Escaflowne: Notes
format credited to pornkings, otherwise known as tin.
1. Her screaming falls mutely on Isaac's deaf ears.
But does the end really justify the means!
2. Isaac realizes something one day, as his eyes peer hungrily into the Fate Redirector Machine. His body is frail, his breaths are strained, his vision is blurred, his skin is papery thin, and his heart beats loudly in his ears. He is old and he is not God.
3. Merle realizes that Hitomi is like water. She had that odd power to her, that uncanny ability to seep into everything and everyone around her, soaking them with her presence. She claws at her skin because she knows that Hitomi's gotten under her too. Always sticking her large nose into everything, Merle thought bitterly, she should just leave them alone.
She'd like to claw at Van-sama too, because she knows that Hitomi's gotten to him too. Straight to the bones.
4. Merle also realizes that Van is like fire. Hostile and wild, dangerous and can hardly be contained. Meant to burn its way through everything and cause its destruction. But Merle likes fire, she convinces herself, because it's warm and keeps her alive.
She doesn't tell Van-sama this, though, because she knows that he'd hate himself more than he already does.
Merle also reasons that Hitomi and Van are not Fated to be together. Water extinguishes fire, and that isn't necessarily a good thing.
5. Van thinks Allen's clothes are too flashy for a knight. Fine threads and expensive silks—even Van can't bear wearing them. Only when Allen dons Scherazade is Van forced to respect him.
6. When Chid thinks of Allen, he sees a hero. When Chid meets Allen, he sees a liar.
7. Hitomi to run. Unbridled power, surges of speed, thundering feet on the pavement. Her heart aches to burst out and fly away.
She hopes that maybe if she runs fast enough, she can grasp that powerful feeling that's eluded her for some time. She thinks that this is the thing that people should live for.
8. I don't believe in fortune-telling, Dryden told her, cradling his wounded hand. Can something so simple determine the furrows and wrinkles that make life so complex? It can't possibly be that easy.
9. Allen needs a birdcage. That way, he'll be able to keep all the people he cares about, Serena, Hitomi, Chid, in close watch. They'd be safe, he convinced himself. They'd be with me.
Sometimes , it strikes him that above all, he hates being alone.
He does not note the irony in this.
10. Hitomi doesn't think she's pretty. Her hair is too tousled and tangled, flying willy-nilly in the wind. Her legs are too brown, sunburned from the miles she's cleared. Her nose is far too long and her eyes are far too wide. Her lips are chapped and dry, and she wonders how Allen can stand to kiss her.
Allen tells her that she should be a songbird. What's the use of looking pretty? Peacocks are boring anyway, he says with a smile.
Peacocks are male, she notes. And I like pretty things.
He lifts her hand to his lips and smiles as she blushes. Then I'll be your peacock.
11. Hitomi is not a tool. Van knows this.
Words can break bones. Van cannot fathom this.
12. He is driven mad with the images of dead ones. Shesta, Dollet, Gatty, Miguel, Guimel, Violle. A girl dances in the field of wildflowers and twirls her silver hair in the bright, blinding sunlight.
13. They filed his nails down because they found him cutting at his skin with morbid diligence. He screamed as they did it.
Let me out, he shrieked, let me out of this masquerade. I don't want to dance tonight. I'm not wearing the right shoes.
14. This is madness, he proclaimed, truly indignant. Are you claiming the right to be unhappy?
That is a right, she said defiantly, that every human being deserves.
15. I can't live in a cage, she said to him, crying. Please let me go.
He looks at her with bitter eyes. I'm doing it to protect you.
I don't want to be trapped in there with you, she retorts. A cage built from guilt and memories and false hope.
16. Millerna knows that she had to grow up someday. The princess may always marry the shining knight in the fairy tales, but she realizes quickly Asturia is not a storybook setting.
Dryden offers her a lifetime a security, she reasons, and inevitably love.
Allen may be beautiful, but he was poor. In more ways than one.
It would only be after her first child, does she realize that she has made the right choice.
17. You might as well give your life up for a loaf of bread. Or a rock. Or a leaf, she said to him, frustrated.
Why would I do something that stupid? he retorted.
Well, she responded, with all sincerity, Giving your life up is stupid.
18. The first thing that Hitomi taught her only child, a girl with amazingly bright and wide eyes, was about wishes.
"I'm sorry dear, but eating sweets will spoil your appetite for later," she said kindly to her child. Persistent and impatient, the little girl whined petulantly until Hitomi was forced to smile.
"Dear child, did you know?" she said, kneeling to face the girl, whose eyes widened slightly. "You can't always get what you want."
"Why?" she asked, innocently, angrily.
"There's got to be a balance somewhere," Hitomi said, a sad look in her eyes. "You must be selfless." And she smiled, happy that she had that chance to teach her daughter.
The lesson didn't stick, however, and it wasn't five seconds later that the child, with all naivety, asked, "Then when can I think about myself?"
19. Just a physical impulse, reaction, a louder than normal thump of the heart, a natural red to the cheeks, an ordinary electric current that running through the skin. It isn't love. Love can't be determined by mere physical reflexes.
Hitomi tries to ignore the way her skin prickles when Van touches her. She tries to ignore the way her heart nearly stops when she hears him speak. She tries to wash the stinging away from her cheeks, wash away the flush.
This isn't love, she convinces herself. Just a physical impulse, reaction.
Impulse. Reaction. (because love can't be determined so easily)
20. Van looks at the moon and measures how far it must be from where he is sitting. He concludes that wings won't be enough to get him there. He waits.
21. She marvels at the strength of gravity. It keeps people's feet on the ground, it keeps the earth from breaking apart, it keeps the apples falling from the trees, it keeps her and Van connected, despite the distance in between them.
22. An angel, Hitomi marvels as the white feathers drift down to caress her cheek. Van's hand reaches out for hers.
A demon, they cry as the white feathers drift down on the blood that rivers and pools at their feet. Van's hand reaches down for the final strike.
23. Moles are known to be blind. Which is possibly why they are underestimated so much.
I want you to stay by my side.
He sees the words fall and crash onto the floor.
He sees the shaking of her fingers and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand straight up.
Humans are also known to be blind.
24. Van understands that sometimes things transcend beyond human understanding. This is what makes him a wise king.
25. Millerna likes to think that she is the pillar of support for Asturia. She marries Dryden to strengthen that support because she truly believes that he'll help her to grow stronger.
She'll come to realize that only one of those is true.
26. The pages of the journal are yellowed and tattered. There's a distinct smell of blood on them, and Allen can't help but wonder if it belongs to his father. He opens the book one night, inkbottle at hand and quill hovering hesitantly over the paper, and wonders if he was much like him.
27. Folken was always very foolhardy, Van remembered. One time he burned his finger on a candle because, like a moth to the flame, he was entranced by its dance. Instead of withdrawing his finger to sooth his throbbing hurt, he reached out once more to snuff the fire.
Sometimes, when Van was small, he'd stare at the candle flame as well and wonder what it was that Folken saw.
28. They dance.
A spark of the metal, a cry and a yell, metal crunching and grinding, gravel scurrying and shattering everywhere.
Allen knows the steps by heart.
Strike down, swing left, step back, spin once, spin twice, and around and around again.
Van likes to be the one leading.
Fire, death, hope, and jealousy.
The music's winding down, and the champagne glasses run dry. When it all ends, will they remember how it began?
29. Isaac's first mistake was to assume that everything relied on biological impulses, chemical reactions. Hitomi looks at him and see a blinded and jaded man of science. She'd like to hand him forgiveness, but she doesn't know if he'll know what it is.
30. She reaches to touch her lips and realizes that Van has never kissed her. She wonders what it'd be like, kissing Van. She blushes, because she can't fathom it at all.
31. If she had wings, she thinks, she'd fly to the Moon and reach out for him. Perhaps he'd do the same.
32. Gaddes recalls stagnancy. He wonders how anyone could stand being stationary, waiting. It's a very painful feeling, he thinks.
33. I don't understand things like wars, Dryden says.
I don't understand things like money, she replies.
I suppose we make a good couple then, he says with a laugh.
34. One day, while shuffling through old boxes of memories of her bygone years, she finds her tarot card deck. With an aching heart, she pulls the cards out and holds them lovingly in her palms. She removes the first card, and is startled to see that it is The World. She holds it delicately in her hand and thumbs the English text with a dazed look.
That night, she sleeps underneath the stars with a smile on her face. The next morning, she is gone.