Safatore turned the last page and sighed before silently closing the book. He darted his eyes around, his head lost in thought. He had just finished reading April's diary when he cast his eyes to his companions sitting around.
Was he the only one bothered by the death of this odd girl? Was he the only one who thought she was odd… like, more than she seemed?
He glanced to the foot of the large tree. His youngest brother sat next to the unconscious girl. He looked unconscious too, holding her hand, his eyes closed and white eyelashes glinting off the sun like needles.
He was dead too.
Was he going to succeed in waking her up? Her body, which had been deformed by the falling tree, had regained its original form. But would she wake up? And how was Saka also dying going to solve anything.
"Saka, you're special but isn't this a little farfetched?"
Safatore put the journal in his pocket and stood up, walking to the brunette Akka.
* * * *
It took her a while to realize where she was and the first thing she came face-to-face with was a pair of beautiful green eyes.
A handsome man with long flowy blonde hair was reflecting April's equally green eyes in his. He loomed right above her like a picturesque angel; sunrays beaming behind his head like a golden crown. His considerably long and pointy ears made him look like no man she had ever seen before. But how sure was she of his humanity?
With a raspy voice of someone who just woke up from an eternal slumber, she asked:
"…Am I in heaven..?"
The handsome man suddenly grew two heads from his shoulders, and one more from the top of his head. They all blinked at her.
"Geez! This is not… not heaven…"
One of the heads was a redhead… and it was a girl.
The handsome man smiled. A big, dimpled, precious thing.
"April. You're finally awake."
Awake? Who was he? She did not remember him. The girl strained her eyes and looked.
"… Saf… Safatore?"
His beautiful smile widened.
"Yes, that's me."
The other three heads moved away from him and revealed their bodies. Why, she recognized them too.
"…Eon?... Akka... Sem… Semacoar?"
The elves smiled and gave her courteous bows. She recognized them!
…But someone was missing. Her eyes roved to the side.
"You!"
The tall, indescribably beautiful whitehead stood to the far off-right, scowling. He was the wolf!
"April?"
Realizing that her thoughts had slowly set her adrift and left her speechless and gawking, she turned to face the person who had pulled her back to reality's shore, namely Safatore. She also came to realize she was lying on the ground. Directing an accusing hand at Saka, she wheezed with genuine shock:
"He… he… he…"
Safatore nodded.
"Yes. He did that. He gave you your First Death. Welcome back to the land of the living." He whispered in her ear.
First Death?
"How do you feel?" Safatore placed his hands on her shoulders and sat her up.
April's world spun as he helped her sit up. "Like I was just crushed by a tree." She grabbed her head with her numb hand.
"Are you doing okay?" Safatore asked again, his voice tinged with concern.
April made a whining sound.
"My head, is it split open?"
Safatore chuckled.
"Not anymore."
April glanced at him and then around the others.
"What do you mean?" She honestly did not remember a thing.
Eon stepped up to April and Safatore and knelt next to the girl. She traced a finger down April's cheek and took a strand of April's black and golden blonde hair in her fingers. She said:
"Don't you remember? You died."
There was a palpable silence for a moment, April staring into the redhead's blue eyes and bells ringing in her head. Finally, she saw an image of a tree falling and she felt a subconscious hit to her face that made her grimace out of nowhere. She clutched her hair as she remembered not being able to react before the tree squashed her. She yelled out loud hysterically.
"Whaaaa!"
The elves went wide-eyed and blinked a little as she panicked, groping her hands all over her body in a panic.
"AaAAaHhhHHHh!" She squeaked and shot to her feet.
Safatore grabbed her arm.
"Whoa there! Calm down. It's okay. Everything is fine. You're alive again."
April served to him, eyes wide, before she lost her balance and fell like a statue made of jelly into his arms.
"My body is so weak… and these tails are still stuck on my butt."
She glanced towards Saka, the pale elf who stood leaning against a tree, his gaze set in the far off distance, his face indifferent. She heavily asked:
"I'm alive. How am I alive? Is he a necromancer?"
There was no better way to ask that. Eon, who had been keenly studying April's features for a while now, answered:
"No. But he awakened your First Death. It's the only way to awaken our Inner Auras. Through a touch of death is new life received."
That was fairly creepy… but Inner Aura? Was that some sort of superpower and why did she have to die to get a superpower? That sounded so… so… not elf-like.
…Where had she heard that before?
But, of course, what would she know about mystical creatures except for how perfect they were supposed to be?
"Superspeed, check… Good looks, super check… Magic, check, check, check!... A deadly forest filled with horrendous abominations, why, check! Everything is in order… You are officially stuck in a fantastical… dimension?"
Eon continued.
"Normally, an individual elf would experience their First Death on their own…"
However, Safatore interrupted her and said:
"But of course, we had no idea you were going to be another… victim of our dear Saka's. We were… slightly concerned."
April blinked.
"Only slightly?"
He smiled dazzlingly.
"Slightly."
Eon pushed the man aside as April involuntarily smiled back at him and cleared her throat. She loudly pronounced:
"Under other normal circumstances, your death period should have been three days at maximum. But when the third day passed with you still asleep… we were starting to get worried."
"Why?"
Before the redhead could say anything further, Semacoar, who had been standing next to the ghostly pale Saka – smirking and admiring his reflection on his longsword – peeled his eyes from it and scoffed:
"You both should have persished for good! Whoever heard of the dead resurrecting the other dead?"
An incredibly awkward and almost palpable silence settled over the group as they all slowly turned their burning glares at him. What a careless thing to say. It seemed that this handsome but somewhat dimwit of an elf had destroyed all their attempts to relay the news of April's situation in a sensitive manner…
"…what?"
"Sometimes I forget how loose-lipped you are…" Safatore said through gritted teeth. "You enjoy doing this, don't you?"
Semacoar blinked and lowered his sword.
"It's not like we're going to ignore the method of resuscitation just because we're blood, are we?"
That sounded like a swordfight about to break out. April had a memory of what these two blondes' weapons could do fresh in her mind. One's sword burst into a turquoise blue all-incinerating flame while the other one's blade created ferocious tornadoes almost reaching half the height of those gargantuan trees that seemed to reach for the heavens, dwindling the elves to look like… like… a nail next to a whole arm. Or a baby next to three grown men stacked on top of each other.
"Weird examples…"
It wouldn't be wise to let them go all out in front of her. April might get caught in the crossfire and be eviscerated by the razor-sharp swords… Worst case scenario, she would get charred to death. The worst, worse scenario would be she'd be swept away by a tornado. Probably to another far more dangerous dimension of some sort.
Luckily for her, she felt a dizzy spell coming up so she exaggerated it, put on her best weak face and moaned in Safatore's arms saying:
"Mm, Safa. My whole body's in pain. I think my head is gonna split again."
Safatore swerved to her with an incredulous eye, falling on a knee.
"What?"
She nodded weakly, her eyes twinkling with that helpless anime character sparkle, their faces now aligned. On the other side, Saka held his head and slid down a tree, jaws clenched. April continued:
"The pit of my stomach feels so empty. I feel like a week has gone by without me getting sustenance. I need my supplements, otherwise I'll have a dizzy spell and faint. Oh geez!"
She let herself go limp and as a result, her supple bosom pressed against poor Safatore's chin. The blonde man turned crimson and fluttered his eyelashes, flustered.
Semacoar, a mischievous grin on his face, smacked Eon for her attention:
"Look, look, look!"
Eon scowled and smacked his arm away.
Eon glanced at Akka who in turn glanced at Safatore. The tall handsome blonde was now under the three gazes of the color-coordinated elves with ascending heights. He glanced at Saka who did not show a hint of any emotion, just sitting down with his head in his hands, and turned back to April.
"Hey," he said softly, holding her by the chin.
"Yes?" April did her best to wear the most vulnerable expression on her face, her eyes wide.
Safatore's face turned a deep red:
"Um… I just..."
He hastily chucked April to Akka who gave the girl a golden, oval fruit resembling a mango. It was juicy and sweet and April felt rejuvenated after eating it.
Safatore, regaining his composure, moved his hands to his wrists and folded up the sleeves of his thick, royal-blue coat, immediately revealing his muscular forearms which he crossed over each other.
"Ahem. While you and Saka were unconscious, precisely when you were unconscious, just to be safe, we all had a very important talk…"
April blinked at him with slight surprise, still feeling a little tipsy.
"What… talk?"
Safatore moistened his lips and hesitated for a bit, then said:
"We're taking you to Xander… our home."
April stood silent for a long while, staring into the gem-like eyes of the blonde elf. She understood the importance of finding a well secure haven to rest at, for now, because this forest she had fallen into was not much of a paradise as it seemed.
Defying the rules of nature and biology in general, she was now an elf… give or take the two tails stuck on her butt. Those weren't going away anytime soon. And wasn't this Xander the same place those rabbits had told her about?
"Oh yeah. I speak rabbit, too."
She would be a fool to retort against Safatore's proposal… Who in their right might would refuse such a handsome man?
Pushing her odd line of thought aside, April listened as he continued talking, walking to her in a steady and muffled stride thanks to his jikatabi boots.
"We have to confirm something first."
April tilted her head in curiosity.
He turned to the unnaturally pale and mind bogglingly handsome boy.
"Would you do the honors or should I?"
April wondered what that meant. And for a second, when she saw the shiny long blade of the dagger make its way out of its sheath, fear gripped her heart…
But when Saka gave her an indifferent scowl and stood up, she relaxed a little.
…A little.
Looking at the tall blonde with a malevolent gaze, Saka brought the shiny dagger to his chest and lingered for a second, clenching his jaws and exhaling deeply.
That was hesitation.
"What's he going to…"
But before April finished that thought, the boy ran the blade across his normal right hand. In a second, April felt a burning sensation run across her palm and impulsively squealed.
"Ow! My…"
She hadn't finished her line when she met with the sight of a deep knife wound carved from her pinkie to her thumb. Purple blood flowed out of her right hand, the rest of it reddening.
"…What? My hand."