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 25, 2004 - A Way with Words, Part VII - "You lied to me, Charlotte ..." Aei wept softly, her little pale face hidden in her hands as she sat, while I, half-impatiently, half-uneasily, paced up and down the room. We were inside the village's town hall, in a girl's boudoir of some kind, presumably the place for the lady folk to hang out, to relax, to sip tea, and to exchange intimate details of conversation that heaven never destined the ears of males to hear. Neatly painted in a pleasant shade of apple red, the room was comfortably furnished, with a three-piece suite of similarly-coloured plushy sofas adorned with comfortable featherdown cushions, with a simply-designed yet intricately carved table serving as the centrepiece of a splendid work of interior design. To one side, a wooden dresser stood, complete with perfectly-polished mirrors, drawers full of various pieces of medieval cosmetics and perfumes, and, of course, a cushioned stool for you to rest your behind as you adorned yourself in the mirror. And yet, these pleasant surroundings were no comfort to the royal Princess Uaeouue of Va World ... or, more accurately, to the girl who had just recently become her. "Look, Aei, I'm telling you," I pleaded for the umpteenth time as I wrung my hands in frustration, "I'm just an ordinary girl! I'm not a princess or anything!" "Then ..." Aei wailed as she whirled about, placing her hands on the wooden frame of the sofa as she revealed to me her crimson, tear-stricken face, "Why did you go along with them? Why did you play their game? Why did you follow, if you're not the Princess?" "I ... I ..." I stammered. This had been the stopping point, the issue over which Aei had been so upset. The issue which prevented us from making any headway in the conversation, and thus preventing me from resolving this difficulty that plagued Aei's quickly fragmenting trust for me, "I told you already ... I had to. I didn't want to create a scene ... no, to make the scene even more of a spectacle than it was by arguing in public. It's better ... better that they've given me some time to think, so that I can explain myself. I assure you, this misunderstanding will be cleared, it will ... eventually." "Eventually! Eventually, that's all you can say!" Aei sulked as she turned back on herself in despair, "That's because you're the Princess, and things will always be going for you. But me ... Aei ... poor nameless Aei ... you don't understand how I feel." I remember that she had uttered those lines some time ago, not too long before we first entered the town of Ouaiie, where all this controversy started. I had taken her seriously then, I tried to understand her, to empathise with her ... only to find out that in her mischievousness she was merely making use of her childish appeal to make a fool of me. Of Charlotte, ordinary commoner girl. But now, with this ridiculous rank so inadvertantly heaped upon me, weighing upon my mind and my spirit, I felt older, bigger, bulkier, as I stood to one side, and gazed down at her truly miserable self. "I've lost a friend ... a promising friend ... a promising, true friend. I had my trust betrayed ... no, abused! And here I am, brought along like a plaything! Am I a toy to you, huh, Princess? Am I just your doll?" She was inconsolable. As I watched, helpless to staunch her suffering, I noticed that she was clawing ... clawing at her tender young face in her angst. That crimson on her face was not the redness of passion and emotion ... it was the crimson of blood. Blood rushing from the tiny blood vessels on one's face rupturing, needing only a sharp nick more before it would gush out to the surface. "Aei, you shouldn't do that!" I cautioned as I darted over to her, yet taking care to stay a respectful distance away from the tormented child, "You'll hurt yourself! Stop doing that!" "I ... uh ...?" she paused, gazing at her neatly-trimmed yet sufficiently sharp little nails, which were as yet unstained. She could not see the patches of redness that had emerged in painful lines over her face, but as she paused, and flinched, I knew that she could feel them. Increasingly agonised, she raised her claw-like hand again, before tremulously plunging it into a cushion and digging her nails in as deeply as she could. "The pain ... I ... oh Charlotte ..." she cried as she clenched her nails into the cushion, whose cover was luckily enough made of a material strong enough to resist such a degree of mistreatment, "Charlotte, why did you bring me here? Not to humiliate me, I hope." "To humiliate you? What for? The fact is that I need you!" I stated matter-of-factly, still keeping a cautious distance away from the antagonistic girl. An appeal too emotional and too heart-felt could be easily dismissed as a work of melodramatic play-acting by the intellectually sprightly child, while to say nothing and to leave her wracked in torment and self-reproach would be too much for any heart possessed of human feeling to bear. It was necessary I spoke to her, but in the process it was essential that I remained as reasonable and as rational as possible. "You were there with me from the beginning, back at the cliff! You brought me to your home, to meet your mother and your father. You know how sincerely confused I was, and how well and truly lost I was! I didn't even know what country I was in! Does this sound like the work of a ... a princess (the word now had a distasteful tang to it) who mistakenly found herself lost in her own country, or even one who deliberately set out to escape from it? I need you, to help me, and there is no hiding that fact." "So you're just using me?" she sniffed resentfully, though she sounded a little more mollified than before. Perhaps this gig of seriousness was working, though if I keep it up I might end up sounding more like a Prince than a Princess. "Well, you offered to help me at the beginning," I murmured as I gently sat down a cushion's length away from her, "And now I've got myself into serious trouble, and I need you to help me out of it. All right?" "At the beginning?" she repeated tearfully as she lifted her watery little eyes to meet mine, "Yeah ... that's right ... the beginning ..." "If I was that much of a princess," I postulated theoretically, now that her full attention was on my quivering eyes and quavering lips, "Shouldn't your mother have mistaken me for her from the very beginning? But that wasn't the case ... weird foreigners or wandering strangers shouldn't be an excuse not to help royalty ..." "You're right ... I'm sorry ..." she whimpered, before drawing in her breath ... and digging the full length of her tear-stricken face into my unsuspecting chest, "I'm really sorry for ever doubting you ... you were really just a normal girl like me all along ..." she cried as her warm tears pierced the fabric of my dress a second time, before it was even dry from my previous ordeal. "It's all right ..." I consoled, breathing a sigh of relief as I finally found it safe enough to reach an arm over and give her an encouraging pat on the back, "We're in this together ... thanks for being here." "You're just a girl, Charlotte, you're not a princess ..." she whispered into me, before lifting her head, and raising to me those glassy crystal eyes, that crimson line-marked cheeks ... "Anyway, now I know you're too flat-chested to be a princess!" W ... wha ...? "Argh! What in damnation!" I roared as I reared up to confront the girl, now cheekily grinning in her usual fashion, "Can you stop ... making all these stupid comments! I've had just about enough references from you about how I don't have ... how I'm not perfect! Who's playing with who here?" "Hey, hey, calm down now!" Aei giggled as she raised her hands in a mock pose to ward off the raging monster that I had become, "That's just me, you know! I play with people when I'm happy, and when I don't ... that means I'm sad!" "Huh, some excuse," I huffed and folded my arms, now feeling like the one who had got the worse end of the deal, "If that's the case, how is anyone supposed to comfort you when you are really, truly, sad?" "They'll just have to find that out for themselves!" she laughed, before raising a thoughtful hand to her lips, "You managed to find that out ... so that means that you're good enough to be a best friend!" Still giggling happily, she threw her arms around my neck and sighed in a deliberately and excessively wistful tone. "Er, right, thanks ... I feel better now ..." I muttered as I rather bemusedly raised her arms off my shoulders and handed them back to her, a gift she accepted happily, "I need to ask you a few things." "What?" she asked eagerly, "Ask me anything you want to know, I'll do anything for a best friend!" Er, right ... thanks ... "Um, okay," I accepted her offer gratefully, before posing my question, "If I look that much like the Princess, why did your mother wait until the morning to fetch me from the cliff outside? It's not easy to pose as a princess ... don't you think that she was worried and anxious enough to rescue me at once, rather than leave me there till morning, in spite of all the .. the strange people walking about?" "I guess she wouldn't have hesitated ..." Aei pondered thoughtfully, fingering a patch of raw flesh where she had cut herself a little too deep, "But then again, we didn't know the Princess was missing till this morning, in the news papers. It's not as if us common folk go around searching for nobility just for the fun of it! And besides, my mother told me to fetch you from outside before she even picked up the news paper ... my father had spread it out on the table to read." "Right, I see ... and it was the way I acted and how you responded that led her to need no convincing," I considered as well, before putting forward another issue which had been troubling me all this while, "Something else ... You've pointed out to me repeatedly, whether I liked it or not, that while I look like the Princess I'm ... not built like her in the least, physically ... (*evil giggling*) ... and if that is so, how can a whole town mistake me for her? They're not that stupid!" "Yeah, sure, we common people aren't that stupid, your royal highness Princess Charlotte Know-it-all," Aei retorted at my rather thoughtless comment about the intelligence of her fellow townsfolk, before offering a rather intuitive observation which did not dwell on my exquisite physique or lack thereof, "But maybe ... we haven't had an official visit from the Princess for years now, and that was when I was a baby and she was a child ... a child looking a little like me *smile*! And in those adolescent years as she grew up, maybe she turned out as beautiful as the Princess in the news papers ... or maybe she became someone as meagre and underdeveloped as you!" "... STOP IT!!!" I shrieked as the blood flooded my cheeks at her cheeky comment, in a description that was turning out to be quite a logical and sensible one. "Er ... hee hee ..." she burbled as she gradually loosened the hands of mine which were wrapping themselves around her skinny little throat, and planted them back in my lap, "But that picture in the news paper is just a portrait, and you know how court artists always exaggerate the positive features of the nobles they're painting? It's possible that maybe it's all just flattery, you see?" "Right ... good ... well maybe," I pondered, wrapping my hands around my arms in an effort to restrain myself and to avoid having a charge of child murder on my hands, "And you're telling me the whole town is intuitive enough to figure all that out, and thus deduce that I'm the princess?" "Well, no, they're not all that smart," she hissed, shooting me an accusatory glare, "But they certainly wouldn't have followed through on their suspicions if you hadn't gone out and aided them by shouting your mouth off in the middle of the village square that you're NOT the Princess!" "Right ... yeah, that was a major mistake on my part ..." I sighed as I collapsed against the comfortable cushioned back of the sofa, "So now I need to find a way out of this Princess stunt and to get back home where I belong before I fall into any more trouble. Got any ideas?" "I thought you already had some," replied Aei as she, too, folded her arms and leaned back to soothe her strained emotions, "But if you ask me, I suggest that you not go out and tell them that you're not the Princess just yet." "But ..." I stammered as I almost shot upright again, "But that's impersonation! I could get arrested for that, maybe even thrown in jail, or ... or executed! It might be fun while it lasts ... but I don't want to be there when I get found out!" "Well, I'm saying this for a few reasons," she offered as she complemented some dastardly deeds which she could utilise my newfound fame and status to accomplish, "First, it's going to take far too long to deny your identity to every single person. It's better to wait until you meet someone important, like a mayor or a minister, so that you can explain yourself to them, and maybe they can help you get out of this muddle you're in. Second, if you're dealing with someone who hasn't met the Princess for some time, for example anyone from around here, there's always a chance that they wouldn't believe you and think that you're just trying to escape from the Palace. My guess is that if you just let them, maybe they'll hand you over to the Palace where you can explain yourself better to someone who really does know the Princess well. Third, if you're the Princess, then you should have, or can demand more power, information, or bargaining rights which would all be at your disposal, which you can utilise to help you find your way home! Furthermore ..." "Um, right ... okay ... that's a lot of good reasons why I should stay as the Princess," I stammered, trembling a little at the magnificent eloquence and proficient reasoning which a girl quite some years my junior had demonstrated, "But the important thing is ... what happens if I do get charged with impersonation, when they eventually find out that I'm not the Princess? They'll say that I used them ... that I'm a liar and a fraud, and I'll get into even more trouble than before! Haven't you considered that?" I pleaded, aware of a possible fate that loomed before me, and maybe even before little Aei, who served as my accomplice-turned-director. "Ah, don't worry, we'll get around that!" she laughed as she pointed at me, fingering some unseen flaw in hopefully my speech and not my appearance, "Don't respond to the call of Princess ... get people to talk to you informally, avoiding mentioning your title or your name, Uaeouue ('Er ... how do you pronounce ...'), in addressing you. You're Charlotte, aren't you? And I'm going to call you Charlotte as much as possible, so respond to me, and show them what your assumed name ... in this case your real name ... really is! Perfect!" "Er, Aei, I must hand it to you ... you are absolutely brilliant," I murmured rather incoherently as I rested my head in my hands, shell-shocked at realising I was technically obliged to respond to something other than Charlotte, and not particularly relieved at the means Aei offered of avoiding it, "You have the makings of a criminal mastermind. One day, you are going to land a scam on the whole world, and they will never know what hit them." "Thanks!" she laughed as she grinned gleefully, before her smile narrowed a bit at fully comprehending my appraisal, "Wait ... is that a compliment or an insult?" Don't tell me she was dissatisfied at merely scamming Planet Earth itself ... "Uh ... Princess ... your royal highness!" called a lady in an airy tone from behind the door that sealed us from the rest of the town hall. I was quick to lock it after we had been rather obsequiously ushered in, knowing that I had some issues to sort out with a then-distraught Aei. "Yeah? I mean ... yes? I mean ..." I first corrected my coarse speech in an attempt to sound more refined, as a princess should be, before it struck me that as part of our master plan I wasn't even supposed to respond to the call of Princess in the first place. Damn ... first time unlucky. Hopefully they won't call that lady up as a witness when I'm brought to trial. "Oh heck ..." I grumbled, much more quietly than before. "You know, I think you're beginning to enjoy this Princess thing ..." Aei murmured as she gave me a coy glance, "Almost as much as I already do!" "Your highness ... I'm sorry, but ..." the lady stuttered, unsure, of either what exactly she was talking about, or how exactly she would address someone of a princess' magnitude, "Your assistance is humbly requested, in translating the ramblings of that man ... the criminal who was arrested. I know it is much too menial a task, for someone as pure as yourself to descend to listen to a villainous crook, but ... please ..." "We're going, right?" I asked Aei, my agent, scriptwriter and director all in one, while trying my best to keep my voice as low as possible by crouching down below the back of the sofa. "Of course we are!" she hissed, in return lowering her voice to a mere squeak, "It's not helping you to stay locked up in here forever, and besides, you claim that man was looking for the Princess ...?" "Um, yeah, that's right," I affirmed, before raising my chest, sucking in my breath and trying to eke out of me the sweetest, most pleasant, most polite voice I possibly could, "We'll be out shortly ..." "Wait!" whispered Aei again, still crouched on the sofa cushions, "Not yet! Not now!" "Shortly ... in just a while ... give me a few minutes please, thank you ... very much ..." I wheezed, before collapsing in a gasping fit as both my throat and my conscience were unable to take the strain of sounding unbearably royal. I turned to Aei, "What is it? What do you want to tell me?" "You aren't going out there ... just as yourself, are you?" Aei demanded rather insistently, staring at me through the tip of her fringe. "But ... I thought you said ... that I was just going to be myself?" I asked. Was there some miscommunication here? I clearly remembered she told me to ... "Yes! You're not going to respond to anything which declares you the Princess ... but until the world knows for sure that you're not the Princess, you're going to have to carry yourself like one!" "Carry ... myself? What do you mean?" I stuttered as she descended upon me with a malicious grin, like a deranged psychopath out of some gothic film, "What ... do you want me to do? What are you ... going to do to me? What?" "Wha ... aah!" I shrieked as sinister giggling pervaded my every sense. Ooh. How scary! What's going to happen to our darling little heroine now? Which murderous weapon was found at the scene of the crime? Of course, assuming that it was acquired in the first place. 23. Aah ... apples! No, no! Not the apples! Help me! 24. The book? The book ... you don't mean ... no ...! - Your adventure ends here! Right, it does! I'm smart, and I say it does! Pigs can fly too! Yes, they do! Uh-huh! - posted by Charlotte | 3:58 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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