Holy dragons, guys. 15 reviews? I'm thrilled! It's what got this chapter ready so fast, it was so damn motivating! Yay!

Enjoy :D

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As she turned the lights off in her small office and closed the door, ready to go home, she heard someone call call for her:

'Hitomi! Hitomi! Wait up!'

Hitomi's day hadn't been the greatest. Folken's lingering feelings of sadness hadn't ever completely dissipated, and, as she turned around to look at whomever called her, she prayed it wouldn't hold her up too long from going early to bed.

Trotting towards her, down a student-empty corridor, came Natsuko, the Creative Writing Workshop teacher. In some ways, she reminded Hitomi of her lifelong friend Yukari, and they had become something close to friends in the two years Hitomi had been working in the school.

'Ah, thank goodness!' Natsuko exclaimed, catching her breath like one not used to running, once she'd reached Hitomi, 'I thought for a second I wasn't gonna catch you before you left…' she paused, and studied her co-worker's face for a moment. 'You don't look so good… Did you catch a cold?'

'Um… probably…' Hitomi replied, evasively, '… but I'm fine, don't worry.'

'Right…' Natsuko sounded unconvinced, 'Well… I need your help, Hitomi! It's a crucial situation, and only you can do something about it!'

'Me?'

Together, they started walking towards the school's exit.

'Yeah, you see… remember Katsu, right? My good-for-nothing boyfriend…' She didn't sound like she meant that, though, 'Well. I've… I think he might propose soon…' She nervously looked at Hitomi from the corner of her eye.

'That's great!', Hitomi answered with a tired smile, with the acute feeling that she knew where the conversation was going.

'Yeah, I know, but…' nervously, again, she searched for the best way of saying it, 'I've got some doubts… I'm really confused… and I don't want the moment to catch me unaware, you know? I want to give the best answer I can when the time comes!'

'I see…'

'Hitomi!' Natsuko said, stopping in her walk, to look into her co-worker's eyes with determination, 'Would you ask the Tarot cards? Could you do it for me?'

'Natsuko…' she considered it for some seconds, 'Yes. I'll do a reading for you. But I can't do it today, I'm sorry. I'm feeling really drained.'

'What do you mean?'

'You've got to be on the best condition, because a quality reading depends on the strong energy of the person doing it.'

'Oh, yes, of course…' Natsuko said, with deflated optimism, 'Do you think it could be soon, though?'

'We can try tomorrow at lunch break,' Hitomi suggested, with a strained smile, knowing beforehand it was not a great idea.

'Yay!' Natsuko cheered, excited. But Hitomi sighed.

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Hitomi arrived home exhausted and emotionally drained, and collapsed onto her futon. Through her mind the thought danced, that she hadn't talked to her family for a long while now. She made a mental note to call soon. Then, she closed her eyes and fell dead asleep.

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'Were you here last night?' Hitomi asked Van, the following morning. He looked up from his book and nodded, a frown barely perceptible on his brow.

'I was. And you overslept again.'

Sleepily distracted, she looked out of the window, until his words sank in.

'I WHAT!?'

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Later, as she profusely apologized for being three hours late to work to the coordinator of the sports department, the principal's words from the day before resonated in her thoughts: 'Take some days off', and, 'We're only human…'.

She was starting to suspect that maybe some therapy sessions would also do her good, but she was going through something whose tales no one would honestly believe. All the help she could expect would probably be in the form of medication.

She'd rather leave things as they were, and brace herself.

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During lunch break, as expected, Natsuko found her.

'Hey, I heard you were late again, Hitomi… are you sure you're okay?'

'Yeah,' Hitomi answered, sheepishly, 'A personal situation's got me distracted, but I'm confident it's going to be done with soon.' Wishfully hopeful is more likely, her thoughts corrected, grimly. '… In any case, I'm feeling way better today. We can do the reading now, if you want.'

Natsuko regarded her with skepticism, but her eagerness overpowered her concern.

'All righ! Let's do it!'.

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It was eerie, but, when it came to predictions, she felt she was starting to be always right. She could sense a foreboding sort of certainty it in her core, and as Hitomi drew card after card, their meanings intertwined to form the outlook of an ordinary marriage: a honeymoon in Bali, two children, a miscarriage, old age, and overall happiness. And she knew all this would come to happen.

'If you marry him, you and him will be very happy together,' she said, finally, with a slight smile.

Natsuko was ecstatic.

'And do you… oh… do you know when he will… you know…?'

'Before next week, most likely.'

'Oh, Hitomi!' she exclaimed, impulsively hugging her, 'You're amazing! You're almost magical!'

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'Van'.

He's in the park again, under the great, welcoming willow. The afternoon is very pleasantly warm, and lying barefoot on the grass, lost in a book, he almost can pretend he is back home. The distant sounds of children playing, and car sirens blaring, and the overhead humming of a distant plane, however, ground him in his current situation: a foreigner stranded on a strange country on the Mystic Moon, where people live in towers and dragons do not exist, and there is an ocean and no forest.

Here, where there is the grim certainty of a destiny brimming with schadenfreude and the distant memory of home, and the wilderness. He sighs.

'Van'.

With a frown, he dismisses the thought that someone is calling him. Focuses instead on what the meaning is of how he is behaving. Hitomi is becoming more and more his safe place, the one person he can interact with, and the one thing that might make sense of all this mad searching for something elusive, that is the way back to Fanelia, which might - or very well might not- be connected to that dragon; and, so far, a tiny trace of the dragon is all he's found, at all.

No matter what, I can't let myself be discouraged, he thinks.

But he wonders, deep down, if he might not be starting to rely on Hitomi too much. He considers what he might gain if he chooses to part ways, but-

'Van.' Freezing, his breath hitches. He can hear it clear now. 'Please, be safe.'

'B… brother?'

'Ruhm says that strong emotions have the power to connect people. I have tried in vain all these days, but I will not give up. Van, if you can hear me, please be safe.'

'Brother!' Van calls, and he can't distinguish whether he is thinking or talking out loud, 'Brother! I'm fine- I'm on the Mystic Moon! Brother, can you hear me? Brother!'

He gets no answer.

'Brother!'

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It's very late when Van returns to the apartment, and he finds a plate of home-made food on the table for him.

'I thought you didn't cook,' he observes.

Hitomi, in her most loved pair of pajamas, looks up at him from her computer with a slight frown.

'I do, just not so usually… I really needed to get my mind off things today… though it didn't really work.'

He takes a bite of a delightfully golden baked potato wedge. 'It's very good,' he appreciates.

'You should really heat it up.'

Van shrugs, and takes another bite.

'Oh, you're such a guy,' she complains under her breath, and all but snatches the plate, to microwave it a while. Rather than being annoyed, Van quirks an eyebrow and shakes his head, oddly entertained. Then he pauses, and considers what has just happened: this girl, with her antics, just unwittingly lifted him out from the dark mood that has been with him since he heard his brother's voice that afternoon.

He doesn't draw any conclusions from that, though, because a smoking plate is placed before him. Hitomi perches on the chair opposite him, and with a little gleam of triumph in her eye watches the little smile that forms on his lips, and accepts it as her victory.

'Told you it'd be better.'

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'You may think I'm crazy- goodness, even I think I might be crazy- but I heard my brother's voice today.'

'What?' she asked.

'I was reading… I heard him call out. He told me to be safe.'

Hitomi could easily perceive his sadness. 'What else did he say?'

He side-glanced at her. She appeared to believe him…

'That he'd been trying to reach me for a while. That Ruhm told him strong thoughts can sometimes connect people...'

She frowned. 'Ruhm?'

'A family friend,' he expanded.

'Do you think… do you think it could work the other way around? That your thoughts can maybe reach him?'

His eyes darkened, heavy with that sadness she'd felt before. 'I've been trying to do that the whole afternoon. It doesn't work.'

She placed a friendly hand on his shoulder, slightly troubled by his frustration. 'If it took time for him, maybe it'll take time for you too. Don't give up. It's worth the try, right?'

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She phones home, that night. She doesn't remember when the last time was that she spent an hour on the phone talking to her mother. Oh, how she misses them- her father and mother. With her little brother studying in university in Europe, and herself living in a city that's far away, her family sometimes feels to her like it's become a little broken. Maybe that's just life, but it suddenly doesn't feel like it's fair. Or reasonable: why would anyone want to choose so much loneliness, over so much love?

For growth, like she did, or for the chance at a better life, like her brother did. But, yet, her mother is so eager to talk to her, to know about her life, her work, her friends, even what she had for dinner. It's not fair. A wave of regret accuses Hitomi of being too selfish.

And so, she promises her mother she'll phone them more often- but she doesn't promise to visit soon.

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A handful of pallid stars.

That's all Van sees, lingering over the darkness that exists above the ocean.

He's standing on the concrete ridge of an industrial pier. The water below him hides the scents of many fish. Octopi. Sharks, dolphins, whales. He can even smell the peculiar stench of two decomposing human bodies, too, rising from the deep.

Such darkness, tonight. And the air is starting to become warmer with every day that passes- the summer must be coming. He remembers it, the summer. Ah, the delightful summer in the forest. Running and running and running among the greenest, lushest leaves; and then, when legs tire, flying so, so high… Oh, how he misses flying.

But, oh, no: these are not Van's memories- these are the dragon's memories, and that is when awareness kicks in and lets Van know he is only a guest here, once again, and that he is seeing the world through this dragon's eyes, experiencing it through its senses. It is a rare feeling- Van is here like a guest in this dragon's consciousness, and he can feel the dragon knows he is there, with it, living together.

Strangest of it all is, it does not seem to mind him.

Van can't wake up, although he is not sure he wants to, and the dragon is still reminiscing the flight. The delightful feeling of the shifting air currents beneath his wings, the unbound sensation of freedom and wilderness.

'Why can't you fly?' Van asks.

The dragon doesn't answer with words, but Van somehow suddenly knows it can't do it, yet. There is something to risk it cannot risk, yet.

'I need to find you. I need to go home. And you too. We don't belong here,' he explains, hopeful.

But the dragon lets him know it's not the time, yet.

'I know you miss your home. I miss mine, as well.'

But the dragon says it's not time to go back home, yet. And it is not distracted. In his chest, Van feels the dragon's growing need to be airborne as if it were his own: he feels how this talk of home brings so many memories, and he's been so lonely, in this foreign world…

The dragon tentatively unfurls its long, membranous wings. But the longing does not relent, and they itch. They itch for flight. They flap once, reflexively. Twice, reflexively, too.

But the third flap is strong, and intentional, and lifts its body off the ground, and as the dragon's raw instinct and pent up longing take over, Van feels how, numbingly, his awareness is pulled apart from the dragon's.

He wakes up, covered in sweat, and sits up, completely dazed, dizzied, and confused as to where exactly he is.

He's in Hitomi's apartment, on the futon next to the window, and the floor surrounding him is speckled with feathers.

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whitefeathers: I'm dying to tell you about the dragons but that would be the hugest spoiler ever. I'll be enigmatic and say that I align with the Chinese POV.

Thanks a lot to Meghanna Starsong and pinkdynamite for reviewing! :) Hana-Liatris, you little mind reader you...

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Be very intrigued about what's going to happen next! I'd love to read your theories :D