Tear Drops

Part 2

© 1998 by ChibiChan

Back to Dark Kingdom Home | Stayka's Dark Kingdom Stories | Other Dark Kingdom Stories

Author's Note:

Part 2, now. This has a lot to do with Naru and how she's dealing with everything that's happened.

As before the text in italics are thoughts. The centered ones in brackets are the Stars speaking.

But the other non-centered ones in brackets are like... uhhh... you know. Reading-between-the-lines thoughts of the person. Like maybe the inner critic harrassing the person.

Understand?

Tear Drops - Part 2

© 1998 by ChibiChan

The stars spoke no more... abandoning him there to solve his own problems. Never before had it occurred to him that they would ever desert him in his greatest time of need, but they had, and they would speak to him no more.

Oh, they did speak. Occaisionally. And that was only to insult and taunt him. They were harsh in their mockery. Steely cold words cutting deep like knives.

Nephrite had always been by himself as a child. The Stars had been his only company. Their words had been awkward at first, almost seeming to lead him along, like a man with hurtful motives offering a small child candy on the street in exchange for them getting in the car.

He felt strange talking to them. The others had always thought him crazy, and had actually told him so on many an occaision. Nephrite had been bullyed and beaten for his love of the stars and all things not of this world.
But when he had been underneath his bed, battered and bruised, sobbing his eyes out, they had spoken to him comfortingly, apologizing and making promises.

(We never did keep any of them.)

(What does it matter? He was four.)

(They say the most important part of your life is at around that stage.)

(Who are they? What would they know?)

They guided him through times of doubt and pain. Helping him along the road he chose that had abruptly ended just only a day ago. They had been his only friends, which was a depressing thought on it's own.
But now that they had turned against him,

(Brought it upon himself, he did.)

(His fault.)

(Not us.)

their presence now becoming cold and making him feel unfomfortable, their words viscious and hurtful, he felt so crushed that all he wanted to do was cry. Scream. Shout at the world. He felt betrayed by his only friends.
More than that, he had thought they had loved him too.

(Did we love him?)

(No.)

Then, after a while, Nephrite began to wonder. Testing out his old Dark Kingdom powers again, only to find that his sole remaining one was to teleport. - But that wasn't exactly much use to him, now was it?
But even though the stars would not speak to him, if he concentrated hard enough, Nephrite could still harness and use some of their powers. Although now, their power was extremely weak, and sometimes, even almost non-existent . He didn't think they would be of any use to him.

But the time passed. And unknown to Nephrite, another senshi had been found and Tuxedo Kamen's identity revealed. His arch rival and murderer killed by the wrath of his angry queen, and another senshi, this one of Venus, had made herself known to the world. The Ginzuishou was now in the barely capable hands of Sailormoon, and the Dark Kingdom was beginning to slip up with Prince Endymion as assistant in charge and the mentally unstable Kunzite as the sole surviving General.

And still, the stars told him nothing.

* * *

School had been bad for Naru. But that wasn't much of a suprise to the red headed girl.

Depression now racked poor little Naru's mind, and her once joy-filled classes were now becoming horrid tedious sessions of pure boredom.
She was continuously spacey and always getting sent to the school counsellor and/or principal for sudden outbursts of tears in the middle of a lesson, or maybe sketching pictures of a certain long auburn haired man instead of paying attention to her sensei... - But this day had been unusually bad.

First Haruna Sensei was in a bad mood, and decided to give the entire class an assignment to do by Wednesday on Earthworms. (Umino had been thrilled.) Secondly, it rained. So the entire class had to stay in at recess and also at lunch. And because Haruna Sensei had to look after the class to make sure they didn't wreak havoc in the class room, she was in an extra bad mood for afternoon lessons.

After pulling Usagi out of the classroom for a private screeching session for eating, sleeping and daydreaming in class, (in that order) and almost throwing an English text book at poor little Akiko for not completing her homework, most of the class thought it was for the better when their Sensei left school early complaining of a migraine.

Naru sighed. Tsukino Usagi. Her best friend. Or Ex-best friend, perhaps. The kawaii blonde school-girl was becoming ever distant, and sometimes even

(ignoring)

avoiding Naru on some occasions!

She always seemed to be hanging around those other girls: the school brain, Mizuno Ami and the school's resident karate maniac, Kino Makoto. Also two other girls from private schools, the soon to be Shinto Priestess, Hino Rei, and the beautiful Aino Minako.

She had always wondered: had she *done* anything to offend her old friend in any way? Why was she being shut out?

Usagi had always seemed so open and sharing. Now it was like she was keeping a secret from Naru, and going out of her way to make sure she never found out.

The bus slowed down and came to a halt, stopping outside a department store. Naru looked out the window to see about six or seven girls her age talking and laughing with each other.
Why didn't

(anybody)

Usagi hang out with her like that? Why did she always have to be the outsider? ~
She felt tears rising up in her eyes, but pushed them down. The last thing Naru wanted was to show her sadness in public. How embarrassing that would be...

As the

(deserted)

almost empty

(it's empty because of you)

(your fault)

(be ashamed)

bus pulled away from the bus stop and turned onto the main road, she lifted up her school case to her lap and pulled out some of her homework sheets. Might as well get started now. She thought to herself. Flipping through them absently, Naru read through her task questions to complete over the weekend. Haruna Sensei always did have a thing about homework. She believed in dishing out as much as possible to her unfortunate students!

Naru sighed, and pulling out a small fountain pen, got to work on her homework. At least it was something to do.

But suddenly, her pen slid across the page and fell out of her hand to the floor, it left a large trail of blue ink streaking behind it. Naru was violently jolted forward, and her homework leapt from her lap and scattered all over the floor of the bus.
While she dropped to the floor and frantically gathered up her sheets, it came to her attention that underneath her a small series of explosions were occurring inside the motor of the bus...
With a huge **Put... put... put... !!KABANG!!** , the bus's motor breathed its last breath and 'died', leaving the few passengers, Naru and the bus driver stranded just on the outskirts of Minato-ku.

The driver swore roundly, cursing the motor and offending everyone on the bus. Outraged and disgusted, the people on the bus got up and left, giving the bus driver angry looks. Naru followed, leaving the driver to fix his bus up and hopefully get back to the depot before the passenger's complaints did.

As she stepped off the bus into the cool afternoon breeze, Naru turned around to see a large woodland area looming up before her.

Strange, it seemed, but Naru had never noticed that before. But then again, after all, she had been pretty spacey these past few months, so she had an excuse not to realise their sudden growth.

A cool Autumn breeze rustled the leaves in the trees. It blew through her thick red hair and made her uniform dress flap slightly in the wind.
Her favourite sort of day, she thought to herself. The perfect day for a nice long peaceful walk...
She took another look towards the woods, and made her decision. Naru walked off in their direction, meaning to take a long cut to Minato-ku through them. It was 4:28pm, she thought to herself, looking down at her watch. And the sun was still relatively high in the sky. The way she figured it, she could be through the woods and home by the time the sun set at at least 6:00pm. Or perhaps maybe a little bit later.

At first, the trees on the edge of the woodland were tall thin saplings, but still, growing quickly into giants. For now, though, were around twice Naru's size. Not any higher. But then gradually, they seemed to grow in size, width and also numbers. Soon Naru was no longer walking through a small patch of trees... but wondering through a thick mass of woods!

It took quite some time to find a proper path to follow. It seemed that not too many people travelled through these woods. But thankfully, Naru did find a path, and she followed its winding course until she was soon was deep inside the thickest area of the woodland.

She walked very slowly at first. Admiring the breathtaking beauty of her surroundings, taking in all the wonder and harmony of the place. Then after a while, she left its winding path and took to following the tiny rivers that ran through the area.

She soon quite forgot the rattling presence of depression that plagued the back of her mind. She forgot her problems, and her pain. And she also forgot her mother, who would be so worried if she didn't return by 6:00pm. All these things had completely slipped from her mind as she wandered freely through the woods.

Naru smiled and giggled for the first time in two months, as a large fat fish leapt out of the quickly flowing river and an instant later, plopped back into the crystal-clear waters with a deep 'sploosh!'.

After a while of staring in wonderment at the calm serenity of the water, she turned her gaze from it and looked to the riverbank that was swarmed with beautiful, yet large, clumps of wildflowers.

They were white as the snow, shining out from under rotting logs and stones, basically everywhere! And they were literally dripping with tiny droplets of dew.

Some of them might look good in her hair! As Naru bent down to pick a few, she heard a distinctively hostile, harshly strangled screech coming from behind her. Alarmed, she spun around to come face to face with a large black crow that was flying deadly fast towards her!
She only screamed for a second. The bird swooped her, and crunched it's beak into her forehead, sending a stream of dark red blood trickling down over her face.

The flower lost its immaculate white and turned red.

Everything went black.

* * *

Nephrite concentrated hard. This was putting a harsh strain on his mind! Who would have though it would be so difficult to light a candle? Not he, that's for sure. But the strength of the Stars was weak, and his efforts weakened them only more so.
He saw a spark flicker on he wick of the large intricately decorated Sacramental candle.
Nephrite smiled, but only concentrated harder. Just a little light! To cast some light into this dim gloomy cathedral was all he wanted, why did it have to be so hard? The candle's wick flickered again and a flame leapt up from it.
Nephrite lifted the candle and was about to light another with its flame, when he heard a scream.
What was that? He wondered, and teleported to where he thought they were coming from.

He materialized a few metres from the person, they were lying face down over an old rotting log that marked the boundary of his hated 'invisible wall' that confined him to these miserable woods. He stretched out a hand, and turned the body over.
Blood was dripping from a somewhat large gash in her fore head, and her thick red hair was cast messily across her small face.

Nephrite gasped, his deep blue eyes widened in shock.

Naru!

The End of Part 2 - Goto Part 3

Back to Dark Kingdom Home | Stayka's Dark Kingdom Stories | Other Dark Kingdom Stories

Disclaimer: Sailormoon is the property of Takeuchi Naoko, Kodansha and Toei Animation. All characters, settings etc. are used without permission. This is an amateur fiction, and I definitely won't make any money of it.

This page belongs to Stayka's Dark Kingdom Home at http://www.dark-kingdom.de