the house and I forget to put lids back on.”

“Correct. Um. What’s Grandma’s maiden name?”

“Atherton,” I say.

“What’s our secret code?”

“Cookies and milk,”

“Lily could have told you that, though.” Simon purses his lips, unconvinced. But I can tell Mum knows. I can tell she knew from the minute I started moving around. She’s seen through me.

“Simon, look how much he looks like Lily. It’s Lily. He’s got your father’s nose, he looks like you. It’s Lily. I’ll bet you we could ask Lily anything and she’d answer the way Lily would. Because it’s Lily.”

I wasn’t expecting this to be this easy. After all. I am a woman. That’s one of my defining features. That, and the fact I’m a feminist, which ties into being a woman anyway. What causes am I meant to share on social media if I’m not a woman anymore? I mean. I know there’s the environment but—

“Okay. So maybe you’re Lily. What are you going to do now?” Simon interrupts my thinking.

I shake my head. Now would be a really great time to cry. Simon rolls his eyes.

“Well. First things first. I’m going to have to teach you how to be a man, because you’re obviously terrible at it. Don’t scrunch up your face like that, it looks weird when you’ve got that massive honker.”

“Rude,” I say.

We go upstairs, and Simon hands me a bigger t-shirt, so you don’t look stupid, he says. He asks about all the cuts on my face and laughs when I describe the beard I woke up with. When we go back downstairs, Mum has re-heated last night’s lasagne. She gives me a normal portion, and I wolf it down. I make up the rest of my meal with another three slices of peanut butter toast. Mum’s frowning and I can tell she wants to hug me, but doesn’t want to embarrass me. Now I’m a man. Simon has told her multiple times that she can’t cuddle him now he’s a man.

Simon’s adapted to the situation already. He’s taken it in his stride:

“When you and I go out, do you want me to say you’re my cousin or my friend? I don’t think anyone will believe me if I say you’re my sister,”

“Cousin’s more believable, you look too similar, it’s obvious you’re family,” Mum says.

“Sure. Cousin, then,” I say, heart sinking, “how long do you think this is going to last?”

“Well. We’ll stand by you whatever you choose to be and whoever you want to be,” says Mum.

“Thanks.. but.. I want to be a woman.”

“Then you can have a sex change,” Mum says.

“Not like that, I want it to be painless, without surgery, without drugs. I want it like magic.”

“Maybe it will happen then, but for now you’re a man and you’re going to have to get used to it.”

When my sibling first came out as non-binary, Mum and Dad opposed drugs.

Mum’s changed her tune since then. She’s decided that her kids are smart enough to know the risks involved with anything we do.

“Do you think it’s a curse?” I ask.

“It could be a blessing,” Mum says, and squeezes my hand.

Simon decides to take me to the park. I can tell, he’s almost enjoying this. The novelty of having an older brother. He’s mildly disappointed to find out I’m still me. I don’t really like ball games, have no interest in going to his basket ball game next week. But he soon recovers and we resume our usual chatter. As we turn into the park, we’re talking about astronomy and whether Elon Musk is a good man.

“It’s funny. You look a bit different and sound a bit different. But you haven’t changed, you’re still just Lily, you’re still just you. The more I look at you the more I see it,”

“Shocking. Maybe gender doesn’t define us and we really are just individual people after all.”

“Except you eat more, now,”

I launch into a ramble about how crazy hungry I am, when we bump into Margo. Margo is one of my closest friends, she lives about five minutes away from us, but I don’t see her much what with university and having lives. I want to squeal and ask when she got back, but Simon jumps in first.

“Hey Margo,” he says.

“Oh, hi,” she smiles. She nods politely in my direction.

“How you doing? This is my cousin, Logan.”

“Oh, hi, nice to meet you. I’m Margo,” she says.

“Hi, Margo, you live round here?”

“Not anymore. I’m working for some solicitors in M–– but I’ve just popped down for a few days, spend some time with the ’rents. How about you, where’s home for you?”

“Lyon,” I say. I couldn’t think of any names of places.

“Oh? Are you French?” she asks.

“No, no, I’m just working there as a surfing instructor,” I say.

“Oh, I didn’t know they surfed in Lyon?”

“Well, well, when I say Lyon, I really work by some lakes in the Alps, Lyon’s just the closest town and they move me around a lot to teach all aqua sports. But my favourite is surfing. So, that’s why I said surfing.”

“Oh, cool, cool. Well, I’ve got to go, but Simon tell your sister I say hi, okay?”

“Okay, nice talking to you,” Simon says, and waits until she’s out of earshot before saying “surfing in Lyon, ey?”

“Logan? Why did you have to call me Logan? There are so many names and you went for Logan?”

“You look like a Logan,”

“What does that even mean?”

We head towards the trees in the park for some shade, and Simon pulls out some weed. Simon never shared his drugs with me before. Privileges of gender, I guess. He starts grinding and rolls us a joint.

“You’ve had a stressful day. I think you could probably use some of this.”

He’s kind of right. So we smoke and talk as the light dances in the shadows of leaves. My mind stops feeling as tight and my guts unclench. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. I tell Simon about morning glory, and he giggles at all of the discoveries I’ve made of male anatomy. I moan about missing being a woman.

“Why?” Simon seems genuinely puzzled, “being a guy is great. Sure being female must have its pros, but it has its cons, too. For starters, it’s way cheaper being a guy. Haircuts cost less, clothes and shoes are usually comfier. It’s also way easier getting dressed, because the minute you wear a clean shirt, people act like you’ve dressed up. As a guy, you won’t have periods anymore.

I’ve never had to deal with the kind of mood swings you had. And remember all those bathroom queues you stood in? Not a problem for me, bathrooms are usually empty. Even when there aren’t bathrooms, you can wee standing up, you can wee almost whenever you feel like it. I’ve never really been worried about walking around on my own, nor do Mum and Dad. It’s usually quite nice heading off to the pub by myself, whereas you always walk with friends to anywhere you go.”

“I like having friends,” I say.

“Yeah, so do I, but I don’t need support groups, and I’m five years younger,”

“They’re not support groups, we just like hanging out,”

“Fine. But trust me. I’m not even full man yet and I can tell it’s going to be great. I’m excited, to be a man, face the world. You’re taller and better looking than me as a guy, so you should be even more excited,”

“You think I’m good looking?” I ask.

″Great looking guy.”

Simon slaps my back. He says that’s how guys hug. We walk home and Mum looks worried, then pleased. I tell her I have accepted my fate. I go upstairs.

I browse holiday resort jobs to teach aqua sports. Then I tell myself not to be silly, that I need to get into the real world. I modify my CV, changing my came to Logan and updating my picture. I send it off to some of the three same engineering companies I’ve applied to before. About an hour and a half later, I get invitations to interview from two of them. I go downstairs feeling pleased with myself, and make a blueberry crumble for dessert.

Mum makes shepherd’s pie for the three of us, because Dad’s away on business. I ask her not to tell him just yet. She nods and gives me a huge portion. Big enough that I might have protested once, but now I tuck in happily. I tell them about the jobs and Simon winks.

“Told you being a man is just as good,” he smiles.

We talk about how I’m going to plan this, whether I tell people I’ve had a sex change or go by a different name, cousin Logan. They compliment me on being a man who can cook, and I think how many of the things which are just normal for Lily are impressive for Logan. Things he can boast about, his sensitivity, his empathy, being a great cook.

“You make such a lovely man,” Mum says fondly, and, finally, hugs me. I hug her back tight, and makes a suffocating sound. I can’t people as tight now. I go upstairs, to my now much smaller room. I text my sibling a picture of myself, and tell them what has happened. They call me, to make sure I’m okay.

They’re working for a University in Vienna, Austria, so we barely see them anymore. I thank them, and I can hear the smile in their voice. Because they know I understand, now, the messiness of looking like a gender you don’t relate to. I’m not sure I’ll ever be a man, not inside of my mind. And pretending my entire life would just be exhausting. I ask about their transition, compliment them on their bravery. I’m still petrified of anyone seeing me, this me.

“Life isn’t who you are, it’s what you make of it,” they say, “try to be happy.”

It is because of the war that I know how good a man my father is. Because he left home when no one else would want to, because he fought a battle everyone else was frightened of. There are people living beneath our floorboards, people we feed and tell no one about. They tell me they owe my father their lives, that a life is everything.

But even so. There are days when my father comes home and shouts and we none of us want to be near him. There are days when he throws things and hits my mother and we thank the Lord for the war because we see him so much less.

The people beneath the floorboards never mention these moments. They are a mother and father and two boys, the oldest is my age, eight. He is not very good at reading. He hasn’t been to school in three years. All of them say they will leave France, soon. They don’t ever want to go back. Going back would mean wearing the star of David and being frightened someone will kill them. We don’t want to go back, either. We’d have to spend more time with Dad.

Worlds collide in every corner, but if you keep your mind narrow enough, you’ll never have to walk in anyone else’s shoes. Elena had never been to any country outside of the United States of America, so when her work transferred her to Tunisia she was more than a little nervous. Still, she reasoned, there’d probably be McDonald’s there, if nothing else.

Her first morning in the country, she tried to buy bread from a baker. She used her airport tactic, which was to gesture while speaking loud and slow.

“TWO BREAD, YUM YUM,” she pointed at the bread and made slurping noises.

The man behind the counter looked at her coolly, and ignored her when another customer came in. She looked at him, and understood nothing.

Elena didn’t want to understand, but when she complained at work the next day, there was an awkward silence. A man with a kind face said to her:

“When immigrants come to your country, they do their best to adapt and learn the basic language.”

“But I’m not an immigrant, I’m an expat.”

“You still have to try,” he told her.

“But it’s hard,” she said.

So he introduced her to an Arabic tutor.

The water fizzled in tiny amber bubbles as the worker placed his ginger ale back on the window sill. It would be warmed by the mid-July sun in a few minutes, but he was no longer thirsty now he could work in the shade.

He and the other workers had been building this tower of Babble for at least three months, though he couldn’t ask anyone else to make sure. Language ran from one floor to the next, just as she had patroled the foundation structures, screaming every time a worker attempted to talk another.

Language was an empress, complicated and beautiful but unforgiving, ready to ridicule and mock. None of the workers liked her. Yet as she approached the worker, she said softly:

“Aren’t you going to drink that?”

“No,” said the worker, “you can have it if you wish.”

So Language took the ginger ale and thanked the worker, before going on her way. The worker continued to set stones and bang nails with hammers until the sun had set. Bleeding from one finger, he went home and bandaged it, before falling into a deep undisturbed sleep. The next day, the worker brought two cans of ginger ale into work. When Language did her usual patrol, he motioned her over, and gave her the can in silence. Language nodded her appreciation and went upstairs.

Later that day, as she passed by him, Language stopped to open up her can of ginger ale.

“What happened to your finger? And your thumb?” she asked.

The worker looked down at his mangled hands, the burns on his arms, and then back up at Language’s clean, inquiring face.

“Just work.”

“Come with me this evening, I know someone who can help.”

So, just before sunset, Language appeared and the worker followed her into the forest, towards the hut of an old man and woman. Language spoke to the couple, who nodded and ran back inside the house.

“How long have they been living here?” the worker asked, “I’ve never seen them before.”

“That’s because only with me is the world of people a possibility for you,” Language smiled.

The old woman came back, and with wrinkled hands smoothed cool colour onto the man’s bare skin. She cleaned his arms and hands, and let the ointments sting before she bandaged them again.

“She says the cuts will be healed tomorrow,” Language told him.

“How ever can I repay you?” the worker said as they walked home.

“Continue to look at me the way you do,” Language smiled.

The next evening, when he turned around, Language stood, waiting shyly. He asked about the other workers as they walked along the beach. She told him, some had come as babies, others as fathers and grandfathers. She told about their cultures, the books they loved, the plays they went to watch, the dreams they had.

“I would love to be able to talk to them,” he told her.

“Perhaps I can organise a meal with all of the workers, where each must bring foods from the places they come from, and I can help you all talk to one another,” Language said, coyly.

The worker looked at the full moon, shining bright above the sea, where a mirror world trembled. Then he looked back at Language, and thought he had never seen anything more beautiful.

“Will you dance with me?” he asked her.

“Forever,” she answered, as she placed her palms in his.

WHEN THE SUN set, Bronte rang the cow's bell. Maryam dropped the spade. It clattered on the floor, among the thousand other tools. Clusters of people drifted away from the fields. Maryam felt an urge to pray, to give thanks to someone, though she hadn't touched religion in months. Years, even.

The land, of criminalisation, of discrimination, of environmental destruction, is being rebuilt after the war. A war Maryam was on the front lines of. Once, as a child, as she tried to catch her parents attention, she had been forced to listen to a grown up conversation. The imam and four other parents were talking. One of the men was saying:

"Mark my words. Mankind does not stop. I do not believe that any leader will save the environment. At the moment, that still means forsaking the economy. Without jobs, there will be riots, there will be chaos. So Mankind will eat until there is nothing left on the table. We will get to the end of this, and only then will people be ready to change."

He had been right. And Maryam had been young enough to witness the end. Submitted to worldwide tyrannies, people had been forced out of their homes by the floods, had died of hunger all over the world, and still, the heads of corporative operations had continued to eat off the same table. They began plans to save themselves while the rest of the world would fall into an endless sleep.

Maryam knew there could be no peace in such a world. She joined the rebellion, had blown up a factory or two. Ultimately, the rebels had joined forces from all over the country. They had dismantled the dictatorship's plans, had taken back the Earth.

Now, it had to be rebuilt. Many people still thought of her as the leader of that war. Some people had talked of erecting a statue of her, to mark history with. She had said: let us rebuild the world first. A Greek saying stated all politics followed a pattern. Democracy is followed by chaos, which is followed by tyranny, followed by Democracy. She would enjoy democracy while it lasted.