Disclaimer: Escaflowne, and any idea or concept affiliated with it ,does not belong to me.
"Magnolia Scents"
A cold breeze ruffled the leaves and grass on the icy moist floor of the green hill. The grass felt cold and lonely, but at the same time alive and refreshing, waking a wandering girl up to the dawning world around her as the sun bathed the city beneath in matted shades of pelican pink and mandarin orange. Hitomi breathed in the pungent breeze, closing her eyes and taking in the unbiased feel of everything around her. How good the world smelled to her. How warm the sun felt on her ivory skin. How fresh the grass was beneath her delicate feet.
Closing her eyes even tighter she took another breath and started to slowly carry her pink feet across the wet, cold grass. One step after another. Further and Further on. Stop. Just as quickly as she had started her feet came to rest. She slowly opened her eyes and looked directly into the blue, white and yellow spots of the sun. Releasing the breath she was holding, she opened her arms and took one last final step. Her feet felt the nothingness of cold, rushing air, trying desperately to find hold upon the breeze. Wind upon wind, breeze over breeze. And suddenly, there was nothing- except darkness.
Just as a warm lulling blanket descended on her mind, a light violently knocked on her eyelids, mercilessly pulling her mind from the darkness that surrounded her. Gradually, with great effort and care, Hitomi's thick black eyelashes struggled to pull the pale eyelids up towards the source of light. Barely succeeding, they struggled until a beam of light touched her eyes. With the same intensity as the light had replaced the blissful darkness, the undeniable fact hit her. She was alive. Alive. Breathing. Thinking. Why did the hungry, roaring waves not eat her body? How could she be lying here? Here? HERE? Where on this earth was here? Where was she? As far as she could remember, there was no grass at the bottom of that hill. Only gray, sharp spears of rocks and great hungry waves, which patiently waited for their next meal.
Knowing that speculations did not help her at all, she made a quick decision, eager for the rapidly swirling thoughts in her head to die away. Die…what an ironic thought.
In one graceful movement Hitomi popped on her feet, her panicked curiosity giving her the unexpected strength.
"Ok…I am standing. Wait! I am STANDING! Standing! Standing!…H… How?"
Slowly she opened her eyes, bringing her long, shaking fingers to the back of her head, running it through the straight hazel strands. She was expecting to feel a ruby, warm sticky substance, but as she held her shaking hands to her face, they were as pale as ever.
"No…No blood?…How?" It was then Hitomi truly looked around her.
This was impossible, unrealistic and plainly ridiculous. She could not be here. She absolutely should not be here and there was no way she could explain how she had woken up, uninjured and most unfortunate of all, absolutely alive, in a forest.
"I…I felt the wind. I felt myself falling, the gravity mercifully sucking me down. I felt it. It was real." But so is this. So is this…
"How?" she whispered again, her voice rapidly faltering.
"I mean, I could have landed on a piece of hill further down" she began again with little strength, as she sat down on the dried, parched grass.
"Someone could have found me and just left me here to be found in turn…".
No, that made no sense. There were no thick, dim forests with long slender trees and thick leathery leaves around that hill.
None at all.
Not even a park. Not even trees like these. Hitomi raised her green eyes towards the sky in wonder, eyeing the looming trees from the dry ground with great discomfort. "I have never seen trees like these" she murmured alarmed. Her waking up in this forest was too strange for her comfort, too unrealistic for her liking and too eerie to be true.
"And yet it is…yet it is."
Too confused and disoriented to ask any more questions and too weak and tired to try to ask them, she lay her form down on the ground, resting her head on the spiky grass.
She was waiting now.
Death had strangely refused her, yet it seemes that life has denied her too. Lying in between existence and nothingness, she looked up towards the trees waiting for the answer to fall down-just as she had.
Hi Everyone. Thank you very much for reading this.
If anyone has been wondering...Of course, the story line will progress much faster with the next chapters. Naturally, any story needs background and a steady accumlation of tension to make it interesting.
So...
PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
I really appriciate ideas, corrections, suggestion or anything else that comes to your mind.
Thanks.
