Âu Cơ stood upon the highest peak overlooking the eastern ocean. The wind brushed against her flesh, cool and salty, prickling at her eyes. But no tear would be shed, not with her children behind her, huddling together and staring intently at her back. Âu Cơ readjusted her stance as she beheld the roaring waters below, her shoulders lax, her back upright, conveying the sense of stability that she knew her children needed. She was the mountain that they could lean on during their time of need, and she would embody that role with utmost dignity.

Her eyes turned toward the sun up high as the waves continued lapping at the shore. The wind’s unceasing whispers teased her ears. Her lips then parted, and her voice soared above those noises, silencing them.

“Husband!” Âu Cơ exclaimed, the word encompassing the space. “Why are you not coming home? Why are you still leaving your wife and children here to suffer the silence of your departure?”

For a moment, time slowed to a halt. The wind stopped blowing. The waves ceased their raucous play. The sun grew dimmer, its radiance disrupted by a black spot emerging from the ocean. The silhouette shot toward the sky, coiling and circling midair for a while before flying straight toward Âu Cơ. She blinked once, and the sight that filled her vision shifted, now dominated by a massive maw of rending teeth. No wind was cooling her skin now. Instead, a stream of breath washed over her, carrying with it the scents of the seas, of the creatures and plants that thrived beneath the restless surface. Instead of the beaming sun, she was staring into two glowing eyes, massive and profound like the abysses they commanded. In place of the sapphire sky, there were now azure scales that ran along a serpentine body, luminous against the shadow they cast.

In front of this mighty presence, Âu Cơ stood her ground, unmoved, unflinching. She peered into those orbs that studied her, trying not to drown in the gaze that had once upon a time pierced her heart. Within them, she sought the warmth that had for decades enkindled her thoughts, the same spark that had been ripped away without warning.

“Husband,” she said, and the Dragon King responded.

A huff of air forced her eyes to blink, and when she reopened them, there stood a man before her, familiar and foreign at the same time.

“My wife,” Lạc Long Quân spoke, his voice rumbling like a thousand waves crashing against the shore. Any lesser being would have been brought to their knees, but Âu Cơ did not move, her head still high and her back still straight, meeting her husband’s gaze. There was a storm brewing inside each of them, and any misstep would unleash it into this fragile world. Âu Cơ saw her husband’s shrinking pupils look past her for a fleeting moment toward the waiting children before they refocused on her, as intense as the first time they’d met.

“Decades have passed since your spouse and children last laid eyes upon you, and that is all you have to say, Sire?” Âu Cơ’s words punctured the inflated quietude, and the air trembled with each breath.

Lạc Long Quân regarded her, trying to picture the girl with whom he’d fallen in love, with whom he’d married and built a family. It was a difficult task, like finding a specific grain of sand that had long sunken to the ocean’s floor. Memories of that girl lingered in his mind, overlapping with the present but not quite matching up. Gone were the upward curls around the lustrous lips. Lost was the laughter that made the winds sing with the swaying leaves. Before him now was a woman that truly embodied her divine lineage as a descendant of the ancient Mountain Fairies, beautiful and staunch like they domains over which they reigned. The Dragon King blinked, and the traces of the past dissipated like mist in the sunlight.

“What would you have me say?” he asked, and the waves behind him surged anew toward the shoreline.

“A reason,” Âu Cơ at once replied. “An explanation. Or perhaps, an excuse. Anything would be preferable to the suffocating silence that you have left us with. Anything at all would be more bearable compared to the emptiness that has been haunting us ever since you disappeared.”

She could never forget that time, a normal day like any other, devoid of any omens about a sudden parting when her life had been blessed with so much joy. Her children were growing up, one hundred sons as charming and merry as their mother and as healthy and handsome as their father. But after she’d taken some time to think about it, the subtle signs had been there all along, in the way her husband would stay out later with an unfathomable look in his eyes as he directed his gaze eastward, watching the sun rise and set over the waters he called home, lost in the foams that rose and shattered upon reaching land. The roars of the seas had attracted his ears more than the cries of his subjects and children. The wild winds of the mountains, once a source of comfort to him, had eventually displeased him, and he would seek reprieve with leisurely strolls along the shore, basking in the salty scents that embraced him, that he embraced in turn.

Âu Cơ remembered that day with perfect clarity, when she’d walked outside to the sight of her beloved looking toward the heaven, his body covered in a brilliant aura. Then, his mortal form was cast aside, transformed into that of a fearsome Dragon spiraling toward the distant horizon, seduced by what she now knew to be the homesickness that he’d tried to resist but ultimately yielded to. No goodbye had been spoken. A cold blast of wind had scattered her cries, garnering not a single response. And there she’d stood, alone, a queen without her king, with one hundred pairs of eyes poking at her back, watching their mighty mountain falter for the first time.

Lạc Long Quân’s lips did not move, but in his eyes, something seemed to surface, a flash of humanity within the boundless depths of divinity. 

Âu Cơ held him in her gaze. Her mind traveled further back in time, back to the day she’d first encountered him as if by Fortune’s design, back when her father Đế Lai had led his army southbound, back when she’d been brought along, sequestered in her newly erected castle, surrounded by the riches of nature and insulated from the screams of the enslaved. Those poor souls had begged their Divine Father for salvation, as she would later learn. As promised, he’d arrived to aid his tormented people, a young man of ethereal beauty leading a group of servants straight into her father’s fortified stronghold, unhindered. Âu Cơ had never given much thought to the notion of fate, but on that day, a brief exchange of eye contact had been more than enough to make her fate intertwine with his.

She remembered how she’d traded one castle for another up in the mountain, far away from her father’s reach. No soldier could breach the defensive lines formed by the prowling beasts, with their claws sharpened and fangs readied to tear all hapless invaders to shreds. Đế Lai had been left with no choice but to retreat. Âu Cơ had never thought about her father much afterwards until now. For a second, she wondered how he was doing after all these years, but she quickly decided that it didn’t matter anymore. The string that connected her to her father had long been severed by her own hand, and there was no mending it.

She viewed the present Lạc Long Quân more closely, seeing the one behind the glamour for the first time in a long time. His face was that of a man, but not really. His body resembled a human’s, but not completely. Even now, she could feel the coldness of the ocean emanating from his being, clinging onto him like an inescapable net. She felt something tugging at the corner of her mouth. A Mountain Fairy locked within a gilded cage amid her own domain and a Dragon King encumbered by the pressure of the seas. What a pair they made.

Unconsciously, her hand trailed down her stomach as memories of her laborious months reemerged. There had been days of merriment. There had been nights of passion. She had treasured them all, cherishing every moment spent with her beloved. She had loved him with his glamour on. She had adored him with his mask discarded. She had given him her everything, and in return, he had given her the greatest of gifts.

A ghost of a smile graced Âu Cơ’s lips as she thought about the day she’d given birth to a golden sac containing a hundred eggs, each one bearing a descendant of their unified bloodlines. The hundred children that she’d been blessed with would make the days brighter and the nights fuller, but to think that this would be the outcome of their presumed eternity. She should have known that nothing would last forever, and now, as she looked at the man she called husband, all she saw was another string, fraying in the middle, pulled at both ends.

“Your answer, Sire,” Âu Cơ said, her voice as steady as the earth that supported her.

Lạc Long Quân’s eyes changed. Gone was that last vestige of humanity she’d sought out in those orbs. Gone was that beautiful boy to whom she’d pledged her life. Gone was the woven glamour now that the string between them lied in tatters.

“I am a Sea Dragon by nature. You are of the Mountain Fairies’ descent. Like the land and seas, we are meant to meet but never merge for good,” Lạc Long Quân spoke, a declaration that caused the air to stir and the waves to speed. Âu Cơ said nothing in response. Lạc Long Quân carried on.

“Our paths were entwined, but now, they must part. But I shall henceforth bear my share of the load. One hundred sons you have birthed. Half of them will follow me to the coast below. The other half will follow you toward the mountains above. Though we tread our separate ways, let us agree on a common ground. Should either side ever require assistance, the other will always come to render assistance.”

No more words left Âu Cơ’s lips. A nod was all she gave him before she left with fifty pairs of feet trailing after her. She never glanced back once the last goodbye to the sons that would not come with her had been said, her gait as steady as ever, for the mountain would not bend, even against the roughest of waves.

Lạc Long Quân stood at that precipice, watching until her figure and those of her sons could no longer be discerned, hidden amid the murmuring leaves and bowing trees. The eldest of their children would be bestowed the kingly title of Hùng Vương, ruling over the southern realm that Lạc Long Quân left behind in favor of the watery domain that had given him life. The children that followed him would establish new lives at the coast, perfecting the trades their sire taught them just like their siblings on the highlands who learned from their mother. A new civilization named Văn Lang would take shape following this parting, thriving both on land and at sea.

Neither the Mountain Fairy nor the Dragon King would be seen again in the mortal plane, for they had found their closure and entrusted those inheriting their will to thenceforth forge their own destinies, separated by distance but always connected by the shared blood that flowed inside their veins, that of the valiant Dragon and the graceful Fairy of yore.

[Ngo Binh Anh Khoa is a teacher of English in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In his free time, he enjoys reading fiction and writing speculative poetry. His works have appeared in Penumbric, Star*Line, Weirdbook, Spectral Realms, and other venues. He also enjoys writing haiku, some of which have received awards and honorable mentions in international contests in the USA, the UK, Japan, Canada, and elsewhere.]