Title: Foreign Cultures [Part Two]
Series: Vision of Escaflowne
Rating: PG-13 for some violence.
A/N: Part 2, clearing up some confusion, creating some more, most likely. Sorry it took so long. ~_~

***

    Tristan had been treated little better than Arik usually was by places he went visiting, before Ispano had fallen, and while his mind rationalizes that he deserves the servile treatment because of what she went through for his sake, uncomplainingly, a part of his royal heritage screams in outrage at him. With a war in his heart, he makes his way out of the small, thick tent where he was being housed, and goes in search of his Kathis.

    All around him, the tall, winged forms of the Draconians they are staying with pass him and pay him little attention. Occasionally he feels a disapproving glance from one or more of their number, and he begins to wonder just where all the women are. Even with the power the race had once possessed, surely there had to be female Draconians? Walking quickly in the chill air between the tents, he shortly realizes he has no clue where he might find her, until he hears a lone female voice, though he cannot understand the language it is speaking.

    Looking up to the source of the speaking, he is more surprised than he thought possible, despite the suspicions in the back of his mind at her relation to the people she had brought him to, to see her aloft, sword drawn, sparring with another winged warrior.

    “Arik!” He calls out, cupping his hands around his mouth to try and amplify it to a point where she can hear him. Unfortunately, after waiting for some sort of response, he realizes that the loose ring of similarly flying bodies has blocked out the sound of his voice.

    “She cannat hare ye,” a gruff baritone voice says behind him.

    Startled, Tristan turns, and nearly jumps as he comes face-to-chest with the hazel eyed man bearing a likeness to Arik’s face. Unlike him, whose lineage and past was well known between the two of them, for obvious reasons, Arik had never spoken of parents, or siblings. Thinking hard, he cannot remember a time in which she had spoken of her own life before the day she came to him, so many years ago, to protect him from whatever perils the world might have for him. And slowly, as he looks up into the hazel eyes of the man that he now reasons, after his reception of her, must be her father, Tristan feels guilty.

    “Aye,” the tall man says, lifting a large, delicate hand and placing it on his shoulder. Without any more of his heavily accented words, he steers the younger man aside and into another, much larger tent.

***

    The darkness of the cavern was never truly complete, there always seemed to be some draft, some small shaft of light to keep her hope from dying out completely. Millerna, carefully nursing the other young woman, who is, by now, doing much better, though the two of them had decided it best kept a secret, has begun to try and think of a way to escape rather than simply awaiting rescue. But unlike other members of her family, she thinks bitterly, she has little head for such planning.

    She had tried to discuss the subject with the other woman in her damp, slightly chill prison, but it seems, to her, that the walls have ears every time she starts to speak. “It should be almost time for food, today,” she comments, humming and checking the bandages on the other young woman’s wrists.

    Just as she finishes this, and move slightly back to her own corner of the room, there is the noise of scraping rock and an unfamiliar figure enters behind the normal hooded messenger bearing their food. “Please, don’t stop your small talk because of me, Queen Millerna.”

    ‘So it has come to this,’ she thinks, lifting her blue eyes to stare at the man who has orchestrated the kidnapping. “I am at a loss, sir, because while you know exactly what has transpired with me, I know nothing of you,” she counters, taking in the man’s appearance easily.

    Tall, with a skin tone that tells her this man may be royal by bearing, but not by birth, a well kept mop of curly black hair atop his head, and a strong frame to his body, she cannot place the face she is greeted with, and that fact alone tells her who he is, and where she herself likely is.

    “Daeluzito keb Ouran, king of Norte, as the recognition on your face tells me you have just figured out.”

    “What has Asturia done to warrant this treatment of me?”

    “Ah, the wondrous Aston ego,” Daeluzito chuckles with a smirk on his face, taking a few steps forward, crouching to put himself on an equal level with Millerna, “you should be happy to know that this has absolutely nothing to do with you. You’re merely a means to an end my dear Millerna.”

***

    “I were wunderin’ wen ye’d get ta wantin’ intraductions…”

    Taking the offered seat on one of the pillows in the tent that the tall man motions him towards, Tristan is a little confused. “Your speech,” Tristan says, tilting his head to the side, “and that language you spoke so fluently before…”

    “Yer languge is nat mine, er tha’ ah thae athers here,” he says, “Ye wan’t find many ah them ken spake it this well. And mine is fer less than gaad.”

    He nods, and watches the other man’s graceful movements, despite the large, white feathered wings protruding from his shoulders. Inwardly, Tristan wonders how anyone with such a bulky encumbrance could be considered graceful, and yet, the tall man moves with the ease and grace of a dancer, folding himself down to sit cross-legged on a similarly large cushion opposite Tristan.

***

    Upon his return to the Kathis Compound, Sotet is more than pleased with himself. But the Compound is strangely silent, and as he makes his way into his mother’s presence, he feels deflated, and as though his good news will mean little to them.

    Mot, meeting with the Council, is at turns admonishing them for their laxness in security and the escape of Arik and Tristan, and being glared at for overstepping her position. As Sotet enters the room, the Council falls silent, and Mot’s admonishing words stand alone in the air, “That’s a country’s future we’ve lost track of, and unless there is something you know that I don’t, they seem to have fallen off the map!”

    Hearing the mutters cease, Mot turns to find Sotet standing in the doorway, blank faced. She smiles, warmly, and beckons him into the room.

    “What news of Norte, Sotet?” the Head of the Council asks, settling in her seat with her thick woolen robes nesting around her. The older woman, whom he had come to see as sort of a grandmother, and rightly so, though he could never know that she was his mother’s mother, for she did not know herself, has the same quick eyes as his mother, and more acute hearing than the High Bikathian.

    “I am no closer to knowing why my…” staring at his mother for a split second, he corrects himself quickly, it had been far too easy for him to slip into calling Ouran his father while in Norte, he knew he mustn’t make that mistake in front of his mother or he would loose her trust as well, “why King Ouran has kidnapped Queen Millerna… but I do know where she is being kept, and that she is not alone in her captivity.”

    “And of Ouran?” another Council member, this time the newly returned Jujiin asks him, the silver haired master of etiquette having retaken his place amongst the Council upon his successful return from Freid.

    “He wants to adopt me… properly… as his son. He seems to think that I am necessary to him… as an heir.”

    Several members of the Council exchange slightly worried glances, but the Head of the Council thumps her fist on the arm of her chair loudly enough to make a resounding thud that silences the other Council members, “We will expect a more detailed report later, if you are up for it, Sotet,” she keeps the rest of the Council silent by glaring at them rather than giving Sotet her full attention, “now it is best if you get some rest after your long journey. Mistress Mot, please attend to your son.”

    Mot starts to speak up, but at a harsh glance from the Head of the Council, she nods complacently, like a scolded child, and follows him from the council room.

    Once the door is closed behind her, the Head of Council turns to the other occupants of the room. “It is as we feared…”

***

    Spring in Asturia came to relieve the people of the oppressive winter rains, but the mood inside the castle was still as stifling as before. Dryden’s recovery, while miraculous, made some of the advisors a little worried. A power struggle between the King and the Princess would leave the country split, and in a bad position if military warfare broke out.

    The advisors, however, had no idea that the recovery on Dryden’s part was brought about by his distracting fascination in the relationship of his sister-in-law and the Senior Knight Caeli, along with the care of Celena Schezar and the company of his son. The advisors, outside of the political position being shared by their somehow joint-rulers, knew little of the affairs of the royal family.

    Eries, when not in some meeting about the hostile waters Asturia found herself in, had taken to spending her time alone, determined not to get too accustomed to life in the palace, or comfortable with the companionship she could find in the capital. Oftentimes the castle staff could witness her walking around the courtyards, admiring the fountains, with a far-away, lost look in her eyes.

    Among the younger maids in the castle, the returned princess was something of a romance novel waiting to happen. Like Dryden, the maids and the ladies-in-waiting spent much of their time tittering about what sort of a relationship the princess and her oftentime companion, Allen Schezar, shared. Celena, when she heard these silly gossip sessions, was quick to put a stop to it, feeling protective of her brother and a little jealous of Eries’ monopolization of his time.

***

    Tristan had been having a slightly lengthy and garbled, conversation with the Draconian village leader, when Arik comes into the tent, slightly winded, but without a scratch on her, wings curiously absent. Tristan is halfway to his feet by the time she has crossed the room and is kneeling before the tall Draconian he had come to think of, quite correctly, as her father.

    “Be proud of your daughter, father,” she says in the same fluid language he had heard her speaking with him upon their arrival in the tent village.

    “I have never been otherwise,” he replies, motioning for her to stand and remove herself to another cushion. “But what is the cause for such pride on this day?”

    “I have won the day’s spars, and regained my position in the eyes of your men.”

    “Perhaaps,” her father says in the same heavily accented pidgin he had been speaking with Tristan before she came bustling into the tent, “ye should speak so yer man can understaand ye.”

    Blinking, Arik turns, and, seemingly for the first time, she sees Tristan seated, staring at her curiously. “Oh… oh.” After a moment of embarrassed silence, she says, “I was just telling Haruth, that he should be proud of me.”

    “Your father, you mean?”

    Slightly startled, she nods, “Yes, my father.”

    “Why should he be proud of you?”

    “Because the men of the hunting party have regained their trust in me.”

    “Ah trust thay laached befare,” Haruth says, “It happens when yae are barn away from the paple. And Aerik was barn as far away as she cad be.”

    “Father, please don’t speak of that with him,” Arik says quickly, reprovingly.

    “The truth will out sooner or later, my daughter.” Haruth frowns, standing, “Like why you won’t bear your wings as the rest of us while in our midst. We head homeward in the morning, get some rest.” Without further comment, except for a nod to Tristan, the tall Draconian leaves the tent.

    Tristan stares across at Arik meaningfully, but for a long time she does not look at him. When she does, she takes a deep breath and says, “Haruth is my father.”

    “I’d gathered that, Arik,” Tristan responds, tilting his head to one side. “Who, may I ask, is your mother.”

    Arik gets to her feet and steps towards the entranceway to the tent, “Ask me anything but that. It is something that will only greater confuse you.” There is silence, and then she says, “We’ll be moving camp to the home area in the morning, you should get some rest.”

    Tristan gets to his feet and quickly follows her out of the tent, “Then make me understand. Arik, tell me something about these people, your people. Where are the women? Why don’t they speak the same language as the rest of Gaea?”

    Glancing sidelong at Tristan, Arik smiles faintly, remembering, again, that his inquisitive nature is one of her favorite things about him, and nods once. “My father’s people, as I must call them since they are not my only relatives, are the last of the Draconians that survived on Gaea, the language that they speak is the one they brought with them from the Mystic Moon.”

    Tristan pauses, and then moves quickly to catch up as she leaves him behind. “The group my father is leading at the moment is a hunting party that sets out over the land to bring meat home to the few women and elders that there are.”

    “I’ve only seen twenty men here,” Tristan comments idly.

    “The Draconian are a dying people,” Arik replies, lifting aside the tent flap for him to step into their tent. “There are barely twelve women, and the elders are all old and feeble, unable to leave their homes. Of the women, only eight are able to bear children, and with my not so obvious absence, they know little of the world off Asgardia.”

    “Is that where we are?” Tristan steps in, and she follows. “Asgardia?”

    Arik nods. “It is the only place I know where you will be safe,” she says, moving to her things and taking out clean robes. “We’ll be going to the village tomorrow morning, you should get some rest.” She starts past him out of the tent, carrying clean clothing, but he stops her with a hand on her arm.

    “I have been doing nothing but rest since we got here,” he says, “and you seem suddenly to want nothing to do with me.”

    She stiffens slightly, and speaks without turning her head towards him. “I am not supposed to have fallen in love with you, Tristan. You’ve seen what is expected of me. It is a Kathis’ most important duty, one we are supposed to be trained to the point where we complete our duty with no feeling.”

    There is silence in the tent for a long time after she says this, until finally Tristan breaks it with a soft, “That is horrible.”