#fp chapter 2

When all else failed, Kohana could appreciate Cliffside’s natural beauty. She had always been a great lover of beauty in all the forms it took, but she had been born and raised in the city, in a forest of skyscrapers where the light pollution was so thick it nearly blotted out the stars. There was something to be admired about it, for sure, something awe inspiring about what mankind was capable of, but there was an equal amount to be admired in the serenity of her new home.

She was not hardy enough to venture onto the moor, and whilst the woods were intriguing she wasn’t about to stumble about there in the dark. But she decided that, if she was to be here with no set schedule, she may as well make time to watch the sunset, and that was exactly what she was doing.

By her calculations, the sun should begin setting in around five minutes. For now she was by the cliffs, shivering in the wind and cursing herself for not bringing her cardigan, but convinced that going back to fetch it would make her miss the sunset.

Cliffside gave her a lot of time to contemplate, she thought, staring ruefully out of the sky as she rubbed her arms in a futile attempt to warm herself up. She would quite like it under any other circumstances.

The sound of feet pounding on the ground drew her attention, and she looked away from the horizon - five minutes, just five more minutes - to see her roommate approaching.

Shin had made herself a solitary figure in the time following the trial. She always left their cottage at the crack of dawn, same as always, but as of late she was scarcely seen during the day. They would occasionally meet in the evenings, but hardly a word was said. A nod, maybe, the odd pleasantry, but then one of them had to shower, or went to sleep, and she was out again at first light.

But this chance encounter was fortuitous, in a way. It finally gave Kohana the opportunity to discuss a matter that had been in her thoughts for quite some time now.

She raised her hand to try and catch the swing dancer’s attention.

Ten minutes pass before two familiar panels open up with the clunking and grinding sounds of clockwork.  The screen and projector are revealed, just like last time.  And just like last time, a third panel opens up to release chains to wrap around Masaki and drag the ranger to his doom.

The first thing that strikes you about the scene is just how dark it is. All you can make out are the faint outlines of trees, and the fainter outline of Masaki. It seems he can see just as well as you can, as his movements are hesitant and uncertain. While you have trouble seeing the details of his punishment, you can hear them clearly. It’s raining lightly by the sounds of the drops falling through the leaves, and you can hear every brush through shrubs and undergrowth on the ground, every moved branch that snaps back and scrapes across Masaki’s skin as he wanders, confused, trying to find a way out of wherever he ended up.

Suddenly, for half a second, the sky lights up, startling you and the ranger both. It’s illuminated just enough for you to confirm your initial suspicions--he’s in a patch of thick woods. After a long, low rumble of thunder, the scene returns to being dark and rainy. As Masaki stumbles blindly around, the sky flashes again and again, the thunder evolving from a rolling rumble to booms and roars. Finally, you see a white bolt of lightning strikes a tall tree just a few feet from Masaki while a deafening crash of thunder reverberates through the area. Masaki falls to his knees, clutching his face, obviously disoriented by the intense light and sound. He looks up through his fingers at the tree looming above him that was just struck by lightning--it’s on fire.

The light rain is doing absolutely nothing to stop it. The fire spreads rapidly across the branches and from tree to tree, and for the first time, the scene is lit brightly and consistently enough for you and Masaki to make out the full extent of his situation. He is in a patch of woods, yes, but in that patch of woods is a circle of trees, surrounding Masaki and packed together tightly enough that he would have no means of escaping from within them. A circle of trees that, is, currently, catching fire. You can also see clearly see Masaki’s face for the first time: he’s absolutely terrified.

[Art by Cherry/Crispy]

The ranger manages to get to his feet again, then runs, desperately, to the small section of trees in the circle that isn’t either on fire or almost there. He tries to figure out a way through them, but the trunks are too close together, the thick branches practically intertwined, that Masaki physically cannot. Finally, after seconds of desperate struggling, the last untouched trees ignite, and Masaki stumbles back in fear into the middle of the circle of trees. When the underbrush at his feet begins to catch fire as well, Masaki falls to his knees once again, shaking and hyperventilating--it’s clear he’s not going to escape this fire.

The trees are ablaze, the underbrush is on fire, and Masaki’s clothes are beginning to singe when another bolt of lightning strikes the same tall tree as before. With the structural damage from the burning, the force of the strike knocks the huge tree down across the center of the tree circle, and it comes down on top of Masaki in time with the loud crash of the following thunder.

In the moments afterwards, the rain grows heavier and begins to extinguish the fire, until all that’s left are the burned husks of dead trees, and Masaki, crushed bloodily under the one that fell…

Kohana was not one to adopt prejudices. As a general rule, she tried to withhold her judgement for as long as it was possible for her to do so. The reasoning for this was simple: Kohana did not like to be wrong. She would not come to a conclusion until the evidence supporting it was adequate.

In the case of Magnus, however, she had faltered. It was not that she had developed any particular dislike for him. It was just that his gratuitous adoption of a misused Latin pseudonym coupled with his quite frankly anachronistic attire had led her to somewhat discredit him as a respectable individual. But the trial had proved her wrong. Underneath that mask and hood of his, Magnus was possessed of a far more capable and resourceful mind than she had expected from him. Perhaps he still cut a bizarre figure, but Kohana had to remind herself that his eccentricities did not preclude his own kind of intelligence.

So when the old crone gifted her with a chemistry textbook, Kohana decided that it was only logical to give it to him. If anything else, it was a way for her to acknowledge her own mistake - not that he ever had to know about it, of course.

But with a brand new area having been opened up, the matter of actually tracking down their resident chemist was a remarkably more difficult one. After confirming that he was nowhere in the immediate vicinity of the village, Kohana was forced to brave the woodland trail in order to find him.

She was not a nature lover, to tell the truth, and was grateful to find him beneath the fairy tree so that she didn’t have to stumble out onto the moor and completely ruin both her shoes and her stark white clean socks.

Kohana cleared her throat loudly as she approached, the book clasped tightly in her hands.

Kohana didn’t know what to make of the romantic novel the old crone had given her, any more than she knew what to make of the sultry drawing of the Fool that had apparently been her fortune. Romance was something that she, like with anything else, had always approached from an academic standpoint. She knew of odes, and scathing parodies, and of elegies. She knew the Ars Amatoria, she knew of vitriolic love in mythology, she knew of all six ancient greek words for love, from agape to philautia.

All of that proved futile, however, since she still had no idea of what to make of this book. Even the cover confounded her. Sat by the duck pond, she had made it through approximately a chapter in an afternoon and was already baffled by it.

There was no way that the crone had given her the book intending for her to enjoy it, right? She supposed it made a change in pace from her usual literature - it was in her native language, at least - but that did not make it a pleasant change. It was far too saccharine for her tastes, so sweet it was practically diabetes-inducing, and one chapter in and Kohana knew she could not endure the rest.

But who else could? Not her roommate, she thought. Shin felt more like a suave charmer than a hopeless romantic. Then again, who knew whose guilty pleasure was sappy romantic mush? Any of them could have a secret stash of love fiction and she would know nothing about it.

It was at that point that Kohana saw a flash of blonde out of the corner of her eye, and hurriedly shut the book and tried to arrange her elbows in such a way as to cover what it was. She knew she ought to avoid attracting attention, but...

Natsume Nannini would not ordinarily interest her. However, thanks to her roommate, Kohana believed that Natsume was one of the people she was most familiar with in all of Cliffside. If she scraps she’d been hearing were to be believed, Natsume was an angel among mere mortals.

The period following Caroline Chambers’ execution was an odd one. It didn’t feel real. Kohana returned to her cottage and continued with her translation work. She went to bed that night. She got up that morning. She got dressed in just the same way as she always did.

The screams and the carnage of a girl just her age, one so talented and with so much potential, burned themselves onto the back of her thoughts. Caroline Chambers’ execution and the blank stare of a lifeless Akihiko Fujiwara were ever-present in the background of every mundane action. Yet life was carrying on, the world was still turning, and the rhythm of life in Cliffside was as tedious and quiet as it had been before. But the change was unmistakable. It thrummed under the silence, a gentle heartbeat now forever altered. Peace was unattainable now. Fear pulsed through the community. Kohana was grateful for the silence, but that gratitude came tempered with the knowledge that it could not, and would not, last forever.

She was glad that she had finished book 3, because thinking of Pentheus only reminded her of Caroline. All actions had consequences, she reminded herself, looking back over her translation and tweaking the phrasing ever so slightly. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, so to speak. But did she really deserve it in such a brutal way?

Ah, but who was Kohana to pass judgement?

At the very least, the Fool opened up different areas to them. She did not comment on the hypocrisy of their actions. She just took the opportunity to visit the grocery store.

She supposed it would have been prudent to talk with her roommate first, to kill two birds with one stone and shop for both of them. But, she thought, as she emptied her bags and began to pack away various amenities in their cottage kitchen, it did not matter when everything was free. Truly, were it not for the murder and the being held against their will, Cliffside life would be quite pleasant.

But the knock at the door did confuse her somewhat. Shin was not there - perhaps it was Miss Nannini calling to talk to her? Putting down the punnet of grapes she had been holding, she quickly skirted over to the door, readying an apologetic smile -

- only to see a bright pink amazon of a young woman in front of her. To her credit, Kohana did not show any surprise, only tilted her head to the side and managed a slight, polite little smile.

Back at home, it was Kohana’s custom to have afternoon tea on most days. Especially on stressful days, or days when she had several deadlines looming, she found that there was little that cupcakes and Earl Grey could not fix. And so, with the tension in Cliffside building, it seemed only appropriate to seek refuge in her regular routine.

That was how she ended up having a one-woman picnic under the fairy tree. It was not quite like home. The tea was in a thermos flask, she’d had to make cucumber sandwiches herself, there were no macaroons or cupcakes, and she’d been forced to use her cottage’s tablecloth as a picnic blanket, but it was at least some semblance of what she would have had at home.

The tranquillity was calming, at least. Happily sewing away, she found all the concerns of the past few days slowly drifting away on the gentle breeze. As interesting as it was to socialise with the other denizens of Cliffside, there was something soothing about being sat on her own with nothing but the trees for company. Just Kohana and her thoughts, and perfect silence.

At least, until a purple monstrosity came stomping into her peripheral vision.

Omen was someone who Kohana, as a general rule, would do her best to avoid. He was rude, he was unpleasant and he was needlessly spiteful. Even if he had such feelings of contempt towards anything and everything, was it really necessary to voice them? The gracious thing to do would be to quietly continue sewing until he had left - chances were he was just passing by. But on this occasion, being gracious was just too difficult.

Looking up from her needlework, Kohana flashed the cryptozoologist a smile. “Good afternoon, Mr Omen. I heard through the grapevine that you had something of a tiff with the Fool. How did that work out for you?”

Kohana was furious.

For the better part of an hour, she had been combing every inch of Cliffside and shooting a wary glance at anyone who looked about to ask her why she was carrying around a vintage porcelain doll. She had gone into the woods, where every single time she entered she felt more likely to be murdered. She had even squelched her way through the moor, meaning that her pristine white socks were ruined beyond saving, unless the Fool possessed some industrial strength detergent. She had looked everywhere, and guess where she found the grave digger?

The graveyard, that’s where.

She could kick herself for visiting the most obvious place last, and had she not stopped and forced herself to breathe or calm down before approaching Aiko, she might have been quite tetchy indeed.

Until now the doll had sat on her desk next to the owls, its glassy stare seeming to loiter on her while she worked. It was a little creepy, but not so much that she had been willing to throw it away. It was clearly expensive, and she knew that someone, somewhere would value it very much. She’d just been at a loss as to exactly who in Cliffside would.

The Fool’s story had been the missing piece in the jigsaw. And, if Kohana was being honest, it had triggered an interest in Aiko. Beforehand she had been eccentric and perhaps a bit lacking in tact, but harmless. But now the girl who dug graves for a living was a (much more fascinating) girl who stole from them, and whilst such deeds were shunned by polite society, they nevertheless said a great deal about those who committed them.

The grave digger (robber?) had yet to notice her yet. Kohana loitered in the entrance of the graveyard, as if entering would somehow be overstepping some kind of boundary.

Just as before the Devil had calmly displayed each vote as it was sent to her, and when the time was up you knew because she stood and clapped her hands to signify you should be giving her your full attention.

“So, that’s all the time we have for that, and let me just say I’m mighty pleased y’all’re finally gettin’ with the program. Not so hard, is it? Now, after reviewin’ all the votes the results are pretty clear, and I’m sure some a’ you are wonderin’ whether or not you got it right. Seems like a pretty simple case once all’s said an’ done, yes? Well, thing is...”