The day was hot for springtime, or at least that's what the old people said, sunning themselves on porches and in clean-swept, sandy yards; the adults had no time for such comments, because springtime meant planting or meant tending the young animals in their pens and fields, and all such things always demand your attention. That's why adults so rarely seem to notice the strange or the unusual, or even the magical... But the old people do, finally, once again. No-one listens to them, though, so they have to tell the children, who hear it for a while before they grow up too, and it's some time once again before they remember to take some time to listen and to see.
On this day, in the land of Rosso that stretches across the Red Plains, a young man and a young woman passed through the edges of the town called Valentina. In truth, they had been walking through its borders for some twenty miles, but Valentina's township was primarily pasture-land for some time in, and it was late in the day when they entered properly into town. Grandmother Abigail, an aged woman whose hair was as wisp-thin as cloud-stuff, looked up as they passed by her porch: A young man and a young woman, both with long golden hair. They came on horseback, saddlebags behind each, but seemed to travel lightly; they weren't the merchants or traders that sometimes passed through. Old Grandmother Abigail, looking up through filmy eyes, saw them pass; two sets of blue, blue eyes looked down at her from their horses, one black and one brown, and smiled. Abigail nodded, her head wobbling on her neck as though the one were two heavy on the other, and the young pair passed into the center of the town, the tracks of their horses in the dust printed on the road behind them.
Grandmother Abigail smiled, in the vague and by now mostly toothless way that she did. What nice young people, she thought, settling back in her porch-front chair. What a pretty-looking pair.
Not long later, with the horses stabled and everything, the young woman found herself seated in the small lobby of the Valentina Hotel, waiting for the staff to clear a lazy guest from the only should-be-available room. Resting against the back of the low, padded bench, the blonde woman – now without her companion from earlier in the day – ran a hand through her hair; the air was beginning to cool, and soon the afternoon would turn golden with sunset. 'Maybe I'll go out to see it,' she thought, musing idly on the idea to kill just a few seconds of time. 'But on the other hand, I could use a relaxing bath...'
From the corner of her eye, a flash of awkward movement caught the attention of the lobby's only occupant, and when she turned her head the woman had to repress a smile; four girls, perhaps around the age of ten or eleven, were clustered in the far corner of the room, watching her as surreptitiously as possible (which hadn't been very). Tilting her head in curiosity, the woman watched them fidget and elbow each other with bemusement until finally one with dark skin and violet eyes stepped forward, heedless of the restraining hand on her arm that was connected to an irate-looking, glasses-wearing girl.
"You're not from Valentina," said the first girl, and the sentence was a statement rather than a question. The hand on her arm fell away as the glasses-wearing girl, looking halfway mortified, put her face over her hands, and the blonde woman smiled and nodded.
"Yep!" she said, and her voice was high and clear, almost more youthful than could be expected; although youthful-looking already, her long blonde hair tumbled down her back in waves that added an air of maturity to her petite form, and her orange-and-marigold dress of watered silk made her look particularly "grown-up" to the girls before her. On the other hand, her manner, when she suddenly laughed, was child-like, and perhaps that was what encouraged the girls to collectively step forward. Just behind the dark-skinned girl was a girl with twin pigtails in a candyfloss pink, and she was the one who took the lead.
"You're going to be staying here?" she asked, and didn't give the woman time to answer before continuing, turning to gesture to a blank-faced girl beside her, whose dark-purple hair was up in two short pigtails. This new girl was either very bored or just pretty expressionless, since her non-expression didn't change at all as the pink-haired girl shook her slightly by the shoulders, saying as she did so, "This is Miru. Her family runs the hotel."
"It's nice to meet you, Miru," smiled the woman, and the girl gave an abrupt, polite bow in response. However, there was no vocal reaction, and the woman couldn't help be slightly taken aback.
"Oh, that's just how Miru is," smiled the pink-haired girl, as Miru righted herself again. "She doesn't talk much. I'm Teto, by the way. And this is Mayashima," the dark-skinned girl smiled, waving laconically. "... and Iu." The girl with the glasses, looking slightly put-out and a little embarrassed by her friends, bowed politely herself, then immediately launched into an apology.
"I'm sorry for my friends," she said, shooting a 'look' at the others. "We really shouldn't be bothering the customers of Miru's family..."
"Oh, it's all right," said the woman, waving the matter off with a flick of the wrist, and Iu looked slightly shocked that an adult could be so informal. "I like talking to others, anyway. I don't have much to do since I'm waiting."
"I bet you've got a lot of stories to tell, right?" asked Teto eagerly, her hands clasped to her chest. "I've never left Valentina, but I'm definitely going to travel one day and see the world!"
"Well, I've done some traveling," admitted the woman with a smile, apparently amused at this motley crew and at Teto's outgoing antics. "And you could say I know a story or two."
"Would you tell us?" asked Teto, her eyes wide, and Iu almost did a double-take as she looked at her friend with a 'I can't believe you're doing this' sort of expression. Teto took no notice whatsoever, and something told the bemused adult in their midst that Teto had a long history of ignoring the other, more formal girl.
"Please?" added Mayashima, who then nudged Miru in the side; swaying slightly from the nudge, Miru wobbled a bit like a weighted doll before adding, in a monotone:
"... Please."
Teto sighed at this, but Mayashima couldn't help but grin, and the blonde woman seemed to find it amusing as well, since she set the luggage in her hand back beside the cushioned bench.
"All right, then" smiled the young woman, settling herself back into the seat; "If you really want to hear it." Her smile was mischievous, and for a moment it occurred to Iu that the woman seemed as happy to tell the story as the others were to hear it. Iu opened her mouth to say so, but she was cut off as Teto's arm gripped her sleeve and pulled the bespectacled girl to the floor.
"Teto!" she yelped, glaring at the rose-haired girl through her glasses... but Teto wasn't listening. The other girl was already seated, her legs folded up underneath her, and just like Miru and Mayashima, Teto was looking up expectedly at the girl.
"Is it a long story?" asked Mayashima, already ready to listen, her legs crossed like the tomboy she was. The young woman laughed, then nodded.
"It's about fifteen years long," she said at last, "but I'll try to keep it brief."
"Is it a love story?" asked Teto... of course. She was always interested in things like that, long before any of the other girls had really thought of liking boys, and to the astonishment of the impromptu audience, the woman before them looked somewhat saddened at the thought, her blue eyes dropping slightly before she responded.
"It is," she said, and her voice was a shade softer than it had been before. "And at places, it gets kind of sad. Are you sure you really want to hear it?"
"Does it have a happy ending... ?" asked Teto tentatively, ignoring Mayashima's reprove that 'asking will spoil it anyway!' There was a moment of silence, possibly of thought, before the woman seated before them brightened suddenly and nodded, the tips of her golden-blonde hair brushing lightly against her neck.
"It definitely does!" she said, once more sunshine and smiles. "But do you still want to hear it?" And then, to a rousing chorus of three "Yeah!"s and one more reluctant "All right...", she smoothed her skirt over her legs and began to speak.
"Once upon a time..." she said, and the girls would have moaned at the old-fashioned cliché if this woman's voice had not been strangely changed by those words, shifting slightly from her youthful energy to a measured, almost formal cadence. "... there was a golden kingdom, which had been ruled by a single Dynasty for as long as Time had existed in the minds of Men."
'Well,' though Iu, trying hard to retain her aloof behavior, disapproval of sitting on the floor and all, 'at least that's a little different from the norm...'
But soon enough, the woman's voice overcame even Iu's stoic determination, and it seemed that the little hotel vanished, and the girls could see in their mind's eye the very scenes that the woman began to describe. Smooth, steady, and cool, her voice seemed to pain a aural picture of this mythical time long ago.
"Although," she went on, the forming of her words almost too easy to listen to, "there had been attempts to unseat that Dynasty, all of those attempts ultimately failed. The royal family would always manage to overcome their rivals..."
Their enemies would fall to fighting among themselves, or someone in the conspiracy would be persuaded to betray his fellows, or the usurpers would be defeated on the field of battle. Sometimes, those who wished to change the regime would simply die in their beds, the cause of their death perhaps suspected but ultimately unknown... By hook or by crook, the ruling family of the golden kingdom had always retained their throne, and dark rumors had arisen in their shadow, that they had made pacts with evil gods, or perhaps were demons themselves.
But, whatever else could be said about them, it was true that this ruling line, the family called Kagamine, were superbly successful at making their kingdom prosper. Although the golden kingdom had started out as nothing more than a series of small hamlets, each successive generation of the Kagamine did all within their power to strengthen their homeland and see that it grew, and always with one of the Kagamine name at its head. Eventually they became a great power in the world, they and their golden kingdom, and they were renowned for their famed military; it was believed that only the crimson mercenaries of the southern plains could match that army in skill at arms, and the soldiers of the golden kingdom were much greater in number. When they marched into battle, nearly every enemy fled the field before the dazzling men and women clad in gilded steel.
Under the Kagamine family, the golden kingdom grew into its name, and was soon preeminent among all the other nations. Because of this its people prospered, and whatever ill rumors might have existed around their ruling line, the people of the golden kingdom did not take them seriously; or, if they did, they didn't much care. It was enough for them that their families were safe, their trades were vibrant, and that they lived in a land where they were proud to bear its name. And so, while those abroad bandied about terrible heresy about the Kagamine, they dared not speak such words aloud, especially within the borders of the golden kingdom. For a very long time, the sign of the Kagamine - an oval mirror, edged in gold - was respected and feared across the world, and held in great esteem by the people it oversaw.
But, one might ask, how could this even be possible? After all, is it not the name of Kagamine that is even now reviled as the most fearful of tyrants? How could the golden kingdom, if it was truly such a proud and worthy place, now exist as nothing more than a few transient peasants in the ruins of a charred countryside?
How could the last Kagamine, scion of such a long-ruling and accomplished line, be known today only as a sly-faced femme fatale, a "daughter of evil" worthy only of disdain and revulsion?
This is the power of the passing of time, and of the truth in the old saying: History is written by the victors. History, yes, and myth, and even the fairy-tales we tell to our children may hold even a measure of what once was true, however badly that truth has been eroded by the changing tides of fate. This, then, is the story of that golden kingdom, and of the last ruling Kagamine, and of the golden-dark shadow that was forever at her side. What follows is the truth of what happened so long ago, and it is not a story of dark magic or supernatural visions, but of simple human nature, and the power that love holds to create... and to destroy.
Perhaps it is even a story of how love, sometimes, can save.
The woman's voice ended abruptly, and the girls blinked, exchanging glances of confusion; it seemed almost hypnotic, the woman's words, but indeed they were still in the little hotel. The woman was smiling down at them, her eyes somewhere over their heads, and she stood as she said "I'm sorry, girls, but it seems like the room is ready." Indeed, Miru's father was beckoning the woman over, key in hand, and as she picked up her luggage in one slim hand she smiled apologetically at the children around her.
"But that was barely the beginning of the story!" protested Mayashima, and although Miru quickly shushed her, the dark-skinned girl had a point.
"Anju does have a point," admitted Iu, reluctantly conceding at least that much. "That was barely a prologue."
"Oh?" The blonde woman looked down with something like laughter twinkling in her blue eyes, and Iu colored hastily as she looked down at the carpet, wishing that her glasses were opaque to hide her embarrassment. "Do you want to hear the rest after all?"
"Well..." mumbled Iu, still keeping her eyes on the floor below her; "... If you wouldn't mind. And we don't have anything more pressing to do, of course."
"Which is basically a yes!" pointed out Mayashima, happily draping herself over Iu with a laugh and ignoring the green-haired girl's indignant screech. "So maybe later, then? If you aren't busy?" Mayashima looked up at the woman with her best set of puppy-dog eyes, causing the blonde to laugh until the case in her hand swung slightly from the effort.
"I don't know how long I'll be in your town," she managed at last, looking as though it were still a struggle to hold back her laughter. "But I'll try to find you tomorrow, if that's really what you want." Stepping away from them, the woman only paused once to look back over her shoulder, throwing the little group a small, almost childish wave, accompanied by a grin, before she followed Miru's father, already carrying her luggage, up the stairs to the guests' floor.
"And you said there was nothing better to do then chores," scoffed Teto, tossing her pink pigtails as Iu rolled her eyes. "Good thing we didn't listen to you, right?"
"Oh, whatever," huffed Iu, now looking ill-tempered at having lost the non-existent argument. "You'd better have all your chores done before we find her tomorrow, though. We're not going to help you out again if your mother finds out you left something undone."
It was now Teto's turn to make a face, before she brushed the thought off altogether. As the girls rose to their feet, straightened their skirts, and headed out into the street, she voiced aloud the question that all four had been wondering since their mysterious new friend had taken her leave.
"What do you think she'll tell us about tomorrow?"
Author's Notes: Some of this may seem familiar. That's because this is the 'Kingdom of Gold' snippet from the Gemini Musica anthology, which would be the Daughter of Evil/Servant of Evil/Regret Message trilogy. I decided to expand it into its own series since I wasn't sure how many chapters it would be, plus it deserved its own novelization. I've set it in the same vaguely-fantasy world of the videos, but will of course be expanding the setting considerably. Please let me know what you think of it, and I hope you enjoyed this start!