To tell the truth, I edited out the chapter before this one - but only because it was totally irrelevant, and whatever information I had in it will be mentioned later. However, I finally pick up the story in a place that's close to Avalon ... but not quite there. Oh well, just read on....
{ On The Hill ~ Kaze wo Kanjite ~ and opening animation plays.... }
キャサリンの夢想
Log 5: Kathryn's Vision
A girl reclined on a cushioned lounge, supported by a few silk pillows. The mainds had closed the sheer curtains around the lounge, and lit the torches through her suite.
Now she was alone in the darkness, the wind blowing from the balcony her only company. An ivory feather blew through the opening, finding its way through the curtains to the lounge. The girl could have touched the feather, if she wished; but her hand closest to the feather had been cut off earlier - all that remained was a bandaged stump.
Not that she could have known about the feather - she was asleep.
She awoke to the rustling of the curtains around her bed. She could feel a hand stroke the bandage on her stump of an arm.
"Do not worry," a young, masculine voice whispered.
She looked upwards. There was a boy, barely twenty, a silver staff held in his free hand. Golden hair blew around his unclothed body, and three pairs of ivory wings framed his form. She recognized him slightly, from a statue in the palace temple.
"You ... you're ... an angel?"
"Yes." He bent down and looked at the girl. "I remember you."
She saw his face. He had eyes the color of the stormy sky; his face was chisled as though from marble. It was a likeness she had seen often in dreams. "Yes ... you do look familiar." She nodded. "I am Kathryn, Sultana of Sálíphirá."
The angel smiled. "I am--"
Kathryn awoke to birdsong and early sunlight. She sat up and pushed open the curtains with her right hand--
The bandages, crusted with her blood, circled her wrist. Above that, though, she saw her hand, healthy as though it had not been cut off the night before.
"The healers can't be that good," she sighed, tucking the curtains away. She stepped off of the lounge - the maids in the dressing room would have her robes prepared for her.
Flesh gave way beneath her bare feet.
Kathryn looked down at the ground.
Lying on the marble floor by her lounge was the angel from her dream, arranged as though he had fainted. His cold hands held tight to a silver staff.
Before you ask "What the hell happened to Jason?", I'll just tell you that he appears again ... much later. So don't worry. And before this story continues, I'll give you a BRIEF history lesson on Kathryn's sultanate.