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The very first thing she sees when she wakes up is a beautiful man with amber eyes.
He doesn’t speak, just looking down at her in silent contemplation, and she wonders what he’s thinking about, this god who had breathed life into her.
It must be a lonely existence, she thinks. To be responsible for the lives of so many.
She isn’t the only one. There are others. But she alone holds a position close to him – she is the one he leaves on the shelf, right above him when he works. She is the one he looks at when he pauses, nimble fingers painting another eye, adjusting fragile limbs.
He treats them all with such patience and respect, she marvels. Though they are little more than toys in his hands, silent and helpless, and he cannot hear their voices.
Dolls have no identity, no past to call their own. She is no exception. But she does want a name. Something she can centre her being around. So that when he glances at her with those lonely eyes she can imagine him calling for her, and maybe that will lift his spirits. He is her god, and gods should not have to be lonely.
He is both strong and gentle. She sees his polearm leaning against the shelf, and later has a dream where he wields it in one hand, the sharp edge carving out a path in a sea of monsters. He holds her, fixes her hair with a wistful look in his eyes, and she imagines doing the same for him, tucking that lock of hair that brushes against his cheek behind his ear.
One day, he speaks to her while she stands there, observing him. “I had to return a doll to a human today.” His hands never stop moving. “She seemed happy. You would have been proud.”
She wants to agree, but she cannot, so she simply waits for him to continue. “I find human children strange. She didn’t seem afraid of me. But most of them never are.”
He is not someone to be afraid of. She remembers that from a distant dream, where she wove silk flowers and placed them on his head, laughing at the look of surprise on his face. She remembers his pause, the way his eyes softened as he smiled, glancing away from her.
It was a sweet dream, and sometimes she misses it, wonders if it would be possible for those fantasies to come true someday.
On another day, he gives her a name. “Lumine,” he whispers, and she listens with rapt attention, curious about the grief in his eyes. “I wish you were here.”
She is here, she wants to say. She is standing here, trying to speak to him with nothing but her eyes and an earnest heart. But he cannot hear her, so she tucks the name away with all intent to treasure it because her god finally named her and now, she exists.
Her dreams are not always pleasant. Sometimes, they make her sad. She thinks about the god she once saw, his amber eyes distant, lips pressed into a frown. I cannot love you, and only you. My heart is bound to Liyue. To everyone in this nation.
She does not understand what Liyue is. She has no world beyond this room; everything is contained in this miniature garden, this shelf where dried flowers rest among paint and brushes. She can almost recognise the flower crown hanging beside his bed.
His name is Xiao, she hears one day, when someone knocks on his door with a familiar dish in their hands. Almond tofu, she thinks. She suspects he likes it, though she cannot explain why. Her god takes the dish with thanks, but leaves it on his table, uneaten.
“You know how to make dolls? They’re so pretty.” She searched for another word, gaze fixed on the shelf above his head, dried petals scattered over worn wood. “So lifelike.”
“The children like them.” He said nothing else, picking up a doll and handing it to her – she marvelled at the detail on its face, in the carefully painted lips, the clear eyes, the long, delicate eyelashes. The doll’s hair was smooth and silky.
“It’s funny, don’t you think?” she asked. He looked at her, puzzled. “You’re an adeptus, so you know what immortality feels like. But to these dolls, you’re more than just that. You’re their creator. Their god. The one who gives them life.”
“They aren’t alive.” He took the doll back from her, placing it carefully on the table.
“I know they aren’t. But if they were…” She paused, then smiled. “Then they must all be grateful that their god is someone as kind as you.”
She dreams about dancing with him under the moonlight. Slipping away from the room into the velvet darkness, soaring through the skies, the wind at their backs.
He gazes out of the window, sorrow in his expression. Yearning for something, though she doesn’t know what it is. He reaches for the moon, the silvery light bathing him in otherworldly radiance – she watches and prays that someday, he might notice her.
I cannot return your feelings. So lock them away, and live out the life you have been given.
She is nothing more than a doll, clinging to a god who had spurned love, apathetic in his duty towards his people.
But that doesn’t mean she cannot hope. And so the naïve and piteous girl wishes on.
Sometimes, people would deliver almond tofu to his room. He doesn’t turn them down, but still, he refuses to eat, leaving the food cold and untouched – he stares at the dish with regret in his eyes, trapped in memories she does not share.
At night, she thinks about making almond tofu for him, and wonders if he would eat it then. The steps come to mind, familiar as the back of her hand. She knows he likes his almond tofu with peanuts, and prefers it slightly sweeter than most.
She knows he likes almond tofu because it tastes like dreams.
I cannot be weighed by the measures of the human world.
She does not expect him to understand her feelings. She does not expect him to know what it’s like, to yearn for someone from a distance, her feelings forever unrequited.
Instead, she will continue to earnestly love him, and only him. She watches over him as he gives life to another doll, letting it take shape beneath his skilled fingers. The smile on his face is wistful; she wonders how lonely he must be, to sit with his dolls every night, letting them dance and sing for him, his imagination more vivid than reality itself.
“Sometimes, I wonder what you would say if you saw me now,” he says, glancing at her. She does not answer, standing stock-still, her blank eyes staring straight ahead. “You’d probably laugh at first. Then give my dolls away to the children, instead of letting them just build up here, unused and unloved.”
She wants to ask if he would give her away, too. But she thinks she knows the answer. He picks her up from the shelf, his fingers wrapping gently around her, and she looks up at him, a doll and her god, both of them frozen in time, never-changing.
“Did you ever wonder what death might feel like?” she asked, turning towards him with flowers in her hands, her eyes soft, wondering.
He paused. “No. I’ve never had to,” he answered, turning her question over in his mind. It was an interesting thought. If he died, then wouldn’t he be released from his duties? Freedom in oblivion. No immortal ever gave serious consideration to their own demise.
She laughed. “I think about it sometimes.” Her voice was contemplative, and she rested her chin on her knees, studying him from the corners of her eyes. “Where do you think we go after our deaths? Where do all the old archons go?”
“The archons come back. They aren’t people, not exactly. They’re concepts, ideas.” He felt strange discussing this with someone who wasn’t an adeptus. But then, she wasn’t fully human, either. Maybe that was why they gravitated towards each other. “We aren’t archons, so we might not come back. Maybe our souls will be swallowed up by the night sky.”
And turn into stars and constellations, guiding future generations. It wasn’t like him to say something like that. Perhaps Rex Lapis was rubbing off on him.
“Maybe.” She fell silent for a while, her fingers deftly twisting the stalks of the gathered flowers, forming a chain. Then she sighed. “I hope we get a chance to return, though.”
“What would you return as?” He didn’t know, himself. He had been this way for untold millennia; he couldn’t imagine an existence as anything else.
“Me?” Her fingers paused, and she met his gaze then, her lips curving upwards. “I think I might want to become one of your dolls. It must be nice to be taken care of by you.”
“You want to become a doll?” He didn’t know how to respond to that. She was always finding new ways to surprise him. “But you wouldn’t be able to move or speak.”
Her smile reminded him of starlight. “I think it doesn’t matter, so long as I get to be near you.”
Xiao slowly opened his eyes, sunlight filtering through the window onto his table. The doll he was working on had been placed aside, blank eyes staring expectantly at him.
His paintbrush was on the verge of rolling off the table. Yawning, he reached for the brush, but then he paused, his gaze flicking up to the shelf overhead.
The doll stood there, looking the same as always. White flowers in her soft blonde hair, a dress the colour of moonlight, warm eyes like honey. Something in his chest twisted, and he stood, staring at the doll, wondering if she might open her mouth and speak –
A ridiculous thought. His dolls weren’t alive. He knew that; he was the one who said so long, long ago, when she first wandered into his room and saw them, scattered across his table, silent companions who wouldn’t judge him no matter what sins he committed.
Even she couldn’t breathe life into them, much less him, the one with blood staining his hands. He wasn’t a giver. He took and he took until there was nothing left to take, and he was forced to retreat from the very people he was meant to protect, locking himself away to avoid more pain.
Still, as he stared at the doll who shared her likeness, he couldn’t help but long for the impossible. He brushed his thumb against her cheek, seeking a nonexistent warmth, and imagined that she was here, with him, the fragrance of the flowers she loved filling up his room.
Her smile was gentle. As though she might really be alive.