What are these...?

Dreams and visions.

What is the difference?

The difference is belief.

Which is this?

This is what was meant to be.


* * *

The Vision of Escaflowne:
Through Calm Waters

By Dan Riley

Prologue:
The Sound of the Bell

* * *

Was it just a dream?

I can't be sure.

I never used to believe in this stuff, and yet...

It was so real.


* * *

Kanomi glanced up at the sound of the school bell's tolling, absently brushing a few
errant strands of her blue hair behind her ear as the wind tugged playfully at them.
She stood up from her position kneeling in the grass by the pond, brushing her skirt
with her hand to dislodge any grass that had caught on it.

Before her, the quaint little school pond lay quiescent, disturbed by little ripples,
marred by the activities of wind and insects. Kanomi sighed as she adjusted the
straps of her backpack, shifting it slightly. She bent over to pick up her sketchbook
and pencil from where they lay on the ground. She had been drawing an interesting
old tree on the other side of the pond. Its complicated gnarls and twists had puzzled
her for some time, and she had finally decided to tackle drawing it.

"Come on, Kanomi! Lunch is over and you're gonna be late!" Her friend Mari called to
her from over at the cluster of lunch tables. Kanomi waved and headed
over.

"Hey, Kanomi. You looked like you were pretty into that drawing." Mari grinned at
her friend, knowing how absorbed she could become in her sketching.

Kanomi smiled back. "Yeah, that tree's really tough to draw. Somehow the twists
don't seem to meet right, like... I don't know, it's hard to describe." Kanomi frowned
and shook her head. "I sound like my Mom."

Mari laughed as she gathered up her books and the two started heading towards the
school building. "You're more like her than you're willing to admit."

"Like her? No way." The two joked amiably as they walked. "I've told you before, I
didn't inherit all of that mystic junk from her."

"I know, I know. I was just joking!" Mari poked her in the ribs. "Being a little
defensive, aren't we?"

Kanomi just shook her head, laughing softly at her friend's repeated jibes.

Then the sky went black.

Not a normal black, like nighttime black. An utter, absolute black, like nothing
Kanomi had ever experienced. And with it a chill feeling of despair, as though the air
were being squeezed from her lungs.

She tried to look around, but her vision was obscured by the void around her. Then
Kanomi felt, rather than saw, a shape loom before her. It was huge and awful and
cold and powerful, and she felt its scrutiny upon her like the weight of a giant
boulder. She thought she cried out, but couldn't be sure because no sound came,
and then she fell.

As she fell, images flashed before her, too many to remember. But a few imprinted
themselves indelibly into her memory.

A cat-man with midnight skin and glowing yellow eyes.

A giant machine with a sword, which was somehow also a dragon.

A man with long silver hair, silhouetted before the sun as he floated on outspread
wings.

A pendant of crystal on a cord, hanging from a wooden cross.


And then that horrible, choking entity, and the encroaching black.

* * *

Kanomi woke in the nurse's room.

She blinked slowly awake to find Mari hovering worriedly at her bedside. As Kanomi
sat up slowly, Mari grinned with relief.

"Jeez, Kanomi. You had me worried for a minute there. What the heck happened? All
of a sudden you went all still; then you yelled, and kind of tripped. You fainted
before you hit the ground... gave yourself a little bump on the forehead."

Kanomi rubbed her forehead as she sat up, wincing as her fingers encountered the
bruise her friend had mentioned. "Ow..."

"So what happened?" Mari appeared equal parts concern and curiosity.

She frowned. "I don't know. I saw... I don't know."

Mari frowned slightly, a wrinkle creasing her brow. "Well, do you think you're
okay?"

Kanomi swung her legs over the side of the small cot, standing experimentally. Her
legs held. "Yeah, I guess so. So what happened after I blacked out?"

Mari grinned slightly. "Well, I was scared, so I kinda screamed. So guess who came
over and helped me take you here?"

Kanomi wasn't in the mood for playing games with her friend at the moment. The
strange... vision, or whatever it was, had left her shaken. And she had a splitting
headache. "I don't know... who?"

Mari's grin tripled in size; something Kanomi wouldn't have thought possible if she
hadn't seen it. "Makoto-kun. Hyuga Makoto practically carried you in
here!"

Kanomi felt her jaw drop, despite the odd disquiet her episode had left in her.
"Really? Makoto-kun?"

Mari nodded, her eyes sparkling.

Just then, the nurse came over. She was a nosy old woman who liked gossiping about
the students who required her care, so the two friends shut up the moment she
approached. "Are you alright, young lady?"

Kanomi nodded respectfully. "Yes ma'am. I'm fine now."

The nurse nodded. "Well, then you two had better be off for class then."

"Yes ma'am."

* * *

Kanomi sighed as she looked wistfully out the window at the pond outside. She
couldn't concentrate on her classes after the weird... whatever it was. At least there
was only another half hour left.

She looked down, and noticed that with her pencil she was idly sketching a rough
drawing on the surface of the desk. It was a drawing of the pond, and the twisted
tree.

Quickly she stopped, glancing furtively around to ensure that the teacher had not
noted her defacing of school property. Once she was sure she was safe, Kanomi
began to rub out the lines of graphite with her palm. The image smeared, faded, and
gradually disappeared under her ministrations. Kanomi spent a moment staring at
her face, reflected back to her from the now-clean surface of the desk.

The bell rang, a stark electronic buzz that broke the quiet of the classroom with an
astounding prolonged bzzt.

"All stand. Bow. Dismissed."

The old ritual was comfortable in its familiarity. The students filed out of the
classroom, a conversational buzz filling the silence after the noise of the ending-class
bell.

Mari said goodbye to Kanomi as she left the class, and Kanomi responded
automatically. She didn't notice the worried glance the other girl shot at
her.

Why was I drawing that tree?

She had started drawing without realizing it before, but the thing that was odd was
the quality of the sketch she had made. In fact, it had been better than the one that
was in her sketchbook. It had been one of those rare drawings that really captured
the feel of the scene; now that she thought about it, having to erase it made her a
little sad.

She made her way slowly out of the classroom, her mind not really occupied with
where she was going. It had been a very odd day, with the combination of the...
episode... and the drawing. When she finally came back to herself, she found that she
was standing outside at the edge of the pond.

Kanomi glanced at her watch, and saw that she still had a few hours before she was
expected home. Deciding that she really had nothing better to do, she settled down
on the grass with her sketchbook and began to work on her earlier
drawing.

After almost an hour, Kanomi sighed with frustration and set down her pad and
pencil. It wasn't so much that her sketch was coming out badly - in fact, it was one
of her better ones - but that it was nowhere near as good as the one she had begun
without knowing it.

"Guess I've got some kind of unconscious talent, or something," she muttered to
herself.

The school bell rang behind her, noting the passing of the hour.

As the bell sounded, a rushing wave of silence enveloped the pond. It was not an
ordinary sort of silence, which is a fragile thing, broken by the slightest whisper. It
was a silence stronger than sound, which overpowered all noise and movement, and
forced everything to calm.

In an instant, the wind was gone.

Even the ripples spreading across the surface of the pond disappeared, leaving it
eerily smooth, like a perfect sheet of glass.

Everything was utterly calm.

And Kanomi felt herself falling towards the water as consciousness slipped from her
grasp.

End Through Calm Waters Prologue.