Neko & Tsubasa
Originally by MaTenshi-On'na
Revamped by Aoluas Anminti
Disclaimer: Aoluas Anminti does not own Escaflowne, and is not making any profit from this or any other Escaflowne fanfiction. This is a revamp of Tenshi Nibbunnoichi's (a.k.a. Demoness Monica, MaTenshi Onna, etc.) fanfiction concept. Her inspiration was taken from Neko Hime, and Secret Life of a Girl, both excellent fanfictions, and, of course, the Escaflowne series itself.
16/3/06 edit
Prologue
By Vovyna Yillph
"We shouldn't have done this."
Therese, lounging in her lover's arms, looked up at him and pouted coyly. "You're ruining the mood, Erison. Let me enjoy this." She smiled softly and ran her hand over his furred forehead and catlike ears. Quite suddenly her expression turned serious and more than a little sad. "I love you."
Erison sighed, stroking her hair and tightening his arms around her. Her head fit comfortably between his neck and shoulder. She pressed her lips to the sensitive skin underneath his chin. "I mean it, Rese. I love you too, I always have, but being near you was enough for me. I have wanted you, yes – desperately, sometimes – but I knew the danger it would put you in. And now that I have had you, rather than bask in it, I am worrying about what consequences may come of it."
"You worry too much, Eri." She splayed the fingers of one hand over his chest and pressed soft kisses to his throat, pleased when he began purring. "Let yourself enjoy this."
"Rese…"
"I love your voice when it's like that." She interrupted. "When you purr and speak, it's almost like growling. It's very masculine, very attractive."
"Rese…"
"Stop worrying."
"What kind of lover would I be if I didn't worry?" He'd stopped purring. "This is all the fault of my desires. If anything happens to you, or anyone finds out Therese, my love, tell me; I will take responsibility."
"Erison…"
He pulled away from her enough to take her hands in his. "Therese, promise me."
"Erison, no. Please, just…"
"You must promise me." He said urgently. "I vow to protect you if anythign comes of it. I vow it, but you must tell me so that I can make good on it. Please, Therese…" He searched her eyes for her consent.
"But, Erison…" She shook her head once, almost imperceptibly. "They'd crucify you. 'That beastman ravished the queen,' they'll say. 'That wretched tomcat bastard,' they'll call you. You wouldn't be abe to go anywere with me anymore."
He sighed. "I don't care about the people. I must be able to protect you, Rese. You mus allow me that." He squeezed her hands lightly and pressed his forehead to hers, closing his eyes. "I… I don't know how much I could do to protect you against Aston and his fury, but—"
"Aston's fury?" Theres scoffed. "Aston's fury? He is a fat man, idle, impotent, and soft. He has no fury."
"Every man is capable of fury, Therese. "He said with a gravity that immediately sobered her. 'And every woman, too, but that's not the point. You must promise that you will tell me, Therese." He opened his eyes to look directly into hers. She was still for a moment, staring at him. Suddenly she felt that she was seeing just how much he cared for her, and how important this was to him. In that moment it was equally important to her, not tfor the purpose of being protected or looked after, but to give Erison the assurance that she trusted him with this, that what meant something to him meant something to her also.
She took her hands fom his and pressed them to either side of his, brushing her lips against his as eh said, "I promise."
He kissed her passionately, leaving her breathless when he pulled away. "Thank you, Therese." The relief was evident in his voice, but she didn't have long to dwell on it as he kissed her again, and again, each time with more fervor than the last. Even as she responded, though, her thoughts were elsewhere.
Fury? Aston? She had only heard him raise his voice on on occasion, just a little bit, and that to a captain who had gotten all of his subordinates killed on a mission because he had been too inebriated to react and give sensible orders when they finally encountered the enemy. Considering that he has also run like a coward when he saw the situation turning sour, leaving his mean to be slaughtered…anyone would have been angry. She herself had been apalled at the waste of lives, all for one man's incompetence. Aston had barely seemed miffed, or at least, not nearly upset enough to express it. Fury? She dismissed the thought as Erison turned her onto her back, his lips meeting her collarbone and travelling lower.
Trying to reconcile the concepts of Aston and fury was distracting and truly pointless, since they had no connection, she was sure. There were much, much more important and pleasurable things to concentrate on right now…
Two weeks later, Therese's monthly flow came. She and Erison breathed a joint sigh of relief and, upon its ending, lay together again. For many moths they continued on with their affair until, eventually, Therese' flow was late. They managed not to panic over it until it was two months late, and when the fourth month rolled around and she began to show, she sent Erison away despite his numerous protests to her ancestral villa many miles away from Palas, almost sitting on the Asturian border.
When Aston asked her why she'd sent her most beloved servant away, who'd always accompanied her since her childhood when her parents had gotten him for her, she claimed that Erison had been becoming annoyed with the mood swings brought about by her pregnancy. It was an outright lie; Erison had been doting on her endlessly and, for all his worrying about their future, had displayed an obvious paternal pride as he tended to her needs and most trivial wants, fetching odd combinations of food for her at odder hours of the night and bearing even her most bizzare mood swings and tantrums with no complaint. Sensing that her statement wasn't going to stand up to any scrutiny, Therese added that Erison had family in that part of Asturia whom he had long been separated from and was visiting with, which was true.
"Hm." Aston grunted. "You spend too much time with that worthless beastman anyhow. It's good he's away from you. Good riddance."
Therese bristled, but made no comment. Over the following days, she began to suspect that her answers had not satisfied Aston. She sent a letter to Erison via her most trusted personal messenger instructing him to alter her maternal grandmother's portraits so that the woman's hair tone matched Erison's. Aston had met the woman only once, at which time she'd worn all-encompassing robes and a dark scarf over her head which hid all but her eyes, nose, and cheeks, after the tradition of married women in Basram, her homeland. Even if she hadn't been so covered, she was old enough that her hair was snow white beneath. All who had known her in her youth before she was married, when she had possessed fiery copper hair, were now dead. While changing her family history in an attempt to hide her own indiscretions did chafe at Therese's conscience a bit, self preservation ended up winning out.
Besides, Gramma Jholai would look good with Erison's silvery brown hair.
The child was blonde.
It was the only thought that Therese could focus on. Even now, two days after giving birth, with the little girl suckling at her breast in the dead of night, with fireworks and revelry still going strong in Palas as they celebrated the birth of Aston's first daughter and heir, Aston's, the only thing that seemed to have substance in Therese's mind was that the child was blonde. She knew, of course, what it meant. Erison's child could only have darker hair than hers, he had no fair haired parents, while Aston's mother had been almost white-haired. The child was blonde…
Hours later she saw off a courier with a letter to Erison telling him the news. Watching the sun rise over a Palas that was going to be mostly hungover later on in the day, she realized that she was disappointed.
When Marlene was fourteen months old, Erison returned to Palas. Therese immediately sent for him to see the princess. He looked at the child for a long time, finally saying, "I'm glad that she looks like you, Therese. " Tilting his head to the side, he put his hand out and Marlene wrapped one chubby fist around his clawed forefinger. "I'll care for her as though she were my own," he whispered, "and think of her as yours." Therese cried, though she couldn't put words to the emotion that made her do so, and kissed him.
The following month, they began meeting again as lovers.
Twenty months later, in the early spring two months before Marlene's third birthday in Yellow 1, Therese resigned herself to the fact that the flow she'd missed in Purple 1 was not going to make an appearance. She and Erison held their breath, unwilling to spectulate and discuss their fears – or hopes – about this pregnancy.
This time, Therese did not try to convince Erison to away. One night in late Yellow before the season could really be called summer, he told her as he held her that it was just as well she hadn't tried, because this time he would have refused to go.
In Red 1, when she was about six months pregnant, Aston mentioned a curious increase in her craving for meat and fish, and a peculiar affinity for nepeta cataria, a tall plant with white flowers and downy leaves, much like mint 2, which seemed to serve no greater purpose than to attract every palace cat to her rooms where she kept the species in abundance. She shrugged his comment off, noting aloud to Aston that all pregnancies differ in one way or another from each other. Erison, however, was much disturbed by Aston's comment, and it chaged his whole demeanor. He'd not tell her why.
In the weeks following, Erison's collection of daggers and short swords, which he'd previously kept casually, expanded rapidly, and he spent an hour at the least sharpening all of them to razors' edges. Reports began coming in from Asturia's rural areas of beastpeople being found along woodland paths maimed, beaten, or burnt, and always dead. Aston always smiled at these, and seemed to take special pleasure in smiling at Erison if the beastman was at the queen's side when the reports were given. Therese told herself that the soldiers whom she saw leaving sometimes in the dead of night were being sent to protect the beastpeople, and kept herself from entertaining any alternatives. Even so, she told her poison tester to attend to Erison's food as well, and ended up having to replace him when the man died from cyanide in Erison's evening tea.
Approximately a month before the child was due in Blue 1, a group of dead beastpeople was found near Therese's ancestral villa. When the news reached her that one of the deceased had been Erison's eldest sister, she commanded that all beastpeople in rural areas, including Erison's family, evacuate to Fanelia, if they could. The messenger with a letter of request whom she sent to the Fanelian royal family came back with an answering letter promising all beastpeople refuge and consoling Asturia for their loss. It continued on to say that they were only sorry that they could not send military assistance to find and punish the culprits, and was signed by Queen Varie Escariina Fanel. Following this, Therese hired a group of men, usually assassins by trade, to steal Erison away to Fanelia, along with his belongings, and keep him there as long as they might. They were also to make it appear that he had been killed in an attack while accompanying his family to Fanelia. The fee that they demanded was hefty for what was, really, a glorified moving service; it was blatant extortion, but Therese paid them gladly.
Aston was furious; with the birth drawing ever nearer, his favorite tormentee gone, and able to draw no more amusement from any attacks what with their having drawn international attention, he had nowhere to direct his anger over his certainty of his wife's infidelity. Therese, through her false tears over her best friend and lover's supposed death, smiled.
Erison had not yet been "dead" a month when Aston's foul temper and fouler behavior affected his wife directly for the first time. Drunk after a celebration of a courtier's engagement, he raged into Therese's bedchamber and threw her from where she lay, slurring out accusations as loudly as he seemed able.
"Fucking filthy mutt…" he kicked her, "spreading your whore's legs for him…" kicked again, "whore! Lettting that mongrel touch you, here?" He shoved a hand up her nightshift. "Here?" He pressed one finger against her anus. "Well? Here? Did he mount you like the bitch you are, you tramp?" He pulled her over to an armchair and made her kneel in front of it, pressing her shoulders and head down into the seat, ignoring her crying. "Did he like to feel your swollen stomach? Did he like the thought of another man's seed in you? Huh? Or is it his? Eh? Tell me, you bitch. Whore! Tell me!" He grunted as he shoved himself into her. If he said any more, she didn't hear it.
As he raped her, Therese could only think that his terms were all wrong. Mutt, mongrel, bitch, tramp… they were all for dogs. Anyone coud see that Erison was feline.
So too will our child be, she thought as welcome nothingness blocked out all other sensation.
When Therese woke, it was to the crisp scent of a morning in Blue and an infant crying in a crib next to her. After a moment she discerned that she was in the palace's medical ward.
Though her body protested with every minor shift, she leaned over to see and gently trace the features of her newborn. The child quieted as soon as Therese touched her, but before the squalling mouth closed Therse caught a glimpse of tiny but defined canines in a row of white teeth where human newborns would have had no teeth at all. There were tufts of down-soft fur circling her wrists and ankles, large feline ears ending in tufts of hair, reminding her of a lynx, and finally, a long, slim tail poking from beneath the edge of the blanket.
Therese never even knew she was crying until her vision began to blur. Ignoring any rejections her abused body minght have, she caught her daughter up in her arms and kissed her gently before settling her next to her breast so that she might drink. She ran her fingers tenderly over each feature of her daughter, memorizing each as she discovered it and loving each as they were comitted to memory. She threaded her fingers through the hair – silvery brown, silken, Erison's – and grinned, tasting her tears as the creases brought on by the expression guided them into her mouth.
"My lovely," she breathed, awed, "my precious, my koneko 3. I'll name you for you father, for my love, for our Erison. You may never know him, oh, my little one, but he is a wonderful man." She kissed the infant's forehead and inhaled her soft baby-and-kitten scent. "My beautiful, wonderful darling…
"My Eries."
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1According to the Escaflowne Compendium, the Gaeans refer to months with the names of colors. There're only six we found, but here's a list anyways: Purple (February), Green (April), Yellow (May), Orange (June), Red (August), Blue (November). Yes, we only found six. If you have corrections or additions (canon or not), feel free to suggest.
2Catnip. Vo grows it just to watch her cats go nuts year round.
3koneko means kitten in Japanese, we're pretty sure. Ko (child) + neko (cat)
Vovy's Author's Note
Is it better than before? Is it? I alwayss feel so self-conscious with revamps…please review. Constructive criticism quite welcome. Did I emphasize "constructive" enough?
Aoluas' Author's Note
Apologies for lateness. We've been going through some difficult crap. The original Disclaimer is below, errors and all.
Disclaimers: okay, obviously I don't own Escaflowne, so bugger off with the lawsuits. I'm just having a little fun. And yes, yes, oh yeah-yeah-yeah, this story was most Definitely influenced by Neko Hime. Of course, my story will differ from hers (I don't think there'll be as much angst, and I know it won't be that good) so don't berate me about it. Oh, Secret Life of a Girl also influenced it.