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Disclaimer: I do not own Escaflowne and/or the characters in it. There, everybody happy?
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Chapter 1
Echoes of the past
Dilandau and Van were locked in battle above the beautiful moonlight Gaean forest, a forest that despite being apart of the planet Gaea, a planet which the earth acted a moon, was nearly identical to any forest on Earth. She could hear them even above the clash of metal and screaming of the others involved in this nightmare.
Couldn't they hear the screaming of their men? Couldn't they understand the senselessness of this battle?
As she raced through the forest of screams, she could see the two towering Guymelefs, incredible machines created by the various people of Gaea, Escaflowne versus Oreades, and somebody was going to die. She knew from experience that Dilandau was definitely not going to back down, not from a battle against Van, and Van still had too much hatred to let Dilandau go! But she wasn't going to let Van become killer, not over somebody like Dilandau. As she broke through in the clearing, Oreades suddenly crumpled, and Escaflowne, gleaming brilliant white in the moonlight, raised its sword for the killing blow. Suddenly she heard her own voice screaming no. . . .
Hitomi shot up in her bed gasping, heart racing a mile a minute. It'd all felt so real! The horrible battle with men screaming mingled with the sickening clang of sword against sword. And Van raising Escaflowne's sword for the final blow. . .
She shuddered at the memory, telling herself to calm down, that it was just a dream she'd had because she was missing Van and everybody. That and this was the first in a long series of dreams she'd been having about Gaea, and the Zaibach Empire returning. Dreams that repeatedly woke her up like this.
Dreams that felt like reality.
She sighed, frustrated and angry, knowing that she couldn't go back to sleep now. She kicked off her sky blue covers, when an idea stuck. A walk in her building's courtyard would help her clear her head go back to sleep, though she couldn't really explain why it did, but it did, and she had classes tomorrow, so sleep was necessary.
So she climbed out of bed, on the floor like most Japanese beds, with her small mahogany dresser with round brass knobs next to it, and the door to her bathroom off to her right. Her bedroom was at the far end of her apartment, with the bathroom just to her right and the kitchen, which used the traditional Japanese Fuji Screen as a door, just before that. She used a plain, white-fabric folding screen (the kind you usually see people changing behind) as a barrier between the bedroom and the living room, which was just straight head of her bedroom. Her living area, housed a couch in the far left corner of the room, a coffee table with a TV, just in front of the couch, set a against stark white walls, which was the color of all the walls in her apartment.
An oak door at the far right wall of the room opened to the "hall," a little square room where Hitomi could greet visitors, typically her parents and little brother. Directly across from the door into the hall was the closet door. She used to store a spared bed and blankets, plus her coats. She pulled on a nice warm grey wool coat with white trim, and stepped out the door, quietly creeping passed the closed doors of the other apartments (many of them housing her schoolmates) down the stairs, and stepped outside into the center courtyard of her building.
The cold October air began to clear her head as she quietly began to walk around the courtyard, a giant square with a cement walkway (and some cherry trees in the middle) stuck in the center of the building. At night, it was nice quiet place to walk around and just lose yourself in your thoughts, (in daytime, it was usually full of people studying, or couples having "private time") and Hitomi had plenty of thoughts that night, mainly about Gaea.
It seemed so long ago now. Back then, she'd been a scared, slightly immature fifteen year-old sucked from her high school's track while running and into the world of Gaea, where the Earth was the "Mystic moon." She also found herself unwittingly thrown into a civil war between the Zaibach Empire, ruled by the ruthless Dr. Dornkirk, and the other kingdoms of Gaea. It was there that she'd met and had to leave behind her closest friends. Alan Schezar, his sister Celena, Meryl, a kitten/human girl, and Millerna, princess of Astoria, a powerful kingdom equivalent to Italy during the Renaissance. It was also there that she met the love of her life, Van, prince of a little mountain valley kingdom called Fanelia.
Gaea had also been the home of probably the most homicidal person ever to exist, Dilandau by name. He'd worked for Zaibach, but both Dilandau and the Zaibach Empire had met their doom through her and her friends not to mention the machines on Gaea, called Guymelefs. Namely, Van's Guymelef, Escaflowne, and some help from her psychic abilities.
After Hitomi had returned home, she hadn't been able to communicate with anyone outside of Van, and so she had managed to live, for the most part, a normal life. She'd finished high school the top of her class, and was now a twenty-year-old psychology major at a university. But she found herself missing them, and Gaea, with its many Kingdoms. . .
As Hitomi came to the far right corner, mind filled with thoughts of friends, and Van, she tripped over somebody on the ground, shrieking in surprise as she hit the ground. When she had regained her senses, she turned to face the person whom she'd just tripped over, and began apologizing, "Sorry! I thought everyone was sleeping! Didn't mean to_" She stopped when she saw the clothes.
Though a layer of thick blood covered his face, his outfit was unmistakably Gaean.
"What's going on here? What's a Gaean soldier doing here?" She sputtered, completely bewildered.
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Here it is. The first part of my first fanfic. I don't know how often I'll be able to update, because I'm getting ready to move from my home to my College campus, plus I'm working on another fanfic for Inuyasha, but I probably do a couple chapters a month, at least. In the next couple chapters, you'll find out more about the soldier, and Hitomi finds herself with a little situation on her hands. Poor Hitomi ^__^
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