Note: Eheh… sorry for the long wait… Did anyone miss the series? …I guess not… Mou… I'm not appreciated… (sniff)

Disclaimer: Like before, I do not own anything here…

TSUBASA RESERVOIR CHRONICLES

SEARCHING FOR THE LIGHT

CHAPTER 7: PURSUIT

As the wind around them caused by their 'world-traveling' cleared, Syaoran looked around warily. The group was standing on top of a cliff, surrounded by grassy plains and exotic-looking flowers.

Syaoran made a mental check on their small group. Sakura-hime… Fai-san… Kurogane-san… Mokona… Great, it seems that they are together. Now, the next step is to locate the all-important feather…

"Is that smoke coming from that village?" Sakura suddenly mentioned to no one in particular, her gaze fixed in the direction of the small village below the cliff that they were standing on.

Their gaze all followed hers and saw thick black smoke blanketing the afore-mentioned village.

"You think we should check it out?" Fai asked Syaoran calmly.

"We really shouldn't. Nothing comes of sticking our noses into things like this," Kurogane expressed, crossing his arms and giving Fai 'the look'.

"Mokona thinks we should help out! Maybe Mokona will be able to locate Sakura-chan's feather there," the white manju piped up from Sakura's arms.

"Aww… Kuro-pon... Are you afraid of the bad guys that might be hiding somewhere in the suspicious-looking village?" drawled Fai in his lazy tone, causing the ninja to twitch.

Syaoran quickly voiced his agreement to avoid the building-up tension between the two and lead the group down the cliff towards the village.

Reaching the village, they saw the residents of said place were acting indifferent towards the black smoke emitting from one of the houses there. They were moving about gaily and chatting happily with their neighbors, ignoring that particular house, as if nothing at all has happened.

Puzzled by their actions, Syaoran wondered if they were once again dumped into another strange world with bizarre customs. He hoped not… but it seems that the thought was becoming more and more valid as a woman with extremely long white hair stumbled out of the house, coughing and fluttering her hands in an attempt to clear the air around her.

"Ah! Not again! No, no, no, no, no! Not again!" she cried in a frenzy as she run around her house, probably finding some way to… remedy the condition her house has become.

As the group stood there staring at her acts, the other villagers ignored her and moved away further to avoid her presence.

Sakura then moved towards the woman who has stopped her fruitless running around and had sat there sobbing loudly. Syaoran, worried that Sakura will come to harm, followed her.

Sakura bend down a little and gingerly tapped the woman's shoulder to get her attention. Suddenly the woman jumped up, maybe from shock at being touched or something, and whirled around to face them.

"Are you alright?" Sakura asked concernedly, as the woman's eyes grew bigger and all of a sudden, the woman glomped Sakura, startling Syaoran but earning a confused look from the princess.

Before anyone could react, the woman let go of Sakura and looked at her closely. As Fai and Kurogane approached them, the woman smiled broadly and dragged Sakura into the house she had vacated earlier.

"My! I seldom have visitors! Please make yourselves comfortable! Oh, and pardon the mess… my experiment failed once again… I wonder what went wrong?" the woman chattered on as she sidestepped pieces of broken glass and wood that was littered on the floor of her place.

Stopping at what seemed to be the sitting room; she pulled out a few cushions from a big wooden box in a corner and placed in around a blackened table. (They were supposed to sit on the cushions on the floor before a… 'shorter' table? Uh, is that sentence right?)

Smiling all the while, she withdrew into another room and emerge a moment later bearing a tray of tea things. Syaoran and the others had settled somewhat awkwardly around the table as she poured tea into small cups and passed it to them.

"So, what do you want with old Erna?" the woman queried as she sat opposite them and folded her hands on her lap.

"What happened here, oba-san?" Mokona asks as it hopped onto the table.

The woman blinked and curiously reached out a finger towards Mokona, poking it warily. Mokona giggled at the attention and bounced up and down, rattling the cups of tea.

"Wherever did you find this? Is this a doll or something? How do you make it move? I've never seen anything like it…" the woman marveled.

"Uh… well, Mokona is…" Syaoran began when Kurogane interrupts.

"It's a white manju that can speak,"

Silence. Everyone except Mokona and Kurogane sweatdrops. The woman blinks again and removed her hands from its constant poking of Mokona.

"Uh… right… Anyways, why are you here to see me?" she asks again, averting her eyes from Mokona to her visitors.

"Is there any strange happenings in this country lately? We're traveling around to… collect materials for a book…" Syaoran replied, struggling a little to find a suitable reason for his question.

"A book? So, you're a writer? You don't look like one though…" the woman comments, as she looks at him from head to toe. "But I guess I'm not one to say that... I'm an inventor myself, do you know that?"

"Inventor?" Fai wonders, tilting his head to one side.

"Yes! I make useful objects for the people like this here back-scratcher…" at that she pointed to a wooden stick with a misshapen mesh of wire at one end, on the wall next to her. "This here back-scratcher is specially designed so that it can relieve the itch of hard-to-reach areas on your back without twisting your whole body around! It can also be used to clean the drain-holes of your house toilet and…"

Then, she started to elaborate on the various 'wonders' of the back-scratcher that she had invented and how she was going to report her plans to the other villagers during village meetings but was stopped by her granddaughter. She droned on and on non-stop until all of them began to nod off when she suddenly returns back to Syaoran's question.

"But about the strange happenings… My granddaughter is serving as a high-ranking priestess in the temple not far from this village and she told me about the disappearance of the head priest three months ago…

"It was covered up by them so no one knows of it but… my granddaughter told me that they found several pieces of paper on his desk and it seems that he was researching something…

"The temple has sent out a few people to search for the head priest but they cannot locate him in the near vicinities of the village… Lately, my granddaughter has been very busy and she didn't tell me much news about the temple anymore… I wonder if they're trying to do something over there…"

The woman stopped and sipped her tea slowly.

"Oh, by the way, would you young ones be interested to write something of my inventions in your book? It's not like I'm desperate or anything, you know… but people from other villages should also be given a chance to benefit from my inventions too, don't you think?"

When she looks up from her cup to give Syaoran a knowing-look, she discovered that they had disappeared.

"That woman gets on my nerve," mutters Kurogane as the group quickly moved away from the house they had entered earlier.

"But her inventions are really something, don't you think? It'll really help people to scratch those hard-to-reach areas and it can also be used as a cleaning utensil. It's a pity that Celes doesn't have such so-called 'inventors'…" Fai voiced out his opinion, earning a strange look from Syaoran and Kurogane.

"What? Is there something on my face?"

"Fai-san's country doesn't have any inventors?" Syaoran questioned curiously.

"I think his country is crazy enough with just him to want other crazy inventors…"

"Kuro-pon! That's so harsh! You're hurting Fai-san's feelings! Really, you can't say that especially since you haven't even been there before! I believe Celes is…"

"…a wonderful place if Fai-san is a part of it…"

Everyone turned to Sakura, who had uttered the last sentence. She had on a faraway look in her eyes as she clasped her hand and imagined a place with cerulean blue skies and delicate flowers like those that she had found back in Clow Kingdom.

"It must be a place where the soil has a rich earthy smell and carpeted with the greenest of grass… The ever-blue skies must be filled with exotic birds with long colorful plumes and melodious voices… And there are plenty of lakes and ponds with shy carps weaving in and out amongst the roots of the water lilies that dotted the bodies of water…"

Sakura opened her eyes slowly as if waking from a trance and look at Fai with sparkling eyes.

"I believe Celes is such a place… Right, Fai-san?"

"Sakura-chan… Yes, Celes is as you say… You have described it in such beautiful words… Thank you, Sakura-chan," Fai replied, giving Sakura a warm smile.

The princess returned the smile.

"Is that the temple?" Mokona asked as they approached a white domed building amidst a bustling city.

"I think so… Let's ask someone," Syaoran answered and walked towards the closest passerby to confirm it.

"It's so lively here compared to the village where oba-san lived," Mokona added, looking around.

"It seems that no one suspects the missing head priest yet…" Fai comments as he saw a few people enter and leave the domed building.

Syaoran appeared then and brought word confirming the identity of the building and also of the unawareness of the people regarding the absence of the head priest.

"So, what should we do now? Enter the temple?" Kurogane asks.

"I think we should get a room first since it's almost night and…"

"Syaoran-san, maybe you should change your outfits. People are giving us weird looks…" Mokona whined as they realized the people are stopping and staring at them.

"Oh dear… Another time?" Fai sighs happily as they made their way to the nearest clothing store.

Note: Whew! It's kind of tiring to type all this in one go after such a long stop… But the long rest has replenished my ideas' storage so I could write better next time!

So, tell me what you think of this chapter, okay? I need to know if I'm backsliding or improving…

As a side note, does anyone think if I should put my email add in here? I'm afraid of getting all those junk mails, though… but it's also a good way to get comments from people too… hmm…