C&c welcome. titles again aren't my strong point, so....
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"The fall of a bird"
An El Hazard shortfic.
I own none of the rights to the characters involved in this story. all
rights in the UK and America are held by Pioneer anime.
***
Princess Rune Venus sat by the ledge of her balcony, overlooking
the county she ruled. Unusually, her thoughts were not centred on
the lives of the people she ruled, wisely she hoped, but instead
were of a time long ago in her past.
She looked down at the gardens of the palace, and saw a small
group of birds take flight. she sighed sadly, with a touch of
remorse, and turned away, intending to retire to her study. A
gunshot abruptly returned her attention to the gardens below,
where she saw her sister gleefully massacring the defenceless
birds below. The look of savage unholy glee on Fatora's face, the
bloodlust in her eyes made her want to vomit, to disown her sister,
have nothing more to do with her ever... But then her own guilt ran
deep.
Fatora's bloodlust could be excused. Her captivity by the
Phantom tribe, the tortures she had undergone, her further capture
by the Bugrom. It was enough to make any normal person go wild -
to desire to lash out at those around, to want to gain revenge on
them, and the world that had allowed it, all in the bloodiest way
possible. Looking weakly back down at the garden, at her
maniacally laughing sister, Rune shuddered, and dismissed the
thought. Fatora had always been this way, ruthless and vindictive,
but never so openly.
Alielle, usually constant at her lovers side, or flitting to and fro
at her partners whim, stood back, her face reflecting the same
horror and disgust that Rune was sure her own face displayed.
Meeting other people, exploring the world, had been good for the
young girl decided Rune. She'd begun to learn some of the
fundaments of honour and friendship from Makoto, self respect from
the priestesses of Mount Muldoon, assertiveness from Nanami...
She firmly clamped a lid on the skill that Fujisawa had helped
refine in her. In all Alielle was finally becoming able to see all of the
woman that she loved, including the darker side.
Although Alielle had a roving eye, and several roving hands,
Rune chuckled dryly, she'd always been faithful to Fatora in her
heart, loving her with a passion that was almost childish, in that it
failed to recognise or understand what it did not wish to, insisting
on 'seeing the best, and ignoring the rest' as Alielle had recently
put. Her tastes did not run the way Alielles or Fatoras' did, but it
would upset her to see the young courtesan hurt. She hoped that
Alielle could deal with this ugly side of Fatora, or that she could
find someone else to love when they finally did separate.
Saddened by these thoughts, Rune turned and continued
towards her study, her cat closely twining around her ankles. As
she sat herself at her workbench, and withdrew a parchment listing
the next days meetings, she paused, her blue-grey eyes pensive.
With a soft motion she gently laid the listing down, and withdrew a
small book from a recess not easily seen from a distance. Almost
caressing the soft leather of the binding, she laid it open to a blank
page, and continued her intermittent diary entry.
***
'Birds have always been a source of beauty in the world - their
plumage, bright colours splashed everywhere in wild abandon, their
songs a touch of mystery in a mundane world of rustlings and loud
distractions. Birds for we of the royal family have had a third
meaning. they are our reminders of the powers we bear, and the
fragility of life. I am disturbed by Fatora - the painful lesson we were
taught has faded beneath her anger at the world, her blind need to
always be the one in charge, to control the world around her.
'Birds though. Strange that we should have been bound to
morality by such a simple thing, bound to thinking our actions
through, to trying our best to find other solutions, before we
unleash the might of our armies - before we take that which is most
precious.
'I still find it hard to think about, much less speak of.
'When we - the children who are to rule - are given this lesson,
we are given it in the harshest way possible. Experience. For me, I
was twelve, recently seconded to aid the servants among their
many tasks - to instill a sense of humility in me, and show me the
lives beyond the one I lead, I was told. At the time I was working in
the gardens, aiding the staff as they fed the animals that decorate
the gardens inside our walls, and stock our larders. It was no
imposition - I loved the routine, the chance to be close to those
gentle cousins of humanity, to love them because they needed to
be loved, for they had no ability to love for themselves.
'One of my tasks was to scatter grain for the geese. I would
walk out, striding boldly through the flock, regal as the princess I
was to become, giggling as loudly as the child I was. One of the
things that would happen after I did this was that pigeons from
around the area would alight and eat the grain for the geese. I had
been told that this was a nuisance, and I would throw my hands in
the air and shout at them, running through the dark packs of
startled birds, laughing happily.
'There were other tasks to perform, other animals to be fed, and
these would occupy me for far longer, but still the pigeons would
gnaw at my mind. Wild pigeons were unwelcome, yet there were
semi-tame birds, who would always come to the same place - they
had lived in the palace for so long, their ancestry and residency in
the gardens stretching back centuries. These birds, tolerant of
humans, yet still the masters of their own destiny required no
feeding, for they would scavenge up the leftovers of others, yet it
always amused me to leave a little extra when I filled the food bins,
and give it to these birds.
'I could not spend all of my time with the animals - there was
schooling in protocol, politics, grammar, etiquette, math, history,
self defence. Oh yes. We had not had a war for centuries, yet we
heirs were always trained to be our own last line of defence, able to
save ourselves, or at least take our killers along with us as we
travelled deaths domain. They began to teach me to use a small
pellet gun. It was very weak as such weapons go, yet it was a true
weapon, capable of killing. The gardeners sometimes used
weapons similar to the one I had to hunt vermin from the grounds.
'I was a poor shot, finding it difficult to use the weapon -
impossible to fire at any target at a distance. My marksmanship
was poor, yet I would stay and imagine myself as a beleaguered
figure, rescuing my kingdom armed with my little rifle. At evenings I
would be forbidden to touch the weapon, yet still I would
sometimes sneak away, and attempt to emulate the skills of the
gardening staff - I had once heard the head cook shoot a rat at over
100 feet, a feet to be mightily praised for the under powered
inaccurate rifles.
'I never saw anything, or if I saw anything I would be disarmed -
a rat once passing close to me hissed at me from it's place in the
shadows by my foot, scaring me badly. How I wished I had been
armed so I could have killed that rat, for it often would spring out at
me, and I grew to loath the sight of it. However I was determined to
show I was good with the weapon, which I was not, by proudly
showing the body of that rat or other that I had caught.
'I was on one of my solo explorations with my little rifle when I
saw the flock of pigeons that so vexed my morning feedings of the
geese. On impulse I lifted the rifle and sighted at a nearby bird. I
pulled the trigger.
'At the unfamiliar crack of the pellet, the birds took to the air. I
missed. I had not truly been disappointed, but I again reviled my
lack of skill. Grunting with the effort of swinging open the barrel and
pushing till it compressed the spring, I slipped in a fresh pellet, and
went in search of that elusive rat once more.
'I came quickly on another pigeon, uninterested in me, and not
to far away. Deciding that I would finally get one of those pesky
food stealers, I sighted again, ignoring the twinges of familiarity,
and shot.
'It fell from the branch so slowly, its wings flapping weakly at
the air as it tried to stop its fall, till it hit the floor with a muffled
thud, and flapped weakly. I walked towards it, and gasped as I saw
the blood on its back. I had shot through it. The blood was so red,
so thick, streaked down it's back in several small trickles.
Swallowing bile, I reloaded again, and shot at the bird, uncaring of
whether I had truly hit, just wishing to put the poor creature out of
its pain. To this day I do not know if I hit it that second time.
'As it lay there dead I began to feel ill. This bird was one of the
ones i had delighted in feeding. A fact i had already known as I
shot it the first time, but not thought about until the reality of my
actions stared me in the face. I had murdered a friendly bird, one
that had come to me, and accepted food. I had to hide the
evidence - I was a fool, and a killer, gasping slightly, I tried to pick
it up by its leg.
'There was a slight twitch from the body. I jumped back with
muffled shriek. The bird had been rolled over enough so that I saw
the neat puncture wound under its right breast, the look of glazed
horror on it's face, the sightless agony in its eyes. Trying to contain
my supper I tried to stop imagining a look of betrayal on it's face,
as I gathered my nerve and fought down my gorge enough to pick it
up once more.
'Holding to its leg with my index finger and thumb I ran to a
nearby wild hedgerow - once I knew had young foxes in who would
dispose of the evidence of my crime. Feeling soiled and dirty to my
soul, I returned to erase all traces of my crime, scuffing a small pile
of gravel over the bloodstain on the path where the bird had fallen.
'Fleeing to my room, I was shivering and terrified. I was sick to
my stomach, and damned in my own eyes. Pausing to retch dryly
into the privy, I stripped off my clothes and flung them far from me,
wanting to be clean I fled to the bath, but when there I could not get
in - it was *right* I be dirty, still covered in the dirt and sweat of my
crime. I was cold inside, and it hurt when I thought of that bird. I
didn't bath for a week, when it had been my fancy to bath every day.
'Looking back, I never again took pleasure in anything martial,
the weapons training, the hand to hand combat, military studies. It
was all tied in with my horror at the end of the life of one small
pigeon. To this day any bird can trigger memories of that day, and
every memory urges me to never kill. But i have to, I am a ruler,
and for my people to prosper, they must be protected, and the
young men and women who defend them sometimes die.
'I don't know the technique they used to attempt to instil this
lesson in Fatora, but it has failed. In my own case it took too well -
I am almost unable to order my armies into battle. Sometimes I
curse the memory of the person who developed this method of
teaching morality to those of the monarchy. Other times I bless
their memory. We rulers of this day are unable to perpetrate the
follies of those who caused the Holy Wars.
'I don't know how they knew to let us make these mistakes,
how they designed the techniques of horror they inflicted upon us...
yet they worked. As I look back I know they planned for this to
happen to me. The rifles were always to be stored in the armoury,
yet I was permitted to have mine, until after the event. I was taken
from the duties with the ground staff after the event, lest they spill
the secret of how they had carefully goaded me into the rashness
that had ended a birds life.
'Yet, still with her own experience of her own, Fatora scares
me. She truly wishes to kill those she is opposed to. Not for
defence of those who are bound to her, but for power, for revenge
and joy in the killing. Sometimes I wonder if she or the Bugrom are
more monstrous to me.'
***
Laying down her pen, Rune re-read the last words on the page,
recalling that the last Bugrom war had been caused not by the
Bugrom, but the evil of one of their own, a mad youth from another
dimension, and shuddered. She pulled her clothes tightly around
her, as if the temperature had dropped suddenly.
But the warm, still summer air was constant.
[end]
***************
Some of this is a true story. Some is not. The true parts happened
a month ago, and explains why "The Moron and the Maiden" has
been delayed while I dealt with this. Please - if you don't have to
kill, DO NOT KILL. All life is sacred. All.
Also, while writing, there came a point where I realised that there
had to have been *some* checks placed on the rulers of the many
kingdoms of El Hazard - checks placed by decimated and fearful
populations that had barely survived the horrors of the holy wars,
and wished to see them happen no more. How would such a check
take place? Politics can be subverted, people cannot be
guaranteed to act wisely, so how do you make your rulers into just
people?
You give them the experience of life and death at such an early age
that it is burned into their minds for all time. It was just something
that occurred to me while I re-watched the first OAV series and
saw how hard Rune had to fight herself to make the declaration
that they would go to war with the Bugrom.
Feedback welcomed. Counter arguments turned into fics ^_-
21-11-00
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Ryoko
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