Chapter Text
Lumine is sprawled beside him like a basking cat; the dandelions on Minacious Isle glow softly, casting quicksilver highlights on the highs of her cheeks, the lids of her closed eyes, and the ridges of her collarbones despite the warmth bathing over her from the sunrise. He has a hand resting on her sternum, and he can feel the steady rise and fall of her breath as he traces the bauble on her corset — there are shards of grass stuck in her hair, and green and brown splotches settling in on the slippery, smooth fabric of her dress.
The warmth of the island makes everything hazy, blurring everything but them away, all the edges of his mind as soft as sea glass as he fights off his usual exercise in aestivation. It’s nice like this, being able to interact with her how he wishes; this is what must be called the ‘honeymoon phase’ of a relationship, it really shouldn’t be this hard to decide if he wants to keep touching her or if he should take advantage of the perfect lighting and sketch her figure and chart the shadows of her face before it’s too late. He can never quite perfect the numinous aura that surrounds her, even with reference, but it’s never for lack of trying.
“I’m thinking,” Lumine says, her voice soft as it always is, commanding his attention: her voice is a sigh that’s too languid to hurry up and too charismatic to slow down—she prefers Paimon to speak for her, so any time he gets to hear her speak in the lulls of the pixie’s absence is a guilty pleasure, “turning it over in my head.”
He hums to signal that he heard her, “about what?”
She stretches, arching under his fingers like a yawning stray before turning towards him more fully. He’s still propped on his elbow, and she rises to mimic his pose. The taffeta of her skirts slips and bunches with the movement, but she doesn’t seem to mind her disheveled appearance and the crumpled skirts exposing her legs. With a rough cough and a warm face, he raises fully, eyeing the yellows of the sky fading into bright, friendly blues. He rubs his eyes with the heel of the palm not holding him up, but wicked thoughts remain in view, heart still pounding noisily in his inner ear as the humid air still settles over him, fogging up his thoughts — all the fault of the blushing sun.
“Thinking,” she repeats, “I’m turning over what ‘the limits to life’ are. Since you asked.”
He did ask. He blinks, and by the time the heat in his face subsides, Lumine has curled into herself. Politely, he plucks a shard of grass from her fringe. “Turning it over?” He repeats. It’s a habit, he’s noticed. Lumine has a tendency to parrot phrases she’s learned, over and over until she decides they fit comfortably in her mouth.
“Turning it over,” she says in a low, serious tone before laughing, he doesn’t have to look down at her to know there’s a pleased smile on her face for him playing along with her. "I don't think there are any."
"Care to tell me the reasoning for this hypothesis?"
"Not really based on anything here," she says slowly, lolling her head to the side, away from him. Albedo's eyes latch onto how her chin juts from this angle, the way her hair curls over her cheeks. His fingers itch. "More from experience traveling. Anything that has the possibility of dying is very stubborn, things always find a way to live."
Albedo's fumbling with his sketchbook when he replies, flicking through thumbnails of faces and scenery and biota for space, "not to say your empirical evidence isn't a valid reference for this theory, but saying there is no limit disregards the fact there are creatures - flora and fauna alike - that could not thrive and adapt to new circumstances, or had died out due to overhunting or overcrowding or by purposeful interference."
"But are those really limitations on life? Limitations on species, sure. But life as a whole?” A pause, “oh, do you want me to pose for you?”
"Those are indeed lives, you know. Of course the parameters for successful survival between living beings do differ for each species — but the failure for one to thrive can affect the entire ecosystem around it. The end of one can be the end of another; we’re not talking about survival of the fittest, but the limits to life." He waves a hand to tell her to keep still, and she hums in response.
"But," starts Lumine, just as he etches out the details of her face, "creatures and people find a way to live -- the death of one can affect many, but it's not really the end. The sweetflower that Sucrose chose as her windblume went extinct, but it wasn't the end of sweet flowers altogether, they adapted. Survival of the fittest doesn’t mean only the strong can survive, I think ‘the fittest’ in that phrase refers to those that can conform to their new surroundings easily. Basing the limits on life on one thing that couldn't make it is kind of silly, when things evolve for a reason and have the capacity to learn no matter what they are."
He hums, then scritches out her response next to her the first draft, smearing graphite where the shadows should be. Messy thumbs, he'll keep this to himself then transfer it to watercolor paper later to give to Paimon as a gift. He'll keep this response in mind when conducting his research. It’s an interesting perspective, but he’s not quite sold on it yet, "So, is that your answer?"
“It sounds kind of condescending, if you phrase it like that.” Lumine says, looking at him through her lashes - they’re pale, everything about her is pale, like a flower grown in the dark, seeming to glow amidst the claustrophobic shadows.
(his master was similar, but he could never say she glowed in quite the same way — she was reminiscent of a washed out pallet, caliginous greys desaturating everything she stood next besides, though that could be said for him as well. he stole her face, after all.)
“It wasn’t supposed to come out that way.” Lumine didn’t seem upset in the first place, her tone is mild and even, her body is still lax. She’s pointing out an observation, he thinks, her eyes aren’t cutting and her lips don’t press together — he can figure her out and piece her together better than most other people he comes across, but it’s best to make sure any misunderstandings are off the table.
“I know,” she says, “it didn’t hurt my feelings, it didn’t make me feel bad - I just think that maybe you should know — for the future, since keeping communications with others seems a bit hard for you. It is for me too. Just letting you know.”
He prods her cheek with his pencil, and like a child, she inhales. Filling her mouth with air and setting her jaw. He pokes at her roughly and her cheeks deflate, rendering her chipmunk impression a thing of the past as she barks a laugh — chortling, a short aha!, loud and stark and pleasant in his ears — he can feel his own lips quirk up as well, flicking his wrist and leaving a grey streak on her cheek from the lead. “You didn’t answer.”
"There's a word I know—don’t give me that look I’m answering you," says Lumine, pursing her lips with a huffy sound that’s normally reserved for when Paimon’s hands stray from her own plate at dinner, where Lumine moans and makes snide marks but never with any real heat behind her words.
Albedo stops giving her that look and Lumine nods once in approval. Absently, he thinks about all the leaf litter and soil getting rubbed into her hair, but doesn’t see it as particularly needed to comment on it.
“Thank you,” she says, then makes a quiet keening sound that makes Albedo jump. It curls around her tongue pleasantly, soft vowels that she bites off roughly, gnawing on the rhotic. "Stubbornness past destruction, side-stepping it, even." She pauses, and roughly rips damp grass from the root out of boredom. There is dirt under her nails. "My brother liked to describe things like that, things that can die. It may not be my answer, or the right answer, but I believe in him, and I think he would say that."
He records it in his mind — tries to take in her pitch and modulation for an auditory playback later on. He doesn't recognize the word. There's no one in Teyvat who would recognize it as anything other than garbled nonsense, even the high, slow sibilant sounds of his master in the late of night when her projects don't go according to plan sounded nothing like that.
(he had asked her once, to teach him, and she had given him the same dismayed look of unconcealed distaste that she always had, the same baffled contempt for the creature that happened to wake up in her spare body.
nothing that will benefit you, she would say in her rasp of a voice, and she would always sound like a pig in an abattoir, the gargle of glass, tripping over the smooth planes of teyvat standard.
the language of hubris, she would say with muted spite around digging into words like glass and too sharp teeth that don't quite fit her mouth.)
He packs it away and frowns, "but that's not what you think, it's what your brother does."
"We think the same—I am my brother and my brother is me -" she says unconvincingly, and Albedo notes the fact that she contradicted herself, fumbling in her haste. Her connection and similarities to her brother mean more than her own opinion; not her answer, Lumine says, but both her and her sibling think the same, do they? "- and it's an answer nonetheless. Things that can die are very determined not to do so, and as long as there’s a chance, they won’t. Not even if they have to throw away everything.”
He thinks of Rhinedottir — it wasn’t the response he wanted, but he finds himself agreeing, if only a bit.
He wants to ask her about the language she used, but she perks up, staring out into the distance with expectation. A house pet hearing something in the next room. She sits up, unconcerned with if he’s finished his base sketch or not, and within the next moment he hears the howl of a child as Paimon dives into Lumine’s chest, playfully falling back the force of it as she laughs. Then proceeds to roll over and smatter Paimon’s cheek with overexaggerated kisses as they cackle.
“Traveller!” Paimon shouts in embarrassment, as she tries and fails to push Lumine’s forehead away, settling for smacking her shoulder instead. “Not now! Chests! A whole bunch of them, and there’s one upside down too! Paimon found soooooo much treasure. Let’s go, let’s go!”
“Really,” says Lumine in mock fascination. Albedo primly picks a shard of grass from her hair to remind her that he’s there with them.
“Oh, Albedo can come too, I guess,” Paimon says, an afterthought. “If he wants to.”
“I’m sure that isotoma of his could be of some use,” Lumine says, close to a mutter, quieter now that Paimon’s here to speak for her as she buries her cheek into Paimon’s hair like a child with a stuffed toy.
“Well, Kaeya and Diluc are coming too so —“ Albedo deflates, any interest popping like a blister pack of analgesics, which he’s certainly going to need if he’s anywhere near Kaeya’s vicinity, let alone both of the bickering brothers at the same time.
Lumine shifts, and despite not looking at him during the exchange, amends with her voice dying in volume, “Only if he wants, he was drawing something though.”
“But, could the isotoma go that high?” Paimon asks, wonder clear in her voice. Lumine makes a humming noise and inclines a glance towards him, the ever-present smile on her face is still there but something in her eyes shift, and she taps Paimon on the cheek and whispers something that makes her gasp. “Then let’s go then, silly! We can’t let Kaeya get to the treasure first, with all that pirate blood in his veins. Why are we even wasting time here?”
Tearing out of Lumine’s hold, she encases a finger on each of Lumine’s hand with her grip. Laughing as she gets up, Lumine turns back once to wink back at him before letting herself get tugged away — unfairly, Albedo burns at the action, heat simmering under his cheeks and back of his neck. His ears must be red too, again.
The dandelions got kicked up with Paimon’s arrival, seedlings and their plumes scattering around and catching in his hair too. He doesn’t move to clear them away.
He can’t stop thinking about the language she used — he’s heard it memorized the tone and variance, but for some reason his perfect pitch isn’t working with him; he trips over his words, slurs where vowels rolled off of her tongue neatly. Albedo spent the first few years of his creation mostly silent - horrified anxiety stinging at his lungs and making his tongue heavy.
It’s embarrassing, it feels the same as when he gathered up enough courage to say Rhinedottir’s name for the first time. She told him he had a lisp and the airy quality of his voice grated on her ears. She said he was an idiot for not speaking when it was expected of him, and if he could speak all this time, why wait until now? Did he want to embarrass her by having her introduce him to potential partners as a little fool who’s tongue didn’t work?
Lumine — Lumine is not like that; but he still does not want to humiliate himself in front of her. He’s old enough to know that affection isn’t conditional, to never question any of the respect or care he’s received in his life, but there's a familiar niggling in his head. Agitation sluicing through his veins, exploding across his synapses like the crackle of electro. Misguided as it may be, insecurity still has a way of alchemizing into flustered, panicked apoplexy in his chest, even after years of praise and gasps of awe from people in his field. He wants to keep her, and studying her and sharing her interests are ways to tie her tighter to him. After all, she’s a cynosure, it isn’t as if there’s a lack of people vying for her attention.
He breaks it down into sounds — rolling his tongue is difficult, and there was never a hiss of air when she closed her mouth around the ending. He’ll get better at it.
Idly, he scritches dark marks onto the parchment in front of him — corners curled and paper going soft from how often he flips back and forth between the pages, all easy corrections on Timaeus’ latest report. He has quite the solid hypothesis, though it feels like the execution would be quite lacking if he continued running things in this direction — his placement of the control group itself is iffy — as an element, dendro fusses in a way that’s difficult for even Sucrose to alter, in fact, it’s only because Sucrose has such an understanding of dendro that her sweet flower experiments have been so successful. In comparison, Timaeus’ proposal seems childish and rudimentary.
“Is there only one language in Teyvat?”
Lumine’s prodding the embers under the pot when she breeches the subject, breathes crystallizing and tangling in the air like webs, but her voice is as crisp and clear as always. The heat makes her bangs frizz, curling like wisps of cirrus.
Albedo blinks, then lifts his head in acknowledgement — though he’s having difficulty parsing such a silly question.
“Pardon?”
“Is there?” Lumine says, “so far everyone I’ve met, I’ve been able to communicate with and speak to — it’s… it’s very strange.”
He thinks of his master, and keeps his mouth closed. “How is that considered strange?”
“When Paimon was teaching me how to speak, she mentioned there was only one language in Teyvat — seven whole continents, all with such varying culture and separated by land and sea, but only one language in the whole world?”
“I think it’s rather convenient that we have only one language — there are records of other languages used, but a few hundred years ago it was decided it was best to just assimilate to one, so Teyvat Standard is, of course, the standard.” Albedo pauses and considers his next words, “it was a language given to us by Celestia, therefore is considered improper and animalistic to disregard a gift from the gods — though a universal language is far more impressive than just a little boost in skills from a vision.”
“Celestia,” she starts, and something in Lumine’s expression curdles and dies at his words, “Celestia, no wonder.”
“Yes,” says Albedo, “Celestia. Teyvat standard is known as a gift from Celestia.”
There’s a small sound of disgust from inside Lumine’s throat, glottal, and says, “that doesn’t sound very convenient, it sounds cruel — language is intrinsically tied to culture. From the moment you open your mouth, your language shapes and influences you and everything you have.”
“You act as if a culture can not develop if a world shares a singular language — I’d disagree.” Pushing his papers to the side, he neatly lines his pen up with the edges of the parchment, “consider: how similar are Liyue and Mondstadt to each other, despite all the easy communication? Despite being tied together by land, even?”
“That’s not what I’m getting at, and you know it,” says Lumine petulantly, and her eyes flick to Paimon in the corner, wrapped up in his master’s old fur shawl, a spot of white on golden embroidery and dyed amethyst pelt. Klee curls up in the same way with Rhinedottir’s coats and mantles, knees to her chin, tucked into herself like a cat. “I’m talking about the things you lose when you’re not allowed to communicate. Imagine all the things lost in translation, it’s irritating, isn’t it?”
“If there are any untranslatable words, I’m sure they weren’t lost forever. I’m sure they’re feeling right at home in a dictionary with the rest of the patois.”
“I don’t like that you’re calling it patois, that seems a bit rude to me.”
“It’s not, though,” says Albedo, “Kreideprinz in itself is slang among the Sumerian alchemical society for a failed recreation of Rebis or teratomas in general. It’s never been an issue for me. Words are just words.”
Lumine doesn’t respond to him, a thoughtful frown on her face as she thinks. “I don’t know how to explain it to you — I’m not being difficult on purpose. I think it’s like losing a limb. You can live life with a prosthetic, you can get used to it, and it helps tremendously with day to day life, but it’s not the same, I think, if you lived your whole life without one.”
He wonders if this is something she thinks, or just something else she thinks her brother would believe, contradicting herself and sawing off all edges that don’t slot with her brothers. He doesn’t mind her hypocrisy, he comes to find. He just enjoys hearing her talk. He thinks of his master and her frustrations with tones, speaking in tongues with a grimness that seemed beyond her years. Albedo decides Lumine doesn’t need to know about that, and his omission of this isn’t particularly a lie. Witnessing something and experiencing it yourself are two very different things.
“My brother loves you,” says Lumine, with a sudden ferocity that makes Albedo blink rapidly with the desperation behind it.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline his affections, I think it might be a bit awkward to accept them while being in a relationship with his sister.”
“No, no, listen, Albedo.”
“I’m always listening to the things you say.”
“My brother loves you,” Lumine repeats, making a sweeping gesture spanning the entire room on the last word, “he’s an anthropologist—he loves people, he thinks studying them is fascinating - it would make him bereft to know there are languages and people he hasn’t been able to observe, just because of all the things you lose with a dead language — it's nice when you want to learn a new language, it’s a treat, something to supplement what you have, but when you're forced… isn’t that just survival of the fittest again? Now people can thrive, but I imagine back then it must’ve felt suffocating and frustrating to be forced to adjust and conform to something you didn’t ask for in the first place. Do you understand?”
“Didn’t you mention once before that adaptation was needed and a necessity?” At Lumine’s withering glare, he puts his hands up.
“You don’t get it,” Lumine says, and there’s a familiar note in her voice that causes him to be hyper aware of every mote of dust drifting in the air, the crunch of snow under the paws of foxes and rabbits in Dragonspine’s wilderness. “Surviving and living as a person, those are different. When you don’t have an option, or can’t be yourself because of what everyone else thinks, that’s not living, it’s survival.”
“I don’t get it,” he admits, and ignores the urge to talk about his master, the wisps of her voice tickling his eardrum, “but perhaps it’s because this is an issue that speaks more keenly to you?”
The light reflecting off the snow is bright enough to make her pyrite stare almost completely yellow, the honey color almost overtaking her irises, turning them into slits. Her attention makes him shiver, excites him. She’s waiting for him to speak, but he holds her gaze until she prods at his thigh with her pointer.
“Lumine,” he says, and then with pride, Albedo parrots her words from the archipelago. It isn’t perfect, but it’s passable to his own ears.
If possible, her pupils thin more, constricting and going oblong as he eyes her in fascination. There’s a pleasant, surprised exhale that escapes her lips. "Oh, I guess I should have known that would catch your attention, Chalk Prince."
Of course, anything she does will catch his attention. He always has his eyes on her.
"I've been turning it over," he says, and Lumine gives him such a flat and unamused look it makes his lips quirk up. “Since curiosity is a very hard thing to resist.”
“Do it again,” she says, just as stern, and her soft voice creaks like rotting stairs with the sudden pressure behind it. He was right, this was something he could use, something vital to her that he could use to inch forward into her life, “one more time.”
“Say please,” he shoots back, then cradles his face with his palm, feeling playful with excitement. He wants to tease her, just a bit.
She won’t acquiesce, she’s much too prideful for that, but the sudden, obstinate flush on her face satiates him. It’s everything he wanted.
“I don’t want to,” she says childishly. Albedo prods her with the toe of his shoe, and she huffs. She wraps her wrist around the ankle of his boot. Her skin is hot even though the leather — a starburst of white, she stands out no matter where she goes, the color of winter stark against Mondstadt’s vivacious grasslands and Liyue’s subdued plains. He expected her to feel just as cold as she looks, just like him, but she’s not. Her hands burn, and when she kisses him, her mouth against his scorches him just the same.
(no matter how warm he feels, he knows his fabricated body always matches the ambient temperatures of whichever location he resides at the moment, she must feel the chill of his skin, always lukewarm at best — maybe that’s why it’s so easy for her to touch him, for him to melt against her. they’re a perfect match, all she needs to do is kiss him and they’ll get to see perfect thermodynamic equilibrium at play.)
At his laugh, she folds her arms. “Do it again,” she demands.
He opens his mouth, and she shudders, a full bodied jerk as she exhales roughly. His mouth can’t curl around the hard sounds as sweetly as hers does, but there’s something focused in her gaze that’s extremely attractive when faced in his direction.
“Again,” she says.
He tries to roll his tongue in the same way she does — he fails, he knows, but Lumine wants him to say it again, so he does.
“One more time,” she asks, stone faced and serious. Her eyes burn.
“I believe I’ve said it several times,” pleased, he eyes her reaction. There’s a purse to her lips as he smiles. “I’m guessing it’s to your satisfaction?”
“You sound like a braying horse,” says Lumine, absently, but Albedo doesn’t take offense to it. There’s no heat behind it. “Your accent is atrocious.”
“I’ve only heard you say it once,” he points out, “anything constructive to go with that criticism?”
“When I started traveling with my brother, they told me not to tell any of our secrets to little green men,” she says with an air of consideration, a thoughtful frown on her face. “You aren’t green anywhere but your eyes, though.”
Albedo pointedly ignores the fact she didn't deny that he was short. “Would you believe me if I said my interest in learning happens to be selfish rather than academic? They are just words, but I’ll make sure not to spread your secrets.”
“All your studies are selfish,” Lumine points out, and Albedo thinks of his master again. She’s correct, but it still makes him shift uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s not a bad thing, though, to want to learn. Everyone wants to do that.”
“I promise that my interest in the way your mouth moves over your language is nothing but purely academic interest, usually.”
Lumine’s eyes curl into humored, foxlike crescents before her eyes dart back to Paimon in the corner, still asleep.
"It's a very complicated language," Lumine says with a sorry, almost prim smile after her brief check in on Paimon, as if she’s debating on not telling him. It almost seems condescending, but Lumine has never been cruel to him deliberately, "I don’t think your tongue can be taught to move properly."
Unbidden, he starts deliberating on all the other ‘proper’ uses of his tongue. “I thought you’ve already taught me how to move my tongue.”
He can’t decipher Lumine’s smile, “I sure did.”
“And,” he starts, “I’m not green anywhere but my eyes.”
“You sure aren’t,” she says, holding his gaze before breaking it, “fine, then. Yes, I-”
Her skirts hiss as she stands, and with a languid movement despite the tension in her shoulders she stands and crosses over to him. She seats herself at the end of the bench and without even asking for him to move over, checks him with her hip to make space for herself. Then she does it again just to be annoying, like when she drags out conversations just to poke at his nerves.
Lumine’s not looking at him. She presses her hands together and presses each finger towards its counterpart thoughtfully as she thinks. “Astrology is a very well researched field, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” says Albedo, “astrology is a very well studied field. Quite popular in Sumeru, I hear in the southern half of the country it’s quite important for matchmaking and marriage meetings.”
“I’m guessing astronomy’s been a bit neglected, though,” Lumine says, “I haven’t been able to find much on it in Teyvet. I don’t think you’ll be able to understand. My language is built on the stars, and this world lacks the vocabulary.”
“How bold of you to act like I’m incapable of figuring it out.”
“Okay,” Lumine looks up at him with consideration, “okay. No, you can do it. I guess it won’t be that bad since you already know what it means, and I’ve been to worlds with a similar language structure and vocabulary. I could make some minor substitutes and see if anything sounds familiar.”
“You are a compendium of knowledge indeed,” he says, feeling fonder than he sounds. It’s not quite the way he wants to project his feelings, he wants to backtrack the sentence and start over, but he’s not sure if telling her he loves her right now will sound insincere or not. He doesn’t add anything.
Lumine preens despite that, “I am a Stellar Archivist, I have never forgotten a thing.”
There’s something in her tone that makes it seem like she’s calling herself a title, rather than describing an action — an anthropologist and an archivist? Even their job descriptions link up. Lumine will jot down every observation her brother makes, will store it deeply in her memory and recall it as she wishes. Albedo wonders if following him around and being his living notebook was something she wanted, or if it’s just another part of her relentless, religious dependency. Despite all the months knowing her, he knows next to nothing of her brother or their lives before that.
(there’s a feeling with sharp edges prodding his chest, he thinks of his master, and then thinks of how much lumine’s brother really cares for her. if her affection is only as great as it is due to all the time spent wearing out her knees at the altar of him, wondering if she’s altering him just like albedo did with his master, mother, caretaker. it would be nice if it wasn’t true, but albedo’s selfish enough to hope that it is. it would be another thing to loop around her neck and tie them together.)
“—though, if I do introduce new concepts to you, I wonder if you’re important enough for them to stick and allow the language to evolve once again. I very much doubt it.”
Albedo doesn’t get a chance to even process that sentence before Lumine starts explaining.
“It’s made from the stem ‘burn’— azzatru —attached to the word ‘desire’ or ‘goal’ —ña, I used a positive suffix: — er to imply success, it’s direct translation is protostellar while it’s negative counterpart is a brown dwarf. The negative suffix is —aat. A similar word is supernova, but replace ña with an æ for ‘self’. That word is always negative, though,” she puts it together, a quick and pleasant sound, “but that’s a bit off topic. Now you try.”
Albedo replays the movement of her mouth in his head with less than academic interest.
Her tongue juts out to wet dry skin at her lip, “should I repeat it?”
“Oh, no. I just… it’s Ahssa—true—nai—er, correct?” he says, slowly. “Was that better?”
The look on Lumine’s face implies that it was not better, “with more practice you could almost sound… very… provincial.”
“I don’t sound right at all, do I.” It’s not a question.
“No, you still sound like a horse,” she says solemnly, but there’s a spark in her eye, sharp and pleasant joy on her features before she turns her head to laugh, “sorry, it’s just really funny.”
“A shame,” he says lightly, and touches her hair because he can, because she’ll let him, because she likes him too, “I was confident that time.”
“Pyro abyss mages are also very confident,” Lumine says solemnly, in the same mock-serious way she always is when she’s being purposely annoying and pointing out the obvious, “until it rains.”
“That’s true,” he says, “it’s also true that I am not an abyss mage.”
(his master had started growing fur on her chest and neck that she had covered up with her shawls, and no matter how many times she cut her nails they still grew back to their full extent the next day — there was only so much she could do to preserve her body with alchemy without a proper soulless spare.)
“You wouldn’t be as pretty if you were,” Lumine nods.
For some reason, that’s what makes his cheeks flush with uncharacteristic shyness, the same blooming unease and excitement he felt the first time she kissed him. She said that after she first kissed him too. His eyes dart away to look for an excuse not to look at her until his thundering heart calms. He can’t even blame the heat, with the severe lack of it on Dragonspine.
“One moment, actually,” says Albedo, and he fumbles for his sketchbook. It’s across the room, he realizes with dismay, “since I’m not familiar with the pronounciation or the other terms that you translated; so I need to write this down to understand — give me one moment. I’ve never learned another language before.”
“I don’t particularly think you need to write it down,” Lumine says, “It’s not like it has much to do with you finding the secrets of this world, after all.”
“I want to know everything about this world,” Albedo replies simply, “and I would like to learn everything about you. At this point those might as well be the same thing.”
Lumine looks at him carefully, then with feeling, gives an empathic, “ew.”
Albedo can’t tell if she’s joking or not with her expression and tone as flat as it is, and shifts at the uncomfortable sting of embarrassment compounded on the sudden reticence from her earlier praise. “I am being sincere. You are well aware we are past the rubicon for a platonic relationship. It’s not like you come to see me to play checkers.”
“I know. It was still lame, though,” says Lumine diplomatically, but she’s smiling and she’s not moving away or leaving. She looks more amused than anything. It’s mollifying. It quells any anxiety roiling in his system immediately. It’s just a joke. “Really gross. My type’s the kind of person who would make me their third or fourth priority and ignore me while I ignore them, you know?”
“Yes, I am also fond of cats, maybe you should get one instead of a—“ he fumbles, he doesn’t particularly want to call himself her ‘boyfriend’, the word sounds too tepid for how he feels, it feels clumsy and uncomfortable in his mouth. He doesn’t finish the sentence, and because Lumine is wonderful, she doesn’t prod him to. “I’m the wrong person to go to for that kind of treatment, however I’ll keep it in mind. I’ll be sure to turn you away at the gate next time then, if that will appeal to you more.”
“You wouldn’t though,” says Lumine, fondly. “Not ever.”
“I wouldn’t,” Albedo agrees. “I enjoy your company a tad too much.”
“I know,” She reaches up and touches his cheek, a quick, light tap just to touch his skin before her thumb presses at the area under his bottom lip, “I’m great at checkers. Try again?”
Albedo opens his mouth, letting syllables slip through his teeth.
“I can’t feel your teeth buzz,” she says with a small frown, “it’s supposed to start out sharp, if that makes sense: ah-zzah. The second half needs to be stressed more, and,” her fingers trail down his neck, “the next part is layered, you’re making the sound too low I think.”
“Truh,” Albedo repeats, and her thumbs brush against the thin skin of his throat. He tries again, less guttural, aspirating a weak alveolar, “trho.”
“Higher in your throat, and a bit faster. It’s like a trʊ. Maybe lift your tongue higher? You need to roll it and —“ Lumine shifts, and suddenly clamps her mouth shut.
“What’s wrong?” Lumine looks at him as if she’s never seen him before, a very far away expression. She looks bothered for some reason.
“Nothing,” she says, and it’s slower than she normally speaks. Her thumb rests on the ridge of his Adam’s apple, “I’m thinking.”
He puts his hand over Lumine’s, keeping her hand in his neck. Her skin is so hot it makes him dizzy. “What are you thinking about?”
Lumine’s smile is very kind and polite, when she presses their foreheads together, their hair blends together, “I’m thinking I know what you’re doing — this isn’t really the best way to do so. We don’t even have a word for kissing in my language. We are naturally unromantic people.”
“And what did you think I was doing?”
Lumine kisses him once, chastely on his mouth instead of responding. When she pulls back, Albedo presses his other palm to the flat of her shoulders, keeping her close.
“You are much too young to pull one over on me,” she says easily.
“Very presumptuous of you,” replies Albedo, and he knows she can feel him swallow as he talks, “I’m older than I look.”
Lumine hums, “much, much too young.”
“Do you have a word for that in your language too?” He asks, and with a snort Lumine pushes him away, highly amused, pleased and catlike. Her other palm presses flat against his forehead when she laughs, dislodging herself as his hands run down the length of her back.
“There’s one in your language,” Lumine replies, “it’s ‘petulant’.”
Albedo gives her a withering look, but she snickers and stands, turning on her heel in a swift movement. It’s pitch black outside, and the flurries of snow dapple the sky. Lumine stretches, and when she turns back to face him, her pale silhouette is blinding amongst the mouth of the cave. Her smile is bright as her eyes curve in amusement. Albedo feels, suddenly, hopelessly, defensive. She is right in front of him, but he feels disgustingly alone. He wants her on him again, the warmth of her skin dies as soon as her hands leave him, and the chill soaks through his skin so quickly the affected areas feel like they have freezer burn.
“I love you,” Albedo says, abruptly and fiercely, searching for validation, “I meant it when I said I wanted to learn everything about you.”
“I know,” says Lumine, as if she’s obliging a child, yes, yes little timmie, the geese and pigeons will stop bullying each other after a good meal, you’re absolutely correct. In the same, easy and noncommittal way she says everything, “I like that about you.”
She doesn’t say she likes him directly, and that’s suddenly, woefully important to him. His body feels taut, a string ready to snap, “Lumine—“
Paimon makes a sudden garbled noise in her sleep, and Lumine eyes her with the same laser-focus she never looks at anything else with. Paimon rolls and clings to her leg, eyes creaking open as she gives an over exaggerated yawn, rubbing her eyes as she looks between them.
“Traveller?” She says, voice heavy with sleep and confusion.
“Hi, Paimon,” Lumine replies, and Albedo is struck by the unfairness of it all. It sings a litany of insecurity in his head. His stomach churns, because he knows that tone. She’s going to leave again, her attention has shifted away from him; Paimon and her comfort is top priority. If Albedo questions her in front of Paimon, Lumine will never come see him again — compared to Paimon, Albedo is replaceable. It’s unfair, and he knows it’s hypocritical of him to feel so. If Lumine had interrogated him on any subject in front of Klee in an aggressive manner, he probably wouldn’t be able to stand it. Albedo exhales roughly through his nose, and his hands jerk to grab his pen again. He feels just as childish as Lumine previously described him.
“The traveller was just about to step out, I presume,” he says, straining to sound mild. Things were working out so well, and he backtracks the entire evening to analyze what went wrong. “You did say you were only visiting for a few hours.”
Paimon gasps like she just remembered something, “oh you’re right ! We got a new billet and wanted to make Rosaria something!”
Lumine agrees, and he can’t hear if she replies but she nods her head in agreement. Paimon darts up, and his master’s shawl falls to the floor limply. With a frenetic bounce in the air, Paimon pushes Lumine back as she laughs, and he’s filled to the brim with the feeling of leaving less impact than air.
“I love you,” he calls again, but his voice is drowned out by their laughter, communicating on a wavelength he’s not quite on and they dash out of the cave. It doesn’t make sense that there are moments he can’t understand her when they’re so similar.
Albedo is alone, and he tempers his frustration into a new plan.
Lumine is not unwilling to teach him, in fact, she gave a very thorough explanation, she exposed more about herself in this singular conversation than she has ever in the entire course of them knowing each other. He can still use her language to get close to her.
Albedo scratches out question mark on a particularly confusing section of Timaeus’s paper and decides to head to the library the next time he’s in the city.