Chapter 1

Red and yellow

"Your Majesty, is there something we can do for you?" the two Damcyan soldiers asked as their young King approached the door to his private rooms, smiling, but also looking quite exhausted.

"No thank you," Edward replied with his melodious, soft voice and smiled even more to support his remark. "I'll just rest a bit…"

"As you wish, Milord," the guards straightened up as their liege entered the chamber and closed the door softly behind him.

Still slightly smiling, Edward loosened the clasp of his red gown and let the cape fall to the ground with a careless gesture which for some reason seemed not to suit him. He dropped his smile, as well and went to the window. Leaning his forehead against the windowpane, he looked at the desert surrounding the castle.

Yellow and gold wherever one looked, bright mornings, blue sky and white sun during the day time, followed by deep red evenings, black nights with silver sparkling stars--no matter what the season was, the desert always stayed the same and Edward couldn't say that he would mind. He had grown up here and had learned to see the desert's beauty, its wondrous life forms -- for him it had never been a dead, monotonous hell like other people sometimes called it. 

Even now he watched the landscape with something others would have called contentment, just as some people thought that he had gotten over the past, that, just as he had overcome his fears in the Crystal War, he had overcome the sadness that had struck him after she had left him.

After all he had a Kingdom to care for, friends that cared for him, his music too soothe him when he was sad and the endless desert around to remind him that something as eternity might well exist.

It was a bitter-sweet thought that the King of Damcyan had found his peace of mind after everything that had happened, but it was an illusionary one.

Truth was that he still liked the desert, but the golden dunes had lost their shine and sometimes the sun seemed to burn too bright for him, as well as the nights were too dark and cold.

The Kingdom--well, someone needed to rule over it. After all he had to meet the expectations of his late parents, of the Elders who tried their best to help their young King, of his closest friends, Yang and Cecil, who had been glad to see the smile returning to the face of their friend upon taking up the throne of Damcyan.

However, had they just looked more closely, they might have seen that his eyes were not smiling, but were looking expressionless into the distance and that the smile on his lips was burnt into his face; burnt because he had always smiled for her while she had been alive and would also smile for her now that she was gone…

He would also keep himself in shape for her, though nothing could mislead about the fact that the golden honey colour of his hair had become more dim, that the once so bright turquoise blue of his eyes had darkened and that the calmness in his gaze was not a sign of contentment, but a sign of the acceptance that she was dead forever, that everything in the world had lost its mystery, that everything that was left was grief…

In his heart he knew that this was not right, that maybe there was something else to this life, but he could not fathom what. His friends and advisers said that time would heal his wounds, but time had only shown that there was no one that could compare with Anna.

They said that if he just worked enough and took care of the Kingdom, he would find a new meaning in life, but the people, even if they were his people, could not replace the meaning she had given his life.

"I'm sure you will find another love one day," his old nanny, one of the few Damcyan survivors of the Crystal War was often saying and though he always politely nodded, he met her words with incomprehension:

"That's how it works only in fairy tales," he thought gloomily as he watched outside how a soft breeze was taking the glittering sand from one dune, only to built up a new dune with it, somewhere. His parents though and his love Anna would never come back…

Once, Edward had believed in fairytales. In fact the love between Anna and him had been one. Against royal etiquette he had, disguised as a bard, snuck out of the castle to court the beautiful burgundy haired girl that he couldn't forget since he had seen her on a visit in Kaipo. She had fallen in love with him on the first sight as well and against the resistance of her father, Tellah, she had agreed only too happily to come with him and become his Princess.

The days with her, despite Tellah's interferences, had been so sweet, his parents had taken the girl into their heart at once, and life had been noting less than a dream...until the day Golbez had attacked the castle with the Red Wings. Edwards's parents had been killed as soon as the Baronian soldiers had spotted them; in contrast to what the glorious sounding tales about the incident said, there had been no heroic fight for the crystal, as the attack had come so unexpected, that no on had even the chance to react…

And as the attackers had entered the main hall of the castle, inclined to kill the prince on sight, too, Anna had thrown herself before him, without a word, just a look filled with love, but also with sadness in her eyes.

"In a fairytale, she wouldn't have died. She would have survived and we would have lived happily ever after…"

But, alas, life was no fairytale and she had died of the wounds the arrows had inflicted, her last words trying to make peace between the two people she had loved most: Edward and her father.

"And Tellah has died, too…"

All that was left to Edward now was his music, but the songs were no escape from reality for him, but always dealt with one thing: his one and only love.

Even more so, when playing his lyre and singing, the right words seemed to leave him, the tunes had no longer something lilting to it, the tones seemed to die away like they had never meant to exist; his fingers would hit the wrong string, slipping away from the instrument like her life had slipped through his hands.

Still, he would live on; he would drink, eat and sleep, smile and occasionally laugh, all for her, all to endure the eternity until his suffering would stop. And sometimes he believed that only the endless sleep seemed to be able to do that.

But time went so slow…

Leaving the window, he approached a little stairway that was near the door to his room. He followed the steps down to a door that lead outside into a little garden--it had been Edward's wish that he could reach Anna's grave also from his room, so that if he wanted to mourn, he could do so without having to cross the whole castle and showing his grief openly.

There, amongst now withered dune grass laid a simple white headstone of marble, two dried roses on it: One red, one yellow.

With a bowed head Edward knelt before it, though there were no tears left he could cry since long ago.

"Anna, what is it I should do? It's been nearly two years now. I know I promised to live, but is what I'm doing really what you wished me to do when you talked to me for one last time in Kaipo? All I do is sit in my castle, contemplating, musing…" he whispered.

"Talk to me, just once more…" he begged, but the only answer he received was a sudden breeze, which blew the two roses from the grave… Edward tried to get hold of them, but the gust was faster; while the red rose got stuck in the iron fence surrounding the graveyard, the yellow one slipped through the bars and was blown away into the wideness of the desert. 

Carefully, Edward took up the red rose and placed it back on the grave--the red reminded him of her hair… and the blood on her gown… Another gust blew his honey coloured hair into his face. "Red and yellow… do you want to tell me that you will stay here and that I should leave, like I once did so long ago?" he mused.

Then again, it had just been the wind talking to him and not her…

Sighing, he retraced his steps to the stairs leading into the castle. The duties of a King were waiting.

At the bottom of the step he stopped and gave one last, nearly longing look in direction of the endless sandy hills and it suddenly seemed to him as if the breeze had blown more into the desert than just the rose…