Misha didn't speak the rest of that day. Instead, after returning home, he spent most of his time staring absentmindedly at a tracing he'd taken of the small profile picture from his mother's grave. He stared at it and stared at it, yet found it became no more familiar than a stranger's face.
He spoke a little the next day, greeted Bran in the morning and gave short answers when asked questions, but he otherwise remained silent, though instead of staring at his mother's picture, he read Bran's notebooks.
Bran decided that it was an improvement and quietly stayed by his side, not too close to be a bother but close enough that he could answer any questions he might come up with.
There were none.
Finally, on the fourth day, Misha came back to himself.
He hugged Bran.
Bran had been about ready to start cooking that day's breakfast when Misha padded up from behind and put his arms around him and hugged him tight.
"Let me cook," he said.
They hadn't slept in the same bed since the adventure in the dream-Coil so the sudden contact was all the more startling to Bran.
"Alright," he managed to say after a moment.
Something had changed in the last few days. At first, Bran had just thought it was an internal thing just in Misha but he was realising now that it was more between the two of them.
Misha let Bran go and he stepped aside to let the dragon take over the breakfast making. As he did, he took the opportunity to give Misha a look over.
He looked alright, not totally better, but much improved.
Perhaps now was a good time to try his little idea, Bran thought to himself.
"Misha?"
"Mm?"
"I need to take a trip to the Under City. Want to come?"
Misha flipped both fried eggs. "What's the Under City?" he asked as he moved the eggs to one side to allow a bit of space to toast the bread.
Bran resisted the temptation to grin. Just yesterday Misha wouldn't have asked but now that he was, it really did mean he was getting better.
"The Under City's a city made by and for the supernatural and paranormal and all that. Most places have something like it," explained Bran.
"A secret magic city?"
"More or less."
Misha finished with the eggs and toast and plated them both. He turned off the stove then gave one plate to Bran. "I… I'd like to come," he said eventually. "If you don't think I'll be a bother."
"When have you ever been a bother?" was Bran's immediate reply. He took the plate then ushered Misha out of the kitchen. "Anytime you have a question, just ask. It's never a bother."
--
We packed two large bags, and with your usual instrument case, we ended up carrying with us no small amount of items. Mostly they were multiple sets of clothes (in case I had any accidents) but there were also bits and bobs that I guessed were for spells or something. I didn't ask since, even though you said I wasn't a bother, I couldn't help feeling like one.
I'm not sure what made me feel like that. Maybe it was just from suddenly realising that the last thing that tied me to my old life, my father, was now gone. Or maybe it was from saving you in the dream-Coil. Up until that point I'd come to think of you as basically omnipotent, yet that experience showed me that you're as human as I am.
…That's not actually a very accurate phrase, but I think it gets my point across. Basically, I suddenly realised that you're fallible.
I guess, at the end of the day, whichever reason it was, or even if it was both, I was feeling small and vulnerable like a little child and to be honest, I was glad to have a distraction. I'm not sure if that's what you were trying to do in suggesting the trip to the Under City, but it helped.
Initially, I thought we'd be making the trip through that magical door in the living room, but it turns outdoor rentals in the Under City cost an arm and a leg. I guess if parking costs a fortune in cities, then it makes sense that a magical, teleporting door should also be expensive in a magical city.
Which is how I found myself squeezed in next to you on a little boat bobbing around in one of the bays up north past Sai Kung. The squeezing was because, apart from us, there was at least a dozen other people all on the same small vessel all 'ooh-ing' and 'ahh-ing' and snapping pictures on their phones. Tourists, in other words.
I leaned a little closer to you. "Where are we going?" I asked.
"To the Under City."
"...Is it also a tourist destination?"
You chuckled. "No. But-"
The waves from a nearby ship rocked our little vessel something silly and I immediately grabbed for you. Water smacked against the side of the boat, spraying us all. You patted my hand.
"Don't worry," you said, and almost as quickly as you said it, the rocking of the boat stopped.
"What did you do?" I whispered.
"Nothing," you replied. Then you nodded toward the prow of the boat where the captain of this merry vessel stood resolutely.
I'd thought him a funny character when we first got on, what with his pirate hat and clothing from another era, but now I looked at him with more observant eyes.
"Is he… someone different?" I asked.
You nodded. "He's a jing. Some animals or objects, if they stick around long enough, they can end up with a soul, and if they cultivate it enough, they can change forms. That's what a jing is."
"So, what was he?"
"No idea."
Another wave came, a smaller one this time, and a gaggle of twittering tourists shouted in excitement. I sighed. Did getting annoyed at tourists mean you'd become a local? I don't know, but I was annoyed nonetheless, though you didn't seem to care at all.
After a few more minutes of waves and annoyance, the little boat neared then docked at a very strange rocky island. We were in the middle of the bay, yet this literal spit of land stuck out like a sore thumb.
The tourists, newly invigorated by the prospect of land, quickly jumped off the boat and started snapping away. You and me were at the end of the queue and were the last apart from our 'pirate captain' to get off.
"Long time no see, Little Raven!" the pirate called out. He was old and wrinkly and had a bad posture yet there was something irrepressibly alive about him, and it wasn't just the large feather pluming out from his hat.
You grinned and replied to him in Cantonese then nodded toward the island.
The man gave a laugh. "You better take the narrower route. The government had to block off the main one after a tourist got stuck there last year."
You said something to him that sounded like thanks then turned to me. "Let's go."
The sky was bright and blue and I was glad for the hat you'd forced on my head earlier even if my horns did stick out awkwardly into the brim on the inside. You were wearing one too and you looked really cute with it. Just thought I should mention that.
"Little Raven?" I asked after we were some distance away talking along the rocky beach. The rocks here were reddish and shaped like hexagons.
"Little raven?" you asked as you cut a path up over the rocks, away from where the tourists had gone.
"He called you 'little raven', right?"
"Oh, that's interesting." You nodded. "My Chinese name means 'raven', so I guess when he spoke, you heard it as its literal meaning."
"Ah, since he's a jing and I'm a dragon I can understand him no matter what language he speaks. But I couldn't understand you…"
"I'm a human. That's outside of your domain," you said.
"But when you and Amethyst talk, I can understand both of you," I said.
"That's cos I spoke in English, and she spoke in Cantonese."
"Eh? Really? I had no idea! Huh…" I looked out at the sea and the dark green coastline. There were small white houses along the water and a few dotted higher up in the mountains. In the far distance I could pick out the grey blue silhouette of the mountain range that divided the New Territories where we were and Kowloon, where we lived. "What's your Chinese name?" I asked, suddenly curious.
"Wu Siu-aa,[1]" you replied. "Or Wu Xiaoya in Mandarin."
"And it means 'raven'?" I asked.
"My surname in English is D'Arcy, which means dark-haired one, so my mum picked wu as my surname since it means 'black' and is part of the word of raven or crow, wu-aa."
"But why 'raven'?"
"Because 'Bran' means 'raven'."
"Really?"
You nodded. "What about you? Do you have a Chinese name?"
"I do." I eyed him. "But I don't want to say it. I'll say it wrong."
You laughed. "If you don't practice, how will you improve?"
"Plenty of people live here without speaking Chinese properly. That's what my father told me."
The sudden mention of my father surprised both of us and we fell into silence. From faraway I could hear the voices of the tourists as they went into some cave.
"Your father wasn't wrong," you finally said, the past tense making me feel cold. "You can get by just fine if you just stick to the western side of Pearl island. That's mostly where all the expats live and work."
I thought about how to reply to that. When my father had first floated the idea of me moving to Pearl City, the language had been one of my concerns (I'd never gotten further than a few phrases relatives had made me learn for Chinese New Year visits), but my father had said it would be fine. Had he, even then, planned on killing me, or had he really wanted me to come live with him and the killing business came up later? And was his death just now a coincidence or something more?
"Loong Yook-mahn[2]," I said instead, "as in 'dragon', 'jade' and 'alabaster'. That's my Chinese name."
I didn't want to 'just get by'.
I wanted to live.
[1] 吴小鸦
[2] 龙玉珉