I have absolutely nothing of interest to say. I don't own Escaflowne. (Now, Scherazade...nope, don't own it either. Actually, I can't even drive and really should be able to at my age).

Chapter Two...which continues the three-different-times thingie...

Ghosts, chapter 2

The market was especially busy that afternoon, a trading convoy from Freid having recently arrived to barter wares with the shops of Palas. The young man ducked his head out of sight automatically at the sight of anyone with a bald head and orange robes; his two female companions mocked him mercilessly for the reaction. The younger of the two failed to grasp the joke--even after several months of relatively normal existence, she failed to grasp most things--but she laughed anyway, handing him one of the scarves she'd bought for adorning her own short ash-blond hair as a disguise. He accepted the gaudy fabric but did not put it on, sadness tugging at the corners of his blue-violet eyes as he observed her carefree smile. Try as he might, he could detect no traces of the one he wished for within that face. And the other man he wanted to find was nowhere to be seen either.

A flower vendor accosted them on the street; the older woman bought a red rose for the younger at her insistence but would not purchase any more, even to adorn the table or to take home to the man awaiting them there. Shrugging the slight off, the girl flitted away to ogle jewelry she would never on her pocket allowance be able to afford, leaving the couple alone with their thoughts for a moment.

"So he's not here?" the woman asked her companion, who shook his head. "The merchant you're looking for?"

"I didn't really expect him to be. It's probably just as well. What would I say that wouldn't sound idiotic or ingratiating?"

"'Thank you' is usually appreciated by most people," she chided gently, tugging the scarf out of his pocket and--despite his protests--tying it around his head. Turning, the girl saw her friend wearing her present to him and beamed, twirling her rose in her fingers.

The young woman smiled and let herself be pulled by the girl over to the jewelry vendor, early spring sunlight glinting off the purple gem she wore suspended from a chain around her forehead. "You see?"

The young man grunted and looked away. Gratitude was hard for him to express, and his companion knew it. In that matter they were akin. But betrayal...each knew all too well how the other responded to that.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The next day, he could walk. Talking was proving to be a bit more difficult.

"Hhhuu ahhh..." Damn. He tried again, swallowing to wet his throat and trying to ignore the pain as his maltreated vocal cords screamed in protest. "Whhho--"

"Dryden's my name. Don't bother with 'sir' or 'lord.' No point in it. Here, use this." The tall, scrappy man pushed a notepad and pen over to the boy's end of the dining table. "I'm guessing you were going for 'who are you', right?"

He nodded, not without a touch of anger. A whole day had passed in which he had been confined to the insufferable bed, yet now that he found his strength was beginning to return he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with it. Part of him screamed to leave immediately, go in search of his comrades regardless of his still-tender injuries; more practical parts of his brain argued that until his health had returned, he remained vulnerable to any hostile forces he might encounter and so was safer in the company of this considerate, if eccentric, man. And hadn't the man sworn to return him to the army himself?...assuming, of course, that he was to be trusted.

Best to cut to the chase, then. Ignoring the shallow bowl of broth the man had given him to eat, the boy instead turned his attention to the notepad, scribbling down the words "What do you want with me?" and shoving it back towards the pad's original owner. Reading the note, the man cracked a grin while sipping at a cup of tea.

"Big words, eh? I understand. You're nervous, a soldier out of his league. All you types can think about is war and enemies, isn't it? Well, I'm not about to attack you or manipulate you for my own ends. I saw you needed a hand and happened to have one to offer." Spreading butter on a piece of bread, he munched noisily but continued speaking; the boy flinched at the indecorum. "As for what I plan on doing with you...if the world's condition will let us, I'll drop you off at the first Zaibach military outpost we find. Asturia's still allied with you?" The boy nodded. "Good. No problems there, then."

"But young master!" A beast-man servant the boy hadn't seen before came scurrying over like the mouse he resembled. "If we're seen dealing with the Empire, it might reflect badly on our relations with other nations, especially after their invasion of Freid! What would happen to our profits? What will your father think?"

"That I'm an irresponsible buffoon who can't keep gold between his fingers, as always," Dryden replied lazily, now finished with his bread and turning his attention to his own bowl of soup. "The old man will never see things my way, and I'll never see them his. You think we haven't made our peace with that? I'm bringing him plenty this trip."

"But not...the prize?" the mouse-man quivered.

"No. She's going where we discussed."

Prize? She? How many abandoned people were on this convoy? Oh, gods, did this Dryden make a career of selling people? Barbaric! The boy gestured for the pad and was given it. Choosing his words carefully, he finally wrote down "So you're a merchant." Best to start small and work towards larger accusations.

The mouse saw the note as it passed from boy to man. "Watch your manners, boy!" he cried, ignoring the amused smirk on his master's face. "You mean you don't recognize the heir of Asturia's foremost merchant and advisor? This is Meiden Fassa's eldest son, the next in line by marriage for the Asturian throne!"

The boy stared. Dryden grinned. The soup spoon the boy had only just picked up clattered to the table. Numbly he tried once again to talk. "Th-the Ahhhhst..."

"I have the same reaction every time I have to introduce myself formally," Dryden admitted conspiratorially. "Don't take it too much to heart. The young lady in question has yet to bestow her consent upon me, and quite frankly I don't give a damn if she does or not. We haven't seen each other in years, anyway. It'll probably come to nothing in the end. So why get all worked up about it? Anyway, enough about me." Turning serious, he crossed his arms before him on the table and leaned forward in his chair a bit. "What happened to you? I didn't know your allegiance until I checked the tag. Where'd you get that armor?"

"Mark of an elite unit. Was a prisoner in Freid. Tried to escape. Failed." He had to cut his sentences short to keep them all on one page, unwilling to look like he was contributing wholeheartedly to the discussion. And there was no way he'd be telling this man about exactly which side had given him the strangle bruises. Trust only went so far, even with a man who might someday be a king.

Dryden, reading the note, nodded and tore off the sheet. "Doesn't seem like Freid's style, though. Strange...very strange...the guy got you from behind?"

He nodded grudgingly, not liking the direction this thought process was going at all. He knows. He knows it wasn't Freid. Now it's only a matter of time...and then he won't take me back to Zaibach. Why would he? No one would accept a dead man back into their army.

"Damn cowardly way to deal. Reminds me too much of trading." Dryden finished his soup. "Well, Miguel, feel free to hobble wherever you like. I haven't got anything to hide, no matter what you might think."

Oh, really? "Then what's the prize you aren't giving your father?" he challenged, shoving the paper over with a broad smirk plastered on his face.

Dryden's eyebrows quirked as he read the missive. "You're a perceptive one, aren't you? I like that!' He laughed loudly. "All right then! Come on. I'll introduce you to Sylphy. Here, need a hand?"

He did, but he wasn't about to admit it. Slowly, stiffly, but with dignity intact, he stood of his own accord and cast a defiant glare at the merchant (who merely regarded him over the tops of his glasses, completely unreadable). Wherever they were going, he would get there himself. He was a Dragonslayer, after all. Shame and weakness on his part would reflect badly on his commander, and he simply could not let that happen.

He began to regret his obstinacy as the sheer enormity of the trading convoy struck him, limping down a long hallway in Dryden's wake and staring wide-eyed at his surroundings. The fortress he'd lived in with the army had been dark and sterile, gloomy and oppressive; this transport seemed comfortable, warm, inviting. Almost like a home. He justified the discrepancy with the fact that Dryden had to make long journeys in his convoy and had the money to afford to travel in style, whereas his fortress was built for military maneuvers and not individual comforts. Yet he probably had spent as much time in there as Dryden did walking these halls...

"Here she is. Be quiet; I don't know if she's up yet." Dryden pushed a door open but stood aside to let the boy enter first. For the second time that day, the soldier goggled.

Sleeping in a tank built into the back wall, green hair wreathing her head and rippling with the water, was a mermaid.

"Wh--whha--hhooww..." he ventured, windpipe still disgruntled at being nearly crushed.

"It's disgusting," Dryden said flatly, and the boy had to turn his head and look at the merchant to see he wasn't referring to the contents of the tank. The man's eyebrows were furrowed over his circular glasses, obstructing his green eyes from view. "Look at her. Beautiful and individual as you or me yet some people think they can treat her like a pet or an artifact. A 'rare find,' she was described to me. They wouldn't have tried to sell a human if they'd caught one!"

At the sound of the man's voice, the girl in the tank blinked sleepily; surprised to see someone accompanying him, she shrank back in fear, eyes wide in her pale face. Stepping slightly forward to compensate for her retreat, the boy's reflection glinted off the glass for a moment, and from what he saw there he couldn't blame the mermaid for backing away. His normally well-kept brown hair hung in odd angles in front of his face; bloodshot eyes stared out wearily from reddish smudges on his face; his throat was mottled with ugly, sneering bruises. He looked like a walking dead man, swathed already in burial robes: the merchant's loose-fitting robes all but obscured his body.

But I'm not dead, he reminded himself, thinking of the purple gem around his neck. I won in the end. He didn't kill me. Trying to smile, he waved hesitantly at the girl behind the glass, not certain how to behave to alleviate her fears. She cowered.

"Easy, easy, Sylphy." Slipping his glasses into a pocket, Dryden slowly approached the tank. "This is Miguel. He got caught in a trap too. See? He's not going to hurt you."

"Hi," he croaked, dusky awkwardness flushing his cheeks. Taking another cautious step forward, he stretched out both hands to show he was unarmed. Curiosity flickered in the mermaid's eyes; her own hands rested lightly on her side of the tank. The boy placed his fingertips across from hers and smiled shyly.

Dryden chuckled. "She likes you."

"Whhaaat--"

"Am I going to do with her? She's going back to the ocean. No one deserves to feel misplaced."

Something clicked in the boy's head. Turning to look at the merchant, he regarded the man with an accusing glare. Dryden cracked a grin at the scowl. "Trust me yet?"

The boy turned his attention back to Sylphy, watching her hair billow with each fluctuation of the water and being scrutinized in turn. Despite the man's insistence that she was no different than a human being, the boy could see how someone would regard the mermaid as a trophy object rather than an individual in her own right.There was an otherworldliness in her bright yet vacant eyes, a streamlined perfection in her form not found in the blockier bodies of humankind, that set her apart in addition to the physical separation of the glass wall. But Dryden regarded her as a person despite the racial and physical divide. Dryden refused to see boundaries between others. To him, the boy was a person; country or military status didn't matter. Was he, Miguel, judging Dryden on his Asturian blood? Or on something else, something less distinguishable? The first thing he'd noticed about the man had been his informality...yet here he himself was, in the same robes with an even more slovenly appearance.

He tapped on the glass; Sylphy laughed, little bubbles rising from her mouth, and tapped back. Dryden sighed happily.

"Like I said, the place is yours until you've recovered. It might be harder to get you back to Zaibach now that the invasion of Freid's been formalized--" when had that happened and why? "--but I swear you'll get back to your unit."

The boy nodded, restyling his hair in the reflection on the glass and making Sylphy giggle even harder. He had no more reservations about his situation, at least currently. Nothing could keep him now from rejoining the Dragonslayers. Not even, it seemed as he surveyed the bruises on his neck, his own "death."

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The red rose was gone, and Rephina refused to think about the possible symbolism of its absence.

When selecting her bouquet in Palas, she had chosen to purchase mainly white roses, preferring them for their novelty over their more vibrant counterparts. Yet one man--heaven forfend, at that time, his fall--defied having even his rose the same color in her eyes. Everything about him demanded that he be set apart, and so she had requested a single red rose be added to the mix, a spot of blood in the snow. Never had it occurred to her that she would need to cast it aloft some day. To find it missing now...

She was being foolish. The rose had fallen out at some point, and she had failed to notice in time to keep it from being swept up by the fortress's maintenance staff. That was all. Best to finish her task and be done with it.

Carefully she selected fourteen flowers, cradled them in her arms gently and glanced wistfully at the now near-empty vase. How quickly the vibrancy faded with depletion. How quiet the fortress felt now. Headquarters had no doubt already been contacted, and replacements would likely soon arrive. Yet who could replace the best of the best? Who but her cousin could sleep in his bunk, sit across from her at mess, laugh at her frenetic polishing of her melef on the off-chance that someone might actually order her into battle? Who else would put up with some useless woman taking up space, wearing a uniform she had not earned with experience but tricks and her uncle's money?

No one, that's who. There was nothing left for her here now. Her tie to the fortress had been severed by the dragon's sword when he cut her friends down. Sighing, she plucked out the scrawniest rose left in the vase and added it to her load. This was war; she had nothing to look forward to but death anyway. If she didn't lament her own loss, who would?

Solemnly she carried her burden to the open balcony overlooking the plains. She didn't know what country the fortress was over at this point, and she didn't particularly care either. Let the natives, whoever they were, wonder about the thorny snow. Once something had left her hands, it was gone as far as she was concerned. Too far gone to be reclaimed...

One by one she commissioned her fellows to Jeture, murmuring their names almost prayerfully as each flower slipped from her fingers and into the clouds, lost to her view forever. "...Viole, Guimel, Dallet..." Had it only been yesterday that, wide-eyed, she'd stood on the bridge with her heart in her throat at thoughts of the glory they no doubt faced? Had it only been that short a time? It seemed like years, and yet nothing.

"...Shesta, Gatty, Kagero..."

Two roses remained of fifteen. One she let go almost carelessly, whispering her own name to the wind and blinking as the breeze whistled through her hair. Blasted wind. It was making her eyes water again...

One rose left. One soldier who she had to let go. Yet her hand would not uncurl from around the stem, despite the pricking of the thorns. It was such a simple motion, really. Ridiculous for it to be taking this long. Just let it go...let it fly.

The wind whipped at her again, more violently this time; she squeezed her eyes shut and flung a hand up to ward off the blast, yet in so doing lost hold of the rose in her other hand. The wind tore it from her palm and carried it away. By the time she realized she'd dropped it, it was already lost.

"Ryuon," she whispered anyway, staring after it and wishing it would somehow reappear, even if only as a speck on her vision. But there was no denying it. The white rose was gone. Her cousin was gone.

A thorn-scratched hand groped blindly for the jewel in her pocket. Should she let that go, too? What right had she to keep it when no others who wore its counterparts existed? It almost deserved a rose of its own.

But the ideals it stood for...did those have to die as well? Her idol had failed her, had led everyone she cared for to the most horrific deaths she could imagine. But did that mean no one could achieve the heights to which she'd aspired and which she had seen, wrongfully, in him?

She turned the violet jewel over in her hand, watched the light reflect off of it. Such a beautiful thing, to have been ripped from such a monster. The man who'd harvested the gem had done so with his bare hands while the dragon still lived, kept the jewel in memory of the event, and had broken it into pieces to give to his men as a symbol to set them apart. None of the others had known the gesture originated not in their commander's mind but in her cousin's; she had related an aphorism to the former man in a moment of supposed intimacy and he had plagiarized the idea shamelessly. "To slay a dragon is to stare down Death and win." Well, they hadn't lived up to that. Not this time.

By all rights, she should have thrown the gem away. But she could not do it, even though staring at it she felt herself twist with sudden revulsion. The only other surviving piece of the jewel was worn around the forehead of the man who had betrayed her, reduced like all his other belongings to an expression of vanity. Could she bear to keep with her any reminder of him after what he'd done?

She had to, she realized, slipping it back into her pocket. If she kept no memento, in time no one would remember the boys who had fallen the previous day. They would be mere names and numbers on a list of casualties, and she would never allow that to happen. She would keep it with her, then, and prove to the world that the ideals they'd stood for had not died as well. Position based on skill, self-sufficiency, taking charge...everything the unit had represented in her mind, she would become.

Yet she could not do it here, in the fortress where their ghosts lingered in every hallway she was accustomed to seeing them in the flesh. Would not do it in the presence of the commander who had failed his men. She had to leave, transfer, go as far away as she could. Let him hear of her prowess this time. Let him learn what it meant to be a pinnacle of mankind. All she'd seen in him, she would become. He would cower in fear before such a person, as he had cowered in the shadow of the dragon. White melefs would haunt his dreams forever. She would make it so.

Turning her back on the railing, silently she strode back towards the bridge to inform the leader of her decision. Replacements for the fallen would arrive sooner or later. She would leave on their transport, enter a real part of the war, fight in actuality. No more seeming, no more pretending. She'd be damned if she let the way she'd gotten into this army hinder her participation. Once she would have scoffed at herself, grinning wryly at the fool who thought all problems could be solved by a sword; now war was all that kept her standing. That fool knew more about existence than the cynic ever could: in the end, the planet's population fought dragons every day. Everyone stared down death and either won or lost.

That wasn't good enough for her. She would become the dragon instead.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

a/n: Next time: Miguel witnesses something he'd rather not aboard Dryden's convoy and Rephina, on her way off the Vione, finally has the promised "cats discussion."