Van's eyes snap open as a scream tears him away from a peaceful dream where he looked at the faint horizon of the sea at night, suspended on an air current. He's ready to grab at his sword, but he cannot move his sword arm. As he sees the computer's screen blinking with some landscape-themed screensaver, casting faint artificial light over the dark room, he becomes aware of where he is. He recognizes the pleasant smell as Hitomi's shower products. And Hitomi in question, right next to him; immobile at first with the shape of the scream frozen in her lips. She had fallen asleep first, but surely he must have not been awake much longer- they're slouched side-by-side, slightly uncomfortably, on the futon and against the cushions they had stacked against the wall.
Slowly, Hitomi grounds herself too: she's back in her living room, on Earth; but she's, regardless, horribly shaken.
Van, who cannot feel his arm because he'd had it in a weird position, frowns at the same time he softly shakes his arm awake. Disregarding the stings, he places it on her shoulder.
Her eyes, full of ghosts, find him, and for a moment, very fleeting, they scare him. Him. She folds on herself, properly shaking now, and hugs herself in silence.
Now, Van, shaking-off sleep and worries, gently uses his arm on her shoulder to guide her to his lap. There she stays, upper body resting on his thighs, as he slowly caresses comforting circles on her back.
This feels familiar for him- ages ago, when there were thunderstorms and Merle's sensitive ears drove her into panic, she used to steal into his room and tremble until he did the same, trace circles on her back. Then she'd relax, and fall asleep.
It is taking Hitomi a very long time to relax, however, so they just stay like this; in the eerie light of the screen.
Where the sun finds the moss, in the glen
where the stream runs gold,
there you find a young lad, passing through
through the elms and linden, and ferns...
It's finally his quiet, earnest voice, singing the beginning of "The Dragon of Green-the-glen", what calms Hitomi's little tremors into going away. He's sung it for her, once, but it had been another thing –before, his voice was recalling and retelling. Now, it's barely above a whisper, and his voice feels warm and close. He feels her muscles finally relax. He stops the circular motions, running his hand up and down her spine in a distracted manner, now.
'You talked to Folken, yesterday,' she finally says, her voice very small and slightly muffled.
If he's taken aback, she never knows. 'I certainly did try,' he answers too, in a whisper. As if speaking out loud were slightly dangerous. She remembers the furniture moved to the edges of the living room, his meditative pose, but the memory, weak to begin with, just apathetically dissipates.
'He heard you,' she just says, 'He knows you're here.'
Silence.
'He knows you're safe.'
'Hitomi...'
'I tried to warn him, Van,' she almost sobs, 'About the fire, but the dream pulled me out!' She sits up. Her eyes are red-rimmed.
She looks so tired... She looks, Van is pained to realize, shattered.
'The damned dream! Worthless! What is this stupid connection even for! I couldn't even warn him!'
'Hitomi...'
'It will burn down! Everything will burn down!' she cries, and collapses into herself, sobbing.
Her uncharacteristic outburst dampens Vab's otherwise stronger reaction to her anguish about his homeland ravaged by future fires. Everything is so confusing, as if the world were spinning. And she's crying.
It almost feels like there is a hurting in his chest by seeing her this overwhelmed. With everything happening so far, she's always been calm, level-headed.
But now, she's crying- folded into herself, alone in her anguish.
It's easy for Van to gather her up and pull her against him. She continues to sob against his chest encased in his arms, and he decides it's as good a moment as any to see if he can remember the whole song, with all its 146 verses.
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A warm ray of morning sunlight on his face eventually wakes him up. He's lying on the futon and Hitomi is still in his arms, sleeping. She's warm, the sun is warm, the room is warm.
It's strange. In another life, he would be feeling flustered, or awkward, or perhaps even turned on. But here, in this sunlight, in this room, he's barely keeping his shadows away. He struggles between drawing her closer, or sitting up.
Her body, still encased in her fluffy robe, fits in his arms, and he likes how she smells- a bit like the fleshy tropical fruits in Palas' seaside marketplace.
He draws her close, against his better judgement. His heart tells him to protect her, but how can he? He's useless in this world, and no one can really be protected from the things they keep inside, be it personal demons... or dreams.
He really, really likes how she smells. That's why he sits up, stealthily, and goes to make coffee.
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The heartwarming smell of coffee invades the little apartment. It gives Van a little peace of mind, and succeeds in waking Hitomi up.
When she comes into the kitchen, she's (finally) changed out of her robe into a big, old, faded orange t-shirt, and some shorts.
Van doesn't really know what ground he stands on. He chances a little smile, hoping it doesn't look too concerned.
'Smells nice', she says, sleepily.
He nods.
He then proceeds to watch as she, still sleepily, goes around the kitchen gathering things. After a while, she brings two Western-style toasties to the tiny kitchen table.
'Goodmorning', she says, taking a little bite. 'Slept well?'
He stares at her.
'Yeah... I did, actually, after...' he trails off.
She nods. 'Weird, but me too. First proper sleep in like forever.'
He nods. Talking, today, is not being so easy. Any conversation he could attempt would touch on things that could ruin her mood, and –he looks at her, sipping coffee, looking at a potted plant she keeps near the window, in dozy contentment- he can't do that to her. He doesn't want to feel like a shadow weighing the room down, but he does, a bit. So he sips his coffee, too, and chooses to stay in slightly-defeated silence.
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The way he feels now, is unusual. Is strange.
There is a heart that beats to the left, safe within a rib-cage; and the world seems a bit... flat. One-dimensional. It takes a while to realize it's because he's smelling very few smells. And hearing very few sounds. There's no scales guarding his skin, and clothes are keeping him from sensing the direction of the air flow and from really knowing the temperature. But, in any case, he figures it's warm, and the wind is still. Or maybe there's no wind at all?
He seems to be in a closed space. Images of landscape pass too fast for him to identify them, but he likes what he sees –green, trees, familiar sights.
He's not alone. Next to him, a woman that feels familiar too, but for other reasons, sits on a seat and has her hands on a wheel. She looks focused. She's driving a device on a paved road.
Of his limited range of smells, he likes best how the woman smells. Comforting, also. Like the fruits that grow in the summer in the highest tree-tops, the ones that the sun reaches the most. For the first time in a long time, he feels at peace, even if he knows he is dreaming. This woman's smell brings happy memories of summer sunsets soaring over the canopy of the forest, in the company of some of his brethren. They are soaking in the last light that will make sure they sleep soundly, in that incredible kind of summer-sleep where their cold blood feels always warm, almost like the blood that flows through his veins now.
Strange, so strange.
Warm evening air, ripe fruits, flight and kin and summer sunsets.
Happy dragon dreams.
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'Are you okay?' Hitomi asks.
Van snaps back from a slightly unusual daydream –a sunset, Fanelia's forests seen from far aloft, and the memory of the taste of a fruit he is quite sure he hasn't ever tasted before. In the back of his mind, this seems relevant, but...
'I'm fine,' he replies.
He's actually enjoying this car ride, he's always liked things that move in speed. Hitomi seems to be full of good ideas. She had decided that boxy, anxiety-ladden city life was not doing anyone any good. Perhaps it was because Van's tales of his land awakened something in her, a longing for woods and open spaces; shaped by regrettably scarce memories of camping trips, mostly from her college training. So she'd rented a car (and some camping gear) for the weekend and decided that they would go somewhere.
Perhaps because she was feeling marginally rested for the first time in a while, she felt excited to show him more of her country, and perhaps even work towards dispelling the rather gloomy image he seemed to have of her world.
It had really been too long since her feet had touched a nature track, perhaps with Yukari some springs ago. Even longer since she had been out camping, although she had always enjoyed it. Perhaps that was what was wrong with her. She was suffocating, drowning. Too much work, too much routine, and too much stagnation, dealt the final blow by an otherworldly guest, a dragon, and, well, visions of the impending doom of a parallel world.
And throughout it all, she was beginning to realize, she hadn't been completely true to herself: her life was beginning to show that it was lacking in something.
She really, really shouldn't be too hard on herself.
She looked at Van out of the corner of her eye –a rare someone who she could get along with so effortlessly. Who was so courteous. And knew of boundaries. But at the same time, the easiness of their coexistence scared her, because it would end. Soon, if fate was kind to Van.
Don't boycott your good mood, she censured herself, just drive. Drive. Focus on the road.
They had, for the moment, left his armor stored under her bed. His sword, however, was at his insistence in the trunk of the car, wrapped in a blanket.
Hitomi had images from her dreams of what Fanelia's castle looked like: walls made of rough stone, tapestry sparsely hung on the walls; carved wooden furniture.
Truly, a guest from an other-world that was medieval in its form and who was a prince and who was possibly accustomed to slaying dragons could, and by all rights maybe even should, have been a much coarser business than Van...
'Have you killed many dragons?' she found herself asking.
Van, eyebrows lifted in slight surprise, assessed her before answering:
'Killing dragons is outlawed in Fanelia,' he said, a bit amused.
This came as a surprise.
'It is?' she deadpanned.
'Yeah. It took many years until Folken finally figured out that their attacks were in retaliation for our attacks.'
'They... what?'
Hitomi was aware that she was not sounding very bright right now. She chalked it down to her being focused on not missing the right exit of the highway.
'They are much smarter than what people assumed.'
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They were now starting to drive on a country road. The sun filtered through the leafy trees' foliage, and, as they were driving more slowly now, Hitomi pulled down the windows a bit to let some fresh air in. It came with the scent of plants and forest. Van and Hitomi shared the grateful feeling of truly breathing for a while.
'Van,' she said thoughtfully, '... could you tell me more about the dragons?'
His reply was delayed by the first signs of the National Park they were going to. Soon, they came to a large map carved in wood, where they spent a good while deciding what direction they would go.
It was much, much later, when the sun had already set, that Van remembered Hitomi's request. After much looking, they had chosen to pitch the tent in a narrow clearing by the grassy banks of a little stream. Hitomi had had the good judgement of renting only one tent, but one that was meant to accommodate 5 people; so it was very roomy and airy. The plan was to stay for one night, and hike in the national park the day after.
They efficiently organized a campfire and picked up sufficient wood. Soon, they were grilling on a fire that spread dancing shadows all around them.
'I apologize. I have... I... I've never been the best at communicating,' he said, thoughtfully, 'I never thought you don't really know much about dragons,' he admitted and looked away, slightly embarrassed.
'It's fine,' she said, '...you're fine. I mean, I could have asked, too.' She bit her lip. She clearly wasn't that great in the communication department, either.
Their eyes crossed. He shrugged.
Up over them, the breeze made the top of the trees sway lazily. They were letting go of their last flowers, those who had had, and most were covered in thick, new leaves. The rustling sound was like a soothing lullaby in the background. The smell in the air was earthy, and like the smoke from the campfire, and like the scents of the forest that hung in the moisture around the stream.
Van was barefoot, and wore a borrowed hoodie. Hitomi, anticipating quality storytelling, rummaged in the bags they'd brought and pulled out a bottle of wine. She began pouring two glasses, while he told how dragons had always, historically, burnt down hay-roofed villages, eaten people who wandered too deep into the forests and generally terrorized the outskirts of Fanelia. But, even though they were feared, their power was greatly respected. In a way, they symbolized prized Fanelian attributes –strength, fiercelessness; and, it being a country with a fair share of beast people, wildness and wilderness. Some societies, in places far from the Fanelian capital even had initiation rites which included dragon-slaying, or milder forms of it, like procuring a claw or a scale.
'I see,' Hitomi said, fascinated by the world that his steady, pleasant voice described. It was strange –for someone who rarely spoke, and who was rather bad at saying what was on his mind, his tales were spell-binding. She thought she could listen, entranced, for hours.
'Still, I think that's only scratching the surface about dragons and what they are,' Van continued, thoughtfully, enjoying the wine, 'There's some books in the royal archive that tell that, in the beginning of times, the early inhabitants of Gaia shared the land with the dragons quite peacefully. Those texts are old, and not even Folken has been able to understand them completely. But he is convinced that they had some sort of understanding...'
His voice trailed off, as he looked at her pointedly. Her expression must have shown accurately that she didn't get what he was implying. He shook his head, with a little smile, and took a sip from his cup. She took one from hers.
'You can't have an understanding with something that doesn't understand,' he clarified.
'Oh...' she took another sip, '...of course.' It took a while for her to process that information, however. And then, suddenly, she had too many questions.
'Do you really believe that? So intelligent, really? Is that why Folken protects them?' Hitomi asked.
'Partly,' he replied, allowing himself a moment. In other circumstances, his lips would have been sealed. But because this was Hitomi, who apparently was meeting Folken in her dreams... and because he trusted her... he told her the truth, which perhaps could cast some shame on the king, according to some.
'He had a... he encountered a dragon once, in the forest. Although he could have, Folken did not attack it. After looking at him for the longest time, the dragon didn't either. It could have easily killed him... maimed him at the very least... but it did not. Folken swears that the dragon actively decided to spare him. That was what convinced my brother to change the law.' He looked up at the trees. '...Many weren't happy.'
'For sure...' she trailed off.
The fire crackled. Van took some dry wood from the pile they had gathered and fixed the burning logs and fed the fire. It was second nature to him, Hitomi observed, he was used to this. It was a neutral thought, just as noticing how at peace both of them were right there and then.
The wine bottle eventually was empty.
Hitomi wasn't really sober any more, and maybe that's what it took for her to think of a pivotal question, one she couldn't really believe she had not thought of earlier:
'but Van...' she started, 'then... what exactly was going on when you and the dragon ended up here...?'
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A/N
For sure, being stuck on Earth is nowhere as cool as being stuck on Gaia.
As you see I'm now on my way to becoming a Fanelian bard, what with composing the lyrics to The Dragon of Green-the-glen and all! Which goes to the tune of Revenge, remember
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Often I do research about the places I'm writing about, but this time, the National Park is made up.
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Because of the long hiatus, I wrote review-replies to those who'd reviewed ch.7 to let them know this was alive again... I'd not expected that it'd been so many people! It made me really happy :) Hope this lives up to y'all's expectations!
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You might have noticed that I shift between writing in the present and in the past tense. I do it consciously and because I've discovered it's fun not to be bound to one tense. I hope you don't think it's poor storytelling. It's just me having a good time, is all :)