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Baal is old, old, old when every morning she “wakes”, she counts down the years she’s been alive and loses track of how long, but there are dates she can drag out of her memory, Dates are written in thin ink on letters, wax sealed and fresh like the way She used to preserve flowers in the frost. And they still sit in her bottom dresser, crisp and faded letters, stained with water and tea, from when She was younger, love letters and short letters and letters of the changing times.
Baal used to be the god of change, her rule overlapping with Barbatos’ somewhat.
Lightning is fleeing, leaving echoes and shockwaves in its wake, and Baal remembers when she too did that. When her word was not hard law and her voice was not strained, a younger god, when her voice boomed and shook like thunder. When the change trembled in the air as she spoke it into existence. When she still walked amongst the common people and celebrated with them too. Of course, the dendro archon’s death had shaken them, all of them to their bones. And afraid, scared, and miserable she had clung too hard to Her and strangled their love. It was dead, cold water between the two of them, oceans and brine apart, but some part of her younger self hopes she is still the god of change and some part of Her still loves Baal.
Baal was tired, and perhaps that in part with her fear had caused her to close the country, close her heart, close the door to her large room. No servants dressed their Archon, and Baal was alone in her room. She had ordered her palace to be built in the farthest north they could because her shallow and greedy heart had told her that the cold north winds were like Her hands, cold yet unshaking unlike Baal’s, who’s hands rattled and trembled like thunderstorms on the horizons. Her digits, jittery from the pure amount of Electro that had coursed through them at multiple points.
But still, in summer it is too warm and Baal has trouble sleeping those nights, her head not working right and she always catches herself, fingering the edges of the letters She sent Baal, considering writing one last one to Her.
Baal cuts her hair short, perhaps in some corner of her mind remembers when She ran her hands through her hair and commented on the softness.
She doesn’t let her servants cut or wash it anymore, she does it herself, and her hair is soft like the new silk merchants sell.
She’s sure if the majority of the population saw her now, they would gasp and whisper, the changes in her appearance are staggering, and she catches some of her servants staring behind her back at her change.
Her hair is a violet purple-blue, And it hasn’t been this short for ages.
Her robes are fur-lined now and lean a little more towards the style of clothing Snezhnaya diplomats wear.
Baal’s Gnosis is a knight, a glowing chess piece of a horse that she will manifest and eye sometimes, mostly on the bad nights. None besides Her have ever seen Baal’s gnosis, and she’s sure that with the way she carries herself, they must consider her piece a king or queen. She’s heard snide and quiet rumors, that she doesn’t have one, That she’s a queen, that her gnosis is broken. And she eyes the untouched and perfect smooth light of the knight, the personification of golden immortality, and has to wonder perhaps.
Had it been the other way around? Had the golden knowledge of those above, had the knowledge that the scholars of Sumeru seek twisted something inside her? Perhaps it is a childish notion, one she spends too much time on, and she wonders what the old man, Rex Lapis would say about its symbolism, long drawling prophecies, and tales of the gods that came before, gods that are buried in the ground, in the ocean, in the soul of all of Teyvat.
Even knights bow to a queen. She remembers, in the most watered-down way hearing this, when she had played chess with the commoners.
Checkmate.
…
Another game.
Knight takes Queen and she hopes that what has happened is not their fate.
There are no horses in Inazuma. It’s Ironic that the God of this isolated land would be “saddled” with the figure of a horse when her land is without horses.
Even Knights must bow to their queen.
And She is queen of Baal’s heart.
And the Tsaritsa is a queen,
And She is the Tsaritsa.