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by Karmacat
STUFF CONCERNING ORLY, SARABI, SHERE, AND A LITTLE BIT OF COSETTE
The old Khan family is back.....
The girls both go off to college, and, once again, Shere is all alone. He finds it
somewhat ironic that he should end up much the same as he was before he met August, and he
becomes very lonely. He communicates with the girls at college, sure....in fact, he sends
them way too much money than is appropriate for a college student. He just has no sense of
proportion anymore, so he’s sending Orly about $500 a month, and she’s throwing
huge parties in her dorm every month called “Orly-Riffics”......
He has an assistant named Penelope. Penelope is actually very important, and the only
reason she wasn’t in TFS was that, well, I hadn’t thought of her yet. But she
would have been. Penelope is a tall pantheress with long black hair. When she is older it
bears a few stripes gray. She’s easy on the eyes, so to speak, and is very
strong-willed and friendly. When Shere was courting August, she was gopher, the one who
took the orders for the flowers that he sent August. He was up to sending her flowers
almost every day, sometimes twice a day, and she finally came forward and said:
“Um, Mr. Khan, may I....may I say something to you as a bit of, well, something from
a woman’s point of view, if I might?”
He gave her an unusual look, slightly puzzled. “I suppose....”
“Well, um, you’re sending flowers to Miss. De Sante almost every day now, and,
well, I, I mean, she’s a wonderful woman and all and I don’t blame you one bit,
but....but, um,....well, it looks...sort of....kind of...I mean it would come off to me as
being a bit....I don’t know....sort of....a bit much, maybe.....desperate....?”
Khan’s face remained unmoved. He raised an eyebrow at her.
She attempted to smile. The attempt failed.
“Oh, Mr. Khan, I’m sorry, I overstepped my bounds, I’ll go clean out my
desk right now, oh I’m so sorry, I apologize Mr. Khan -” She turned to leave.
“Stop where you are,” he commanded.
She froze and slowly turned.
“Sit down.”
She sat.
“So....” he said, considering her for a moment. She expected him to ask just
what she thought she was doing, coming into his office and trying to play counselor to
him.
“What is your name, madam?” he asked.
“Penelope, sir,” she whispered. “Penelope Pollack.”
“Well, Miss Pollack ....please, go on.”
She blinked. “Ex-excuse me?”
He looked at her with a bit of impatience. “Go on with what you were saying, miss. I
am, as they say, all ears.”
Basically she talked him through his entire courtship of August, and they became great
friends. Think about it: Khan didn’t have anyone to give him advice about August but
was too prideful to ask for it, and he was very impressed by someone who had the balls to
just come forward and say it. He promoted her to personal assistant. When he and August
were married, August was a little suspicious of their relationship - she thought there was
a possibility of something going on there. But August and Penelope made fast friends and
were always laughing together.
When August died Penelope nursed him through his grief, and he came about thisclose to
having a relationship with her on rebound - but she was married and he resisted, being a
gentleman and all. After his grief about August faded so did his (romantic) feelings for
Penelope.
Penelope was the closest thing the girls had to a mother, and she basically helped them
take care of their girly stuff, you know, periods and whatnot. The girls love Penelope and
can talk to her about things they can’t talk to their father about. Penelope loves
them as is they were her own daughters. Penelope also has a daughter who is older than
Sarabi.
Penelope’s husband was verbally abusive, and he left her for a girl who is “barely
nineteen and cute as a button” later in life. Shere is very nice about it and gives
her a vacation when she needs to get over it; however, she says she dreads not having
something to do and works anyway. Penelope is pretty cool. Her husband also had issues
about her “relationship” with Khan, accusing her of having an affair with him
and then saying someone as stupid and ugly as Penelope could never land Khan. At one point
Khan takes her to some kind of big rich person’s date-required banquet and they see
her husband there. When they talk to her husband with his stupid little wife, Penelope
takes great care to address Khan as “Darling.” Khan catches on and plays the
game, leaving the ex-husband to choke on his hors d’overues.
I also had another idea for a story where August’s younger sister comes to town, Myra
Ellen DeSante. She is a very talented singer and piano player, and she looks exactly like
August. She’s only about 35, though, and engaged. Shere nearly passes out when he
sees her because she looks so damn much like his wife now, and the last time had seen her
she was 17 and scrawny. He falls really really in love with her, and she with him, even
though she’s engaged. They kiss once, and it’s one hell of a kiss, but after
that it’s just too weird. She still thinks of him as August’s husband, and he
thinks of her as her little sister, and they kind of agree that it wouldn’t work out.
Later, he finds out that she called off her marriage. Penelope was the only one who knew
of the whole thing.
So, basically, when the girls leave for college, Shere is all alone again, except for
Penelope. They begin to spend the evenings together, just talking and whatnot, informal
and friendly; one night he happens to mention dinner. Penelope takes out her note pad and
asks what he would like and she’d call down for it, and Khan says that no, he was
asking if she would like to have dinner WITH him.
So, basically, Penelope and Shere don’t so much fall madly in love as they do
silently agree to stay together. Shere likes Penelope’s long black hair, not in a
sexual way, but in a look-at-the-pretty-shiny-thing-I-want-to-touch-way. There was kind of
a neat little scene I imagined where Shere kind of mentions, in his stout way, that he
always wanted to touch Penelope’s hair.....he feels guilt about his relationship with
her, though, until he has a dream where August smiles at him and says, ‘She’s
absolutely lovely, Shere, just lovely,” which is what she had said about Penelope
when she first met her. I couldn’t bear to leave Shere lonely for the rest of his
days, not after what he went through with August. He and Penelope are very happy together.
I keep thinking of this one scene I had in my head, that really doesn’t have a whole
lot to do with anything plotwise. I just imagine Orly as a baby, and her being the cutest
child in the world...the kind of thing where Shere might carry her around the building,
perhaps, and he’d be trailed by a bunch of ladies who were admiring Orly....
Anyway, on to Sarabi. One of the questions I got most often concerning her was “What’s
gonna happen with her and James?” Well, truth is, I still don’t know. They get
along fine, but I really don’t think they have enough in common in order to sustain a
real relationship for more than a few months. I think James “served his purpose”,
if you get my drift....and anyway, Sarabi’s gonna be doing some traveling.....
Sarabi’s powers began to fade after TFS, almost until to the point where the family
had almost forgotten about them on a surface level. She goes to college. And then, in her
sophomore year, she leaves college, and no one knows where he heck she went. Shere is in a
panic; no one can track her down, and of course he’s afraid that he might have lost
her again. He is especially worried when he doesn’t even get an offer for ransom - he
really fears the worst, and so does Orly. (Orly, by the way, went to a local university
with a strong arts program. Sarabi went to an Oxford-type college somewheres). Some of
Sarabi’s friends at college (yes, she had FRIENDS!) say that she had been acting more
distant than usual, and had repeated often that she felt she had to go find something, to
learn to do something, and one day she was just gone. Sarabi is gone for about six months
when they finally track her down - on a remote island owned by her father, of all places.
A small spiritual clan lives on this island, and they are deeply involved with the
prophecy of the white-haired tiger - basically, these people are teaching how to heal, and
how to make the best use of her powers. When Shere finds Sarabi, she is dressed in native
garb and is being closely guarded by two powerful-looking pantheresses. She’s
undergone almost a complete personality change; she has become quiet and wise, and smiles
a lot - there’s an aura of complete joy that surrounds her, and it’s not Orly’s
hyperactive joy - it’s a real joy earned from wisdom. But this just confuses Shere.
Sarabi sometimes dispenses mystical knowledge to him without being asked, and he doesn’t
have a single clue what she’s saying....eventually, he just gets angry with her. He
wants Sarabi to come home and be heir to his company, and Sarabi delicately refuses,
saying that she would remain upon the island until her training was finished. She shows
him a little boy whom she had healed from a horrid illness with her bare hands. After a
while Shere realizes that there’s just no arguing with her, and that things would be
as they would be. In a strange way, he begins to feel dwarfed in comparison to her. He may
have all the money in the world, but his daughter had come across something far more
powerful, and meaningful, than that. He just wished he knew what it was. And Sarabi says
she wishes she could possibly tell him, but such things cannot be expressed in words.
So Shere goes home, and leaves Sarabi on her island abode. I suppose she would come out of
there on a few years, maybe at the age of 22 or so....and after that, I really don’t
know what she would do....maybe she launches some sort of worldwide spiritual renewal.
Whatever it is, it’s something big, but not something that makes her famous. Sarabi’s
spiritual work is done quietly, the kind of thing that heals everyone without their even
knowing it. In fact, I doubt I could even write this, what she does with her
life....Sarabi probably passes into realms which I could not even begin to describe.
One thing she does not do is take over Khan’s company.
Orly does that.
Weren’t expecting THAT one, were you?
Orly does go to her liberal arts college, and has a somewhat normal college experience -
even though her father told her that she would have to be heir to the company her senior
year of high school. The knowledge lies heavily on her heart, because it wasn’t what
she herself was expecting at all - she has very strong doubts about whether or not she
could actually do it. Shere has more confidence in her than she does, though less than he
would admit to, and they have long talks about it. Orly is kind of angry at Sarabi for
dumping this on her, but also happy that her sister is happy....
Orly has a very fun time at college. She’s big into the theater department, and she
helps develop a sort of UofCS (University of Cape Suzette) Lampoon sketch-comedy thing,
because Orly would do that. Gabriel goes to college with Orly, and one of his parts in the
sketch comedy is an exact farce of Shere’s friend Patricia. Shere actually figures
out that Gabriel is gay at some point, but is to polite to mention it. Orly laughs when
her father intimates it to her, as if she didn’t know. “Dad, you’re the
most worldly person I know, but dang, how could you not pick THAT up?”
Anyway, Orly graduates from college, and Shere gives her a job to train her for owning the
company. She ends up managing August’s record division by the time she’s twenty
four, and she is suprisingly good at being a boss. Orly’s hyperactive artistic energy
is channeled into management and planning ability, and she shows herself to be extremely
capable. Shere stops worrying about Orly’s ability to manage Khan Industries.
I imagined a fanfic involving Orly and Cosette, this one taking place when Orly is about
28, and Cosette is in her late teens. Cosette is very intelligent, as you all know. She
reads a lot aboard the Iron Vulture, and all the books she reads are about civilized
people living in a civilized way. This influences her thinking. She begins to take a
rampant dislike of pirates in general. She hates the criminal lifestyle and the stupid
plans that always fail. She wants, for once in her life, to live like a lady - she wants
to know what it would be like to go shopping in a department store and have a nice dinner
out. She and LaRoca have also been fighting lately, and one night they get into a big
argument, wherein which Cosette says she doesn’t want to live her mother’s life.
She sneaks out in her plane (she has her own plane) and goes to cape Suzette, in search of
the only person she knows of who could show her how to live a civilized life - Orly Khan.
She figures that Orly owes her one for letting her out of that cell so long ago, in TFS,
when Arson was trying to kill her.
She finds a way up to Orly’s office, and Orly conceded to this reasoning. At first
she is so shocked to see Cosette that she can hardly speak, and has a few frightening
flashbacks about what happened on the Iron Vulture. But they are of like mind, the two,
and they get along.
Basically, Orly tries to help Cosette live in the civilized world, but Cosette’s
pirate upbringing, indeed her very nature, can’t be easily undone. Cosette reverts
back to her old ways, and somehow betrays Orly greatly. They become enemies of a sort -
Cosette ends up hating Orly, for reasons I haven’t yet thought of, but Orly still
wants to help Cosette.
Cosette returns to her pirate family, but still doesn’t like all the stupid plans
they make that fail. When she is old enough she infiltrates Cape Suzette, and, using her
knowledge of it, creates an incredibly feared mafia there. With the going of Karnage’s
generation and the coming of Cosette’s, Cape Suzette’s pirate menace moves
inside the city, underground. And Cosette Karnage is their leader. If this were to become
the series, Cosette would be the main villain. She is smarter and much more deadly than
Karnage ever was. The older she grows, the more whatever semblance she once had of morals
fades. Her intellect becomes one of the greatest tools of crime ever witnessed by Cape
Suzette, and it is mythed that she owns almost as much of the city as Orly Khan herself
does. In fact, I think that Orly makes some sort of illegal deal with Cosette WAY
later....the kind of thing Shere did with Karnage, but she doesn’t do it for profit,
she does it because she has to. WAY WAY later, Orly puts together a Khan Industries-funded
secret police force that eradicates Cosette’s gang....Cosette disappears after that,
who knows where.....
(Imagine, Cape Suzette, being run by women!)
Shere Khan dies, eventually.... he “kept going until he just stopped going”, as
Orly would put it....Shere is far to dignified to become senile and incontinent. He lives
to be 86 or so, and one day says to Penelope that he feels awfully tired, and that he
might sit at his window and have a rest....she finds him there....he dies overlooking his
city, just as a man like him should.
I also imagined a brief hint of an afterlife for him. One minute he’s old and in his
chair, and the next he’s in t he “Jungle House” with August - a house they
owned in the middle of the tropics where they spent their honeymoon. And it’s funny,
because this seems totally natural to him, and he just has a brief memory, feeling that he
had forgotten something - but it soon leaves his mind, and he goes to sit outside with his
wife, who hands him an iced tea and says, “Good morning darling! I thought you would
never wake up!”
He puts his arm around her, kisses her, and says, “Yes, but I had the most pleasant
dream...I just don’t quite recall what it was....”
And over them grows a tall tree full of Fire Island Blooms.
I hate to end it on such a sad note - their lives aren’t tragic at all. Orly get
married to some wonderfully funny, loving man, and has a son named Shere. Sarabi drops in
occasionally and then goes back to her healing work, but she and Orly have a great
relationship.
Well, I guess that’s about it, the whole story. I regret that I couldn't write it out
in full form for you, so you could get a fuller scope of all the emotions present in these
imaginings. Man, can you ever imagine how long all that would take to write....lifetimes!
:) Anyway, i hope these synopses did enough to sate you guys....if you have any questions
feel free to ask them, because I don’t doubt that I left some stuff out. :)
Thanks-
Liz
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