Disclaimer: The author of this fanfiction does not, in any way, profit from the story. All creative rights to the characters belong to their original creator(s).
Fairy Tales: rose woven
by Pout
Chapter 4: The Water Nymph
The two brothers stood at the summit of the pass looking down on the vast expanse below them. They were making extraordinarily good time on their journey with relatively few incidents along the way. Less than a week had passed since they left the official borders of their kingdom. Moving through the dense terrain of the mountain path, the outlands of the state were still within view, and from their vantage point, they cast worried gazes back towards their home.
Duo brushed a lock of sun-lightened hair from his eyes and pointed out: “You can even see the ocean from here.” Rolling blue tinged the horizon before fading into sky.
“An impressive view,” Heero agreed.
“Trowa and Quatre are out there somewhere,” Duo mused. Beside him, Heero made an agitated movement before turning back to his horse and swinging gracefully astride it. “You’re worried,” Duo stated. “Why? Do you think something’s happened, too?”
Heero turned in his saddle and frowned openly. “What do you mean, ‘too’?”
“A couple nights ago,” his brother said as he remounted, “I just…had a feeling of sorts. Like something bad had happened. Did you feel it as well?”
Heero seemed to consider the question for a while before curtly nodding affirmatively.
Duo cursed mildly and turned to stare back at the ocean miles away. “Do you think we should-?”
His question was cut off abruptly as Heero shook his head, saying, “No. We continue on. We don’t know that anything is actually wrong. Besides, they’re more than capable of taking care of themselves. We shouldn’t worry.” He urged his mount back towards the main trail affectively ending the discussion.
Following behind, Duo nodded his agreement, “You’re right. They’re big boys now.” Yet even as he said this, he turned his head and cast one last troubled glance towards the distant span of sea. They rounded the bend and quelled their hearts as their kingdom dropped out of sight.
* * *
Five days later, after a number of run-ins with some less-than-friendly bandits as well as a few of the wilder beasts that inhabited those parts, Heero and Duo were still making their way steadily down the side of the mountains. Brick’s Passage had indeed cut their travel time nearly in half and Heero calculated they would emerge from the mountain forests within the next three days.
And so it was that when they came upon the lake, Duo was loudly humming a little ditty about three bar maids while Heero tried unsuccessfully to ignore him. It was the discovery of said lake that spared Duo bodily harm from his irritated older brother.
The trail they followed had meandered out of the woods into a wide clearing that encompassed the flat bank beside a relatively moderate sized lake. On all sides but for the glade they had arrived at, the lake was bordered by thick forest. Its placid waters rippled gently, touched by a slight breeze.
Duo immediately dismounted and hurried over to the side of the lake, longing for some cool refreshment. As he knelt beside the placid water, his violet eyes peered down into its clear blue depths. Marveling at the purity of the lake, he flinched back suddenly when he thought he caught a pair of crystalline eyes staring back at him. Blinking in surprise, he looked again but found nothing. Shaking his head and wondering at his own paranoia and overactive imagination, he sighed and let his hands sink under the cool surface of the water. Splashing his face with the cold liquid, he opened his eyes and was blinking droplets away when it began.
At first, it was merely a bit of haziness around the edges of his vision, like bright lights shining out from behind him. Then with a watery flash, the visions began. He saw a faint image of himself flying down the road, running after something, or someone. He saw a forest of thick trees and generous beams of sunlight. A cottage. A cave with glittering jewels. A flash and he saw himself approaching a lake, larger than the one he knelt beside and bathed in moonlight. He saw a figure at the opposite shore, hidden away in the shadow of the trees. He saw himself walking towards it and the light began to fade away. Distressed, he leaned forward and splashed a handful of water over his eyes and was rewarded with another set of visions.
This time, he saw again the cottage and the cave with its hidden treasures. He saw again the thick forest and the spacious lake. Again, just as he moved forward toward that figure in the shadows, his sight cleared and he saw only the lake before him.
Behind him, his brother was oblivious to the visions he was experiencing. Heero had led their horses to a nice patch of grass was about to unload their provisions for the midday meal, when he turned at last to the lake in order to berate his brother for being lazy and making him do everything, as usual. What he saw frightened him: Duo had his head submerged under the surface of the water and seemed to be slowly sinking in. At a sprint, Heero ran to his side and dragged his younger brother back, his eyes wide and on guard. Duo hit the bank with a thump, choking up water, blinking his eyes and looking at something behind Heero’s shoulder. “Duo! Are you all right? What were you doing?!”
With a groan, Duo flopped onto his back and sighed heavily. “Seeing water,” the younger prince answered. “It’s seeing water.”
Heero dropped down beside his brother and sighed as well. Seeing water; that explained it. Waters that allowed those without prophetic sight to catch glimpses of the future. Seeing water was dangerous in that one glimpse was almost never enough. Curiosity would drive a man to drown himself if only to keep sight of what lay ahead. “We should get out of here, then,” Heero said. “Whoever tends to this lake could be back soon, or could be here now. And one can never guess how they’ll react. Come on, get up.”
Still choking slightly, but entirely willing to leave the scene, Duo took Heero’s proffered hand and together they turned toward the horses. They took a step then stopped, frozen in their tracks. “This is not good,” Duo said out of the corner of his mouth as they sighted the nymph.
She was a beautiful creature, as most water nymphs are: pale blue skin and white-blue hair, a shimmering gown of ice and liquid, and just about three feet high. The miniature form was petting the legs of their horses and staring back at the two princes giving no clues as to whether or not she was angry over their trespasses on her territory. When she spoke, it was with a voice that somehow managed to sound remarkably similar to running water: smooth but ephemeral, each word disappearing quickly, leaving a very tangible silence in its wake.
She stared without blinking and said: “What have you seen, Prince?”
Dealing with the Other World was a tricky thing. One never knew what made these magic creatures angry or pleased. They often seemed to know much more than their human counterparts and this made them especially difficult to interact with. On a general principle, it was best, usually, to be honest, so that’s what Duo did. He told her all of what he had seen in the visions, then waited for her judgment. However, after he completed his narration, she merely nodded, then turned to Heero and said, “You must see as well.”
Seeing the future was generally not a good idea for anyone who was not born with the gift, but when Heero tried to protest, the little nymph turned angry, and later Duo would comment on how he was sure he had seen steam rising from the top of her head. At Heero’s refusal, the little nymph came stomping across the distance between them, her cool eyes ablaze. The two princes, knowing that they really shouldn’t try to run, stood where they were and let her come at them. As a rule, nymphs generally disliked leaving their given territories and only left their borders when absolutely necessary. If worse came to worse, they could whistle for the horses and hopefully make it to the woods before she caught them and the water nymph would be discouraged from giving chase.
The little creature came to a stop right in front of Heero, staring up at him with fiercely narrowed eyes. “I am a product of Destiny,” she declared in her liquid voice. “I said you must see, so you will see. You should know better than to disagree with a water nymph about Other Worldly things. You anger me.” Not knowing how best to proceed after hearing this statement, Heero opened his mouth to apologize and quickly closed it as the nymph suddenly doused him in water.
As with Duo before, Heero’s vision began to glow around the edges and suddenly, translucent images appeared, solidifying slightly so that these gifted visions were overlapping the real world that he saw around him. He spoke as he saw, telling the nymph everything that flashed before his eyes. “I’m riding through the forest. A little woman. A number of little women. A house in a tree. A man, with long blond hair, in a tavern. He’s pointing at something. I’m turning to look. Flowers. Thorns. It’s dark. A tower. Red flowers. I’m turning-” His vision returned to normal and he fought the urge to ask for more water.
“I understand,” the nymph said simply. Duo wanted to say, ‘Well, we don’t,’ but resisted valiantly.
Ignoring them for a moment, the ice-colored creature walked over to the water, reached beneath its surface with one hand and pulled out a small vial. She walked back to them and stood there with the vial in her hand. “This is a bit of my seeing water. You will need it in the future,” she said, speaking to Heero directly. “You must remember: there is only enough for one douse; it must only be used when one feels the pangs of the worst despair.” That said, she pressed the vial into Heero’s hands and stepped back. “You must leave now.” Taking the dismissal for what it was, the two brothers quickly gathered their things and mounted up. Glancing back at the nymph, they found she was smiling slightly at them.
On a whim, Duo raised a hand and called out, “Thanks!” And as he and Heero rode off down the path heading back into the forest, they heard the rippling laughter of a silver-blue water nymph trickling through the breeze to follow them.
* * *
Three days later, just as predicted, the two brothers emerged from Brick’s Passage, a little less than two weeks after leaving the palace. Having made it over the mountain range, the princes were at a loss as to what they should do next or where they should go.
“The prophet really should have been more specific,” Duo sighed as he lay sprawled out on the grass. “Go east, over the mountains, he says. Well, we did that, now what?” He yawned loudly and opened an eye to peer at his older brother. Heero had been unusually preoccupied these past few days. “What’s on your mind?” Duo asked.
“I can’t get that vision out of my head,” Heero answered candidly.
Duo sat up and plucked at the grass beneath his fingers. Solemnly, he nodded in agreement and said, “I keep thinking about that lake and that person on the other side.”
“Did you see who it was? If it was an ally or an enemy?”
Duo shook his head. “It was night, I couldn’t really see anything clearly. But I didn’t feel threatened. If anything, I felt, I don’t know, anxious…excited, I guess. Like I had been looking for that person.”
“Your potential wife?”
“Dunno.”
“Was she in a tree?” Heero asked good-humoredly.
The younger prince laughed and shrugged before falling back into the grass. “I really want to know,” he whined.
Heero gave a slight chuckle. “You never were a patient one.”
Duo gave him an annoyed look. “Well, what about you? You only got one douse. What do you think it meant? Towers and flowers?”
“There was that blond man in it, too. And whatever it was he was pointing at, I felt like it was important.”
“What about the little women? Don’t tell me you’re going to marry a midget.”
“Haha,” Heero replied dryly. “They were faeries. Wings and everything.”
They sat in silence for a few moments before Heero went to collect the horses and Duo said contemplatively as he stood up, “Well, we’ll know as soon as it happens in the future, I suppose.”
“That isn’t very helpful.”
“That’s Other World magic for you.”
“Selectively useful.”
“Exactly. Ah well. We saw it for a reason; otherwise we wouldn’t have seen anything at all. This is just one of those wait-and-see things.”
“I hate those.”
It was a little past midday when they came to a fork in the road, one no different from any of the dozen or so they had passed since the morning. They had been traveling blindly, aimlessly picking roads simply to see where they would lead. This time, however, Duo nudged his horse to the right without much thought about the decision, only to come to a halt when he heard his brother call his name. Turning in his saddle, he was surprised to see Heero stopped some ways behind him where the road had split.
“What’s going on?” Duo asked as he turned his horse around. Heero looked off towards the left and Duo realized they had come to the end of their journey together. ‘Our hearts will be our guides. We’ll ride together for as long as our emotions lead us down the same path,’ Heero had said. But their instincts were pulling them in different directions and they would have to go their own ways now.
There was an awkward moment as they both tried to decide what to say at this crucial parting. At last, Heero put out his hand which Duo grasped warmly.
“Be careful,” Heero said with sincerity.
Duo smirked. “I’ll be waiting for you back at the Palace.”
“Really? How do you figure that?” Heero asked, clearly skeptical. “I could be married and with children on the way before you even meet your tree-dwelling girl.”
Duo snorted. “Oh please, Heero. I could court five dozen ladies while you dealt with one.”
The older prince laughed and shook his head.
“Take care, Heero,” Duo said, suddenly sober. A heavy silence hung in the air until finally, Heero nodded, turned his mount, and headed down the left path disappearing from sight, swallowed up by a bend in the road.
Swallowing the dry emotion in his throat, Duo watched the dust settle in the wake of Heero’s departure. He knew, somehow, that the next time they met, they would both be changed. The next time he saw any of his brothers, they would all be different and it would never be quite the same as it had once been. As he set off down his own chosen path, he tried not to think about how it would likely be a very, very long time before he saw his brothers again.
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