The Last Vision

01 : A Universe Between Two Worlds

The odd nighttime breeze blew into Hitomi Kanzaki's room. Her curtains swayed away from the window like waves. They seemed suspended in the air for a long time. Everything moved in slow motion.

It was bad this time. Worse than the other times. So bad her teeth were grinding against each other in frustration. She missed him terribly. His unruly hair. His temper. His hands made rough from hard work. The itch she would feel when his bangs fell over her eyes. His clean scent. His manly laugh. His warmth, strong and sure.

Hitomi gathered her pillows around her body and tried to burrow deeper in her bed. She expected keeping the promise they made to each other to be challenging, but she didn't expect this agony.

But we can see each other anytime, right? So long as our thoughts reach each other.

I didn't even kiss him, she thought. The longing trapped in her body made breathing hard.

She ran her fingers over her neck, pretending her hands were his. As her fingernails grazed over her breasts, she arched back, wondering if he would like what he saw underneath him—the image of her reacting to his touches as he reduced her from woman to raging fever. The fantasy of them making love, his wings spread over and around them, lifting her up at the right time, urging her cling to him for dear life was a cruelty she subjected herself to over and over again.

Hitomi turned to her side and gripped the pillow between her legs. Ankles hooked together, she pressed the pillow closer to her womanhood, hoping to quell the burning ache, but the attempt was unsuccessful. It only fed the fire.

The wanton feeling never went away. It was only masked by the dreariness of daily routine and feigned ignorance. But more powerful than physical longing was the loneliness she was always made aware of while walking along the street alone, hearing a line of a song, or preparing a meal for one. She couldn't remember why she left Fanelia, why they both agreed it would be the right decision. The why of it screamed and bounced against the walls of her wind, grasping for reason and clarity. Her ability to think straight weakened as the lust and loneliness inside her blazed unapologetically. Unable to control herself any longer, her fingers dipped lower, leaving a hot trail along her body, until they found her center, swollen, crying. Her whole body was crying for him.

"I'm not doing fine, Van."

Her eyes burned with the birth of tears.

Van Fanel sat on the edge of his bed, shirtless, his mouth clenched shut in a hard line. His elbows rested rigidly on his knees as sweat beaded on his sun-browned brow. His right leg flinched involuntarily. He held his calloused hands together in a death grip.

It was one of those nights again—when he couldn't stop thinking about her. He didn't mind thinking about her all morning and afternoon, which was the new reality he had to embrace the moment she drifted away from him almost two years ago. He just wished he could think of her more gently at night—her laughter ringing in a garden of roses, her touch lingering as she wished him a good morning, her hair parting to reveal her emerald eyes—instead of the sinful, desperate fantasies that came to him as the light of the sun left Fanelia and the Mystic Moon glowed brighter and brighter among the stars.

Allen's words came to him again. It's only been a few of years. Your feelings will soften their grasp eventually, the Asturian knight said. But he couldn't possibly understand. There was no way anyone in the kingdom understood the kind of love he and Hitomi shared. This worried him immensely. There was no one to consult and no one to offer comfort—except the girl who left him.

Perhaps if he could find another dragon to slay, he might just end up somewhere near her again. If he experimented more with the pendant, there might be a way back. Although he felt it was a dishonour to his brother's memory, he played with the idea that if he woke Escaflowne and flew as far as he can in the direction of the Mystic Moon, he could find Hitomi and tell her they shouldn't have parted.

I'm not doing fine, Van.

Sometimes he imagined her sweet voice calling for him, telling him she needed him, asking him to save her. "We shouldn't have parted, Hitomi." It killed him.

Then, as if a psychic cord suddenly connected them, he swore he felt the uncomfortable heat inside her, similar to the burning happening inside him, a contrast to the cooler touch of her pendant hanging against his chest. He jerked upright from his bed and paced around his room in angry strides. He reached his balcony and let the steady flow of wind push against his bare chest, calming him down. He could have burned holes in the Mystic Moon the way he stared at it so intensely.

He had to call her back somehow. The pendant, the Drag-energist, Escaflowne, sheer will, strong love. They could be the ingredients of her return—or his arrival to wherever she was. He found himself overcome with a determination so concentrated that the hair on his forearms rose at attention. He felt the itch of beading sweat around his scalp. The pendant grew heavy hanging on his neck. He wondered how desperate and agitated he had to be before the pillar of light surrounded his body again.

The young king turned away from the night sky and sought the darkness of his room again. He huffed in a fit of distress and vowed that if he had to ride the moonlight all his life to get to her, he would.

TBC.

A/N: This is definitely a work in progress. I've started watching The Vision of Escaflowne again for the nth time, and I just started writing a few words down. I understand why Hitomi had to leave Gaea in the end, and I think that was the ideal ending, but the romantic in me just couldn't resist locking these love birds in another situation again. Nothing solid in mind for this story yet. Still trying to find a good angle. If anything, it's an exercise in writing fanfic again. Getting back into the groove of things. Hope this floats your boat. x.