Slayers, Diary of a Dragon, Ch.12

Chapter 12. Absence Makes the Heart Grow Odder.

Friday, April 6th.

Camp. 7:32 am.

He's gone!

He's GONE!

Camp. 8:45 am.

It's just… he… I looked everywhere and he's nowhere to be found! What's worse is that the others are all just acting completely blasé about it. As though Xellos up and disappearing is nothing at all to be worried about!

"Oh yeah," Miss Lina said, looking around the campfire idly when I informed her that he was missing. "I didn't notice."

"I thought it seemed quieter around here," Mister Gourry observed, taking a swig of coffee.

"At least until Filia woke up and started shouting," Mister Zelgadis added lightly.

"Well, can you blame me?" I asked, maybe a little frantically. "I mean, where do you think he could've gone?"

Mister Zelgadis shrugged. "Who knows?" he said, in a way that seemed more to ask 'who cares?'

"Geez, Filia," Miss Lina said, reaching out to flip the nearly burnt toast over the fire, "I thought you'd be the one that'd be happy when he was gone."

I froze, a little stuck for a response at first. "Well, of course I don't want him around here," I insisted—which isn't even something I should have to bother saying it's so obvious. I mean, I take back absolutely nothing I said yesterday. I still wish I never had to see him again. But…

Well, first of all, it's completely rude of him just to drop out on us without saying anything. First he forces his way into our party uninvited and then he doesn't even have the decency to inform us when he's going to leave? I suppose I shouldn't expect a monster to possess common decency, but still! There's being evil and then there's just being impolite!

And… "Are you saying you're not worried at all about what that monster might be up to, Miss Lina?" I demanded. "He could be setting a trap for us—or selling us out to Valgaav and Almayce right now! If he's not following us then there must be some nefarious reason for it!"

…Of course, there are also nefarious reasons for him to actually be following us. There are nefarious reasons for everything that monster does!

Miss Lina shrugged. "Maybe, but even if you're right then it's not like there's a heck of a lot that we can do about that, is there?"

"And Mister Xellos does that all the time," Miss Amelia said, carefully taking a piece of burnt toast off of the frying pan and dipping it into her egg yolk. "He just pops in and out whenever he feels like it."

"He'll probably be back when he wants something," Lina said sourly, taking her own slice of toast and nearly burning her fingertips.

I frowned. It's just… not even being able to rely on whether he's going to be around or not just makes him even more of an annoyance. And nobody's at all willing to do anything about him!

"What do you think he does when he's not with us?" Mister Gourry asked speculatively.

"Meeting with his bosses, making shady backroom deals, high-stakes international conning," Miss Lina guessed half-heartedly, "…eating cake."

"Cake?" Miss Amelia repeated, giving Miss Lina a curious look.

Miss Lina closed her eyes and nodded. "Cake," she confirmed.

"Who knows?" Mister Zelgadis asked, giving me a somewhat wry smile. "Maybe he's just sulking because you looked through his stuff."

"It was justified!" I insisted. "…And anyway," I added with a sniff. "He tricked me into doing it in the first place. If he was going to sulk at all, he would've done it if I didn't look through his stuff."

…And goodness knows I wish I didn't live up to his expectations. But since that's certainly not the reason he's disappeared… what could it possibly be? And when will he come back? Don't get me wrong, I hope he never comes back. But he's a cockroach, and cockroaches are persistent. If he's going to come back anyway, then I'd rather just avoid the unpleasant surprise of it all.

But no—maybe I should just… try thinking on the bright side. I might as well enjoy the time I have without that slimy nuisance around. And who knows? Maybe he won't come back. Maybe he's found someone else to bother. Happy thoughts! Gotta keep thinking happy thoughts!

Camp. 9:04 am.

…This isn't making me happy.

Monday, April 9th.

Tilly's Inn. 5:03 pm.

Hmm. So… I feel like I've learned a little bit more about my traveling party. Well, first off I found out what Miss Amelia brought with her that she was worried about the others finding.

No, I did not snoop!

It was just that it'd been awhile since we'd been able to stop at a town, so we quit a little early. Mister Zelgadis wanted to take a look at some of the libraries in town and Miss Lina and Mister Gourry decided to tag along with him and check out some of the eateries along the way. I figured that would be okay since it would hopefully at least keep Mister Zelgadis from causing any havoc looking for his cure. Miss Amelia said she was feeling tired and just wanted to hang around the room, so she declined to join them.

I made my way down to the lobby for a nice cup of tea. However, once I finally got the tea it was not nice at all. I suppose I can't say it was the worst cup of tea I've ever had, since the incident with the psychedelic tea speaks for itself, but this tea didn't even seem worth the mid-afternoon caffeine buzz, so I didn't bother with it. I just decided I'd head back to the room and maybe take a nap. After all, if I lose out drawing straws tonight then I might end up sleeping on the floor… or worse, in the same bed as Miss Lina. I figured I'd take the opportunity for actual restful sleep while it was given.

I opened the door and saw Miss Amelia sitting on a chair in the connected area between the two rooms we'd rented. She seemed to be engrossed in a novel. All I could make out of the book from where I was standing was that it was fairly short and cheap looking with two people on the cover. When Miss Amelia looked up and saw that I'd entered the room, she let out an audible squeak and quickly tried to stuff the book in between the cushions of the chair. When she realized there was no way of hiding the book, she looked up at me with a desperate expression.

"Please don't tell the others, Miss Filia!" she pleaded.

"Tell them what?" I asked, mystified as I drew closer.

She looked miserably torn for a moment before passing the book to me instead of answering.

I took the book gingerly and got a closer look at the cover illustration. There was a man and a woman standing on the grounds of a large, old-style mansion in the dead of night. Between the way the woman was practically hiding in the man's arms and the torn and ragged state of their clothing, it looked as though they'd been through some kind of major ordeal. I couldn't imagine what kind of trouble could've led to the woman's clothes being damaged in that way, but I felt very sorry and embarrassed for her. It would've been nice if the man in the picture had given her a cloak or something to cover herself up with, but he seemed to have been through similar clothing-damaging trouble as he had lost his shirt, so I suppose I can't really blame him for that. The title of the piece (in text over a drawing of the moon) was Passion's Choice.

"If Miss Lina and Mister Zelgadis found out I was reading romance novels they'd make fun of me for sure," Miss Amelia explained. "Well," she added, after a moment's thought, "Miss Lina would make fun of me; Mister Zelgadis would just shake his head sadly, and that would be even worse."

"Why would they make fun of you?" I asked, somewhat distracted by the dead, dead eyes of the characters on the cover.

Miss Amelia gave me a sidelong look. "You've never… have you ever read a romance novel before, Miss Filia?"

"Well, I've always loved fairytales," I said. It was a sentence that I swear sounded less juvenile in my head than when I heard it out loud. I should've known better, though. When I was little I made a crown out of pipe cleaners, but nobody ever wanted to play princess with me.

I passed the book back to her, maybe a little more briskly than I'd meant to, and sat down on the other chair. "They can't be that different, anyway. Princes marrying princesses and that kind of thing."

"Well… I suppose they're kinda similar," Miss Amelia admitted. "And some of them do have royalty in them." She looked down at her hands. "Not that they're anywhere even close to reality," she said quietly.

I peered over at her. "Really? You've never been rescued by a handsome prince?" Being a princess is apparently not as glamorous and exciting as advertized.

She rested one hand on the back of her neck and gave a little laugh. "Not unless you count my daddy… but most people don't think of him as… well…" she trailed off.

"So, what kind of stories do these things have if they're different from fairytales?" I asked, curious about the books she'd been so keen to hide.

"Well, there are a whole bunch of stories," Miss Amelia said, lifting up her book. "This one has a pretty common set-up, though. There's this girl named Felicity in it. Her father's very sick and when he dies, her family will lose their fortune since it'll all go to their cousins. So she has to find a rich husband before time runs out."

My reaction was probably not what she hoped for. "…That sounds terrible," I said. "So she's just tricking these men to get their money? Wasn't there any other option? Couldn't she have found a job?"

"Oh, but she can't," Miss Amelia protested. "She needs the money to pay for her ailing little sister's medication. She couldn't support her on her own."

I narrowed my eyes. "…How many people are ailing in this story?" I asked suspiciously.

"Just those two," Miss Amelia said. "Anyway," she went on, as one delivering juicy, fictional gossip, "there are these two men that are interested in her. There's Maxwell, who owns a successful printing business and is a pillar of the community. And then there's Allister who has a large inheritance that he spends mostly on gambling and drinking and…" She shifted uncomfortably here. "…Other stuff."

I frowned. "Well… is that even a choice?" But suddenly I had a thought. "Oh, I see. It is like in fairytales, then. Sometimes there will be two princes pursuing the princess. One is good and true and the other is wicked. But the bad prince is putting pressure on the kingdom by, like, threatening to declare war on them if he can't have the princess's hand in marriage. Is it like that?" I asked. "Is Allister threatening her family if she doesn't marry him?"

"Not really…" Miss Amelia said slowly. "I don't think Allister wants to marry her. He said he's 'not the marrying kind.'"

This threw me for a minute. "But I thought you said he was interested in h—Oh. Oh."

Don't blame me for taking a minute to get on the same page on that! I haven't been corrupted by the wicked ways of the world. Don't think for a second that I'd trade my naiveté for being able to understand the seedy motives of some people!

"Well, then I don't see why you'd even bother reading that," I said, crossing my arms. "The ending is completely predictable. She's going to pick the other guy instead of the one who won't even help her reach her goal and is a slimy jerk."

"It is pretty predictable," Miss Amelia admitted. "But not the way you think. She's almost definitely going to end up with Allister."

"What?" I demanded, sitting up in my chair and shouting louder than I'd intended to. "But he sounds awful!"

"But she likes him," Miss Amelia pointed out. "And anyway, his character type pops up a lot and that's usually how it turns out."

I listened to her as she talked about this recurring character type. There are different kinds, she said, some are refined and capable of restraint; some are cruel and insatiable. But usually this kind of character is worldly, witty, charming, devastatingly handsome and 100% vice-ridden. If a girl ends up with a character like that, she'll either end up reforming him or pregnant or dead of heartache (I didn't think you could die of that, but Miss Amelia says it happens all the time). I didn't really know what to do with all that since I'd always been under the impression that a rake was just a gardening implement.

"How can you stand books like that where the girls ends up with someone so terrible?" I asked, nose wrinkled. "I mean… I would've thought you'd want her to end up with the nice guy."

"Well… sometimes it turns out that the nice guy really isn't as nice as he seemed," Miss Amelia commented, sounding slightly concerned. "…It's really not fair when bad guys wear white," she said, as though it threw off the balance of her personal universe. "And, well, I hate to admit it, but sometimes the nice guy is just… boring. Or at least he's written that way."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Of all my party members, Miss Amelia is the last one I'd expect to be spouting moral ambiguities. She nicknamed her fists Truth and Justice for goodness sake!

"But shouldn't you want her to end up with the hero? Not someone who's such a… a villain," I demanded.

My word choice seemed to set her off. "Well, you can't always tell from appearances! Sometimes someone seems like a villain when you first meet him, but it turns out that he only acts that way because he's been used and people have hurt him and because of his tragic past it makes it hard for him to trust people so that's why he lashes out because he's just afraid of really, you know, opening up to someone and actually trusting again but he really isn't a bad person and that'd come out if only he had someone who really, really loved him!"

She delivered that entire thing without stopping for even a moment. After she'd taken a deep breath she coughed sheepishly and added: "…But that's a whole 'nother character type."

I don't want to… umm… pry where I'm not wanted, but it seemed like she might have someone specific in mind.

"A-anyway," I said, trying to pivot the conversation, "I still don't see how the heroines in these books could be attracted to such dishonorable men."

"I think it just makes for a more dramatic story," Miss Amelia answered, not sounding like she had much non-fictionalized experience in the world of courtship, "but who knows? Maybe some girls just like that type."

That type. You know I… Alright, I'm going to have to say something that sounds utterly, utterly ridiculous. I mean, it's so unbelievable that, well, trust me, you will laugh when you hear it. Or, you know, maybe not even laugh because it's kind of horrifying and wrong. But whatever reaction, it's just completely absurd but… when Miss Amelia was talking about that type of guy… for some reason the picture in my head started to look sort of like… Xellos.

See? Horribly, laughably ridiculous! Just imagine Xellos as some kind of master seducer. Ha! It's so funny I might throw up.

No, he certainly doesn't fit the bill. He may be devastating, but he's not devastatingly handsome—certainly not with that haircut. Okay, so maybe he has, I don't know, very defined facial features that could be described by some as striking but…

Wait. Let me back up here. He looks like a clown and always has a ditzy look on his face. There. That's what I meant to say. There's nothing even remotely close to smoldering and suave about him. Nothing!

And he probably thinks he's witty and charming, but he's not. He's just unpleasant and demeaning and thinks he's all superior because he can put other people down. I'll give him worldly. He probably is worldly—certainly compared to me. But then again, everyone is worldly compared to me. Worldliness is overrated.

I'm sure I only thought of him at all because, well, the kind of man who'd throw away his life and money on gambling, alcohol and… sexual immorality, the kind of man who'd ruin the reputation of a young woman and then leave her ruined… that kind of man is downright evil. And I suppose there's no one more evil I can think of right now than Xellos. So that's why I thought of him. Even though he definitely doesn't fit with most of the details.

Pfft. Imagine someone considering Xellos attractive. Ludicrous!

"Umm… Miss Amelia?" I began.

"Yes?" she asked.

And… I honestly don't know what made me ask, but I went on: "Why would Xellos have a woman's fan?"

She gave me an odd look and I immediately felt uncomfortable.

"I mean, It's just that when I was looking through his stuff I found this purple fan and it didn't look like it was his. I just was, well, wondering who it belonged to and why… why he has it," I finished, mouth running off where my brain had completely checked out.

She looked curiously at me for a moment and then suddenly clapped her fist into the palm of her other hand. "Oh!" she exclaimed finally. "I remember now!"

She couldn't finish what she was going to say right away because there was a noise from the hall that signaled the return of Miss Lina, Mister Gourry and Mister Zelgadis. They were muttering something about "librarian" and "sword point" but I'm honestly not even going to ask. Miss Amelia was quicker on the uptake this time and hid the romance novel under her cloak right as the others opened the door to the room.

The others stopped talking when they entered the room and saw us sitting together. Miss Lina put her hands on her hips and leaned forward. "What is this, a tea party?" she asked.

"No," I said slowly, still wondering why the fan thing was even bothering me. "But we could have one, if you like," I said, brightening in the midst of my confusion. "Only I should probably brew a pot myself, since the tea at the café downstairs is just not very—"

"…I was kidding," Miss Lina cut in, raising her eyebrows. I should've known it was too good to be true. Why is the only fellow tea enthusiast in this party a monster of all things?

"Miss Filia was just asking me about Femille," Miss Amelia chirped.

"I was?" I asked, not following.

"We're not talking about Femille," Mister Zelgadis said flatly.

"What about Femille?" Miss Lina asked, completely ignoring Mister Zelgadis's objections.

"I guess Mister Xellos still has that purple fan he had when all the guys had to dress up like girls," Miss Amelia explained. "Miss Filia found it in his bag."

"Huh, that's weird," Miss Lina commented. "Wonder if he's expecting to have to use it again?"

"It does seem like we end up doing that a lot," Mister Gourry whined, radiating low-spirits and repressed memories.

"It's never happening again, and did I mention we're not talking about it?" Mister Zelgadis asserted once again. Nobody paid him any mind.

"Wait a minute," I cut in. "You're saying you had to dress all the boys as girls?" I asked, flabbergasted, but rather relieved at the explanation for the fan. "Why on earth would you have to do that?"

"We needed to go into the Kingdom of Femille to look for the Claire Bible," Miss Amelia explained. "And the Kingdom only had women in it."

"Ostensibly," Mister Zelgadis cut in bitterly.

"And they were a bunch of crazy people too," Miss Lina added, raking her hand through her long hair irritably. "Can you believe they actually thought that I was a guy in disguise?!"

"Well…" Miss Amelia began gently, "I still say you didn't do yourself any favors with that outfit. You were the only one of us who didn't wear a skirt, and that cloak you had over your chest just made it look like… you know, you were hiding something."

Miss Lina fixed Miss Amelia with a death glare. "Well EX-CUSE ME, Amelia," she shouted. "Not all of us have a biological sign on chests that screams 'FEMALE!'"

Miss Amelia cringed as Mister Gourry started to unwisely cut in. "You could've just stuffed like the rest of us did," he pointed out. "It's not like you were any better off than us guys were. Well…" He trailed off and gave her a rudely close look. "…Maybe I have like, half a cup on you or something," he reevaluated.

She punch him hard in the stomach so that he keeled over, yelping in pain.

I was shocked to hear that they'd had such an adventure. Nobody from the Temple of the Fire Dragon King would ever cross-dress. Well… I suppose there are some historically relevant cases that ended in burning at the stake. I don't think they do that anymore, but it's still rather frowned upon.

"Where did we get that fan for Mister Xellos again?" Miss Amelia asked, choosing to breeze past the trigger that had set Miss Lina off.

"Probably at that thrift store," Miss Lina answered, shaking out her fist. "That's where we got that dress for Gourry." She sighed. "It was such a pain to find something in his size."

Mister Gourry wheezed as he got up, but seemed remarkably undeterred by his clobbering, as though it was not at all unusual. "You made me pierce my ears too," he complained. "It hurt and it took forever for the holes to fill in."

"Quit whining," Miss Lina ordered. "My sister pierced my ears and it was way worse than what I put you through with a clean needle and half a lemon."

"Wait, what actually happened when you went undercover in this kingdom?" I asked, knowing I wasn't going to get a linear story if they kept being distracted by complaints.

Miss Lina shrugged. "The Claire Bible lead turned out to be a dud, a demon attacked us, the guys got found out as… well, guys, and Zel saved a princess who turned out to be a prince."

"We're definitely not talking about that," Mister Zelgadis insisted, but he seemed to know he was fighting a losing battle.

"So, what did you do?" I asked breathlessly.

"Beat the demon—but we were still in trouble, you know, because the guys' disguises were blown and the penalty for men being in Femille is death. But then it turned out that a bunch of the 'girls' that lived there were really guys in disguise, so we made it out okay," Miss Lina summarized.

"Wow," I said. "That sounds like such a… bizarre adventure."

"Oh, that's nothing," Miss Lina dismissed with a wave of her hand. "I mean, there was that one time nearly everyone was turned into dolls and Zel had to dress up like a rabbit—"

Mister Zelgadis didn't even say anything this time. He just sighed and lower his head into his hands.

"—that was a bizarre adventure," Miss Lina finished.

"Or the time we had to play Brass Rackets to find a clue to the Claire Bible," Miss Amelia added.

"Or the time we found that magical songbook and Lina and Amelia had to wear—" Mister Zelgadis started vindictively.

"I think she gets the point," Miss Lina cut him off hurriedly.

"I…" I began. "I mean, I knew you all had been on a lot of adventures before, but I had no idea how odd they were," I commented.

"Yeah, we're always getting into weird scrapes," Miss Lina admitted sheepishly. "But we always manage to get out of them one way or another, right guys?" she asked with a strange sense of pride.

"Right!" Miss Amelia and Mister Gourry said.

"So far," Mister Zelgadis drawled.

I guess at the end of it all I'm just… kind of glad that everyone in the group has had so many weird and dangerous experiences, but always got through okay. I'm not sure if they're unlucky to get in those situations in the first place or lucky to get out of them but… no matter what it at least seems to work for them. And maybe that means they really can stand up to whatever the prophecy has in store for them.

7:46 pm.

Also, I'm trying very, very, very, very, very hard not to imagine Xellos in drag.

…But it's just too easy.