'but Van...' she started, 'then... what exactly was going on when you and the dragon ended up here...?'
For a while, the twigs and logs in the fire crackled with no other sound to interrupt them. Van's eyes seemed lost in the flames, and Hitomi, hazy with wine, couldn't really tell if it was bitterness she saw there, or just the shifting shadows.
'That damned creature was chasing me,' he muttered, finally, sounding displeased.
After everything he had just told her, that seemed to make no sense. No sense at all. Unless...
'Did you attack it?'
'What!?' he exclaimed, 'For real? Of course I didn't. That crazy dragon just pounced at me out of nowhere.'
'Pounced?'
'Like a dog. Had me under his paws, crushing to death.' Van's memories supplied the stench of poison from the creature's maws, and its impossible weight. 'I had my sword. I freed my arm and took it by surprise. Then I ran.'
And his memories supplied also the slight pain near his throat, where the blade's lucky angle chipped away at a scale and stung him, and how he recoiled, startled. The thought disappeared as fast as it came. Van thought it odd, but didn't linger.
Thoughtful, Hitomi poked at the fire with a thick twig.
'But... your sword... your armour... I... thought you were a dragon slayer...' she trailed off.
'Are you...' he started. For the first time, Van realised that he'd drunk his fair share of wine as well, because it was not like him to be asking personal questions without doubting himself, '...disappointed?'
She raised her eyes, and Van saw her face bathed in firelight, 'What?'
'Are you disappointed?'
'About what?'
'Well, that I, uh, am not a dragon slayer,' he said, scratching the back of his head, feeling slightly awkward. He was embarrassed, and loathe to admit that he, like many Fanelians, still found a tinge of cultural disappointment in having to forego dragon-slaying; and the great pride that came with it.
'No no,' she said, alcohol-influenced dismissively, 'I mean, armours and swords are cool, whatever you're doing with them.'
Lost in mental labyrinths of whatever she could have meant by that, Van raised an eyebrow.
'Is that an everyday thing, in Fanelia?' she asked, quite innocently. 'I mean, swords and armours, is that what people just wear around, when they're walking on the street?'
Van chuckled. It was beyond him how her words could sway him into feeling so many different things in such a short time. Mechanically, he fixed the fire, and Hitomi, who had been sitting rather far, moved a little closer to him.
We like her smell, brother of the king, Van's thoughts seemed to whisper, in a sudden way. Again, the thought-words dissolved, and Van didn't linger. He only kept the feeling of his mind being slightly slow –but it was surely the wine.
As for Hitomi, the wine was making her sleepy. But she didn't want to sleep, and that's why she had come closer: she wanted to hear him well, and keep on asking him every single question she could think of. She wanted to imagine his world, to see what it was like, even to the slightest, most menial detail. At work, some people had called her abilities with the Tarot magical, but they didn't know anything. Magic was this: little sparks rising up to the sky, the song of the wind in the trees, and Van's wonderful voice telling her stories.
'Nah, people don't wear armour on the streets. But I'm not "people",' he reminded her.
'Right,' she interrupted, with good-natured sarcasm, 'your Highness'.
He scoffed in a subdued, rather regal way. 'Not because of that,' he smiled, 'I often assist the Royal Guard, or take care of certain diplomatic matters. Or pass Folken's private communications, like the day I wound up here.' It went without saying, he assumed, that Folken had no interest in others knowing who he was privately corresponding with: him sending Van suited them both just fine. Van honestly liked messenger duty and the excuses it gave him to disappear from the castle and escape the meddling, plotting court. He could roam the kingdom and the forest, and sometimes even go abroad. And people rarely knew who he was, so... he was free.
'And you were on your own...?'
He looked to the side, prepared to defend himself –'I wasn't going so far... I was just carrying a message to Ruhm...'
But Hitomi never questioned him. Van had spoken of Ruhm before; the chieftain of a tribe of forest-dwellers that was an old family friend. 'I see,' she commented, resting her chin on her hand, 'So... not dragon-related, I guess?'
He shook his head, 'In the slightest.' Folken wanted to commission a birthday present for his youngest child.
Hitomi sighed, patterns of light from the flames dancing on her face.
It never got cold, around the fire. Until wine-weariness caught up with them, they stayed up and talked, good-natured banter mixed with a shared interest in soaking in the forest, and stretching the night as thin as could be done.
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Earth is a dangerous, malignant place for a dragon to unfurl its wings and fly.
At first, when the need for flight and instinct for being unbound prevailed over its caution, it glided low over the black, rolling waves of the sea at night. During the days, it hid in alleyways and warehouses. Never did it really dare to venture far from that city that terrified it with its glaring noises and ubiquitous smells of petrol and putrefaction. During the days, when it hid, it tried to become as small as it could, curling in itself, quivering in fear and anxiety as it waited, always waited.
Once its wings had unfurled once and covered miles upon miles of limitless ocean, it felt better. But then, it had encountered the ships. The huge ships, full of light and city-like, that slithered on the water; ominous like the air-fortresses of the warrying nation with the mad emperor. And with their gigantic engines that never stopped and tore at its sensitive ears with their deafening conjunction of different pitches. It tried, then, flying higher. High up in the clouds where no-one could trace its silhouette, but not only was it cold. No, it was also populated by metal contraptions, flying vehicles that were bird-like in build, and very fast. They terrified it, too.
Driven halfway to madness in its despair, the dragon has been curled up in the dead-end of a maze made up of discarded containers, down by the piers of the city.
But it has seen today that it is bound to the city no longer, and it has seen today that the prince is in a forest. Unchained from the sensorial chaos of the city, where thousands of smells of thousands of people mingle with thousands of activities and products and vehicles and exhaust fumes, the dragon finally begins to analyze.
Nostalgia for its home and city-born anxiety begin to recede when it feels familiar smells: the cheerfulness of damp branches, the serenity of moss, fire, smoke. The sweet summer fruit scent of the king's brother's woman.
The dragon does not know how this sensorial information comes to it, but it has no reason to mistrust it. It is time, it can feel, to stretch its wings towards the night and towards fate, if fate will aid it.
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'I really don't want to go back,' Hitomi pouted.
'...me neither,' Van confessed. They looked at each other for the first time in hours, equally concerned.
'Do you... ah... maybe want to stay one more night out here?' she bit her lip, not sure if she should be ashamed about asking.
He scratched the back of his head –she noticed he did this when he was embarrassed. '...actually, yeah. It would be nice.'
They were back at the camp, which they should have taken down that morning before they went on their hike; but they had been rather good at finding excuses not to do it. Now, it was many hours after midday, and they were back to the tent still pitched and the campfire ready to be lit again.
When Van idly started lighting a fire, Hitomi just looked at his hands working, chewed the inner side of her lip, and said nothing. The words they had exchanged recently had been the first since their argument, a couple of hours ago. Van, voicing out his frustration with the search for the dragon, had pessimistically said that it seemed he was stuck on Earth. So he thought he'd better get used to the idea and get a job. Contribute. Stop being a burden. Hitomi had not wanted to hear a word of it. He was her guest!
But he'd been thinking about this for a long time. And what was even more, her strange involvement in his situation meant that this coming week she would not be working, and he felt he was to blame. But along the way, he had somehow managed to say that Hitomi was not really contributing to his search. Well, excuse her, Hitomi had said, it wasn't her fault that she had to juggle work, life, nightmares about his world, and everything else. For the first time in a while, she'd lost her temper, and called him self-centered, pig-headed, and some other various things.
He hadn't particularly liked being insulted.
It had been altogether nasty, rather loud, and frustrating, and they had ended up not talking for hours. But now the sun was signalling that the afternoon was firm in place, and their tempers had cooled enough that they both kind-of realized that they had been arguing both out of selflessness and selfishness.
Suddenly, Hitomi's lips were moving and she was saying, 'Leave, if you need to.' It was strange. Almost like an out-of-body experience. Her voice sounded tired, weary of renewing their argument from earlier.
Van's eyes found hers, but they betrayed nothing, and he didn't answer. He just kept on building up a fire from the first kindlings.
'I'm sorry about before,' she said quietly, 'I... I was being selfish.'
The fire crackled as it caught the larger twigs and branches.
'The truth is I really like having you around. If you go... I will miss you. Really miss you...' she found that saying these things was easy, even if they were embarrassing things –'but that's not right. It's selfish. I won't hold you back. You need to go home...'
When she looked across the fire at him, she found him already looking at her, with a slightly troubled look in his foreign-coloured eyes.
Now that he was calm again, he felt he was ready for this particular conversation.
'Why do you put up with a life like that?'
She startled. 'E-excuse me...?'
'Your life. It's so... soulless. Repetitive...'
Noticing she was starting to get angry again, he tried really hard to say what he meant, which was most definitely not to insult her –'I mean, uh, are you... are you happy?'
Hitomi sighed, in slight defeat. 'I thought I'd be,' she said honestly, 'But I'm not sure...'
She looked at him, over the fire that had nicely caught onto the pyramid of branches. Van was looking at her, with an expectant expression. In it she recognized the desire to have said the right words, the lack of will to fight her or antagonize her or anything. What a pair, they made. With a slightly apologetic smile, she said,
'I guess I never realized... not until you came around, at least. And you told me all those stories...'
If she were sitting on grass, instead of a log, she would have liked to fall back and lie on her back, to look at the darkening sky. Instead she sat there, stretching her shoulders which she noticed were slightly slouched.
'Maybe in the future I would like a more meaningful life, more... you know... lively. I thought that working in a school would be like that, but you're right. There's something missing.'
Van nodded.
'What about your family?' he asked, after a while.
'My family...?'
'Yeah,' he shrugged, 'What do they say about your life?'
She scratched her cheek. 'Well,' she began, thoughtfully, 'My little brother studies in a university in another country, far away. I've not seen him in forever, and we talk like, twice a year. Maybe. And my parents...' she sighed, 'they, uh... think I, uh...'
'You're blushing,' he teased. She glared, in half-hearted bitterness.
'They think it's high time I married, okay?' she confessed, the blush still there, 'They're old-fashioned like that. In their world, yeah, I mean, I think they know I'm not the happiest at work, but it's just a temporary thing, right? Because one day I'll get married and work won't matter like that anymore...'
Van could almost see her frustration. But he was at a loss about what was ordinary in the Mystic Moon and what wasn't, and he wasn't sure that asking more about this topic wouldn't upset his host. Still... 'Is that what you want, though? To get married...?' Based on what he had seen so far, people here did not seem to be pressured into marrying.
'I, uhm...' she stalled, 'I wouldn't mind, I guess... just... well, decent men don't just grow on trees! It's not as easy as saying, yeah, I'm gonna marry... you know?'
Van half-chuckled, actually relating to the discussion and to the feeling.
'I know, actually, yeah.'
'So my parents... they're... they're nice, yeah, but don't really take me too seriously.'
'I see,' he said, raising his eyes up to the sky, now dark. Hitomi rummaged in the bag of supplies and found two sodas. She tossed one to him; which he opened and sipped, slowly.
He made an interesting sight, she thought –in the kind light of the fire, wearing the cosiest and largest hoodie she possessed (three sizes too big for her, but it fit him as though he'd bought it), with his dark-longish hair mussed up after a day of hiking. The image of Van today overlapped with the Van in armour she had ran against all that time ago, and it was slightly strange to think that he was from somewhere else. And a prince. And that sooner or later he would be gone.
That particular thought made her sad, although she didn't know what kind of sadness it really was. It felt a bit like when Yukari had gone off to university.
After a while, Van picked up the topic she had began addressing a while back, the one that had gotten them into the nasty argument earlier.
'You think I have not tried to leave?' he asked, softly.
She blinked, surprised. 'You have?'
'Yes,' he said, and looked away, 'But I can't, not really. First, because you're the only one that actually understands me when I speak. Which is convenient, but weird...' he allowed himself a small, rather forlorn smirk, 'Anyway, here you are, losing sleep over dreams of my home lost to the fire... my heart would not forgive me for leaving you alone with a burden like that.'
'You can't really blame yourself for-'
'-stop', he interrupted, 'I won't hear it. You don't know why you see those things, and neither do I, but I will not desert you.' He reached out, and placed his hand on her shoulder.
She shivered, not from cold. His hand was steady and warm, his eyes were frank.
Had that been a moment of something... something different? Hitomi only thought of it belatedly, when it had passed and he had turned to look at the forest. Ruffled by feelings that she couldn't identify, she stood up and busied herself with fixing something to cook over the fire.
'You... do you really think I've not been any help?'
She said after a while, in a small voice.
'That's not... not really true. I spoke without thinking...'
When they first met, he'd asked about a reading, and she'd not done it. Something had put her off.
But, her tarot cards were in her bag in the tent (right beside the purse with the toothbrush, if she was not mistaken), and she knew that, ready or not, she owed him.
'Before we go to bed, then, we're... I'm gonna ask the cards,' she declared with finality.
She missed the conflicting emotions in Van's expression, because they were only there for a couple of seconds.
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A reading that begins with The Emperor stretches into a trip that Hitomi isn't ready for. Card after card, the images that jump forwards in her mind's eye are lively, ominous, indecipherable. A man sitting on a throne of iron, while a clock in the background ticks away the time and the emperor melts under the scorching heat of the sun, which makes everything burst into flames. The image of her grandmother's pendant swings back and forth, counting the seconds, making an image (or, more accurately, a scene) swirl into the next one, and the next one, where the elements depicted on Judgement are re-enacted by a lovely blonde woman in place of the angel, and two little children playing on the ruins of a devastated city that reminds Hitomi of the Babylon of her school textbooks.
Tic-toc
a swish of the pendant
a dragon, roaring,
two dragons, dragging forth The Chariot,
tic-toc
a woman with long, lustrous hair, The Star, angel wings elegantly framing her body, her crimson eyes lovely and sad, but hopeful.
Other cards appear. Other images. Other feelings, but everything covered in the scent of smoke.
'There is...' in this plane again, Hitomi swallows, uneasy, as the words come out of her mouth without being processed by her thoughts, 'there is hope, in this reading. Right now, somebody...' she frowns, 'they... somebody..., yes, is moving ahead of things, fighting back things... Things...'
She frowns again, feeling stupid for not being able to come up with the right words for the feelings that push forward, the Seen Happenings that push for being told, 'Whatever "things" is, it's terrible, but it has not happened yet,' she says, trying to put together the incoherent information she's getting from whatever force drives the cards, and her own common sense, 'Yes. Terrible things that will happen are, uh, trying to be stopped? By someone. A group of people, perhaps?'
Van does not interrupt her even once.
Even though he aches to reach out and reassure her that whatever she's seeing is only visions. Even though he wants to remind her that they're sitting in a tent in a forest on the Mystic Moon, and that he's with her, and that nothing can harm her, even in spite of all this, he does not do anything.
He lets her sort out her thoughts.
'I think,' she begins, 'No... I feel, that those terrible things include my dreams, where Fanelia is burning. That... all this time, they have been some kind of warning, or premonition, but everybody you care about is safe. So far,' she sighs.
Van's lips lift in a troubled smile, but his eyes look pained. 'Go on,' he says, softly.
'The... terrible things... the fire... they will be caused by someone. I saw a man, on a throne made of metal. Perhaps it's him.' For the thousandth time, she frowns. 'And these people trying to stop him... I...'
Her eyes meet his.
'Van, somehow I get the feeling that I have to meet them. That somehow I... we... can help them change this future of fire and war...'
She gasps, bringing her hand to her lips, suddenly aware of what she has said; and at the same time Van's eyes find hers –both are aghast.
War.
It's the first time that word appears, and it clicks in Hitomi's consciousness with the finality of a missing piece; but for Van it evokes terrible images from his father's tales.
Van is the first one to speak.
'This... is a mess,' he says, passing a hand through his long dark locks, and after a while his eyes search hers, trying to understand how she feels.
He has always trusted that her visions are true because he knows she believes so herself. His gut always has told him the same –she is for real. But Van... he finds Hitomi very hard to read, sometimes. Like now, when something swirls in her eyes, and the line of her mouth is thin.
'I should go with you,' she says quietly.
The tent is like a cocoon, in a way. The trees outside are quiet in the night. The odd cricket chirps sporadically. Inside this tent, time has stood still in between the warmth, the light from the torch that hangs from the ceiling, and the clean, non-descript smell of rented equipment.
In this tent, she can say that she will go with him as if they talked about a place that one can easily reach, like a park or a temple; instead of a foreign kingdom in a hidden world. As if he had not been unable to return home for longer than a month now, as if he weren't stuck, as if leaving were easy...
He's at a loss, not really knowing where to begin answering her, which is a feeling he is not entirely used to.
'Clearly, going to Gaia is easier said than done,' he mutters.
She reads between the lines: 'What if there was a reason why you're here?' she asks, 'What if... you...'
He shakes his head, his lips purse with sourness. 'Just leave it,' she's going to protest, but he doesn't let her, 'Regardless of the reason, I'm still stuck here, and now you're saying there will be a war...'
'But that's what I mean!' she exclaims, 'We've got to warn them! And when it's time for you to return to your kingdom, I want to go with you. Please.'
'I...' he falters. This is a mess. 'Gaia is a wild place...'
She smiles in reassurance. 'I'll be with you.'
'I won't be with you all the time. I might not be able to protect you.'
'I trust you.'
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They both lay in their sleeping bags, awake, but for the longest time no one spoke and no one slept. A breeze picked up outside; and the moon finally rose over the tree-tops, casting weak silvery shadows along the tent's length.
Yes, and time trickled by. Time that felt the longest, and all the while, Van was poking at the strange thought in his head. And, finally:
'Then, if it is so that I can bring you with me to Fanelia... you will come?'
'Yes, Van,' she found herself answering, 'I will.'
The words set on her chest with a strange finality, and she knew with a clear head that a very important decision had just been made –and no matter what happened, for better or worse, something had been set into motion.
And, that night, when she finally fell asleep; almost as if she had been expecting it, her dreams changed.
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In the clearing, the breeze caresses everything: every blade of grass on the ground, every leaf of every tree and every blossom and wildflower; and the pale hair of a man –Folken, Hitomi knows- and the long, beautiful tresses of a woman that reminds Hitomi of someone she might have seen somewhere else, somewhen. She is not unknown, but Hitomi doesn't really know her.
In the moonlight of two moons combined, this place looks ethereal: a dream within a dream. Hitomi's hair sways in the gentle air currents too, and the hushed voices of Folken and the woman reach her with serene tones.
'Three months, already,' Folken says, 'Three months on the Mystic Moon.' He looks up
to the clear sky –unlike other times she's seen him, he does not look tormented; only thoughtful. She notices, too, that he is restless. Worried. 'Van...' she hears him whisper, 'Why did you end up there?'
Until now, the beautiful woman has been silent, watching Folken through big, soulful eyes. Crimson eyes, familiar eyes. But now, she speaks:
'Your brother is safe, so you said,' she says, in melodious tones, 'I know that he has been called to the world of our ancestors for a reason. In time, we will know it.'
'Mother...'
She smiles gently, placing a white hand on his shoulder, 'Folken, my beautiful son... I have raised you to know exactly what to do right now...'
Hitomi sees him frown very slightly. 'And what is that, then?'
The beautiful woman –Van and Folken's mother, Hitomi now knows- smiles in a strange way, both wise and slightly playful: 'You place all your trust in your brother, and wish only for the best.'
Folken is smiling too now, smally; wistfully –'How simple of me,' he says, shaking slightly his head, 'Of course you will say that, mother.'
Hitomi finds that she likes seeing Folken smile. And his mother's words affect her as well, calming her, making her feel serene. She sighs, breathing freely for what feels like the first time since she became aware of the dream.
'Are you there?' Folken suddenly asks, turning slightly in her general direction. His mother's expression is of slight surprise, but she doesn't say anything.
'...yes...' Hitomi replies.
'Is Van still with you?'
'Yes, he is. He's well. He wants to go home,' she informs him, almost pleasantly, 'We're still looking for a way...'
Serenity pervades this dream.
It's a strange contrast with her other dreams, she thinks, of fire, and silhouettes rushing through the flames, and... and...
'You have to beware!' she finds herself exclaiming, shattering the peace in the atmosphere and Folken's calm look and his mother's regal air, 'We know that war is brewing, terrible war. And, Folken!' she calls out, and if he is surprised by her knowing his name, it gets lost in his expression of dismay, 'There is already somebody, somewhere, working on stopping it! Be-'
The dream begins to dissolve.
Impotence makes it hard for Hitomi to choose what is the most important thing she has to say, but as she fails to say anything else, and darkness begins to swirl and signal that she will wake up, an echo reaches her ears –Van's mother, saying 'thank you, stranger. Tell Van we are waiting for him to come home.'
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He eyes snap fully open into the darkness of the tent, and she breathes in a large gasp of air. Van, a light sleeper, observes her with half-open eyes from across the tent. But she just takes a couple of calming breaths, and drawing from the serenity of her dream before she spoiled it, thinks of that ethereal meadow. Soon, she is asleep again, and Van closes his eyes and goes back to sleep, too.
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The next morning, when they open the tent, the yellow gaze of the dragon, curled around a renewed fire, makes them freeze.
Every now and then, it blinks its reptilian eyelids upwards, as it lounges in the sunlight and lazily stares at them.
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A/N
Being drunk around a campfire is one of the finest things in life. It doesn't need to lead to... stuff.
I would like to hear what you think about Van and Hitomi's interactions, if they're in-character, and if you think they've got chemistry? Of course I ship this ship but I don't think that romantic involvement born of Stockholm-syndrome-like situations is particularly healthy. I'm trying to let this evolve a bit and I'd like to know if it feels alright.
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As in my other stories, time goes faster in Gaia than on Earth. No particular reason for that.
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Thank you guys for the lovely encouraging reviews! They made me really happy :) I hope you liked this chapter!
This story was never meant to be a long story. In my original plans, it was not going to be longer than 13 chapters. A 2-years-long hiatus stretched it a bit, so now I'm aiming for maybe... 15?
Take care all of you and we'll read each other soon I hope! 3