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And after thunderous hail and relentless rain, the night comes with silence and a gentle breeze. In the air she can still taste the storm that had passed through the harbor, conjured by mages that had in a second changed their lives forever.
The red ropes in her hair are intertwined in a complex knot, proud and secured once more as a demonstration of her link to the adepti and her bow to embrace a path away from a curse that could eat her alive. Shenhe is on the open terraces of the Jade Chamber, looking over the ocean that promised Inazuma so far away and the city below them, alive with lights and faint music and smells that she distinctly associates with Liyue.
She breathes in.
Yun Jin had been motionless on the floor.
She breathes out.
Yun Jin had been motionless on the floor.
Shenhe had never been wounded in such a way before.
“One sees you have found respite in the night, Shenhe.”
She breathes in.
So her master knew. Shenhe fears the wall of words she would encounter, she had none to offer in return.
“Master.”
“One has known of what has transpired today in Liyue Harbor, Shenhe,” her voice is warm and her words gentle, like a mother that never stops looking out for her children, no matter how much time has changed them.
“I apologize, all of your teachings and training…” Shenhe had this speech in her mind already, she had gone over it while she waited outside for something to happen.
She had been waiting for this to happen.
“On the contrary, I am proud.”
Shenhe blinks. That is unexpected.
“Master?”
“You’ve come a long way…” Cloud retainer extends her wings, her neck stretching as she looks into the full moon over them. “One feared this would also be part of your way into becoming human again, Shenhe.”
“I don’t want it, not any part of it. It is confusing, maddening,” Shenhe doesn’t add scary
“Perhaps, but it is a path you cannot walk away from, it is your nature.” Cloud Retainer turns around and looks at her, Shenhe’s seen that look hundreds of times. This is a lesson, not a test yet.
But a test would come soon enough.
“You are feeling once more, as you are supposed to. Don’t shun away from those feelings, conquer them and guide them. Amidst a storm, you are still the captain of your own ship, Shenhe.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Master,” to her surprise the adeptus laughs, a laugh that’s so alien any other human would have had a hard time comprehending it.
“Maybe it is a poor metaphor. Come when you are ready, Shenhe, Jueyun Karst will always be your home and haven when you need it,” she extends her winds and takes off effortlessly, Shenhe has always felt a strange jab when she sees it.
When she has the word for it, she’ll call it jealousy.
Right now, Shenhe observes as she leaves, circling over Liyue Harbor once more before disappearing into the peaks to the west.
Shenhe should go back inside, where the Tianquan had rushed Yun Jin after the battle at the Opera’s street. She had taken Yun Jin in her arms to Bubu pharmacy, but Ningguang had intercepted them on their way, calmly telling them instead to go to the Jade Chamber, the safest place in the city.
Shenhe did, of course, with Ganyu beside her guiding her steps and Keqing and Lumine behind her explaining everything that had happened to the Tianquan. To her surprise, or maybe not, Shenhe can’t explain why she feels so little about things that don’t affect her directly, the Jade Chamber had been targeted as well by the Abyss Order.
A futile attempt, of course, Ningguang and her personal guard had repelled the attack without any casualties or major injuries. The Jade Chamber personnel were quick to take Yun Jin from her arms as soon as they had gone through the threshold of the gates, rushing her into one of the infinite rooms hidden within the halls and walls of the crown of Liyue.
The noise, the people, the air, she couldn’t tolerate it, she couldn’t take it.
They took Yun Jin and carried away her weak body, giving directions and indications.
It had been too much.
And now the hours passed by with silent apathy as she waits outside, unsure of what to do with herself or with the feelings that crashed and roared in her chest. Shenhe, out of habit, had redone her hair with the red ropes and the thunderous rage in her had diminished to a muted litany.
The tremble in her fingers had disappeared as well.
And the strange feeling that made her heart wrench when she thought of Yun Jin.
The world seemed to have lost part of its luster. Shenhe welcomed the silence of her own feelings with a sigh.
She didn’t want to be human, she wanted to be a crane and fly far away, to a place where her feelings and her own mind wouldn’t trouble her.
Yet, she wasn’t to be that lucky, was she?
She is human and she doesn’t have feathers and wings, but arms and a polearm designed to kill and wound.
Shenhe doesn’t know how to care and heal, she doesn’t know how to put in words what she feels, how to deal with what she wants.
She looks over Liyue Harbor and wishes everything was simpler than it truly is.
The night offers no answers, no respite. Why would it? Shenhe knows better than to expect the answers to be handed to her.
She should head back to Yun Jin. What for? She doesn’t know, but she wants to be by her side. Her shoulders tense and her breathing stops for a second.
She wants to be by her side.
Shenhe realizes this is the first time she has felt so strongly for somebody who was outside of her immediate family or in touch with the adepti. A sigh escapes her lip and she shakes her head. She doesn’t want to understand that right now.
Maybe later.
For now, she simply lets her legs take her to Yun Jin’s room, following the indication of the staff still up at that hour of the night and the traces her eyes can see through that palace that Ningguang calls home. The wooden floors, so polished that the moonlight shines in them and mingles with the candles and lanterns that keep the night’s darkness at bay, don’t squeak or crack when she walks on them, instead they guide her through hallways and hidden passages to an ajar door.
She opens it an inch and knocks softly, unsure how to follow through. Doubt feels strange. Hesitation makes her feel weak and foreign in her own body, but Yun Jin answers and she crosses the door and closes it behind her gently. Yun Jin looks better, but that isn’t hard when the last time she saw her she was still covered in blood with open wounds and elaborated breathing as she tried to keep her pain away.
Now she has clean bandages where the worst wounds were and her skin is pale but not sickly. The biggest change, however, is the lack of her headpiece, her dark hair free instead. Yun Jin smiles and prompts up in bed enough to sit up and rest her back against pillows. Shenhe helps her, her massive strength handling her weight with care. Shenhe blinks when Yun Jin takes her hands and keeps her close for a second longer, but she doesn’t resist.
It is warm, not like fire, not like the sun.
It’s warm as if something ignited from her chest and this is the first time she feels this way. Maybe because she is used to her heart handling cryo energy, her chest filled with emotions that are cold and calculated, numbing and heavy.
This, instead, it’s like the fluttering of a butterfly that flies through gusts and gales no matter how fragile her wings are.
She kneels next to Yun Jin’s bed and looks at her from below, the first time she does so. The songstress is beautiful, in a different way with no ornaments and a simple tunic as sleeping gowns.
Yun Jin smiles and pats her hand twice, her eyes sparkle with something and Shenhe wonders what has just crossed her mind. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to watch my opera,” she says, the bandages in her forehead moving as she speaks. Shenhe remembers that gash open.
“Truly? On a time like this?” Her tone is exasperated and it makes Yun Jin laugh. It is like that afternoon hadn’t occurred.
But it had.
“Ah, you can’t truly take the stage out of a performer!” Her smile is so big Shenhe wonders how she can feel such a big emotion it lights up her face and overflows so that Shenhe is smiling now as well. She laughs and realizes, she only feels freely when she is around Yun Jin. She only sees the world’s colors and hears the world’s sounds at their fullest when she is around her.
Even with her red ropes restraining the curse of her fate.
“Why is it that I…” No, she can’t say it, she doesn’t know how to say it. Yun Jin looks at her and her jade eyes are beautiful and inquiring. Shenhe wants to let it go of her chest, but her mouth can’t articulate it. “When I’m with you the world seems… different.”
“How so?” Yun Jin asks and Shenhe struggles to find words. She looks past her into the wooden wall and decides to go with the simpler explanation.
“It seems more interesting, clearer.” It is a start.
It also is an understatement.
Yun Jin looks at her for a couple of seconds, her eyes traveling through the features of her face enough to make Shenhe painfully aware of the moment, of how close they are, of what had happened that day. She finally smiles and lets go of her hand, putting some distance between the two of them. “I think you are in love with me… or maybe starting to fall in love with me.”
Shenhe looks at her, a frown knitting her eyebrows together as she considers it.
“How would I know?” She can’t deny it, she cannot talk about what she doesn’t understand yet.
And that’s a naive question, one she’s never asked before.
“I’m not sure, operas talk about love and describe it, but it is different for everybody and anybody, but…” Yun Jin doesn’t look at her, instead, she intertwines her own fingers and keeps her eyes low. Her cheeks regain some color and Shenhe realizes she is embarrassed. “Sometimes you look at me the same way I look at you”
Shenhe doesn’t move, she feels instead. She feels the warmth of Yun Jin next to her, the smooth floor underneath her, the heavy silence around them. She finds her mind racing through every sensation, trapped in a riddle that doesn’t have an answer.
That doesn’t have a purpose.
Shenhe finds, in that labyrinth, however, a small light. A candle that she recognizes as happiness.
And hope.
“What do we do about this now?”
Yun jin laughs, small and strained but a laugh nonetheless and looks at Shenhe, still kneeling, still stoic despite everything that happens around her. Shenhe looks at her, her soft cheeks, her gentle nose, her lips-
Shenhe stares at her and doesn’t realize.
Yun Jin does.
“Just… stay with me for a while, please? I feel safer if you are in the Jade Chamber after everything that’s happened,” she asks, a heavy sigh escaping her lips as she lays against the pillows once more, exhausted.
“I could have hurt a lot of people.”
That’s the truth. Shenhe realizes that she fears that truth.
This is a night of too many firsts for her liking.
“You didn’t. You defended me…” Yun Jin takes her hand with her own, she had a bandage that covered most of her palm in it. “And, if it comes to it again, I know that I can trust you.”
“Yun Jin?” How can she say that so sure when Shenhe doesn’t really know herself?
“Not even at your worst you let go of your heart enough to forget me.”
Shenhe looks at her, bewildered.
Yun Jin, instead, smiles.
“Even if the world burns I know you will be there to catch my back. That’s enough for me.”
Yun Jin falls asleep quickly, exhausted by her wounds and by her feelings. Shenhe stays by her side, examining her features as she dozes off, wondering what is it about her that is just so different to Shenhe that other humans don’t have. The night goes by slowly, the candle dying out on the night table and the moon replacing the need for any other source of light.
She hears Lumine by the door before the Traveler can knock. Lumine looks at Yun Jin who is in the heavy slumber of the wounded soldiers first, then at Shenhe. She invites her out with a gesture of her eyebrows, tilting her head to the exit. Paimon is next to her and floats in with a reassuring smile.
“I’ll stay with her, don’t you worry,” she says in a tone so gentle Shenhe barely heard her.
“Thank you,” she mouths, standing up. Lumine starts walking without the need for words. Shenhe looks at Yun Jin once more before following in silence.
Outside the night has grown cold and the wind is like a knife that cuts through clothes and skin.
“Traveler…” Lumine turns around, stopping her words before they are born. Next to her, the blade carefully wrapped in white clothes and set against the wall it’s her polearm.
“There is no need for apologies or anything of the sort. I understand the pain of seeing somebody we love hurt.”
“Yet I attacked you.”
“Were you angry?”
“I was… scared” Lumine smiles at this, there’s sympathy and understanding in her features. The lights and shadows of her face are sharp under the moonlight.
“I talked with Ningguang and Keqing, we believe the Abyss was after something of value for Liyue. Something the Qixing wouldn’t share with me.” Lumine crosses her arms and Shenhe can see she is both worried and annoyed.
Lumine is also tired, but Shenhe hasn’t picked that up yet.
“Did they get it?”
“No, their diversion attacking us wasn’t enough to split the millelith. They did not acquire whatever they were after.”
“Which means they will come back for it.”
“Yes, that’s the conclusion the Qixing arrived at as well.”
“Yun Jin…”
Shenhe can only think of her, the image of the songstress lying motionless on the street goes by her mind like lightning.
She doesn’t know yet, but she will never be the same after seeing it.
Lumine nods, after all every traveler knows what it is like to leave something, somebody, behind.
“Liyue, as a nation, is in danger. They will need you. They will need your strength, Shenhe.” Lumine offers Shenhe her polearm, the blade harmless in the Traveler’s hands. “And you will need this.”
“Are you sure?”
“I want to trust you, Shenhe. And so does Yun Jin. Prove us right.” Lumine looks at the covered blade and a phantom moment of grief goes through them, a glossy look that takes away from the warmth of her presence.
“Prove yourself right,” she adds, the moment gone and the pain washed away by another wave of determination.
Shenhe wonders, not by the first time, what must it be to have a will that could allow traveling through different worlds. She looks at her weapon and twirls it like it is an extension of herself.
In a way it is.
Maybe the answers to her questions are to be found at the edge of her blade.
Maybe they are to be found at the other end, facing what she is willing to put herself in danger for to defend them.
Yun Jin will sleep dreamless that night, while a crane of white and black guards over her. While a human takes her first steps into finding who she really is and what she is willing to fight for.
Shenhe will discover, in time, that in that day and night she not only found she is in love, but that her love is willing to stay by her side and stand there as the world turns and bleeds in the violent war that is to come.
She nods and looks at Lumine, decided, before turning around.
“And, Shenhe…” Lumine smiles and for the first time that night Shenhe sees the polite and easy-going demeanor she usually wears. “Ask her and kiss her. Time can be short for us humans.”