A few comments about Kanata and Santa, before I begin. I am not going to delve deep into their pasts and upbringing, but for the sake of completeness, I am going to point out a few key influences upon their characters. Kanata acts like a spoiled young lord at times, simply because he IS a spoiled young lord. He has grown up in luxury and has always been surrounded by admirers. He has never had to work hard at anything except whatever he wished to - namely, fighting skills. Therefore, he will be crabby and snobby sometimes, but not for long. Thrust into the life of a commoner, he'll soon learn responsibility.

Santa, on the other hand, is an attendant who has likely grown up in relative poverty and upon coming of age (say, fifteen), he set out to find a job for himself and landed up into the position of attendant at the Saionji castle. Therefore, he is more used to the life of commonfolk, and as such, does not mind hardship as much, and is also aware of the socially acceptable behavior from women in lower classes of society. Hence, his hurried offering to help the femininely disguised Kanata from his horse.

That said, on with the story! ^o^

The Legend of Halkeginia

It was early in the morning – so early in fact, the many would have still called it night – when their ship rumbled into the port city of Tristain situated at the west side of Halkeginia. Having been assailed by an unexpected bout of sea-sickness, Kanata had spent the entire journey throwing up into a pail in the corner of the small cabin they were given. Santa, choosing to not be confined within the enclosed space reeking of vomit, had sauntered out about on the deck of the ship, enjoying the whippy wind and the starry waves. His mood sour, Kanata grumbled the entire way from the cabin and down the gangplank and up to the platform outside the harbor where several carriages stood parked, their drivers lounging about, hoping to be able to get passengers from amongst the crowd departing the harbor.

Picking the closest carriage, Santa instructed the driver to take them to the nearest inn they could find. The ride to the "nearest" inn took a suspiciously long while, during which Kanata's mood got only worse as the incessant rocking and jerking motions made by the carriage served to slosh his stomach all the more. Santa busied himself with peering out through the window on his side of the carriage, and could have sworn that they went past the same stone fountain at least thrice. But that couldn't be, could it? After all, the traders all told tales of how honest and hard-working the people of Halkeginia were…

The carriage finally came to a stop outside a huge wooden house, which was bound to be extraordinarily expensive, and after a LOT of gold passed hands between Santa and the driver, the two travelers trudged their weary feet up the steps of the inn and into its wide foyer.

The inn did turn out to be impossibly pricey, but to hell with money! Kanata needed his rest, and Santa could only cower under his darrrrling wife's glare. With great relief and gratitude, they were finally shown their rooms and Kanata collapsed into one of the beds and slipped into blissful rest.

~*~

It was noon when Kanata woke up, and even so, he lay in bed for quite some time, unwilling to leave its warmth. A strange squeek-ing noise finally caused him to stretch luxuriously and then sit up to look around the room. Santa sat cross-legged on his bed, polishing his sword with a piece of cloth, the white rag going squeek pweek squeek pweek back and forth over the steel blade. Sensing movement behind him, Santa turned to look at Kanata and opened his mouth cheerily. A hiss and a twang and he suddenly found his forelocks detaching themselves and floating down to litter around his lap. He turned to look at the wall opposite and gulped to find a sword sticking out of the wood of the bureau, its hilt still quivering gently from the force of the impact.

"If you don't want that sword to hit closer to your eyes, shut up and don't call me darling." Kanata groused.

"Yes, Sir!"

"Now, what time is it?"

"Eleven in the morning, Sir!"

"Where is our breakfast?"

"I'll tell the landlord to send it right up, Sir!"

"Good."

~*~

Fully rested and fed, Kanata now focused his attention on the mission at hand. Santa made of show of pressing his finger to his lips before tiptoeing across the room to open the door and peer into the corridor. Signaling all-clear with a thumbs up, he then proceeded to bolt the door shut and moved the bureau in front of it, before tiptoeing over to the window on the opposite side of the room and ensuring that no one was loitering outside it, three stories above the ground. Happily confirming the lack of flying eavesdroppers, he closed the window shut as well, and jammed his dagger into the window handles to lock them. And all the while, Kanata tapped his foot impatiently and glared at the insufferable attendant through narrowed eyes.

Finally unable to take it any longer, he snapped. "Santa! There is NO ONE under the bed! Now, haul yourself back here and listen to me!"

"Aye, aye, Sir!"

Finally settling down, Kanata elaborated on their mission, what they knew and what they had to find out. "So, we know, doubtless, that this Charm is bound to be under heavy security, and safeguarded at all times by as many soldiers as possible. The best warriors of the kingdom are bound to be involved in its protection. Which means that there could only be very few places it could be in."

Santa nodded, his face comically serious.

Kanata continued, uncaring, "It could be in the palace, first. It could be in the royal temple, second – no one would think of raiding a temple, and the strong spiritual powers of all the priests and priestesses combined is definitely a force to be reckoned with. It could also be hidden in their gold and diamond mines – the security there is strong as hell, and there aren't many entrances to the mines, which will make it difficult for anyone to go in unnoticed."

"Why not somewhere near the training grounds? There are bound to be numerous fighters there at all times." Santa quipped.

Kanata leveled him a stare. "What did I say about the kind of warriors who are most likely to be protecting it? The best. They must be the best! A large number of mediocre soldiers is of no use if a cunning and very fast thief comes along. A Charm of such power must be defended at all times by the best guard!"

"Alright, alright. So say, that the Charm could only be present at one of those three places. Now what do we do about it?"

Kanata drew his brows into a thoughtful frown and pondered the problem. At length, he spoke again. "Entry to the mines will probably be forbidden without explicit authorization by someone in charge of it. However, entry to the temple is not forbidden at any time. Entry to the palace is not forbidden, but it is restricted. If we were to choose as such, the temple would be the best place to begin, but, I do not think a normal worshipper would be permitted to be let into their secret chambers. Again, we would need special authorization by someone in power. But then again, the person in charge of the mines may not have power upon the temple."

Santa "hmm"ed his consent.

"So, it all comes down to this. We must get someone in a position of immense power to trust us and thus, allow us to visit all the secret chambers in all the places as we please." He paused here for a moment, mulling over a scheme, and by the way he worried his bottom lip, Santa concluded it was not going to be an easy scheme. Finally, Kanata appeared to have come to a conclusion and he nodded to himself. He looked up at Santa, his gaze challenging, and a telltale smirk twisting his lips. "We must get close to someone in the royal family."

~*~

That evening, the two of them set out to scout out the city of Tristain, and find horses for the journey to the capital of Halkeginia. Deciding to part ways so as to be able to cover more ground, the attendant went in search of an ale house where he could doubtless meet plenty of drunk and loose-lipped men, while his master, with much snarling and pouting, went in search of somewhere where he could find a lot of gossiping women.

Kanata briskly walked along past stately houses, obviously belonging to wealthy merchants, and playing children and a street lined with tanners and butchers and as he walked, he noticed several things that differentiated the Halkeginians from the other people he had ever met. They were fair of hair and light of skin, most of them sporting golden, light brown or flaxen hair, with the darkest shade being copper. Blue, green and grey eyes peered curiously at his foreign appearance, what with his long fake russet hair and auburn eyes. The women of Halkeginia were shorter than those of Fiore, and more graceful, while the men were all clean shaven regardless of age. With his tall stature, Kanata was bound to stand out like a sore thumb amongst the puny women here.

Finally, his feet led him to square in the middle of the city, where four paths intersected. The square was brightly decorated with colored flags and streamers, and colorful lanterns hung from the houses that lined the square. A huge crowd was gathered here and loud music and the tingling melody of a tambourine resounded in the air. There was laughter and merrymaking and faintly, through a slit-like gap amidst the closely thronging mass of bodies, he could make out a swish of colors whirling past at a frenzied pace.

Curious, he slowly eased his way deeper into the crowd till he stood nearly at the front and could see the performance going on. It was a group of street performers, enacting out a play. They wore flowing garments of chiffon in every color imaginable, the women baring their midriffs and the men wearing turbans. Several fake trees made of planks of wood and paper stood in the middle of the square in imitation of a forest, and fake hills surrounded the trees on one side. The play seemed to be about a young girl of six years of age, who wandered into the Horaizon Mountains and got lost.

Kanata watched, as the little girl, dressed in a shimmering golden skirt and wrapped in a deep blue shawl, looked about herself in panic, before collapsing to her knees and starting to cry. Quite a few of the women in the surrounding crowd held their hands over their hearts, their expressions conveying sympathy. The little girl started speaking in a mumble, her words interspersed with hiccups and sobs, "Oh poor, poor, me! I am lost and it is dark and a wild beast will come along now and kill me. Mama, Mama! Help me, Mama! Where are you? I don't want to be alone…"

The harpist struck a sorrowful tune that trembled momentarily in the air before fading away. The tambourine sounded discordantly, and a drum was struck repeatedly with the gravity of doom. One of the street performers, who appeared to be both a mimic and a ventriloquist, boomed like the thunder and hissed like the rain. Brightly blazing torches were flashed through a sheet of cellophane to imitate lightening. In the middle of the ominous scene, the little girl shivered pathetically from cold and fear and huddled in upon herself.

Suddenly a firefly flew past her, like a streak of hope amongst a cloud of gloom… The little girl watched in a daze for a moment, before she started running after the firefly. The firefly zig-zagged in between the trees and the girl dashed madly in order to keep up. She tripped over a tree root and went sprawling down to the ground. The crowd around gasped collectively and made soothing noises to the girl who, as was her job, ignored them in favor of crying to herself.

Suddenly a disembodied chirruping, clearly the ventriloquist's doing, broke out from near the tree where the girl fell. Startled by the sudden loss of silence, the girl looked around herself, and her eyes landed on a small squirrel, which was chattering in fear and grief and staring at the girl with frightened eyes. Stupefied to find a creature smaller and even more helpless than herself alone amidst the howling storm in the dark forest, the little girl held her hand out to comfort the squirrel. The squirrel looked at her hand for a long time, frozen with doubt and torn by longing, before it slowly nudged forward and hopped into her palm. The little girl brought the squirrel close to her chest, and all through the night, she held it there and warmed it and comforted it, bravely holding her own tears back.

Morning rays of the sun found the girl still awake, huddling near the roots of the tree, protectively holding the squirrel close to her. As the sun rose fully, and the rain ceased to pour, the little squirrel chirruped to life and then peered out at the abundance of light all around. With a delighted little squeak, it wriggled out of the little girl's hands and bounded away out of sight. Suddenly bereft of her only companion, the little girl felt lost for a moment, before she bravely raised her chin and put on a smile on her face. "If a little squirrel is not afraid of the mountains anymore, I shall not be scared either."

Even as the words just barely fell from her lips, a blinding light erupted before her and she threw her arms over her eyes to shield them from sightlessness. When the light dimmed, she looked up, only to find an unearthly presence in front of her. A figure enrobed in flowing white garments hovered before her, the features on its face so refined and graceful, so angled and soft at the same time, that it was impossible to tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. When it spoke, its voice carried out, richly layered with a thousand ringing tones and melodious like a chime and fearsome like thunder at the same time.

"Daughter of the land," it spoke, "small and afraid as you are, yet you harbored a stray animal and kept vigil over it through the darkest of nights. Your spirit so kind and your heart so strong, you placed the care of those who are weaker before your own. You are a monarch at heart, and you shall rule these lands, and your people shall prosper under your loving reign. You shall not be unfair, you shall mete out justice, and in times when calamity may threaten your people, you shall stand before them and be their human shield. And so that you may not crumble, so that you may stand firm, I bestow upon you my kiss of strength that will hold your limbs upright till your last breath may leave you." And so saying, the unearthly being swooped down and touched its lips to the little girl's forehead. "Henceforth, brave daughter of the land, as long as you and your daughters carry my kiss, you all shall never falter in your duty, and this land shall forever answer to you!"

Resounding applause shattered the air as the crowd of onlookers clapped their hands for all they were worth. Whoops and cheers rang around the square as the white-robed figure's speech came to a close and every person in the crowd hailed, "Praise the God of Horaizon!", "Praise His mercy upon us!", "Long live Halkeginia!!" Amidst the loud noise, the figure in white, who was undoubtedly portraying the God of Horaizon, vanished from sight, and the little girl turned around to find her way back home with renewed determination and courage. "I shall not falter."

A woman dressed in deep purple robes took over the narration and her deep voice struck out imposingly as she told the tale of how the little girl grew up to be Queen Akane, who united the entire land in the cradle of the mountains under one flag and established the kingdom of Halkeginia. "The first Queen Akane ruled with an iron hand and a heart of roses. She cared for all people. She set down the law and saw that it was followed, and under her reign, Halkeginia attained its eternal glory. She married wisely, and her daughter ruled after her, and her daughter came next and so on. And every generation of the royal family would always only have one daughter and no sons, and every daughter would carry on the reign of their mother."

As the narration came to a close, Kanata looked around the crowd, expecting another round of applause to tear through them, and watched in surprise as instead, they appeared subdued and muted. Unrest rippled through the crowd and they started edging away from the square, huddling in groups and talking in whispers. Watching their patrons leave suddenly, the street performer brought her narration to a hasty conclusion and then signaled her fellow performers, who ran out with their scarves in their hands, spreading it out in front of people for money. Gold and silver jingled together as coins were dropped into the cloths, and as the square finally emptied, the performers took to disassembling their props and packing their things.

Miyu is likely going to finally appear in the next chapter... I tried squeezing her in into this one, but it's SO HARD!!! ToT

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