Chapter 2
Where am I? the girl wondered. Everything was dark, slowly she opened her eyes a bit, and tried to focus. "Ugh, it's too bright," she moaned quietly to herself. She tried recalling the past moments before she was in this room, but only found a tinge of pain in her head. Pat pat pat, footsteps went; gradually it became louder and closer. The girl closed her eyes and strained her ears to hear who was it.
"Who is she? She seems so, so, how should I put it? She just seems so suspicious. Right Naito? Right? Naito! Don't ignore me!" bellowed a voice. Naito? the girl wondered. Finally, she heard the door to the room she was in creak open rapidly, "I mean, look at her!" the voice shouted.
What's so wrong with me? she thought, well, at least I know that nothing's wrong with me, maybe him though, he should go see a doctor. "Naito! Listen to me, face me! Don't you dare look away. Tell me once more, why..did..you..bring..her..here!"
"W-well," another voice stuttered. This must be Naito the girl concluded. "She was wounded, I had to do someth-"
"NO! You didn't have to do something! Do you not know the village rules? Hm, Naito? Tell me number 27. Naito! Say it!"
"Number 27, um, 'Never take any notice of outsiders unless directed by the Councilors.'"
"So, why didn't you just do it? Tell me! Do you not remember that disrespecting the rules means disrespecting the Councilors, which means punishment!" the first voice bellowed louder. There was silence. Ugh, this is just life-taking, should I just get up and say that I'll leave? It seems like I'm getting the other guy, Naito, into a lot of trouble. "Naito! Don't you walk out on me!" There were footsteps patting rapidly.
"NO! I won't listen to you! Not any more!" the voice replied with determination, "I'm tired and sick of you always nagging me! I'm leaving!" There were more footsteps, and then a slam. Then the room was silent with the girl lying silently and the speechless 'first voice.'
"FINE!" he yelled back, "BUT BRING THE DUMB GIRL WITH YOU TOO!" And then in the background, if you listened closely enough, you could hear the faint, "Fine!" and then a grunt of anger.
"Why don't you ever listen to me?" the first voice quietly said, "I actually care about you, I don't want those councilors to take you away from me, you're…" he hesitated, "you're my last family member." Gradually, the 'first voice' walked toward the door, clicked it open, walked out, and then closed the door silently as he left. Finally! But what did he mean by 'dumb girl', that really offended me! The girl then tried moving around a bit in the bed. She tried moving her right arm, but only a unbarring pain came searing up her arm in reply to her mind's command. Fine! Just let EVERYTHING go against me today! Like I care! Hmph. The girl just laid there, waiting for something to happen, just anything, so that she could be rid of this killing silence and unmovable position.
Pat pat pat, there came footsteps again, except they were quiet ones, really silent, like he or she was tip-toeing so that no could notice. The door silently creaked open and then the person swiftly stepped in. Oh god! How long have I been lying here? Like TWO hours, and NOW somebody comes, ugh. The person gradually gained distance toward the girl; the girl relaxed herself to seem like she was peacefully sleeping.
"Girl?" the person whispered, "you awake?" Hey! It's Naito! Hm, should I answer and say yes? The girl pretended to be just awakening. She groaned and tried opening her eyes. She took a good look around the room; the room was quite small, painted autumn yellow, a table, five chairs, one bed which she was lying on, and a guy staring right down at her.
"W-whoa!" the girl said half loudly.
"Shhhhh! You don't want to wake up Souri," the boy hushed her. The girl blushed a bit then looked at the boy. She looked at him closely, chestnut hair, deep black eyes, slender eyebrows, and half-way broad shoulders.
"Can you get up?" the boy asked her quizzically.
"No, there's pain everywhere and I thi-"
"No more talking, it'll just waste time, we have to go, now. Here I'll help you, just lean on me while we try to get out of this wretched house." The girl tried getting up using her arm; the searing pain came soaring up again. The girl let out a little yelp, then ignored the pain and started to get up slowly, yet clumsily. She sat up, the boy then pulled her left arm over his shoulders, and helped her get onto her feet.
Pains started to sear up her arms, body, legs, feet, especially her head. "Don't worry about the pains, they'll go away eventually. Probably from the long time you were lying in the bed with all those injuries." The girl looked at him dumbfoundly while they started to walk down a hall. What injuries? The girl couldn't remember a single thing. She then just concentrated on making her feet go the right way. Right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, left, no, right, left, right, left. They went through a door and walked out to crisp mid-evening air. She took a breath in.
"Ah, this air smells sweet and refreshing." The boy nodded as he looked at her. "Why are your eyes so black?" she questioned, "It's like you have no pupils."
"No, I DO have pupils, it's just that my eye colour is so black," he replied proudly yet with a tint of sour in his tone.
"Mines too!" The girl said cheerfully, she felt nice to be someone who too had unique eyes like hers.
"You do?" He looked into her eyes closely and very hardly, "Oh my lord! You do!"
"What about it?" The girl questioned.
"I'll tell you later, we have to get out of this village a.s.a.p. The sooner the better, or we're dead meat. And when I say dead meat, I really mean it."
They started to walk slowly toward the horizon; with only a night to travel, it was enough to get far away from the village where they began.
Chapter 3
The sun was rising and stretching it's light and warmth over the land. It was the first beginning of a day since Naito and the girl had left the village to make it to the Land of Dri where they took a rest and slept in a cave.
"I've been lying in that bed for five days!" exclaimed the girl.
"Yes, unfortunately before Souri came back from his out-of-town work. You see, I was out in the market six days ago shopping for magical nee-"
"Magical needs? What're those?" the girl interrupted.
"Don't interrupt! Eh-hem, as I was saying, I was shopping for magical needs. But right after I bought some apples I saw you walking towards me. You were wounded, bleeding, and just to wrap it up, you were in really bad shape. Then you collapse, but just before I catched you, you pleaded me to help you."
"Now that you mention it, I starting to remember everything now."
Naito gave a satisfactory nod as he finished his story, "So I brought you to Souri/my house for you to rest and heal until you were ready to move around. So I fed and hydrated you everyday. Until Souri came home and got all maniac when I told him about you. He started to go bezerk and everything like a mad bull and then we had that conversa-"
"Um, I sorta overheard that conversation in the room. I sorta, well, um, was conscious then. Eh-heh-em," the girl told the boy. He pinched his lips tightly and gave her a sour look.
"You know that that was impolite. First interrupting, and second eavesdropping."
"I know, I know, I'm sorry," the girl replied sheepishly, "So, you're gonna tell me now?"
"Tell you what?" Naito eyed her suspiciously.
"About our eyes of course!"
"Oh, that, well, first of all, black eyes like our's are quite rare you see. Only spell casters and potion mixers, well, you can say mages, have those kind of eyes." The girl stared at him blankly.
"What are you staring at me like that for?" Naito asked nervously.
"So…" she started slowly, "you're saying that I'm a mage?"
"Well, um," Naito said nervously, "um, well, you, you, never told me your name yet. You better tell me or I'll be, calling, you girl for the whole time, eh-heh," Naito finished while his right hand was raised and rubbing the behind of his head.
"Well, my name is, is, is, um, can I trust you? Well, of course I can trust you, you saved my life! 'Kay, my name is Maki."
"Whoa," he started, "even your name is of a mage!"
"Well?" Maki stared at him.
"Well what?"
"You didn't think that that baby trick was going to work on me to get off the topic, did you?"
"Eh-heh, well, um, what topic?" the boy asked while tried to look innocent.
"Topic about eyes, and I asked you if it meant that I was a mage as well."
"Well, we better get going or Souri will find us, so we better get to a town before sunse-"
"Don't get off the topic!"
"Fine," Naito finally gave in, "well, I don't exactly know, we'll just have to see the things that you can do. Now, lets set off."
They both clambered out of the cave, first Naito and then Maki.
"Which way are we heading?" Maki questioned.
"Toward the morning sun." And without another murmur, they started toward the sun.
Chapter 4
"Augh," Maki moaned in grief, "when are we gonna make it there?"
"Well, let's see, if we keep up this pace," Naito started to calculate with his fingers, "we'll reach the next village in two hours from now, not bad y'know."
"Not bad! How can that not be bad! Already we've been walking for three hours; my feet have blisters, my arms and legs are dragging, my back is killing, I feel hot, it's like forty degrees, and, I…am…sweating BADLY! Ugh!" Maki cried out as she wiped a drip of sweat from her forehead with her sleeve.
"Anyways," Naito started with a concerned voice, "what happened to you before you were wounded? And why were you wounded so badly, more then any I've ever in my life seen."
"Well, that, um…"I don't know what to say, should I tell him that I was somehow brought here to this world of magic from my 'Mortal Earth'? And then attacked by these giant creatures, which I can't describe because they were like 3-D shadows?
"Well, you see, I was, um……traveling, you see, I was a traveler, and I was making my…way, towards the mountains. And before my destination, I was…given word that I was to go to a village, your village. But then these…c-cre-creatures came after me and attacked me. You see, and then I made it out alive? And I found your village, you see?"
"I see," Naito replied thinking hardly. Phew, I don't think that I should just tell him yet. This is not the time is what my instinct is telling me. I wonder why, but who cares. But I'm sure glad that he fell for that lie.
"So," Magi started, "Who is this Souri?" Naito stopped in his tracks and had a solemn expression on his face.
"He's, my partially my older brother."
"What do you mean by partially?" she asked quizzically.
"You see I was an orphan. I was found at the doorstep of Souri's house, and he thought it was a gift, a treasure, a responsibility from the gods! How naïve he was! Phhht, a responsibility from the gods.," then Naito started to murmur to himself.
"And yet," he started to talk again, "I don't even know my own name! Ha! How ridiculo-"
"It's not ridiculous Naito, even I don't know my real name either, I'm an orphan too. The orphanage manager just gave me that crummy name. "And without further ado, they started to gain distance toward the next village.
"Kit," Maki started.
"Ya."
"How much longer do we have to walk now?" She asked eagerly.
"Hmph, you're in for it. An hour and a half!"
"No, ugh," Maki groaned.
Chapter 5
"Maki! Maki get up!"
"Ugh, go away!" Maki groaned as she took her right hand and brushed it in the air as shooing a fly.
"Thank god you're okay. You know that you just collapsed!"
"Really?" she groaned. She then started to feel the surface that she was lying on. It was smooth, yet cool unlike the hot weather which she was just in. She opened her eyes and took a good look at the floor. Marble. She looked into the majestic swirls of varying colours, the smooth texture, the cool surface.
"What happened?"
"Oh my goodness," Naito groaned annoyingly, "you just collapsed onto the marble floor. Shortly after we just entered our reserved rooms of this hotel of this village."
"Hmph, and why may I ask?"
"Well, I don't know! How am I supposed to know! What I'm guessing is the heat."
"And I bet," Maki started, "that anybody would fall right away after stepping into a nice cool room from walking for four hours in the hot, steaming, life-killing sun outside!" Maki glared him in the eye has she got up from the ground. He glared back at her with twice the strength. She shot back, and the fight continued.
Soon after about five minutes of the glaring fight, they had both turned their heads opposite directions and stopped talking to each other. Maki had gone to observe the landscape outside the window of her room, and Naito had gone to go shopping for 'mage needs,' which she guessed, were things needed for potion making and magic.
"Hmph," she complained grumpily, "what a big, fat, ugly, domestic, inhuman, um, stupid, idiotic buffoon!"
"Boys, never ever did understand them," Maki started to think hardly this time, "And never will."
"Come on! He didn't even ask if I was well, he didn't even care about me! He probably did a spell or something onto himself so that he could walk for four hours straight in the hot sun!" Maki started to pout.
"He's never going to receive my sympathy! No, never." Maki looked into the sky, the red and orange clouds that hovered above the village. She looked deeper into the vague silver lines of swirls that still somehow managed to seep through the other strong colours. She looked deeper into it, imagining what lay inside. She then gasped, everything around her was moving, shooting right past her; she was no longer looking out a window into the clouds.
"Come, yes, come to me Maki, my reincarnated destroyer. Yes, forget everything, just come to me." Sooner then Maki realized, there were two pale white hands coming out from the darkness in front of her, reaching out to touch her, take her away. Maki couldn't move; she was paralyzed. Move you damn body obey ME! Maki started to sob a bit. Move or Pale Hands here is going to take me away and then I'll never get home, ever. But yet still her body did not budge. Tears came overflowing out of her eyes.
"Naito, help me," she managed to whisper. Maki then started to see past memories in her head, is this what they call when they say that they see past memories when you're going to die?
She saw her woeful, angry, frustrated, happy, lonely memories since her birth. Some memories, which she didn't even know that she, had. She started to sob a bit louder in the real world, trying to get out of this trance of death overcoming her. But the floods of pictures kept coming and going through her head, playing over and over again.
"Yesss, come to me my dear. Accept the feelings, accept your destiny, you can't escape it." Maki listened to the hissing and rough voice. She then focused on the real world, the red clouds she was examining before, and the lovely room with the marble floor she got to stay at.
"Let her go!" cried a little voice of a girl. "Let go of her! She does not belong to you!"
"My, my, my. Of course she does not belong to me, she is already mine since she was born in the mortal world."
"No!" shrieked the voice, "she belongs with us. The other belongs to you. But not this one!" Maki felt her head start to pound. What does she mean by I belong to them and the other belongs to Pale Hands? Everything is so confusing here! Get me out of here.
"Maki," the little voice whispered, "quickly get out of here while you can, overcome those memories and remember where you are from, and remember the place you were before you entered here." Maki had listened to the voice carefully, and did as it ordered. She concentrated harder then she had in her whole life, until finally she found a little glowing speck of light within her, just barely shining in the overwhelming darkness. Maki reached for it, stretching her fingers as far as they would go and finally reach it.
She felt her cold and sweaty body go warm and dry from sweat. She felt no longer sad, neither frustrated nor scared, she felt joyful.
"No!" Pale Hands hissed, "She's escaping! You little runt, I'll make you pay!" As Maki felt herself seep back into the light from the dark, she heard a faint little groan and a coarse cackle of satisfaction.