Eighteenth Night:

A Tale of El-Hazard.

"... for lookye; Lodoss must ne'er be one, or mist shall --"

"Darkness."

Makoto looked up from the tome, and blinked. Afura Mann didn't look in his direction as she ran her finger along the spines of a number of books in Roshtaria's Great Library. "Excuse me?" he asked politely.

"The character that you translated as `mist' actually means `darkness'. There's a passage later on where it talks about the that of the hearts of the people who despoiled the author's homeland, and it doesn't make any sense to talk about the mists of a heart." She paused, then turned to smile faintly at him. "It's poetic, but it doesn't mean anything."

"Then ... you've read this book?" Makoto asked.

She nodded. "A while ago. I've got a copy back home."

"Then do you know if there's anything about --" he pounced, and watched her shake her head once. Makoto sighed and set the book down. "This was one of the small pile of books that Dr. Schtalbaugh pointed out that didn't seem to belong to any nation of El-Hazard," he explained. "I hoped that it might give me some sort of a clue ... something to go on."

"Well, Mizuhara-san, I'm sorry, but there's nothing about traveling through dimensions in that particular tome." Afura walked over to the table where Makoto sat to look at the book. "It is apparently from another world, just like you are ... but whoever the poor madman who wrote it was, he didn't know anything about how to walk between worlds."

Makoto pushed his chair away from the table, and stood up to stretch. Afura heard the sound of joints cracking as he did. "So ... what did you come to the palace for, Afura-san?" Makoto asked as he slipped a hand into his shirt to rub his shoulder under his blue jacket.

"I'm helping with another one of Miz's plots to get Fujisawa-sensei to marry her," she replied offhandedly, examining the other contents of the desk. "Ah! Here's the problem," Afura noted, picking up the translator's dictionary. "The poor girl who wrote this bit of drivel lost her mind midway through. She'd sprinkle poetic expressions in amongst the actual meanings ... supposedly, if you combined all her mistranslations in order of appearance, they either produced a bit of erotic poetry in our language about what she and her lover had done one fine day, or a long rambling explanation in theirs about why she'd killed him."

Makoto gulped.

"Or so goes the legend," Afura noted, setting the dictionary back down.

Part of Makoto urged him to inquire about the plot that she'd mentioned, but another part made him ask, "Afura-san ... why did you read this book?"

Afura looked at him oddly. "Because I wanted to. Why else?"

"Well, I mean ... you'd have to spend hours working with this translation guide, and --"

"I had a much better one," she interrupted.

"-- but still, what did you hope to find out --"

"Whether or not it was interesting." She smiled at his confused expression. "Mizuhara-san, I like to read. Back at the temple, I have so many books that I don't have enough room in my chambers to keep them ... to say nothing of the temple library."

"Wow ... you're a real scholar ..."

"No," Afura said firmly. "I'm a priestess. Schtalbaugh is a scholar -- he reads and he also writes about what he reads." She began to leaf through the pages of another book -- "The Lore and Legend of the Land of the Sephiroth" -- that Makoto had planned on getting to later in the day. "I could just lose myself in reading something like this, sitting peacefully and pouring over the words and the thoughts. I'd never be a good scholar -- I'd have to be reading and thinking about what I was reading, constantly. I could never do that."

"So you became a priestess instead ... so you'd have lots of time to read?" Makoto guessed.

"Well, that and I had the rare talent that the job demanded," she said, smiling wryly. "But you're not far wrong, Mizuhara-san."

Afura looked up, then. "Now, if I'm not mistaken, the plans that Miz set in motion will be falling down around her ears, and Fuji-chan --"

"FUJI-CHAN?" Makoto asked, incredulous.

She let out a deep sigh. "Mizuhara-san, I've asked this of Shayla, and I was hoping you'd be willing to do me the same favor; if I ever become so besotted with someone that I start giving them a pet name, please end my life."

Makoto stared at her for a moment, unsure if she was joking or not.

"In any event, Fujisawa will doubtless be heading for the hills ... time for me to go and help pick up the pieces. Good luck with your studies, Mizuhara-san ..." she tossed over her shoulder as she started for the door.

"Um -- Afura-san?"

She looked back at him, a single eyebrow lifted in inquiry.

"Um ... I'd like to walk with you, if you don't mind."

Afura shrugged, and started walking again. Her stride was a bit longer than his, so Makoto had to rush to catch up.

He finally worked up his courage when they were in the hallway. "Afura-san ... do you do a lot of counseling, at the temple?"

She considered. "My share. Technically, that's Miz's area of responsibility, and she's rather good at it."

"Really?"

"She gives wonderful advice to the lovelorn, Mizuhara-san."

He gave her a look. She shrugged. "Those who can't, teach. And besides, this is a very strange world we live in, where neither men nor women can see things which are very close to them."

Makoto blushed. "I'm not that bad, am I?"

"I wasn't talking about you in particular, Mizuhara-san. You're not even the worst offender that I know about, when it comes to that."

He swallowed. "Afura-san ... I have to talk to you about Shayla-Shayla."

She paused, and let out a deep sigh. She turned to look right at him. "All right."

"I ... I know that I didn't realize that she was in love with me at first, but ... but I'd really have to have been blind to not understand how she felt by the time we went on the raid to rescue ... Princess Fatora," he added, almost spitting the name out involuntarily.

"True enough."

"But I thought for a while that she was over me ... but recently, I've been getting hints that she just ... isn't." He was silent for a moment. "Is she?" he asked hopefully.

There was only one answer Afura could give him, and it hurt to see the hope in his eyes die as she answered, "No."

"Dammit," he muttered quietly, turning away.

"Makoto," Afura said, using his personal name for the first time that she could recall.

He looked back to her, clearly upset.

"Nobody ever gets over their first love, Makoto. I've talked with old women who remembered, as vividly as they did the faces of their husbands, the faces of the boys who gave them their first kisses under the stars. But people come to terms, and go on with their lives. I mean, take a look at Rune Venus. You think she wasn't hurt by finding out what her `Galus-sama' was, or what he actually thought of her?"

"Well, of course, but --"

"But do you see her lying around crying about it?"

"I don't see her very often at all, Afura-san," he replied with a flash of humour.

She acknowledged his point with a nod. "But when you get down to it, she, like any other healthy person, isn't letting her sadness over losing him ruin her life." Afura paused to let that sink in. "You were Shayla's first love, and she hurts because she didn't `win'. She's stubborn and competitive -- probably more so than any other person that I've ever met -- but she's also healthy in that way, so eventually she'll acknowledge that she lost. Probably in a `bland roots' sort of way, but --"

"When you say, eventually," Makoto interrupted, "just how long are we talking here?"

"Going somewhere in a hurry?" she asked with a cool smile.

He gulped.

"The point is, she won't do something crazy because of you," she concluded, "so you don't have anything to worry about. All right?"

He nodded, and Afura turned to start heading down the hallway once more. She could hear, in the distance, Miz wailing that her sweetheart had once more run off. And under that, she heard Makoto mutter, "What if I do something stupid?"

"Like what?" she asked casually.

Makoto looked up, startled.

"I have very good ears," she told him without any trace of false modesty. "What sort of stupid things are you thinking about, Makoto?"

He hesitated, which told her much of what she wanted to know. "I haven't been making any progress with the Eye of God ... and ... what if, some night, a year or so from now, when I haven't made any more progress than I have now, I --" He fell silent.

"Mizuhara-san," she said calmly.

The implications of the return to formality were not lost on Makoto.

"I don't believe that. I don't believe that Shayla would let you do that. I don't believe that you could ever hurt her or Ifurita like that. And I don't believe that you could believe that you'd do that, knowing how she looked at you there on the Eye of God."

She fell silent, and Makoto spent several moments studying his shoes.

"But I'll tell you what, Mizuhara-san," Afura said softly, stepping close to him. "I'll make you a promise. If you ever do hurt my sister like that, I will tear your heart out of your chest."

For a moment Makoto wondered if he'd heard her correctly.

"And I wouldn't enjoy doing that. So, being the nice person that you are, you'll do whatever you can to avoid making me do that. Right?"

The End
(For Now)

But the concept that Afura might be the most "intellectual" of the Daishinkan was vaguely suggested, I think, on the Fifth Night of the series, when she was the Priestess who was discussing matters with Dr. Schtalbaugh.

I would like to apologize for taking so long for this, and for not doing the story about Jinnai, Diva, and the Bugrom that I wanted to do as my next El-Hazard story, but when the muse says "Write this", it's hard to say no. Maybe next time ...

No, there are no prizes for correctly identifying the origins of the two books that Makoto was looking at.

The Magnificent World of El-Hazard, and various characters both native and foreign to it, were created by Hiroki Hayashi and Ryoe Tsukimura, and brought to North America by Pioneer LDC. The preceding story, while incorporating aspects of this motion picture held under copyright by others, is copyright 1997 by Chris Davies.

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