Amoro Revidi
Title: Edge of the Wood [Part Six]
Series: Vision of Escaflowne
Rating: PG [blood]
A/N: Part 6... not sure if I like it or not. Let me know what you guys think.
***
Sitting up in bed and stretching, Hitomi lets out a small yawn that collapses into a chuckle. No matter how many times she thinks it through, the idea of getting jet lag when flying on wings still seems funny. She leans up, careful of her bruised muscles, and rests her arms on the windowsill, and, on top of the cross they make, she rests her chin, looking out over the serene morning landscape.
She and Van had arrived somewhat late the prior evening and he had asked that she go straight to bed. Hitomi smiles, Always so considerate… it’s unnerving.
Slowly she lifts her head, one hand going to her lips as she recalls the quick kiss they had exchanged before he closed the door to her room and told her that there would be several servants waiting if she needed anything. She sighs and leans back against her pillows again, pulling the sheets up to her chin and drawing her hands over them repeatedly, the silky feeling such a contrast from the hospital room she had been trapped in only the night before.
A soft knock on the door echoes lightly into the room.
“Come in,” she calls out, hoping her voice is loud enough to make it through the thick wooden door.
A maidservant enters and curtsies. “Sorry to disturb you, Lady Hitomi, but…”
“Let’s get one thing straight…” Hitomi begins.
“… but Lady Merle said that I should come and inform you that breakfast will be ready whenever you are and that Lord Van inquired after you at breakfast.”
Hitomi’s heart fell slightly at that thought. Van’s already eaten. “Did Lady Merle say how I could get in touch with her?”
“She said to tell you that she’d see you at breakfast.”
Hitomi nods in response. “Well I’m ready now, if that’s no problem.”
“You’ll have a fitting shortly after breakfast, she said to inform you as well.”
Hitomi, climbing out of bed, nods matter-of-factually and then pauses. “A what?”
“A fitting,” the maidservant responds, carrying a robe over to her and helping her into it. “You can’t walk around in a robe for the rest of your stay with us, so when the advisors heard you were coming to stay for a while they arranged to have seamstresses make you gowns.”
Hitomi holds up a hand. “Now wait just a minute, I won’t be wearing any gowns.”
The maidservant smiles and giggles emptily.
“What’s so funny?”
“It sounds so much like what Lady Merle warned us,” she says between giggles, “that you would be very picky and probably would refuse to wear too many dresses.”
Hitomi sighs and tightens the belt around her waist before following the maid out of her room and into a drawing room area. “She gave us the patterns to some pants suits as well… they’re modified riding clothes so I don’t know how often you’ll want to wear them,” the servant pulls out a chair and waits, eyes somewhat downcast.
“I don’t have anything specifically against wearing dresses, you know,” Hitomi comments as she takes the designated seat.
The maid smiles and claps her hands, and a kitchen boy comes in bearing a plate of food. As he makes his way out Merle slips into the room, motioning the maid to be on her way for a while.
“How was your trip, Hitomi?”
Setting down her fork, Hitomi turns to regard Merle and smiles. “Merle!” she calls out, getting to her feet and going to embrace her friend.
Merle smiles and returns the hug, tail swishing happily. “How are you doing?” Hitomi asks, “I haven’t seen you in ages, how’s everything?”
“I’m doing fine, Hitomi, everything’s… well you know Fanelia,” she winks and then pauses, waiting for the response to her question. “How was your trip?” she prompts again when Hitomi doesn’t respond.
“It was nice, smooth like I was being carried,” Hitomi jokes with a grin, retaking her seat as Merle sits across from her at the small table. “Van’s already eaten?” she asks somewhat sheepishly.
Merle nods. “He gets up really early, but he said to make sure you weren’t disturbed this morning because you’d probably be very tired. I honestly don’t understand him sometimes, you don’t seem so exhausted to me.”
“Well how long have I been asleep?” Hitomi responds, yawning slightly again.
“Good point, it’s mid-morning already,” Merle says, drawing her legs up to her chest as she sits and watches Hitomi continue her breakfast. “Don’t get too full, I’m sure Van will expect you to have lunch with him, even though he didn’t require your presence at breakfast.”
“I feel like I missed something important.”
“Well he’s not usually so anxious, but that’s about all you missed,” Merle responds, one ear pricking as she listens to something in the distance.
“Anxious?” Hitomi asks, sipping her milk.
“Yeah, but I bet that’s just because you’re here and he wants to be sure you have a good trip.” Merle smiles at her and winks, “That and he’s still got a major crush on you.”
Hitomi blushes slightly, one hand slowly drawing itself up to her lips again in recollection of the prior evening’s kiss.
Merle doesn’t notice this gesture, however, and so she asks in a lower voice, “Hitomi, what happened?”
Continuing her breakfast, Hitomi ignores the question.
“Hitomi?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Merle’s tail stiffens and lashes from side to side agitatedly. “Hitomi, if something’s happened… you’re my friend too, you know. All this time I’ve tried to get Van to tell me what happened that you were sick…”
Hitomi glances at Merle with serious eyes and asks, “And?”
“And he wouldn’t tell me a word. He told me that I’d have to find out for myself. I haven’t been able to because not all of us can sprout wings and fly to the Mystic Moon just for a chat!” Merle hops up out of her chair and crosses to the window, angrily folding her arms on her chest.
Back at the table, Hitomi leans back slightly in her chair, grimacing but unable to keep her frown in place with the thought that Van hadn’t revealed what was wrong with her or why. Somehow the privacy he had given her even in that small a manner made her happy, she didn’t want everyone to know what happened since it hurt so much to think about it herself. She didn’t think she could stand having an entire world’s pity at her situation.
“Merle,” she begins in a mollifying tone, “I’m sorry… I just… I’m not quite ready to talk about it,” Hitomi finishes, looking down at her hands folded in her lap.
The cat woman glances over her shoulder at her friend and her anger melts away. She turns and crosses to stand at the edge of the table. “It’s all right, Hitomi,” she says, putting on hand on her shoulder. Hitomi smiles glumly up at her and Merle winks in response, “now hurry up and finish, we’ve got to get you fitted with something to wear before Lord Van sends for us.”
Hitomi frowned a little at that reminder of that necessity. She shrugs and swallows the end of her milk, When in Gaea… It also didn’t hurt that everyone was calling Van by an honorific or something that reminded her that here in Gaea he was a king and not just her friend.
***
Van hadn’t gone to bed as he had advised Hitomi to the night before, and so he found his energy sufficiently drained that he didn’t feel up to meeting with his advisors in the morning. After calling off that meeting he took a short nap and then went down to inspect the castle’s garden, hoping that the action would cause some of the tension in his body to relax.
As soon as his foot had hit the main gravel path in the garden, though, his eyes had been drawn up to the window of Hitomi’s room and the tension and anxiety caught up with him again. Finally he had decided that he was being a fool about the whole situation and decided to loose himself in the plants for a while.
Glancing up at the sky he realizes the hour and curses mentally, going to wash up before calling lunch to be served. Skidding around a corner he runs into Merle, who wears a smile on her face and a relaxed demeanor.
“Merle!”
“Lord Van,” she replies with a slight, mocking curtsy.
“How are you?” he asks lamely.
Merle smiles mischievously and her tail swishes behind her, “I’m doing quite well, thank you, but I don’t think I’m the person you’re wondering about.”
“Ah…” he straightens up unconsciously and she chuckles. “What?”
“You who went on and on about wanting a queen whose faults you could see in the open beforehand,” she hides her mouth behind one hand decorously and then says, “and the minute the person you’d like to spend all your time with is here you do exactly what you were afraid to face those princesses for.”
Van arcs a black brow as he looks at her, and draws her close by slipping an arm around her waist. “Come on Merle,” he says teasingly, “you’re talking nonsense,” he squeezes her waist once and then lets her go, continuing on his way.
A sour expression on her face, Merle sticks her tongue out at his retreating back. “I swear I’ll never see what she sees in you anymore.”
***
As the sun reaches its highest point the veranda dining room is filled with various Fanelian nobles inhabiting the castle, the King, and his guest. At a small corner table Van sits, Hitomi to his left and Merle on his right and the three reminisce quietly about the changes the castle has undergone and other pointless pleasantries.
Hitomi feels herself relax, the ball of fear clenching in her chest loosening as the good ‘Gaean air,’ as Van had called it in his list of persuasions to get her to come with him back to Fanelia and Gaea, works its magic on her.
“So, what are you going to do this afternoon, Lord Van?” Merle asks him pointedly, noticing the wandering of Hitomi’s attention out the window and at the countryside.
“Huh?” Van asks, caught off guard for a moment before he follows Merle’s gaze to Hitomi’s attention straying from the meal and the conversation. “I cleared the afternoon to spend time with the two of you, since we haven’t seen each other in so long,” he says quietly, taking another bite of his roast. “Perhaps we could go for a ride?” he asks a little nervously.
Inwardly, Merle laughs at his sheepish demeanor, while outwardly she shakes her head. “I can’t go this afternoon, I’ve got to see to some things about our trip to Asturia.”
Hitomi, seemingly not noticing their conversation, finds herself lost in thoughts. First they had begun about the discomfort of wearing the dress, no matter how loose the bodice was, it was still laced to show off her figure, which had grown somewhat fuller over the past six years. Then it had strayed to Merle’s hair, and how different she looked with long hair, and then it had settled, for a while, on the look of Van’s profile in the sunset before it was drawn out the window and to the actual scenery from the veranda room.
Merle quietly excuses herself and goes on about her preparations, planning on how to force her two friends together as she had come, over the past few years, to accept as fate. Van waves a hand in front of Hitomi’s face, somewhat concerned at her inattentiveness.
“What?” she asks, startled from her reverence of the landscape.
“Are you finished?”
Looking down at her empty plate, Hitomi nods. “Why?”
“Like I was saying, Hitomi, I thought we could go on a ride this afternoon. I didn’t think you’d mind as intently as you’ve been staring at the landscape.”
Hitomi blushes and looks down, “It’s just been so long since I’ve seen Fanelia when it wasn’t… ruins…”
Van nods placatingly and puts a hand over hers on the tabletop. “Well I intend to show you as much of it as we can see this afternoon.”
Hitomi smiles at him happily and nods.
***
Stumbling, she clutches her wounded shoulder with one hand and holds the almost limp form on her back with the other. Just… a little… farther…
Finally exhaustion overtakes her tired form and she collapses, the two bodies she was moving hitting the ground in a tangled mass of limbs and bloody clothing. The sword clatters from her fingers and lands a few inches from her outstretched hand.
He groans and shifts his weight off of her for the most part.
With a wry grin her final conscious thoughts are, Always the gentleman prince… and then her mind goes blank.
***
Seated atop the mare, Hitomi lets out a happy cry as the animal’s thundering pace carries her over another hill. On a golden furred stallion beside her, Van feels the infectious joy spread into him and allows himself a wide smile as he watches her being jostled just slightly in the saddle. Just enough of a handicap to remind him that she hasn’t been riding, most likely, since her last trip to Gaea.
The two of them pause at the top of the next hill and she glances around, “Fanelia’s beautiful, Van,” she says in breathless joy.
He smiles at her, “I’m glad you like it, Hitomi.”
“Should we start to head back now?” Hitomi’s voice is slightly disappointed as she looks up at the placement of the sun in the sky.
Van contemplates and glances around at the rolling plains area before saying, “I’m sure going to the edge of those trees wouldn’t be a problem, at the very least. At the pace these mounts are going it don’t see why we can’t explore the forest a little.”
I feel so free out here, with only him and the horses, I wish it could never end. She thinks to herself. I wish I could stay in Gaea and just spend time out here.
The two of them knee their mounts into another canter and take off, grass flying up behind their steeds as they head over Fanelia’s terrain at a swift pace. The wind whipping hair back and exposing the late afternoon heat to necks and faces.
At the edge of the forest, Hitomi pulls her mount up short and, seeing her reason for pause, Van does as well, sliding to the ground and trusting the animal not to stray far. Hitomi starts to get down as well but he raises a hand to caution her to remain seated.
“Van…” she says, somewhat distressed.
“If anything goes wrong get out of here,” he says to her, one hand on his sword as he approaches the pile of blood sodden clothing and limbs.
Hitomi glances at the scene before her uneasily, wanting to turn back the clock and have turned around at the last rise, the selfish and mean thought that this interrupted her ride shocking her. Slowly Van approaches the bodies, kicking the sword out of reach of the worn and yet smaller hand before kneeling to check for pulses.
Angry at herself, Hitomi moves her mount forward some and hears Van’s gasp and subsequent exclamation, “They’re still alive!”
She throws one sore leg over the saddle and slides to the ground, coming over to stand next to Van, putting a hand on his shoulder and grounding him for a moment. “What do we do?”
Van turns to look at her, eyes wide and wild for a moment, but they quickly regain composure and he says, “You’re not too sore to ride are you?”
Hitomi shakes her head determinedly and he nods with a smile, standing and placing her back in the saddle carefully before reaching down to move the smaller body across her horse’s rump, placing the larger of the two bodies across his own horse’s hindquarters.
Somewhat bewildered, Hitomi waits as he lashes the body down and then repeats the process with his own horse before nodding to her and wheeling around and kicking his horse to head back towards the castle.
With a sigh, Hitomi feels dread creeping into her at what might have befallen these people, and she kicks her own steed into motion, feeling a bit of peace at the powerful animal’s surge of strength as it carries her and the wounded… she glances to look at the face on the body lying behind her saddle… soldier towards safety and help.
As she catches up with him, Van glances at her consolingly, “I’m sorry our ride was cut short,” he says somewhat loudly through the wind rushing past them.
“I just hope they’re all right,” Hitomi says, pleased to find that she truly feels that way. Van shakes his head and she continues, “It’s all right.”
“No, it isn’t,” Van responds firmly, a deep tone in his voice she doesn’t quite recognize. “You didn’t come to Gaea again to get caught up in its problems. This is supposed to be a vacation for you.”
“Van…” she says quietly, voice carried away in the wind.
“I’m sorry, Hitomi.”
***