Chapter dedicated to buay! Danke dir für die +fav! :D

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Hitomi opens her eyes to a scene she is not part of: two silhouettes in the darkness of a large chamber whisper nothings in one another's ears. Why do they look so surreal? Why does it feel so hard to breathe?

She doesn't want to know what is going on, so she turns to a large window. The night is black, and full of stars.

The window has no glass panes, and hot summer air breathes through, fragrant with scents she doesn't recognize. Looking down, she can guess streets and little rooftops. Feeling awkward, she tries to focus on the many things that don't seem to make any sense, like the grain of the stone or the lack of windowpanes, but nonetheless catches whispers, slivers of the conversation going on behind her.

The woman's voice is slightly accented, punctuated with odd inflections and endearing little growls. The man's voice is calm and deep, like an undercurrent. They are discussing, now a kingdom, now daily matters. Children's antics, palace gossip. How Van is still missing.

She spins around.

'Van?', she asks.

They stop talking, abruptly. The man stands up, cautiously comes towards her. 'Who's there?'

But she can't answer: out of nowhere, flames consume the room. They burst violently forth, and Hitomi sees the room spin and spin, and it makes her horribly nauseous and anguished; and through the spinning and the burning and the shifting, rushing, fighting, through it all, someone is screaming 'Merle!' 'MERLE!'

'MERLE!'

And that's the very same scream on her lips when she wakes up.

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Heaving, it takes a long while for her to realize she's trembling like a leaf. Her lost eyes soon find Van's, at a distance that is barely respectful, looking wild with adrenaline.

'Are you alright?'

'I think so.'

'Did that scream come out of my nightmares, or yours?'

'What do you mean?'

He hesitates. 'Merle is… she's family.'

Hitomi falls back onto the futon, not completely shaken out of the terrors of the dream. 'Mine. Definitely mine. Are you sure that's what she's called?'

'Yes.'

She looks up at the ceiling. Then she must sit back up, because, on the edges of her vision, she felt as if the flames would start again. 'Oh god,' she whispers, the screams still seem to ring in her ears.

'Something happened to her,' she says, at last.

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When she finishes retelling her dream to him, recounting every minuscule detail she remembers, she realizes with a heavy heart that his eyes look troubled and distant: it's because he believes her.

'It's got to be true,' he says under his breath, 'You don't know who they are, damn, I haven't told you a thing about them, yet it's Merle and my brother you saw, no doubt about it. Damn it.' His fists are clenched.

'I'm so sorry, Van,' she whispers, crestfallen. He oozes helplessness, but there's really nothing she can do for him.

'Forget it,' he says, ruefully, 'Let's go back to sleep. We can't do anything, anyway.'

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The following morning, Hitomi felt awful. For the first time in the two years she'd been working in the school, she called in sick. Ironically, she was not sick at all, just very tired (she'd spent the rest of the dark hours of the night profoundly disturbed by the dream, and had only managed to effectively fall asleep after the dawn had broken.)

She was also not used to disturbing, lifelike, most-likely-premonitory dreams.

After muttering some general apologies for her absence to the school's receptionist, she returned to bed and fell back asleep.

She woke up again around midday, to find she was alone, something she welcomed too gladly.

It was Wednesday. A sunny, windy Wednesday. While the coffee brewed, she spared a thought to where Van might be off to. The day before, she'd taken the time to show him the basics of going around the city, so that he could explore the place and maybe search for clues on how to go back to his world. He'd been a very fast learner, and this despite the fact that, from what Hitomi had gathered so far, the place where he came from was rather like the medieval times of humankind. Locks, elevators and streetlights he'd understood without much care, and, though technology seemed to annoy him slightly, he wasn't too mindful about electronic billboards or cars or mobile phones.

Maybe there were things not too dissimilar in his world? Hitomi hadn't really had much time to ask yesterday before having to run off to work. And she'd hoped he'd been paying attention as to how to return to her place, (though he'd reassured her he was the kind of guy that never got lost) but when she'd come back home later, after work, she'd found him out in her small balcony, looking at the city lights, lost in thought.

Sipping her coffee, she wondered how much longer he'd be around. What if he could never go back home? She frowned, not liking the thought much. Somehow, it felt unfair for someone who appeared so… free? to have to be stuck in a cosmopolitan 21st century life.

I'm not gonna think about this, she told herself. He's definitely going to find a way to go back.

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… though, if he's still here by the weekend, we probably should go get him some present-day clothes or something.

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'I saw you stayed home today,' Van said, 'It was because of the dream, wasn't it?'

'Yeah,' she replied with honesty, 'I couldn't really sleep after that.'

'It's my fault,' he whispered, 'If I weren't still here, you wouldn't be burdened with visions of my world'

'Well, there's no way to know that…'

'Honestly, Hitomi. I think I overstayed my welcome with you. I owe you a lot, and the least I want to do is bring you troubles.'

Van was really good at masking what he was feeling, but Hitomi detected some very subtle form of sulking there, and her temper flared:

'Are you serious? Listen, Van. I don't like this any more than you do, but I believe fate threw us together for a reason. Whatever it is, I feel like I'm… like I have to help you out with this. Why else would I dream about your people? It has to mean something!'

She quickly realized she was saying that for her sake as well as his.

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The week passed otherwise uneventfully.

In all honesty, Van was probably the best other-wordly guest fate could have stuck her with: although he was usually quiet, the rough way he had with words didn't mean he wasn't polite when they talked; he was interesting to talk to; he helped her with the dishes even if from his awkward way she could tell he wasn't used to it, and used up most of his days to try and find a way to return; although how he did it, he never told her.

It was probably just like having a couch-surfer over, if she went by what her friends told her. And, if it came to happen that anyone found out about him, that's exactly what he was going to be: a couchsurfer. (…Although she didn't own a couch, probably her parents' spare futon qualified anyway). She was still working on coming up with a backstory for him, though.

On Friday, the last day of her working-week, she met for an after-office with some friends, like she usually did, and it was all in all pretty much normal, except for the fact that, when she returned home, there was a (by-then, familiar) tall man pouring over one of her books, presumably trying to make sense out of it.

'Get anything?' Hitomi asked, genuinely curious, peering over his shoulder. It was 'The Fellowship of the Ring'.

'Some things,' he said, off-handedly, 'Some scholars on Gaia know these scriptures.' Normally he wasn't this talkative, but Hitomi's kindness seemed to bring it out of him.

'You're really full of surprises,' she commented, and caught his little smirk. 'That's a great book, by the way.'

'Tell me about it?' he asked.

'Well,' said Hitomi, taking off her coat, and starting towards the kitchen to see what food there was, if there was any, 'It's the story of a hobbit, a little person, who has to destroy a very evil weapon, to save the world he lives in.'

Van quirked an eyebrow. 'That's all?'

'Well, no, not really, actually the book you've got there is the first part of three. The series is called 'The Lord of the Rings'…'

'Tell me more about it. It's not like we have anything else to talk about.'

Hitomi laughed. 'Yeah, you're right. It's just, it's a long and complicated story, and I don't remember it that well… Oh. Oh!' she exclaimed feeling both stupid and enlightened. Van looked at her with his best "explain yourself" expression.

'It's just, we could just watch the movie! I'm pretty sure you're gonna like it, I mean, everybody likes it. Plus, you can tell me if that world looks like yours!'

Van had a remarkable poker face, although Hitomi doubted he knew what a poker face was. She smiled, apologetically.

'I'll just show you what I mean. We can also get some takeout, because rice is all there's in the pantry.'

'Uh. Sure?'

'Right!', she beamed, slipping her coat back on, and grabbing her purse and her keys. 'Wanna come?'

'Sure. Why not.'

Pondering on the peculiar customs of the people on Earth, Van went along.

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Before playing the rented movie on her laptop, Hitomi looks quizzically at her long-term guest:

'Van, I wonder... you seem completely unsurprised by everything I show you. Are you sure you'd never seen a computer before?'

'Mmm.. yeah, pretty much sure,' he says.

'You go to levels of stoic I didn't know were possible...'

'Well,' he muses, 'There aren't any dragons here. No leviships. There are plenty weird machines in Zaibach, from what I've heard, so nothing here so far has been a great surprise.' At her frown, he explains Zaibach is a country on Gaia, just like Fanelia or Asturia.

'You people seem to think that there are things that are impossible,' he tells her, 'But pretty much everything is possible on Gaia, I guess it works on different rules.'

'Do you miss your home?' she asks, abruptly.

'Yeah. Yeah, a lot.'

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Couchsurfing: the practice of sleeping overnight in the houses of friends or fellow members of a social network, esp as an alternative to staying in hotels,.