Written 2012 - May - 15.
黑龙 (hēi lóng) means black dragon in Chinese, and the Chinese name of the Amur River is 黑龙江 (hēi lóng jiāng).
Over the course of eleven months, Valkyrie Cain travels more than she ever has in her life. She dips in and out of towns, cities, countries, sometimes with Fletcher, through Teleportation, but mostly not, because Fletcher's a lot better with Australia than he ever was Europe.
Sometime around the fourth month of all this, when she's feeling tired and a lot like giving up, she sneaks into China via the Amur River. It's cold, but she hardly notices it after so much time in Russia.
She is watching the sunrise with her hands wrapped around her knees and only slightly noticing the stillness when she hears the sounds of another living being – breath and soft cracks from protesting bones, and, courtesy of her Necromancer ring, a heartbeat. She scrambles up, ready to run like Hell.
The individual before her stops her in her tracks. She is caught in his stare, locked in by dark eyes, and her blood begins to boil just under her skin and she makes no movement as he steps slowly towards her. He touches her cheek, and his flesh is hot.
She slaps him, more out of reflex than anything else, and now she is moving and she is beginning to settle into a more combat-suited stance when he starts laughing, holds a hand out with his palm to her – don't hit me, please.
He starts moving toward her again, when he has finally managed to stay his mirth, and now she blocks him with the air. She has begun to smile just a little bit at the pale-faced boy with the black hair.
"D'you speak English?" Her voice is warm, without as much as a trace of hesitation, and her expression is relaxed. She is more in her element now than she has been in months.
"A little," he says, shrugging, and then he grins at being able to move once more, though he doesn't try to approach her. "Are you?"
"Sorry?" she asks, blinking.
"Are you English?"
"Irish," she says. "Yourself?"
"I'm a little from everywhere," he says, and starts to laugh again. His voice is only slightly lower than hers, and it's a wonderfully rich sound.
"Why are you out here?" she asks, after a pause.
"The sun is risen and it's a beautiful day," he says, and now he smiles with garnet lips and arranges himself cross-legged on the ground. His actions are unexpectedly graceful, and Valkyrie frowns.
"Are you a vampire?" she asks.
"Yes," he says. "Are you an Elemental?"
Somehow she finds herself spending the rest of the day with him, sharing her life's story as well as she can recount it, and listening to his. He's surprisingly good at speaking English, surprisingly well-read and well-traveled, and the more she hears of his past, the more she believes that he really is a little bit from everywhere.
And he's charming, in a strange, desperate, effeminate way, by turns flamboyant and melancholy, expansive and taciturn. He jumps from superlative to understatement, from undeniable fact to fantasy.
They've both been keeping a careful eye on the sun, and as soon as its descent is imminent, Valkyrie smiles. "This has been wonderful," she says. "I wish you the best in life, and I hope that I won't have to kill you any time soon."
"The same to you," he says, and he laughs again, though it sounds heavy. "By the way, we never did exchange names, did we?"
"I'm Valkyrie," she says simply, and he returns her grin, every bit as wry as she.
"Hello then, Valkyrie," he says. "My name is Caelan."