whitefeathers, you and I are of the same mind… Shoutout to HanaLiatris for the beautiful review and encouragement!

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This is Earth.

Van knows primarily because of the scents: nowhere in Gaia smells this boxy, this industrial, this hopeless.

Yes. The scent of hopelessness is so uniquely Earthean.

Late-night tinged wind clashes, unbound, with his skin, having travelled uncountable miles over the vast ocean. Some smells it brings he has no name for. Some feel tropical and alluring, some are dark and dank and some are so, so human. He can easily know what wind caressed the board of a cargo ship, and what winds were air breathed by hundreds upon hundreds of city-dwellers.

This night is almost silent. Only the murmur of the sea gives him some sort of spatial awareness, otherwise, as he stands on the roof of that nondistinct building, he feels as though he were flying.

Heavy reptile wings flex, yearning. But he somehow knows he has to wait. He knows he has to avoid being seen yet. And so, he looks up to the sky through dragon eyes, and stares longingly at the waxy sickle of the Moon, and the waxy sickle of Gaia behind it.

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It's late morning when Van tentatively shakes Hitomi awake.

When she finally sits up, hair sticking up, her tired eyes find him and pin him with a vacuous, sleepy, questioning gaze.

Uncomfortable, he shrugs. 'I don't know if it's my place, but I thought you had to work today.'

'Work…' she repeats, processing. Then her eyes widen, and suddenly she's awake, haste and dread filling her stomach.

'Oh shit,' she rasps under her breath- she, who rarely ever curses.

Van wisely steps out of her way as she scrambles around getting ready, taking time she doesn't really have to reopen the door after she's slammed it shut in her hasty exit, to locate him with her eyes and breath, 'Thanks for that, Van'; and then disappear.

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That day, after work, Hitomi walks back home, almost dragging her feet, but needing time to sort her thoughts out. First things first, next to everybody's asked about her foreign couchsurfer- the nurse has been gossiping. She spent the better part of her day polishing and refining Van's story-cum-alibi; and now, the official version is that his wallet, where he kept his passport and papers, got stolen, and it will take some time until the Finnish embassy can reissue them. It would also seem that she's been taking an online Finnish course, and that's why they can communicate almost exclusively.

Hitomi sighs. She only prays that no real Finn will appear and sink the ingeniously crafted backstory.

Her second concern is less bittersweet. The nightmares she's been having lately are starting to take a toll on her. She shouldn't have overslept, this morning. Yet she did. She can't afford to let this mad situation affect her life, but it seems that with every day that passes, and with every nightmare that shows her a new glimpse of a future, razed Gaia, she plunges deeper and deeper into an inescapable sinkhole.

And then there's Van, inscrutable Van, who has a sadness around his eyes and a steel will to not become broken.

I wonder, she thinks, could we have been friends? If we'd met somewhere else, or under different circumstances… I mean… if I wasn't all he has here… could we still have been friends?

She likes him well enough, she guesses. He's collected, and polite. A great storyteller.

Well, she muses –soon, now, she'll be back home- I guess I'll never really know.

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Van was halfway through the book. She didn't notice until he'd set it face down on the table.

When asked about it, he just shrugged: 'I don't know. At some point it started making sense.'

'Well, now at least you won't have to rely on looking for clues to not bore yourself to death,' she joked.

A blatantly unamused glare told Hitomi exactly how Van felt about that. Never one to enjoy annoying people, Hitomi veered towards something that had been on her mind- she's also been giving it some thought on the way back home.

'I couldn't help thinking… what exactly made you go to the coast yesterday?'

'I told you. A feeling. A presentiment. I don't know…' he stood up, and walked over to the window to look out at the city. 'It was something weird I'd never felt before. I thought I should as well check it out.'

'Yeah…' she trailed off, the gears in her mind turning in a sluggish way, as she tried to grasp an idea, which belonged to a kind of ideas she wasn't too used to entertaining.

'And the feeling… did it tell you that you had to go somewhere here? … In the city, I mean.'

Van nodded.

'This might sound crazy…' she started, and stopped there, considering just what kind of crazy it was. The ridiculous kind to anyone but her, probably. But Van turned around to look at her, leaning against the glass and crossing his arms over his chest. Well? I'm listening, his posture seemed to say.

There's no escaping from it now, right? Hitomi asked herself. That made her feel slightly better about it.

'Have you ever heard of dowsing? It's a way to pinpoint directions.'

Van shook his head only once, and very regally.

'I just thought… How about we try it? My grandma told me about it, but I've never done it before… Eh… it occurred to me when you were talking, and I don't think it's a coincidence-'

'-We'll try it,' Van said, artfully cutting her before she could start a ramble born out of self-doubt, and a small smile appeared on his lips: 'It's not like we have anything to lose, right?'

Hitomi beamed.

'Right!'

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The map of the city is spread on the living room floor, and both Van and she are sitting crosslegged before it. Hitomi is absent-mindedly chewing on her lower lip, wondering where and when to begin.

Rays of sunset pour through every window in the apartment. As Hitomi takes off the amulet necklace that used to belong to her grandmother, the vibrant orange light catches in the small stone that dangles from it, and makes it appear aglow. Certainly, it is possible to think it might be magical. In a passing thought, Hitomi asks the spirit of her grandmother to help her out.

Unbeknownst to her in her concentrated haze, Van is coolly studying her. He's good at reading people, and can interpret the little signs in her posture that tell that she's not calm.

'Don't be nervous,' he eventually offers, 'You don't need to do this if it's stressing you out.'

She looks up at him with unsure eyes. 'I don't really know how to start.'

He smiles, and there's experience behind that. 'Then just start.'

'Right,' she says, appeased. Her hand suspends the pendant over the center of the map, where it dangles perfectly still, without even oscillating with her pulse.

Suddenly, as if someone was making her know it, it becomes clear to her that she won't find anything if she continues like this, because she's not the one that's searching.

'Put your hand over mine,' she instructs Van, 'Focus on what you want to find. If you remember what it looks like, picture it in your mind. Think of that, only. Every other thought doesn't matter at all now.'

Seconds pass, and time and silence make a certain sensation of foreboding grow to be almost tangible. And then, after what feels like an eternity, right before their arms start to feel heavy with their own weight, the pendant starts to oscillate.

Very slowly, and very gently, too, but steadily, it guides them to circle over an area by the docks.

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'It is by the coast,' Hitomi says, with a relieved smile.

Van blinks several times. 'It actually worked…'

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'Van! Wait!'

Van stops, looks over his shoulder- 'What?'

'You can't go now! It's night already!'

Impatiently, letting her know he thinks she's making him waste time, he turns around to face her.

'If I wait until tomorrow, I might not find anything.'

'I still don't think it's a good idea,' she says, giving entity to a feeling in her gut, that tells her that darkness won't aid him with the search. I didn't think he'd be headstrong like this, she thinks, placing her hands on her hips. She looks at him and evaluates his defiant stance and his annoyed eyes.

'You're entitled to your thoughts,' he says, briskly, starting to turn around to leave.

'Wait…! Van! You've got to do this tomorrow. How about we do another dowsing test in the morning, before I go to work? Now we know it'll give us direction. Don't go now. Trust me.'

Once again, he looks at her over his shoulder. For a short while he considers her words.

'All right. I'll trust you.'

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She feels the warm reassurance of the guiding stone against her heart as she falls asleep.

That night, she gets a break- a deep, dreamless sleep.

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Late the following morning, Van is breathing in again the healthy scent that hangs from the sea-breeze, sitting on the low concrete wall that lines the promenade, and looking out to the horizon. For a couple of hours now he's been searching around, but everything looks as ordinary as it might for someone who is not from Earth.

He breathes in, trying to become focused. It's no good getting annoyed. I still have a long way to go, and Hitomi's prediction today also said this is the right place.

The horizon is so very perfectly flat, he gazes at it a while longer, wondering how long the memory of it will last once he returns back home to the crooked horizonline of valleys and mountains, so often eclipsed by the boughs in the forest. He's not really aware of this, but he distractedly begins to whistle The Dragon of Green-the-Glen.

Would Hitomi like Fanelia? Ah, but he'll never know that. What he knows is he has to go back, before her direful visions become reality. Although he doesn't know against what precisely, he has to warn Folken- they must be ready.

This thought makes him get back on his feet, and start towards the part of the area he hasn't checked. He heads for a row of warehouses that look rundown and rusted, and speculates about what he might find inside, if he does find anything at all.

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Hitomi ignores The Feeling at first -it's been so long since she felt it, that she mistakes it for a haphazard draft of wind the first time. The second, for a too-strong wave of the scent of the freshly mowed grass by the track field. But the third time, she starts to think it's unusual that the little hairs on her arms stand, since the day is pleasantly warm, and then it dawns on her what that actually means.

!

Immediately she becomes alert and uneasy, and loses track of the student whose long jump performance she was monitoring. When the kid asks about her progress, she has to make something up that will pass as an excuse.

And Hitomi is a dreadful liar.

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The remainder of the class passes like that, with her being edgy and unfocused. During the following class, it only gets worse, and at some point she reaches for the comforting, familiar shape of her pendant…

The stone's warmth is the warmth of a living thing.

Without a forewarning sign or feeling, a vision replaces the track field, her students and the school, and instead…

She sees a dark space, where a door that opens from the outside frames a silhouette- a man holding a gun. The light bathes the contents of the room: wooden crates and boxes, and another silhouette.

'Put your hands up, or I'll shoot,' the man by the door says, 'Good. Now step where I can see you…'

Yes, Hitomi knows it's Van even before she sees him put his hands up and walk into the projected light.

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She comes to, to a circle of concerned students hovering over her. Did I faint? No, she's sitting on the floor.

'Ms. Kanzaki, are you okay…?' one of them ventures.

'I…' she looks around, floundering. 'I… there's been an emergency… I have to leave at once…' She stands up, and her eyes locate one of her more responsible students.

'Ms. Kamino, would you please inform the headmistress? The rest can go. I'll see you on Friday…'

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She steps off the bus and looks around, helplessness taking over. The dockyards are enormous: countless rows of hangars and warehouses built upon a seemingly endless concrete lot. The scent of the sea wafts uncomfortably.

Oh God, she frets, how on Earth do I find him now…?

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Desperate circumstances merit desperate measures, or rather, ideas, and she pulls off her pendant and dangles it before her, as she earlier dangled it over the map. Her mind's eye sees Van, with an amount of detail that's ridiculous. Please let me find him, she repeats in her mind, please let me find him.

Eventually the pendant oscillates, and, choosing to trust it without question, she begins to sprint in the direction it signals.

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She irrupts into a most peculiar situation.

There is Van, facing opposed a middle-aged man with a disdainful expression on his face; and two stern police officers.

Van, arms crossed over his chest, looks regally disgruntled, albeit imperceptibly taken aback to see her there. The middle-aged man, who is dressed in jeans and sneakers and a suit jacket, briefly regards her with indifference. And one of the police officers, taking off his shades, asks in a stately manner:

'Who are you, Miss? And what are you doing here?'

'Oh we… we just agreed we'd meet up here… Is there any problem… -she reads the officer's name tag- … Mr. Iyamoto?'

'You know this man?' the other policeman inquires- 'The owner of the premises,' he says, indicating the middle-aged man, 'Found him trespassing on his property, but so far we haven't made ourselves understood. Would you like to clarify this situation for us, ma'am?'

Hitomi blinks, looking like a deer in the headlights right before the car runs it over. 'A-ah, yes, certainly. Excuse me,' she says, and turns to Van. With her best conversational poker face, she asks him:

'Are you alright…? I saw a vision… I saw someone pointing a gun at you… What on Earth is going on here?'

Van's eyes widen enough to let her know he's astounded: 'You saw that…?' …but then, he realizes that might not be the best moment to discuss it. He fills her in, in a heartbeat- the man caught him in a rundown warehouse he was checking out, pointed a weapon at him, made him come out, and shortly after, the police arrived. He'd judged it would be better not to cause a scene, since he gathered those were the authorities, even though he couldn't understand a word they said to him.

Impatiently, the middle-aged man –now revealed to be the owner of the warehouse- urges the policemen to take the corresponding disciplinary action and let him return to his affairs.

'Ma'am, if you please, tell us about this man. What is your relation to him?'

'He's my couchsurfer,' she answers, as businesslike as the fear of getting caught permits her, 'He's from Finland.'

They nod. They believe her. 'Could we see his papers?'

'I don't think you can, I'm sorry for that. He got his passport stolen last week, and he's still waiting for his embassy to send him the new one. But I can vouch for him,' she says, drawing her ID from her purse. Again, the officers check it and seem to believe her.

'Very well, Ms. Kanzaki. That over with, you realize your friend was trespassing on private property, right? Now, we can't take him in for questioning or let him go with a warning if we can't get through to him. Do you think you could ask him some questions, for us?'

'Certainly, yes.'

'Then kindly ask him what he was doing inside this man's warehouse.'

'Stealing, most likely,' the owner pipes in, '…or worse, contributing to those accursed rumors of ghosts and whatdoIknow. It's punks like this that bleed the business out.'

Both officers and Hitomi look at him while he speaks, but tune him out.

'They want to know what you were doing in there, Van…' Hitomi tells him.

'Well… try telling them… let's see. Tell them it's something people do normally, where I'm from.'

She nods. That's a good one.

'He says, it's normal in Finland for people to explore abandoned buildings. I mean… he thought it was abandoned…'

The officers say 'oh' almost in tandem.

'Sir,' one of them asks the owner, 'Is there any sign that states it's private property?'

'It's obvious, isn't it?' the owner retorts, 'Every single warehouse here belongs to somebody.'

'You've heard the lady, sir,' the other police officer intervenes, thoughtfully, 'This man thought it was an abandoned building. What exactly are the conditions of your premises? If they are approved for use for commercial purposes, then we would very much like that you show us around, to ascertain that their current state of preservation complies with the regulations… Just, procedural matters, you understand.'

'I understand,' the man says, through his ground teeth, glaring venomously at Van, who is looking at the exchange with a curious gleam in his eyes that clearly says he wishes he knew what was going on.

One officer addresses Hitomi: 'Ma'am, tell your friend that he's free to go. But please, remind him that those practices are not allowed here.'

'I will sir,' she says, with a little, relieved smile.

'Good day, then, ma'am.'

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'Thanks.'

They had been walking a long while in silence before Van said that.

'Don't worry about it,' Hitomi reassured, with a small smile, 'I'm just glad nothing happened to you.'

Van sighed, running a hand through his hair: 'I am… I apologize for that.'

She laughed.

'Apology accepted, but not really needed. You were doing what you had to… I just thought you could be in danger. I'm glad I came.'

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'What were you going to do, if they tried to take you to the police station?'

Van averted his eyes.

'I hadn't thought it out that far…'

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'Van… could you… did you find out anything?' she asked, at some point. Not having thought about it, she was taking them the way back home, although it felt strange doing it on a weekday shortly after midday.

Van reached for the back pocket of his jean, falling into a slower walk; to, eventually, stop. Hitomi stopped too, looking with curiosity at the object that he held between his index and thumb. It was glossy, about the size of a big coin, and shaped like a spearhead. It was, in short, a scale.

Hitomi's eyes widened when realization hit, and when they met Van's, his were collected, impenetrable.

'The dragon,' she breathed.