An Escaflowne story. I have (as in the parlance) altered fortunes and destinies. In other words, this is an AU.
Warning: incest.
Soldiers of Fortune
It is said that gold followed silver but none now living can tell the tale, since our mother is dead and the midwife too. But the truth is of little account, for we have been equal ever since, the only two of our litter.
Or should we say, the only two born? For we came into this world with teeth, and these were bloody. This much we may deem to be true: that those were our first kills, our womb-siblings, which we shared before our eyes had ever seen daylight.
Even as kits we clove to one another. Our names like echoes, our steps close as shadows, in every way twinned but for the shade of our pelts. From our mother we took suck, and later from our father fresh meat, but for all else - warmth, companionship, speech, love - we had but to turn our heads to the side.
"Belubelu," whispered one, and "Narunaru," replied the other, huddled together beneath the deerskin covers in the darkness of our hut. This hand on that hip, and that hand on this hip, lip to lip and eye to eye and complete.
*
It was the end of a summer when our mother found us out and her cries were terrible.
She would not be quiet, flinched as though our touch burnt her, tears glistening on her lashes and that horrible sobbing. She would not be quiet. She began to slap and scratch and spit, naming our perfection a perversion and depraved--
It was silence we wanted, silence. Not to slay. Not to slay, not at first, we didn't want it, but we did it.
Our father came home early that day and found us crouched over the still-warm corpse. Standing at the doorway with his woodaxe in his hand and the sun at his back so that his shadow overcast us, the breath forced out of his lungs in short sharp gasps and eyes darkening in horror.
This we saw for a moment only. We knew what we must do.
He was a strong one, our father, and he fought. His blows landed hard enough to bruise bone and split flesh. It was not easy, but soon he too lay still, with his blood pouring out so that the wooden floorboards beneath his staring eye swelled and creaked.
Such a pair, our parents, lying side by side.
As the bodies cooled and stiffened in the night, we licked at our fur and curled 'round each another in comfort. Cunning kits would have run, cunning kits would have hidden. But we all but waited to be found - and so were. The next morning's dawn found us bound and hauled before the mob to be judged.
These were simple people that we lived amongst, folk of loom and yoke and axe, who hung horseshoes over their doorways and threw spilt salt over their shoulders. 'Judged,' we say, but there was no trial. They feared us and loathed us, naming us not only unnatural killers and parricides, but bad luck.
Fearing to slay us lest they too be tainted, they flung stones at our backs to drive us beyond the bounds of the village and into the depths of the inhospitable forest. We were then thirteen summers old.
*
Dark times, these. Dark times.
Will we recount to you these lengthening autumn days that stretched into winter, our endless walk through the woods? The long hungers, the frostbitten nights, the despair of two helpless kits who had never before hunted alone? We were killers born, yes, but to track and corner our quarry were skills we had only begun to learn.
The season was turning. The goose flew south and the deer bounded westwards. Fox curled up in his den and bear lay down to sleep. Insects there were, and these we ate; and once or twice we feasted on the last of the rabbits. We even scrabbled for the late-ripening berries and tough woody nuts, as though we were birds or squirrels.
None of this was enough. Soon our ribs became sharp as our elbows, legs and arms jangling together like bony chimes.
When the wind came rising up, and with it the howling voices of wolves, we would press our thin bodies together pretending to be warm. We sheltered in the crooks of trees and beneath towering rocks. The dirt paths of the forest grew thick with leaves and later snow, while our threadbare clothes fell to pieces about us.
Onwards, always onwards, trudging paw clasped in paw, till our voices guttered and died, till there was no longer any use for names and--
No, enough. We do not want to remember this any more.
*
A day came when the trees ended and the ground fell away before us in a great precipice. We stood on the lip of that great cliff, and saw stretching out to the horizon a vast and barren plain, realising then that we had passed all unknowing through the heart of the forest and out the other side.
We would not go back and forward we could no longer go. Poised on the brink, we clasped hands silently, so deep our despair that our thoughts strayed even to falling. This, it seemed, was to be our destiny.
The twig that snapped beneath his foot was gun-shot loud in that quiet. We turned our heads with a start and saw Lord Folken for the first time: this tall pale man who stood so still that until that moment we had paid him no more heed than a tree swaying in the wind or a rock impassive in the chill morning air.
He pinned us with a cold gaze, towering above us with his black cloak gathered as close to him as shadows. In fear we inched backwards towards the edge and the great drop beneath - the wind whistled in our ears almost loud enough to drown the painful thud of our hearts, and it was only then we realised then that we did not want to die.
But the hardness faded from his eyes when he realised what it was he faced, these two scrappy kits with blistered paws and crusty eyes swaying in our rags of clothes. "Little ones," he called us, and his footsteps crunched clear on the frosty gravelled ground.
"Poor lost ones," he said, and his face was sad when we cowered from his approach. Our frightened mewls, our feeble hisses and scratches, none of these he heeded. "Naria," he said, and "Eriya." The kindness in his voice when he named us was almost too much to bear. His hand did not strike but soothed and at last we quieted beneath his touch.
So he gathered us up in his mismatched arms of flesh and metal. He told us we were going to a place called home.
Then he stepped to the edge, black cloak spreading wide into feathered and glorious wings, and flew.
*
And that is the end of that story, for Belubelu and Narunaru are no more. We are Naria and Eriya now, silver and gold, strong and beautiful as we always knew we could be.
Here in Zaibach our lives are good. We will never want for food nor warmth again, nor need run from pelted stones and curses; the fiercest warriors and mightiest kings alike tread lightly in our presence; and at night we share a single bed and no one dares judge us.
Once, in another lifetime, this would have been enough. This one and that one coiled together, needing no other and complete in the circle of our own arms. And there will always be comfort in this, pleasure in our sleepy caresses and your body rising to meet mine, our hearts beating in perfect time.
But there is another we care for now. Although we fight in the name of the Emperor, it is for Lord Folken that we endure the experiments and the transfusions, for him that we soldier and serve. We do this for him that turned our world inside out and our black into light, who altered our destiny beyond all recall.
We were born bad, born unlucky, but Lord Folken believes we can be good and so for him we are; and in this as with all else we are twinned, loving the one-armed prince who can never hold us both.
By Rowan (winter_rowan@hotmail.com) January 2002 to September 2004
This story is not to be archived without permission.