A/N: I can't believe that somebody is actually reading this piece of crap...oh, well...I FINALLY figured out how to post new chapters (I'm a computer klutz). I should say this now, as the story progresses, it's gonna get a little darker (in the way of imagery), so hope ya don't mind. Another crappy chapter. Enjoy! ^___^
Disclaimers: I own many useless things. Card Captor Sakura and the characters therein are not one of those things. And besides, if I did own them, they wouldn't be useless.
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Part II: Stranded: And so it Begins
Tomoyo groggily shifted to one side, trying to escape the rays of the sun that attempted to disturb her peaceful sleep. Murmuring something incoherent, she was about to once again surrender to a heavenly dream. The clutches of sleep still pungent on her, she almost dismissed the fact that something was tickling her nose. Startled, the girl quickly sat up, her dreams all but forgotten, and surveyed her surroundings.
She discovered that she was sitting in a sun filled meadow, the trees towering high above her. The sunlight peaked though the scattering of foliage, spreading luminous light across the earth. Birds were merrily chirping, practically lulling her back to sleep. Tomoyo, if she strained her hearing, could discern the trickle of water somewhere off to her right. She could smell herbs, a strange fragrance of flowers and something that reminded her of spring. The smells and sounds overwhelmed and intoxicated Tomoyo; she felt a certain calmness about this place, as if she belonged amongst these trees.
She wondered for a split second when Eriol acquired such a beautiful --- 'Wait a minute!' she mentally exclaimed. 'Where WAS Eriol?' She'd been over to his house many times; enough to know that he never had a forest behind his mansion. She sprang to her feet and began to frantically search her surroundings. With some surprise, she noted that she was no longer wearing her school uniform, but a strange outfit accentuated with leather accessories.
A muffled sound to her left caught attention. Deciding to ponder on her wardrobe later on, she went to investigate the source of the noise. Behind some bushes, she found the thing that caught her attention. Tomoyo stopped short, her breath caught in her throat at the sight that greeted her.
There, on the ground, in another sun filled clearing was a slumbering Eriol, bathed in radiance. Walking up to him and then couching beside him, Tomoyo inspected him. She was amazed to find how child like he looked when asleep. His mouth was stretched in a content little smile, no trace of the grin he usually wore. The line between his eyebrows disappeared, as if there was no longer anything to be worried about. He mumbled something softly to himself, his voice a bit stifled by the soft grass.
Tomoyo, unwittingly, reached out a trembling hand to brush the stray strand of silky hair off his forehead. She realised her action a bit too late, but resolved to let her hand linger on his soft skin. Wondering what brought her to do something like this, she removed her hand, just in time as Eriol stirred. Scurrying back in hurry, Tomoyo sat on her hunches, watching as Eriol fully awoke.
Shifting into a sitting position, Eriol drowsily reached to run his hand through his messy tangles (which disordered them even more and made him look very cute, not that Tomoyo would ever admit that). He stifled a jaw-breaking yawn and sleepily looked around, noticing for the first time that he had company. Blushing in embarrassment, he hastened to make himself more proper, which earned him a giggle from Tomoyo.
Eriol's eyes nearly fell out of his sockets when he noticed what Tomoyo was wearing. A loose cotton shirt with billowy sleeves and ties to hold the blouse in place (A/N: Imagine something like Garnet's outfit in FFIX). She had dark brown breeches on; they were tucked into high, black leather boots that were lace up all the way to the thigh. Her hair was bound with a leather thong. He also noticed the way the outfit hugged her curves and accentuated them further. He was beginning to fight the nosebleed he felt coming on when her giggle interrupted him. Looking down, he finally noticed that he was wearing similar attire. His was manlier.
'What a rude awakening,' he thought in distaste.
Seeing him frown, Tomoyo giggled again. "Good morning to you, too."
"Ha-ha. Not funny," he replied sarcastically. "Where are we?" He asked once he, too, noticed their surroundings.
"I was hoping you would tell me," the answered, her mood turning sour.
The last she remembered, she was on her way to the bathroom. She clearly remembered thinking that she would miss him once he went away. Then the room she did not notice before. Tomoyo halted on the last thought. The room! Memories came crashing down on her. Now she remembered! The dark room that caught her attention, the mirror sheathed in dark velvet, her reflection, and the look of glee on the girl's face. She shivered; dread seeping it's way into her system. How could she forget?
She retold all that happened to Eriol, who in turn sobered up and looked seriously at something she couldn't determine.
"Do you know anything about this place now?" She asked hopefully.
Eriol shook his head at her question. "That was the Mirror of Veritas (1); sometimes it is called the Mirror of Praesentiae (2). I inherited it from Clow Reed, who, in his time, inherited it from his father. Clow did not know what the use for it was, and he was told not to dwell on the subject. To be cautious, I kept it looked in a secret room; I have no idea how you found it. It is beyond me what happened, but it seems it transported us someplace." As he said this, all Tomoyo's fears had been confirmed.
After a pregnant pause, she asked, "Can't you use your powers to get us out of here?"
"I'm afraid I cannot. After Sakura transformed all the cards, I gave up most of my power to be as normal as I possibly could, (3)" he answered solemnly.
"Oh, I-I'm sorry -- " Tomoyo began.
"Iie. Don't be sorry; it was my choice, it's better this way," Eriol reassured her. "Besides, I still have some of my power, just not as much as I used to."
Tomoyo nodded in acknowledgement, still feeling guilty for what was clearly not her fault. Although she knew perfectly well that Eriol was the half reincarnation of Clow Reed, the most powerful mage of all time, she did not know all the responsibilities that came with that position. She felt responsible for getting them into that mess. At that moment, she resolved to get them out of this strange place.
"So, I guess we're stuck here. Jeez! That's just great!" She exclaimed, sarcasm practically oozing out of her statement.
"Well, look at the bright side, at least we don't have Nakuru to bother us," Eriol joked and watched with satisfaction the beginnings of a smile on his companion's face. He liked seeing her smile, he thought.
"I heard that!" A high-pitched voice bellowed from some undergrowth nearby. The squeal was followed by Nakuru bolting to their side and began to smother Tomoyo. Eriol sighed, nope; the Gods in Heaven were not on his side that day.
He watched as his pesky guardian continued to squeeze the life out of poor Tomoyo, who was struggling to suck in breath. Luckily, before the girl could suffocate from strangulation, his other guardian opted to intervene. "Leave Master and Tomoyo-sama alone, you dim wit!" The little creature said in an annoyed voice while landing on Nakuru's shoulder.
That stopped the tirade, and Tomoyo made a mental note to thank Spinel Sun later.
"Now that IT (referring to Nakuru) has shut up, let's look for a way to get out of this place," Spinel Sun said while being perched on Nakuru's shoulder.
Spinel was sent ahead of the company to scout for a possible road. There were no pathways in site, so the group decided to go through the underbrush, which brought more difficulties to them. After approximately two hours of ambling aimlessly through the thick vegetation, the party came to a halt in a sunny clearing.
Eriol was sitting under a tree, savouring the way the shadows cooled him off. Nakuru was nowhere to be found, probably sprawled somewhere, bemoaning his poor stomach (he ate some unidentifiable berries on the way). Spinel Sun was on a nearby branch, dosing. And Tomoyo was sitting on her hunches while she inspected the ends of her hair. She looked up suddenly. Tilting her head this way and that, she was looking for the cause of that foul stench that dared to invade her senses.
Rising, she went to look into the matter. Waving a chaste excuse to Eriol, she left the clearing. She weaved through the shrubbery, unconsciously brushing away the leaves that somehow got tangled in her hair. She stopped in yet another clearing, repulsed at the sight before her.
Not five feet of where she stood, lie a partially festering animal carcass. Moving in for closer examination, she looked in twisted fascination at the revolting scene. The creature's body was stretched out in a grotesque manner, one of it's paws (if they were paws) bending obliquely. The majority of it's skin was peeled off, most likely eaten away by flies and other insects. The many lacerations on its bloodied muscles, which were beginning to rot off, exposed the yellowed bones that were charred in some areas.
She could smell the coppery reek of blood, mixed to that of rot and other putrid things. Her imagination and the smells got the best of her and she could practically *taste* the blood in her mouth. Her face was scrunched up in a mask of disgust. The carcass was at least a fortnight old (4).
As atrocious as the sight was, Tomoyo for some reason could not stop herself from getting a closer look. She gasped in abhorrence at what she saw. The creature, appearing to be some kind of a mule, had it's maw open, out of which grew a few long weeds, twisting in-between it's teeth. Tomoyo felt vomit coming up her throat when she saw the animal's eyes. The eye sockets were blank, as if someone or something gauged the eyeballs out; out of the black depths she could see maggots eating away the insides.
After seeing a couple of flies zip out of the mule's nostrils, Tomoyo decided she had had enough. She glumly went back to the clearing she left the rest of her company in. Choosing to keep the horrendous spectacle she witnessed to herself, she sat in her previous seat, purposely ignoring Eriol's questioning look.
After they re-joined with Nakuru (who apparently was using the bushes as a makeshift toilet) the group set off again, heading north. Eriol, as the only male in the company (with the exception of Suppi-chan), was chosen as the temporary leader (Nakuru objected but no body listened). There didn't seemed to be an end to the tree, they just went on and on, stretching for miles. The group did not relent, though, and moved on.
Tempers were running thin. Nakuru constantly whined about his (5) aching feet and stomach. Spinel just fluttered silently, his irritation clearly evident. Eriol, as the leader, marched on with as much valour as a starving man on the edge of his nerves could. He felt that he needed to put on a brave front for his company's sake. Tomoyo was the quietest of the four. After seeing the mutilated animal, she decided that she wasn't hungry and kept to herself, pondering at the cruelties of nature.
She wasn't looking where she was going, lest she would have seen what her feet were treading on and would have walked around it, but she did neither and thus she stumbled and fell, landing painfully on her behind. She looked from her position on the ground at the source of her fall, noting that it was an object of brownish hue. Sudden apprehension grabbed her; it was that or the fear that a part of the animal she'd seen somehow followed her. She blindly scurried on all fours, bumping into a solid object. Startled, Tomoyo leaped up and was about to dash for dear life when something grabbed her arm.
Yelping, she was beginning to fight the unseen menace when she noticed that it was not harming her in any way. Opening her eyes (which she had shut unknowingly), Tomoyo looked straight into the sapphire pools that belonged to Eriol. Exhaling in relief, she all but draped herself on Eriol; no bloody cadavers there.
Slightly shocked, Eriol held on to the trembling girl, soothingly patting her hair. He looked at his bewildered guardians and shrugged lightly.
Once regaining her senses and realising her intimate situation, Tomoyo let go of her saviour and forced on ahead, leaving the three figures to follow her. She chose to ignore the warmth of the embrace and the feelings of security she felt while being held. She blamed the entire episode on wariness and lack of proper food.
Following her lead, the company walked on, stopping once in a while for rest. At what would be three in the afternoon, according to their internal clock, Nakuru suddenly collapsed to the ground, wailing and flailing his hands like a four-year-old.
"I'm hungry and I'm tired! This isn't fun anymore!" The guardian moaned.
"Everyone is tired and hungry, you nincompoop! What do you suppose we do about it? And stop acting childish!" An agitated Spinel Sun snapped.
"How about we cook Suppi-chan!?" Nakuru asked in a not very believable sarcastic tone. "With a little bit of spicing and primping, I'm sure he would taste just like chicken!" At this idea, Tomoyo felt her stomach churn and the beginnings of nausea coming on.
As the Moon Guardian was having fantasies of dancing chicken and strawberry tarts, rice bowls and buttered croissants, chocolate cakes and other delectable dishes, Spinel whimpered and hid in the mane of Tomoyo's hair.
He kept on murmuring into the back of the girls head, "Tomoyo-sama, you're nice you wouldn't let them eat me, would you?" His rescuer giggled sweetly and reassured him his safety.
Nakuru was about to make a good comeback when he visibly stiffened, the devious grin wiped off his face. He stood up, poised like a bulldog, sniffing the air. He then, without any warning, bolted off to somewhere. The others obediently pursued. When they did reach Nakuru, he was still in bulldog mode, snout and all.
"What? Decided that Touya would like you more if you acted like a canine?" Spinel asked from somewhere in Tomoyo's hair.
"Sadly, no. But it does seem tempting, if it would get Touya to be mine." The guardian replied with a smirk. "Actually, I think I smell food."
The others stiffened. Come to think of it, Eriol could detect a very faint scent in the air. Shocked that his ragamuffin of a guardian was actually useful, he looked at Nakuru appreciatively. Without much hesitation, the company quickened their pace and followed their noses...
(tbc)
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(1) Veritas -- means truth/ honesty in Latin.
(2) Praesentiae -- means present time, also in Latin.
(3) I'm not exactly sure what happened to Eriol's power after the transformation of the Cards, but if I'm wrong, please forgive me.
(4) I do not know how long it takes for a carcass to completely decompose, sorry if it sounds too farfetched.
(5) By the information that I got, Nakuru is actually a male in a female body, so I'm gonna refer to Nakuru as a he.
I hope you will forgive me for the dead animal thing, it was kinda the spur of the moment.