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It’s raining on the day she dies.
Everything is disorientating and her hand is pressed against the fresh wound on her abdomen that bleeds out and stains her white dress crimson. It hurts; of course it does, why would it not?
She has trespassed on these lands, meddled in the affairs of the gods, and now she is going to pay with her life. A fitting ending, she would think, for an outsider.
The tree she’s resting under does little to shelter her from the rain that pelts against her sweat-slicked skin. Her eyelids feel heavy, and she’s beginning to doze off despite the chill that cuts down to the bone. Lumine can vaguely register Paimon’s frantic voice above the sound of sheets of falling rain as the small female promises to find help, but Lumine knows it’s already far too late.
She smiles.
“It’s alright, Paimon,” she says. “I will be right here.”
It’s a lie.
When Paimon returns with Amber and Jean, she is gone. There is nothing left of her existence except a patch of blood stained grass and shards of fragmented light that shimmer brightly in the darkness before dissolving into nothingness.
The howling wind sounds a lot like someone is crying.
Lumine remembers the first time she dies.
She’s wading, thighs deep, in the rushing current. Water swirls around her legs and threatens to tear her apart if she were to take the wrong step. Her brother clings desperately to the trunk of an uprooted tree that remains lodged in the middle of the river. She reaches out a hand, stretching and reaching for him, calling his name over the crashing waters.
Lumine is so, so close. Her fingertips brush against her brother’s, but her foot from underneath her slips, and she’s sent careening into the river that swallows her whole. Aether screams her name as she’s sent under.
And then she’s drowning, drowning, drowning.
She thrashes desperately, fighting to resurface, but even she can’t tell which direction is up or down anymore. Black spots gradually creep along her vision as the freezing waters drag her down to her watery grave. Finally, her lungs give in and she sinks to the bottom. The death that follows after feels like peace.
Lumine wakes up again in a field. Her clothes are dry, and it’s like the entire incident never happened. Her brother tells her she’s been gone for five years. It felt like five minutes.
She’s given a proper burial ceremony, despite the fact that she had no body to bury.
It’s a cloudy day when she’s officially laid to rest, officially declared as dead, and both the people of Mondstadt and the Knights of Favonius take turns saying their farewells to an empty casket full of cecilia blossoms.
Half of the flowers are supplied by Flora and her shop. The young girl still remembers Lumine’s kindness and generosity when the traveler ventured around Mondstadt, picking flowers to help with her shop’s display. The other half of the flowers are from Diluc’s personal garden because he knows that they’re her favorite.
(She gingerly thumbs a soft petal between her fingers. Her expression appears thoughtful, but there is melancholy in her golden eyes. “They’re beautiful,” she says, a gentle smile gracing her lips.)
Diluc is immensely uncomfortable the entire procession, and his silence is a testament to that. The whole event reminds him of his father’s death. It had been raining on the day he passed as well. However, unlike his father, Lumine was going to be remembered as a hero.
He loathes this sick system, where deaths hold a weight and a value depending on the person. Regardless, it is a history that repeats itself once more, and still, he is unable to do anything to protect those who are dear to him.
(“Look, Diluc,” she laughs, reaching up to brush the hair away from his face as she tucks a couple of cecilias behind his ear, “we match now.”)
Diluc catches Jean’s worried gaze from the other side of the plaza before he notices the smoke curling from his fingers as the leather of his gloves burn. Squeezing his hands tighter, he turns around and brushes pass the civilians who have yet to pay their respects.
A particularly sharp breeze tugs at his clothes with urgency, and Diluc glances up and catches sight of a very familiar figure. Thinking he must be mistaken, he continues walking onwards, slipping into the crowd and disappearing from sight.
(The cecilias she gave him remain in a small vase on his study’s desk.)
From on top of the Anemo Archon statue, the green bard looks on.
When she is born, she is named Lumine because she will become the light that guides them all.
In a similar sense, her brother is named Aether because he will be the one to hold the heavens on his shoulders.
She has not lived long, but she feels like she’s lived for a millennia.
The sun sets on another day. The sky is still an orange and pink hue, the breeze still smells like the ocean, and the children many generations later still run around roaming free. Years and years have passed, but at the same time, nothing has changed.
The elder that sits beside her on the cliff doesn’t turn to her to ask his question. Instead, his gaze is longingly cast far off into the horizon beyond the edge of the sea.
“Where will you go now?”
Her silence is enough of a confession, but she supposes she can humor him with a response for old times’ sake.
“I don’t know,” is her answer, but she’s gone before the morning comes.
The bard plays a song about her lasting legacy and tales of her glory. It’s known throughout Mondstadt as “Wind of the Traveler” after the name of the poem he had written for her underneath the shade of the great oak tree.
The whispers of the wind call for her return. The light has not yet died, they sing, and their melodies carry far away to those who dare to listen.
He can still feel it—the blessing he bestowed upon her the first time she interacted with one of the Statues of the Seven. Although the tether was faint, it was still present.
Three months is a long time for someone to be gone, but Venti has faith that she will be back. After all, the story of Mondstadt’s hero and the Dawn Winery owner was not one destined to become a tragedy.
Oftentimes, work helps serve as a distraction from his thoughts. These days, however, work only serves as a painful reminder of all that he has lost. Despite the fact that she’s gone, traces of her linger everywhere.
As Diluc wipes a glass with a cloth, his gaze settles on the bar stool that remained empty ever since Lumine’s death. He doesn’t know if it’s out of respect for her or courtesy for him, but nobody dared to claim that seat as their own. His heart grows heavy at the implication.
Sometimes, when he walks alone at night in his manor, he can still picture her crouched over the bed of flowers smiling up at him without a care in the world. Or, when he’s buried in work in the quiet of his study, he can imagine her running her fingers down the spines of books on his shelf, fascinated with every single record there was to read.
Now that she’s gone, it’s like she never existed in the first place except for the memories she left behind. If he had one chance to go back and change things, he would’ve persuaded her to stay.
Then, almost as if the wind could hear his selfish wish, a gentle breeze drifts in through the open window of the Angel’s Share tavern, carrying a single message:
The light has not yet died.
Lumine finds herself waking up facing the clear blue sky.
Curiously, she sits up and glances at her surroundings. Clouds lazily drift on by when she peers over the edge, and she’s so high up that she cannot see the ground below. There’s not a single person here other than her.
It’s disconcertingly quiet. Other than the occasional bird that would soar overhead and the sound of her own footsteps, she hears nothing but silence.
As she looks around, she can spot tall tower structures stretching high into the skies and an endless path before her. The paths branch and connect—diverging and converging—eventually forming a single path.
She takes her time at first, cautious and wary in unfamiliar territory. However, a sense of urgency overtakes her that she can’t quite explain. All she knows is that she must hurry. There was still something that she must do and someone that she must find.
Lumine breaks into a sprint and sees that the path comes to an end at a single door. She does not know where it leads nor does she care, but when the doors swing open on their own, she passes through without a second thought and embraces the light.
When she opens her eyes again, she’s laying in grass in the shade of the great oak. The wind that whistles by greets her like a welcome home.