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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Thursday, February 26, 2004 - The Wayward, Part VII - "Come here!" "Come here, come here, come here!" I called, over and over, as I wandered about the grassy field outside the ruins, both somewhat intrigued, while proud, of the way in which that nameless, faceless, and seemingly bodiless creature followed me, as obediently as a creature without a mind would be, "Come here! Come here!" "Come here!" "Come here! Come here!" Heh. I felt so pleased at the simple-minded way in which the being obeyed my every command, irrespective of how ridiculous, repetitive, and unreasonable it was, without pause or hesitation, "Come here!" "COME HERE, YOU ..." I was distracted from my playful gambolling by a horrendous crash emanating from somewhere behind me, the place where Io Aoi, intrepid adventurer, had parked his carriage, and was carefully unloading the massive stack of files and papers he was carrying onto it. With emphasis on the word 'was', because as I turned about and peered curiously I saw nothing other than the brave explorer himself collapsed in a heap, while sheets of script and paper files which just had their contents accidentally emptied lay strewn about him. A couple of files which were sealed firmly enough to prevent the papers within from being spilled had landed squarely in the middle of his chest, pinning him down and constricting his breath like an ancient torture method. "Get over here! You promised to help me, kid, and you'd better make good with it!" he growled furiously as I dashed over, leaving the creature uncommanded and idling in the middle of the field. The files on his body were obviously no obstacle to his recovering his position, each file not weighing so much individually as to stifle a fully-grown adult. By the time I got over to him, he was frenziedly retrieving each slip of fallen paper and was stacking them in piles in a seemingly random fashion, eventually slotting the completed pile into its appropriate folder. "You're fast ..." I murmured while I bent to stack the unopened files into another neat pillar to be carried, not being able to do much else due to my inability to understand the written language of the land and seeking not to interrupt his meticulous arrangement, "You have the makings of a professional secretary!" "I what?" He glared at me, before the words sunk in and his face turned a beetroot red, him obviously being unwilling to associate himself with a job so stereotypically ladylike as the humble secretary. "Well, you don't have the makings of much else other than trouble!" he retorted as he strung up the last of the opened folders and proceeded to stack them, lifing them into the open back of the carriage, "If you'd helped me like you agreed, I wouldn't have needed to clear up this mess!" "All right, I know ... I'm sorry," I apologised for failing to assist the man who'd agreed to offer me a lift back to civilisation, as I, too, lifted the folders in my pile into the carriage, but one by one rather than as a whole stack, "But you shouldn't have offered to carry that entire stack by yourself, if you'd known that you might drop it." "I ... well ... it was an accident! Of course I wouldn't have known that!" he grumbled in his frustration as he impatiently snatched up what remained of my pile and put it in the carriage, before I had managed to finish doing so myself, "But all you're carrying is a picture frame and a small brown book! Surely you should have realised your duty as a girl, no, as a human! ... to help another man in need?" Well, I guess so ... seeing as to how the side pockets of my dress were large enough to carefully insert and hold tightly the picture frame and the book on either side, leaving me empty-handed. "I did help you open the door in the first place," I murmured, on the side acknowledging that the feat in itself was a total piece of luck, the creature having chanced upon the ring and gifted it to me at the very beginning, "But I already apologised ... let's not argue about this. Hostility isn't good, alright?" "I wasn't arguing, I was just stating facts!" insisted Io Aoi unhappily, before adding on in a suddenly cheerful tone of voice, brought on, no doubt, by his adventuresome enthusiasm, "But there we are! We're done! Now you can climb in, and ... I assume you've rode a carriage before, girlie?" he inquired in a voice with a patronising ring to it. And what, may I ask, was so difficult about sitting in a carriage? "Charlotte, thank y ... no, please!" I grimaced at having to force my name upon him for the umpteenth time, "And we can't leave yet ... we need a plank." "A ... a plank? What for?" he asked, nearly laughing out as he glared at me, totally flabbergasted. "Well, for the ... the thing, of course!" I pointed out in an almost matronly tone, rather protective of my less than talkative friend, "Do you expect it to jump up?" "Maybe, why not?" he replied stupidly, "Did you even try to ask it to do so?" "No, but ... oh come on!" I reprimanded, my common sense wishing to avoid any further bruising, "It's something liquid, it doesn't have legs! Maybe it's springy, not that I've tried to find out, of course, but unless it's bouncing I think it's highly unlikely it can ever summon or accumulate energy enough to temporarily oppose gravity! Don't you have any knowledge of ... no, any common sense at all?" "I don't understand your explanation, but oh heck," he sighed as he clambered in and reached for a toolbox hidden somewhere near the front of the carriage, "That thing's more important than I thought it was, so I guess I'll follow your demand, smart little starlet." Um, did he mean Charlotte? Or was that just a lousy attempt at a pun? I must admit, however, that while the man had little in the way of human relations or basic general knowledge, he did have a useful assortment of skills that would come in handy around the house or the office. One of the perks of being an adventurer, I guess. With the deftness of ease and the assistance of a hammer he pulled from a simple toolkit, he carefully removed a broad plank from the floor of his carriage without causing the entire structure to collapse in a cartoony manner, and laid it against the back of his carriage to provide a simple slope for the creature to make its way on board. However ... "The inclined plane is too steep!" I protested as he wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of the hand that was holding the hammer, nearly braining himself in the process, "That thing will just slide off! Or worse, it might fall over before it gets up! Don't you have a longer plank inside that carriage?" "You know, kid," he growled as he twirled the hammer in his hand, and yelping as he dodged to one side when it nearly fell on his foot, the tool not exactly being the most suitably weighted instrument for twirling, "Your complaining's really, really getting to me. In my life as an adventurer, I've had to deal with fearsome beasts, with difficult puzzles, even a dangerous stampede of a horde of my fans all eager to meet me ("Yeah, right ..."), but I must tell you I have no experience with whining, whinging, whimpering little girls. In my time I've met many a exquisite, eloquent, and endearing lady, and I find it thoroughly impossible to imagine any of them started off as a little complainer like yourself." "Um, uh, right ..." I gulped as I nearly choked on my own saliva. Judging from his carefree and laid-back manner, one could not possibly perceive that this man could have a temper of any kind. However, seeing as to how I was alone, in the middle of nowhere, and without a witness in sight to voice my case should something horrible happen to me, I decided that it wasn't a good idea to try and bring that hidden fury of his to the surface. "I'm sorry. I promise I'll shut up from now on ... I mean, I'll stop making so many complaints. And I have an idea on how to get that creature up into your carriage, and it doesn't involve any more planks. I just need you to help me in carrying something ..." Io Aoi certainly wasn't too pleased about that, but if it meant being able to secure the mysterious beast without having to disassemble any more of his beloved carriage he was more than agreeable to it. Pretty soon after, with a simple beckon on my part, the creature edged its way up the slope and into the carriage, with the aid of none other than a large plank from the wooden door of the building, which had been blasted out onto the pavement. Smart, eh? "Quite an impressive piece of thinking, I must say!" applauded a rather bemused adventurer as he hammered the loose plank back into the floor of his carriage, while taking care to avoid contact with the creature at the same time, quite a difficult chore considering the less-than-adequate space remaining within after having stacked the folders and other scraps of 'important evidence' inside. "It's your choice if you want to sit outside in the front of the carriage, with me, or stay inside with your little pet. It's going to be squeezy both ways, unless you can think of another innovation of yours to get around it." "Er, no, I can't," I mumbled as I contemplated where in the carriage to rest my tender aching behind. Sitting in front would mean sharing the seat with mister Chauvinism himself, and there was always a chance I might accidentally fall off the precarious perch either out of my own carelessness or due to recoil from yet another shocking remark made by him. Staying inside, I had no fear of actually getting attacked by the nameless monster, but it was possible that when going up or down a hill, or at coming to a sudden stop, I might accidentally come into contact with it and ... well, I don't want to think about it. Fear is a powerful weapon, irrational as it is. In the end, I opted to seat myself just behind Io Aoi rather than next to him, so as to avoid falling out of the carriage while at the same time keeping a safe distance away from the creature, which I never realised was resting so close to me in the cramped little carriage, after its back door was sealed. He had already fastened the horse to his carriage (having done so before even loading the goods), and with a dextrous flick of the reins, and a suitably adventuresome punch to the sky from him in the process, the animal broke into a slow trot. "So, you never told me," Io Aoi began again, in his usual pick-them-up fashion, as he simulatenously controlled the reins of the horse with that natural appearance that comes out of a profession, "Have you ever been on a horse carriage before?" "I ... well ..." Actually, I couldn't remember for the life of me. And yet, then again, if I said yes I might be asked to 'trot' out some otherwise useless piece of trivia and proceed to flub it in the same pathetic fashion as the questioner himself often did, and if I said no, another bout of teasing could be expected heading my way about my na?vete. So much trouble, over a simple question about horses? "Uh, why do you ask?" "Just curious, seeing as to how you look excited," I ... look excited? Um ... well ... yeah, I guess, seeing as to how I had been thrown into a mysterious world by some cause unknown and become acquainted with a creature that defies mystery and mythology. But he was right, somewhat. "I presume that you don't see many horses where you come from, is that right? You're probably one of those kids who lives in a big city and never goes out." "Yeah ... probably," I mumbled tremulously. You mean he knew about cities? I hadn't seen a settlement for an entire morning, a rather unusual happening which made me feel just like some wild jungle girl, and now this unusually perceptive character was able to discern, despite my blank expression, that I was a creature of civilisation. So, despite the monsters, the unusual names and the illegible script ... was I in the world ... the real world? "Heh," he chuckled while letting out a little wistful sigh, "Kids like you shouldn't be wandering off like that. The countryside is different ... long roads, strange people, nobody to watch your back, while in the city ..." he turned and winked at me with a knowing glance from under that flimsy straw hat, "You've all the comforts of life. Waking up from a comfortable featherdown bed, to the brothy smell of the breakfast stew your landlady prepares for you, bread moulded in brick trays ... and when you walk out there are guards suited in armour all standing around to protect you! The countryside's a dangerous place for one so used to convenience and ease like yourself." "I suppose ..." Uh, well ... looks like my original guess was correct. I was in a medieval world, not some outlandish, supernatural extension of the real one, and that meant no cars, no streetlights, no electricity ... and I had actually survived thus far. Amazing! But, feeling my increasing inadequacy over the concept of civilisation which I was to encounter, I decided to change the subject. "By the way, does your horse have a name?" "A name? Of course! Anyone ... or anything so kind enough to follow me and aid me on all of my trials and tribulations deserves a name! I call her Iiuuaa, a name of deserving of royalty!" Io Aoi once again saluted the sky for having blessed him so, before folding his arms contentedly with the rein gripped tightly in one hand. Royalty? "Royalty?" I asked, rather curiously, "What's so royal about that? Like Ua ... er ... oh ..." "The Princess, Uaeouue! You'd better get her name right, seeing as to how you're carrying her picture around," he cautioned, and that bit of skin of mine separated from the wooden frame by a mere fold of cloth seemed to tingle, "But the royalty always take the longest names for themselves, while it's better for us ordinary people to have names that are short and simple." Hmm ... I understand what he meant. Like Archibald Alexander Barthomelew Sebastian Maximillian the Seventeenth or something ridiculous like that, except that now a single word, to these people, was considered long, and an average name would be merely a syllable or so long. "You've a rather long name, yourself," he commented as he relaxed his arms, ready to give a command to the horse in case of any difficulties, as we were now ascending the small hill I had difficulty overcoming earlier, "And a foreign one, at that. If it wasn't for the fact that you behave like a tramp, girlie, I'd have thought you to be some princess from a faraway land!" Faced with such a comment, I didn't know whether to feel unusually proud about myself or to gnash my teeth with rage and cook up a good retort. "So, what's my name, hmm?" I put the question to him coyly, seeing as to how it seemed impossible for him to break out of the utterly annoying practice of slapping some demeaning pronoun upon me. That should fix him. "Hmm ... well ..." You mean he didn't remember? How many times did I remind him? "It's ... Starlet, isn't it?" Oh heavens ... "Grr ... Charlotte! Charlotte!" I yelled repeatedly, clenching my fists in my rage but trying my very best to avoid smacking upon his vulnerable back, "You got it right, once! Surely you can keep doing so!" "Well, sorry, kid ('Argh!'), it is a strange name, after all," he commented rather emotionlessly, before realising, like I had just moments ago, that he was speaking on a potentially shaky ground, and decided to change the subject once again, "Are you going to give that pet monster of yours a name?" "Pet monster?" I repeated as I glanced behind me, only to see it looming over me, not more than a foot away. From my sitting position, it seemed that I could see up its hitherto concealed hood, but in the darkness of the inside of the carriage I saw nothing more than blackness, "I never thought about it, but I don't think I will. If it will listen to me without me slapping a name on it, I don't see the point of doing so." "Heh, that's minimalistic!" he chuckled bemusedly, throwing an uncharacteristically long and complex-sounding word into the conversation, "But haven't you considered ... what if you were sitting, say, at a tavern, and you called out to someone whose name you didn't know. Would that pet of yours come as well, since it doesn't have a name?" "I ... I never thought about that ..." I murmured, trying to envisage a similar scenario in my head. That would most certainly be quite a farce. "But ... see, it doesn't respond when I speak to you, yet sometimes it listens when I'm just talking to myself. Maybe it's more ... more than just words." "More than words, eh ...?" he remarked before his voice suddenly dropped a notch ... as did the carriage, "Whoa, whoa, careful there!" We had just gone past the top of the hill, and that meant, like in that nursery rhyme, that we were going down ... and as the sound of a file toppling and sliding across the floor of the carriage pierced my ear like a sharpened blade, my greatest fear was that the creature itself would topple upon me, spreading to me that same deadly miasma of ... or was I already trapped in it? And then I glanced behind, and saw it rather sturdily rooted to the floor of the carriage, unmoving, almost as if it was anchored there. A close call. "Speaking of the hill ... whoa there!" Io Aoi called as he tried his best to cut the already inching pace of the horse, out of worry that the carriage might gain a momentum of its own and roll downwards taking the horse and us with it, "Didn't I see you walking up this same hill, sometime earlier this morning when I was driving to that place we just left?' Did he? As I reached an arm out to catch a toppled file which was on the verge of sliding out the front of the carriage, I jogged my memory, trying to remember if I had seen a brown-haired, clean-shaven, straw-capped man on my way to the laboratory, while I was the follower and my 'monster pet' was the guide. Had I? So, yes or no? It's only been seven parts so far ... surely you remember! 25. Someone? What, you mean he was that guy? 26. Nope, nobody that I know. Figment of your imagination. - You're adventures has ended here . Err ... lousy translation - posted by Charlotte | 3:56 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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