Diplomacy: L'Académie

[From L'Académie , by Aimee Ecrivain]

...It has been a most unusual year! Giselle has grown an inch over the summer, and has somehow grown hips enough to hold up her dreary limp outfits, and the boys--stupid things--turn their heads when they'd utterly ignored her not three months ago. When we skipped into the classroom together, hand-in-hand, there was Madame Lebeque, glaring at us and as immovable as ever. All you could see of her was a great pile of scraggly curls piled up over an ever-sinking scowl. I could have sworn that last spring, you could see her nose too. I imagine she was in that same chair thirty years ago, the mound of hair--brown or gold instead of dishwater gray, and maybe not even much out of fashion--staring down the students coming in. Maybe her chin even showed above the desk back then.

I was discomfited under the basilisk stare, and when it turned toward me, I slowed down and dramatically froze, which caused Giselle to giggle on cue. Even with her new womanly strut, the giggle saves our Giselle. She has a plain, though not ugly, face and her expression is quite often serious, as though she is focusing on the deeper philosophical meaning in conversation, the finer geometries in our playground and so forth. But it is an easy matter to light up that mouth and those eyes in mirth, and quite worth it. Mme. Lebeque's stare on me grew colder with my performance. She hardly seemed her normal, evil and dull self. She was agitated in some way. I really must know.

"Sit down children," she grumbled. Giselle nudged me, and I made as if shaking off a witch's spell. In our seats, we looked at each other. Something was up, clearly. Giselle hissed at me. "The new men in town, I bet you anything." When the English army left the city, it affected the villages towns only a little. Some men disappeared, sometimes new ones strutted about in one uniform or another. All the old men say it was always this way, even here in the south. They forever fight over our little villages and fields.

Medusa snarled from the front of the room. "There will be some changes this fall," she said. She produced a stack of fat pamphlets and placed them on her desk so as to obscure half of her visible head. "Please each of you take one of these. Calmly, now. They are your German primers" German? Giselle pushed me along.

When we were quite assembled back in our seats, Madame Lebeque spoke again. "You will have a new language teacher this fall." The situation seemed to demand a little more explanation. "With Monsieur Marceux..." (filthy garlic-breathed little lech) "...taken sick." She turned her head, and, to our collective amazement, stood up. The upper half of her body somehow looked exactly like the upper half of her face, all a pile of something or other. "Stefan?"

Now, I have seen boys in uniforms for school, for work, and, like I said, the English soldiers that until recently wandered through the center of town, they were very nice in their earnest, awkward way, but when Stefan (he wants us to call him Herr Gruber, even though he is very nearly our age) stepped in, you couldn't see his pink boy's face for all the polished boots, pressed trousers, crisp jacket that hung as neatly as though it were on the back of a statue. Even his...

MAP OF FALL 1902 MOVES (click)

Austria: Fleet Aegean Sea SUPPORT Italian Army Tunis -> Smyrna
Austria: Army Albania -> Greece (*bounce*)
Austria: Army Budapest -> Serbia (*bounce*)
Austria: Army Serbia -> Bulgaria (*bounce*)

England: Army Belgium HOLD (*no order, destroyed*)
England: Fleet English Channel SUPPORT Army Belgium
England: Fleet North Sea SUPPORT Fleet Norwegian Sea -> Norway
England: Fleet Norway -> St Petersburg (north coast) (*bounce*)
England: Fleet Norwegian Sea -> Norway (*bounce*)

France: Fleet Brest -> Mid-Atlantic Ocean
France: Army Burgundy SUPPORT German Army Ruhr -> Belgium
France: Army Gascony -> Brest
France: Fleet Mid-Atlantic Ocean -> Irish Sea
France: Army Picardy SUPPORT German Army Ruhr -> Belgium

Germany: Fleet Denmark HOLD
Germany: Army Holland SUPPORT Army Ruhr -> Belgium
Germany: Fleet Kiel SUPPORT Fleet Denmark
Germany: Army Ruhr -> Belgium
Germany: Army Silesia -> Warsaw (*bounce*)

Italy: Fleet Eastern Mediterranean CONVOY Army Tunis -> Smyrna
Italy: Fleet Ionian Sea CONVOY Army Tunis -> Smyrna
Italy: Army Trieste HOLD
Italy: Army Tunis -> Smyrna via convoy
Italy: Fleet Tyrrhenian Sea HOLD

Russia: Fleet Barents Sea SUPPORT Fleet Gulf of Bothnia -> St Petersburg (south coast)
Russia: Fleet Gulf of Bothnia -> St Petersburg (south coast)
Russia: Fleet Rumania SUPPORT Turkish Fleet Black Sea -> Bulgaria (east coast)
Russia: Army Sevastopol -> Ukraine (*bounce*)
Russia: Army Sweden -> Denmark (*bounce*)
Russia: Army Ukraine -> Warsaw (*bounce*)

Turkey: Army Armenia -> Smyrna (*bounce*)
Turkey: Fleet Black Sea -> Bulgaria (east coast) (*bounce*)
Turkey: Army Bulgaria -> Greece (*bounce*)

RESULTING MAP (click)