I'd like to dedicate this chapter to my sister, for her unwavering support :)
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Under the stars, Catherine was dancing to a gypsy melody with the two girls that performed the closing trapeze act.
Sitting by the edge of the bonfire light and the breathing darkness, Trowa stitched up the holes in his favorite socks, and watched them as the girls twirled and clapped, and gradually abducted other observing members of the troupe to make them join in their lively dance.
His time to join them came right after the fire breather's. Catherine stretched her arms towards him, her feet still moving to the beat, her hips swaying distractedly.
'Come on in, Trowa!' she said merrily, taking his hands in her hands, making him stand up; and he ignored her rosy cheeks and her heaving chest in favor of questioning his being able to keep the pace up.
'I doubt I'm good at this,' he told her, 'but I'll join you, nonetheless. Give me a second, though.'
Soon, he was twirling around the bonfire too, his dancing more of a gentle, in-compass sway, but his hands expertly rattled a borrowed tambourine, the tin zils ringing through the night like a myriad silver bells.
From afar, they must have looked like a choreography of fireflies- gypsy fireflies.
Beer bottles were merrily passed from hand to hand (circus-style, with flips and flourishes), ownerless- as per custom, each took a swig and passed it on. At some point, and possibly slightly under the influence, Catherine had swung an arm over his shoulders and declared: 'Trowa, brother dearest. I'll have you know I'm not marrying until I meet the guy that can play the tambourine half as well as you do!'
The dancers- almost everyone in the troupe, by then- roared with laughter, and even Trowa had allowed himself a measured, fond chuckle.
However, he discreetly pulled out of the crowd some minutes later, to put the tambourine to rest on a stool.
The Ringmaster noticed his action: 'Indeed, Trowa, fear their womanly wiles!' he boomed, 'Wise to do that, kid, before you end up seducing the whole of my troupe! Fat good would that be!' he'd pronounced loudly, yet amicably, cheeks red-tinged with exhaustion and beer.
Embarrassment was an emotion rather foreign to Trowa, and he decided that night that it could remain that way, for all he cared.
So, he ignored the Ringmaster and his qualms about dancing, and he joined them, and danced with them until the bonfire was embers, and everyone agreed it was good to call it a night.
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There was a special place in Trowa's heart where he exclusively stored memories like that one: moments of belonging to something beyond him.
Family, he guessed.
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That morning- the morning of his departure from the cottage and from Gorgova- he reveled in the tingling warmth that came with the thought of home.
At peace with himself, he began to brew the coffee, and laid everything out to make himself some scrambled eggs.
He didn't usually cook anything for breakfast, but the day ahead of him would be a long one. He knew very well how wearisome travelling by motorcycle could get, especially when the roads crossed uneven ground.
A fleeting image of something he'd dreamt the night before caught him by surprise as he idly stirred the eggs in the frying pan: He'd sat on a high throne, with a sword in his hand and a long, red cape. Possibly also a crown on his head. He'd heard the wind cry behind him, and he'd seen it beat, incessantly, the treetops of the great, dark forest that spread before him. He'd seen it pick up his cape, and make it flitter like a battle banner.
He stood up, under the shadow of the looming mountains, and over his head he'd seen the sun and the moon chase one another until it was neither day nor night.
He'd heard- yet not seen- the battle calls, the screams, the clashing of metal against metal. It grew louder, and louder, until he realized it was the sound of the wind.
'Stop!' he shouted, desperately.
But at the same time that the wind died out, he woke up.
At the moment, there had been no wind outside, though he remembered hearing a distant flutter, not unlike a flag. But it had been early and he'd been sleepy and hungry, and the dream had faded into nothing.
It left him with a bad aftertaste, although he didn't know what he'd seen in the scrambled eggs that could have possibly triggered that image of the dream, especially when he'd been reliving the dear memory of his circus people scarce seconds before.
Silently as was his fashion, he poured himself a cup of coffee with a pensive look on his face.
As he let his scrambled eggs slide from the pan onto a ceramic dish, the last thought he dedicated to the unsettling dream was that it felt a lot like the tarot card he'd drawn from Radu's deck the day before, the Emperor- only that, in his dream, he'd been the one sitting on the throne.
He shrugged, more concerned about his breakfast going cold than about the meaning of dreams (he'd never been too curious about it, anyway), and found a place on the table where he could comfortably set the dish and the cup, and start planning for the day ahead.
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As he tinkered around with some last-minute checkups, Trowa felt he was quite pleased with his new bike. At some point, it had been a Japanese off-road bike, probably a Suzuki, but its subsequent owners had done some adjustments of their own, and it looked like a very unique, very passable kind of long-distance tourer. Trowa was very knowledgeable when it came to any means of transport- how to pick them, how to fix them, and, (what had proved to be most important during his life), how to steal them.
(…Still, he'd bought this one. After so many years in Catherine's company, her voice would have taken over his conscience, and he'd never have heard the end of it if he'd done otherwise.)
He was rather proud of himself for having chosen this one bike. He'd liked it for its ample holding compartment under the seat, where he could easily store the- he refused to let his mind regard them as ridiculous- 17 bottles of tzuica he'd bought to honor those who had possibly been his first fallen comrades. He'd also been partial to the straight, no-nonsense (yet heated!) grip, and the reliable front fender. But, without a doubt, what he liked the most about it were the high wheels, undoubtedly meant for cross-country rallies and stunts. They would not, maybe, be ideal for a journey as long as the one he meant to undertake, but he found that they still suited him immensely.
On heavy wheels, he'd have felt significantly less acrobatic.
It was painted white. He liked that as well, because otherwise it might have reminded him a bit too much of the overall design of Heavyarms (narrow, taut, without a single idle piece of equipment to add useless weight or hinder its mobility).
They say dogs look like their owners, Trowa thought, maybe that's also true of motorcycles. And mobile suits. He shrugged.
The wind that struggled to pick up the dampened dry leaves on the floor flustered Trowa's hair into a sloppy disarray. His fingers combed some stray locks out of his face, and they lingered in place for a while until another gust of wind tousled them again.
(He'd cut his hair shorter and shorter along the years, but never short enough to withstand the wind. He'd always been fine with his youthful fringe, and he'd never felt too pressed to get rid of it- not completely, at least. It gave him a grounded sense of identity that he profoundly appreciated. For someone who had been used to assuming varied identities- even when he was performing- it was reassuring to be able to look at himself in the mirror, at the end of the day, and have a constantly familiar face staring back at him.
… and the feeling held, even after years of civilian life.)
After oiling a particularly delicate set of chains that had looked a bit too dry to his liking, Trowa deemed himself satisfied with the bike's check-up, and he went back inside for a last-minute cup of coffee.
Without haste, he walked around the cottage, and made sure that he'd left everything he'd used clean and in the place where he'd found it.
He also scribbled a quick note, which he left on the kitchen table. It read:
Dear Hostess:
in the summer, when you come down here, I hope that you find everything as you'd left it. You will notice a new inhabitant in your garden. I hope you like the roses- I picked them because their color made me think of you. Don't make much of it, though- as I've said before, I will never be able to repay the kindness you have done to me.
May we meet again,
Trei.
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A slight pang of nostalgia. That's what he felt when, sitting on the bike, he looked over his shoulder to have a last look at the cottage where his initial stormy thoughts had slowly become calm again.
The last thing he saw before he drove away was the alligator statue, once again the guardian of the keys.
On his way out of town, he stopped by a supply store and got himself a sleek, reliable helmet, and a pair of thick biker gloves. Flexing his fingers inside them, putting the helmet on, turning the key in the ignition and setting his feet on the footrests, he felt 17 and a Preventer all over again for a moment.
But then the engine roared into life and he started for the highway; and he was himself again- 28 and in the middle of nowhere, drifting, and in a process of silent revolution against himself.
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He spent an unascertainable time in solitary driving through sleepy country roads, where the scent of the lush grass was all around him, and countless flocks of water fowl flew orderly overhead.
He refueled in Tulcea, and bought something to eat on the road and two liters of water. And, on second thought, he bought a large, colorful road map of the country, making sure all minor roads and tracks were marked in a way that pleased his practical side.
He rode on.
A couple of hours later, he got quite lost trying to circumvent the suburbs of Brăila, eventually taking a wrong turn and ending up having to patiently wait out many red traffic lights in the inner city.
In the end, he felt it'd been worth it, because he'd had the chance of driving around the old city center; and, although the cobbled streets had killed his back, he'd enjoyed watching the aged stone buildings, and basking in the timeless feeling of the remaining medieval architecture. Seeing that there were still beautiful, ancient places that had survived the wars made him happy. He thought that, at some point in history, there had been soldiers fighting in those streets, defending the same buildings he now drove past. That, probably, they'd also thought they were fair, and thus worth protecting.
When he finally found the way out of Brăila, he was very grateful to those hypothetical soldiers- and he hardly needed a compass to know he was driving to the nor-nor-west.
The highway made for a pleasant ride, and he soon found himself driving through a bucolic landscape of alternating wooded hills and farmland. There was a pleasant chill in the air as he cut through it at an average of 100 km/h: pretty fast for a bike, though not as fast as he knew he could push the engine. Still, he was in no hurry.
Trowa arrived in Tecuci at high noon, where he refueled again and made a half-an-hour pause to stretch, do a couple of handstands (one on the bike's seat, to entertain a passing old lady, who clapped in delight and cheered in Romanian), and buy himself a warm cup of coffee.
Driving out of the city, he drank the coffee leaning against the bike, looking at the dreamy landscape, mind almost completely blank but for his appreciation of the drowsy-looking clouds.
From Tecuci onwards, the road improved considerably, and he estimated he'd be covering in few hours a greater distance than he had anticipated. The number of cars and trucks increased significantly, and he was forced to divert his attention from the landscape, and be more alert towards the road. He soon made a game out of overtaking any car driving at less than 80 km/h.
The days were getting shorter, from what he could see, and the sun began to lower what felt maybe too soon to his liking. It set to his left, behind the blue mountains that started looking closer and closer the more he drove north-westwards.
After the colors that bloomed with the late-fall sunset, came the sudden tranquility of twilight; and, eventually, night.
The highway was built along the valley of the river Siret, and, in the darkness, the surrounding mountains appeared to Trowa like the gigantic walls of an enormous labyrinth.
He was an enthusiastic night-driver. He felt the thrill in his bones of cutting like a hawk through the black air, chasing after the rear-lights of the cars ahead of him. It was things like those that made him love the Earth so much.
Earth, where the darkness was alive and the air betrayed the surrounding plant life. Where, although you sped ahead indefinitely, you did not take flight and you did not fall off the sphere of artificial gravity.
Countless thoughts flickered past him like the traffic lights around him, and he couldn't find it in him to feel tired.
At about 10 pm he was pulling into the garage of a small inn in the city of Roman. His legs welcomed the ground under his feet, and he arched his back, finally letting out a yawn.
Damn, he felt so alive right then!
Along the ride, he'd drank the whole two liters he'd bought earlier, and he was dying to get a drink, some food, and go to bed. He was lucky enough that the inn was still serving food, and he was treated to homemade Romanian dishes that seemed to him right about the best he'd ever had.
And then, he went to bed, and was dead to the world until the following morning.
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He woke up with a slight back-ache, but it was only because he'd covered about 400 km the day before, and he'd not ridden a bike in a long while.
The coffee they served in the inn was strong and black. Absentmindedly stirring some sugar into his cup, he inspected his map for the best road he could take that day. Wherever he chose to go, directly westwards, or north, and then westwards, he would have to brave steep mountain passes where he didn't know if the wheels would hold. He was lucky that it was not yet winter and that there was no ice on the roads yet, but he doubted he wanted to take his chances.
By nature, he was a cautious man, and he spent a while mentally weighing his chances. It would be strategic to set his immediate aim in the city of Cluj Napoca. With that in mind, if he kept it simple, he seemed to have two options: setting a more direct course through minor roads, or making an important detour but sticking to the well-kept highways.
He smiled privately at that being his main concern at the moment.
In the end, he decided to follow the innkeeper's advice, and take the roads that wound through the mountains. He was told that the first city he'd reach, Piatra Neamț, was immensely beautiful and absolutely worth seeing. He figured that, given that he was there, he might as well check it out.
By 10.00 am he'd paid for the night, and the food, and he was already on his way; relishing the clear morning air and the mild sunshine.
There was hardly anyone on the road, which was straight and easy, and it felt to him that no sooner had he set out that he was spotting the urban layout in the distance. True to the innkeeper's word, the city was worth seeing. Like the day before, he found himself wandering the medieval streets (though this time it was by his own will, and not because he'd gotten helplessly lost…), and admiring the timeless feeling of the stone walls and the forested mountains in the distance.
He was leaving the city behind and entering the mountainous part of the road when he decided to stop and look at the city from above. He saw it was built by the shore of a great lake, sheltered by the mountains and the forest.
He was rather new to this landscape-awareness and sightseeing business, but he guessed that it was because, before, he'd hardly had time to do it. And yet, as he was of a contemplative nature, it seemed to come naturally to him.
Smiling softly, he snapped a picture of the view, and sent it to Catherine.
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Author's Note:
I hope I'm not boring you guys with Trowa's lonely travelling ;) Take it as an in-depth character study that will end very soon, when the other characters start showing up!
(I'm writing this with an atlas and a very, very detailed map :D)
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I like the word 'fair'. It makes me think of the Lord of the Rings :)
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I got my hands on a character CD (in Japanese, sadly) where the 5 pilots record someone a message- a 'morning call', 'encouraging call' and a couple other sketches. I had a lot of fun with it, especially Trowa's "morning call". He's like: "…'morning". And the guys tell him, "dude, be more expressive!". And he goes something like: "… 'morning. You should get up. As you see, it's the morning, there's birds singing outside and the sun is shining. However, I cannot make you wake up if you don't want to. Ultimately, it is your choice. Bye."
Hilarious.
If you want the file, write me and we'll figure something out!
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Also: I'd like to read your interpretation of Trowa's dream! Anyone out there who ventures? :)