PART III: PEARL (Both versions)

Chapter 1: The White Pearl

     Pearly flakes of snow covered the earth, lightly dusting the path leading into the town that lay in the valley near the sea-cliffs. Most of the doors inside the town were shut tight against the frozen winter night; it was almost ten o'clock, and all the shops were closed. The small, dimly-lighted inn at the edge of the town was about to be shut for the night as well, and the innkeeper was performing the last organizational duties around the wooden counter, when a knock sounded on the door of the inn.
     He opened it slightly, just a crack, for the hour was very late. A young man was standing on the steps, holding a woman in his arms. He was extremely pale, his eyes dark, and his color was cast into a sickly hue in the yellow, melancholy glow of the lamp fixed above the door. He was also shaking in the chill, for his long-sleeved shirt was light rather than warm.
     "Please-" his voice was hoarse and fatigued, his accents strained- "I need a place to stay."
     The innkeeper opened the door wide and peered at the woman. She was wrapped in a green cloak and lay in the young man's arms perfectly still and white. Her skin had an aspect of an unnatural pallor, her eyes were closed, and her long hair streamed over the young man's arm, nearly reaching the floor. An ugly slash across her neck, dark with dried blood, partially explained her condition.
     "What happened?" he asked.
     "We were… attacked by bandits." The vague, guilty flushed that stained the young man's cheeks at this lie was luckily concealed by the dim atmosphere. "She is my traveling companion. I carried her in my arms for over an hour now. I have some money, innkeeper…"
     The innkeeper raised his hand to halt the young man's warily-uttered request. "Please come in,” he said, opening the door wide. The young man entered into the warm room, and almost immediately collapsed into a nearby chair, his legs refusing to hold him any longer. He maintained a secure grip on the woman, however. The innkeeper eyed him curiously, but made no comment. “We have one free room," he told him, "but only one bed."
     "I'll sleep on the floor. She needs immediate care."
      To the young man's relief, the innkeeper made no further inquiries, and only said, "I'll provide an extra blanket. Follow me."

     Elazul ascended the rackety wooden steps to the second floor of the inn and entered the tiny room indicated by the innkeeper. A small white bed and a chair, both seeming to shine with a comforting, homelike glow, provided a welcomed sight to his exhausted body and worn spirit. He carefully deposited Black Pearl onto the white sheets and then, relieved of the burden, he sunk into the chair, passing his hand over his eyes. For a moment he struggled to collect himself again, but then he turned to the innkeeper.
     "I'll need some hot water and clean bandages to care for her wounds," he said. "Is there anyone in the house at present- a maid- who could tend to cleaning her?"
     "The two maids are gone for the day, but we have a girl who sometimes helps me clean the inn at after hours," answered the innkeeper. He stepped out of the room for a moment and his voice rose in a shout. "Rachel! Come here for a second!" Entering the room again he said, "She's a good, responsible girl, and she might be of use to you."
     A few moments later a quiet-looking girl of about thirteen appeared at the door. She had a pale, oval little face and dark, melancholy eyes; short dark hair framed her white countenance in feathery strands that reached no longer than her jaw. She paused at the threshold, her eyes taking in the sight of Elazul and the woman lying on the bed, but she displayed neither surprise nor dismay, and her gaze went to the innkeeper in passive expectancy for further orders.
     "Rachel, this man will need a bowl of hot water and some soap, as well as bandages. The woman is injured and needs to be washed. Will you be able to do it?"
     The girl nodded a silent assent, and Elazul intervened. "I'll need some water and soap myself. Please bring another bowl of water, and two towels." He rummaged in his bag and withdrew some silver pieces, which he placed in the innkeeper's palm. "This is the deposit for three nights. Also, I just thought of something; she has no replacement clothes. Do you think you can find a clean nightgown for her?"
     The innkeeper turned to the girl again. "Rachel, run down to your mamma and ask her if she can sell us some clothes from the shop. Get us two nightgowns and some undergarments." Rachel said nothing, but nodded again, then turned and left as soon as he ceased speaking. Elazul, his face suffused with a faint tinge of embarrassment, said, "Thank you for your help."
     "No need to thank me," answered the man. "If you need anything, just tell me." His eyes ran speculatively over Black Pearl, but he made no remark, and left.
     Elazul let out a sigh. His gaze went to Black Pearl. She lay on the white bed, the cast of her countenance nearly as pale as the sheets. He felt the strain of fatigue overtaking his whole body and wondered how long he could stand the wait; an urgent need to lie down somewhere and rest rose in him. The aftermath of Black Pearl's attack had passed, but a slow, laborious march of over an hour in the freezing winds with the woman's body in his arms sometimes exhausted him nearly to the point of fainting.
     A few minutes later Rachel entered with the bandages, as well as with a wooden bowl of water, a towel and soap. She perceived the young knight leaning forward, one arm against his knee, the palm of his hand supporting his forehead, his eyes gazing down blankly. He was roused at the noise of her entry and straightened, turning his face towards her; but he said nothing. Their eyes met, and a moment later she deposited the items she had brought on the small table at the side of the bed without comment, then turned and vanished again.
     Elazul, fighting against his fatigue, was roused to action again. He took the clean, cream-colored towel and dipped its edge in the warm, scented water. He gently passed the wet cloth over Black Pearl's face, clearing away the dust and the sweat. He proceeded with a careful cleaning to the various cuts and bruises on her face and shoulders and arms, paying careful attention to the lengthy wound across the lower side of her neck; then he withdrew the bottle of purifying distilment from his bag. He doused the wound with some of the liquid, and then, as he was unrolling the bandages, a thought suddenly occurred to him- the danger of discovery of Black Pearl's core.
     With deft fingers he unlaced the shirt at Black Pearl's neck, and the incriminating sight of her core met his eyes; but it gave Elazul a momentary and unexpected pause. The dark jewel shone faintly, but it had an odd aspect. Instead of the impenetrable black Elazul was used to seeing, a faint glimmer appeared within it, as if a small, pale star had formed in the center of the core.
     Elazul had no time to deliberate over this strange phenomenon for he thought he heard a noise from downstairs. He quickly passed the wet towel over Black Pearl's neck and shoulders, cleaning them, and then he unrolled the bandages and wrapped them around the upper part of her chest until they concealed her core completely. He then bound it securely and waited for Rachel to enter. She came in two minutes later, carrying the second bowl of water that contained a sliver of green soap floating within, and a large towel. "For you," she said with a soft voice. She turned and left, but returned a moment later, carrying some packages which she placed the side of the bed; Elazul could recognize the pale lacing of a nightgown.
     “I'll need to bandage her chest wound again,” he told Rachel. “The previous bandage had become soaked. Do you grow sick at the sight of blood?”
     Rachel gave her head an adamant shake. Elazul began to issue instructions which Rachel followed with careful precision. They unwrapped the cloak from around Black Pearl's body, and Elazul pulled the corners of her shirt up. He untied the expertly-bound bandages, that were now drenched with a slowly spreading red stain. The deep, gashing wound met his eyes, still oozing a small amount of blood. Apparently it had re-opened- doubtlessly, Elazul reflected without remorse, due to his own action. He cleaned the blood with water, then doused the wound with the purifying tonic; finally, with Rachel's aid, he wrapped the clean bandages around it.
     His mission done, he withdrew a clean shirt from his traveling bag and took the bowl of water and the towel. He rose to his feet and turned. “Please clean her and replace her clothes,” he told Rachel over his shoulder. “Be very careful not to move her too much.”
     He went to the corner of the room, where a curtain closed off a small area designed for dressing. He entered and shut the curtain. Placing the bowl on the floor, he seated himself in front of it with his legs crossed; then he leant forwards and dipped his hands in the water, splashing a quantity of it on his face, and then over his head and neck. This action refreshed him somehow, and he proceeded to clean himself.
     When Elazul finished washing he said, slightly raising his voice: "May I come out?" A quiet voice answered him, "Yes," and he put on his clean shirt, automatically buttoning it to the neck in a habitual gesture of precaution. He drew the curtains aside and came towards the bed, his travel-stained shirt bundled in his hand.
     He found Rachel sitting by the bed by Black Pearl. Black Pearl's blood-stained clothes had been replaced by one of the nightgowns Rachel had brought from the shop. Rachel was sitting at the head of the bed; the bowl of water was placed on the table, which Rachel had moved close to the bed. Rachel had gathered Black Pearl's long tresses and placed it into the water bowl, in which they now floated like golden seaweed. She was applying a fragrant liquid, pale peach in color, that generated a white foam which she proceeded to disperse across the long threads of hair, cleaning them carefully and thoroughly.
     Elazul came to sit on the side of the bed and watched Rachel's work without interrupting her. She did not look towards him, but suddenly she said, with a wistful voice: "Her hair is so beautiful. I wish mine was this pretty. I brought new water to clean it especially," she added.
     Elazul smiled at this unexpectedly artless remark; it was like a little girl that found a wonderful new doll. Rachel finished cleaning Black Pearl's hair and doused it with water, then dried it with the towel. She then stood up and began to gather the items she brought in, but Elazul rose to his feet and approached her.
     "Thank you," he said. “You provided me with an invaluable help.”
     Her dark eyes looked at him for a moment without a change of expression; she made no reply, but after gathering everything she pointed at the bed with her finger.
     "Your blanket," she said.
     Elazul noticed a second blanket draped across the edge of the bed, and he suddenly laughed, the first spontaneous sound he made for a long while. The laughter dispersed the lingering shades, and lightened his spirits a little. "Yes. Thank you for remembering."
     A faint smile flitted across the young girl's pale face, but she said nothing and left the room, closing the door behind her quietly.
     Elazul seated himself in the small, uncomfortable chair again. He draped the blanket across his shoulder and watched Black Pearl. There was no perceptible change in her; her eyes were still closed, her face still white.
     He wondered to himself whether she was in some sort of a shock that added to her condition, and recollected the vision of the blinding flash that the sword has emitted. Then he recalled how Alex vanished over the edge of the cliff, blood oozing down her body, and he turned his eyes away from Black Pearl, passing his hand over them. They burned and ached, chafing against their inability to shed tears. Elazul stood up and removed the chair to the corner of the room. He wrapped himself well in the blanket and lay on the wooden floor besides the bed, closing his eyes.

     He opened them again to gentle sunlight. Slowly he rose to a sitting position, passing his hand over his face to remove the trappings of sleep from his eyes. A stirring at his side, on the bed, caught his attention, and he turned his face quickly towards it.
     Lady Black Pearl sat on the bed, looking at him. Elazul, who meant to rise to his feet, suddenly became perfectly still and stared at her with stunned silence.
     She was sitting in a pool of the cool morning sunlight that diffused through the window; and it took Elazul a moment or two to fully grasp the strange alteration that overcame her. Black Pearl's hair, whose color had previously been a rich dark gold threaded with flaxen threads, had altered to a uniformly pale, light gold, the long silken waves framing her face and body in a glowing halo. The large eyes were no longer black; their color turned into a deep, clear turquoise. It was a subtle change, but it seemed to alter her aspect thoroughly. Instead of shining darkly she glowed with a bright light, pale and pure in the white gown of satin and lace.
     It took yet another moment for Elazul to understand this impression, perceive that the change was not only physical. Black Pearl's countenance was not frozen into its usual calm expression, but was, instead, relaxed and somewhat wary. Her eyes didn't seem opaque and penetrating, but looked at him with a strangely undetermined expression, seeming to receive his gaze instead of repelling it.
     After another moment Elazul collected himself with an effort and flushed faintly at a realization that he had been staring at her. He hurriedly rose to his feet, attempting to act as casual as possible. "How are you feeling, Lady?" he asked, keeping his tone neutral; his expression, however, was obdurate, the lines of his face harsh.
     She opened her mouth but for a moment no sound came; then she answered, "I don't know.”
     Elazul seated himself on the side of the bed, looking down at the white sheets to try and avoid staring at her strangely transformed appearance. Many conflicting feelings crowded in his mind as it coursed over the turbulent and precarious career of their acquaintance, but his instinctive reaction had always been to protect a woman in a susceptible situation, and he was unsure what to do or say. He decided to leave the conversation to her, for he had never known Black Pearl to lack for words. He found himself struggling between his deep anger and his present indecision, and wondered whether she was doing the same; and upon that thought he suddenly realized that she said nothing. The prolonged silence grated his nerves, and he looked upwards again.
     To his slight chagrin he found that she was still looking at him with the same uncertain expression in her eyes. A thought entered his mind that she still hasn't recovered completely; and this recalled her wound to her memory. “You shouldn't be sitting up,” he said grimly. ”It could hurt your wound.”
      "My wound?” she echoed, her voice very low.
     "Yes." Elazul did not pay attention to her words, but looked at her with a frown, reflecting that she was certainly sitting with a poise that indicated comfort rather than pain. He could discern the faint cantor of the bandages through the white gown, and they did not seem to be stained with blood. A good sign for her; he wondered whether the wounds were not as grave as it seemed before.
     She now spoke again. “There was a pain in my chest, around here-“ she placed her fingers lightly on the bandages- “but I put my hand onto them and the pain disappeared.”
     Elazul eyed her somewhat doubtfully, perplexed at her strange way of speaking, and a puzzled expression entered his eyes. “The pain vanished?”
     “Yes.” She lowered her eyes before his intent gaze, seeming disconcerted for a moment. His astonishment deepened at this uncharacteristic reaction on her part. Something was certainly wrong with her; it was not only the physical transformation. "Lady," he said, "what do you recall?"
     After a lengthy pause she looked down before his direct, searching gaze, her fingers smoothing her nightgown with a strangely restless gesture. "I- don't know," she said, and her musical voice, that has always been clear and precise, was low and soft in its tones. "I can't recall anything, just..." her brows came together in a momentary effort, and her fingers halted their nervous activity; "a white light.” Her eyes returned to Elazul, wary, but also filled with some other emotion. “Did you… did you rescue me?”
     Elazul had been too confounded by this strangely-uttered speech from Black Pearl to respond for a moment. He then realized, with a sudden flash of understanding, that this was no longer Black Pearl as she once had been; he had guessed that she might have lost her memory, but this was no mere memory loss. It was a complete and utter transformation. Perhaps, he thought with a strange verve, some hidden aspect to Pearl had surfaced and displaced her previous persona- which might mean that what I once felt, that something that I sensed glowing from within her core had been there- I was right!
     He still couldn't understand what she meant by the pain in her wound vanishing when she placed her hand to it. Somewhat more gently, he said, “Can you please describe to me how you made the pain in your chest vanish?”
     She averted her face again, her color heightened, and stammered, “I- I don't know. My hand glowed white and the pain vanished."
     Elazul recalled Black Pearl's treatment of him, her hand surrounded by a dark glow, draining his core, her own black core glowing as it weakened him and drained his energy; and what she now said about her hand being surrounded by white light, the pain disappearing; and he thought of her strange transformation, dark beauty to light. And then Elazul was up on his feet, kneeling on the bed, leaning towards her, his hands grasping at her nightgown. Her eyes widened and she shrank away. All at once he realized how his action might be interpreted by her and he paused, his face flooding with red; but his mind was racing with anticipation for the confirmation of his suspicion, and he said, quietly, "Don't worry! I won't harm you, I, I just need to replace those bandages." He straightened, falling back a little. "If you wish it, you can undo them yourself."
     She looked down at her nightgown, her fingers passing over the bandages about her chest. "These? I should take them off?"
     Elazul nodded. "Please do, quickly. I- I shall turn my back, if you so wish." He turned around and sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her. "Now, please unbind the bandages. Quickly!"
     "'I- I will," was her hesitant answer. Elazul thought, she is definitely changed; Black Pearl never obeyed anyone's command; and he waited impatiently. Finally, she said "I have done it," and then she uttered a short exclamation of surprise. "Oh! What's this?"
     He turned around. The first thing he could see her eyes looking into his with consternation, and heard her voice saying, "I- why do I have this- what am I?"
     The next thing Elazul saw was Black Pearl's exposed core, and he stared at it, torn between amazement and the realization that his theory, so vaguely founded, had been right beyond his wildest dreams.
     Black Pearl's core had become completely white.

This chapter is dedicated to Mazrim Taim.

Take my hand
You know I'll be there…
I'll cross the sky for your love.

    - U2, Drowning Man

Chapter 2: Drowned Dreams: Pearl

     The coral-colored ledge of the cliff curved against the glittering April sea, shadowing the bright sands beneath it, banishing the gently diffusing sunlight. The peculiar arch of the coast at that point closed off the arm of the ocean beneath it into a widely curving, u-shaped body of water. The coral ledge was a unique little structure, a watch-point rising above the level white shore, affording a full view on the luminous blue vista spreading to the horizon. Visitors liked to ascend the steep path leading to its summit, to take advantage of the beautiful view.
     A shadowy blue structure of a three-story building, an inn, was constructed upon the shore on a collection of red rocks, just above the u-shaped bay. Overshadowed by the inn and the flanking cliff, the color of the surging currents of the bay became a profound blue hue. Only in mid-noon of very bright days, when the sun was balanced high in the sky, it would manage to lance a luminous ray that penetrated through the dark waters, making them shimmer with a gentle light like the inside of a beautiful blue jewel. The waters of the natural pool were very profound, plunging deep beneath the rocks, and although their glassy surface was constantly disturbed by the streaming sea, it masked depths that swallowed all light, and were dark and silent like the inside of a grave.
     The figure of a girl walked along the shore that day, her bare feet washed by the cool surge of the mid-day tide. Long hair rippled down her slender back, and her large, wistful eyes surveyed her surrounding scenery somewhat absently. The girl's skin possessed an unhealthy pallor, but the heat of the day brought a pleasant color to her white cheeks, and she appeared to relish the beauty of the day and in the warmth of the gentle sun.
     She coasted the shoreline for some time without much more purpose, it seemed, than to enjoy her walk; and she rounded the edge of the cliff, her steps leading her to the carved path that led towards the shadowy inn, when suddenly she paused.
      A tall woman stood near the coral cliff in a pool of bright sunlight. She stood with her back to the meandering girl, and did not seem to notice her silent approach. The girl's attention was caught by the golden hair that tumbled down the woman's back in thick waves, over which the sun threw a shimmering, luminous net. The woman was clad in a cream-colored dress, its skirt embroidered with a crimson border that rippled through it like a thin thread of blood, and her long legs were encased in white boots adorned with gold lace. Although the girl could not see her face beyond the curve of the white cheeks and slender neck, she guessed that it would be beautiful as well. The woman stood with her back straight, slim and elegant in her billowing dress.
     The girl approached the young woman slowly, almost as if she was afraid to disturb her silent repose. She hesitated as she gained a clearer view of the woman's face, and halted again. The woman's eyes were fixed on the horizon with a distant expression, and she appeared to contemplate the blazing sea absently, as if she was deeply absorbed in thought.
     But when the girl saw her face she started suddenly with an almost nervous gesture. Her thin hand flew to her mouth, her eyes widening with shock.
     Still, the woman did not hear nor see the girl; she stood as silent as a statue, stillness incarnate.
     The girl's hand trembled visibly. She uttered a faint sound; and the woman, catching it, finally stirred and turned.
     The girl became very quiet under the woman's gaze. She found herself looking into eyes of a profound turquoise color, shadowed by long lashes. She stood with tense poise that indicated that she waited for something, a signal of recognition from the woman, and that she dreaded it at the same time. But the woman said nothing to the girl; and after surveying her for a moment without much interest she turned her head back towards the sea.
     The girl was astounded at this gesture, and her shock doubled. For a moment she appeared at a loss, not daring to do anything, as if afraid of the consequence of speaking. She experienced a brief struggle, wrestling to overcome a naturally timid nature, but finally she garnered her courage and spoke.
     "Lady," she said in a quiet, hesitating voice, that still had something in it; an anxious anticipation of a backlash for her action. "Lady, I-"
     The woman finally took notice of her. She turned towards her again, this time fully.
     "Did you come for them?" she asked.
     "Them- Lady?" faltered the girl.
     The woman moved her hand slowly, as if seeking to encompass the full vision of the sparkling azure sea, of the warm, golden day. "I dreamt it was raining this morning," she said, the rich notes of her voice lulling like a slow melody. "A bright curtain in the sunlight. And I…"
     Her quiet voice trailed off. The girl, staring at her with wide eyes, said nothing. The expression in the woman's dreamy eyes turned soft.
     "I could see them through the curtain of rain."
     The turquoise eyes focused on the girl for a moment, then wandered away from her, and after another pause the woman turned slowly towards the sea.
     "It faded, and the sun rose high the sky," she said. "But they called to me. So, I…"
     Once again, she trailed off at mid-sentence. Her eyes watched the glittering, changeable sea. "I followed them here," she finally continued, her voice very low. "But then, I…"
     She became silent again. The girl said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on the woman steadily, with a strange expression.
     The woman never finished her speech. After a short silence she suddenly moved restlessly, as if struck by a different thought.
     "I must go," she said absently, her voice regaining its usual tones. "I lingered too long, and…"
     She looked towards the girl, noticing her presence again for a brief moment. "I will be missed," she finished simply.
     Without another word she began to move down the coast with an elegant, steady gait, and the warm winds played with her long hair, rippling soft shadows through it in the sunlight.
     The girl was finally roused into action at this, as if shaken from a trance, and suddenly began to run after the white-clad figure of the tall woman. She caught up with her and dropped to her knees onto the bright sand.
     "Lady!" she said, her voice full of emotions. "Lady, I know not what- but- oh, Lady, why do you not recognize me?"
     The woman paused, watching her in slight puzzlement. But her bewilderment faded presently, and her eyes wandered away again, towards the calling horizon. She said in a soft, vague voice,
     "I… I'm not sure. I often forget."
     She was about the turn again, losing interest in the girl. The girl, noticing her intention, rose to her feet and grasped her hand.
     "Please," she said. "You must, must know me! I know not what happened, but you cannot, you cannot have forgotten me, Lady Pearl! It is I, Sapphire."

     Upon his arrival to town, and on the days that followed, Elazul was thrown into a black fever of restless activity. Impatient, restless, burning with the need to do, to know, he left the inn and Pearl sitting in that closed little room and went to the shore of the sea; and there he quested, embarking upon a long, weary, determined search that lasted for days and proved futile. No body was brought ashore with the winter currents; nor did the villagers and fishermen going about their business near the cliffs find anyone matching the description he provided. Once, a young sailor who died in a shipwreck several days earlier was washed to the coast with the gray tides, and Elazul, informed of it, hurried to the scene with a sickening feeling of anticipation; but he knew it not to be Alex, and turned away from the decomposing body with pity and revulsion, nauseated by the spectacle of corruption and death.
     Of Florina there was no trace. She vanished as if she never existed.
     For a whole week Elazul kept up his search for Alexandra's body, questing with characteristic tenacity, torn between hope and despair; leaving the inn at dawn, coming back late at night, dirty and exhausted, throwing himself at the bedside with barely a taste of food and immediately falling asleep, never noticing that Pearl, huddled in the little bed, was always awake, her eyes open in the darkness as she waited for him. Usually she rose in the bed after Elazul would fall asleep, watching him; but she would neither say nor do anything, and after a little while she would simply vanish into the depth of the bed again, like a white, silent ghost.
     Sleep brought no solace to Elazul, but black, tormenting nightmares. He dreamt that he was drowning inside a bottomless pool, his breath strangled, slowly sinking through the endless darkness. But although the imminent feeling was that any moment he would die for lack of air, death never came, and instead he descended slowly, persistently, trapped in an endless moment of deep and abiding hopelessness. He would wake up bathed in cold sweat, his heart wrenching with an elusive, inexplicable dread, sensing that he had known this feeling once. Death closed him upon him, although he knew not whose death; his own, Alexandra's, Florina's, or the terrible knowledge that in the city, Jumi were ill and dying with little solace.
     All that time, Elazul's thoughts turned on Alexandra. He recalled bits and visions of her, the memories surging up constantly, already obscured by a haze, a curtain of mist that placed them in the past, flowing backwards upon the ever-moving currents of time. And at the same time the haze softened them, blurred the images. Now that Alexandra was gone, Elazul began to feel the pangs of longing, the sense of lingering regret. It was a natural reaction, a response to the shock over her death; but Elazul began, perhaps with much less clarity than he did in the case of Black Pearl, to forget everything that he had been wary of and even disliked in Alex, and his mind dwelled instead on the times when harmony and affection existed between them. He recalled the admiration he always felt for Alexandra's best traits, her staunch loyalty and acute intelligence, and the warm feelings he experienced when she understood him without the necessity of saying much. Sometimes he had the strange sensation that they had been, in some ways, twin souls that found each other, drawn together for some purpose despite their differences, and wondered how he always sought to cut out the most difficult path for himself, instead of recognizing love where he found it. His need for it re-surged at the memories, so strongly sometimes that it made him feel numb, struggling under a lingering ache that became a nightmare in itself, making him sleepless and restless; and causing him, when gray dawn arrived, to continue his search with a hopeless kind of determination, his desire fueled by a strange feeling that finding anything, any clue to solve the mystery, will enable him to hold on to something instead of sinking in the hopelessness, blindly fumbling through a darkness similar to his nightmare. He desperately fought to recapture a fragment of the rapidly vanishing past that was already becoming a memory, blurred through the idealizing re-construction that his feelings had built around it. But the answer never came.

     His fruitless search was cut off abruptly. Elazul soon learned that he was no longer master of his own time. When he returned to the inn on the evening of the sixth day the innkeeper informed him that Pearl was gone.
     Pearl spent most of her days closeted inside the little room. She took no interest in anyone or anything, and Elazul had to leave instructions to Rachel to serve her with food; he feared that otherwise she would forget to eat. For the most part she did not speak to anyone, and Elazul had little time to understand her new persona. He had seen enough of it to know that she lost her memory, and was no longer the same; but the over-riding need to hold on to the past, to find Alexandra's body, to find Florina, overcame everything else; and he forgot Pearl.
     He called her, quite simply, Pearl; but he felt nothing towards her at this point. She was a strange, different person, one that, he sensed, required more time to understand than he had to bestow. The great anger that he felt towards Black Pearl for killing Alexandra was oddly inappropriate with this new woman, and it melted quietly away after that first morning. But at the same time, he no longer felt any of the burning longing that existed in him when she was Black Pearl, exuding power and allure, challenging his self-worth and strength of will. He felt some pity towards her; but nothing beyond.
     It was doubly strange; because now that Pearl's hidden persona, the glow that Elazul had sensed from within her, surfaced and proved him right, it left him feeling listless. Perhaps it was because Elazul had wished to draw it out while she was still Black Pearl, wished her to display a weakness that will enable him to overpower her. But it came out in a way that was unexpected, and transformed her completely. Black Pearl, possessing the profound power, the fine instinct to discern hidden motivations within her fellow beings, sensed Elazul's unconscious wish to master her and resisted it; and her resistance stimulated Elazul's desire. As Black Pearl, she deconstructed the feelings of others, reflecting them back at the person who projected them, using her perception as an effective weapon. But now that she was Pearl, receiving and absorbing feelings, she accepted Elazul without resistance; and Elazul, left with no challenge at all, lost interest in the battle of wills that no longer existed. This did not mean that he understood her better than he did Black Pearl. Indeed, her effect on him was one of a curious sense of sinking, lost in something that he did not quite comprehend, and was, perhaps, a little afraid to.
     So Elazul pushed the need to understand Pearl away from him, and concentrated his energies on his quest; but her actions soon proved that she would not as easy to handle as he thought.

     She had stolen out unseen on that evening, as quiet as a shadow, and no one could tell her whereabouts. Elazul had no rest on that night. Following upon clues from night-time passers, he walked through the light rain and the sinking dusk. It took him nearly two hours to trace Pearl to the far edge of the town, where the village met the wilderness.
     He found her sitting at the edge of a vast meadow, staring into the dark clouds that raced across the pale face of the moon. Eerie shadows chased each other across the earth, swift and silent, and the winter night was full of whispers. Sitting in her white gown against the dark background, the figure of the young woman seemed to Elazul like pale shadow haunting the lonely wasteland. He was chilled and weary, and a feeling of loneliness and despair filled him all at once. For at that moment he knew that his search for Alexandra and Florina was over. The past was slipping away again, melting from his grasp, as it had always done. Nothing was left to him but Pearl.
     He came behind Pearl and touched her shoulder, indicating that she should get up. To his surprise she understood the silent summon and obeyed, rising to her feet. Unwrapping his green cloak from his shoulders, he covered the thin gown that clung to the young woman's form with the cold, listless rain.
     "Let's go, Pearl," he said.
      She turned a little, and her large eyes watched him silently; she made no response. Then, lowering her head and stumbling a little, she stepped besides him. He wrapped his arm around her, and she clung to him, shaking. Walking slowly, they made their way through the silent streets towards the inn.

     When they reached the inn, Pearl was shaking badly, and it was clear to Elazul that she was not well. He supported her up the stairs, and she collapsed into the small bed, huddling under the covers. Laying his hand on her forehead, he discovered that it was burning.
     "Damn it," he muttered.
     His worst fears were realized as the night wore on. Pearl tossed in the bed, feverish and restless. Her eyes were open, but Elazul, who sat in the small chair and watched over her, could tell that she did not see him. They were fixed, it seemed, on something unseen, and sometimes she shuddered and muttered words in what Elazul thought might be the Runic language.
     He thought of going downstairs to fetch some cold bandages to place on her forehead; but as soon as he moved from his seat she suddenly rose quickly and her hand caught his arm.
     "No!" she said. "Don't leave me!"
     He gently tried to explain to her that he was going to fetch something to make her better; but her fingers tightened around the lapel of his sleeve with surprising force.
     "Stay here!" she said. She was breathing quickly, her eyes fixed on his face, and there was something strange in them.
     Elazul said nothing, but slowly sank to his seat. Pearl, relaxing, huddled back into the bed and drew the blanket over herself, staring at the wall.
     Elazul remained sitting with his hands clasped together, sometimes watching Pearl, sometimes staring absently at the black night through the small window. He knew that, for that one moment, he had been commanded into obedience by Black Pearl.

     The night wore on. Elazul was used to hard conditions during his travels, but he recklessly wasted his energy that past week, and he was paying the toll. As the hours ticked by slowly, the little room began to blur before his eyes and his body felt as if it melded into that small, hard chair. Pearl's frantic shuddering subsided a little after some time, and she eventually closed her eyes. Elazul took advantage of her subdued condition to slip away and retrieve a bowl of cold water and a cloth, which he applied to her forehead. After a while he was too exhausted to continue with even that simple task, and he sank into a sort of a waking dream, the night hours swimming around him listlessly, seemingly without end.
     He was jerked into attention by a sudden cry, and realized that he fell asleep, although he could not tell for how long. The cry repeated; Pearl's voice.
     "Stop it! Don't do this to me! Oh please, stop! Stop! STOP!"
     Elazul became alert at once, and he leant over Pearl. "What is it?" he asked quickly. "Is something hurting you, Pearl?"
     Pearl was lying in the bed, her wide-open eyes fixed on some undetermined point in the opposite wall, breathing quickly and shaking. Feverish sweat ran down her face, and her fingers clutched frantically at the white sheets, trembling uncontrollably. She did not answer Elazul's question, appearing unaware that he spoke.
     Elazul, guessing that she was experiencing a waking nightmare, felt a little relieved, although he pitied her distress. He applied the cold, moist cloth to her forehead, smoothing her hair down with his hand, as if she was a child. After a little while this appeared to have an effect, and her trembling subsided. But then she held onto his hand again.
     "Don't leave," she said. Her voice was different that her earlier, harsh command. It was low and weak, a piteous entreaty.
     "I won't," he answered.
     There was silence, and Elazul pondered the situation. He knew that he should call a doctor, but Pearl's distraught condition made it impossible for him to leave her.
     Inert with indecision, Elazul remained at Pearl's side for a little while longer. Exhaustion was beginning to overcome him again, when, all at once, he was roused by a sudden memory that seemed to offer a solution. He pondered it for a little while, and then decided to try this new idea.
     "Pearl," he said, very gently, leaning forward. "Pearl, can you hear me?"
     There was no reply, and for a moment Elazul thought that she finally fell asleep. But then she turned her face towards him. She did not say anything, but she seemed to be listening.
     Elazul was relieved to see that she was receptive to him presence. "Listen, Pearl," he said, quietly, not sure whether his guess will work. "Do you recall that first day, when you awoke from your faint, and unbandaged your wounds?"
     Silence, then: "Yes," she answered softly.
     It was a meager chance, but Elazul clutched at the hope it offered. "You healed your own wounds, Pearl. Remember? You told me that you channeled a light from your core to your wounds, and they healed."
     She said nothing, too dazed, perhaps, to follow his thoughts to their conclusion. Elazul clarified it for her.
     "You are ill, Pearl. But you might have the power to heal yourself, as you did then. Can you heal your fever, Pearl?"
     He fervently hoped that she will reply in the affirmative; but after a short silence, during which Pearl lay inert, milling his words over in her mind, she only shook her head.
     "I can't," she said. "I… I don't know how I did it."
     "Can't you try?" he asked. "Try to see if you can, Pearl."
     But this suggestion threw Pearl into a strange fit of panic. She held tightly to Elazul's hand, and buried her face against it.
     "I cannot!" she said, in a stifled, distressed voice. "I- I don't know what happened!"
     Elazul heaved a sigh. He knew that Pearl was not in conscious control of that new healing power that appeared ingrained in her core, and he hoped to goad her into assuming control. But he could now see that it will not be easily achieved, because Pearl had no memory of how to wield that innate power.
     "I understand," he said wearily. "But if you only could, Pearl, you would feel better. You have the power to heal wounds, Pearl."
     But Pearl only shook her head frantically, her voice muffled.
     "No!" she said. "I have no power!”
     Elazul did not know what to make of this answer, and he gave it up. He was too tired.
     "Go to sleep, Pearl," he said quietly. "It will be for the best."
     She said nothing, but edged close to him, her head coming to rest near his knee. Her fingers retained their grip on his hand. Then, cradling her cheek against their laced hands, she closed her eyes and became silent.
     Elazul was locked into a position that was, if anything else, even less comfortable than before. He adjusted himself to it the best that he could manage, trying to ignore his weary, sore muscles.
     How ironic, he thought wearily as he carefully settled himself back into a somewhat less trying position in the chair, how ironic it is that she, Black Pearl, had reproached me for never taking responsibility, because I refused to become a guardian's knight. And now, she is forcing me into it without meaning to.
     He couldn't tell when he fell asleep, but it seemed only a moment later when he jerked awake at the sound of a soft tapping at the door. A maid entered, bringing them food. Elazul asked her to summon the doctor.
     The doctor administrated a herbal remedy, but it did not seem to do Pearl much good, and the next three nights afforded little rest for Elazul. He took care of the feverish Pearl, doing his best to assuage her suffering, without much success.
     And then, on the third afternoon, Elazul woke up to a strange scene. The room was full of gentle sunlight that slanted upon Pearl's little bed- which was empty.
     Alarmed, Elazul rose at once and looked around. He immediately spied the young woman's white-clad figure sitting a little further away, in a corner of the room.
     He rose to his feet and approached her. She was sitting with her back to him, perfectly motionless, leaning over something that she held in her lap. Her long, waving hair flowed around her face, concealing her expression.
     "Pearl," Elazul said quietly. "Are you feeling better?"
     She made no answer. Elazul approached her and stood over her, looking down at the object she was holding.
     It was the ancient sword. Pearl was holding it over her knees, and Elazul, seeing it, became very still at the sight of sunlight rippling across the luminous blade.
     It's beautiful, he thought. He completely forgot the strange sword that brought Black Pearl's downfall. Something about it made him uneasy, and now he found himself suddenly wary of Pearl's interest in it. He wondered whether it signified something important.
    "Why are you holding the sword, Pearl?" he asked.
    She looked up; and to his astonishment he discovered that she appeared much better. Only yesterday morning she was still feverish and restless, but now her green eyes regained their usual, serene depth, and her skin was no longer flushed with fever.
     "I had a dream, Elazul," she said in an absent tone. "I dreamt of sunlight, and something called to me. And I… I felt better, then."
    She rose to her feet slowly, her fingers leaving the sword. It cluttered to the floor, but she did not pay any attention to it, and went back to the bed. Huddling inside, she drew the blanket over herself, and closed her eyes. After a few moments she fell asleep, and her breathing was serene, regular and deep.
     Elazul remained, looking down at the sunlit splendor of the shining sword. Pearl's words echoed in his mind.
     Sunlight calling to her; and her fever healed. Just like her wounds have healed with light flowing from her core.
     But Pearl's frantic utterance returned to him.
     I have no power, she said.
     Elazul knelt and examined the sword. I have no weapon now, he thought to himself. I might as well use this one.
     He had a vague, uneasy sense that he ought not do this, ought not to wield this strange, mysterious weapon…
     But the sword's light called to him, and, without realizing it, he obeyed the call.

    On the day of Pearl's recovery from illness, a plan formed in Elazul's mind. He knew that he could not continue this way. He must find a house for Pearl and himself, and find a temporary occupation to keep them both.
     He consulted the innkeeper about this matter.  The innkeeper, after a short meditation, advised him to acquire the help of Rachel's mother, Jennifer. Elazul agreed, and the two met that afternoon.
     Rachel's mother was a practical-looking little woman with long, thick, light brown hair, and wide eyes that stared at people in a disconcerting fashion, as if she was constantly taking their measure. She took to Elazul at once in an easygoing, friendly manner that appeared natural to her. She was as voluble as her daughter was silent, and appeared to know everything about the people of the town. She conveyed much of her knowledge to Elazul as they quested for a house together.
     Elazul did not have much money at his disposal, and the only dwelling they found that fitted within his budget was a run-down little cottage at the edge of town. Rachel's mother surveyed the house's dark, dusty interior with distaste; but she immediately assured Elazul that this could be remedied with some cleaning. Elazul could see no other option, and he took the place. He asked Rachel's mother whether her daughter could help with the initial ordering of the house.
     "Of course, dear," said Jennifer briskly. "We'll be glad to help you."
     Elazul felt grateful for her generosity; and he recalled something else. A little embarrassed, he said, "I was also wondering whether you would aid Pearl to choose some new clothes. It's just that she has only one suit, and she needs more; she's a little absent-minded, and probably can't be relied on to choose properly for herself."
     Jennifer had seen Pearl during the first quarter-hour of meeting Elazul. "I would love to select some clothes for your lovely friend!” she said at once. “She is as tall and beautiful as a princess, and some of the gowns we have will look remarkable on her."
     "Thank you," said Elazul. "I was also wondering about something else, however. I'll be soon getting some work, and Pearl will… well, she will need taking care of, someone to stay in the hours with her when I'm gone. I was wondering whether Rachel could come and watch her for me for a few hours during the afternoon, at least at first. I'll pay well," he added.
     Rachel's mother nodded, as if he confirmed something she already understood. "I think Rachel won't mind doing that. From what I've seen of your friend, she does seem somewhat… fragile. I hope you don't mind me asking, dear, but did something happen to her, or was she always like this?"
     "No- yes," answered Elazul, caught off-guard by the question, and unsure of what to say for a moment. "She experienced a shock recently, and it changed her a little, so I- I'm taking care of her."
     "Is she a relative of yours, then?" asked Rachel's mother, raising an eyebrow.
     "She's- no," answered Elazul, a little quickly; but he added no further explanation. Rachel's mother stared at him for a moment with her disconcertingly steady gaze, and Elazul changed color.
     "He's a precious one, isn't he?" the little woman remarked to no one in particular. "Well, don't you worry your head about it, dear. I'll take care of everything."
     And so, the next afternoon Elazul met a vision of Black Pearl as he had never seen her before. Rachel's mother certainly selected beautiful clothes for her; their general array of gold and white fitted Pearl's new persona well. But at the same time it was a little unsettling for Elazul to see this tall, majestic woman decked in somewhat childlike clothes. Pearl made no objections, and her complete obliviousness to the indignity inflicted upon her made him feel strangely disconcerted, the true realization of his situation pressing upon him again, his new reality somewhat unsettling and a little sad.
     He spent the next day questing for work, and he finally found an afternoon's work at a smith's workshop. The wages were just enough to keep up the rent for the house and feed Pearl and himself.
     Rachel met him at the door of the house when he returned in late evening on the first day. Elazul was pleased to discover that the house had been meticulously cleaned, the dust and cobwebs swept away, the floors and cupboards washed. The house had been fitted with new furniture, selected by Jennifer, that appeared both practical and tasteful without being too expensive.
     He thanked the silent child that proved so much help for him, and escorted her home. Returning to the house, he washed himself and went upstairs to check on Pearl.
     Pearl was asleep, and seemed peaceful, almost childlike. Elazul watched her, and wondered at the change his life had wrought. He only left the Jumi city some three weeks ago, but it seemed like a space of months, even years.
     And he reflected, my life is finally going to settle into a quiet and comfortable routine; who knows how long it will last, but I need this space of silence, a space to live quietly and forget about everything… for at least a little while.

     Sapphire was setting a table in the restaurant of the blue seaside inn, spreading a white cloth map across it, carefully arranging the silverware and china upon it. She continued with her task, moving from table to table until the entire hall was arranged for the upcoming dinner.
     She glanced outside the large windows and observed the rich golden rays of the setting sun pouring into the hall. Evening is near, she thought. Perhaps I was wrong? Perhaps it was not-
     Just then the door behind her flung open and the innkeeper entered. "Sapphire," he said. "There is a man here who wishes to see the woman that you brought today. You told me to ask you first, so here I am."
     "Yes, thank you," said Sapphire at once. "Where is he?" She already began to move towards the door, but then a young man stepped through. "Where is that young woman who found her, then?" he asked; his voice was brusque, his accents tense.
     Sapphire recognized him at once. Then my guess was right, she thought. "Elazul!" she said softly, a tremor of happiness rippling through her voice at seeing him again. "I'm so glad you're here. I-"
     He was astonished to see her, and halted for a moment, staring; but then he strode quickly towards her. "Sapphire!” he said. “How… what… what are you doing here?"
     She bestowed a faint smile on him, amused at his crestfallen expression. “I left the city,” she said, quite simply.
     Elazul looked at her searchingly for a moment; but then, shaking himself out of his momentary stupor, he said quickly: “Then, of course, you saw-“
     Sapphire nodded. “Yes. I found her on the beach.”
     “Then you know,” Elazul stated quietly. “Where is she now?”
     Sapphire indicated the stairs with her hand, moving towards it, and Elazul immediately began to follow her. They ascended the small, narrow staircase that led to the third floor, where most of the inn's rooms were located. Sapphire pushed open one of the doors. “My room,” she explained.
     Pearl stood with her back to the door, watching the sea through the open window. The unceasing waves flung against the rocks several stories below, three floors of the inn and the full height of the red cliffs. Elazul, approaching her, noticed that her eyes were fixed on the opaque darkness of the pool flowing below. Perceiving Elazul, she shifted her gaze to the floor.
     “Elazul,” she said, softly. “I- I tried to go home, but…”
     “It's all right, Pearl,” he said immediately. “Come here; sit on the bed. You've met Sapphire, right? She is a friend of mine.”
     Pearl fixed a vague look on Sapphire; but no flicker of interest or recognition appeared in her eye. She proceeded to obey Elazul, moving towards bed with slow steps. Elazul seated himself besides her.
     “Listen, Pearl,” he said gently. “I need to talk to Sapphire. Just rest for now.”
     She nodded, saying nothing. Elazul indicated Sapphire to come sit near him at the window-seal.
     “Speak softly,” he said. “I don't want her to hear us.”
    Sapphire nodded in understanding. Elazul took her hand, pressed the thin fingers. “I am truly glad to see you again,” he said. “But tell me everything that happened, Sapphire. Why are you living in this place?”
     The smile she bestowed on him was warm and genuine. “I am glad to see you, Elazul… so very glad. And I will tell you the story.”

     "I always wanted to leave the city, Elazul,” Sapphire began, her eyes fixed on the sea outside her window, her soft voice slow but clear in tone. “You know it. Remember that time when we visited that town together? It was my first time outside the city and it was…” she slowed for a moment, and finished, “it made me realize how much I wished to leave it.”
     Elazul made no comment, but waited for her patiently to continue.
     “Snow and Emeralda felt the same way that I did. You know that Emeralda always wished to leave for the university, and Snow was ready to join her. She was very angry at everything that the council did to you. So… she gathered both of us, and we made plans for our escape. Which we executed about a month after you left.”
     “Sapphire,” Elazul interrupted her now, “please tell me- how is the city?”
     She glanced at him, noticed his strained expression, and understood it.
     “It's… not as bad you might think it is, Elazul,” she said. Almost on impulse, she leant forward and took his hand in hers. “Please don't look so worried, Elazul! Diana and Rubens are taking care of everything. And as for the healers… they managed well, even without Florina. The number of sick actually dwindled in the weeks after you left. I don't know what the situation is like now,” she added. “But, Elazul…” she stammered now, her white cheeks flushing as she uttered her observation, “Florina was in a bad shape… I knew that she was. The city would have been in the same way even if she stayed because… of her condition. Elazul… please don't trouble yourself over the city. I think that everything is all right, at least for now.”
      Elazul said nothing, but his eyes stayed on Sapphire. Although she did not know it, her manner affected him as deeply as her words.
     She changed, he thought to himself, not a little astonished. Sapphire changed. She is actually exerting herself, speaking to me… trying to comfort me!
     Since Elazul maintained his silence, Sapphire, after examining him and feeling reassured at his expression, continued with her story.
     "It took almost two weeks of traveling, for Snow, Emeralda and myself. It wasn't easy, but we managed. And when we reached this inn, and this beautiful little harbor, we decided to stay for a while before continuing, and I...”
     Sapphire became abruptly silent, a soft look stealing into her eyes. “I simply had to stay here,” she said, in a low voice. “So I engaged to work here as a waitress. And I've been here ever since; for over two months now."
     Elazul covertly examined Sapphire as the girl narrated her story with a quiet, flowing, even voice. The rays of the dying sun that streamed through the window of the bedroom were orange and warm, and the soft evening wind caressed the young woman's long hair, stirring it around her white face. There was a relaxed look in her eyes, an air of serenity about her, and of quiet contentment.
     Yes, he thought; Sapphire changed. It was a subtle change, but it was there, for anyone who cared to observe. She was happier, much more open, much more... sure of herself. I don't know what brought this change, but it must be this new life. She seems happy, as if she found her niche.
     "Why did you stay here, Sapphire?" he asked.
     "I love the sea," she replied, turning her face and watching the slow, steady surf beyond the red rocks. "I... I fell in love with it, Elazul." She gave him a rare smile, rare because it was a clear, genuine, warm smile, unlike any of her previous, pale attempts at expressing her happiness. Or perhaps nowadays it's not so rare, Elazul realized. "I had to stay. The moment I came here, I knew that I had to stay. Snow and Emeralda didn't deter me. I think that they understood."
     "So everything is all right?" he inquired, searching her face intently. He had to make sure; he couldn't rely on his instinct alone. "Do you feel comfortable with this place, Sapphire?"
     "I had help," answered Sapphire. "A dancer that works here was very nice to me. Her name is Revanshe. She worked here for a long time, performing in the dining hall, and she's on good terms with the owners of the inn. The innkeeper was very kind as well. Revanshe helped me get the work, and made sure that they give me a good room. She's like a big sister to me."
      "I wish to meet her, then, and thank her for her kindness," said Elazul. "But, Sapphire, are you sure you don't wish to come live with Pearl and myself? I have a house in town, not far from here. You can stay with us."
     But she shook her head. "No, Elazul. I don't wish to live in town. I love the sea. I love it here... I love to be alone, relying on my own work… and to feel free. I don't need much. Just a room to stay, and food. And I have both here."
     Elazul was silent. He saw enough by now to perceive that Sapphire, despite her compliant manner, would be adamant about this matter. Perhaps, just perhaps, if he ordered her, he could influence her to come and live at his side, where it was safe. His eyes made an inevitable shift to the young girl's shirt, closed to her neck. He knew that Sapphire understood the need to conceal her core. And still, he didn't know if she would be safe enough.
     But then he gazed into the girl's large eyes, perceiving once again their expression of serene contentment, observing how she changed from the timid, nervous, sickly child of the city, and he could not find the heart to do it.
     Perhaps I myself should come live here, he thought. For a while, just to keep an eye on her. Yes, as soon as I can, I should come…
     Perceiving his silence, Sapphire repeated her previous statement.
    “I wish to stay here, Elazul.”
     Elazul looked down. “I understand.”
     As if wishing to change the subject, Sapphire said: “And what about you, Elazul? Please tell me all that happened.”
     He met her gaze with a mirthless smile. “You must guess some of it by now.” But then he proceeded to narrate all the events. When he got to Alex's death he halted, slowing; and then felt Sapphire's hand on his own again; a quiet, reassuring touch. And he recalled that she, too, has once suffered a loss in her life through death.
     He concluded his story, and Sapphire remarked quietly: “I could see that Lady Pearl has changed; now I understand why.”
     “You changed too, Sapphire,” Elazul observed, searching her face intently.
     She gave him a somewhat melancholy smile, but said nothing, and Elazul returned to that recurring, troublesome reflection. If I leave her here, alone, and people find that she's a Jumi…
     The apprehension troubled him, and he shook it off again, repeating to himself: I'll come back as soon as I can.

     Elazul decided to meet the dancer Revanshe, whom Sapphire said had helped her so much, and judge whether she could take proper care of Sapphire.
     He made the request to Sapphire, and soon followed her down the staircase again, into the inn's second story and into the same spacious hall of the inn's restaurant. He had not noticed how beautiful it was, but now he had time to observe it at leisure.
     The hall was decorated tastefully in soft shades of blue. Large windows overlooked the gorgeous vista of the sunset over the sea, and the small mahogany tables, overlaid with white maps and stubby candles set inside curved copper holders, gave it a pleasing air of quaintness.  There was raised platform in front of the tables, attached to the wall set with the windows; and a young woman, her back to the splendid view of the sea, was performing a dance on this stage for the nightly guests.
     Elazul seated himself at a table with Sapphire, watching the show. The young woman was clad in green, and held a long silken scarf in her hand, which she used to affect a flowing, water-like effect to accompany her graceful movements. After she finished the dance audience applauded her. Bowing, she left the stage, and spotting Sapphire, she made her way towards their table.
     She seated herself on a chair, and, her eyes on Elazul, inquired of Sapphire after his identity.
     "He's an old friend," Sapphire answered. "Elazul, this is Revanshe."
     Revanshe had taken off the veil that had concealed the lower part of her face, and Elazul found himself looking at a tall, willowy woman of about twenty-nine. Her delicate face was attractive if not beautiful, with very white skin and high, strongly marked cheekbones, and her exotically slanted eyes were sky-blue in color. She had let down her yellow hair, that had been previously pinned away from her face in a tightly-coiled braid, and it fell down to the small of her back.
     Elazul made a gesture of welcome; but Revanshe did not take his proffered hand, and instead continued to examine him with her straight stare. At Sapphire's answer she raised an arched eyebrow. "Friend?" she echoed.
     Sapphire nodded, and Revanshe leant back in her chair. "Hm," she said. "Well, child, if I had a man who looks like THAT passing off as my friend, and if some hussy inquired after our relationship, the first thing I personally would do is tell her that he's mine. THEN I would inquire her precise intentions."
     Sapphire smiled; and Elazul, not at all disconcerted, said gravely, "I'm afraid that I am more like Sapphire's brother than anything else."
     "I'll take your word for it, then," Revanshe answered. "So, what's the full story?"
     Elazul related it, carefully omitting all details relating to the Jumi city, and hoping that it would sound plausible enough; but Revanshe did not make any embarrassing inquiries, and she waved off his expressions of gratefulness for helping Sapphire.
     "Nothing to it," she said briskly. "I immediately saw that this child needs my help; and so I gave it."
     "Don't belittle your actions," replied Elazul. "I know of many that would do otherwise."
     She arched a brow. "I can think of several ways in which you could thank me."
     Elazul, meeting her gaze, finally changed color. A smile tilting his mouth, he said, "I thank you deeply from the bottom of my heart."
     Revanshe gave a dismissive sniffle and rose to her feet. "So he says. Well, Sapphire, I can see that you took a little time off tonight, no doubt to host your re-discovered friend. I would love to chat more, but I need to change, first." To Elazul's surprise, she leant forward and grabbed his hand, shaking it briefly; then, turning around, she made her way through the narrow paths between the tables and vanished through a small back-door.
     "Please don't mind Revanshe," whispered Sapphire, leaning forwards towards Elazul. "She acts a little strange sometimes, but she's really very nice and kind."
     He smiled at her. "I think that you're in good hands, Sapphire," he observed wryly. “That woman certainly will never be at a loss for an answer to anyone.”

     A little while later, Elazul ascended the stairs towards Sapphire's room. Much had happened that day, and he needed to re-organize his thoughts, be alone for a while. He will soon retire to the little room downstairs that the innkeeper and Revanshe arranged for him; but first he had to check on Pearl.
     He opened the door slowly, and could see that Pearl was standing near the window again, as she had done before.
     “Pearl,” he said softly, approaching her. “I'm back. Did you sleep?”
     She made no reply, and Elazul, coming to stand before her, perceived that her eyes were fixed on the dark ocean.
     “Pearl,” he said again, gently. She was like this sometimes; lost in her own reveries, oblivious to his presence… he placed a hand on her shoulder and she shuddered, as if his abrupt gesture broke a spell.
     “They… are not longer calling me,” she whispered.
     She turned dark, troubled eyes on Elazul. “I… I must find them again. I have… I have lost them, Elazul.”

Comment: Revanshe had exactly two lines in Legend of Mana, and her principle role was to have lewd sexual advances made upon her by a talking fish with legs (whose role, you must recall, had an obvious relation to Sapphire). But she was related to the seaside harbor, and she was pretty cool. So I decided to give her a role in this story, which, while still small, is better than to have her be the object of desire for a fish.

Dedicated to StarDragon.

Chapter 3: Earth Painting: Glowing Blossoms

      The month of May burst into scent and flower with intense verve and hue. The earth painted herself like a vain woman, girdling herself with multitude of sunny blossoms; and she danced with the soft yellow of buttercups embroidering the green meadows of her dress, the starry brightness of daisies shining in her eyes, the blood-red poppies staining her lips, and the dark, fiery orange of sky-reaching sunflowers ornamenting her head, boasting her beauty to the blue, watchful sky.
      The figure of a young woman, twenty-five years of age or so, stood inside this warm splash of color, her bright eyes watching the azure flame of the skies over-arching the valley. She stood very quietly, as if lost in a momentary meditation, and the soft breeze played with the gold-trimmed edges of her knee-high, green dress. Her gloved hand clenched momentarily, as if she was deliberating upon something, perhaps an uncertain decision. But then her fingers relaxed and a faint smile played about her red mouth, as if she was reminiscing upon something that she found particularly pleasing or particularly amusing. She passed her hand over her hair, smoothing it into place, fixing the short chestnut strands around her cheeks in a careless gesture. Finally, she spoke.
      "I am sorry, Elazul," she said. "I would like to see you again, but I have my own purposes to think of; and I cannot have you intruding into them with your incessant questioning, your intrusive evaluations and criticism; intrusive because they almost always ring true, and make me aware of what I don't like looking at in myself. They tell me that you found peace at last. Let me do you this small favor, then, in repayment for all the trouble that I caused you. Let me not disturb your repose for a little while more."
       She turned her head and something flashed into her vision, like a calling sign, a summon; the orange fire of a cluster of flowers growing near the side of the road. Then she laughed, a merry sound that flowed through the hot spring air.
      "You are vain, little flowers," she said. "As vain as I! You shall be a fitting trademark for me, pretty ones."
      She bent and plucked two particularly large and glowing blossoms, and trimmed them of their broad, silky leaves. Then she pinned the blossoms in her hair, one over each ear, securing them into the thin tiara encircling her head.
      "There," she said, straightening. "We're all set now for our next conquest."
      She cast a final, fleeting look towards the dark form of the town nestled inside the green valley.
      "And when we meet again, Elazul," she said, "beware of your troublesome Sandra!"

      The sun sank a little in the thick blue skies as afternoon approached, and the town was hushed a little, perhaps because the heat became oppressive and suffocating that moment in the middle of May. It was a day that smelled of the oncoming summer, hot and heavy and sleepy, a day that made everyone's blood flow a little slower, turned even the most practical of people into lethargic, silent dreamers.
      A thin man sat inside a small, shaded bar, hunched in the deeper shadows in the corner, perhaps to escape the burning heat. The man was slightly bent over his drink, the hood of his white cloak pulled over his head. Although his bony fingers were clutched around his tall glass, he seemed to rarely partake of the drink; from inside the shadows of his hood, strangely pale eyes watched the ongoing in the bar.
      Few other customers sat in the bar that day; the only others besides the white-cloaked man were four men who had been drinking steadily for some time, in an apparent comradeship. The barkeeper, a middle-aged man, stood at the counter arranging his bottles. He glanced at his customers occasionally with apparent disapproval, but did not address them directly, and upon their request for another bottle he obeyed, setting it on the table silently and immediately returning to his occupation behind the counter.
      The drinks were apparently beginning to have an effect on the men, and they spoke louder now, in what appeared to be a budding argument.
      "I'm telling you," said one, slapping his palm down on the table, "that it WAS her. It was Sandra, I say. Green dress and orange flowers in her hair and everything. So don't you suggest that I was drunk at the time."
      His heated declaration was greeted with jeering contradictions.
      "I'm sure."
      "Don't make me laugh."
      "Yeah. Few people actually seen the sly little bitch, you know."
      "Though many claim they did, of course."
      The man, turning red, gestured towards the bartender.
      "He'll affirm it, I say!" he said, his voice becoming louder. "He saw her once. Didn't you, bartender? You saw Sandra, the jewel-thief, two weeks ago around the town."
      The barkeeper glanced over his shoulder, halting for a moment in his arrangement of the glasses on the shelves; but the door pushing open cut off any reply that he might have prepared.
      The newly-arrived customer was an uncommonly handsome young man with dark hair. He was clad in what appeared to be his work clothes, plain gray and stained with sooty marks of fireside labor; and although he cleaned his face and hands he was obviously coming directly from his work. The four men at the table paused in their conversation and watched him with an unfriendly silence as he walked towards the counter. Deprived of their argument for a moment, they proceeded to drain the bottle given to them by the bartender. The man at the corner table watched the young man as well.
      The young man paid no attention to any of them. He reached the counter and, addressing the bartender, requested two bottles of beer.
      The barkeeper regarded the young man with an expression far friendlier than he showed any of his present customers. "Nothing for you?" he asked good-humorously.
      The young man responded with a slight smile. "No, thank you. My employer sent me on a little mission, a break from work, so to speak."
      The bartender nodded. "I already know the type that he particularly likes. Hold on; I'll fetch it from the cellar."
      There was a short silence after the bartender departed through a side-door. Then one of the four men at the table spoke. "Hey, I know why you looked familiar. It's the new smithy-boy."
      "Of course it is," another man said, a smile, not particularly pleasant, curling his mouth. "Didn't you recognize the pretty face of the new smithy's boy?"
      The young man glanced over his shoulder briefly, but he said nothing in response, and the gaze he flickered towards the men was uninterested.
      "Nothing for the smithy's boy, I see," said another man.
      The men, as in agreement, now joined the parade of taunts.
      "The smithy's boy doesn't drink."
      "Too good for drinking, or not man enough?"
      "With that pretty face of his, I'm surprised his father didn't think that he was a girl."
      "He must have, and so he forbade him to drink."
      The young man's shoulders hunched a little, his mouth became somewhat grim. But he kept his eyes on the counter.
      The bartender had returned by now, and he heard the last few remarks. A slight frown creased his brow, and his eye flickered towards the young man. But he said nothing, and settled the two bottles on the counter.
      "There you go," he said. "Are you sure you don't want anything yourself?"
      Before the young man could reply, one of the men at the table called out, "Of course he won't! I forbid him from having a drink, like his daddy said."
      "It's all right," the young man said calmly, in response to the barkeeper's look. "I don't care about the opinion of some drunk idiots."
      "Drunk idiots, he says," echoed one of the men with a nasty tone.
      The four men rose to their feet now.
      "Maybe he thinks himself too good to talk to us," said one.
      "Hey, smithy's boy. You think you're too good?"
      "We're not the ones taking care of some strange woman," put one of the men in.
      "Oh yeah," said another, with a sneer. "Isn't he the one taking care of that crazy girl?"
      "One who talks to spirits."
      "Yeah; just last week, I saw her walking in the town square, talking to spirits."
      "Hey, smithy's boy, why don't you take better care of your woman?"
      "Letting her wander around town like that."
      "Are you the crazy woman's lover, or just her nursemaid?"
      "You know," the young man said to the bartender, "I'd like to have a drink after all."
      The bartender glanced at him uneasily, noticing the dour look in the young man's eyes; but he obeyed without comment, filling a glass and handing it to the young man.
      The four men, meanwhile, advanced towards the counter and stood in a close semi-circle around the young man.
      "He's not taking good enough care of his woman," said one.
      "So she's looking for other forms of consolation," put in another.
      "Hey, smithy's boy, tell your pretty woman that I'm ready and willing, if she's looking for a real man, instead of a nursery maid."
      "Tell her I'll be there tonight," put in the first man. The other men laughed.
       The young man turned around slowly, finally facing the men. He was holding the glass in his hand.
      "Don't worry," he said. "I'll take care of it."
      Before the men could respond, he leapt forward all at once, dashing the drink in his hand into the face of one of the men. The man fell back, trying to wipe the stinging alcohol out of his eyes, but the young man's fist, landing a powerful blow just beneath his jaw, sent him reeling backwards into the table behind him. The table overturned, crashing to the ground with the man.
      The young man had already turned towards the second man. He ducked, avoiding a punch, and crashed his fist into the man's midsection, just below the heart. The man doubled over, deprived of breath, and was knocked to the floor with a swift kick.
      The two remaining men, acting in unison, attempted to catch the young man between them; but they had just consumed a vast amount of alcohol, and their opponent was in much better possession of his senses and balance. He managed to avoid them quite easily and immediately turned and punched one of the men squarely in the face. The man retreated, crying out, and covered his bloody nose with one hand. The young man delivered a hard kick to the man's knee, causing him to lose his balance. He fell heavily.
      The last man was the one who told Elazul he would visit Pearl on that night. He showed Elazul the knife in his hand.
      "Not so fast," he said. "I'll skewer that pretty face of yours, smithy's boy, if you come any closer."
      The young man made no response, but advanced. The man retreated and then, with a cry, leapt at the young man.
      Eyes flashing coldly, the young man brought his other hand around, the hand still holding the wine glass, and drove it into the side of the man's head. The glass broke. Blood streamed down, and the man screamed, the grip on his knife slackening. The young man caught it. Then his arm shot out and he closed his fingers around the man's neck.
      The man's hands tore at his neck, and he gagged, suffocating because of the iron grip locked around his neck. Blood streamed from the cuts on his forehead, dripping onto the young man's hand, staining the gray sleeve red. The young man, smiling grimly, tightened his fingers a little.
      "Now, listen you all," he said, retaining the deadly grip on the man's neck, and speaking quietly above the man's choked gasps. "If I see any of you anywhere near my house- anywhere near HER- I'll kill you all, one by one."
      He released the man. The man fell to the ground, reeling and gulping air, his hands around his neck, where the red marks of fingers could be seen. The young man straightened, surveying the four men. They were slowly rising to their feet, eyeing him with hostility.
      "Anyone thirsting for more?" asked the young man, the dour smile still bending his mouth.
      The men glanced at each other, but made no answer. The young man threw the knife in his hand to the floor, at the feet of its owner, with a contemptuous gesture.
      "You're right about one thing," he said. "I not am very much like my father. His punishment for your stupid insults would have been much less pleasant than mine. Now, get out of here."
      He turned his back to the men, and leant against the counter again. The bartender, who observed the scene in silence, marked that the smile had vanished from the young man's lips, and that the grim look returned to his eyes. The men avoided looking at each other; one by one, they filed and straggled out of the bar, nursing their various injuries. The figure in the corner watched them as they passed by, a mirthless smile pulling its thin lips.
      The young man's face was still lowered over the counter, when the bartender's voice sounded. "Very protective of her, are you?"
      He received no reply.
      "It's all right," said the man kindly. "They got what they deserved, in my opinion. They should be doing something else than sit here and make stupid arguments like whether they saw that jewel-thief." He indicated the young man's sleeve with his finger. "You would probably want this washed," he told him.
      The young man looked at his bloodstained fingers and sleeve edge, but said nothing for a moment. The barkeeper handed him a clean towel, dipping it in water first. The young man cleaned his hands of the blood. Then he turned around. "Thanks," he said flatly, his voice tired. "But all I did is cause a mess in here." He straightened the overturned table and chairs, then picked the two bottles, and after thanking the barkeeper again began to make his way towards the door; but then the man's voice, speaking musingly, reached his ear. "I wonder, though, whether Sandra the jewel-thief was really here a few days ago. I saw her once, you know."
      At this, the young man's aspect underwent a remarkable change. His paused in his tracks, his face turning white; then he swerved around sharply and, with three wide steps and a space of a second, he was near the bartender again, leaning close, his blue eyes flaring, searching eagerly, a troubled, burning, hopeful light in them. "Sandra," he said. "You said you saw a woman named Sandra."
      The bartender edged away gingerly from the uncomfortably close premises of their bodies, recalling what he had seen just a few minutes ago, mindful of the danger manifested in the young man's rigid poise, tense voice, livid face. "Yes, Sandra."
      "When did you see her?" The question was quick, the tone harsh. "What did she look like? Tell me!"
      The bartender's eyes searched the young man's face, and he arrived to his own conclusion, which appeared to afford him a completely different view on the matter. "Relax, son," he said with a dawning smile. "I'll tell you all about her soon enough. Settle down and have something to drink. I really do think you that need it. You sadly wasted the last one."
      The young man straightened, seeming to flush a little, and said, "I apologize. But please tell me. I need to- to know what she looked like." He mechanically obeyed the bartender, settling himself in a nearby chair. He looked down, fingers clutched on his knee, but he listened with attention as the bartender took a glass and began to polish it, and in the process spoke with a meditative tone.
      "Well, Sandra is, if you don't know, the partner of the famous bandit-leader, the Fox. Seems like she saved his life once, some years ago, and then she joined his crew and become one of them herself. It's strange, for they say she actually used to be a nun- nun at the great shrine- I suppose this explains how she saved the life of the Fox. But she became as good as any of them, even better. They say she and the Fox are lovers,"- at this the young man looked quickly up, his eyes clouding over with a dark emotion, a red tinge burning in his lean cheeks; but he noticed the man's eyes on him and quickly averted his face. "I'm not quite sure if that's true, however.
      "I saw her a few weeks ago," the bartender continued, uncorking the wine bottle and pouring a little of the ruby liquid into the polished glass. "Just for a moment, which is more than others can claim, for she comes and goes as quickly as light. She was a good-looking woman-very fetching, with pretty features, white skin and chestnut hair. She wore a green dress, and what a fine figure she had; rather taller than the average woman, and very slender and trim." He rounded the counter and came over to the young man's table, settling the drink in front of him. The young man took it without comment, but drank nothing, listening instead with a tense expression, his fingers clutching around the stem of the glass.
      "Her eyes," he prompted. "What color were her eyes?"
      The bartender glanced shrewdly at the young man. "They were dark," he finally answered. "But I've seen her for such a fleeting moment, I'm not quite sure."
      The young man said nothing, his face lowered, and the barkeeper continued. "There are many stories about Sandra. Some time ago she and Fox embarked upon some pretty crazy exploits that made Sandra instantly famous. The most notorious of them is that one in which Sandra arranged to rob Kristie's Palace of Arts in the university out of its entire stock of antiques. When morning came Kristie's servants found almost nothing in the palace except a few statues; how the thieves managed to get beyond the complex security system is anyone's guess. Kristie, of course, raised a huge racket about it, for even though most of her items are so exclusive and famous that most people would have had a hard time selling them on the market, she was still pretty upset, as you may guess. But on the very next morning she found all her stock back in the palace, with a note inscribed as following: "Dear Madam: this was done as a bet between Fox and myself, and everything is returned to the last item. If you need anything, just call me. No hard feelings!" Sighed by Sandra. From that day on Sandra and Kristie became friends, and they work according to a mutual bargain to aid each other. Sandra brings to Kristie any antiques and rare commodities she finds in her exploits, and Kristie's servants are always at Sandra's disposal if she needs any special work to be done." The barkeeper chuckled. "After this one, there's almost nobody who doesn't know about Sandra. But there's plenty of new rumors about her lately; rumors that have to do with Jumi cores."
      The young man looked up. "What?" he asked, rather sharply. "What are they saying?"
      The barkeeper shrugged, his brow creasing. "Well, I'm not sure. But Sandra's name had been somehow linked to the Jumi, as if she's been looking for Jumi herself. They say that she's looking for a special jewel, the most bright and beautiful jewel; what else may they mean besides a Jumi core?"
      The young man said, a little unsteadily, "They... they are saying that Sandra is looking for a Jumi core? But that's..."
      He halted just in time, averting his eyes quickly before the barkeeper's look of surprised inquiry, and the expression in his downturned countenance was a mixture of simmering feelings. After a brief pause he suddenly rose to his feet. "Thank you," he said abruptly, "for all your help. This is all I wished to know." He turned around and made way towards the door.
      After the young man left the bar, the white-cloaked figure sitting in the corner rose to its feet and approached the bartender. It lay a few coins on the counter and said, in a peculiarly unpleasant, soft voice: "Bartender. Does this young man know Sandra?"
      The bartender looked the figure over, his eyebrows coming together. "I'm not sure. He never spoke of her before, but he does seem to take an uncommon interest in her. Why are you asking this?"
      "No reason," answered the figure, its bloodless lips curling into a thin smile. "It's just that Sandra is an... acquaintance of mine, so to speak. And I take a great interest in her activities."
      The bartender stared at the man; but before he had a chance to reply, the figure turned around and left the bar.

      Pearl drifted inside the hot May evening, wading gently through the wafting heat trapped between the houses, inside the warm blue shadows. The heat swallowed all voices, and the orange of the lanterns hung at door-posts burned without noise. The woman's long hair lost its color, turning as blue as the shadows of the town, and in her white gown she looked like an ethereal phantasm, moving inside a rippling haze that blurred her world until forms had no meaning for her.
      She walked in a hazy dream, saw and perceived nothing around her; all she could see was the vision of the bright forms beckoning to her from a distance, burning like white flames inside the empty blue world, leading her towards her destiny, their silent fire promising her truth, an answer, an end to the uncertain mist of her existence.
       Something held her now, arrested her. She halted gently, like flowing water, unresisting. There was a whisper of voices around her, and the burning forms in the distance wavered suddenly, like streams of white fire on a curtain of blue flame. The whispers intensified, consolidated into one word...
      Pearl... Pearl... Pearl.
      She now perceived the hazy shadows crawling around her, glowing faintly through the blue fire, but they were gray and insubstantial and lacked meaning for her. She continued on, drifting past them.
      But then she noticed that the bright forms in the distance had vanished. She could no longer see them. And the heat sank slowly around her, engulfing her.
      The world turned dark, and Pearl was left empty and alone. She slid to her knees, shuddering. The mist intensified, the gray forms consolidated around her in the sweltering heat, sought her with their whispers.
      Pearl covered her face with her hands.
      "Stop," she said. "Stop following me! Stop telling me your stories of death. Leave me alone!"
      She combed her trembling fingers frantically through her long hair, down her face.
      "I do not wish to remember," she whispered. "I do not wish to know."
      She was sitting thus for what seemed a long time, the slow, humid night streaming around her. Then a hand touched her arm, a firm grasp, a living touch, and a voice spoke her name, asked her a question; but the words were blurred, indistinct. She shook a little but said nothing.
      The voice spoke again; but she remained sitting, not responding. Then she sensed that someone was near her, kneeling at her side, peering into her face. She raised her eyes, and the figure seemed a faint shadow inside the blue night, and she could see nothing beyond.
      "Please leave me alone," she said. "Leave me alone. I do not know who you are."
      But the figure uttered her name again, and its fingers touched her face; and then a curtain of haze tore before her eyes, and she could see distinct forms again. And then she knew that it was the young knight that had once rescued her, who had known her in the past she could not, was afraid to recall. And she leant forward, her forehead touching his shoulder, seeking the only support she had ever known, seeking that reassuring, living touch and presence. His arms encircled her, and he said, "Pearl, you must not leave the house like this anymore. You promised me."
      "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I... I forget."
      She recalled his name now: Elazul. She kept forgetting it, then recalling it, then forgetting it again... like she did everything else. But every time she felt lost, every time she forgot, he always came and found her, and reminded her of the living world again.
      And as she rose to her feet and followed him though the warm, quiet streets of the town, Pearl sensed a great dread overcoming her. She suddenly feared, she knew not why, that one day he would forget her as she forgot him; that he would forget to return her to the world, and then she'll be left to wander amid the gray phantasms, seeking the ever-retreating, silent white forms that called to her, seeking futilely until she became one of the ghostly phantasms herself.
      "I won't let you leave me," she whispered. "You can never leave me. I won't let you ever leave me, Elazul."

      Another memory visited Elazul, a memory flooded with light.
      He had taken Pearl to the woods on that day, and they walked through the soft sunlight, inside the green spring, inside a forest full of drifting leaves and dotted with a million tiny white flowers, like stars descended to earth. There was a large lake in the middle of the forest, whose waters were a profound, clear, beautiful violet; and the water reflected the trees and the sky, looking like a living painting drawn in liquid colors upon glass.
      Pearl had been fascinated by this vision, and Elazul watched her as she sat at the side of the lake, her own white form joining the picture inside the violet waters. For a moment she became part of that dreamlike world, herself a creature of the forest, her golden hair a ripple of sunlight, her gown a multitude of drifting white flowers, her form shimmering and merging into the green and violet and white of the forest. It was a beautiful vision, a peaceful image amid the chaos of his life.
      And somehow Elazul knew that, with the mention of Sandra's name, the repose had been abruptly cut short, the liquid painting upon the glass shattered with a brutal blow.
      As quickly as it began, his brief interim of peace ended.

Comment: Yes, I couldn't resist writing up the cliché situation, "silent and stern handsome young man punishes punks". Well, a least Elazul's character fitted it well.

"Earth Painting" is the memorable Jungle music. For some reason I always associated it with Sandra, even though she never showed up in the Jungle. Must be because the tune is very upbeat, and because the Jungle is so green.

I think everyone should recognize Lake Kilma.

Chapter 4: Earth Painting: Lucky Clover

      Snow was dreaming. In his dream, soft white snow fell, fresh new snow of spring, falling upon green meadows, covering them in a pure, bright blanket that grew thicker and deeper until the green beneath was completely concealed from view. And he reflected how beautiful the snow-covered earth is; it was no longer turbulent, the confused streams of energy that rippled across its dark surface, that brought chaos and disorder, were chilled and deadened and nothing remained of the world but that lovely, orderly stillness of snow. The cold air swirled around him, freezing him to the core of his being. And then he suddenly realized that the snow was suffocating all life below it, that it was covering it evenly without care or remorse, concealing all life beneath, a life that may be chaotic and disorderly but that had a force and meaning in its movement, a dark fire that engendered feelings instead of killing them in order to still them.
      And then he saw three rubies lying in the snow, two black rubies and one red; and the two black rubies became two dark eyes, and the snow upon which they lay became the white face of a girl, and the green of the meadow burst through the snow and became the girl's hair, and a the third ruby, as red as fire, became the girl's mouth; but the mouth was closed, the black eyes stared at nothing, the face was as white as death. And he knew the girl was dead; and then he realized that the girl looked like Emeralda.
      Then the wind changed and beat upon him with sudden violence, and a storm rose up around him, a hurricane of snow that almost blinded him; and amidst the madly swirling flakes he could see the ghostly figure of the dead girl rising to her feet, a pale phantasm. The figure strode towards him slowly through the white air; but even as it became clearer in view, it began to change from the familiar vision of the girl that he knew, to transform into a different creature. Her skin became even whiter, a delicate, frozen, crystalline hue; her hair whipped around her, her tresses growing long and wild, and it was drained of its living hue until it became a ghostly blue; and then she opened her eyes and they were a deep, crystal violet, and without pupils; and he knew that they were unseeing, yet all-seeing.

      Snow shot upright in his bed, breathing quickly and trembling violently, sweat trickling down his skin.
      The darkness around him was complete and for several moments he could not see anything. The brief switch from the perfect whiteness of his dream to this darkness confused him, and his hand quested for something, anything to hold onto as a reassurance of reality. It found a blanket wrapping him. He tried to fling it away from himself, but as soon as he did the sweat on his body became cold, and he realized that the temperature of the air around him was very low; and he had to retrieve the blanket and wrap it around himself again the best that he could to protect himself.
      Something finally stirred in the darkness; and now Snow's eyes became used to it a little, and he recognized the faint square of a window just above him.
      The faint stirring recurred, and then a voice spoke, a familiar voice, in tones of concern:
      "Snow, are you all right? You startled me."
      "It's nothing," he answered immediately, feeling a little ashamed of the commotion he made over a mere dream. "Just a nightmare, Emeralda. Go back to sleep."
      "I think you better go to sleep as soon as you can," she said. "Tomorrow we have to take the final trail to the peak of the mountain, where the Crystal Garden is, and you'll need all the strength you can master."
      He could see her form, gray in outline in the faint moonlight flowing through the window, crouching besides his bedroll.
      "Yes, I know," he answered, trying to sound as calm as he could. "Like I said, it was just a nightmare. Go back to sleep, Emeralda."
      Instead of answering, she extended her hand and placed it on his forehead. He was too surprised to avoid it, but he felt himself flushing with embarrassment, and was grateful that the darkness concealed this reaction. "What is it?" he asked.
      "Just checking your temperature," she answered calmly. "I thought that perhaps you would be feverish again, after all this journey."
      "I am not a little boy, Emeralda," Snow said fretfully, both humiliated and grateful at her concerned gesture. "I left my parents to escape exactly this treatment, you know."
      "Well, you need taking care of," Emeralda replied, not at all perturbed at his tone. "But, you're not very feverish after all; perhaps just a little. So it's all right."
      She rose to her feet and turned. "Good night," she said, over her shoulder. "I'm going back to sleep."
      Snow watched the gray outline of her form retreat to its own corner of the little mountain cabin. He curled himself back into his own blankets, his eyes wide-open, fixed on the darkness. It was not the fever that troubled him; although he would not admit it, one sensation lingered from the dream. His core felt cold.

      Emeralda shielded her eyes against the brightness of the sun upon the snow-beaten path. Thankfully, the progression of spring into summer showed its marks even up here in the lonely cliffs of the peak, and the trip up the mountain was no more difficult than she and Snow had expected it would be.
      Their three months at the university had been enjoyable. They registered as students, and, having paid their quarterly due with jewels converted into currency, they looked forward to having a pleasant spring. Once every two weeks or so they took a trip to the seaside, a day or two travel away, to visit Sapphire; and even Snow was relieved of his initial apprehension about Sapphire when he and Emeralda perceived how well she integrated into the little community of the inn. Emeralda herself, when her mind was not preoccupied with her new and rigorous course of study, sometimes missed her parents and three older sisters. But she knew that Snow, and especially Sapphire, were immeasurably happier in their current situation than they had been in the city, and she hoped that the search for them would be either not too industrious or unsuccessful. Since she knew that their families would never allow them to remain, despite the letters of reassurance that she sent to the city, she only hoped that the date of their finding would be delayed as much as possible.
      The trip to the mountain had been a long time in planning, and Snow and Emeralda took advantage of a two-week break to finally embark upon it. They have been four days on the trail, and would be four days in returning. To her surprise, Emeralda enjoying their trip greatly. She took delight, at the lower altitudes, in the vision of the mountainside awakening into the warmth of spring, with hundreds of tiny flowers like drops of crystal winking amid the verdant slopes. But the weather became bitter as they ascended, and they left the last habitation behind them many hours ago. The air turned pungent with frost in the vicinity of the peak, and she was thankful for her heavy coat and the scarf she could wrap around her face to shield it from the harsh winds.
      She did not dream of complaining. Snow was the one who ought have complained, and he did not. He closed his lips stubbornly and plowed on in the cruel weather, only turning irritable when she tried to express doubts about his ability to withstand it, or misgivings about his condition. He was especially crabby and difficult today about this matter; ashamed, she guessed, for his weakness of last night. But he also appeared pensive at the same time, and made little conversation, his eyes fixed on the azure skies above the peak they both toiled to reach. She did not hold it against him, because she knew that he was feeling perturbed at the prospect of finally meeting Crystalle, the Snow-faerie who froze his core when he was a small child; and she also guessed that he was perhaps mulling over last night's nightmare, which she was sure had to do with Crystalle. She therefore refrained from addressing him unnecessarily, and only uttered practical comments and suggestions regarding the direction of the trail itself.
      Snow knew this, and he was grateful for Emeralda's exemplary patience with him, grateful that she understood him so well and tolerated his weaknesses with such composure. I wonder if I even deserve such treatment from her, he reflected. But this is why I like Emeralda so much; she knows when to be patient with me, and when to be impatient, just as I deserve, and to never be too much of either.
      But how can I explain to her, Snow thought, his eyes simmering with a restless fever, how can I explain to Emeralda why I felt such fear at the dream, how I felt such dread at the near vicinity of Crystalle? How can I tell her that I felt, and still feel, my core responding to her nearness, to her almost-tangible presence? How can I explain that I fear that I am wrong- that Crystalle was not good and beneficial in that action of freezing the black ruby into an ice crystal. And that instead, my parents were right; that Crystalle was a wayward, amoral creature, a fey creature that cared not about the evil she inflicted. That she indeed cursed me out of pure mischief, like any faerie. And that, because she is this way, I have entangled her, Emeralda, in my own stupid, naive need to find the truth, and led her into a deadly trap, into the hands of an evil creature.

      A panic seized him and he suddenly halted in his track, ceased his incessant, weary battle against the cold atmosphere that threatened to freeze his body into submission, threatened to foil his determined mission- or perhaps determined to send a warning, stop him before it's too late, with its premonition of a cruel, icy hand. I must go back, he thought frantically, escape before it's too late, and take Emeralda with me before something evil befalls her as well.
      But then he felt a warm touch of fingers curling around his own. Emeralda, holding his hand, pointed with her other hand upwards into the vast blue sky.
      "Look, Snow!" she said, sounding genuinely excited. "We made it. We finally reached the gates of the Crystal Garden!"

      Like lucid ice, like crystalline jewels, the gates glittered in the strong sun of high noon. The two young Jumi stood before it in awe, arrested by the glimpse of the crystal garden spreading beyond it, a vast array of clear ice carved into delicate figurines in the semblance of trees and flowers, arrested into their form by the deep, eternal chill of the mountain's peak. But the gates were locked to visitors, barred not by their own delicate physical substance but by a strong barrier of faerie runes. Emeralda, placing her fingers on the silvery handles, withdrew them at once.
      "It's so cold it burns!" she exclaimed, blowing warm breath on her aching fingertips. "I don't think we can pass, Snow."
      Snow, peering intently into the garden, made a gesture of resignation with his hand, and turned towards Emeralda. "Well, then, we have nothing more to do here," he said abruptly. "Let's go, Emeralda."
      Even as he spoke, he already turned towards the downsloping path; but Emeralda did not move. Snow, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder, paused and stood with his back to her. Even with his back turned he knew that she was gazing at him with that direct, searching look of hers, that she used when people did something that she disliked or disapproved of. But the question she asked of him was spoken in an even tone, one that neither condemned nor approved.
      "Are you sure, Snow?"
      "Yes," he answered rigidly, without turning around, so she would not see his perturbed expression. "I don't think that we can enter, and I don't want to find out what she does to intruders."
      For a moment, Emeralda made no answer; and Snow waited to see what she would say. Does she understand his fear, did she perceive it, and does she think him a coward for it? But I don't care, he thought, setting his teeth stubbornly although he flushed with shame at the same time. I have decided that I won't put her into this danger; and this is the perfect way to do it.
      Then Emeralda advanced and, rounding him, came to stand directly before him. He looked down, avoiding her eyes; but he already caught a glimpse of her face, and could see that she was serious, but also that her expression was not the disapproving or inquiring one that he expected to see.
      "It's all right, Snow," she said with a quiet voice. "I'm scared too. It's all right to be afraid."
      He said nothing, his eyes on the white ground before him. Emeralda reached out with her hand and laced her fingers around his cold hand. "And yet," she added with peculiar gravity, an almost solemn voice, "at the same time I feel a sense of... of excitement, I suppose, at this new venture we are about to face. It's all right to be afraid of this feeling. Without doing something new and unknown, Snow, we'll all just freeze in place and stall, and then life would be extremely stale. This is why I like to study, and discover new things; but it's all the same to me, if the exploration is mental or physical. I've never been to a real adventure, and I know you haven't been either. But you're about to find out the truth about yourself, Snow. You shouldn't be afraid of it."
      Snow finally looked up, and Emeralda, gazing into his face, could see that he was not watching her. He was looking beyond her shoulder, his eyes fixed on something, as if entranced. She turned her head in search of what he was looking at.
      The crystal gate had swung open, and just beyond it, in the middle of the garden courtyard, stood Crystalle the faerie.

      Snow immediately recognized her from his dream. Human-like, she was yet not quite human. She was swathed in pale, gauzy clothes, silvery and white and mist-gray; her long hair floated around her face like drifting blue mist, hundreds of tiny crystals shining across it, covering it in a net like shimmering raindrops. Her face was delicate, the skin as pale as death, and the large eyes were as rich and as dark as the heart of the ocean. Her body floated a little above the frozen ground with the power of her magic, sheltering her bare feet.
      There was only one difference between the Crystalle of Snow's dream and the Crystalle that now stood before him; a tiny difference, but it tore the curtain of the dream apart from the reality. Crystalle had pupils, like any human person; Crystalle could see. And the violet eyes saw right through Snow, right into his soul, into his white core, and they glimpsed the black flame that burned inside, smothered beneath the frozen whiteness, but still potent, still destructive.
      And Crystalle spoke to Snow; not with words, but into his mind, her voice a gentle, cool, rippling stream.
      "So you came back, Black Ruby; came back to discover the truth."
      Snow went down on one knee and bowed his head, feeling it was the proper gesture before this majestic and beautiful faerie. Besides him, Emeralda, silent but listening, followed suit.
      "Yes, Lady Crystalle," he answered. "I wish to know the truth about my core."
      "Very well," she answered. "But beware; the truth isn't always what we wish it to be. Like the little Emerald at your side told you, you are about to hear something new, something that you are afraid of, and may rightly be so."
      "It's true that I'm afraid of the truth, Lady Crystalle," Snow answered. "Just like Emeralda said; but I cannot live with the false story. I need to know what my fate will be. Lady Crystalle, all my life I heard one story about my past, that my parents told me, and the rest of the Jumi believed; that you cursed me. And I refused to believe it, and created my own story, and said that you blessed me, saved my life. But I don't know which story is true; it could be that both of them are false. I must know the true story, whatever it may be, instead of living in a fabricated past."
      "Well said," answered the Snow-faerie. "Listen well, Jumi of the Black Ruby, to my reason of freezing your core.
      "The Jumi no longer recall it, because the last Black Ruby had existed before any currently living Jumi had been born; but I've lived on this earth for thousands of years, and I can still recall what a Black Ruby was like who could not control the cruel, dark fire of his black jewel.
      "When your parents brought you I could instantly see that your core was flawed, and that its fire was burning out of control. But I could also tell that you would have survived the onslaught of the Ruby fire; physically, you would have survived the fever and lived. But you may have not withstood the mental ravages it could have inflicted on you.
      "A Black Ruby, even when it's whole and perfect, has special energies that require a great exercise of mental will. The last Black Ruby, ancestor of your family, was an honorable man who used his great powers for good intentions. He was strong and powerful, but not cruel. But not all men are like him; and I knew a Black Ruby who lived thousands of years ago, whose core had been flawed from birth, who was a cruel man; a man who used his jewel's power for ill, and inflicted much hurt upon many innocent lives until finally the fire of his gem drove him insane and caused him to destroy himself. This, young Jumi boy, is the dark side of the power of Jumi cores. A gravely flawed or corrupted Jumi core, instead of being used for healing, may be used instead to kill, to draw energy unto itself instead of exerting it to heal others.
      "Your parents did not come here by coincidence. I knew that a Black Ruby had been born, and I knew that his core was damaged; and it was my will that drew them here, even as they thought that they came out of their own volition."
      Snow, who had listened to Crystalle's speech in silence with his head bowed, now intervened. He raised his head, fixed his gray eyes on the Snow Faerie.
      "Then... then all you did was not really for me," he said quickly, and a little breathlessly. "Not for me at all."
      "Correct," answered Crystalle. "What I did was neither a curse nor a blessing to you, or out of any concern for you, Jumi of the Black Ruby. I was merely acting to shield others from the damage you might cause."
      "What you did," said Snow, his voice edging with a hint of anger now, "is a presumption; presuming to decide my fate. Without waiting to see what the outcome might be, knowing fully well that I will survive my illness and live, you devalued my jewel and abated an illness that might have lasted only a short time; to substitute it with an illness that constitutes a life-long, permanent infliction."
      "Jumi of the Black Ruby," answered Crystalle, and her ethereal, rippling voice was cool and clear, had neither a hint of anger or remorse. "I was deciding your fate, as you said, instead of giving you a chance. And, furthermore, know this: I hold your fate in my hand still. If I decide that you constitute a danger to others, I will do all that I can in my power to destroy you. My people have suffered too, you see, from the Black Ruby."
      "But how could you decide... how could you do this without knowing anything about me?" asked Snow, his voice trembling with rippling fury. "You inflicted this on me without giving me a chance to prove myself. I will have you know, Lady Crystalle, that I do not have an intention of hurting anyone, either now or in the future."
      "And yet how quickly you anger, Black Ruby, despite your frozen crystal core," answered the faerie's cool, sweet voice.
      Snow opened his mouth to reply; but then he looked down quickly, bit his lip, and was silent.
      "I admit to what you accused me of," continued Crystalle. "And yet I still gave you a chance. A chance to see whether you are able to control the fire of the Black Ruby as you grow older, out of your own power of will. Tell me, Snow: do you feel able to control it? If you say that you do, I will give you a chance to release your core from the spell arresting it."
      Snow's head bowed further. He glanced at Emeralda, but she was looking down, refusing to meet his gaze, refusing to participate in the decision. He was alone in deciding his fate.
      But then he recalled the dream. Holding his head up, looking straight into the fathomless depths of the faerie's violet eyes, he said:

    "Lady Crystalle, you sent me a dream; and the dream made me realized something. I realized that it is fire and energy that bring life and change, for both good and for ill. You yourself live so long, for thousands of years, that time for you is nothing, and even us long-lived Jumi are but a fleeting moment in your eternity. And you cannot perceive that you may not arrest time, cannot chain it in place for creatures like us, who live in a different way than you do. And I cannot live my life this way either, Lady Crystalle. This is why I am dying; you've repressed the very life essence of my core. I need this energy and essence to grow, or my body will eventually be incapable of sustaining itself on its meager energy, and I will die. Please release me, Lady Crystalle; and I will prove to you that I am worthy of your trust."
      For a long time there was silence, then the faerie's voice said, "Well-put, Black Ruby. I shall do as you request; but I will not be the one deciding when the chains of the spell on your core will break. It is you who will make a choice, when you know, in your soul, that you are strong enough for the Black Ruby's power. Make this decision carefully, Jumi of Crystal Snow, because if you fail I will haunt you for the remainder of your life, until I kill you. Leave this garden; with this warning, and my blessing."
      She moved her dark eyes and they rested on Emeralda.
      "Little Lucky Clover," she said, "you know better than anyone how to take care of the Black Ruby. You shall carry his blessing."
      A bright wind flowed through the garden, and the form of the Snow faerie dissipated into mist. A moment later the two young Jumi were standing outside the crystal garden. And the gate was locked.

      Emeralda gazed at it thoughtfully for a few moments; then she turned to Snow.
      "She seems to know everything," she noted, a rare edge of genuine wonder in her voice.
      "About me, certainly," responded Snow, a little moodily.
      "She also knew about the lucky clover," Emeralda said.
      Snow, whose mind still dwelled on Crystalle's revelations, asked with an absent voice, "What do you mean?"
      Emeralda put her fingers on Snow's shoulder, shaking him slightly. "You don't know, Snow? I have three sisters!"
      Snow now began to pay attention. "I know you have three sisters," he answered flatly. "And I know it's unusual. But what does that signify?"
      "You don't know?" asked Emeralda, a little surprised. "Well, perhaps you may not. As you know, Snow, Jumi usually have only one or two children, because they share a part of their core's essence with the new child's core, and creating more than two children puts a great strain on a Jumi's core. Well, when my mother had my two eldest sisters, no-one was surprised. When my third sister arrived, they all noted how rare it was. And when I arrived, they all marveled, because it was the first time that a Jumi family had four children for hundreds of years. And since we are four Emeralds, they began to call us the Lucky Clover. And this is what Crystalle named me."
      "I see," Snow remarked. A trifle morbidly, he added, "If she knew this, perhaps I really should be afraid of her hunting me down if I choose ill; just as she promised."
      "Oh, I trust you to choose well," Emeralda said, matter-of-fact. "There's no reason why you shouldn't."
      Snow made no answer for a moment; but then he said, "You'll help me, though, won't you, Emeralda? To choose rightly, I mean. Even Crystalle said you will," he added, a trifle defensive, in case Emeralda thought him absurd.
      She gave him a smile now. "As I said, Snow, I think you'll choose well."
      He looked down, silent again; but then he said, to turn the subject, "It seems that I really was very isolated because of my condition. I didn't even know about those little social details that most aristocratic Jumi children know about. I didn't know about the Lucky Clover."
      "Well, now you do," Emeralda said dismissively. "It's not as if all those trifle social details are important anyway. And besides," she added, "I'm not sure that my parents are really so lucky to have four daughters."
      "I think it's lucky they had four daughters," Snow said quickly. "If they didn't there wouldn't be you, Emeralda."
      "Well, if you put it that way," Emeralda conceded. "But you wouldn't think of it that way if you listened to my mother. All I hear nowadays is how worried she is that she won't be able to be pair us all off when we're of age, because of the scarcity of high-born young men our age. But I don't care about that part, anyway," she added flatly.
      "I see," Snow replied, his cheeks turning a self-conscious red.
      Emeralda gave him another smile. "At any rate," she concluded, "I'd rather stay with you than have any knight guarding me."
      Snow wasn't quite sure if he should take this remark as a compliment or not; but Emeralda's confident little hand stole into his own, and he blushed harder.
      "That's good," he answered.

Comment: "Memories of Running" in Feig Snowfields, anyone? The tune reminds me of Crystalle in a snowstorm, and you can think of it playing in the background to Snow's dream.

In the original story of Snow, Snow-White, who was a friend of Crystalle's, died, and his shattered core became the crystal garden. But, hey, I couldn't do that to Emeralda and Snow, and I'm not going to. As said, though, the Black Ruby story is my own invention, and you can see how its concept actually ends up tying with Black Pearl and HER core powers.

Since the Jumi in this story reproduce biologically, I thought this would be an explanation as to why there isn't a Jumi population explosion; i.e. usually Jumi have only 1-2 children, thus their population either remains constant or otherwise diminishes. And it's consistent with Elazul, Florina, Alexandra, Sapphire, etc. being only children.

I did not do the part about Emeralda finding the cores of her sisters in the university. Since I never wrote up the sisters as actual characters, it would have been superfluous (and wouldn't fit into the story anyway!) And even if I had done it so, it just didn't provide as much food for story as her interaction with Snow. I'm only wondering how creative her parents had to get in finding names for four daughters based on 'Emerald'.

Snow & Emmy proved to be a surprisingly popular pair, which pleased me much, since they are a non-game pair (Snow having been dead in the game or something like it). Very likely they are liked because they are a younger pair, and much more 'innocent' compared to the other relationships, which involve, in this story at least, sophisticated and rather corrupted adults. As someone correctly pointed out to me once, no-one can feel really sorry for adult characters like Black Pearl, Sandra, Diana or even Rubens, who know exactly what they are doing and, in a certain way, pay for their actions, good or ill. This is also probably why Elazul, who is a little younger and less sophisticated, is a little more sympathetic than the above persons. In fact, this story IS about Elazul growing up, or growing older.

Since I have been asked about the mute characters a few times, I thought that you might be interested in MY version of the mutes, and I hope it will satisfy you, because they will not appear in the LoJ story.

Male Mute: His name is Darrel. He is a large-bodied, good-natured young man, deeply interested in philosophical treatises and the history of the world. He spends much of his time on research and studying, and in his garden, because even though he is incredibly strong, he is essentially a man who believes in peaceful solutions and in being At One With Nature. He is generally shy around the ladies, and even though he likes Pearl, he is careful not to show it openly. This is because Elazul tends to get a little aggressive at any such suspicion, and Darrel is afraid that any overt skirmish between them might cause him to accidentally break the young hothead in half.

Female Mute: Her name is Maya. She is perky & cute & some suspect that she consumes too much sugar. One of her hobbies is uprooting big trees with her bare hands, a fact which greatly grieves Darrel, who believes that trees have souls and so forth. Since she tends to throw around anything that comes into her hands when she loses her temper, everyone are always friendly and courteous with her.

(The sprites/mutes in Legend of Mana were obscenely strong.)  

"What wonderful blue eyes you have, Ernest! They are quite, quite blue.

I wish you would always look at me this way, especially when other people are around."

     - Gwendolyn, The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde)

Chapter 5A: Burning Blue: Emotions

    The sky turned a deep azure that spring afternoon, and the weather remained warm, the air perfectly motionless, the heat absorbing voices and sounds. An occasional flash of silent lightening, tearing across the sky in pale, jagged spears, warned of the approaching storm.
    Sure enough the weather altered quite quickly afterwards, and the hot, musty atmosphere was freshened by a steady, light drizzle that washed across the warm skies of evening. The pale yellow moon hung across the velvet blue, and the effect of the warm, sharp colors of the moon and skies was striking, resembling a theatrical décor that reduced everything below, the slowly-moving cobalt ocean and the little town sleeping besides it, into playthings assembled against the splendid view of the scenery.
    The little seaside inn sleeping upon the dark red rocks had been closed early against the storm, and the guard stood on his nightly watch against intruders. The orange light that illuminated the hall on the first level of the inn streamed faintly from under the main doors, and the figure of the guard appeared like a dark shadow against it.
    Inside the hall, a woman clad in a plain blue cotton dress leant against the innkeeper's counter. A thick yellow rope of hair, tied with a pale green ribbon, swung down her back. She held a glass of drink in her hand, which, from its dark red color, appeared to be an alcoholic beverage, sipping from it occasionally. She was more occupied, however, in the flow of the conversation she maintained with the innkeeper.
    A man with a dark-haired young woman leaning on his arm emerged from within the adjoining coffee-room and passed the two by the counter. He greeted the woman in blue, and congratulated her on her night's performance.
    The woman thanked him without much interest and continued her conversation with the innkeeper. The man, not taking the hint, addressed her with another remark. It was apparent that, despite the wishes of his dark-haired companion, who regarded the blond woman with a peevish expression on her pretty little face, he was determined to engage the attractive dancer in blue in a flirtatious banter.
    The dancer had recognized his intention from the beginning, and it became to clear to her that this man required a broader hint to do away with himself, which she did without dispatch.
    The man seemed disconcerted, although keeping a determined hold on his assumed smile. It was apparent that he had thought the dancer an easy prey to extravagant flattery, and had yet to experience the taste of her ironic tongue. But his young companion tugged on his arm.
    "Come on, let's go," she said with her petulant little voice. "I'm tired."
    He obeyed, and the dancer continued her conversation with the innkeeper as if the brief interlude had never occurred. He regarded her with an amused eye.
    "I tend to think that you are too hard on your admirers, Revanshe," he remarked, instead of replying to the subject of their conversation. "Most of them don't mean harm, you know."
    Revanshe shrugged, sipping her drink. "I like to play games on my own terms," she said coolly. "I can't abide it when men think they can coerce me into submitting to theirs."
    "Including a verbal byplays?" remarked the innkeeper. "I must admit, I've never seen you lose a verbal exchange."
    She was unconcerned. "This means that I'm playing them right."
    He gave a laugh in reply. "As I was saying."
    The door opened now, and the face of the apologetic young guard peeped in. "I'm sorry, Sir," he said, addressing the innkeeper. "I know that the policy is that the door closes after ten to uninvited guests, but there is a man here who insists on-"
    Before he could finish, another person pushed through. It was a young man, whose green cloak was patched with dark areas where the light rain soaked it through. He pushed the hood of his cloak back, revealing a serious face with regular, clear-cut features, and ran a hand over his wet hair. Another figure followed him silently, like a white shadow; a tall woman, clad in a cream-colored cloak.
    "My apologies for coming in unexpectedly," the young man said curtly, without much ado. "I've been traveling all day and I'm afraid I had no time to make arrangements or send a proper notice."
    The innkeeper and Revanshe stared at him as he spoke; but the dancer recognized him as soon as he revealed his face.
    "Elazul," she said, laying the glass of wine on the counter-top and gesturing with her hand to indicate that he may approach. "What brings you here, and at this hour?"
    Elazul spied her now. "Revanshe," he said quickly. "Is Sapphire awake?"
    "Softly, softly," admonished the dancer. "He is always such an earnest one. Come here. Sit down first. Invite your friend as well." She nodded her head at the innkeeper, signaling that Elazul was all right. The innkeeper raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He trusted Revanshe implicitly.
    Revanshe rang a bell and ordered hot drinks to be brought to the coffee-room. Elazul walked after Revanshe, signaling the woman behind him to follow suit. They seated themselves at one of the small tables in the darkly-shadowed little hall. The heavy curtains that fringed the coffee room's large glass windows looked towards the ocean, that flowed silently below with unremitting darkness.
    "I apologize for coming in so abruptly," he repeated, as he pulled a chair close to the table and indicated to his companion to be seated. "Is Sapphire in her room? I don't wish to wake her up if she's asleep, and I'm afraid that we'll need some arrangements. I can pay for a room, if you have one. If not-"
    "That's all right," Revanshe interrupted. "We'll find you some lodging. Now, what is this about?"
    Elazul didn't reply for a moment; he meditated upon something, and to Revanshe it seemed that he did not attend her question. Then he said suddenly, in what appeared to be an abrupt change of subject:
    "That guard of yours isn't very good. If I came through that easily, he would never be able to prevent truly dangerous characters from penetrating this inn."
    "Is this what you came for all this way?" Revanshe inquired, with a lift of her eyebrow. "To criticize our safety measures?"
    The maid came in, carrying a tray with hot drinks. Elazul said curtly, "I am concerned." He took the tea-cup offered by the maid, setting it down on the table without looking at it. "Concerned for Sapphire's safety, Revanshe."
     Revanshe uttered an elaborate sigh. She crossed her hands over her heart. "The ardent lover rushing in from the storm, his hair plastered with rain, eager to ascertain his lady's safety!" she intoned. "How utterly romantic, Elazul!"
    Elazul perceived that her treatment of him did not alter much since their previous meeting. "You already know that Sapphire is like a sister to me, Revanshe," he answered with admirable patience. "And I've heard some things... well, it doesn't matter. At any rate, I will talk to Sapphire."
    Revanshe eyed him. "Like a sister, huh?" she echoed. Her gaze shifted to Pearl, sat silently besides Elazul and stared at her tea, as if she couldn't quite comprehend what she ought to do with it. Pearl's profile appeared very white in the dim room, and her glorious hair tumbled down her back, shining a lustrous gold. "I can see the reason," she remarked.
     Elazul followed her eye, and his countenance altered a little. "Who, Pearl? No, she's... well, she's also like a sister to me," he concluded. By now, he thought, it might as well be true. But it wasn't something he wished to inquire too deeply into at that moment.
    Revanshe raised an eyebrow. "Indeed. Can I be your sister too?"
    "I'm afraid that after the way you've been speaking to me it wouldn't be really proper to call you my sister," answered Elazul. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I will go ask for that room."
    He rose from his seat and, gesturing to Pearl to follow him, he went into the guest-hall, leaving behind him a very dissatisfied dancer.
    She presently walked to the guest-hall and returned to the counter. "Did you give that young man a room?" she asked the innkeeper.
    The innkeeper nodded. "I recognize him now. Sapphire's young man," he said.
    "Her friend," Revanshe corrected. "Or, apparently, an adopted brother of sorts." She took her drink in one hand again, swiveling the glass gently in an absent manner. She recognized that she had just been defeated in a verbal exchange, and the feeling was rather displeasing.
    "Not proper to call me his sister after the way I've been speaking to him," she said to herself, echoing Elazul's words. "That was a... a CUTE reply. I do NOT like cute replies. Especially from men so much younger than I am."

    A warm day, enwrapped by bright skies and a glowing sea, greeted Elazul the next morning as he walked from the harbor to the town a little after dawn. Despite the early hour the tiny seaside hamlet was awake and alive with scents and sounds. He walked in the narrow streets of white stones, between the little red houses, enjoying the fresh breeze gliding towards him from the direction of the water. The delicious odors of newly-baked bread wafting on its currents caused him to pause in his tracks and purchase some breakfast. He then continued his survey of the town, and despite a weariness that lingered from his two days' journey he felt invigorated by the warm morning, that smelled of the approaching summer.
    He was eventually found by Sapphire at around eight o'clock. She received the story from Revanshe as soon as she awoke and went down to the town to find him. He spied the slender form enveloped by the cloud of long, rippling hair from a distance, and immediately knew it was her. She made a gesture of greeting in acknowledgment and came towards him. After exchanging words of welcome, Sapphire smiled at Elazul, peering upwards into his face. "Revanshe told me you're here," she said.
    "I guessed as much," he answered. "Did she say anything else?" He smiled slightly now. "Something about an extravagantly romantic entry, perhaps?"
    "I don't know," replied Sapphire, looking a little bemused. "I wasn't attending. I left to find you at once."
    He seemed amused; and Sapphire, although she wondered why he came so suddenly, was glad to find him in such a good mood. Elazul then expressed a desire to go down to the docks, to which Sapphire complied at once, and they made their exit to the harbor.
    When they reached the wooden docks extending towards the waters, Elazul stood for a few moments, contemplating the fresh vision of the ocean. Sapphire stood silently besides him, herself absorbed in the beautiful view. Elazul, finally turning around, placed his fingers on Sapphire's arm.
    "Come, Sapphire," he said. "Let's sit on the dock."
    She obeyed, as was her wont, and soon they were seated side-by-side, their legs dangling down from the wooden floorboards, the ocean flowing beneath them in soft blue currents.
    "Elazul," Sapphire began, "Revanshe told me that you came with Lady Pearl."
    She hesitated, and Elazul scanned her expression. He met an inquiring gaze, and understood that she was expecting an explanation.
    He looked down at his hands, pressing his fingers together, deliberating over what he should say. He decided that the best method would be a direct explanation. "Listen, Sapphire," he said. "Something important came up, and this is why I came so suddenly. A few days ago I was at the town bar, and I heard some news that greatly disturbed me."
    He looked up and finished, rather quickly, "Alex is alive."
    Sapphire's eyes widened. After a moment, she said, "But that's... that's wonderful! Did you... did you meet him, Elazul? Or did you merely hear about him?"
    "Her," Elazul corrected. "Alex is Alexandra, you see."
    This news apparently took her completely unaware; for the first time since Elazul met her, he saw Sapphire genuinely astonished. "Oh!" she said; and Elazul knew that she was milling over in her mind almost a year of complex events in the Jumi city, so notorious that even she could not but know about them. "Oh," she repeated, after a prolonged silence. "I... I see."
    "But, Elazul," she added almost immediately, "You must have been happy to hear about it."
    He smiled at her plain, rather naive way of stating this. "Yes, I was. Also since if Alex is alive, Florina must be safe too. But that's not all."
    She looked down. "Yes. You also said that it disturbed you. Why… why did it?"
    Elazul watched the glowing morning. His smile vanished; his usual, serious demeanor displaced the almost carefree expression he displayed before.
    "I think that I always had a kind of a secret hope to hear this," he said at last, speaking softly. "The strangeness of Alex's body never being found, and of Florina inexplicably vanishing prepared me for this, somehow. So, you see, the shock wasn't quite as great as it would have been otherwise. I don't even care to know how Florina managed to escape, how Alex survived. Right now I'm simply happy to know that they're alive. But...
    "With Alex, unfortunately, there is always a 'but'," he finished, with an edge of a tight smile. "Things are never plain and simple with such one as Alex."
    Sapphire, who did not know much about Alexandra, lowered her eyes after discerning Elazul's change of mood. She sensed that Elazul had been undergoing a mental struggle since the news, and did not wish to add to it. Elazul's eyes rested on the burnished horizon without perceiving it.
    "I don't understand," he said, speaking quietly. "I don't understand why Alex would not look for me, if she was alive. It gives me a troubling feeling, almost as if she's trying to hide something from me. What is it, Alex?" he asked, speaking to himself. "What are you planning now, that I should not know of? Ought I try and find out, despite your reluctance to reveal yourself… or because of it?"
    "Elazul," said Sapphire.
    He briefly recollected himself. "I'm sorry, Sapphire," he said quickly. "Things have been happening all at once, and I've been feeling a little distracted by it all."
     "I can imagine," she replied quietly.
     Elazul then related Alexandra's history to Sapphire concisely, to allow her a greater understanding of the situation. He finished his recital with an explanation of his presence in the harbor, his sudden arrival.
    "You see, Sapphire, the rumors about Sandra and her alleged search for Jumi jewels created a dangerous situation. I began to ask around the town the last few days, gathering as much information as I could. The rumors about Jumi jewels had fueled the human greed for Jumi cores anew. The bandits had woken, crawled out of their lairs, and they slither about, sniffing, questing, thirsting for these valuable treasures. The situation is much more dangerous than it was a few months ago, when you and Emeralda and Snow embarked on your voyage."
    "So, you are saying..." said Sapphire faintly. She did not complete her sentence.
    "Yes," he answered briefly, guessing her unuttered question. "You have two choices, Sapphire. Either you come back with us to town, or we stay here with you. I can't let you live alone anymore."
    There was silence. Elazul examined Sapphire's down-turned face. She said nothing, her finger tracing shapes on the boards aimlessly.
    "Staying?" he asked.
    She nodded, a short motion with her head.
    "Then this is what we'll do," he stated curtly.
    Sapphire made no answer. Her head remained low. Then she said quietly: "Thank you."
    Elazul did not attend her; he meditated upon something again. "I am only puzzled as to what I should do about Snow and Emeralda," he said. "They are not safe in the university by themselves. But if I know anything about Emeralda, she will refuse to obey me, and Snow will follow whatever she decides. I'll go to check on them, just to ensure that they're all right. I understand that you correspond with them regularly, so I assumed that you'll notify me if anything happened. But now that I know that the situation has changed I am no longer at a liberty to make any assumptions."
     "And if they refuse to leave," he added as an afterthought, "perhaps you should enroll in the university, Sapphire, and we'll all live there."
    He examined her expression. He rather thought that she'll refuse this suggestion as well; to his surprise she suddenly looked up with one of her rare, genuine smiles.
    "After all the effort you put into taking care of us, I think I can take that step," she said. "It will be nice to be with Snow and Emeralda again, after all this time. If necessary, Elazul, I'll do so. But, Elazul, what about your house in town, and your work?"
    He seemed amused at this unusually practical inquiry from Sapphire. "I was thinking of becoming a guard at this inn," he replied. "I'll close the house in the town and notify my employer. Don't worry about all that. What's important is making sure that you're all safe."
    Sapphire gazed at Elazul silently. He returned her look with a slightly raised eyebrow. "What is it?" he asked.
    "It's... it's nothing," she answered. But then she suddenly said, "No, it's... it's because you take so much pains over me, Elazul."
    She took his hand in the same sincere, heartfelt gesture that she did once when she tried to comfort him about the condition in the city. "Nobody ever took so much pains over me before. Only Emeralda, but with her it was... different. But with you, it's more like... I truly feel that you are like a brother to me, Elazul. I never felt that I had a real family after my m-mother d-died." She articulated the words with difficulty. Then, rapidly, she finished: "I'm glad that I met you."
    Elazul was moved by her gratitude, and yet it caused him a sudden pain. Was she really always this lonely? He realized that she was not like him, lonely out of choice, and that instead she felt her loneliness acutely.
    Sapphire continued in softly-spoken tones. "It's so much more important to me than just having a knight. Indeed, I prefer it to having you as a knight, like the council wished. I much more wish for that permanent kind of bond of a family… because if someone fell in love with me, he may always change his mind and leave me one day. But not someone like you, a brother… the family bond will always exist, will never vanish. It is the permanent kind of bond that keeps you happy and alive."
    Elazul was moved by this view of the world and ties between people that was both realistic, pessimistic, and idealizing, naïve. And he reflected, funny how things turned out in a way that Diana did not anticipate, and yet much more than she ever wished them to be. I became equally as important to Sapphire as I would have been had she fell in love with me, or I with her. I filled the void that she lacked, and before she could love someone she needed that emptiness filled; and in that way, as in many, she was still too much of a child.
    To divert her thoughts, he voiced his own, smiling at her and saying: "I think that we ought to give thanks to the council. Without knowing it, they had done a good thing, even though our acquaintance did not turn out the way they had hoped."
    Sapphire perceived the amusing side of this as well. "Yes, I suppose so. But," lapsing again into her earnest mood, "You and Revanshe are my family now, Elazul... yes, and even the Lady Pearl. But especially you."
    Elazul sensed those flowing, intangible bonds, warming him, yet also weighing him down, filling him with unease. He suddenly realized that he was not used to being this important to anyone, at least not since his mother died.
    Except, he thought, to Alexandra, but she was independent, did not need me, allowed me to keep my own independence despite her attachment to me.
    And also, said another voice, to Pearl, who was not like Alexandra, but more like Sapphire, and yet different, because…
    This thought he pushed away hastily, to a dark corner of his mind, refusing to dwell on it, because it made him feel as troubled as he had felt with Sapphire's words, or perhaps more.
    He said: "I think it's unfortunate that you refused to get acquainted with Florina, Sapphire. She would have been the perfect person to adopt you."
    She gazed down again, contemplating the sea beneath, and responded quietly: "When we meet Alex and Florina again, I wish to get acquainted with Lady Florina. Maybe it will be easier for all of us, to be together."
    He responded with a rather weary tone. "Of this I must somehow convince Emeralda."
    She sensed the exhaustion in his tones, and looked up quickly, watching his expression covertly. For a moment she said nothing, then she suddenly said, "Elazul, you are-"
    He looked towards her, sensing her altered tone, his gaze inquiring. She looked down again.
    "You are... waiting for the Jumi, aren't you?" she asked, haltingly. "To come and take us all home."
    He was surprised at this penetrating remark, but admitted the truth at once.
    "I suppose so, yes. There are so many of you to take care of, Sapphire. I'm not quite sure I'm up to it, and I'm afraid of what might happen if I fail."
    He watched the bright azure waves, the sparkle of water in the sun, but he could not longer feel as easy as he did an hour ago, when he waded through the freshness of the morning, feeling warmed and revived.
    "I suppose," he said slowly, "that I'm thinking that perhaps Alexandra could help me. Or I hope that she will."
    But what I'm most afraid of, he reflected privately, is that she wouldn't. He returned to the former subject, to turn his thoughts away from this recurrent, troublesome reflection.
    "But it's Florina that I particularly wish you to know," he repeated. "She was like my sister, and I suppose that it's only appropriate that she will yours as well, Sapphire." With a sudden smile, he added, "Revanshe was right. I seem to be collecting sisters nowadays."
    Sapphire nodded. "She said something like it to me this morning."
    Elazul shrugged. "I always got along better with women than with men," he said. "I just like their company better. I suppose that after living all my life with my father, learning to be nothing but the proper soldier, I came to loath this ideal I had to strive to, detested what men considered important. So I stayed away from them. I did not feel that I needed to strive for their approval; I automatically earned their respect because I excelled at what they most admired and honored." He spoke this with an indifferent voice, an almost contemptuous one. "But because of my father, I felt I've had enough of their company."
    "And… what about Alex?" asked Sapphire. "Did you know she was not a man? Is that why you befriended her?"
    "At first I thought that she was a boy," answered Elazul. "I wasn't very interested in her until I realized that she was a woman, several weeks into our acquaintance. I was curious, I suppose, because she was… a very unusual person, to say the least. Before I realized it, I acquired the first real friend that I ever had. And I discovered how easy it was to talk to women… at least, to women like her, because some might say that she acted a lot like a man. I suppose that she was enough of both a man and a woman to strike the right balance in speaking to me."
    He paused, seeming to contemplate this. "And still, Alex was not the type of person that is easy to get along with. It wasn't until Florina that I realized that I like women's company, as friends. Between them I felt... strangely comfortable. I guess that Florina balanced Alexandra's shortcomings."
    "Or maybe," Elazul added, after further thought, "I feel comfortable with women because they don't demand much of me, unlike men." He shrugged. "In some ways, they are more ready to accept me as I am."
    He looked towards Sapphire with a somewhat self-conscious smile. "For obvious reasons, some of which you doubtlessly heard about."
    She understood his meaning and flushed faintly, looking guilty. "I... yes, I did. All that... gossip. I... I don't like gossip," she said suddenly, and it was the first time Elazul heard her speak about anything with something like censure. "It's just that Amethyst and Marina... they have nothing in common except their love of talking about other people, and that's what they mostly did when we were all together. So, I, I heard about you, and about..." She paused, and turned almost red.
    Elazul raised an eyebrow. "About me and who? Alex? Black Pearl? Amber?"
    She looked into his eyes. "Were you really in love with Black Pearl, Elazul?"
    He hesitated a moment. But with Sapphire he was comfortable, felt nothing of the embarrassment that he felt in front of others when speaking of this subject. Perhaps it's because she doesn't censure me for it, he thought to himself, doesn't probe me with that cynical, world-weary gaze of Diana and her like.
    "I don't know," he answered. "I suppose, Sapphire, that I was greatly taken with Black Pearl, because... she had... something in her. She was strong, and unyielding, and did not give her love easily. I doubt she ever gave her love to anyone..."
    He halted. "I suppose that I wanted that love," he finally said, admitting the truth that he had known for a long time. “I wanted to be loved by someone as completely, as strongly, as entirely as I knew that the Lady Pearl could love, if she only let herself love anyone. This is what I wanted from her, and was, at the same time, angry at the knowledge that I could not attain it, and ashamed of those feelings because they made me so dependent on her only. And these feelings made me angry with her, perhaps even unreasonably angry. And at the same time, I could not forgo that wish that she so strongly inspired in me. I suppose that I had no one to blame for it but myself."
    "Some say that wishes sometimes come true, and never as you wished them to," said a new voice behind them. Elazul recognized Revanshe's ironic tones at once, but he turned and gazed at her without a sign of perturbation.

    "I suppose so," he answered.
    Revanshe stepped between Elazul and Sapphire. "Here, child, make me some room," she said briskly. "Move a little to the side- a little more- but not too much, mind you, or you'll fall into the water. There, that's better."
    Elazul, a trifle amused, said: "You treat her as if she was a little girl. She's of age, you know."
    "Indeed?" asked Revanshe dryly. "And what age, might I ask, is 'of age'?"
    She turned her critical gaze towards Sapphire. "When I first asked this girl how old she was, I thought I heard her say something like 'fifty', but then she suddenly changed her mind and told me that she was eighteen. I always wondered about that little slip of the tongue."
    Elazul stole a glance at Sapphire, and saw that her cheeks flushed, and that she looked a little frightened. Calmly, he answered, "Sapphire will never lie, of course."
    "Indeed?" asked Revanshe, with a lift of her eyebrow. "And how old, then, might YOU be?"
    "Three times as old as you are, Revanshe," answered Elazul. "And, therefore, you should treat me with more respect."
    "And I suppose," inquired Revanshe, "that your beautiful Pearl is two hundred years old?"
    "More like a thousand, I think," answered Elazul. "I'm not quite sure of the exact count, however."
    Revanshe sighed.
    "I only wish I would be as good-looking as you are now, when I am your age," she remarked.
    "Revanshe," Elazul said with half a smile, "I am twenty-three years old."
    "My point stands," she answered. "Now, what was that talk you gave Sapphire about being loved? Big Sister is here for you, to listen to your tale of woe." She placed her fingers on Elazul's shoulder and gave it a not-quite-sisterly squeeze.
    "Sorry," answered Elazul steadily. "I already told you, Revanshe, that you can't be my sister." He placed his hand on hers and removed it from his shoulder. "For obvious reasons."
    "Refusing me?" she asked.
    "In every way you can conceive," he answered. "I'm afraid that you are destined to break your heart over me, Revanshe."
    Revanshe gave one of her disdainful sniffles and rose to her feet.
    "Elazul," she said. "Can you swim?"
    He wasn't quite sure what she was up to, and regarded her with a lift of his eyebrow. She folded her arms. "Well?"
    Elazul gave up. "Yes," he answered.
    "How about you?" Revanshe asked, turning to Sapphire.
    Sapphire, assured by Elazul's aid, evidently recovered from her confusion. "I cannot," she answered. "I, I never learned how."
    "That's good," Revanshe remarked.
    Elazul had been gazing at Sapphire as she made her answer, and he did not notice that Revanshe stepped to the side, so she was standing right behind him; and, as upon her last remark, she leant forward and placed her hands on his shoulders.
    Elazul glanced behind him. "What-" he began; but before he could complete his sentence, Revanshe gave him a sturdy push. Taken off-guard, he lost his balance and fell from the dock and into the water.
    "Because," Revanshe called out, "if Sapphire can't swim it means that she can't fish you out, Elazul."
    Elazul emerged to the surface of the water, spitting and splattering; he floundered a bit and then clung to the foot of the dock. Flinging his wet hair out of his eyes, he looked up at Revanshe with a half-incensed, half-amused smile. She stood with folded arms and eyed him critically.
    "I think that I'm changing my mind about you," she remarked. "Floundering in the water like that, you remind me of a fish. And I really, really hate fish."
    And upon this statement she turned on her heels and walked back towards the inn.
    Sapphire's face appeared over the edge of the dock, her eyes worried. "Are you all right, Elazul?" she called.
    Elazul clung to the foot of the dock ruefully.
    "I'm beginning to think," he remarked, "that going out there and facing the hunters is no more dangerous for me than staying here."

    Pearl stood and watched the blue evening through the window. She did not quite understand why Elazul took her to the sea again, but she did not care. All she cared about is that Elazul did not leave her behind when he went. She did not want Elazul to leave her. The very notion filled her with fear, and made her feel strangely unlike herself, filled with dark, alien emotions.
    Someone approached her quietly; a girl that Pearl felt to be vaguely familiar but could not place in her mind at that moment. The girl said, with a soft voice, "Lady Pearl, dinner is ready. Do come."
    Pearl turned towards the girl slowly. "Where is Elazul?" she asked.
    "He's downstairs," answered the girl. "He's asking you to come down, Pearl."
    Pearl stared at the girl for a moment. "Will we be staying with?" she asked. "Elazul told me that we are going to stay with someone."
    The girl nodded. "Yes, Lady Pearl. I'm the person you'll be staying with."
    "Why?" asked Pearl. "I… I do not recall you."
    The girl hesitated, seeming unsure of herself before Pearl's gaze. Then she answered, haltingly, "Lady Pearl, I've known Elazul from a long time ago. Elazul is… he's like my brother. I care about him very much, and I know that you do, too. I almost feel like you are my family, because he's like my family… please, Lady Pearl. I know that somewhere, somehow, you can recall me." She approached Pearl and took her hand.
    Pearl looked absently at their laced hands. She withdrew hers slowly, listlessly, and turned towards the window again.
    "Elazul can't leave me," she said to the dark vision of the ocean. "Not for anyone."
    "I understand," said the girl. "He won't, Lady Pearl. I promise you that I care about Elazul greatly. But he will not leave you. He is taking care of us both. If something happens to Elazul," she said, very softly now, speaking more to herself, "I… I don't know what I shall do. If anyone ever hurts him…" she pressed her hands together. "I care about him very much, Lady Pearl."
    Pearl turned with a blank expression.
    "If anybody ever hurts Elazul..." she said,
    "...If anybody ever hurts Elazul...
    "I… I will…

    “kill them."

Comment: Talk about wishes coming true!

I couldn't resist inserting the Oscar Wilde quote, especially since Elazul has that 'stunning blue eyes' cliché going for him. The actual quote that inspired the title is 'A hero's dream burning blue/ the people sleep forever' from "The Wanderer of Time" of Final Fantasy: Pray.

This is a 'conversation chapter', dry and kind of tedious, and I hate those, maybe because they remind me how much I neglected to explain while lingering over descriptions of glowing seas and summer meadows and chirping birds and all that flowery nothingness that I so love to slow this story with.

A hero's dream burns blue
The people sleep forever

    - The Wanderer of Time (Final Fantasy: Pray).

Chapter 5B: Burning Blue: Dreams

    The man clad in pale, flowing robes sat inside the hot blue evening, his gaunt figure bent over some parchments. He was writing, his emaciated hand clutching a white quill between its bony fingers, the thin, spidery scrawl flowing steadily over the cream-colored paper. The darkness was alleviated only by the ghostly glimmer of a candle, but it was an insufficient relief, and served nothing to illuminate the man's features. Instead, the light seemed to throw them into greater shadow, deep within the hood of his cloak.
    The darkness moved, the blue heat intensified a little. The man was unaffected by it. He continued writing, and only said, in a soft, unpleasant voice:
    “Yes. The report?”
    A figure stepped from within the shadows; a tall, slender man, with long hair falling onto his shoulders. From his silhouette it appeared that he was an archer, the bow and arrows slung at his left shoulder. His figure remained swathed in darkness, a shadowy outline.
    “He's yet to be found,” he said, in response to the pale man's inquiry.
    The man in white paused in his writing. But after a moment he dipped the pen in ink, and continued to write without appearing to regard the archer's news as important.
    “I have seen him in town only a few days ago,” he said, his soft voice unruffled. “How did you manage to lose him?”
    “He vanished, Sir,” the archer answered, with a similarly detached, cool tone. “It appears that his decision to leave the town was made in haste, and upon impulse. We were not prepared for it, and so we lost his tracks.”
    “Unfortunate,” remarked the man in white, without pausing in his task. “And yet, it seems to cast a definite suspicion upon him. Almost as if he sensed that he was under surveillance.”
    “That, Sir, I cannot tell,” responded the archer.
    The man in white finally halted in his ceaseless toil. He leant forward a little and tapped a thin finger against his desk, apparently in thought.
    “He could not have known about me,” he said, meditating. “Unless he was deeper into Sandra's confidence than I suspected. From his reaction to the mention of her name in that bar, it seems that he was surprised at the news that she was at large.”
    The tall archer said nothing. The man in white directed his gaze towards him.
    “It's vital to track him down again,” he stated. “You, man of the forest, would be best for this task.”
    “I would be sir,” said the archer coolly. “And yet, we've much on our hands lately.”
    The man in white waived his thin hand.
    “That signifies nothing,” he answered. “What could be more important to me, pray, than finding Sandra?”
    The archer was silent. The man in white tapped his finger on the desk again, then dipped his quill in more ink, and resumed writing on the crisp paper scroll. As he did so he spoke in a smooth, measured tone:
    “I wish you to track down this man, and report to me of his movements. I want a full, precise, and detailed account of his exact doings. This might be the key that will aid me to gain the upper hand on Fox and that Sandra of his.”
    His silky voice was now peculiarly venomous. “That little bitch Sandra had once aided the Fox to set me a trap, that almost betrayed me to the police. I will not forget this little trick of theirs any time soon. I am determined to find the Jumi jewel before Sandra does. If she is as keen on it as she's rumored to be, I think that she will go to some pains to regain it from me. And I have a peculiar feeling that this man might be the key to knowing more about Sandra and her goals; perhaps even about the Jumi jewel. But first I must find out more about him.”
    The archer bowed.
    “I will do as you wish, Snake,” he said. “Expect a full report as soon as possible.” And upon these words he turned and left.
    The man called Snake continued his scrawl upon the paper parchments, a thin smile pulling his mouth. It was a rare occasion when his instinct was wrong. He knew that it would not err this time. But only when he finds this man, Elazul, he would know the exact truth.

    The hot evening deepened into an equally hot night, and in Etansel, city of the Jumi, the light of the jewels acquired an eerie glow, their rich aura bleeding into the hazy atmosphere.
    In the towering southern spire of the royal palace, the glimmer of a soft orange light at one of the windows denoted that the occupant was still awake. This person, a slender little woman clad in white robe of silk, was standing by the window. She was framed on either side by the lacy wings of a gauzy curtain that stirred lightly in the warm breeze occasionally drifting past the open shutters. The trickling orange light came from a sparse oil lamp, its light turned low.
    The woman stood motionless for a long while, contemplating the hot night and the misty beauty of the winking jewels spreading on levels upon levels of gracefully curved balconies below. She appeared to be waiting for something, or someone, and time slowed around her, as inert as her own motionless figure, absorbed into her stillness.
    Then the door opened, slowly and quietly. The wait ended, and the hours of the night once again slid into motion.
    The woman turned to regard the man who stood in the doorway. She was clad in her sleeping robes, but he was wearing his costume of duty. He had been apparently working into the small hours of the night.
    “What news?” asked the woman.
    The man stepped into the room, for a moment not answering. He approached the woman and came to stand near her, by the window.
    “I thought you were asleep,” he said. “It's almost three o'clock.”
    “I know,” she answered. “The news, Rubens.”
    He appeared to sigh, but he read the poised intensity of her body, and answered without ado.
    “He's dead, Diana. Murdered by Jumi hunters.”
    She was silent for a moment, but then spoke, her voice steady: “I suppose that's what I expected, as we haven't heard from him for this week and more.”
    “Another emissary dead,” she added after a pause. “Risks taken, lives lost to no avail. It baffles me, how one woman managed to so thoroughly fool us all.”
    “At least the children are safe,” Rubens remarked quietly. “Our most careful inquiries did not yield news of a Jumi core which might resemble their cores on the Black Market.”
    He approached her, laying his hand on her shoulder. She stood motionless, her gaze fixed ahead of her- it seemed to him that she did not attend his last remark at all. “Come, Diana,” he said with great tenderness. “Please sit down. You must be fatigued.”
    She shrugged without appearing to feel his concerned gesture. “Fatigued? Me?” she said, over her shoulder. “And what about you, who's been working ceaselessly for days now?”
    He made no answer; and she nevertheless obeyed him, seating herself into a great chair not far from the window. Rubens took a chair of his own, pulling it close to hers and sinking into it gratefully.
     “I must admit that you are at least partly right,” he said, since Diana remained silent, staring at her hands, now folded in her lap. “Ever since the rumors about Sandra began the situation became much more difficult. I suppose that it's lucky that Jumi children leaving the city is previously unheard of. It's the reason they remained safe.”
    “Sandra,” Diana echoed, the name drawing her attention. Her voice was laced with bitterness. “This hateful- this vile little tramp- this Sandra. Something inside my heart warned me about her from the very beginning, Rubens. I knew that she would be our bane.”
    “Do you believe the rumors, then?” asked Rubens softly. “That she is hunting for Jumi jewel? It's monstrous, Diana. I won't believe it. It must be a mistake. Someone must have heard that she is associated with Jumi, and drew the wrong conclusion.”
    “I do not put it above her to do anything by now,” answered Diana, her voice cold. “After all that she has dared, I think that she is capable of anything. But the poison she had set loose eats deeper than her rebellion.”
    Her gaze was still concentrated on the darkness, and she did not shift it to Rubens; but he sensed that her thoughts finally gained a greater focus.
    “Her rebellion is unprecedented,” she continued. “She has defied us all, sought to make us fools by flouting the city's rules. And now some call her act a daring and spirited gesture. But let us for a moment suppose that hers rebellion is forgiven. We must next consider her taking away of the Clarius in the middle of a severe plague. Is there any honor in this act? No. It caused many more deaths than we would have suffered otherwise. And the blame for every life that had been lost since then lies at the Alexandrite's door.”
    Rubens countered, but very quietly: “True, but please consider that she wished to save Florina, Diana.”
    But Diana continued relentlessly: “Yes. Some even say this. Then let us heed their voice, and suppose that this act of hers is forgiven. We must then consider her next deed, Rubens. Whether or not Sandra is truly hunting for a special Jumi jewel, the mere rumors about her doing so caused the Jumi hunters to re-emerge. Several of our emissary knights died at their hands. Their deaths, Rubens, is Sandra's fault, as surely as if she herself killed them.” She paused another moment in morbid meditation, but then she said, her voice harsh: “And thus, Rubens, with every additional consideration of each of the Alexandrite's actions, more deaths weight on her soul, and her deeds amount to unforgivable proportions. I cannot, I will not forgive her! I will blame her, Rubens, blame her for all she has done, whether or not she intended the results."
    She halted in her severe stricture for a moment, but then continued:
    “And as for her love for Florina, her excuse for that so-called rescue, I cannot accept such an odd and distorted affection from one woman towards another, that precludes everyone else. As in all else, it makes the Alexandrite a strange, perverse creature, one whose mind works in ways that I care not to divulge or understand. She should reserve that kind of love for a man."
    Rubens finally interrupted Diana. “She is not in love with Elazul?” he asked.
    Diana gestured dismissively. "Perhaps," she answered, not appearing particularly interested in the answer. "Although if this is what people call love, I pity Elazul for being the recipient of it. She never treated him with any kindness or consideration. She was attracted to him, I suppose; but I would hesitate to call the attraction that they had for each other love. In my opinion, she did not love Elazul any more than he loved Black Pearl. No; the only love I could perceive in her- that true, consistent, supportive kind of affection- was reserved for Florina.
    “As for Elazul,” continued Diana, “it's doubtless that he was attracted to Alexandra; but that attraction was not love either. The hold that she had over him, the kind of attachment I perceived between them, was a fascination born of a mutual purpose, a similar nature. The Alexandrite, for Elazul, embodied the spirit of rebellion he possessed against the city. You may say that he molded her so she could act his secret wishes out. This is why he trained her to become the best knight of their generation except himself. He recognized that they both shared the same spirit of defiance. A dangerous, destructive sympathy.
    “It's doubtless, however,” Diana remarked, after a short pause, “that at least one of them fancied himself or herself to be in love with the other, for at least a little while. Which one of them it may be, I care not to know. I do, however, pity Elazul for tolerating Alexandra's callous treatment of him. The affection she bestowed on him was not the true kind of love.”
    “Perhaps he felt it to be so,” Rubens suggested.
    “Perhaps,” Diana answered. “But then again, his father was such a man that I suppose that he eventually learned to tolerate hurt from people he is attached to, perhaps even taught himself to accept it.”
    Rubens said, wearily, “Elazul is not like his father, Diana. His father was a fine knight, but a hard man. I always thought that he is more like his mother.”
    “In physical appearance, certainly,” answered Diana. “Or in coloring, at least, he is very like his mother. And he is unquestionably much better-looking than his father ever was. But I always thought that he inherited his father's personality. He displays the same reserve, the same unyielding stubbornness, the same quick temper his father possessed.
    “Certainly,” she continued, after a short reflection, “he is much more capable of true affection than his father. But his mother's memory keeps him this way. A softening nostalgia, you may say, that causes him to control, or perhaps even deny, that hardness that he had inherited. I have heard him speak of his mother with love, of his father with something akin to loathing. I can understand the reason, but I think that his father had been a greater influence on him than he cares to admit.
    "And as for that Alexandra," added Diana, a barely concealed aversion in her voice, "she is an exact replica of her own father as well. Not physically, perhaps, but her personality is of the rebellious, mendacious thief that her father had been. We should have never have let 'Alex', the dissenter's child, continue on his quest to knighthood; but, alas, we needed all the knights available, and we relaxed the rules too much. I suppose that we did not expect such gross deceit and dissimulation among our own kind. It was Black Pearl who decreed that justice must allow the dissenter's child to be accepted back into the city, no matter what the sins of the father may have been.
    “It's strange,” she added, after further meditation. “I had always thought Black Pearl's notion of strict justice odd; it's at once severe and impartial, so that it possessed a strangely fair side to it. As in this instance: let not the child suffer from the sins of the father. And yet, it was that very fairness, that generous side of her severe policy of justice, that brought her downfall.”
    Rubens thought that Diana sounded unusually unforgiving that evening, and it was a side of her that he did not like. He learnt forward and placed his fingers on her folded hands, caressing those cold little hands a little, a soothing gesture.
    "Let us leave the subject of Alexandra aside for a while," he said gently. "And as for Elazul, if he indeed resembles his father but would not follow his father's conduct, then he merits our respect for refusing to submit to the worse part of his nature."
    Diana finally looked at him at this quietly reproving remark. Unexpectedly, she smiled.
    "I deserved that," she said. "I haven't been easy to deal with lately, have I, my dear one?"
    Rubens returned her smile, his own possessing the characteristic warmth and kindness that flowed through Diana's soul like a rich draught, soothing and warming the cool, empty spaces of her heart. She had surprised even herself at the vengeful loathing she felt towards Alexandra, of which kind she had never felt towards anyone. But Rubens' natural ability to forgive always mellowed the poison, diluted the rancor.
    Would it that I could stay this way, she thought. If I ever lost Rubens, I would lose that better part of me. I do not wish to know what would happen then.
    And she wondered, as she did often before, why is it that I hate the Alexandrite so much? Is it because she exposed my own inability to act upon my guilt regarding Florina's predicament, because her actions made me feel almost equally as guilty as I know her to be?
    At her side, Rubens spoke.
    "I'm afraid that your mood of charity with me will not last for much longer this evening, Diana," he remarked, his tone somewhat wry. "I have been accosted by several councilors about a very particular proposition, and they insist that I discuss it with you."
    Diana suddenly straightened in her chair, and became very still. "What is it?" she asked, cool and rigid again. "I have heard of these murmuring among them. Yes, you must speak of it now, so I can dispose of it quickly."
    Rubens watched her as she sat thus, her gaze fixed on the darkness, looking like a statue of white marble, inflexible and unyielding. He had anticipated this reaction, and he reflected that the council would never succeed in convincing Diana. It must fall to me, he thought, to find the middle-way solution to satisfy them all, to prevent a breach.
    He proceeded to speak, with a carefully measured, neutral tone.
    "I will not say that I perfectly agree with their proposition myself; but it must be discussed, Diana. It's about the ill Jumi. The plague may not be as bad as it used to be, but, as the councilors pointed out, we've had periods of relief in the past. It might come back with renewed force at any time. They wish to find a way to increase the number of healers before the Core Waning returns."
    "We already conducted a thorough search," replied Diana with terse, clipped accents. "There is no healer is as good as Florina. Even Sapphire's help, had she not been lost to us, would have been meager in comparison to Florina's powers. Florina was our last true healer."
    Rubens said softly, "Out of the adult Jumi, Diana."
    She became even more straight and rigid. “No," she said. "I won't hear of this outrageous proposal, Rubens."
    “A middle-way solution would suffice, Diana,” said Rubens quietly. ”As some of the councilors proposed, we can tap into the healing powers of the younger Jumi. But on a very limited basis, without choosing a Clarius, even if one of them is sufficiently strong for the position. A limited participation by everyone would suffice to afford relief for the ill Jumi.”
    “This is how it will begin,” answered Diana. “But it's not how it will end. Can't you see, Rubens, that if I allow the council to do this, they may propose something even more drastic next, insist on pushing that participation by younger Jumi even further? And how can I allow them to do this, without knowing for certain what future effect it might have on those children? What if such a burden reduces their life-span, or their ability to have children? The harm caused in the long-run will be greater than letting the ill Jumi die.”
    Rubens said nothing for a moment. Then, very quietly, he answered,
    “I cannot say that I do not agree with you, Diana. But you must prepare yourself to what the council would say.”
    “Without Black Pearl's support, you mean,” said Diana with a bitter smile.
    Rubens did not respond to this remark. He watched her, a still, white form in the blue evening, the gauzy wings of the pale curtains flowing around her in gentle ripples. She sat thus for a while, a rigid, inflexible figure. Then, unexpectedly, she lowered her head.
    “Never before had I felt how much my powers depend on Black Pearl's support,” she said with unusual softness. “The council grows agitated because of her strange absence. They say that the Alexandrite and the Lapis Lazuli, either by themselves or together, managed to kill her. They dare to defy me… how dare they! But when she returns, order will once again be restored to this city.”
    And Rubens, watching her, was stricken with sudden remorse. It is I who aided Elazul to escape, he recalled. I don't believe that Alexandra by herself could have hurt Black Pearl, but with the aid of the Lapis Lazuli, perhaps she could- but no, Elazul would not let Alexandra kill Black Pearl; I do not believe it. Yes, Rubens could not regret this action of releasing Elazul from an unjustly harsh punishment. And still, Black Pearl had not returned. And if his actions resulted in an unforeseen damage, it was him who must remedy it.
    And then he knew what he must do to repair it.
    "Diana," he said quietly, "I am going to leave the city and look for Black Pearl."
    Diana raised her head with a sudden movement, fixing her eyes on Rubens.
    “The dangers, Rubens,” she said quickly, at once. “Do you think that…”
    “I can withstand the dangers,” he interrupted. “You forget, Diana, that I had once been a prized knight.”
    Since she said nothing in reply, he added: “We sent some of our finest young knights, and they have been murdered. We need someone older, skilled in the way of the world. I know the human world, Diana. I shall know what to do, and I am well able to defend myself. Do you think that I will fail to survive, where the youthful Lapis Lazuli succeeded? The only one that can kill me, Diana,” he added wryly, “is Black Pearl herself."
    Diana shook her head, and her hand shot out and gripped Rubens' in a forceful grasp.
    She knew that he proposed this because he knew that she needs Black Pearl for the city. She thought, he is doing this to restore me to my previous position, he is doing it for my sake, for me, and me only…
    And another thought occurred at once to Diana. If anything happens to Rubens, she knew, it would be the result of her own ambition, her need for power. As always, he was allowing her to use him for her own purposes, because of his love for her.
    And she knew that if she said only one word to detain Rubens, if she pled to him to stay, to support her, instead of sending him on this mission, he would comply and stay.
    But Diana also knew that Rubens was the one person who will be able to succeed in this mission, to find Black Pearl and restore her to the city… thereby restoring her, Diana, to full power.
    And so, Diana clasped Rubens' hand between her fingers, quietly savoring the warmth and strength it gave her…
    And said nothing.

    The atmosphere of the dark blue night flowed in warm ripples, sultry and almost unbearably hot. It was only two hours to the dawn.
    Elazul had not managed to fall asleep. After he retired from his nightly duty at the inn he lay in his bed, half-dreaming, too fatigued to either stay awake or fall asleep, swimming in a world of warm blue shadows, a world where ethereal shapes and forms took life and meaning of their own.
    Half-fragmented reflections recurred, ones that troubled him constantly ever since he first heard of Sandra, over a week ago.
    As he had told Sapphire, the knowledge that she was alive had startled him only for a little while, because of the puzzling circumstances of her death. That moment of knowledge realized something that Elazul had half-consciously dreamt of, for the past few months; the hope, to which he clung but which, as time progressed, he begun to despair of: that she would still be alive.
    And yet, the mention of Sandra's name caused him a different kind of a shock. It shattered the peace he had known, and scattered away the half-conscious dream of the past four months, when he thought she was dead. It was the shock of reality that tore away the idealizing haze that he had constructed around her. When Elazul thought that Alex was dead, he had dwelt only on her good points, the passage of time softening the image of her, marring away all her faults.
    But now that he knew that she was alive, the cold reality touched him again, and he found this sensation unpleasant, unsettling. He realized that Sandra must have known that he still lived in the whereabouts of the city. He thought that, since she should know that he was alive, she should have looked for him; he thought that a search could not have been too difficult. And he found himself caught between a swiftly-fading hope and a dawning feeling of wounded rancor. The hope that she had conducted a fruitless search for him, which was the reason that she did not contact him; and the guess, quickly turning into a bitter conviction, that she knew where he lived and avoided him purposely. Even worse, he puzzled out the reason why she would take such a measure to avoid him, and his previous knowledge of her character brought him to the correct conclusion.
    What is that new scheme of yours, Alex, he thought, which you would not let me know about? Why do you never trust me to help you, as you did not trust in the case of Florina's abduction? And what is this new plan, how grievous must it be in nature, that you are afraid, once again, that I will oppose it? And, Alex, am I not important to you enough, that you would be willing to cause me such pain by letting me think that you are dead?
    What are you planning, Alexandra?
    When he thought that Alexandra was dead, Elazul has indulged himself in a dream about her, wondering whether he could have loved her. Now that he knew that she was alive, he realized that, perhaps, the relationship between them did not change since those days when their different personalities divided them, prevented them from admitting their attraction to each other. He now realized that the old gap did not mend; it existed as before, and it tainted the soft memories he had conjured of Alexandra. Elazul found this sensation of waking from the dream a galling experience.
    Not soul-mates, he thought, but souls at war, always pulling each other in opposite direction, evading each other, trying to influence each other until the connecting thread was pulled thin, thin enough to tear and yet… not quite so.
    And he realized that the worst of it was that the longing that the months of dreaming had evoked in him had not subsided because of this embittering knowledge. Rather, it became a new part of his relationship to Alexandra, that made him resent her as much as he longed to see her again.
    And it dawned upon Elazul, with a dazing clarity, that it was exactly the same quality that permeated his relationship with Black Pearl. And he reflected to himself, why should it be this way- what is this strange, damaging quality in me, that makes me long most for what I cannot have? And as in every night, Elazul lay awake, tormented by the continual circle of his thoughts, torn between the exhausting forces of conflicting feelings.
    At some point of that interminable night, feeling weary and exhausted by the mental struggle, he rose from his bed and walked down a corridor of the inn, seeking a place where he could refresh himself and rejuvenate his thoughts. He walked inside dim, warm shadows, walking in the darkness slowly, almost dazedly, walking towards nothing.
    Slowly, after what seemed like a long stretch of time, he realized that the corridor seemed to continue endlessly on. He then realized that he was no longer inside the inn, but inside a strange, misty blue world.
    He could now see that he was inside a great palace, whose long, narrow halls swam in flowing, hot blue mist, and he knew that he was looking for someone, although he knew not who or why.
    Gradually he realized that vague forms of people were walking past him in the corridors, misty shades, their features indistinct, jewels glimmering on their breasts. These bright jewels were the only distinct objects in the burning atmosphere; and Elazul knew them to be Jumi, and felt that he had dreamt this dream before.
    He walked past the great library again, and he saw, as he somehow expected to see, the figure sitting there, a little more distinct than the others. He now knew it to be Snow, and he also knew, although he knew not how, that the reason that Snow was identifiable rather than a vague shadow was that he was closer to death than many of his others, because of his illnesses, and his flawed jewel…
    He continued towards the exit of the palace, still seeking that unknown figure, and as he expected, when he came to the garden, he saw Sapphire standing inside the flowing blue mist, her figure clear and distinct, its brightness a damning beacon that indicated her damaged core. She stood leaning against a hedge, looking at nothing, and he passed her quietly, recalling, somehow, that she would not answer him even if he spoke to her. And still, he could not help stealing a glance at her and, to his astonishment, he saw that her eyes were focused upon him, as if she could identify him. But she said nothing, although her expression seemed sad; and he passed her by, not attempting to speak to her despite it, knowing that it was not she that he looked for.
    He advanced further into the maze, and the feeling that the object that he sought was in the middle of this garden intensified. Another turn through the labyrinth, and another, and then he was in the middle of the garden, near the flowing fountain, whose water sparkled clearly amid the blue mists, like tiny dewdrops.
    But the dais was empty, and the figure he expected to see, the ethereal, burning form of the angel, was not there.
    Elazul knelt, his head hung low. He knew that he was reiterating something he had done before, but the gesture was empty, one of defeat instead of reverence. He knelt listlessly, not knowing what to do, and remained sitting still for a long while- he could not quite tell for how long.
    Then a voice spoke, quite clearly, recalling Elazul from his lost reverie.
    “Lost,” said the voice softly. “Gone… lost.”
    Elazul raised his head. Sitting at the bottom of the dais was a pale, ghostly form of a girl; and all at once he felt that she was familiar, that he had seen her before.
    He rose to his feet and approached her. Her features were pale, indistinct; but as he watched the long, waving hair flowing down her shoulders and back, he finally identified her, and knew who she was.
    “Why are you lost?” he asked, quietly, sitting at her side. “Why? Tell me.”
    The girl sat with her head hung low. She replied to his question, speaking with a strangely empty, sorrowful voice.
    “I cannot tell you.”
    “Please,” Elazul said, trying to peer into her lowered features, struggling to see them clearly. “Please speak to me. Please- let me help you.”
    But she only shook her head.
    “You cannot,” she said. “I have failed. You must not fail. You must do as you were bid, turn your thoughts to the heavens, forget the earth and its creatures. I could not, and so, I forgot what the heavens had bid me. But you must not forget.”
    “You… you are the failed messenger, weren't you?” Elazul asked softly. “The one that the angel bid to return with the message.”
    She was quiet, and appeared to tremble. After a moment she only said, her voice immersed in sorrow:
    “It matters not. I cannot find my way anymore. The angel… the angel, it…”
    “Why?” asked Elazul. “What is it? Please tell me. What about the angel?”
    “The angel… is with us,” answered the girl. “Once we are imbued with its essence, we cannot escape it, not matter how much we try…”
    To Elazul's amazement, the girl's form began to dissipate slowly, to vanish into mist. Her last words flowed sorrowfully towards him.
    “I did it for my people, but I have failed them because of my pride, and now many sleep in death. But you must fulfill your destiny, lapis lazuli… so you will not become like me.”

    Elazul jerked awake. A dream, again. He had fallen asleep, he knew not how long ago, although it seemed for no more than a few minutes.
    A warm, flowing spring dawn greeted him. He watched it wearily, thinking of his dream, knowing that it had recurred not only once, but many, many times. Somehow, he could only utter one word when he tried to recall it, one name that floated up from the rapidly vanishing traces of the dream…
    “Pearl.”

Comment: I am stating the obvious here, but Snake, the thin man in white, (Fox's rival) and his band are invented plot device characters. He was the figure cloaked in white in the bar, in PIII/Ch2, who watched the fight between Elazul and the four men, and then asked the bartender if Elazul knew Sandra.

Someone commented upon the time scheme in the story, so I think that perhaps I didn't make it clear enough how long the story takes, though I am usually careful about marking down the time period of a chapter.

To put it in perspective: the entire Parts I and II span exactly one year, winter to winter. Part III begins in March of the second year, 3 months after Part II and continues to the middle of May. Parts IV and V will continue in the spring and summer of that year. The entire story since PI/Ch1 spans a little over a year and a half.

Part IV

Maintained by:

d Galloway (Insert Image Here)