Chapitre One: Apples and Pears

By now, of course, we had come almost to expect it. Syaoran had identified various strangers as Sakura's brother, their high priest, and his own sensei; I had experienced my startling encounter with Tomoyo-hime (which is not to say that I didn't act like a fool, because I did), and we had even begun to encounter faces duplicated from friends we had made after our journey began, like the hot-headed warrior lad who we met in that dream. Still, it must have been surprising for Fai. To open the door and to see himself standing there.

I'm not sure that that excused his hysterical response. He didn't run away, and he didn't scream, but for that strange friend of ours it was a precise analogue. His reactions have never exactly been normal, but I'm starting to see a pattern in them. And when he starts smiling like that, it's never a good sign.

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It was a bright noontime in this new world, but we had departed from the last at dusk, and Sakura-hime was already asleep in my arms. She's a light little thing, and didn't much trouble me, but she was bound to wake with a crick in her neck, and I supported Syaoran when he suggested we find an inn immediately. The boy will make a good leader some day. Fai of course smirked, and asked if I was getting tired of being the group's beast of burden, but when I asked him if he would prefer to carry her himself, he simply skipped off and declared that he was our mascot, and couldn't be expected to do such things.

"But Fai-san," shrilled Mokona, "I thought I was the mascot!"

"Oh, oh, I didn't mean to displace you!" chirruped Fai, grabbing Mokona and swinging it through the air. "But you are far more important than that! You are our translator, and without your help Kuro-pon would never be able to understand his family!"

And then they giggled, and made up a song.

I swear, if I wasn't cursed...

It was a beautiful place though, and truth be told, it was quite pleasant carrying the little girl. It gave me a good reason to go slowly and take in my surroundings, without having to cry out in delight at everything like Fai, or gawk like a bumpkin, which was Syaoran's reaction. The buildings were of strange craft; tall and slender, there was a good deal of glasswork in the façade of each; a different colour on every building; a jar of fantastic sweets, glittering in the sun. The people were holding a market, it seemed; and they were much untroubled, which was a definite bonus after some of the war-ravaged places we'd visited of late. The foods on each stall looked bizarre to me, and I know that if Sakura-hime were awake, she would immediately try to identify which one of them was an apple.

"Oi, mage." I nudged Fai. "Go and see if they'll take our money here... and if they do, then will you buy an apple?"

Fai looked for a moment as if he were going to protest automatically, but then his brain clicked into place, and he smiled and walked unhurriedly up to the very next stall. Syaoran was staring at the crowds, and didn't notice his departure for a moment – and visibly started when he did, wheeling with sudden worry.

"Ah, Kurogane-san! Where has Fai-san gone?"

"He's trying to work out what an apple looks like on this weird world," I replied. Just as I closed my mouth a woman walked past carrying what looked to me like a carrot – which was fully an arm-span in length, and a rather diverting shade of blue. It's always nice when fate illustrates your point.

Fai was chatting merrily to the young lady running the stall, and had most likely said something indecent, because she was blushing. He came back to join us, grinning from ear to ear, tossing a small green and red fruit like a ball, and holding a paper bag in his hand.

"Is that their apple?" I asked.

"Nope!" he grinned.

I resisted the urge to ask him why he'd wasted our money on it, because that would only be giving him what he wanted. Instead, I shifted Sakura-hime's weight onto one of my arms, and reached out to grab the fruit with my freed hand. It was a green-blotched pear, plain and simple. I tried to hide my irritation as I tossed it back at his head, and held Sakura-hime properly again.

"Why have you bought a-"

"A pear, right?" he asked cheerfully, catching it without looking.

"Well-" I stuttered, wrong-footed. He loves to do this to me.

"I just remembered what Papa said in the Hanshin Republic! These are exactly like the apples which we grew in my country."

"So..." murmured Syaoran. "Mokona can only translate the spirit of a sentence, and if we use different words for a similar thing, then the words get jumbled up..."

"Right!" said Fai. "And if it's a word which has no meaning to you two whatsoever, then it doesn't get translated at all! Kuro-fuu told me he's never heard of a laki fruit before, so that means he must be using my word for it." Mokona looked abashed at this. At least, I think it did. "Ah, don't worry, Moko-chan!" Fai added, brightly. "Think how useful it is that your spell is so clever! If we ever had to wear a disguise and change our names, for example, the people we lied to would hear what we wanted them to, and not what we were directly referring to!"

"Ne!" chipped Mokona, its ears rising in excitement. Syaoran still looked calculating as we carried on down the road. "So... if Fai-san wants me to call him Yukito-san, I hear him saying 'Call me Yukito,' even though 'Yukito' means 'Fai' in that sentence. That's clever!"

"So the only difficulty the spell makes for us," I found myself saying, "is that if we're using different words for similar things, the connotations get jumbled. It's most likely that we're not all using the word 'apple' in the first place. But maybe... it's a common fruit in all of our countries, which can be stored through the winter?" Syaoran nodded at that, looking satisfied, and Fai smiled at me. He started to eat the 'apple' as we walked on, and then another thought occurred to me.

"That can't possibly be right. When we first met you, you were geared as if you were going to climb a mountain. I've never seen so much fur in one place. How can so similar a fruit grow in the desert and in the tundra?"

Fai's perpetual grin left him for a moment as he considered, looking up at the few slow-moving clouds. "I didn't say we grew apples in my town. We had many imported goods too. So I suppose the connotations are still the same, right? The fruits probably grow in a similar environment. Or they could be hardier than you're thinking, I suppose." His smile returned at that. I wasn't at all sure that his statement fitted with his previous words, but the conversation had become so convoluted that I decided it was best not to press him on such a small point. Still, he had my interest now. I wondered how the magic did work, and whether it kept them from knowing my true name – the one which only Tomoyo-hime was meant to remember these days. I imagined so, because I heard Fai's taunts using the 'kuroi' sound in a way which wouldn't apply to my true name. A clever spell then, which allowed the northerner mage, with his strange sing-song language, to make a pun which both of us understood.

A pity it made him insufferable.