Chapter Text
“Tighnari,” Collei said between bites of the slice of bread she had just lathered jam onto. “When can I start learning more ranger skills?”
“Well, my last apprentice just graduated last week as you know, and you’ve been doing well in your studies, so I don’t see why you couldn’t start.
“Really? You mean it?”
Tighnari nodded and gave her a look over as she jumped out of her seat, flapping her arms in excitement. She’s been putting on some healthy weight finally, in the past few months she’s been working on her eating troubles and exploring new foods. She hasn’t stopped being picky by any means, but when she gets a plate of food in front of her that she likes, she eats like a swarm of ravens. A smile crossed his face, as along with that weight came an impressive amount of energy. She always loved to help out but struggled because of how weak she was and how quickly she was exhausted.
“When can we start? What can I do? Can—”
“Catch your breath sweetheart, finish your breakfast and I can give you your orientation.”
“Yes sir!”
Tighnari giggled as she wolfed down the rest of her meal, filled with the immense pride of a first-time parent seeing his kid start to grow up. Thankfully she was taking after his academic prowess rather than her other father’s, or she wouldn’t have the free time to allow for ranger training.
Tighnari pushed his way through the doors of the small shed that Collei had come to know was where the Forest Rangers stored various tools, equipment, and weapons. He reached over and pulled a string hanging from the ceiling that turned on a lamp above the large central table. On it was a beautiful blue, black, and gold recurve bow, decorated with light blue feathers.
Collei stared for a moment before she realized Tighnari was waiting for her. “Wait, for me?” He nodded at her with a smile across his face, She reached for it, excitedly but gently picking it up. “How do I string it?”
“That’s a great place to start! But, though I did have it custom made for you, it’s probably a bit too heavy for you to draw on your own for now. Until you’re a bit stronger you’ll be using one of the trainer bows.
Collei frowned for a moment, but was immediately filled with a motivation to not only earn her keep with the Rangers, but to be able to use this gift. “Okay, let’s do it.”
Tighnari pulled a much lighter looking bow from the wall next to him and handed it to her. “First, take the string and loop it on this side. Then, put that side down on the ground and hold the top with one hand, keep the string in the other. Carefully step on it and push the top down until you can reach the string around. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”
She gave the instructions a shot, and immediately got frustrated at how difficult it was despite Tighnari’s confidence. She looked at him like a sad puppy, and the look he gave in response didn’t even need the words to accompany it. Use your words, Collei.
“Dad, can you help?”
“That’s Master Tighnari to you while you’re on duty as my apprentice, but yes.” He lended a hand to push the top of the bow down with a little bit more force than she could manage on her own, and after a small amount of fumbling she managed to get the bowstring hooked properly.
“Why was it unstrung anyways?”
“If you keep it strung too long when you aren’t using it, the wood will warp over time and get set in a bent position, and it will lose its ability to snap back when you release the string. This is one of the simplest aspects of taking care of a bow, just like making sure to not dry fire.”
Collei nodded along, but cocked her head sideways in confusion at the last comment.
“Right. Dry firing is when you pull the string back without an arrow nocked to it and fire it,” Tighnari explained. “Despite the arrows being very small and light, the energy from the string being pulled back mostly gets transferred into it. If there isn’t an arrow, that energy gets redirected into the bow itself, and it can’t handle it”
“Oh okay, that makes sense. I’ll remember that.”
Tighnari slung a quiver over his back then led her out of the shed and a few hundred feet away where they found a set of wooden targets.
“This is a target. You’ve surely seen them before, but I’ll explain anyway. This small circle in the middle is generally your goal when you’re shooting, but for now your goal is to hit it at all.” He walked her ten paces away, and then stopped and handed her an arrow. “This has a rounded tip on it, it’s for your safety while training. Keep in mind though that this will still injure any living thing it hits, so you have to be careful. Also, put this on.” He tossed her a piece of heavy fabric with two stretchy straps attached to it, and explained, “This is an arm guard. It’ll protect your forearm from getting cut up by the string when you shoot. Eventually you’ll learn to not need it, but you’ll want it for now. Do you want to give it a shot on your own?”
Collei nodded, quickly figuring out the straps and getting it situated on her forearm. Tighnari nodded and gestured to the bow. She fumbled with it, and eventually figured out how to nock the arrow. She lifted the bow up and pulled the string back, visibly struggling even with the trainer bow, arrow wobbling along with her arms. She released the arrow, and to no surprise it soared over the target and into the dirt mound behind it.
Before she could even frown, Tighnari started clapping. “Well done for a first try! You’re going to get it in no time.”
Despite her frustrations, she listened to him correct her form and show her how to aim. With proper form it was much easier to draw the bow, and she could focus on aiming better. In just a few attempts, her shots started consistently hitting the target, much to her father’s delight.
After around an hour of repetitions, he stopped her. “Give it a rest for now, you don’t want to overwork yourself.” He poured dendro energy into the targets to repair the damaged wood, then he taught her a few stretches to keep herself limber before going back to the shed to put the bow and arrows away. “Now, would you like to come with me on my patrol? I’ll take a basic route today to show you around.”
Collei nodded aggressively, as patrolling was one of the reasons she was most excited to become a forest ranger. In school she had taken interest to plants, and started to sketch the ones she could see without straying too far from Gandharva Ville to later identify them in the library. She wanted to go further into the forest to find more, but Tighnari told her it was too dangerous.
“Okay sprout, do you want to grab your sk—” before he could even finish, she pulled out a pencil and the book that was around half full of drawings of different flowers, vegetation, and animals that could be seen from her perch or the forest floor below. “Who am I kidding, of course you don’t go anywhere without it. Let’s get going.”
She followed attentively, though occasionally getting distracted by a specimen she didn’t recognize, pausing Tighnari’s spiel to sketch out a picture and take a few notes on it. Along the route, he explained the duties of the forest rangers, from checking on the health of wildlife to making sure to take note of any suspicious activity. He explained that sometimes they would have additional objectives, like collecting various materials or investigating previous reports that needed a closer eye.
“For now, let’s loop back to the village.” The sun had started to peek below the canopy, indicating it was dinner time. “You won’t be on a patrol alone for a while, but I wanted to show you what it’s like for now. Still having fun?”
She nodded intently. “Patrols are the best part so far! Bows are cool but tiring, this is really fun!”
He chuckled, not surprised in any way. “Let’s get back, it’s your favorite tonight, and Cyno should be back from the desert by sunset.”
Excited by the news, she ran along, making him jog to keep up. As they approached their house in the trees, he noticed the lights were already on and there were two familiar silhouettes in the window. As Collei reached the door, she sprinted through and jumped full force into hugging Cyno, nearly knocking him over. He’d been on a mission for the past two months, and was pleasantly reminded that she was growing as Tighnari had mentioned in his letters.
He stumbled back momentarily but caught himself and her in his arms, swinging her around him and setting her down after a few seconds. “Hey sprout, welcome home! Where were you two?”
“I started training to become a forest ranger today! Tighnari taught me how to shoot a bow and took me on my first ever patrol”
“Oh wow! Now isn’t that wonderful, my little ranger.”
Tighnari then ducked into the room, walking over to his husband to give him a hug and a kiss on the forehead. He turned his attention to the second figure he’d noticed from the window, who Collei seems to have entirely missed in her tunnel-visioned dash at her dad. “Well hello there, I take it you’re back from your tour?”
The red-haired woman, momentarily enamored by how adorable Collei was, turned her gaze to him, and responded “Indeed I am.” Immediately back to the young girl, she squatted down slightly to Collei’s eye level before outstretching a hand for her to shake. She wasn’t that much taller than the teenage girl, but the gesture was appreciated and made her feel much safer to meet her. “I’m Nilou, and you must be the Collei I’ve heard so much about.”
Collei shyly nodded, carefully reaching out to return her handshake. While she was becoming more and more accustomed to meeting people, the breaks in routine it usually entailed still caught her off guard.
Cyno piped up, having planted himself in one of the chairs around their table. “Nilou is a friend of ours from when we were young. She’s a dancer and just returned from her tour across Teyvat, so I figured I’d invite her over.” Turning to look at Nilou with a mischievous smile that already made groan and roll her eyes back, he asked, “I hope your tour was good, but when is your Threer going to be? Did you ever even have a Oner?
The rest of the adults in the room firmly planted their faces in their palms, wholly unimpressed by Cyno’s joke as usual. Collei let out a pitiful giggle, but that was enough to make him feel as if he had accomplished his goal.
“The tour was lovely, but I’m exhausted. I’m going to take a break to choreograph some new routines and teach some lessons for a while.”
Collei perked up, “Lessons?”
“Yes, while I’m not on tour I teach singing and dancing lessons. I don’t need the money, but I love teaching people the arts. Why, are you interested? Plan on following in Nari’s footsteps?”
She was caught up for a moment on her calling him Nari—nobody else did that, they must be close—but then immediately questioned, “Wait, his footsteps?” When her eyes met Tighnari, he was already reaching over to a bookshelf that she knew carried some albums of her parents’ memories. He flipped through some pages, found what he was looking for, then beckoned her over to look.
When she came over, she saw a collage of kamera photos of a younger Nilou dancing with a beautiful fox-like woman with oddly similar features to her dad. “Wait, do you have a si—” She realized mid sentence that she was looking at her father from when he was younger. The same ears, same tail, same eyes, but widely different in just about every other way.
“Do I really look that different? I guess this treatment I invented actually does work!”
The adults broke out laughing at Collei’s slack-jawed look, it was always entertaining when someone didn’t recognize him in old photos. When she finally collected herself, she looked to Nilou and asked, “Can you teach me how to dance? And Sing? And um, if you know how to sing can you teach me how to... train my voice... to be more girly?”
Finishing off her laughter with a giggle, “Of course, I’d love to! Of course we’d have to work around your school schedule and your ranger training, but I can do that for sure! It’ll be great exercise too, Nari had an advantage when he wanted to join the Rangers because he was already so agile and strong from dancing.”
Collei beamed with excitement, her eyes practically begging her to start teaching her now, which Tighnari begrudgingly allowed while he and Cyno began cooking a meal for four. Collei was still clumsy and far from coordinated, and got tired quickly, but Nilou was shocked by how motivated she was to continue.
As the night came to a close, Collei said goodnight to her dads before they went to show Nilou to the guest house. As she climbed into bed her exhaustion from the long, active day hit her in full force and she was asleep within minutes.