Satorisama: Hello again, dear reader!! I enjoyed writing this chapter and I hope you like reading it. Daja's past with the mysterious character Damion come farther into the light.
Chapter 6: Dreams & Advice
Daja: I feel calm and peaceful in this darkness that surrounds me. The darkness comforts me for I was always working in the dark, and working was when I was the happiest. I wander around in this blackness for awhile just reliving my life one day at a time accepting all the joys and defeats that have come my way, until I get to him.
I sit on the ground just watching a memory of us, bickering, rough housing, and generally showing our unspoken fondness for each other. Captivated by this memory, I watch as it plays out in front of me. Damien and I continue to fight with each other, eventually ending up with us rolling on the floor, him with his hands in my hair yanking out clumps of my mane and me struggling to get free while laughing and punching him playfully. He pulls me close to him, enveloping me in his powerful arms and planting a kiss on my hand, obviously not his first choice but his only option since I began to struggle once again.
This memory gives way to another, less enjoyable one, but still of Damien and I. It's of one of our early jobs together, working as mercenaries for fat rich men in order to gain experience together in the teamwork department. I watch in silence as we glide swiftly over the plains, racing each other with me obviously at an advantage due to my heritage and the natural swiftness of that race. We pit our souls against each other and continue fecklessly across the moor. After a minute, Damien and I just stop in our tracks and look at each other. We burst out laughing as we realize that this could tear us apart as a team and we must put all trivialities behind us. Damien extends his hand towards me and I take it in my own. He looks surprised as we shake and I blush at my own assertiveness to our friendship. We pull our hands apart, and I must say that it was reluctantly on my part. We continue to walk in an embarrassed silence all the way to our boss' castle, which still lies at least three miles away. We really need to work on our people skills.
I slowly raise my self up back into a standing position and continue down a worm path leading somewhere else into the shadows that I have been to before. The farther I go this way, however, the lighter and colder it gets and the more I want to turn back and return to my own dark and happy place. As I turn around, I feel another's presence and I fear it is Hiei for his Jagan eye has the power to infiltrate minds. I don't want him to see my thoughts, my memories, my hopes, my dreams.... He knows too much about me already.
As I turn around, I find nobody is behind me but a chill runs down my spine and I become scared in my own thoughts. I am lost when I finally find my position in the timeline of my thoughts. I sink to the ground watching the scene in front of me. It is the last day of which Damien was alive... I shudder closing my eyes but I find the memory is there to....
It was a dark day when Damien and I parted for the first time in a year of our fierce friendship. I remember being gloomy that morning in finding that Damien had left the ship with out me, but I give him his space knowing that he just needed time alone to sort out our argument. No matter how hard I try, I simply cannot figure out what we had argued about that night before. I sit around all day looking out over the bay silently wishing that I had never grown attached to my un-proclaimed lover and that I had never let myself get attached to anything... I wish... I smile as I realize how much I wish for even though I know that wishing is for fools. So is love, so I guess I am a fool anyway, why stop now and not go all the way.
As the sun begins to set on a day of waiting for Damien to return, I grow more and more impatient with my friend as he continues to avoid the ship. I cannot help the upside down feeling my stomach has, the gut feeling I get when something has gone terribly wrong. I sit up top on the top of the highest mast as I wait anxiously for Damien to return. After about an hour, I decide that something has gone terribly wrong out there off the boat, out there on land.
Land... it has been such a long time since I have treaded on firm ground, such a long time... It was nearly 8 months ago that Damien and I were taken aboard as lowly deck hands, and now look at us, head of strategic navel command upon the ship Sunfire. I can hardly remember the taste of fresh fruit of the feel of grass upon my bare legs or the summer showers that used to come and go so unexpectedly. I can hardly remember what living with dry possessions is like, not having to constantly be aware of where everything and how everything fits or stores into the spaces or cubby holes below deck.
I had been afraid to go ashore earlier, when we first pulled into port here in the small bay no matter how much it called me to return to the plains. I had grown accustomed to the free way of life on a boat, and going back to the suffering land life seemed intimidating. I shake off all my fears as I slide my sheathed sword into my belt and layer my short military coat with all the medals and chevrons on top if my brightly colored tunic and shorts. I tie my hair back into a low ponytail and wipe all traces of runny eyeliner off my face as I toss a bag filled with small marble sized items overboard to rest at the bottom of Davie Jones's locker.
I slip unnoticed off the ship by sliding down one of the ropes that are tied onto the dock. But by the time I had found Damien, it was too late... I watch in horror as he is stabbed through the chest and his assassin laughs at his newest accomplishment. Rage builds up in my soul, behind my eyes, and in my body blinding me from all sense of reason and logicality. I let out an angry war cry as I run blindly towards my lover's slayer and throw my dice towards his turned back. He looks surprised as they hit his body dead on with his spine paralyzing him from the waist down. I pick my dice out of his bloody back and roll him over. Whispering close to the murderer's ear, I say to him, "burn in hell forever you piece of shit... you know not what you have done to me..."
I slash his neck watching as the blood squirts out of him on the ground at my feet. He's eyes stare up at me with the expression that corpses wear, that blank and confused one. A coughing sound behind me reawakens my soft side, sending me to Damien's body to inspect the damage to his chest. I feel into the bleeding wound with my hands and find that the blade had not missed the heart being that it nicked his artery and being the incapable healer I was, I cried out at trying to send my life energy into him, saving him from his certain impending death. I try to pick him up and run him back to the ship, struggling and breathing harshly under all his access weight on my back being that he is at least two times my size easily. Needless to say, my attempt was failing miserably under these conditions and I break down gasping for air and holding my rapidly disappearing way of life in my arms.
Damien reaches up and touches my cheek, stroking it gently and giving a slight playful tug at my blood-soaked dirty brown locks that had lightened so much with the summer sun reflecting off the waves on the vast sea to the west. I cry as he motions me to open his pocket on the left side of his bloodied coat, slowly picking through its many miscellaneous until I find what he wants from the depths of forever-ness which are Damien's familiar pockets. I draw out his flute....
The flute I had learned to play on with Damien as my musical instructor lies in my hands. He told me once that this flute was his most treasured possession and that not many people got to touch it, let alone play on it in its carved elephant ivory. I laugh though I know that I should not, remembering the time that I asked Damien what an elephant was seeing as I had never been to a place where elephants survive and live. I silently begin to hand him his most prized instrument and he motions for me to keep it...
I suddenly feel like crying something I haven't done for decades as this memory fades away. Well until today actually because I cried at the meeting, or would it be yesterday now in the real world because I have no idea how long I have been in this forced coma from none other than my master Hiei. Even though you are my master no longer Hiei, I want to continue to call you that even if you forbid me to out loud ever. I'll call you that in my mind always, master, but I'll say it occasionally to see your stunned reaction at my own defiance to you final order as my true master. You sent a lot of spirit energy into my head to knock me out and make me calm once again, master, but my body, instead of accepting the power, took it as a deliberate attack on my mind and sent me into hibernation. Too bad it didn't work the way you wanted Hiei, I am still awake under my sleeping face, observing you all as you fawn over my limp and lifeless body and discuss me, my shady past which you have, by the way, all wrong, and let's just say "man things" while you think I sleep peacefully and oblivious to you and your doings. But why don't you participate master? Are you afraid of getting attached to them, as I am? If I was I awake I think I would want to train with you as we had in the old days. The old days are no longer here with us, master, you have seen to that by sending me into my mind to sort myself out. Did you do it because I was annoying you with my mindless shouting? Was that your first priority, to shut me up? Did you have an ulterior motive instead? I shudder at my own thought and return to my darkness instead of the outside world of which I could see before.
I hear soft footfalls behind me and I freeze finding my self weaponless and unwilling to fight although I know if I lose my life in my mind I lose forever seeing that I could not return to a body with out a soul to occupy it even though my body could theoretically live on without a soul. I turn around and I gasp in surprise at whom I see.
A soft nocturne flows around his body in the visual form of leaves on a breeze. His hands drop to his side and the flute disappears as I call out softly to him.... he tilts his head to the side, looking at the silently weeping girl a few feet in front of him on the ground, me.
"I thought I told you I can't bear to see you in anguish?" He answers me softly by pulling my hair gently allowing it to fall out of one the many messy braids my hair had unconsciously woven itself into while on my journey through time. He runs a hand down my arm and grasps my tightly clenched palm in his own loose one. "Daja... I know I have not been there for you when you were depressed before. You never let me in to comfort you and I am sorry I did not demand you let me back into your consciousness. I knew you were strong enough on your own to handle every attack enemy troops sent at you, but I didn't know you could succumb to attacks you sent at yourself. I wish," here he stoops grimacing and choking back a sob, "that I hadn't left you on the Sunfire by yourself.... I wish we never had argued... but Daja, I don't regret dying. In life, I could only watch you from afar, gently easing you into life once again as a loved individual, even if you didn't know how much you were loved. In death I can take care of you in a way I could have never done, by being there every time you need me. But Daja, now that I have forced my way into you I have realized you have come to terms with my death even if it still pains you sometimes. You don't need me as much as you used to." Here I begin to sob louder gently curling up into a ball on his legs. "You have found the truest form of devotion your soul could after me, and you have begun to accept it... even if I am not that object. You will find that you will come to rely on this form of affection more than you ever needed me when I was alive. With that I want to end our last meeting with these worlds of advice—"trust your heart let fate decide."
I quiet as he says this and reply to his words by saying, "did you make that up?"
He grins at me slyly and replies, "nope. A smart musician named Phil Collins did. Tarzan, good Disney movie. You should watch it."
I laugh at this and smile at Damien. I lunge forward and kiss his lips for a last time. He kisses me back with love he shows with out restrain. I break off the kiss first and say, "I will always have you in my heart, no matter where I go, what I do, what becomes of me, who I befriend, who I.... " I gulp and continue "love..."
"You can say it.... I don't mind."
"Damien, I will never forget you," I reply as I feel the darkness give away to light and I try to fight waking up as long as I can.
"Neither will I, Daja neither will I...." he says raising his flute to his lips, playing a song I have never heard before so I ask him in return,
"What is that?"
"This song is called 'Two Worlds', it is that Tarzan song I told you about before. You know, by Phil Collins. You'll hear it until I leave you again.... Seeya later, hopefully much later, Daja."
I step from darkness into the light, inhabiting my body once again feeling wide awake as I see the sunlight stream into this cave and hearing "wake up she's awake again" echo off the walls into my ears. Where the hell am I, this is not the same place I left when I fell into my coma. What happened me?
Satorisama with her two dragons: Hope you liked it! Review, Review, Review!!! Next chapter out soon!
