Amoro Revidi
Title: Fit Welcome - Cesario [Part
Twenty-Three]
Series: Vision of Escaflowne
Rating: PG-13
A/N: I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad
thing that I've already gotten into chapter 26. I don't like the length of
twenty-five, so it might be a while before it gets posted. I decided not to
upload all the chapters I've finished so that I have more of a chance to edit
them this time. It's genuinely relaxing for me to write the story, which is a
good thing, it comes easily to me right now, so I might not take a break between
book one and book two. (Especially, since, as I said, I'm already working on 26
right now.) Review responses at the end. Sorry I don't do email right now, but I
doubt any of you would write and I don't have time to respond anyway.
***
The trip back to Cesario is a quiet one, but the air inside the carriage is thick with tension. Kira sits quietly across from Jasper with her hands folded demurely in her lap, staring down at them for the majority of the overland trip, occasionally turning to look outside to where Nil rides alongside the carriage, at the head of the small contingent of guards Jasper had brought with him, along with a bodyguard Xachary sent along for his own daughter’s safe keeping until the wedding.
Jasper stares with a pleasant half-smile upon his face out the opposite window from where Nil rides, an expression that Kira, when she chances to draw her violet eyes up from her intense concentration of her lap, cannot begin to fathom.
*
The atmosphere in the carriage remained the same the entire first day of the journey, and the second, as the newly betrothed couple made their way through the country of Asturia and into the borderland of Daedalus. The change of scenery from the slightly mountainous seaside country to the more inland nation brought about some reason for comment between the two royal persons within the carriage.
*
“What do you think of Daedalus’ scenery, Kira?” Jasper asks when he notices her repeated glances out the window of the carriage at the thickly passing forests around them.
“It’s so… concealed. In Basram… most of the available land is used for farming, and exports… not nearly so much of it is left go to forest like this.”
“I gather it must leave you feeling pretty exposed, to be so out in the open all the time,” Jasper remarks, turning his glance again out the window opposite Nil to glance at the trees himself, knowing it might be some time before he leaves his own country again.
“Yes, Basram… stopped feeling like a safe place, after father was elected king.”
Jasper turns green eyes on his fiancé inquiringly, his look urging her to go on, but she turns towards the window silently, either missing his look or misinterpreting it. With a kind smile, Jasper leans forward and places his hand on hers, which remain folded in her lap. As she turns, eyes startled, he says in a soft voice, “Would you mind telling me about it?”
A relieved expression warms her startled face and she nods slowly. “If… you would really like to know.”
“I most certainly would.”
***
Two days after the ship left Asturia, it was clear that weather conditions would be unrelenting for the port selected to set down its travelers on their way to Fanelia, and so, making an easy decision, Van directed the captain to put into the nearest available port and that those bound with him to head to Fanelia would simply go overland instead of finishing the journey by sea to a closer port.
It was not a very prosperous port that the Swan put into, but it was substantial enough for horses to be secured, along with a few beasts of burden, to take the handful of nobles, their king, and Hitomi to a larger city on their way back to Fanelia. The two day journey on rough seas had only brought the ship a quarter of the distance it had intended to travel, since the winds had taken to the wrong direction a few mere hours after the ship set out.
Van was slightly displeased by the idea that his safe return of Hitomi to first Fanelia, and then Earth, if she chose, would be delayed in the slightest, and he itched to be out of the public eye. There was not a country on Gaea that did not recognize him as king, however begrudgingly, and those countries that did so only begrudgingly would not challenge him because of his efforts during the Great War.
The rain splatters down upon the group as they mount their horses in the livery stables of Aves, the port city they were dropped off in, and as Van looks around at the other nobles, grouchy and slightly seasick from the rough travels onboard the Swan, he finds only one smiling, jovial face in the lot of them. The face, bearing jade green eyes and a dripping wet set of sandy blond bangs despite the hooded travel cloak provided her, belongs to none other than Hitomi herself, and even though she is no longer wearing a gown, as Van glances her over, leaping astride the horse found to carry him to the Egzardian capital, he notes that her bearing is still as though she is dressed in fine clothing.
She looks like a queen, he thinks, and then laughs at himself for such an off-color thought. How could any woman astride an aging horse, getting soaked to the bone, look like a queen? he asks himself.
A nagging thought in the back of his mind gets repeatedly dismissed until he can dismiss it no longer, and admits the truth of the statement, accepting it for what it’s worth. “What’s with all the long faces?” Hitomi calls out to the other Fanelian nobles, and as they hear her cheerful voice the nobles seem to perk up as well, somehow the discomfiture of the sea journey put aside and behind them as they see the young lady so