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Cecilia’s are spring flowers, made to bloom and glow in the sunlights graces. They’re oftentimes used as decor for special events, plucked and displayed in tidy vases and organized ribbons, and the Windblume Festival is no exception to this rule.
Dozens would be scattered about, trampled, and stamped onto stone footholds when it’s time to dance, elevated cheers sung off into the fleeting wind right before nightfall, hands grasping, shoulder-to-shoulder with none other than your friend or lover with cheery grins across your faces, cheeks ample and red.
Would you share a kiss under the moonlight? Would your hands and legs tangle beneath the stars and the sky, relishing time spent before reality sets in once more?
A cup of cider is nursed, decisive expressions formed, nay exchanged, those staying inside remaining cautious to their bread and butter. Lumine was amongst these few, finding herself tuckered out after owing one too many dances with promising prospects and proposals, the famous traveler finding her name uttered and plastered everywhere she went.
Seasonally, she’d find herself in a similar predicament, moping around during the holidays. Something she missed is still out and about, someone she cherishes like none other. Dearly.
There are few that can contest; Paimon, first and foremost, her trusty companion that will be the beginning of the end in Teyvat, floating right by her side at all times. She will be missing her favorite fairy when this journey is over, to which, as she sees it, that day will one day come.
Nahida, the very Archon that sought to retrieve answers, and so she did, in an (dis)orderly fashion. She wouldn’t be continuing on her journey to Fontaine, and later Natlan, if it hadn’t been for her solutions. And for that, she is grateful.
Xiao. She’ll miss his brooding personality, and at times his dull sheepishness, waiting for her when she’ll never return to Liyue. One day, and a million more.
She’s unsure on how she’ll feel once that time comes. Certainly she’ll venture out and beyond, just to bid a farewell to everyone she met on her travels. She wouldn’t leave like a small travel of light in the darkness of the later hours, impending in the wake of the slumbering citizens and reigning Archons.
Her mind nervously flutters at the thought, be it sadness or any anxious imagination of hers. And then, as if it had wandered beyond the boundary of what she’d normally in her lonesome like this, her companion surely sampling as much food as she can get her fill of before they’re off to Snezhnaya, a word (or rather a phrase, a title held close) enters the fray.
A lover.
Not many have come close to such a thing, and yet she feels her face heat at the implications, planting her half cup of cider on the wooden table before her (a bit too rough, might she add, barely able to pay attention to the few specks of liquid that sloshed out) to pat at her cheek. She’s never had the time to think of it, let alone entertain the notion.
There’s a certain individual that does come to mind.
A mesmerizing soul, a peculiar shade of green and blue meshed in perfect harmony—just like the skies back home. Someone who never fails to put a smile on her face, as common as it may be, her heart flutters the most when she’s around none other than a bard without a will or a way to the key already plucked from her heart.
And he held that key dearly. Oh so dearly, snug against his chest, and she knew it.
Truth be told she couldn’t find it within herself to entertain such things. Her brother and similar troubling predicaments are dire of a matter indeed, some that will only continue to grow as time passes.
One day she will leave. She’s aware, and she knows this to a painful degree, but…
With her forehead pressed against the skin of her hand, Lumine drowns her thoughts out at the busy bustlings of the interior at Angel’s Share, her eyes squinted and cheeks flushed.
She felt ridiculous. So ridiculous to the point of her heart beating out of her chest, the influence of cider warming her face and muddling her brain, infected with thoughts of a charming grin and a smooth breeze. She could practically smell the seawater from Starsnatch Cliff.
“Get it together, Lumine…”
Her words were but a whisper, asking herself if she should do better with her time in Mondstadt in place of moping around with thoughts that she never even dreamed of having.
Granted, her dreams were of a strange sense of clarity; sure, she’s pictured the bard more than once, but he was always without his prominent features that she’s grown to love. It evokes her to carve her own wants and desires into his skin, to forgo the thought of rescuing her brother *even if it’s just for a little while*, to burst like a dying star and turn into dark, dark matter.
There’s still the faint scent of the sea—as if she knew the location like the back of her own hand out of pure recognition, and he’s still wearing green and white. His cape is draping in the wind like a flag on a pole, and it only brings her to question the fabric idly, as if she didn’t want to approach him from behind.
She knows that she can’t cave. She knows her efforts can’t go to waste.
Still…
When the bard turns to face her, as if he had been anticipating her long-awaited arrival (to which he certainly wouldn’t be the first), his traits are gone. Not a smile on his lips, nor were his perfectly painted eyes pinching upwards, shining as bright as the vast Fontainian sea, or perhaps an oasis in the desert that withholds a certain glint from a further distance, parched and starved with your feet planted in the scorching hot sand.
No. The man from her dreams would always pale in comparison to the real thing. She simply couldn’t picture his face, not even on a good day.
That’s why, each time he makes his presence known, a wave of relief crashes onto her and soon recedes into a warm, tingly sensation. She feels stupid without fail—how could she forget?
It scares her. What if, after everything is said and done and she’s no longer crossing swords one region to the next, she’s unable to picture him at all? Would he gradually fade away like a figment of a distant past?
She takes another swig of her cider.
She can’t wait for this season to pass. She’s tired of seeing Cecilia’s bloom; a constant reminder of what she wishes to do instead of what she should be doing.
Her mug is shrinking into emptiness. This liquid was no longer fresh out of the barrel.
And for once, she speaks up in her haze, raising a hand just to dig herself deeper.
”A refill, please!”