"Unfortunately I don't think we'll be coming with you." Amelia said to Lina as she put a frilly bonnet on Justina so that her jet black curls peaked out angelically beneath. "Zel and I don't feel like traveling so far when Jus is so little."
"No worries." Lina said as Midas unlatched and started looking around the room as though wondering what all of the excitement was about. Lina hoisted him on her shoulder and the well placed towel she'd put there to protect her dress and pulled up her gown and then started rubbing his back.
"Who all is going with you?" Naga asked as she soothed the folds of her red dress, this one in the current fashion that dominated Saillune's courts and complimented Amelia's perfectly.
"Sylphiel and Rick. They want to have a romantic getaway before the baby gets here. Two of the wet nurses, Connie and Marlena. And Moe, of course." Lina said casually, as Moe was on the other side of the nursery putting Aurelia down for a nap and could easily overhear them. "I suppose you'll be tagging along as well."
Naga smiled, "You had to ask?"
Amelia looked at Naga with shaded eyes as she said knowingly, "Oh, she knew good as well as soon as she said that Mo…."
Naga laughed just as Amelia picked Justina up. Justina cooed and reached her hands out as she let out a long, wet sounding fart. Amelia went pale as Naga said, "Uh-oh, I hope that was all sound and no substance, dear sister."
Amelia looked at Naga in horror and then turned Justina around to see a brown mess soaking through the back of her white gown. Amelia held Justina away from her so as to protect her own dress as it started to drip as she lamented, "Oh no! And the ceremony starts in five minutes!"
"That's why it's no use spending so much on something so frilly." Lina said as she tried not to laugh at how badly the brown stood out against the white. "It'll get ruined faster than Naga can laugh!"
"Let me help." Moe said as he took the infant and put her on the changing table.
"But what will she wear now?" Amelia asked as she pulled at her hair and started jumping from one foot and back to the other.
"You mean in that massive layette you collected you don't have another frilly white dress?" Lina asked. "Hell, I'll give you Aurelia's."
Amelia rushed to the dresser that was stuffed full of baby clothes and started to tear through it. She quickly grabbed another lacey white garment and held it out. "Do you think this will do?"
"Yeah, it's cute." Naga said.
Amelia rushed over to Moe, who had cleaned Justina up and put on a fresh diaper, and shoved the garment on as Naga said, "Actually, Lina, this reminds me of why you can never have too many clothes. Especially when you have so many public functions. My mother always said to have two back up dresses in the wings. You never know when one will be ruined or some copy cat diva will steal your look."
"I guess I just can't outgrow my peasant mentality." Lina said dryly.
"Mommy was so wise." Amelia sighed as she pulled Justina's arms through the sleeves. "I wish she were here. And that my sweet little Jus had gotten to meet her!"
"If our grandfather had been more concerned with protecting his subjects than his good for nothing sons…" Naga muttered.
Amelia reddened as she yelled, "Do you have to do this now?"
"When is a better time to bring it up?" Naga shot back.
"Back off Naga." Lina snapped. While she had no idea what they were bickering about, she didn't like that Naga was upsetting Amelia right before her firstborn's naming ceremony, and that was all she needed to know.
Amelia was still flushed as she held Justina up, "Does she look cute?"
"She's adorable." Lina consoled.
"Right. See you at the reception." Amelia said stiffly.
Naga moved to followed Amelia, but Lina grabbed her arm and asked, "What's wrong with you!?"
Naga scowled and pulled away as she said, "You wouldn't understand."
"Why not?"
"Because no one understands!" Naga shouted, and then she stormed off after Amelia.
"Just be on your best behavior for once or I'll have to pummel some manners into you!" Lina yelled after her. She took a deep breath as Naga disappeared around the corner, and then she turned around and exchanged a glance with Moe. "Do you know what that was all about?"
Moe shrugged, and held his arms out for Midas, "It's not really my place to say, is it?"
"I guess not." Lina said as she handed Midas over, and then tickled his belly a little. "I'll stop by to feed Rails in the evening."
"We'll be waiting." Moe said.
"Thanks." Lina said, and then she walked over to the temple and quickly located Gourry, who was sitting beside Trudy, and sat down beside him.
Yet her irritation with Naga must have still been palpable, for Gourry asked, "What's wrong?"
"Naga is being Naga." Lina said by way of explanation.
"Ah," Gourry said.
"High strung princesses will seek drama whenever they can." Trudy said as she looked around the room. "Though they do know how to decorate a temple."
"Yeah, Amelia missed her true calling as an interior decorator." Lina agreed, grateful for the change of topic, as she looked at the floral arrangements and marveled at how Amelia had somehow transformed the austere temple into something more welcoming for a baby. It was amazing what some well placed fabric could do!
The High Priest came out, and started the ceremony with a long, drawn out reading. Thankfully, Lina only had to elbow Gourry awake twice. Then Amelia, Zelgadis, Naga and Justina's chosen godparents, Han and Leia, came out, and Amelia gave a long speech about the history of each of Justina's four names, including every person of note that have ever born that name that Amelia could track down. And Lina decided to let sleeping dads rest and merely be thankful that Naga was not causing a scene.
"How long will it take to get there?" Naga asked as they left the boundaries of Zefiel City with Rick and Sylphiel leading the party down the trail.
"Two days." Lina replied.
"That's quite a trek with such young babies." One of the wet nurses, Connie, said.
"Children can do better on these things than you would expect." Marlena replied.
"Besides, it's in their blood." Gourry said as wrapped an arm around Lina, "It is good to be back on the road again."
"Yeah," Lina said as a familiar energy charged her veins. She hadn't realized just how much she had missed it until now! "And just think of all the things we'll find that Midas and Rails will see for the first time!"
"Though I guess they'll be too young for us to introduce them to all of the delicious food we'll eat!" Gourry said.
"Well I guess if it is really good we'll have to make note of the place and go back when they are old enough so they can have it!" Lina said as she patted Aurelia's back.
Naga sighed as she watched them, trailing behind the rest of the group as she hugged herself. "They make it look so attractive."
"What?" Moe asked as he dropped back to talk with her. "Parenthood?"
"Just being in a family." Naga replied.
"You've got a family." Moe pointed out, "Though, not every family is attractive. Particularly if you're within it. I heard that you weren't at the reception yesterday."
"I made it to the ceremony." Naga flared defensively as she stared at the ground.
"I'm just pointing out a fact. You must have your reasons." Naga looked back at him as he continued, "And they must be good reasons. Because you seem to be walking a tightrope between wanting things to be better with them and destroying every tie you have with them."
"That's generous." Naga said dryly.
Moe looked at her sideways. "In what way?"
"Because I don't even want to maintain ties with them! I just want them to admit that I was right about one damn thing!" Naga shot back. An awkward silence fell between them, and after a moment she said quietly, "I suppose you think I'm a horrible person now."
"I don't know your side of the story." Moe replied. "So I don't have enough information to know what to think."
The silence became a bit more comfortable as Naga hugged herself. Then she said quietly, "After Amelia was born, things were never the same between my father and me. Me being so different from him didn't help much. But it was okay. I had my mom. But then one day the assassin, Booley, killed her. Cut her down right in front of me."
Moe stopped in his tracks, "I had no idea. That's horrible!"
"It gets worse. My grandfather, the darling king of Saillune, didn't believe the evidence I had that it was a family member who did it. Because Booley meant to kill me! He'd mistaken my mother for me. But my grandfather insisted it was operatives from the Elmekian Empire. Unfortunately I killed Booley before we had a chance to question him, and I regret it every day because I'm sure it would have proved me right!
"But my grandfather was so blind to the corruption within the family, and everyone started treating me like I was too traumatized to be reliable! So I left. And later, one by one, my darling uncles and cousin tried to take the throne through various nefarious means. If it wasn't for Lina, of all people, my uncle, Randy, or my cousin Alfred, would have assassinated my father as well. I should have been vindicated once their true colors were revealed. But everyone still says it was Elmekia! Even Amelia says she has evidence it was Elmekia. Like hell she does!"
"Not everyone. Not now." Moe said quietly but intensely.
"Huh?"
"Well, if you say you had evidence it was your family, and they later turned against you, well, it sounds as though you were on to something? And if someone had listened to you then, perhaps it could have saved a bit of pain and suffering down the road."
Naga felt winded. Never, ever had someone believed her. That Moe wasn't arguing with her like everyone else did was disorienting. But she'd expected an argument and she was going to have it! "But what if I am wrong?"
Moe shrugged, "I live in Zeferia, not Saillune and I don't want to move. Besides, the traitors in your family are dead, aren't they? Does it really matter what I believe, unless it helps you?"
Naga quickly looked away from him as she started to blink very fast as the urge to argue retreated. She tried to force something, anything from her lips, but her throat was so tight that she couldn't. The moments flew by as Naga tried to get her bearings. No one had believed her. No one. Not ever! In an instant her world was turned upside, but in a good way. For once something felt right! And a strange type of magic seized her as she struggled to get her bearings on this new plane.
"What was your mother like?" Moe asked casually.
Naga took a deep breath to ease the lump in her throat, grateful for a direction to go in. And then she started talking about things she'd not talked about since her mother had died.
Naga shivered in the cold, but she remained still as she watched the fractured reflection of the moon float by in the roaring river. Usually at this time of the night she was drinking herself to sleep. But tonight she had skipped the bar. The pain she had been trying to drink into oblivion since her mother had been killed was gone. Or perhaps it wasn't gone. Perhaps it was drowned out by the heady turbulence of romantic feelings that were flowing as strong as the river through her.
Naga exhaled, her breathing visible in the cold air. She didn't mind the bite of the cold. Feeling it meant she was alive. And there were so many things she could do because she was alive.
If she dared.
But fear started to rise within her the more she thought about seeking Moe out. She had loved her mother more than anyone else in the world. But now her mother was dead, dead because someone had mistaken her mother for her! The guilt has always been paralyzing. Life had moved on, but Naga never had. Watching her mother die had destroyed her in some fundamental way and left her incapable of moving forward with anyone. Even the thought of moving forward with Moe seemed unbearably risky. Because was there anything more vulnerable than loving someone when losing them could hurt you irreparably? Especially to someone who had already lost the person who was her world? And since her mother had died, had she kept everyone away because she was mad at them, or had she kept them away because she didn't want to love them too much? Because Naga did not believe for one second that she could survive watching another loved one die.
Naga looked ahead to where the river forked out in two directions, and realized she was looking at her life. One fork would take her in the direction she'd been on since the assassination. The other, somewhere else. Somewhere she wanted to try to go.
Until the fear of losing rose once more within her.
That's it. I need a drink! Naga thought, and she turned to walk back to the bar. But then, above the roar of the river, she heard a strange clicking nose and felt a sense of bloodlust. The hair on her arms stood up as she walked closer to the river. Something was there!
Cautiously she walked down the bank, her senses alert for the start of what she felt would be an imminent attack. She lifted a foot forward, cursing the roar of the river for drowning out the sound she needed to be prepared. But her foot landed in a barren wasteland. The rush of water she had been cursing was silent. Naga looked around and found a land completely unlike the one she had been in!
"What the…" she said, her voice echoing in the eerie emptiness as she struggled to get her bearings. "Strange space."
The sense of bloodlust was gone. But it was a small comfort to Naga. Why would someone pull her into subspace?
"Figure out the why later." Naga said, and then she started chanting, hoping she could break back into her world with a simple spell.
Lina was rather irritated that she'd had to get Naga's room key from the innkeeper as no amount of knocking and yelling had woken her (though it had woken every other patron of the inn). "For the last time, wake up!" Lina yelled as she threw the door open, "Leaving at dawn was not an optional start time!"
But then Lina took in the room and the perfectly made bed that had in no way been slept in. She sighed as she patted Midas on the back, "She must be passed out drunk under the bar."
Lina walked down the stairs and told the rest of the group, "She's not in her room. It hasn't been slept in."
"We started asking around." Moe said, a sheen of sweat on his brow, "A few people said they saw her walking to the river last night but no one has seen her come back. You don't think she got into any trouble?"
"No," Lina said as she shook her head, "I'm so disappointed. I thought she'd be a bit more responsible since I made her the twins' godmother. She just takes off sometime for reasons known only to her. And trust me, she'll just pop back up one day when we least expect it. Anyway, we've wasted enough time here, let's go!"
As they filed out of the inn Moe said, "Are you sure she's okay?"
"Trust me, she's indestructible." Lina muttered. "I don't know what they make Saillune princesses out of, but I know she's fine. I'm just so mad at her! Taking off like this!"
"Miss Lina, I think we should check the river, just in case." Sylphiel said. "My senses are telling me that something feels off."
Lina sighed, "Well, I won't argue against the intuition of a former Shrine Maiden. Fine, let's go down to the damn river."
Moe moved to walk beside Lina as they followed the path to the riverbanks, "This might be my fault really. The conversation we had yesterday must have brought up some painful things for her. What if she wasn't ready to deal with it? I should have sent someone to stay with her when I went to put the babies down last night."
"She's a grown woman, she could have reached out to one of us if she needed someone to sit with her." Lina huffed, "And if she got scared and ran off she should have had the decency to tell me!"
Lina continued to vent as Moe continued to worry as they reached the riverbanks. But despite spending longer than Lina would have liked combing through them, if Naga had been there, there was no trace of her now.
"Well that was a great use of our time." Lina snarked.
"At least we can say we did all we could." Sylphiel said gently as she looked at Moe, who was shaking slightly.
Gourry put a hand on Moe's back, "She'll be fine. She's probably not far. She does like to hide in the shadows. Perhaps it's a tactical move on her part."
"You don't sense her hanging about?" Lina asked.
"She has some good masking techniques." Gourry said as he scratched his nose and shifted awkwardly, "So, um, no. But, much as I hate to admit it, that doesn't mean anything."
"She's not hanging around." Moe said. "Or at least not close enough for me to detect her."
"How do you detect her?" Gourry asked.
"You don't think we're in danger?" Connie asked.
"I don't sense anything hostile lurking about." Moe assured her.
"It's Naga," Lina said firmly, "And I've known her for longer than any of you. This is just what Naga does and she does it for reasons that makes sense to her. She just comes and goes as she pleases. Further, despite doing my best to get rid of her countless times she always comes barreling back into my life. So let's get back on the main road and get moving, because if I know one thing, it's that she'll be back! And when she does, she's getting an earful from me"