Arwyn strikes again, folks! The second half of this chapter presents a strange twists that I never even thought of. In case you think I've gone batty once you read it, keep in mind that there's such a thing called 'possession'. It'll have a role later on in the story, but with another dead character. Anyhoo, enjoy!
Ditto.
~*Chapter Eleven: A Far Cry*~
Van blankly
stared at the paper walls of the dojo, caressing the soft skin of little
Sachairi. As much as he wanted to get
to Gaea as soon as possible, he realized he couldn't just drag Kenshin, Kaoru, Sano,
and Yahiko off of their native planet right away. So, they had stayed the night on the Earth.
He hardly
slept.
He stayed
up nearly all night using Hitomi's pendant to try to find her. But it was no use; he couldn't picture where
she was. He knew she was alive—he could
feel her; he could practically feel the blood flowing through her veins, and
that made him feel better somewhat. As
long as she was alive, there was a chance of rescuing her. And he would definitely rescue her.
Van's
thoughts turned to those of Sachairi. He held his son to him in thankfulness to Megumi. During the events following Hitomi's
capture, Megumi, with some help from Genzai-sensei, had devised a contraption
that could be strapped onto Kaoru that would allow her to 'breast-feed'
Sachairi. Using tubes and plastic bags
that could be refilled with milk (though Van didn't know if the milk was a
formula or from an animal), Sachairi would surely stay alive. Van was so grateful to Megumi, and he
honestly began to panic when she had said she wouldn't be joining them on their
excursion to Gaea. But she had assured
all of them that if she went with them, she would only get in the way—she had
no swordsmanship skills whatsoever, besides knowing seppuku [ritual suicide].
But even if
Megumi wasn't coming with them, at least Van had help. Kenshin, Kaoru, Sano, and Yahiko—they were
all very worried for Hitomi and very determined to find her. And when they made their way to Austuria,
Van was sure Allen would help to find her as well.
Van
grimaced. Allen Schezar was a man that
Van did not like to think about often. But they needed his help. Since
Longgalia was an Austurian duchy, it would help them to have a Knight Caeli in
their midst. No Austurian in his/her
right mind would ever question the intentions of a Knight Caeli, especially the
great Allen Schezar. Again Van
grimaced. 'The great Allen Schezar'…his
mind repeated. While Van admired him in
regard to swordsmanship and chivalry, he utterly hated him in the prospect of courting
women. What was he thinking?—just
walking up to Hitomi and kissing her on that bridge.
Van looked
down, finding himself looking into Sachairi's baby-gray eyes that he hoped
would develop into the striking emerald color that Hitomi possessed. He sighed. "When I first kissed your mother," he spoke to Sachairi, "it was because
she asked me to. I had invited her into
my tent, before my castle had been mostly restored, and we had talked for a
while." He smiled at the
recollection. "And then, I had picked
up her hand and kissed it—I guess I was trying to tell her that I respected
her, whether she wanted to go back to the Mystic Moon or stay on Gaea. And then…then she turned to me, looking at
me with those gorgeous green eyes of hers, and said 'Kiss me'. So I did." Again he smiled, kissing Sachairi on the forehead. "That was the night that we created you."
"Van!" came
Kaoru's voice. She entered the room he
was in. "We're ready to go."
Van
nodded. Carefully holding Sachairi, he
quickly stood and followed Kaoru outside of the dojo to where Kenshin, Sano,
and Yahiko were waiting. With a teasing
glance to Yahiko and Sano, he said, "Now don't faint this time." With a slight twitch of his shoulder blades,
his wings jutted out. He had already
taken off his shirt, so there was no need to worry about ripping it.
Van, after
flapping his wings once, looked down at Sachairi. And to his surprise, he could've sworn he saw Sachairi
smile. Sachairi squirmed a bit in Van's
grip, and with a bubbly gurgle half-cry, he pushed out his own tiny wings.
And the
rest of the group sweatdropped as Yahiko met the ground with a resounding thud.
* * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Hitomi
weakly pounded her fist onto the wall of her glass prison. During the evening hours of the previous
day, she had discovered that there were marks on one side of the glass that
distinguished inches. And right now the
water level was parallel to the twelfth inch mark, which meant twenty-four
hours had passed since Neicodemus had imprisoned her in her wet confine.
Doing some
quick math to pass the time, Hitomi figured out that she had been taken from
Earth at about 1:00 in the afternoon, and that she was shackled the wall in the
dungeon for about an hour. That meant
she had been in the hour-glass since 2:00, and since twenty-four hours had
passed it meant it was roughly 2:00 right now.
A tear slid
down her cheek. She felt so tired,
hungry, and alone. She couldn't fall
asleep for fear of drowning even in what was 5-inch high water at the time,
hadn't had anything to eat since Neicodemus took her, and felt a large
instinctual maternal sadness at having been separated from her pride and
joy—her beautiful little Sachairi—as well as being separated from her beloved
Van.
And it
didn't just hurt emotionally. No, it
hurt physically as well. Her breasts
were swollen and sore because there was no baby to drink her milk, and at this
realization Hitomi again cried. But she
had faith; it was practically the only thing she had left. But it was rapidly deteriorating. She had faith that Van would find her, but
whether he would find her dead or alive was a totally different question. That habitual pessimism was kicking in—you
know, that nagging negativity that claws at you when you just know something
isn't going to turn out the way it should or the way you want it too, or
sometimes both. It'll be my luck if
I accidentally fall asleep and inhale some water, Hitomi thought
darkly. Or I'll starve to death
eventually. Or maybe I'll catch some
rare disease from this water and die just as Van walks through those doors to
my rescue… "Van…" she sighed
aloud. "Will I ever see you again? Will I ever get to hold our son again?"
"Not if I
can help it," answered Neicodemus, who somehow entered the room without Hitomi
noticing.
Hitomi
huffed, fumbling with her hands in a vain attempt to cover her nudity.
Neicodemus
smirked. "No use hiding yourself. I've seen you. Even if you could hide yourself, what's to stop me from conjuring
up the memory of you in the nude inside my mind?"
"Your
wife," Hitomi responded hotly.
Steam
billowed from Neicodemus's ears. He
closed his eyes for a moment, and eventually the steam subsided. "I'll let that one slide." He crossed his arms, giving Hitomi a
sideways glance. He sighed. "For what it's worth, you really are
beautiful."
At first
Hitomi didn't know how to respond. "That's the exact same thing Yul [I made him up] said to me," she
replied after a while.
Neicodemus
arched his brow in mild interest. "What
provoked this Yul fellow into saying those words?"
"He was a
Mongolian transfer-student at my school in Kamakura," Hitomi explained. "I was appointed by the teacher as his
guide. You know, show him around the
school and the town and stuff." She
paused, yawning. "Anyway, he only ended
up staying for a month, but in that month he and I became quite good friends. Not the best of friends, but the kind of
friends where you can't help but tell each other everything."
"A
confidante," Neicodemus interrupted.
Hitomi
nodded. "Yeah. Before Yul left to go back to Mongolia, I
had just found out that I was pregnant. I knew that I had to tell somebody, just in case something should happen
to me, and Yul was the first person that I thought of. So I told him. He didn't really have a reaction per se, he just sort of hugged
me and said that it would be okay." Again she yawned. "And then,
during his last day of school, he gave me another hug and said exactly what you
said—'for what it's worth, you really are beautiful'. I still don't know what he meant by that."
Neicodemus
pondered for a moment. "Well, teenagers
from the Mystic Moon have a tendency to speak behind each other's backs. Perhaps this Yul had heard some nasty rumors
about you, and was simply trying to make you feel better."
Hitomi
sighed. "No, I don't think it was
that. Well, not completely. Yes, there were rumors going on about
me—'did you hear, Kanzaki quit the track team!', 'I heard she was abducted by
aliens!', stuff like that. But I also
think that Yul had some foreseeing capabilities. His name is Mongolian for 'beyond the horizon', after all. Perhaps he saw something that was ugly in my
future, and was making me feel better in advance."
"Hypocrite,"
Neicodemus muttered. "Here you are,
rambling on about futures and foresights when you are the very girl who
murdered Fate."
Hitomi
glared. "You really don't get it, do
you?"
"Get what?"
Neicodemus asked, bewildered.
"Fate never
existed. I simply exposed that fact to
the rest of the world. As for me making
comments about futures and foresights, think of it like this: futures are like
pathways. You travel on different
pathways according the choices you make in life, but sometimes there is an
event that takes place in every single pathway. That is where foresight comes in," Hitomi explained.
Neicodemus's
mind reeled. What his hostage had said
was actually quite logical, and he was even tempted to believe it, but it went
against everything he had planned. And
he had worked so hard on his plans! I
am not about to let a wench spoil everything that I have worked so hard to
happen! "You speak garbage, Wench."
Hitomi made
a small gasp noise, and then nodded her head. She opened her arms as if to accept an embrace. The green in her eyes suddenly wavered and
shifted to a rich chocolate brown. "She
is family, dear Neic," she spoke in a voice not her own. "You would not be so venomous if you knew of
her lineage."
"MAHALIA?!"