Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard.
Where anything goes.
-//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7
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Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard. Where anything goes. -//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7 |
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Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - A Way with Words, Part VI - "Let go of me this instant!" roared the slick-sounding and unmistakeably foreign loud-mouthed stranger, dressed in an absurd mishmash of white, red and green, as he was dragged helplessly by two armour-encased guards into the town square, "Release me, snivelling underdogs! Rats, filthy rats! Vermin ... worse than vermin!" "You can understand what he's saying?" questioned Aei, staring in wonderment as she held the item in her hand, "I can't hear a thing. It sounds like ... all garbled, and stuff. You're sure about this?" "I assure you, every word is crystal clear!" I insisted as I strained my ears through my sheltering hair, to hear the tormented whinings of a criminal otherwise best left ignored, "I can hear him perfectly!" It was as if he was speaking in another language, one that I was fluent with and able to understand immediately, except this foreign language was one that sounded and meant exactly the same as my own. "So what is he saying?" she asked, giving me a curious stare, "Since you can understand him, maybe you can tell me what he's yelling about." "Well, probably the same thing you'd expect from anyone in a similar situation," I replied, still watching eagerly as the foreigner writhed while each of his arms was held in an elbow lock by a guard, "He claims to be some kind of noble from a foreign land, he's telling them to let go of him, and he's making stupid obscene threats at the same time." "What kind of obscene threats?" Aei repeated, squinting at me with suspicious little eyes, "Could you, like, repeat them for me? If they're not too obscene, that is." "You dirty great frolicking troll!" he cried as he wrangled furiously in the guards' iron grasp, "I shall eviscerate you with sharp and rusty iron knives!" Oh, just my luck that he had to start on some incredibly lame insult at the precise moment when I was asked to translate him. "He said ..." I paused, as I constricted my gullet to force the same long-winded and meaningless curses out of my own throat, "Oh, you dirty, great and frolicking troll. I'm going to eviscerate you with really sharp and rusty iron knives." "Really? Uh ..." Aei gazed at me, mouth agape as I glanced down in pain to hide my shameful eyes, "I don't know how much I can believe you ... but that has to be the most pathetic insult and threat I have ever heard in my life!" Come to think of it, she did have a point, apart from that about the lousy insults, as since she couldn't understand a word the foreigner said, I could in theory translate his speech in any way I wanted, possibly even making him out to be the most eloquent person that I could fathom. However, while it cut me to the bone to be forced to repeat each meaningless word he uttered, it wasn't the duty of a translator to misrepresent others, and deception wouldn't be the best thing in the process of endearing myself to others and thus gaining assistance in finding my way home. Well, yeah, she wouldn't find out the truth until it was too late, but isn't that what all criminals think before they embark on their misdemeanours? No, I shan't distort his words, lame and spineless as they were. "You prancing poltroons! You mindless mannequins! You subservient little serfs! Release me this moment, for I am noble beyond a social caste you shall ever attain!" railed the emaciated victim as one of the guards, evidently not understand a word he said but correctly deducing it to be utter nonsense, bopped him on his head with an iron fist in a futile attempt to silence him. "Hey, tell me, Charlotte!" begged Aei earnestly as she tugged at my sleeve with her free hand, "Tell me! What did he say this time?" "Grr ... I won't!" Yes, while I had an obligation to tell the truth, I wasn't obliged to speak in the first place. "Just think of all the lamest insults you possibly can, and imagine them gushing out of his mouth like a waterfall, and you've got it!" "Er ... I think I can imagine that," pondered Aei as she closed her eyes and concentrated for a little moment, the contents of her thoughts easily perceived by the disgusted grimace spreading across her little lips. "Um, forget I said that," I quickly countered as I placed a cautioning hand on her shoulder. It wasn't exactly the best way to bring up children, making them imagine the most mediocre and pathetic things that they could. "Just, well, understand that he isn't talking sense. That's all." "Uh, you're right, I don't want to think about it," breathed Aei as she opened her painfully clenched eyes to return her gaze to the real world, and the ridiculously-dressed nincompoop struggling and screaming before her, "But you said that he said that he was some kind of noble ... what did he mean by that?" "Well ... that's what he said, and I don't know how much of him to take at face value," I considered, a crowd having already gathered around to see just what all the ruckus was about in the town square. To the bystander, it was obvious that some trash-talking foreigner had just been arrested, the crime likely to be that of simply being the wrong person in the wrong place, and the guards were in the midst of interrogating him, to no avail. "Name," intoned the left guard, as he raised a threatening fist at the wrangling prisoner, "Tell the truth. Any lies will only be a further crime to be put against you." "I know not what you just said to me," yelled the thrashing victim as he struggled furiously but futilely, "But if that was an insult ... well ... same to you!" "Speak!" demanded the right guard, as he dealt a fist in a language everyone understood, "Cease your babbling and talk sense, or your villainy is obvious!" "If you think violence can force anything out of me," retorted the stranger as he struggled to understand the order, "You shall never succeed! Injustice will never prevail!" "What's he yelling?" asked a rather large and burly man standing behind me, who had become aware of my unusual ability to translate the foreigner's speech, "Is he saying something stupid again?" "Well, anything he says is stupid," I replied helpfully, seeing as to how there wasn't anything really lost from just acting naturally, "Right now he's shouting some nonsense about justice and stuff." "I shall have you know ... ugh ..." groaned the foreigner as one of the guards kneed him painfully ... while wearing a set of plate leggings, "... that I am the most honourable and respected Pwyns Xjrmynq, descendant of the royal house of Consonance and the heir to the throne, and I will not tolerate such brutal treatment by ... ouch ... thugs like yourself who seek to divert me from my mission!" "What did he say?" inquired a young lady as she nudged me rather eagerly in the ribs, "It sounded long! Did he say anything important?" "Um, he said that he that was on a mission, and that he was the ... uh ... Prince, of Consonance or something like that," I murmured, before quickly being interrupted by the lady again. "From Consonance? Oh ... that's terrible ... horrible ..." she sighed as she lifted her hand to her cheek in dismay. Terrible? Horrible? Don't you mean the way he was getting beaten up like that simply because he couldn't be understood? Sure, he talked nonsense, but maybe if the guards actually responded to him in a fashion he anticipated they might actually find it to simply be a honest misunderstanding or something like that ... "Consonance ... Consonance ..." the word seemed to reverberate between the crowd, several tens strong, that had gathered to watch the scene. Among the adjectives that followed the word were those the lady used, terrible, horrible, and of the verbs only one really circulated. "Kill him!" roared a man standing on the fringes of the crowd, "He's an enemy of the people! Execute him!" "Yeah!" cried the lady beside me who had suddenly found the vocal strength of one several times her size, "Kill the bastard! All they want is to invade and destroy us! We must punish them all!" "Kill him!" demanded a drunk-looking man, hoisting a bottle of liquor, as he repeated the same phrase over and over, "Kill him! Kill him!" "Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!" The cry gradually gained strength until it seemed that just about the whole horde of people, gathering behind me, were chanting it in an almost religious fashion. Hungry for vengeance and for blood, it was now that I understood why large groups of people, even when they are of all shapes and sizes, could be so dangerous. "Er ... Charlotte ..." Little Aei, who had got rather lost in the thick crowd of people behind me, finally found me again as she tugged my sleeve. And it was only then that I realised that she had got somewhat missing. "You see what I mean, when I told you not to even mention that name?" "What's it to them?" I whispered, in murmurs conveying myself over the ritualistic chanting of the crowd, "You're going to kill someone just because they're from another country?" "Well," she replied thoughtfully, surprisingly able to keep her head clear despite being amongst the single-minded crowd, "My dad used to tell me all those war stories ... you know about how this town is right on the border, don't you? I haven't lived through a war itself, but some of these people are actually veterans of war, though they don't look it." "I see ..." So that explains why she didn't share that same bigoted hatred the people had for the enemies from the other country. Turning my attention back to the prisoner and his guards, I could see the two guards reacting rather bemusedly to the chants of the crowd, almost as if it was one planted to egg them on to do the deed. I would probably even say that under their helmets, they must have been smiling at the encouragement they received from their fellow villagers. The victim, Pwyns Xjrmynq, although not comprehending exactly what the townsfolk were chanting, probably understood the gist of what they meant, and his expression had transformed from one of defiant resolution to that of horror and alarm. "Hey Aei," I called as I turned back to the ever-smiling child and was relieved to see her still gazing expectantly in my direction, a pleasant look rather than a bloodthirsty one on her face, "Are they really going to execute him? He says he's a prince, you know." "A ... a what?" Aei attempted to clarify in a somewhat louder tone, possibly not having heard me due to the growing amplitude of the crowd, or maybe not sure if she should believe what I just said, "You said he was ...?" "A prince, a prince," I repeated, trying to make myself clear, but becoming increasingly antagonised by the roars of the crowd baying for blood over the top of my head, "You know, the son of a King and a Queen? The one who becomes the next King?" "A prince ... the son of a king?" she stammered, unsure as to what to say next, before blurting it out, "Yeah, he dresses funny, but ... he doesn't look like one, does he?" "How do you even know what a prince ought to look like?" I tossed a rhetorical question, in a desperate attempt to make myself clear. Was the latent sense of humanity in me playing up again? Of course he didn't look like a prince ... not when he just had the stuffing beaten up of him by two armed and armoured guards. "But he certainly sounded like one. I tell you, he's a prince." "A prince you say, lass?" questioned a bearded old man next to me, who had temporarily pulled himself away from the chanting to eavesdrop on me, "You're being mighty kind, helping us good folks of this town. Hey, the lass says that he's a prince!" the man exclaimed as he cried out to no one in particular. "A prince?" remarked a tough, middle-aged lady standing not too far away from him, "All the better, I say!" And before I could intervene, the chants of "Kill him!" had all too quickly transformed into "Kill the Prince!". I compared this town to one in the middle of 1800s Europe, now were these murderous cries harking back to the violent revolutions of the same period as well? With a timid Aei, increasingly frightened by the raucous crowd, keeping close to my side, I returned my glance to the guards, and noticed that they were staring right at me, ignoring the prisoner totally while still keeping him in a lock. Perhaps they were aware that I was the one who had unintentionally and inadvertently sparked off these mass protestations ... and seemed to be thanking me for my 'patriotic' initiative. The foreign prince, too, seemed to be aware of the fact that the guards were not really paying attention to him. However, instead of trying to escape, since he probably already realised that was futile, he instead shifted his gaze to the source of the guards' distraction, and quickly, his eyes widened as they met mine. Him having kept uncharacteristically silent for quite a while, I was startled when he suddenly broke out into a cry, one which seemed to be directed at yours truly. "Oh, mercy upon my accursed soul!" he cried, in his language which only I could understand, as he knelt toward me while still in the iron grip of the guards, "Is that the beautiful maiden whose visage has filled my every dream, satiated my hungering heart, and scripted each step of my life? How would I ever have imagined that destiny would confer upon me the joy ... no .. the exuberance of meeting her here, at this very moment, which I thought to be my final hour? This cannot be ... but this is! She is the one I have been destined to join my life to, the one with whom I shall unite the twin kingdoms of Consonance and Va World and finally bring peace to our war-torn nations! The blessed and most honourable and most divine of all, the royal Princess Uaeouue!" U ... what?! "I'm not your Princess!" I shrieked reflexively with the force of emotion suppressed from a morning of painful endurance. First, the old man at the farm, then, the relentless jibes of Aei, and later, even my own bloopers trying to find my way about the village! Will the curse of this confounded mistaken identity ever be dispelled? Damn it all! "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" I yelled, fists already clenched into little balls as the blood of passion rushed through my arteries and into my expression-filled cheeks. And then everyone promptly did as I said. To shut up, that is. And my anger and frustration turned into outright fear as I realised, to my horror, that the unintelligible foreigner Pwyns Xjrmynq was no longer the centre of attention. It was me, with my ability to inavertantly communicate the expressions, correct or not, to the crowd. I was the centre of attention. Gazing, gawking, there was no escape from those watchful eyes as I glanced right and left, desperate to escape the encircling ring of attention. Even Aei, my only repose ... "Charlotte ..." she whispered as her soft, concerned eyes pierced my own tormented stare, "I told you not to ..." "Princess ... princess ..." the words ran through the crowd just like the murderous chants of moments ago. But instead of being followed up with curses and threats, that label that had somehow found its way onto my unlucky head was followed by murmurs and gasps of awe ... and fear. A sturdy young man who was standing a short distance away from me diverted his attention to the prisoner for a moment. Held in the arm-lock of the guards, he lay bent on his knees, head and shoulders bowed, fringe ruffled over his forehead, and a single bead of liquid indeterminable as either sweat or blood trickling down the front of his face and falling to the dry, gravelly road leaving a tiny puddle. And then this well-trained, independent young man did the unimaginable. He knelt. Judging by the singular mentality of the crowd, the follow-up effect was obvious. Where there had stood a sea of people railing and protesting there now remained only a single white island, Charlotte, singularly intimidated by the stillness of the unmoving waves about her, while a terrified Aei clung to her waist like the sacrifice chained to a pillar, with the source of the fear being not a horrible beast but the very tide itself. "Hey, kid, get down and show your respect!" hissed the burly fellow as he tugged at the hem of her dress, his timid voice belying his powerful stature, "It's rude to stand before the Princess!" Even the guards themselves had fallen to their armoured knees, their arms still locked around those of the prisoner who had started it all. The man's warning only startled the innocent child to cling to me ever the tighter. As if cherishing the protection, and jealous of copious quantities she seemed to be deriving from my helpless body, I threw my arm over her waist and clasped her tightly with all my strength. "Charlotte ..." she whimpered as she thrust her head against my chest, the warmness of her tears seeping through to scald my skin, "You didn't ... you never told me ..." "Get up," I whispered dryly, "Get up ... please ..." - Is your adventure going to continue? Find out in the next part! - posted by Charlotte | 3:13 pm
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Disclaimer : The Slayers and Filia Ul Copt and all images thereof are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. I don't own any of them, although if I had a choice I would want Filia ... ~//n_n\\7 |
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