Scarlet
by
Yaeko d Nirohmy

Author’s Notes:
I actually started mulling over this story a couple of months ago. It started out with a very bad rough draft which, thankfully, didn’t make it very far. The second version, which is the version that you are about to read, came after having put the story aside for a while. For whatever reasons, this is turning out to be a hard thing for me to write.
Scarlet is based on, or at least derived from, a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson... I came across the original version after a doubt of frustrated searching. You would be surprised hw hard it is to find fairy tales archived online. The version I used to refresh myself with was fround at Aesop's Fables. A young girl named Karen is seduced by a pair of all-too-attractive red shoes. In the original story, the cobbler plays little part in it, and instead of a lover to be forsaken, there is a kind, elderly foster mother. As with mosy fairy tales, there are many different versions of this story... In the original, her feet are chopped off to rid her of the shoes, which she cannot remove. In other, tone-down versions, Karen simply prays (or some such) and the shoes are removed. There are other versions in which Karen dances her way through her entire life, unable to die, but watching those she loves die around her... In others, she does eventually die, when she comes across her own grave.
Well, I have taken this already-dark fairy story and am in the process of turning it into an even darker story about sex, vanity, and immortality. It lost any Christian themes the original fable might have had, and young Karen turned into Mille Feuille. It was, in the end, the version in which Karen dances through her entire life that seduced me. However, as I am not one to leave things as they are, I have changed it more, further corrupting the original plotline.
While writing this, I have been listening to, strangely enough, the opening and ending themes from Ayashi no Ceres. The opening, called Scarlet, in sung by Iwao Junko, and the end theme is One, by Day-Break. Both of these can be downloaded at ANC Anime Multimedia.
Thanks - or perhaps my condolences - to Lady Robyn, who is probably the influence behind this story’s MillexMarron themes.
In any case, I hope you enjoy the story.

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