Chapter 13

"How does this thing work? GO! Bird!! Move forth!! I command you!!!!" Princess Dorothy was attempting to mount the large, golden brown falcon whose true master was someone other than herself. The woman of action she believed herself to be was no longer able to just stand by and watch while Trowa was certainly facing danger and peril.

After all, why should he have all the fun all the time?

But the aforementioned "bird" does not "go." She simply turns a curious bird's eye back on a swivelling neck towards the bothersome gnat of an intruder upon her proud, feathered back.

"What's wrong with this creature? Is it not able to fly? Have you not trained him to obey?!" Dorothy's usual venom spits out her frustration at the blonde boy's unresponding fowl as she slides off its back.

"Valkyrie--SHE--" Quatre corrects in that soft voice, seemed to be the only one who could calm the raging storm that was Princess Dorothy, "--will only listen to me, that's all." He states with a soft smile at her.

"Well, then, get on here with me! Take me over there, now!" Dorothy's high shrilled voice is interrupted by Mariemaia's equally shrill one. And Quatre was glad. He didn't want to contradict nor argue with his fair beauty about whether or not she should be permitted to enter a dangerous battle. After all, she was a girl and that brave archer's eyes told Quatre to protect her. She was the princess of this realm, he was certain, from her commanding tones. Besides, he himself couldn't bear to see her delicate beauty come to any harm. For inside Quatre's chest, he feels as if this girl somehow shared his same sorrows, pains--his same soul. He knew it from the first moment they met. And he had no intention of letting his pegasus-riding angel leave his side.

But her demanding eyes he couldn't turn away from. Quatre Raberba Winner, Prince and one day, ruler of his own far off kingdom of Noxas, snapped at attention before her ordering gaze. He passed on the torch of protection of the little orange fairy girl to the pair of elves standing gawking as yet at the river's edge. They seemed ready to run at any given second.

"Protect the fairy...please!" He yells back politely as he makes a leap above the roaring din of battle all around, landing expertly on his falcon's back. With an offered hand, that Dorothy suddenly believes herself of ever refusing, he pulls her up and sits her snugly in front of him. His arms simply had to reach around her slim body, rather boldly and improperly, from the strict royal upbringing on the treatment of ladies, to get to the golden reins around his falcon's no longer unpleasant to strangers neck.

After all, if her meek master permitted such a thing from this curious blonde woman, why shouldn't she? The falcon's wings begin to flap, about to take off into the unknown fate befalling one friendly archer and one fairy.

But escaping from the smoke of fire and brimstone all around, spotted in the distance, the pair's fate was no longer unknown....

A pegasus' wings aflutter in the skies, break from the red veil surrounding the destroyed castle.

"Aunt Cathrine! Aunt Cathrine!" The shaking little fists of the orange haired fairy Mariemaia clench when she sees her beloved aunt riding to her in the arms of the archer, astride the white pegasus that had just narrowly escaped the window on fire.

The castle comes down in a fearsome crash of smoke, flame and dust, right on their singed horse's heels.

"Look out!! Oh, no!!" Hilde the Elf was still glued to the drama playing out before her eyes. They all watched as the pegasus is struck by a large chunk of flames, propelled from the collapsing tower.

"My pegasus!! TROWA!!!" Princess Dorothy shrieks out as the white horse, its wings damaged by the ash, goes down, plunging headfirst into the deep waters of the darkness below.

But to the astonished eyes of the four onlookers on the shore, the quick thinking and acting Archer had managed somehow miraculously to send an arrow catapulting into a tall tree on the shore's banks. It hit direct aim with a platinum threaded rope attached to the arrow's golden head. Trowa agilely swings himself with the fairy clasped firmly in his arms through the air, deftly avoiding the branches and boughs as he swoops in on the rope. Using its momentum and speed to hurl them into a somersaulted vault to the ground below.

He lands, with one dazed lady, safe in his arms, firmly on his two agile feet.

"Whooo!!" Elfy Duo was the first to speak after this speechless stunt. "Do that three times fast!!" Duo calls out to the archer in amazed respect.

"I bet you couldn't do that any times fast, Duo!" Hilde's girlish elven heart pitters at the courageous, selfless human now walking up to them. One saved damsel in distress was safe in his arms.

"Good job, pal." Duo congratulates Trowa now with a little less than heartfelt grimace and a twisted lip at Hilde.

"Good job?! Good job?! TROWA! My pegasus!!!!" Princess Dorothy was at venom levels again. The fire across the river almost matched by that of the blonde vixen's voice at her lost friend.

"...Is still alive."

The simple statement cuts off her anger. They turn to see a stranger dressed in threatening dark clothes. His lacquered black hair was pulled tightly into a tail. His face was that of none but one who hailed from the ancient dragon clan....The keepers of the evil dragon....

But this Dragon Master's face had not the evil aura about it any longer. He didn't seem to be out to snuff out their lives--nor did he seem to care for their well being.

One look in his black, black eyes was plain there was nothing there to see, but indifference towards them--towards all in the world with the exception of one being. That singular being rises from the waters behind him with the wounded, winged pegasus at her side.

"Mistress Sallie! Mistress Sallie is her, Aunt Cathrine! She's fine!" Mariemaia already immediately attached herself to the hand of her fairy aunt, still carried in her rescuing hero's arms as yet.

She flutters her tiny wings in joy that her friend Sallie was all right too. That perhaps all could not be totally wrong with the world if Aunt Cathy and Mistress Sallie were with her.

"Pegasus! Oh, pegasus! Are you hurt, baby?" Quatre watches with strange amusement as Dorothy baby talks to her pet. The fire-breathing (just a figure of speech) blonde vixen of just a few moments before was now transformed into a doting, caring "Ma-ma" of her poor, hurt "baby" pegasus. She runs to the sopping wet, dirtied horse and nuzzles its tender nose lovingly.

"Mistress Sallie...?" Cathrine's closed eyelids flutter open as her lifelong friend and guardian takes her above-land appearance, walking on bare feet to where her favorite fairy lay in Trowa's arms.

"I'm here, Cathrine." Sallie's deep, watery voice steadies herself from her own injuries. But just one look in Cathrine's eyes and she knows.

"All of them, my precious one?" Sallie asks, but the answer she was already aware of. She sensed it inside Cathrine's tearful nod, confirming her greatest fears.

"We weren't there when....There's only Mariemaia and I left. And that's only because of...." Cathrine's eyes underlie the fact of her deliverance to Sallie. The saddened blue eyes of the Water Nymph look up to the brave Archer, who had saved the final two adored fairies under her charge with gratitude as Cathrine again breaks down into uncontrollable, sobbing tears in the safety of his warm chest.

"Thank you, brave knight." Sallie meets Trowa's eyes with an understanding passing between them. Sallie puzzles over the disturbed feeling of when she had met eyes like that before...

But whatever the past was, it mattered not. Now, only the present and the future of the last two of their race was what she swore her very existence upon to protect. And this time, she would. Or perhaps....She could use a little help.

Sallie's gaze travels from the deep green eyes of brave Archer Trowa to the mysterious dark black eyes of Wufei, the dragon master who had destroyed his own mystical beasts. For his partner's revenge and for her justice.

And her watery gaze connects the two men's. They consider each other, with a natural suspicion in each, but its overtaken by one's sworn vow of protection and the other's sworn justice for the women who had appeared before both this day---and had changed the course of their lives forever.

All thrown together by the red string of destiny.