Disclaimer: I make no profit and own no part of Vampire princess Miyu or any of the characters. Except for an overactive imagination.

A/N as of 03/2018: Editing-in-progress for clarity and fluidity to make this decent, and to improve previous laziness.

Broken flowers, Twisted thorns

Prologue

The ship was shrouded in darkness.

'Be careful, Larva...' His charge had warned him, concern flaring in her golden eyes.

Wary even without her advice, his eyes and senses were continually scanning the surrounding darkness on the non-descript 19th century-like vessel. Wet salt spray draped the hull with the tenacity of a sodden veil, the cloth of sails were worn with age, and the silence was suffocating. Outside, ominous-looking greyish-purple clouds and occasional rumble of thunder signalled the onset of a storm.

The shinma onboard was repressing its power and therefore very powerful according to what he could detect from the seeming lack of presence, although his own powers were shrieking an entirely different message. There was a slight shift in placid air molecules, a shudder hidden to most but the most perceptive. The other knew he was here. A fiery jagged bolt of lightning flashed down from the sky and if he had not dodged, would have created a serious gaping wound. Long nails sliding from beneath his dark robes, Larva swept across the smooth deck of well-worn weathered wood, the only sound resembling a sharp file rasping down a window pane. Stopping abruptly, he hurled himself back, throwing up his arms with a ferocious sweep at the same time.

Long planks of wood parted like the Red Sea, the ones nearest the break he had created tearing themselves from the each other, followed by others being ripped out with such force, they landed in the sea. Larva was surveying the exposed room, but there was still no sign of the other shinma. His mask was tinted with silver, where the moonlight cut across its porcelain smoothness. There were still parts of the room below bathed in darkness, but Larva could wait no longer. He dropped down, landing noiselessly.

A howling wind, which had started up without warning, suddenly died down. A single candle burned on a square table, somehow managing to remain untouched. The darkness wavered, as a lone figure stepped out from the loving embrace of the shadows to face Larva. Red eyes suddenly burned with a light not seen for over a hundred years.

The silence seemed to speak, or was it his own haunted mind...

'Larva.'

It cannot, could not be! Yet it was there, in the dusky skin, a dark lock of burgundy hair trailing down a pale rose shirt. Enigmatic eyes haunting his dreams at whim over the last few months now reflected his image in their hypnotic purple depths. As his name struck Larva's mind, so did the memories...

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

He was bored. He had graduated with highest honours at the battle academy, topping his entire year. Women swooned at his feet; men fawned for his glory. What was there left to do? A pristine colourful meadow of wildflowers was reduced to a field of stalks as Larva exorcised his boredom, severed scattered blossoms filling the air and falling all about him. Summer was a season dragging its many feet of too many days to reach autumn, and the hot months were always sticky, slow and uneventful.

The sound of running feet told him who the intruder was. With one swift motion, he tore through the falling blossoms, to close one sharp-tipped hand around the throat of Andeas.

'A..ai..air..!' gasped his victim, starting to flail at him in an unattractive fashion, when he did not reduce the strength of his grip. The tall human girl collapsed in an ungainly heap at Larva's feet, as the young man gazed scornfully down at her.

'Your father will be receiving visitors soon... not visitors across the ocean of course, but from across the sea! Neighbours, in a manner of speaking-' As she lifted her head, Andeas realised she was sitting in an empty leveled field. Larva had abandoned her, a tiny speck in the distance as he headed back towards the mansion.

Shaking her head, she got to her feet. She could not be mad at the man she admired so, and hoped to emulate one day... A dreamy smile softening her lips, she turned to follow Larva's path. A breeze was starting to gain strength. Her brown-eyed gaze wandered lazily past the flowerless meadow, traveling up a gentle slope towards sparse grass interspersed with boulders and finally, the sharp drop of the cliffs where her master's lands ended. She found herself staring. A dark menhir- No, figure, was standing there! So still, not even the wind disturbed a black cloak wrapped around the entity. Then there was movement-

A look of wonder spread over her non-descript features, as she stared at genderless beauty from a distance. One dark strand of hair blew across the half-hidden face, graced with a bone structure possibly finer and more sophisticated than Larva's. The stranger's piercing gaze was relentlessly fixed on her, although she could not see the colour of the eyes, but those features... so exquisite, she was unsure if it belonged to a god or demon. Was that one also a shinma- Something flew into her right eye, and she blinked in irritation at the sudden itch.

When she looked again, there was nothing on the cliff. Had it all been part of her imagination? Andeas pondered this question all the way back to the mansion, until she walked into the head cook without realising, and was soundly cuffed for her dreaminess. She held the vision in her heart, all the way until bedtime and into the lands of the Sandman.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

The mansion was abuzz. The wretched town was not any better. Tales, gossip, rumours gave the city a vivaciousness not seen in decades. The sale of spices reached a new high, as did the amounts of imported seafood. These overlords from across the sea were reputed to be merciless to enemies, yet romantic enough to soften the hearts of a band of brass monkeys. The maidens were impatient, the young men pensive and determined to show their strength to the impending arrival of these strangers.

'Ridiculous,' snorted Lemures in disdain, as he speared a cheapple with one abruptly-elongated sharp fingernail and popped it into his mouth, forced to spit it out shortly because he could not swallow the core. The fruit experiments were a success, and apples sweetened by the genes of cherries were a delightful consequence, no bigger than strawberries, and manipulated to grow easily while containing only a small central seed core with no other seeds.

Ice-blue eyes warmed slightly in agreement, as its owner peered out the window of the lavishly furnished apartment. Opulent velvet draperies the colour of brandywine and burnished gold usually provided a sensual atmosphere, ruined by non-lit scented candles in strategic marble sconces being ignored, because all the windows were opened to allow sunlight to pour in.

'These foreigners! Even if they are fellow westerners separated only by a small sea, if they think it's another land to brazenly invade without any consequences, they'll be sorry.'

'At least they won't be unrefined savage simpletons, unlike the eastern shinma from across the ocean,' Larva remarked with a slight smile, as he settled into a lush beanbag. Pazusu had spoken warmly of them the evening before at dinner, which was strange considering his godfather had never even met them, but his judgement had never been wrong. Then again, there was always a first time for everything.

Little Carlua had been making him uncomfortable of late, for the devotion in her eyes seemed to be all-consuming... could such little babies still be innocent?

'Worrying about Carlua again? It's just a phase, and children will grow out of it. Besides, you're too handsome and boorishly arrogant to be anyone's relative at times- Ouch!'

Lemures rubbed his forehead where a cheapple had struck, then brushed a lock of blond hair out of one green eye. As he continued to vent his distaste for the unknown invaders, Larva tuned him out. Lemures always did talk too much, with a penchant for melodrama that bordered on ridiculous at times. The strangers would be here by noon tomorrow, and one of the noble families would be staying with them. He would not be there to receive them, nor come home the entire day. Doing so should display enough of his dislike at the invasion of family privacy.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

[ My heart is given to the sea. I cannot wait until my powers are grown strong enough to conjure up a ship, one that will buoy me through the waters of the world along with the centuries. Only that desire, and my own writing as I pen all this down, keeps me alive. I sent out a scrying spell the other day, tired of the wooden walls of my cabin. Where we stay should be pleasant enough, although the young foreigner who saw me may pose a problem, if that one should remember- More footsteps are closing in on my ivory tower. Time to put the pen down for the moment... ]

Tauron Heliopolis stopped outside a plain oak door. Copper waves of his hair was edged with grey. Sadness was more than evident in grey eyes. His eldest son was worried for a younger brother, who was Tauron's second son and the apple of his eye. Ever since Tauron's wife had been lost at sea, caught in the eye of a magical malicious storm conjured by enemies two years ago as she had sailed back from China, emotional devastation was an irreversible scar for someone dear to him. Deeply etched in the heart, mind and across the face of one family member, that one's pain at times almost sent Tauron into despair at being unable to help his second son heal.

He took a deep breath, while turning the knob. Stepping into the room, sunlight streamed through the portals, but was unable to warm the one person it caressed like a lover. His son was sitting there, hands resting atop an open diary protected by a black leather cover inlaid with mother-of-pearl, staring into space. It was time for the lad to sleep, and thankfully their voyage would be over soon. The cabin was as impersonal and bare as the day the ship had been fully constructed, save for the most essential and plain furniture already in this room.

'My son, you should sleep, you have been awake all night again...' was the gentle admonition, as large gnarled hands closed around the shoulders of the more-fragile figure. The young man yielded to his father's support, allowing Tauron to guide him gently across the cabin and help him onto the bed. Covering his middle child with milk-white cotton blankets, the skin beneath his fingers was as cold as freshly-fallen snowflakes. Pain-filled grey clouds stared into misty blank eyes, as purple as anemones in full bloom but as welcome as a gale across winter snow.

As those beautiful eyes closed, he turned to leave, then paused as his gaze fell to crisp pages of the latest entry. Thin lips tightened into a frown. His son had always been too close to the woman who had been his wife. Not only was that son closest in resemblance to her appearance-wise, his disposition was also too melancholy, which could lead to unnecessary depression and unexpected weakness resulting in death at the hands of battle-hardened enemies who knew when not to give up, especially when they could sense how easily their targets gave in.

At this rate, Garline would never be able to truly absorb and express the full magic potential of a certain crystal which a deceased mother had nurtured in secret for her favourite son, an expression of her love and desire to give him an inheritance unlike any other. How could he give Garline the crystal, when his son was not ready?

[ She has always known that I loved the sea, as she did. I am the only one in the family who truly understood her, as she understood me. Our mutual love binds us, keeps us sane. Blood may be thicker than water, but it does not give life in the same way that invigorates me.

Mother.

'Follow your heart,' she has said many a time, kissing me after yet another moment of reckless impulse resulting in interesting consequences. Never to feel her maternal warmth enclosing me in her arms again… Her warmth and the sea have poisoned me irreversibly. Our time is coming.]

He closed the book, then looked back at his son, but the young man had turned to face the wall, back to his father. His hands balled into fists. Helplessness at this moment made him hate himself. The elderly man left swiftly, while gently closing the door behind him, and did not see a lone tear tracking down the younger man's face, because that one had turned back to look at the door. There were so many barriers easily shattered by one heartfelt gesture or a pattern of them, if one knew what to do. The father did not know how to. And the son was no better at understanding and speaking of the way.

Forgive me, father...I have not the strength to reach out. I doubt I ever will again, to anyone.