whiteshade of blackness 'gaku may 23, 2006
Disclaimer : G-boys NOT Saru's...story n concept, though...hehehh
3 rectrix
It had been a very exhausting and depressing long week for everyone aquainted to the small dying boy. Howard and some of the Charms had been simultaneously trying to stabilize the unconscious boy's deteriorated body for the first few days, while the rejection from within the boy had taken the toll on either of them also. It was like fighting the tug of war which lead to loss of either parties. For some improvements there were always some contradictions followed that noone knew if it was amended or worsen his state.
On the fifth day, the boy had awaken somewhat. Deia was always at his side days and nights, much to everyone's corcerns, especially the Lord, there was something that his Spell detected between them, some sort of connection, but he couldn't place it. The boy had been better looking to some degrees, and he tried muttering something unintelligible to her. He'd leaned towards Deia's hand stroking his face for a few blissed moments when suddenly his body shaken convulsively and blood started leaking from his nose. She screamed for help in waves of Harmony to the Charms and held his quaking body, while the seizures got worsen and he spewed out blood all over them both. When Howard and the others came, she was chanting "...be safe...be safe..." over and over, and distractedly refused to let go the small body she held like a lifeline, they couldn't even pry her off of him. They were pressed to stabilize the boy with Deia holding him, but somehow the maneuver worked better to synchronize the Harmony from the many Charms. When the boy had colapsed to unconscious sleep once again, Deia had fallen to his side, asleep, exhausted bodyly and mentally. Her right hand draped over the boy's craft-plate in a possessive gesture. Lyea came some moments later after the ordeal passed from the underground library, trying to search something from the ancestor's chambers and literatures about the circumstances. She knew heartily that there's something going on between the boy and her dearest little sister...or not-sister. They had slept for two days in that position, while Deia woke up on the seventh morning asking sleepily for something to eat with grumbling stomach.
After almost a month of healing and mending and Harmonizing, the boy had been conscious enough for the most times of a day. They never encountered the boy's elemental powers, but the craft-plate's power somehow rejected their Harmony at some levels, as if it has the mind and apprehension of its own towards the Charms. Howard and a few other Charms once had been thrown to the walls by its violent rejection, when they tried to Harmonize the boy without Deia's presence due to some circumstances. Nothing too radical, Howard said, they're just cold to the core and had to have a boiling bath for a couple of days –not that they were going to bath together, of course; that had brought a small laughter from the worried girl. Eitherway, they'd adapted to similar incidents from Deia's childhood when she couldn't control her Harmony, much to her guilt of the memory.
The Charms couldn't examine the boy's internal injuries, that what had depressed Howard the most, first the rejection from the craft-plate, and second was some blockage from within the boy that contradicted the rejection of the craft-plate. The former he could presumed why, but the later was bothering him and others greatly, including the Lord and Odin. It was something like Deia had described the first time, Fairs' but not of Fairs. Something they've never known of, and Odin was the one most anxious about the fact. His military educations had taught him to recon things before encountering them, the not-knowing of the unfamiliarity and the incapability to investigate it was making him agitated.
The boy seemed to want to have some real food today, anything other than more Harmony. Everyone who took care of him knew he had contradictions with it, while usually the Charms' Harmony could heal a dying person in only a few Harmonizing episodes.
Deia fed him some broth and fruit puree. His condition had improved greatly after that day. He could eat more solid food, and most of the bandages could be removed from his healing outer-wounds, and he could stand and walked a short distance on his own. They dressed him in a white tunic long enough to reach the floor that Deia thought it's cute, utterly unbearably cute. And they think it's just about time that she'd dressed him with anything she could think of.
The boy showed his wild side in some or more ways. He used to sniff at people before letting them near him or lick their hand once before letting them touch him, Howard said it was his way of knowing other's intentions and acts, much as their charms worked. He never said anything other than hissing to strangers and krrrrrrrrck-ing sound from his throat in acknowledgment of Deia's presence, someday she expected to hear may be purring sound developed from that krrrrck-ing.
His hair was, of the color of outsider-wood as Odin's words, brown and messy sticking to every directions. And he seemed to be interested in Deia's hair, he usually played and sniffed at it for hours but she didn't seem to mind, like she would at any other people, besides Lyea who used to comb and braid it for her. Instead, the behaviour seemed to boost her confidence to pamper the smaller boy. Howard swore she's going to spoil him rotten sooner or later.
On the seventh week, the Lord encountered Deia after her and Lyea's tutorial session with Howard. Now that the boy, -Prussian as she called him, while behind her back people still called him the Beast- was getting almost recovered completely, she could continue her lessons again every a few hours a day. The Lord asked her to have him moved to the room adjacent to her chamber rather than occupying the same room and bed, he didn't say it outright but he'd heard some servants talking about it.
Deia refused, of course "...He's like a little brother to me, Father. Even if to most people I act as if I treat him like a pet..! You know I know he's not one!"
After somemore reasoning and coaxing, the little girl still adamantly refused, then the irritated Lord said the one piercing word to her. "Deia..! He's a boy...!"
Deia became livid at hearing that, using the telephatic Charms only directed for his Spell to catch Deia screamed in fury. "And so AM I ..!" (1)
The Lord frozen and widened his eyes as if had been slapped at the face. His face redddened in anger glaring at his little girl, who glowered back at him with leveled rage in indignant pose, the small hands clutched at either sides of the white dress in balled tight fists.
After some times of glaring, the Lord hissed in low tone, trying to ease his anger. "...Deia...!"
Hearing her name, Deia let loose the balled fists, and slackened her angry scowl to stony calm mask. She dropped her gaze to the floor after a while, and after a minute she gave a curtsey to the Lord and turn to leave without a word.
The Lord watched her back until she's gone from sight by the intersection of the coridors. He hit the wall fuming, but didn't manage to calm himself. Lyea who had been watching the affair a few meters behind, laid a soft hand to her father's arm with a tender smile on her face. The Lord let out an explosive sigh, then looked down at his daughter's face, who only gave him a bigger smile. It worked better than any comforting words at the time.
"...I never had a son, Lyea..." his voice was barely a whisper when he spoke to her. She just put her father's hand at her cheek and covered it there with her smaller hand, and shook her head slowly with a sad appologetic smile.
He brushed her cheek with his thumb for a while. "Never had one...!" He said a little firmer, dropped his hand from her face, and leave, as always if this kind affair should occur, to her mother's tomb.
Deia made large steps in seething fury, purposely taking the farthest circling route to her chamber. Walking in the maze-like coridors and stairs of the white-stone Castile was always managed to give her some calm back. But this time it only made her more angrier as she neared the destinated room.
The (late) Lady of Archantra was a kindhearted woman even too much for her own good, she thought. Sometimes she felt remorse at her, sometimes she felt grateful and repentantly abhor herself for ever having remorseful thought of her. But, if only she would have just left her to her own demise 10 years ago, then she wouldn't have felt what she felt right now. Anger, discontent, dejected, envy, and so much more negative feelings that she couldn't feel free to express. No, she had to be sunny and cheerful and make people call her The Light of Archantra all the time...!
'...Boys don't cry..! ...Boys don't cry...!' Deia chanted in her heart to calm herself down, only feeling much worse by the sentence every time it's repeated.
She yanked open the door and banged it close in a very rude manner. Prussian was crouching at the corner near the window, and jumped in surprise at her sudden and rude appearance.
She practically ignored him and threw herself on the bed, and stayed there unmoving for a very long time.
Prussian krrrrrrck-ed at her a few times, not getting any response he usually had, not even a glance. He quietly watch her from where he crouched, waiting for anything. Sometime later, Deia's right hand caught something soft under the pillow Prussian usually slept on. She slowly pulled it out and looked at it. It was a long white feather. She studied it for a while, noting there was a speckle of dried blood at the tip of the feather's stem. She frowned. Her anger have not dissipated still, but her curiousity had been piqued.
"...What's this, Pru...!" she asked in a low voice that known only by herself. Prussian pricked a little at hearing the difference of the voice he usually heard from Deia.
Deia flipped the pillow roughly, but didn't find anything else under Prussian's pillow. Her frown deepened, and she snatched her own pillow violently it flown to the floor. Under it she found many white feathers, mostly long feathers, the rectrices of birds she recognized by the width of the feathers. They were of many sizes, must be from many sources, Deia noted. They had small specks of dried blood on each of its stem and some of them still had fresher ones.
"...What's this, Prussian...!" Deia asked again in low annoyed tone that Prussian sagged in his crouching position upon hearing the anger that barely hidden in her voice. His wild prussian eyes searched her demeanor in waryness.
Had he made mistakes? Had he made the violet-eyed human angry at him? Didn't the violet-eyed human pleased with the gifts he put under the human's pillow?(2) His small fingers clenched frantically in nervousness under his too long tunic sleeves.
Was the human going to reject him now..? Or worse, hurt him for punishments or even kill him, like the other humans had tried..? What should he do? Be still or flee? Or should he say something..? Purring, may be...he'd heard the violet-eyed human said something about it once, he never heard it but he guessed he could try now to do what the human had described as cat's sound of contentment, had heard the human mimicked it with tongue-sound, although he never felt content before he'd seen cats before... he'd tried to do it once when the violet-eyed human stroked his hair to pet him when he's still in bad condition, but he only managed to choked a little and krrrrrck-ed again.
He could do it now, he thought, it will pleased the violet-eyed human and he won't be rejected again. He took a deep breath and tried to compromise his throat to prepare it to...
"PRUSSIAN...!" the sudden exclamation slumped him to the wall in surprise. The violet eyes boiled in anger bore at his, and his breath hitched in his throat. What should he do? What should he do? His eyes searched Deia's in panic.
"Did you...Preyed on birds outside of my chambers..." Deia spoke in a deliberatly slow threatening voice and moved toward him, towering his slumped posture on the floor. "...And put the feathers under MY pillow...!" Now that she thought of it, she didn't aware of the sounds of bird's chirping outside her chamber that had lessened more and more everyday.
They were to chase away your nightmares...! The rectrices... Prussian thought frantically, knowing the violet-eyed human was undeniably outraged at him. He sagged deeper on his spot.
"...And I thought I had you safe in MY chamber, secured you and protected you from the harms outside with MY charms, ...and you dare preyed on the birds outside MY ballcony, outside MY CHARMS... WITHOUT MY CONSENT..!" Deia hissed and raised her voice she practically exploded the last words in fury. Her posture was rigid and dark auras swirled around her body, her shadow casted on the white floor from the light streaming down the window darkened dramatically. The amethyst-violet eyes burnt to black in raging darkness..
Danger...! The boy's mind screamed in fright, his craft-plate in his chest burned with unbearable cold and his breaths stung his insides in agonizing pains.
With eyes wide with fear, the boy watched Deia's right hand lifted toward him with the blackness writhed around it, and threw the thing he held under his long tunic sleeve at her face, and jumped through the window and to the ground four storeys down. There was a loud crashing sound followed with the sound of bursting electrical surge as the small boy plunged through the chamber-Spell surrounding Deia's chamber. The electrical waves still rippled on the Air's surface from where the boy's body had took fled, Deia stared at the spot with narrowed black-furied eyes. The wind around her swirling like small-tornado and scattered the chamber to chaos, the electrical surge roaring on the Air's surface like stormy water tides.
...After quite sometimes, the wind ceased, the tidal waves of the Air surrounding the chamber ebbed, things that caught in the swirling tornado dropped to the floor circling the spot where Deia stood still like a frozen statue with freezing calmness.
When the waves calmed to nothing, the breeze from outside blew again passed the barier of the chamber-Spell. It caressed Deia's frozen pose with warm early-summer air, the multy-colored light(3) from outside the window glass casted multy-colored light refractions on the floor, as if trying to dissipate the blackness of Deia's shadow.
Cold violet eyes flicked down on a blackened charcoal near her feet, from where the burnt smell wafted in the breeze, thin smoke still drifted from the thing, a few small white feathers scattered around it. It was a bird Prussian had thrown at her, burnt by her black auras before it could hit her body physically. Deia stared long at the combusted object. The blackened thing didn't get to scattered by the wind because it was in the inside circle of the small tornado's wrath.
But the feathers from her bed were scattered everywhere around her. Some of them in front of her were blown by the breeze from the open window, and caressed her feet gently. Deia didn't have to spread out her Harmony so her charms could read what had happened, she knew her Prussian had killed the birds outside the chamber and ate them to hide the bird's remains, she knew her Prussian had high pain-tolerance and had gained enough strength to withstand the surge of electrical waves from the chamber-Spell, she knew what the feathers had meant...they were gifts from her Prussian to chase away her nightmares he knew she had when one night he 'd woken up by her soft sobs and writhings in the claws of nightmare exactly 9 nights ago, and the next day he'd started to preyed on birds for their rectrices, ignoring the stinging of the chamber-Spell... for her...
He'd had breathing difficulty after that first bird-hunt through the chamber-Spell, and his insides had felt like incinerated, he'd remorsefully killed the bird with one snap of its neck, and reluctantly ate it after he took its rectrices and put them under her pillow, mindful of the blood on his small hands. He felt very bad after that, vomited dry heaves and gagged for hours, his whole body aching like it's on fire. When Deia came to pet him he'd tried a small krrrck and had to swallow hard the urge to gag. Deia remembered he'd been quiet and less responsive that day, and she didn't use her Charms to find out why.
Now, even that she knew of what had really happened, she didn't feel any remorse nor grateful... She only felt empty, and the void of blackness eating her heart and soul from the inside, swallowed all feelings of anger and all else and left her bereft. She just stood there and stared at the charcoaled bird sometimes longer.
Lyea found two patrol-guards knocking at the black-wooden doors, trying to coax the occupant to open the doors.
"What's wrong..?" she asked them softly as to not startle them. The guards gave her nods of respect, and told her that they heard loud sounds from her sister's chamber.
Lyea knew sometimes when Deia had difficulty to control her emotions she would lash out at her surroundings, in someplace alone and secluded from others. She knew too that after the arguments with their father Deia would be in a very bad tempers, but she had never lashed them out in her room. More over, Deia had Prussian in there now. The possibility didn't give her easy minds.
"I'll take care of it..." she dismissed the guards, who gave her hesitated stares for a while, and nodded and leave, thinking that if ever there was danger then the Charms would have been there before them in the first place.
"Deia,...open the door, please" she called softly. No answer.
"...Dearest...please let me in..." she called firmer. Still nothing.
When Lyea lifted her hand going to pound on the only black-wooden doors in the Castile, the said doors clicked open a slit. She waited a moment before pushing the doors open. The chaotic view of the chamber greeted her entrance. Fast assessment gave her no sight of the small boy, only Deia who stood still near the far window with her back at Lyea.
She carefully stepped between the scattered things toward her sister's frozen posture. "What happened..?" she asked Deia quietly. No response. After a few minutes of waiting patiently, Lyea touched a few strands of Deia's hair that had come loose of its braid, and tucked it behind her ear. She noted that the face masked in frozen calmness in front of hers was not of her sister's... it was the face of the real person under the mask of Deia.
Lyea stroked the frozen face softly with both hands, noting that she still had no response, not even a flicker of acknowlegdment. She gazed deeply in the cold violet eyes, and kissed the forehead several times, patiently waited for any reaction. She knew the person in front of her would never hurt her.
The cold violet eyes drooped a little, and Lyea knew she'd been acknowledged. "Dearest...you alright? What happened?" she whispered softly.
The face in her hands dropped the gaze to the corner where Prussian was crouching before. A brief longing flickered in the cold amethysts, then gone.
"Where's Prussian...?" Lyea whispered again, knowing the small boy wouldn't be anywhere in the vicinity such as under the bed. "...Duo...!" her voice barely a whisper, but the lips of the cold mask in her hands twitched a little at the name.
Ever so slowly those lips opened, and froze again with no sound nor movement. After a long moment a weak whisper heard "...I... lashed out..." Lyea's corcerned gaze turned to deep worry.
"...I lashed out...He just wanted to ... give me amulets to chase away my nightmares...!" the slightly deeper voice from Deia's said in much firmer tone. (4) The amethyst eyes searched Lyea's slowly, a tinge of panic flashed in them.
"Shhh... We'll find him. Was he hurt...?"
'Duo' swallowed hard, then gave Lyea a confused gaze "...I... don't know...! ... I was... I yelled.. and he threw a dead bird at me..." -at least I thought it was already dead-
Lyea's eyes momentarily flicked to the black charcoal under their feet. "It's okay, he jumped off of the balcony, didn't he...?" A miniature nod. "...right.., we'll find him before anything happens..!" Lyea pulled the unresponsive hand toward the balcony.
But the owner only stood there unmoving, and gave a small almost unaudible whimper. "Come on, Dearest...Boys don't cry! Let's go and find YOUR Prussian back...!" Lyea whispered soothingly.
The younger child submissively let Lyea pulled the hand and led them through the outside corridors and stairs of the white-stone Castile and on to the turf of the Castile's yard.
Note:
(1) since Deia had admitted that 'she' was a BOY, from then on Deia's /she/ or /her/ will be set in italic. Why Saru didn't just wrote it straight as /he? Well, 'Deia' is still in her guise. WHEN she become 'he' Saru'll write as /he/ or /him/
(2) it's Prussian's thoughts (you know who he really is, right?) He didn't think in words and that's why it'll be written in 3rd person's view still/
(3) Archantra doesn't have original sun-shine, the real sunshine infiltrates the Stratus, which diffused the sunshine from the outside to multi-colored fragments of lights, almost like rainbow's colors or aurora. It too will be expalined more with the story.
(4) Deia -Duo- was actually a boy, but since he's still a 10yrs old boy Saru don't think the difference of "Deia's" and "Duo's" voice could be that significant yet. May be until 2-3 years more...? Huh...! Saru've never been a boy so Saru don't know about it precisely... - -;;