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“Albedo, come on!”
Klee rushes through the mass of people on the crowded main street of Mondstadt, short enough to weave through their legs but not agile enough to keep from tripping them up on the way. Sighing, Albedo follows behind a short distance away, apologizing to those displaced by Hurricane Klee. None of them are too mad, at least. Everyone in Mondstadt knows Klee, and by extension, the chaos that comes along with her.
It's hard to tell what's an effect of Klee being Klee and what's from the general festivity that comes with the yearly Windblume Festival though, especially since there are no explosions to help differentiate between the two.
“Slow down,” he tells her, once he catches up with her. “We have the whole day, no need to rush.”
Which for once, they do. Although it’s rare for him to take a complete day off from his work, Klee’s subtle reminders that ‘it’s the Windblume Festival soon’ and not-so-subtle urging of ‘you’re always working, Klee gets lonely on her own’ had pushed him to ask Jean if he could take a break. He doesn’t think he could have gotten much work in, anyways.
“But we have to get to the fun stuff before the lines are too long,” she whines, skidding to a stop and turning to look up at him. “I saw some really cool stuff on the posters, like balloons going boom and pretty floating things!”
Well, he’d seen them too, considering that she’d shoved them into his face for days and snuck a whole printer’s worth of the things into his lab. Even that morning, as he was getting ready to leave, he’d spotted a few in his closet. Archons knew how she’d managed to get them there.
Still, he gives a hum of acknowledgment. “Even so,” he says, “be careful. If you trip and fall, we’ll have to spend even more time getting you treated at the Cathedral.”
That makes her pout, tugging furiously at his sleeve. “We have to see everything!” she insists. “Klee doesn’t get to hang out with you for long, so every second counts!”
Albedo pats her lightly on the head to calm her down. He’s really supposed to be scolding her so she learns her lesson and doesn’t cause widespread chaos during an already hectic day, but he can’t help the fond smile that comes to his face. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I promised you that we’d play every game you wanted during the festival, right? We won’t miss anything.”
“Fine…” For a moment, her expression drops into a petulant frown. Then, she spots the next shiny thing in their path and immediately brightens, grabbing his hand and dragging him with her. “Albedo, look at that! They have toy hilichurls in a box!”
He exhales and prepares himself for an entire day filled with this sort of excitement. Maybe this time, there won’t be as much property damage.
(He doubts it, but he can’t find it in himself to mind too much.)
The balloons are cute, he has to admit, and the art is fairly well done. He picks one up; the face painted on its surface staring back up at him with angry eyes, strangely reminiscent of–
“Dodoco!” Klee cheers, going up on the tips of her toes to reach more of the dark red ones.
He absentmindedly passes off the one he’s holding down to her. They do look like them, to an uncanny extent, and for a moment he wonders if this might upset Klee, since the goal of the game is to, well, destroy the things. Then he remembers that it’s Klee, and he stops worrying too much about it. Knowing her, it would probably only add to her excitement.
“Albedo, watch,” she yells. She nudges him until she’s sure that he’s looking, then tosses a bomb into the air, where it hits a light orange-colored balloon. It explodes into a burst of confetti, much to Klee’s very audible joy.
He’s not nearly as enthused, however, and tugs the girl away from the edge just as the blast triggers the others nearby into their own equally intense explosions. A few seconds later, the air around them is filled with the scent of gunpowder and the noise of balloons popping is almost deafening. Albedo sighs before leading Klee down the ladder and away from the nearly destroyed tower.
“I’m not done blowing stuff up yet!” she protests.
“I can set up a blasting range for you later,” he says as a compromise, which seems to appease her. Honestly, he’s fine with it as long as it doesn’t involve Klee’s very small body standing near ledges while explosions are going off nearby. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that those are a recipe for disaster.
“These are a lot of flowers,” Albedo observes, an eyebrow raised as he peers off the edge of the platform. “The goal is to catch them all as you fall, yes?”
As he speaks, he turns around one such garland of Windwheel Asters in his hands. The aerodynamics of it all had to be interesting, given the strict control of momentum needed to successfully collect the greatest amount of flowers while avoiding the items that deducted points. If he had an anemometer with him, then perhaps he could–
“Albedo, are you gonna try?” Klee asks from where she’s sat on the floor beside him.
She’s busy at work making a flower crown for Dodoco out of the Cecilias that have fallen to the floor, though he’s sure that she’ll end up losing it by the end of the day as she’d done with her own. He has one as well, but unlike her, he’s been careful not to let it fall off his head.
He thinks for a moment, then shrugs in agreement. This is the most interesting activity so far, and it doesn’t require too much focus that he can still keep an eye on Klee throughout it. Plus, it does look like fun. “Alright,” he says. “Why not?”
“Cool!” She jumps to her feet, bouncing in place. “If you’re gonna, then I wanna try too!”
That, he’s unsure about. Frowning, he asks her, “Are you sure? This is very high up, it might be dangerous for you.”
“It'll be fine, just keep Dodoco and my backpack safe while I go,” she says, hands on her hips as she beams up at him with all the confidence and recklessness of a child who doesn’t understand the concept of fear or death. “Watch, Albedo! I bet I can get all the flowers in one go and win all the points!”
That’s all she says before she leaps off, leaving him to gape after her in horror.
“Wha– Klee, no!”
Albedo closes his eyes as he strums the lyre he’d borrowed, enjoying the calming melody. He’s not the biggest fan of music; he’d never had enough spare time to learn to play instruments in between his experiments, but he can hold a tune at the very least, and his skill at memorization helps when it comes to actually playing the sheet music. It's certainly relaxing.
“Albedo, I didn’t know you were so good at playing the lyre,” Klee says, staring up at him awestruck. She’d given up on trying to play her own child-sized lyre, after several failed attempts that he thought would get Barbatos himself to smite them right then and there.
“I wouldn’t say I’m good,” he replies, pausing to smile at her. “It’s simply something I picked up from hearing others play. I haven’t tried to learn on my own.”
“Still, it’s super-duper cool,” she says. She leans against the back of her chair, eyelids beginning to droop. He isn’t surprised; throughout the day she’d ended up running around the whole of Mondstadt, it was only a matter of time until she grew tired. “I wanna… I wanna learn how to play that good someday too…”
“I’ll teach you sometime,” he promises.
She nods sleepily, yawning as she drifts off to bed. Her head drops to rest on his arm, thankfully the one he’d been using as a rest for the lyre instead of the one he’d been using to strum the instrument. “Thanks, Albedo,” she mumbles.
Naps are rare for such a hyperactive child, so he decides to let her rest until she wakes up on her own. He resumes his playing, but this time he changes the song he’s playing to a lullaby, one that he’s heard gives sweet dreams, and hopes that it helps her have a better sleep.
When they decide to return, the day is nearly at a close, sun low in the sky and festivities beginning to settle down. He and Klee are walking back to the Knights of Favonius Headquarters when something catches her attention and causes her to suddenly stop.
“Is that a slime?” she asks, pointing over at a nearby stand.
Eyes widening in panic, his hand nearly goes to pull out his sword, ready to attack, but he sighs in relief when he realizes that it’s just a plushie, nothing more than cotton and cloth. Thankfully, the guards on duty hadn’t been lax enough to let actual monsters into the city.
“It’s just a toy, no need to worry,” he says, steering her back onto the road. She stays stubbornly in place, though, which makes him raise an eyebrow at her. “Klee? Don’t you want to get back so we can have dinner? If I recall correctly, Noelle made Fisherman’s Toast for tonight.”
He follows her line of vision. She’s staring at the plushie with interest in her wide red eyes, not unlike how she looks when she gets to watch things explode.
“…do you want the slime?” he asks.
She nods eagerly. “It looks squishy,” she tells him seriously, as if the theoretical squishiness of the slime is a national emergency.
So he finds himself standing in front of the stand with her a short while later, reading the instructions written on the wooden signboard beside it. It looks to be a fairly simple game; knock down a certain amount of apples to receive an appropriate reward from the nearby gallery.
It’s easy enough that he’s sure the only reason it hasn’t been completely swept by Amber or a few of his other colleagues is that all of the prizes are undoubtedly for children. They range from hilichurl figurines striking various dramatic poses, boxes of apple-flavored candy, toy lyres tuned to only play one song, and of course, the famed slime stuffed toys that had caught Klee’s eye.
They’re the first prizes, and much bigger up close than he thought. When he takes a closer look, he estimates that one is about the size of a mitachurl’s head.
“What kind of slime do you want?” He sizes up the targets. It should be easy pickings for him.
“Pyro!” she instantly responds, bringing her face close to the red fabric of the Pyro slime and giggling. “It’s the cutest and most boomy slime!”
Albedo doesn’t know what ‘boomy’ means in any context, but he nods nonetheless. He calls over the attendant, who looks surprised to see him there.
“Are you here to play?” the man asks. “The starting fee is 5 Mora, but it doubles for every round that you don’t win anything.”
Something in his expression looks smug, as if he thinks that he’ll make a profit off of him. That makes him smile, equally as smug, though he hides it with a cough. Sure, he’s relatively less well-known among the Knights due to being fairly new and quieter than his peers, but he’s still a Knight of Favonius.
He nods, handing over the coins. “Alright, I’ll play one round.”
“Go, go, Albedo, you can do it!” Klee cheers beside him.
“You can start on three, kid,” the man says. “Three, two, one…”
Once the last syllable exits his mouth, Albedo hurls the rocks at the apples perched on the highest positions, since they have the highest point values assigned to them, then almost leisurely knocks off the rest until his mental calculations tell him he has enough for the grand prize. Of course, each of his throws hit right on the mark.
“That’s enough for the slime, correct?” he asks the man, who’s dumbfoundedly staring at him. At his blank nod, he grabs the Pyro slime from the pile and passes it to Klee, who hugs it to her chest happily.
She beams up at him. “Thank you!” she chirps.
“It was no problem.” Suddenly, a thought strikes him as he remembers the man’s doubtful expression earlier, and his grin widens. “Klee,” he says, “I could use some target practice. How would you like to complete your collection of slimes?”
The man pales from where he stands behind the counter. “What?”
“Really!?” Klee excitedly jumps, nearly crushing the Pyro slime in her tight grip. “You’re the best, Albedo!”
“Hold on a second,” the man tries to interrupt, but Albedo slides over a bag of coins before he can say anything. He’d counted it beforehand, so he knows that the meager contents are exactly 25 Mora.
“That should be enough for 5 more rounds,” he informs him casually. Klee cheers as he picks up the first of his many, many throws.
(Later on, they return to the Headquarters far later than planned, and with a great deal more baggage. Klee names all the slimes according to their elements, but Albedo’s sure that they won’t need names for long. He’s proven right when a few days later, they’re all blown to shreds by Klee trying to turn them into bombs.)