Vision Of Escaflowne Fan Fiction ❯ The Girl With the Raven Hair ❯ Eat, Drink, and Be Merry ( Chapter 7 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

A/N: Sorry I took so long getting this up




A/N: I just remembered that I forgot to mention how Van, Hitomi, and Merle look like now. So you don't get confused I'll tell you now and sometime later I'll go and change it within the chapters before this one. To say it briefly: Van has a beard, Hitomi has hair that goes down to the middle of her back, Merle has hair that goes to her knees and they all look older. Sorry, by the way, that I took so long getting this chapter up. I had a bit of writers block and plus I couldn't seem to find the time to write anyway. But I doubt you want to hear my excuses, so on to the story.
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Chapter 7: Eat, Drink, and be Merry
Nanaki, finished getting ready, now stared out the window. Spring came really fast she thought to herself as she looked across the green land. Indeed it had, it had sneaked up on the people of Fanelia almost without warning, though they were used to short winters and fast coming springs. A few birds twittered their conversations outside.
Nanaki had just realised that she was expected to be in the dinning hall in a few minutes and didn't know where it was, when a knock came at her door. She walked over and opened it to none other than Vallen. He was wearing a shirt and pants much like he usually wore except much fancier.
"I'm supposed to 'escort' you to the dinning hall." He explained sheepishly
"Oh, o.k." Nanaki didn't look too happy about this, but secretly she was relieved. She didn't want to be late because didn't know where the dinning hall was.
"Van and Hitomi have ordered that tonight's dinner be turned into a ball for all the court lords and ladies in honour of their guests, namely us" he continued "So they thought it would make sense if we arrived together."
Nanaki ignored this last part and said "What do you mean there's a ball just for us!?! They really didn't have to! It's a good thing I grew up in a rich family or I'd be seriously in trouble. But what if Fanelian customs are different then the ones I learned? What will I do then?! I'll probably make a big fool of myself in front of all those people! Do I look all right? How's my hair? Oh, I really want to make a good impression."
Vallen quickly took this all in and made his reply "Yes they did have to, it's their custom to have a ball in honour of important guests when they arrive. I doubt Fanelian customs are much different, if at all and as long as you don't act all jittery and nervous the whole time I'm sure you won't make a fool of yourself. You look fine, your hair's perfect, and even though I don't know why it's such a big deal for you to make a good impression, I'm sure you will as long as you be yourself."
"Thanks, Vallen" she said looking shocked, "I don't know what got into me." She thought for a moment about what he said, "And you don't look so bad yourself." She said as they turned the corner into the dining hall. He blushed, and she smiled briefly at him before it got buried with all the other little things that showed emotion. She rarely, if ever, showed how she truly felt about anything. Though she was beginning to forget to do that here. She was showing her emotions, more and more often around these people that she just met.
As they entered the dining room all eyes were on them. Nanaki allowed herself to be led by Vallen to a seat on the right hand side of the three chairs that were obviously made for Van, Hitomi, and Ben. The chairs were empty because they were to arrive last, as was the custom. Merle, Dan, and Alonda were sitting on the other side of the table, to the left of the chairs. Alonda was wearing a baby blue dress with a V-neck and had no sleeves. It went down to the floor and had a slit in the back for her tail. She was wearing dark blue shoes and her shoulder-length hair was down. She was also wearing a diamond necklace and diamond stud earrings. Her mother was wearing much the same thing except her dress was yellow, had long sleeves, and she wasn't wearing any jewellery. Dan on the other hand was wearing clothes like the ones Vallen was wearing, except his were green, not blue.
Nanaki had just settled in her seat when the Royal Family was announced. Everyone in the room rised from their seats for the Royal Family, and only when they had sat down did the rest of the court sit. Hitomi was wearing a deep green dress with sleeves that were white and had only backs to them, not fronts. The sleeves had a ring of pearls at each shoulder, attaching them to the dress and another at each wrist to attach them there. The dress had a V-neck, as all other women in the room's dresses were straight, hers was puffed out from the waist down. She wore a pearl necklace and dangling pearl earrings. She wore white shoes that held a greenish tinge. Her hair was piled up on top of her head with two strands curving around her heart-shaped face. Van was wearing clothes that again looked like those that Vallen had on, though his were much more elaborate. They were red with gold designs. Nanaki looked at Ben for a bit longer then she had the others, for this was the first time she had seen him. He looked almost the exact replica of his mother, except for the fact that he was male and that the emerald green of his eyes had a reddish tinge to them. He wore clothes that were like miniatures of his father's, except for the fact that his were purple with silver designs.
Van got up from his seat and started to address the people in the hall "People of the court, I would like to introduce to you, our guests for this evening. May I introduce to you, Lord Vallen Fassa of Asturia, whom I believe most of you have already met, and Lady Nanaki Summers of the Mystic Moon." At this all of the people in the hall started to murmur in interest. Though they no longer believed the Mystic Moon was cursed, they hadn't thought that anyone else would come from there. They had thought that Hitomi would be the only one.
Nanaki got all this from the snippets of thought and conversation she got. It made her both angry and nervous to know that everyone in this room was talking about her and were shocked by her.
Van had already sat down so Nanaki decided to stand up. "Would you all stop seeming so shocked!?" she demanded "Yes, I'm from the Mystic Moon. Big deal! It's not like you haven't seen anyone from there before. Your own Queen is from there. What made you think she would be the only one to come here from there? Sure, I guess you think she's special because she's your queen and all, but she wasn't your queen when she came. I don't see why you acted so shocked when you heard I came from there too." When she finished her speech she took a deep breath and sat down.
To her right she heard a man's voice say "Jeez! What's her problem?" that made her stand up again. She glared at the man to whom the voice belonged and said, "What's my problem? What's my problem! My problem is that I was really nervous to begin with and it doesn't help to know that everyone in the room is talking about me!" she took a deep breath, calmed down, and apologised "I'm sorry, like I said, I was nervous and I always tend to have a quick temper when I'm nervous. Please don't judge me by that." She looked around at all the shocked faces and a realisation dawned on her. She turned to Vallen "He didn't say anything out loud, did he?" Vallen just shook his head. Nanaki then turned to Lord Wyldon, the man she had yelled at, "Mister, your thoughts are way too loud." She said as she sat down. Seeing all the shocked expressions remained on the faces she turned to Van. "Van," she said (the people were even more shocked that she hadn't used his proper title), "would you please explain? I'm tired of explaining it."
Van explained to the court people about Nanaki's powers. When he finished most of the people of the court looked at her in awe but didn't dare say a thing, for Nanaki looked greatly frustrated. The girl to her right had a different idea in mind and introduced herself to Nanaki.
"Hi, my name's Keladry. I'm Dicine's daughter. I believe you saw her when you went into the throne room. She told me a strange girl with weird clothes came in and The King dismissed her, Bango, and Cartier. You might have seen her on her way out."
Nanaki searched her memory and faintly remembered the woman smiling at her curiously as she left the throne room. "Yes," she said, "I remember her. She seemed nice." After a quick scan of Keladry's mind she found that the girl had no intentions of treating her differently because of her powers. Nanaki was glad about this for she liked the girl. The started talking about normal things (at least, they were normal on Gaea) and became fast friends.
The rest of the dinner was pretty much uneventful, except for when Nanaki floated some of the platters of food over to her when no one noticed her asking them to pass it. Then came dessert.
As the servants passed out the ice cream the people of the court looked disgusted at the mush. They didn't know what to make of the cold lumpy stuff. Each person had a of ice-cream bowl in front of them and there was a bowl of fruit in the middle of the table and also a big bowl of ice-cream beside that in case anyone wanted seconds. Nanaki, Hitomi, Alonda and Merle were the only ones eating it (Alonda and Merle had found out it tasted good while making it). When Hitomi noticed this she explained what it was. "This is called ice-cream." she explained, "It's a dessert served on the Mystic Moon and is actually quite good. You can add some fruit to it if you want, to give it more flavour." She then continued to eat her dessert.
When Nanaki had finished Keladry asked her a question, and it was just loud enough for everyone to hear, "How did you and Vallen meet up in your travels?"
Everyone turned his or her attention to her. "Well, you see, he almost killed me." There were a lot of "What!" 's, "Lord Vallen did that?" 's, and "How" 's scattered amongst the shocked faces. Hearing and seeing this Nanaki smiled to herself, she had gotten just the reaction she was looking for. "He didn't do it on purpose of course." She explained and continued to tell the story about how she had been so bored that she was using her powers to drop icicles behind her. She told them about how, when she had just made an icicle drop, Vallen had startled her making her forget about the icicle that was now falling straight at her head. She told them how he had pointed upwards just in time for her to look up, remember what she had done, take a step back and catch the icicle. She then explained how she had charged up to Vallen, icicle in hand, and how, after a while, she had suggested that he travel with her rather then just following her at a distance as he had been doing.
When Nanaki finished she looked around at the people's faces and noticed that some of them hadn't understood. She sighed and said, "I suppose we could act it out. What do you say Vallen?"
Vallen reluctantly agreed. "But we need and icicle. " he said trying to get out of it.
"We'll just have to get a make-shift one" replied Nanaki looking around the room. Finally she came up with an idea. "Is anyone finished with their ice-cream?" she asked. When everyone shoved their untouched bowls at her she said "You at least have to try it." And went to each person and made sure they each took a bite. Most of them finished the whole bowl when they had finished that first bite but others said they didn't like it. Prince Ben was the only one who wanted seconds though, so Nanaki filled his bowl and took half of the remaining ice cream to make her icicle. She fashioned it in the air to look like a real icicle and put it about as high as the real one had been.
"Hold on to your bowls everyone," she told the people "I'm going to push the table to the side so we have more room to act this out. Everyone obliged and she magically pushed the table to the other side of the room. "Vallen," she said so only he could hear "go to the other side and when I drop the 'icicle' you yell 'hey' and when I spin around point up and it goes on like it did before. Got it?"
"Yes, sir!" he replied with a little fake salute.
Nanaki waited until he was where he was supposed to be then walked under the "icicle" and dropped it. Vallen yelled out "Hey!" from the other side of the room a little to late, which made him point up a little later. So, when he did so Nanaki saw the ice-cream icicle only inches from her face. She was unable to react in time so she got a face-full of ice cream. She looked down at her now ruined dress and then glared at Vallen "Oh, I'm going to get you for that!"
Vallen had meant for that to happen and was bending over laughing. He was so busy doing that that he didn't notice when Nanaki ran over to the remaining ice cream took it magically out of the bowl formed it into a ball and threw it at Vallen's head.
After that it was an all-out war. The people at the table soon became involved and they had and ice cream ball fight. It was girls against guys. Finally, after the girls pulverised the guys (they did have an unfair advantage, the ice-cream balls the guys ducked seemed to almost always turn around in mid-air and hit them in the butts) Nanaki magically sucked the ice-cream from their clothes and off the floors and walls, and pretty much everywhere and put it back in the bowl. She also fixed everyone's clothes and hair so that they looked presentable again.
"It's time to go to the ballroom for the next portion of the ball." Van said and led them into the next room.

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A/N: So how'd you like this chapter? Review and tell me. It was longer than I thought it would be. In the next chapter there will be dancing and the like and all of the stuff that happens in the ballroom. It has some things in it that are important to the story line so watch out for that. If I don't have another chapter up next Friday then you can expect there to be a long time before I get it up because I'm going on vacation after that. I'll try to write my story while on vacation so I can post it when I get back but I'm not making any promises.