You can tell how much of a backlog I've got. ^_^

Matthew Lewis wrote:

I always wanted to do an Escaflowne fic.
Well, okay, maybe not always, having not always seen the
series, but for many months now, at any rate.... ^_^

I know the feeling. I want to do a Riding Bean fic myself. Can't quite get
the story to gel.

                       Royal Tears


   Folken Van Fanel

Ah. An interesting character to center on.

looked out the window of the ship. Swords, arrows,
Guymelefs, horses, screams, and blood-- mustn't

musn't

forget the blood.
People dying, and animals dying and

This seems a bit awkward to me. Maybe drop the first 'and'.


more and more misery, spiralling

ever upwards.
   This war was different though. One side fought not to gain
resources, not

'nor; works better than 'not' , I think

out of greed, or hate, or paranoia. Zaibach fought to

make the world a better place. A fight for all peoples, to lift them

>from the fate of war.

One last war to finish all wars, eh?

   If he was able to, Folken would cry, but a side effect of what
Dornkirk did to him rendered tears impossible.

Interesting.

   Afterwards, walking through the battlefield-- a small town near
Zaibach's borders and now a ruined hulk,

'...borders that was now...' sounds better to me. Also like the fact that
it is nameless. Folken doesn't even pay attention to what it is they are
conquering anymore.

Folken was still in the same
contemplative mood, walking slowly down the street with his cloak drawn
tight, keeping the aftermath of the battle at bay.
   The was a child, on

drop the comma

the street; a child standing there outside an

a

hollowed out burning wreck of a house. A child standing there with a
blank, uncomprehending look covering his young face, not more than four
or five the boy could be, and watching Folken with a strange intensity.

The above sentence sounds awfully awkward. Not sure how I would reword it
though.

The emptiness of the child's face was (thankfully) marred by a constant
stream of tears the child seemed not to notice, until, as if on its own
volition, the boy's right arm came up and wiped the tears, smearing
them towards his ears.


   When Folken returned to the Zaibach capital, the first thing he did
was go to a tattoo parlour. There were a variety of images on the
walls, samples of what could be done, some simple, some complex, some
beautiful and some not, some elegant and some pornographic.

Nice wording.

An empty
chair sat in the middle of the room, which was the most well-lit part
of the establishment.
   A fat man, wearing a clean white, short-sleeved shirt which
stretched to encompass his girth, looked up.

   "I would like a tattoo," Folken said without preamble.

   "Then you came to the right place. If I can't do it, no one can.
Whaddaya want?" the man replied, showing no trace of the fear one
normally saw when confronted by Dornkirk's Sorcerors. "What do you
want?

Why does he say that twice?

I have quite a selection, as you can see." The man nodded to the
walls.

   "I want something different."

   "Ah!" the man exclaimed happily. "You have something in mind
already. I suppose you would have a particular one in mind, coming
here, wouldn't you?"

   "I want... I saw a child crying once. The small boy wiped the tears
away, just so," Folken mimicked the action with his left, his real,
arm. "I want that, the tears, or what would be left of them. One around
each eye."

Heh. Very nice.

   "The smear?" the man said, somewhat disappointed at the lack of
challenge.

   "Yes."

   "Is there any colour you want?"

   "Purple."

   "You sound like you have a reason to do so. Do you mind if I ask
why?"

   "So I don't forget what it is we're doing this for."

   The fat man smiled and gestured grandly towards the chair. "Then
come into my parlour, and we shall see what we shall see."


   That was how Folken got the first two of his tattoos to remind
himself of what they were fighting for: purple for the colour of
royalty, the majesty of the dream, and tears wiped away in
determination to see it through.

Again, I like the turn of the phrase.

   Another war. There was always another war. Now that they had
committed themselves totally to their plan to rid the world of war and
usher in a Golden Age, where all desires and all fortunes would come
true all they did was war.

How ironic.

   Folken felt along the edges of his two tattoos, tracing the
outlines gently as he watched the dispatched Zaibach forces fight yet
another endless battle. It had to be done. It was necessary. The danger
though, the danger was if they forgot what they were fighting for. To
rid the world of the wars. All they seemed to do was to increase the
war and the pain and the suffering, not end it. Some days it looked
like all they were doing was making the world worse.

Probably were.

   Folken stopped tracing the tattoos. After all, they were
incomplete.


   "I didn't think to see you in here again," the fat man greeted
Folken. The man stretched his clean white shirt even more this time.

   "I realised it was not done yet."

   "Oh?" the man said, curiousity piqued.

   "I need another one, just one, here." Folken placed one finger on
his cheek.

   "And what would that be?"

   "A single teardrop," Folken replied, easing himself down into the
chair.

   "Purple?"

   "Of course."

   "Why, may I ask, do you want this one?"

   "So I don't forget what we have lost trying to achieve our goal."

   A single tear, shed for the price their vision was incurring.

Very, very nice.

Author-type comments:

   I dunno, Folken's tattoos just gotta mean something, I think to
myself, and I thought it would be cool to do a story about their
origins. Didn't come out to what I intended, mind you-- perhaps if I
had let it gel for another couple of months or something in my head I
could have come up with something better-- but I haven't and didn't, so
there we go and here we are. Comments? Criticisms?

I like it a lot. You took one physical feature and managed to write a very
elegant backstory for it. A very enjoyable read concerning a rather tragic
character in that series.


Well, back to writing.

D.B. Sommer