The falling leaves drifted past the window, blue eyes tracking the dancing flecks of red and gold. She felt like her mind and spirit were out there also, lifted by the wind and dancing, circling this way, then darting off that way to turn cartwheels before soaring off into the distance.

Dimly she felt a touch on her arm and a voice that called her back, the grace and freedom of the wind dancing leeching from her. No longer and frivolous autumn sprite, she was back to who she had been for weeks. Amelia Wil Tesla Saillune, the bedridden. "Excuse me, Your Highness, I need to fix the bed.." The maid's lip quivered and her eyes were moist as she worked gently around Amelia's prone body.

Amelia gritted her teeth against an urge to curse. If she had to put up with much more well meaning sympathy and grief, she was going to scream. Or throw things. Or both.

Her miseries had started with a bad fall. She had leapt onto a very high tree branch without checking its soundness and ended up plummeting to the ground. It hadn't helped to discover on the way down that she couldn't cast levitation because her monthly visitor had inconsiderately arrived early. To top it off, she had been so disoriented after landing that she tried to cast a healing spell on herself. Not only did she not heal herself, she changed enough of the spell around in her confusion that she managed to give herself a raging stomach flu. Lina, her own cycle imminent, hadn't been able to cast a healing spell. She and Gourry had dragged a feverish, cramped and delirious Amelia to her home.

Even then, it would have been okay if the gods hadn't obviously been frowning on Amelia. The kindly old man who had been Court Physician for as long as anyone could remember, the gentle soul who had been Amelia's earliest tutor in magic, had left for a month long vacation just the day before. Out of all the possible candidates to replace dear old Ravlo for the month that he'd been gone, her daddy had chosen the worst possible candidate. Achek was an extremely thin and dour misogynist who had harbored an extreme resentment for Amelia ever since they had taken the healer's exam at the same time and she scored twice as many points as he did.

Amelia sighed deeply. She really was going to have to speak to her daddy about his problems with judging people's characters.

Achek the Idiot had managed to convince her father that he was Amelia's only hope of survival, and that was when the nightmare had really begun. Amelia had lost her temper and called Achek a liar, which he presented as proof that her injuries had affected her mind, for "surely, my lord if Her Highness was in her right mind, she would recognize me as her old friend". It was at this point that Lina got banished from the palace, as she and Amelia had burst into hysterical laughter. According to Achek, Lina's presence was upsetting to Amelia and would impede her recovery. The crowning touch had been when a team of sorcerers were brought in to seal off her powers, supposedly in case she hurt herself. Amelia had a distinct suspicion that the motivation had come from Lina's muttering on the way out, "You just wait, buddy. She'll have her powers back in a few days and then we'll make you sorry." Amelia had seriously considered strangling her best friend in the world.

So here it was, three interminable weeks later, the kingdom mourning in anticipation of her death, Amelia counting the days until Ravlo returned from his granddaughter's wedding and sent Achek the Total Moron back to wherever he came from. In the meantime she lay in bed, semi-paralyzed and trying not to fantasize about Dragon Slaving her sad eyed friends and family.

The maid finished fussing with the sheets, the cool linen settled around Amelia like a blanket of snow, the pillows fluffed to within an inch of their life. She laid a gentle hand on Amelia's forehead, smoothing back the dark hair that kept falling forward to cover the princess's eyes. "We're all praying for you, Your Highness. Achek will find a cure soon."

Amelia snorted and turned her face away. At first she had been afraid that Achek had some evil intention, but by the second week of him coming into her room every day and trying all sorts of half baked spells and therapies, she'd just about decided that he actually believed his own codswallop. She roused enough to notice the maid preparing to sit down and read aloud to her, just as she had done every day for the past three weeks.

"Can I have some time alone, please?" Amelia's voice was deliberately soft, a product of her determination not to scream unjustly at the well intentioned. The maid nodded and left the room, stifling a sob at how weak the poor princess sounded. Amelia allowed herself a small interlude of planning the best way to administer the raging force of burning justice to Achek the Villainous Malpracticing Cretin. The word "rotisserie" was figuring in today's plan.

After a few minutes of this, Amelia sighed and went back to looking at the leaves outside. She'd heard there was snow in the mountains already and prayed that it wouldn't delay Ravlo's return. Ten more days of this seemed like an eternity, let alone any longer. Her eyes opened wide as her view was filled with a blur of blue and tan. The blur resolved into Zelgadis, climbing down from the windowsill as if this was the way he always entered a room. "M- Mister Zelgadis?"

"Amelia." Zelgadis breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank the Gods I'm in time." She blinked at this statement and would have spoken if she hadn't been distracted by Zelgadis kneeling beside the bed and clutching her hand to his face.

He reveled at the feel of her soft hand against his cheek, warm flesh finally easing the nightmare he had lived in for the past three days. Three days spent running until he felt his heart would burst, then running more, knowing his heart would be destroyed if she died. It normally took a week to cover the ground he had crossed in three desperate days.

"Amelia..." Zelgadis swallowed hard, trying to keep his cool facade in place even as he bared his soul. "Amelia, I heard that you- I heard the you were sick, that you might not make it."

She ran her fingers over his beloved face, wanting to erase the pain she saw there. "I'm okay, really. I'm okay."

Zelgadis shuddered. "You said that just before Phibrizzo... I thought that you had died in my arms."

"But, Mister Zelgadis..."

"No, Amelia." Zelgadis clenched his jaw briefly before continuing. "That time I convinced myself to forget, to pretend, to lie to myself... When I heard you were ill, I couldn't any more. I love you, Amelia. With all my heart." Tears flooded Amelia's eyes and she wondered briefly if this could be a dream, a wonderful dream that she never wanted to wake up from. Then Zelgadis opened his tunic and she almost hyperventilated.

"This is from the Tree of Life. According to the legend, it will cure anything." Zelgadis held up the precious branch, the leaves brushing his fingers as he gently detached the apple.

"Oh, Mister Zelgadis, you finally found your cure! I'm so happy for you!" Amelia's smile glowed with kilowatt intensity. Today was shaping up to be one heck of a diary entry.

Zelgadis smiled and held it to her lips. "It's for you, Amelia. I'd rather be a chimera forever than lose you."

Amelia's eyes widened at the sentiment, then widened father as he tried to get her to bite. "No, NO, Mister Zelgadis, wait!" Her desperation finally got through and he took the apple away from her mouth. "Mister Zelgadis, I'm not dying. The temporary Court Physician just told everybody I am."

A sweatdrop started to form on Zelgadis's head. "You're not dying? But... You're in bed!"

Amelia grimaced. "I'm in bed because Achek the Imbecile convinced my daddy that I'm not right in the head and he had Saillune's best sorcerers work together to seal my power. No one will believe me enough to cast a healing spell on me."

Zelgadis sat, completely stunned, mumbling "But... But..." and "She's going to be okay" at random intervals. Amelia finally convinced him to follow her instructions and cast the healing spell on her. Once it was complete she sprang from the bed and stretched luxuriously, once to stretch the kinks out and once more for good measure when she noticed the way it drew Zelgadis's undivided attention.

She picked up the apple from where he had placed it next to the bed and walked over to him. She carefully brushed his wire hair away from his face before standing on tiptoe and pressing her lips firmly on his. "I wanted to kiss you as a chimera at least once, so that you could know I love you no matter what your form is." She held up the iridescent fruit and, after taking a deep breath, Zelgadis took a bite.

Nothing happened.

The sense of anticlimax continued as Zelgadis gnawed his way through the apple, eventually reaching the point where nothing was left except the seeds. He even ate one of them, grimacing at the bitterness of it. Still nothing.

Zelgadis turned towards the door, his shoulders slumped piteously. "I should've known it wouldn't work. I'm sorry, Amelia.:

"Mister Zelgadis, wait!" Amelia reached out and grabbed his hands, then did a double-take. "Your hands... The leaves!"

Zelgadis looked at his hands, stripes of real flesh glaring from the backs of his fingers. Amelia had broken a leaf from the branch and was running it over his hand. Everywhere he felt its gliding touch, stone melted into flesh. Her cool fingers dragged the leaf over his face, through his hair, the texture of the air changing as it hit skin and hair instead of stone and wire. She unfastened his cloak, letting it drop to the floor as she passed the leaf over his throat and then kissed it, her lips a benediction and baptism for his rebirth.

Lina stopped in front of Amelia's door, shaking the maid she had captured in her rampage through the castle. "Is this her room?"

"You mustn't disturb her, miss! She took a turn for the worse earlier today." The maid wailed and cried while trying futilely to hold Lina back. Just as Lina's mouth was forming the "f" in "fireball", noises started to be heard from inside the room. The maid took advantage of this distraction to run for her life, her loyalty to Amelia not being quite enough for her to brave staring down another one of Lina's fireballs.

"She sounds like she's in pain, Gourry!" Lina pushed would have thrown the door open and burst into the room if Gourry hadn't held her back.

"She's not in pain, Lina. I think we should just go and make sure no one disturbs her for a while." Lina looked at Gourry in complete disbelief. He nodded decisively and said, "I can explain later if you want, but it's one of those things you don't like to talk about."

Just as Lina was opening her mouth to speak, a cry of "Oh, Mister ZELGADIS!" came from behind the closed door. Lina closed her mouth quickly, her face turning the color of her tunic as she started walking quickly away from Amelia's room.

The expression on Gourry's face could only be called a smirk. "So do you understand now why we need to keep people away for a few hours?"

Lina nodded and kept walking. After a minute or so she shot a sidelong glance at Gourry through her lowered lashes. "That... Does it really take hours?"

"Only if you're doing it right."

The next morning, Ravlo walked towards the palace, glad he'd left early to avoid the heavy weather in the mountains. Just as he crested the last hill, Achek the Weasel (as he'd always thought of the young man) streaked past, his robes hanging in tatters and his hair looking quite singed. Behind him ran sweet little Princess Amelia, casting a Flare Arrow while screaming something about facing the Rotisserie of Justice, and a red haired girl who shrieked about being banished from the palace and being made to worry about Amelia in between lobbing some truly spectacular fireballs. Ravlo chuckled and sent off a small fireball of his own before turning again towards the palace.