Chapter 3: Learning & Traveling

"So... in essence..." I took a sip from his lemon tea, wincing a little as my straw drew up an especially sour bit of lemon. I coughed. "So, in essence, ’magic’," I made little quotation marks with my fingers, "is more-or-less real." "More-or-less." "And magical creatures too." "It’s a bit of a paranormal spectrum, but yes." I sat back in the restaurant booth. The whole thing, table and ’chair’ were made of a wood that creaked and warped at my every move. I stopped moving. Around us the restaurant had nearly completely cleared out and the pair of waitresses were starting to give us more and more obvious glares. Another day I would have already scarpered - I don’t like making people annoyed - but today I had more important things to worry about. It was crazy, the whole thing was crazy, but that’s all I had. I had to believe. "And, somehow, I am a dragon." It took me a moment to build the courage to say it. "Yes," you replied. "I guess it comes as a bit of a shock." "A bit, yeah." We fell silent. Then a thought occurred to me. "You don’t seem too surprised," I said. "Mm? Oh, I’m plenty surprised, I just have one of those faces that doesn’t show it," you said, looking at me blankly. "It’s not every day you run into a dragon who doesn’t know they’re a dragon." "I guess not..." We fell silent again. At the counter one of the waitresses processed payment for a bill and shot yet another scathing glare in our direction. Now that I had food safely processing away in my stomach and my clothes were all dry - well, I suppose I should say ’your clothes’ - my mind finally had nothing left to procrastinate with. "So... what now?" I’d mostly grasped what you’d been saying up to this point, but this was the one thing that I was most worried about. "What do I do now?" You didn’t immediately reply and instead picked up the bill on the table. "That’s up to you to figure out," you said, rising from the table. "If you have somewhere to go, then I can give you some cash to help get you there..." You went to the counter and gave the waitress the small clipboard with the bill clamped to it. "But if not, you can come with me." Words can’t express how I felt in that moment, hearing you say that. I’m not ashamed to say I’d led a pretty sheltered life up till that point, but the last five hours or so had taken a toll on me and to suddenly have someone so selflessly offer me help was... Let’s just say I really hadn’t meant to cry. I tried to blink the tears away before you finished with the bill, but you caught me anyway. "Hey..." "I’m fine," I said quickly and smiled. "I’d... I’d like to come with you. If, if that’s okay." -- It was loud on the street, hot too - Bran could feel a headache coming on. He glanced back and saw that he had almost lost Misha. The Misha in question was staring up and around at the mishmash of old, shorter buildings and tall, glassy new ones and all the other buildings in-between. There were billboards and signs and every few minutes a tram would rattle past them ringing its bell. Bran stopped a moment and waited for Misha to catch up. "It’s so different, but also really similar..." he said to Bran, not really expecting a response when he caught up. "Have you been to Pearl City before?" asked Bran as they got moving again. A group of tourists bustled past them and Misha moved out of their way to trail behind Bran. "Yeah. I was born here," he said, "but later my parents moved to Pretan, so I grew up there instead." "No wonder." "You?" Bran considered the question. "I’m similar," he said but didn’t elaborate. They came to a bend in the road and a dubiously indicated pedestrian crossing. Bran stopped. Misha stopped beside him. "Are you mixed race?" he asked. "Yeah. Half-and-half, white and Chinese." "No wonder." Did he look it? Bran wondered. It had been a question he felt he’d been asking as long as he could remember. He glanced at Misha. People generally pegged him as just white, maybe Greek or Slavic or something, especially now that he’d started bleaching his hair, so it was rare that someone got it right on the first guess. "How does magic work?" Misha suddenly asked. The red pedestrian light vanished, replaced by his green compatriot above, signaling for the deluge of humans that had been gathering on either side of the road to charge forward. Bran and Misha joined them. "Well," began Bran, "first of all, I used the word ’magic’ earlier as just a shorthand to help you understand. It’s just an analogy. It’s not really called that." "No?" "No. Depending on the area both in terms of study and location, it’s called different things." He suddenly raised a hand to stop Misha then pointed to a wide opening and a set of stairs down in the building. Above the doorway was a red, circular logo with a white symbol. "We go in here." Bran continued as they walked down into the train station. "When talking about the body, like with medicine or sports, this... ’magic’ is called ’qi’ or ’vital energy’. With mental stuff, it’s usually something like ’intention’. In the arts, it’s called ’inspiration’. In religion, it would be ’faith’. A friend of mine said there’s something like that in quantum mechanics, but I don’t really get it. Oh, and spiritual energy, that’s another name for it. I guess you could say it’s the invisible fuel that makes the world go round, like... electricity." "You’re saying writing a book is a kind of magic?" "What, you think silly old humans can come up with stories all on their own?" Misha thought about the best, most exciting novels he’d ever read. "You have a point." The pair reached the turnstiles and Bran showed Misha how to enter using a special card. "But I want to make it clear," he said, "that I’m not saying that, say, qi is the same thing as inspiration. No one really knows if they’re exactly the same thing, just different names for the same phenomenon, or if they’re different things that carry out similar roles in different cultures and so on." "Or something totally different," added Misha. They happened to reach the platform right as the train doors opened and Misha needed no instruction to rush onto it. "Exactly." Bran shook his head as the doors closed behind them. "I probably shouldn’t have told you all this stuff. It’s just going to make you more confused." "No, no, it’s really interesting," said Misha. He paused a moment to admire the blinking lights on the route map above the door of the train. "You know a lot about this kind of stuff." "A bit," admitted Bran. The train rumbled to life and began to hurtle down the dark tunnels beneath the harbour. Bran, too, looked at the route map to make sure they were on the right train going in the right direction. "But I actually don’t know a lot. It’s just been on my mind since a friend of mine’s been researching it and I’ve been helping him out. He’s working on a unifying theory for Theogony." "Oh..." Misha nodded a few times, clearly overloaded with information. He looked around then suddenly leaned closer to Bran conspiratorially. "So, how do dragons fit into all of this?" "I don’t follow." "Like, are they transformed humans, or... or naturally appearing animals, or...?" "Ah, the latter. Humans can’t turn into dragons. Asiatic dragons at least are more like... Do you know Chinese?" Bran suddenly asked. "Like the language? Very, very little." "Ah, okay. Asiatic dragons, Chinese dragons, are basically, uh, divine beasts, legendary creatures. They have intelligence and speech and once they’ve grown enough in power then they can take another form, like a human being." "And Western dragons?" "From what I understand they’re more like animals." "Fire breathing animals." "Something like that." There was also another type of dragon, but Bran considered that too farfetched for this conversation. It only existed in theory anyway. He closed his eyes and leaned against the railing. The headache was getting worse. There was a dull shudder and the artificial light in the train cabin suddenly shifted as the train emerged from underground. Naturally Misha took a moment to stare wide-eyed out at the strange yet also familiar scene outside. It was flatter on this side of the harbour and the roads looked less windey. "So, if this is all real," he began to ask, before turning back to Bran. "Why don’t people know about it? I mean, why don’t- Bran, are you alright?" "I’m fine. Just a headache. It’ll pass." He didn’t look fine. He was pale and leaning heavily against a handrail, but if he said he was fine... "I can carry your bag for you," Misha said, reaching to take the instrument case from Bran. "Don’t..."