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"Hello. It's been a long time since we met together." A soft voice came from my back. "Yes, it is." "Hmmm.... You seem not to be changed at all." "Aha, how you could talk like that? It's you who aren't changed." "Ha-ha-ha... I'll change my looks as you like." "No, thank you." "What a flat refusal." It was an evening and I could see clouds of bright color of fire in the sky. --- Like the color of blood. I thought. The treetops swung in the wind but the wind told me nothing. "What do you want? Every time you come, you have plans." said I. And I could hear the sound of footsteps. He came a few steps closer to me and stopped. There came another sound --- a sound like a man let out his breath. He sighed? "I come to talk with you." "Talk?" "Well, sometimes I feel like talking with somebody." "Aha, sounds funny. You talk like a human." 
"I have spent a far longer time than you have. Even though I am a demon, I have my own way to feel about things.""You are a peculiar demon, that's all." "Maybe.... I admit that I became more peculiar since I met you." "Don't say 'you' but 'Lina'. She made you so peculiar." "No. It's 'you'. Lina was there, but you, Gourry, and Princess Ameria were there, too. I remember that." The wind blew into our cloaks. "Yes, they were there, and I was...." I swallowed up the words. He fell into silence, too. In the deadly silence, he and I watched at the same sky. Both of us only watched at the sun-setting sky as if we devoted ourselves in thinking. We knew there was no answer in the sky. I found a suitable place to sleep in the woods, gathered twigs and chips of dead trees, and I built a bonfire. "You seem practiced in the skill." "Huh-huh, I always sleep outside. It was only when I was concerned with them for me to sleep at an inn." "Well, I have a good tea with me. How about taste a cup of it?" "Recommended by the priest of the Greater Beast? Is it alright?" "No problem. It's for the human." Soon after, steam rose from the two cups. The flame of the bonfire danced and the shadows also danced on our faces as we sat on the ground facing each other across the fire. "Where do you go tomorrow?" "I don't know." "Aren't you looking for the way to get your human body back?" --- Yes, I was. "I searched for all over the world for a long time. I chased mere rumors and bare possibilities, ...and I have found no answer." "It is, after all, the work of the Ruby Eye.... no, the work of Rezo the Red Priest." "I don't mind which is which. Only important for me is the fact that I can't get my body back." "Do you want to?" Pop! The twigs snapped in the bonfire. "I don't know." "Wow, I remember that you and I competed to get the copy of the Clare Bible, didn't we?" "I did, but it was in the past days. It was the reason to live for me to find a way to get my body back then." "Do you mean that you have another reason now?" "No, I don't, but I have realized there was another serious fact. If I get my body back now, my magic power will become weaker. Human skin is critically weaker than my skin of rock. I'll be much weaker both in magical and in physical meaning. I shall say I'm lucky not to have found the way to get my human body back." "Yes, you shall. You are the first target now." He said in a calm voice as usual. --- I mustn't die now. I know. After the ruin of Phiblizo the Hellmaster, the balance of the universe was lost. Whole universe was caught up in a huge maelstrom of confusion, the terror produced new confusion. Gods, demons and the humans are now dancing with the endless Waltz of Death. Confusion, destruction and genocide make the rhythm and play a song "Despair". There were a few people who wouldn't give up. I know there was a girl who kept on fighting for the purpose to live, to be herself. She didn't change since I had met her. "Is Gourry alright?" "Do you mind him?" "Hmmm... yes. I knew him for all those day and I saw him at that time. I have minded him since then." --- Oh, he has become more man-like demon, hasn't he? "It is a long time since then. He is a strong guy, even though he has a brain of a slime. Perhaps you shall be more cautious about him than me." "No. He is an ordinary man. I know he is skilled in the sword, but without sword of light and without Lina, he isn't a matter to think." --- Yes, we are without Lina. As I thought, I felt that he said "without Lina" in a sad tone. Was that an effect of my feeling? "I liked her... very much." He said suddenly. I was so surprised that I looked into his face. He smiled as usual, but in a self-rediculing air. "We, the demons, are charmed by the stronger power. If we meet someone who have much greater power then we have, then we obey him or her absolutely. In other words, power is the object of our love. Lina was a human, but she had the power of that existence --- mother of everything who dwell in the darkness ---.So I was charmed by her, but... That power brought her the fate...." Oh, Lina kept on fighting, kept on looking forward. She trusted her tomorrow when nobody trusted it. And she was gone just before the united force of Grawshellar the Dinast and Dalfin the Deep Sea. Oh, no, she wasn't gone. She only went back to..... "Just like when Master Phiblizo the Hellmaster was ruined... She was terribly stubborn. She showed her feeling about her precious things only in such a critical situation." "Gourry was almost a living dead for a while." "Oh, you were the same, weren't you?" "And you. You didn't appear for a while after that. It was because of her absence, I presume." I talked back at him, and he grinned as he scratched his head. "Well, that was only a part of the reason of my dropping out." 
I added some twigs into the bonfire and dying fire recovered."How about one more cup of tea?" "Thank you. ...Hmmm, I feel funny as sitting here with you, taking a cup of tea with you, and talking about old days with you." "You seemed dislike me. I like you very much next to Lina.*wink*" Pooh! I spit out the tea. "I hate such a joke!" "I'm not kidding. Oh-oh, If Princess Ameria knows this, she'll get angry." --- She knows what? I have nothing to be ashamed of. "By the way, did you really leave Saillune? I've thought that you were with Princess Ameria." "I couldn't live with her for so long. I was what I was...." I didn't forget her even when I was in the center of confusion, when I was far distance from her. After Lina was gone, Ameria and I managed to make Gourry recovered from the shock and together we went back to Saillune. She was the Princess. Although she was the second princess of Saillune, she should be needed when Prince Philionel would be harmed or gone, for her sister had been absent for a long years. When we arrived at Saillune, she still acted courageously, but I knew that she had lost her ultimate power. She missed Lina so bad. "But I know that after the death of her father --- Prince Philionel? --- you have been the mainstay of her." --- I will be the mainstay of her forever if I can. "I don't know." "It's no use dodging the answer. I have not been concerned with you for all those years for fun.*smile*" "Oh, I remember that you felt difficulties in dealing with Ameria." He seemed startled. "Oh-oh... do you remember that? Anyway, as you are the mainstay for her, how can you stay far away from Saillune?" "Even though I don't want to, there is a reason I have to. You know how long has it been since that day." "Is it so long? I don't feel it's long." "...Wow, you ARE the demon." When I stayed in Saillune, Ameria grew up from a girl to a lady and I was only astonished by her change. She was in the period of biggest change in her life. I only looked at it and felt embarrassed for I couldn't have that change. Oh, I knew how she felt for me. I wanted to receive her. I loved her so hard that I could love nobody else. --- I wanted to hold her in my arms forever. "Did she mind?" "She said nothing, but I think she did. It was OK for five years. It might be OK for ten years, but it couldn't be for more than ten years..." "Other people may become cautious about you. If you visit Saillune tomorrow, everybody, except Princess, will doubt their eyes at the sight of you." --- He doesn't hesitate to point out the problem. "They will. It has been.. about thirty years? since I left Saillune." The sky was filled with stars. Under the sky, the gods, the demons and the humans were fighting only for their reason to live. Now this peculiar demon and I sat face to face and enjoyed cups of tea, next time we would fight as enemies. "Thank god for we won't get old." "Do you wanna pick a fight with me?" "No way! I am glad to talk with you in this way." "What?!" "I said before, 'I have my own way to feel about things'... But I can't talk about you and your friends with other demons. How can I? Well, my master may know I want to talk about the human." He grinned. "Does your master wink at you tonight?" I looked at him embarrassedly and he gave back a real wink to me. He stood his index finger of the right hand and said, "Yes. So, this is the one-night truce for you and me." --- Not so bad. I said in my mind and twisted my lips. It made an expression that I didn't do for a long time. "Oh, Zelgadiss, you smile at me!" "You made me smile, Xelloss." "Ha-ha-ha, I didn't intend to. ...Anyway, night is long. Let's talk some more?" "Sounds nice...." The warmth of the cup in my hands reminded me of her hands. --- Someday, I'll go back. I would go back as the stars in the sky came and went. I wouldn't be a memory of old days. END |