'Are you sure you want to go through with this?' Carenza asked. 'I'd completely understand if you changed your mind.'
He smiled at her.
'For you, my sweet, I would undergo any amount of humiliation. I look upon it as just punishment.'
'Now stop it with the guilt trip, all right? We're just doing a friend a favour.'
He nodded meekly. Carenza rang the bell. There was no reply.
'He's probably in the garden,' she said. 'Come on, this way.'
She led the way round the side of the villa. An empty easel stood on the terrace, along with a stool and a glass of what had probably been iced tea.
'Sandro, have you seen my tortoiseshell comb? I think we have visitors.'
They looked round, and saw Allen standing at the French doors, a towel wrapped around his waist. His fair hair was hanging wet and limp about his shoulders. Upon seeing Carenza and Folken he flushed scarlet and disappeared into the house.
Moments later Alessandro emerged from the glasshouse with a basket of autumn squash.
'Carenza, darling, what are you doing back here? And who is this gorgeous man?'
Carenza rolled her eyes.
'Folken, this is Alessandro di Luca. Alessandro, this is Folken Lacour de Fanel-'
'Please, just Folken, I'm not a prince any more.'
'-my fiancé.'
Alessandro pouted.
'You always have to spoil things, don't you?'
He gestured to some wicker chairs in the shade of a lemon tree and lifted a bottle of pale wine from a terracotta cooler.
'What's Allen doing here?' she blurted, unable to contain her curiosity.
'Well I did say I'd find myself a new muse...'
'What? Allen Schezar? Allen "Playboy of the Western World" Schezar?'
Alessandro grinned wickedly.
'It's amazing what you find out about people after a few glasses of champagne, my dear.'
'I thought he was planning to marry Hitomi Kanzaki?' said Carenza.
Folken raised a hand and looked sheepish.
'My fault, I'm afraid.'
He told them about the fate alteration experiment. Carenza gave him a hard stare.
'What?' he protested. 'I was trying to save my brother's life.'
'Well I think you did him a favour,' said Alessandro. 'Brought everything to a head, made him re-examine his feelings. Poor boy's been fighting women off with a stick for years...Anyway, enough about us. What brings you two out this way? Dryden want his wedding portrait done after all?'
'No, that is, it's not why we're here. We...well, we've come to do you a favour.'
'A favour? For me? Really?'
'Yes,' Carenza nodded her thanks and accepted a glass. She glanced nervously at Folken, who gestured for her to continue.'You-you know that commission you had to give up on, the one in Daedalus?'
Alessandro handed a glass of wine to Folken.
'Oh, the Atlantis fresco, you mean?'
'Yes, that one,' said Carenza. 'Well, I've brought you some inspiration. Folken, please?'
Folken put down his wine glass and unbuttoned his shirt. Alessandro raised an eyebrow and smiled appreciatively, then gasped as white wings sprouted from Folken's shoulders.
'Think this will help with your painting?' Folken said, arms folded.
'Oh my god, yes...' He jumped up and hugged Carenza. 'Wait there, don't move a heavenly muscle! Paper, paper...' He hurried off, muttering under his breath.
Carenza slipped her arms around Folken's waist.
'You heard what the man said. Don't move a muscle.'
'I can't kiss you if I don't move.'
'All right. Two muscles only, though, one for each lip.'
'Actually there are over two hundred muscles in the human face-'
She cut off his explanation with a slow, lingering kiss.
THE END
* * * * * * * * * * *
Author's Note: OK, so I changed the ending - a practice that has received a lot of negative feedback on the Escaflowne forum, at least in the context of Van and Hitomi. All I can say is that when I started outlining this story, I did intend to have Folken die, leaving Carenza to mourn him. On the other hand, this is Folken's story, not Van's, so I was open to the possibility of his surviving, if only I could come up with a plausible mechanism...
About halfway through the story, I was writing about Carenza and Dryden's mother and I started thinking about mothers in the series - or rather lack of them. To my amazement I realised that none of the younger Gaean characters in Escaflowne is known to have a living mother. Not one!
Queen Varie (Van and Folken) - missing, presumed dead
Queen Therese (Marlene, Eries and Millerna) - dead
Princess Marlene (Prince Chid) - dead
Encia Schezar (Allen and Celena/Dilandau) - dead
Mrs. Fassa (Dryden - and thus Carenza) - never mentioned
Unnamed catwoman (Nariya and Eriya) - dead
Another unnamed catwoman (Merle) - dead
Given that my own story focuses on the actions of the characters' fathers, this absence of mothers seems doubly acute. Admittedly several fathers are dead, too, but the living ones are pivotal to the plot. Mothers in Escaflowne seem to exist solely for the purpose of giving birth to characters and then dying so that they can be a cause of angst and/or offer advice from beyond the grave. To me that sucked much more than Folken dying in an attempt to make up for his mistakes. I assume the general lack of living parents is a plot device to force active roles onto the teenage generation, but even so it seemed to me a little excessive.
Having come up with a non-fatal rationale for the absence of Dryden's mother, I felt inclined to also bring back Varie, since there seems to be no concrete proof that she is dead. Yes, she appears to Van in the Mystic Valley and gives him a strange green energist, but that section of the story is rushed over (a victim of the 'fitting 39 episodes into 26' thing?) and never properly explained. Surely a full Draconian like Varie (I assume she is pure-bred Draconian from her belief in being fated to meet Goau) could do a bit of astral travel from, say, a coma? With Varie alive and a Zaibach captive, the stage was set for a dramatic plot twist that would end my story on a more optimistic note.
Hope you enjoyed the ride - I know I did!
Nariya