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Jean hears the cat before she sees it, a meowing wafting from Lisa’s workshop that is both aggravated and slightly forlorn, and concern flares in Jean’s chest when she pushes into the room, the wards on the door lowered and the keys on their peg below Lisa’s favourite hat, but with the Grand Mage herself nowhere to be found.
The window is open, a mild breeze blowing in, the herbs and flowers and bundles of feathers that hang from the ceiling swaying in a dance gentle and serene, and though her cauldron bubbles and boils as the pages of her grimoire rustle on the table, along with empty jars set aside for storing her potions and a cup of tea still steaming on its matching saucer, Jean cannot sense any lingering trace of Lisa’s presence, not even the ubiquitous scent of roses that accompanies her magic.
It is not like her to step out mid-spell, and far less like her to leave her workshop unguarded—knowing how hazardous her ingredients and spellbooks can be—and Jean feels vague apprehension grip tight at her heart, until she hears that mysterious meowing again, coming from the floor beside an overstuffed bookshelf.
She approaches slowly, cautious and quiet, but the cat seems not to notice Jean at all; in fact, oddly, it seems rather fixated on the tome flipped open on the floor, as if it were reading the complex text , of all things…
“Hello, little cat,” says Jean, sweet and kind, and its ears twitch upward, turning its head to her in a swift, surprised motion as it suddenly registers Jean’s existence.
The cat is black, dark as midnight, almost the deepest of violets when the light shines just right, but its eyes are a shade of brilliant green, and more intelligent than a cat has any right to be.
“What are you doing here?” Jean asks, crouching low to the floor as she reaches out a hand for the cat to sniff. “This can be a dangerous place, you know—especially when Lisa isn’t around to protect you. Certainly no place for a stray cat like yourself.”
The cat had perked up when it had seen her, eyes practically glowing in the early afternoon sun, and now it bounds over eagerly to Jean, rubbing its head against her hand, purring loud as thunder in an enthusiastic greeting.
“You are a friendly one, aren’t you?” Jean says, her smile widening despite the unsettled feeling sinking like lead in her stomach. “Did you come in through the window?” Jean asks, carrying the cat when it leaps into her arms, settling effortlessly into the comfortable crook of her elbow. “Did you climb up here and get stuck?”
The cat meows in such a way that sounds somehow fond and exasperated simultaneously—like it simply cannot believe just how dense Jean is being—and if Jean didn’t know better, she’d say it was giving her a distinctly Lisa-esque look, as if it had brows to raise in her iconic sardonic smirk.
The look is so reminiscent of Lisa that Jean cannot help but laugh, chuckling into the empty room as the cat very nearly rolls its gleaming emerald eyes, and Jean rises from the floor to deactivate Lisa’s cauldron, following the procedure she’d taught her long ago, and though she cannot set the wards on the workshop herself, Jean takes the keys from their place on the wall and locks the door behind her, balancing the cat carefully in her arms.
“I haven’t heard any reports of a lost cat,” Jean says, thoughtful as she hugs it close to her chest, its fur soft and warm against her skin, “but let’s go down to the marketplace and see if we can find where you belong, alright?”
The cat simply meows again, snuggling more thoroughly into her embrace, and though Jean’s worry for Lisa’s whereabouts simmers low in her gut, she has full faith in Lisa’s ability to take care of herself, and the problem of the cat is one she can solve easily on her own—a distraction before she succumbs to anxiety and dread, and begins seeking out the librarian.
***
No one in town has seen this cat before (and no one has seen Lisa, for that matter, either), and Jean is slowly losing hope of finding her home.
The cat herself seems entirely unbothered, draped around Jean’s shoulders like a half-liquid scarf (quite welcome in the mid-autumn chill, as it happens), purring in her ear in absolute contentment as they walk around the city attempting to gather information.
The cat receives plenty of pats on her head and under-chin scritches, and declarations of what a good, lovely girl she is, but nobody has any insight to offer Jean whatsoever, and the search, in the end, turns out to be fruitless.
“Well,” Jean sighs, the cat cradled cozily once more in her arms, “you can stay with me for tonight, and tomorrow we will formulate a new plan together.”
The cat blinks up at her, patient and keen, and chirps in what Jean takes as agreement.
***
Back in her office, huddled over her desk, Jean strives to focus on her paperwork for the day, but try as she might, Jean can barely pay attention as thoughts of Lisa swirl fiercely like a storm in her mind.
After she has read the same sentence for at least the twelfth time, Jean gives up on her reports, pushing them away, and breathes slow and deep as she calms herself, absently petting the cat fast asleep in her lap.
Lisa has not returned to the library yet, and none of the knights can remember seeing her today, not since she sequestered herself upstairs in her workshop with requests not to disturb her while she brews her potions.
That is standard for Lisa, once every couple months, when she takes a day to replenish the Order’s potions stock, but something very clearly interrupted her work, and Jean’s worry is beginning to gnaw at her bones, every sense tingling with increasing unease.
She looks down at the cat, scratches behind her ears, smiles as cheerfully as she possibly can when the cat turns its bold green eyes on her, and after the cat has had a stretch and a yawn, she looks at Jean with an expression that appears to resemble sympathy, before butting her head against Jean’s stiff fingers.
“I am getting worried, little cat,” Jean admits under her breath, gaze shifting to the clock as teatime ticks by. “Lisa adheres to a fairly predictable schedule, and her disappearance is not, by any means, normal.”
The cat meows loudly—frustratedly even—but Jean merely sighs despondently to herself, slouching ever so slightly in her straight-backed chair, as she begins to stroke the cat’s dark fur again.
“I just hope she comes home soon,” Jean says, soft and sad, “from wherever it is she has gone to.”
If cats could sigh in resignation, Jean is convinced this cat would have done so, but she arches into Jean’s touch, nonetheless, tail brushing gingerly against her wrist, and Jean silently asks Venti to keep an eye on the witch, and prays for her safety and swift return.
***
Jean manages to finish a fraction of her work—not nearly as much as she would typically do, but it is not, in her estimation, a typical day—and she leaves the office before midnight for the first time in months, heading up the stairs to check the workshop again when the moon begins to rise, lustrous and tranquil, bathing Mondstadt in silver as it peeks above the horizon.
The workshop is exactly as Jean had left it earlier that afternoon, frozen in time like a photograph, and the cat pads after her, following her inside, as she walks across the room to close the window.
She sits at Lisa’s desk, briefly drops her head into her hands, shoulders slumped and subdued and agonizingly tense, but she looks up in confusion at the sound of something solid on the floor; the cat batting around a small purple and gold object that Jean recognizes immediately—
Lisa’s Vision.
Her breath catches in the back of her throat, gazing with wide eyes at the Vision on the floor, and it is only the fact that it is active and glowing—radiant, still, despite Lisa’s profound absence—that grants Jean any sense or semblance of relief, as that glimmer is an indication that she is alive, wherever in Teyvat she may have been spirited away to.
Jean lifts it from the worn, old wood with tentative fingers, reverent and gentle and indescribably terrified, her fear erupting like a wildfire in her chest as she runs her thumb over the violet crystal, just as Lisa so often does.
She knows Lisa doesn’t need it for her magic to function—knows just how powerful she is even without the lightning in her veins—but this suggests to Jean that she is not just gone; that something must have happened, a threat or a struggle, that would have resulted in her becoming separated from her Vision.
But the rest of the room is not in disarray—a bit cluttered, perhaps, though arranged according to Lisa’s meticulous design—and Jean closes her eyes as she attempts to assuage her fears, reassuring herself again and again that Lisa is competent and capable and among the strongest people she knows, more than skillful enough to protect herself.
Or, Jean acknowledges, a lump growing in her throat, it is possible, too, that she came to some sudden conclusion that she was better off elsewhere, and abandoned her Vision and her friends and her whole life in Mondstadt… giving everything up for an unknown goal in an unknown place far away from here…
… And far away from Jean.
Jean swallows hard, feeling shaken and lost, and she clutches her hand tight around Lisa’s Vision as it pulses with an energy so desperately familiar that the telltale sheen of tears wells in ocean eyes, though she blinks them away rapidly before they can fall.
The cat has been watching her from her place on the floor, and she jumps into Jean’s lap to better peer at her, and Jean is unnerved by those large, green eyes—so strangely like Lisa’s in the dim evening light.
“I don’t know what to do,” Jean whispers to the cat, breaths short and shallow as panic starts to set in. “I do not know if this is something I can handle alone… perhaps I should send dispatches to the Tianquan and the Academia—anywhere Lisa may have ended up. I need information. I need help, I need—”
Lisa.
She needs Lisa, and Jean never realized just how much she relies on her—how much she seeks out her opinions and judgment and vast expertise; how much courage and joy she takes from the warmth of her gaze and the curve of her smile, and the way that Jean’s name falls from pink lips, as if it were sacred, a treasure, a song.
Jean never realized how much she loves her.
She inhales sharply at this new awareness, the pain in her heart overwhelming in its scope, and the cat becomes restless, meowing frantically in her lap, pupils massive and ears forced flat against her head, tail swinging wildly against the fabric of Jean’s thighs.
The cat lays a paw on Jean’s clenched fist, and when Jean unfurls her fingers around Lisa’s Vision, the cat presses her paw to the crystal itself, staring at Jean with an intensity almost human, and Jean runs her free hand along the cat’s fur, nodding to herself as she soothes her own stress, panic replaced by the stirrings of determination.
“There is nothing more to be done tonight, but first thing tomorrow I will assemble the Investigation Team and recall Eula’s Company from the field.” She picks up the cat and hugs her close, burying her face in thick black fur. “We are going to find her, little cat,” she says, and the cat meows softly in reply. “I promise we are going to bring Lisa home.”
***
It is undoubtedly too cold to be out this late, especially so close to the coastline, but Jean cannot sleep, cannot focus on her work, so instead she braves the chill and the biting autumn wind to seek solace and guidance at Windrise.
She lays a wool blanket between the serpentine roots, wraps another firmly around herself, and Jean holds the cat against her chest as she sits, worried and weary against the hallowed tree.
“Wind, please,” she begs, pressing her forehead to the cat’s as she speaks soft and low, hushed and heavy for only the breeze to hear, “where could she be? Why would she have vanished without telling someone? Why would she have left her Vision behind? And if she was taken…”
Jean’s hand stills in the cat’s midnight-dark fur, the other gripping tight around Lisa’s Vision, and it feels strange to grasp another person’s Vision in her hands—the Electro energy foreign and forbidden and unresponsive to her—but it also feels intimate in a way that Jean cannot quite describe… as if she bears in her palm a piece of Lisa’s soul, as vibrant and magical as the rest of her.
Jean shakes her head, forces herself to think of more positive things, like the memory of Lisa’s dazzling grin, and how hopeful she is that she will see it again.
“You would like Lisa,” she says to the cat, and the cat nudges her head against Jean’s chin, prompting a fond smile and her hand to resume its petting. “She is clever and kind and utterly enchanting, in every way you could possibly imagine.”
Jean sighs, wistful and sincere, as she gazes beyond the canopy of rustling leaves, out into the meadow and the thick velvet night dotted with stars beyond count or comprehension, and her lips pull taut with the sheer magnitude of her yearning; wishing, more than anything, that the librarian were here to share in it.
“She is the brightest star in the sky,” Jean murmurs, and meets green eyes that contain multitudes—wisdom and secrets, devotion and dreams—and Jean smiles with all the love in her heart, eyes crinkled at the corners as she thinks of Lisa. “If we are lucky, you will get to meet her, little cat. Maybe someday soon.”
Jean drops a kiss to the cat’s fluffy head, brief and affectionate and overflowing with hope, and the instant Jean’s lips make contact with black fur, she is blinded by a burst of glittering violet light, flashing before her eyes more brilliant than the sun, and her eyelids fall shut against the incandescent glare as static ripples and crashes like waves over her skin.
The weight in her lap is abrupt and unexpected, and when she opens blurred eyes, the cat is gone, replaced by none other than the missing librarian, a small smile on her lips and a pretty blush to her cheeks as she readjusts her position atop Jean’s toned thighs.
“Hello, Jean.”
Jean can do nothing but gape stupidly at her, mouth falling open like a Cider Lake bass, but then with the swiftness of the brisk autumn wind, Jean enfolds Lisa desperately in her arms, clinging to her like ivy climbing the brick façade of Headquarters, Jean’s hands a pressure on Lisa’s back as she mumbles her relief, muffled and strained, into the smooth skin at the curve of her dearest friend’s neck.
“I was so worried,” she says, “I was so—”
Jean cuts herself off with a shuddering breath, embracing Lisa impossibly tighter, and Lisa’s own arms snake around Jean, returning the embrace just as strongly.
“I’m alright, Jean,” she soothes, fingers gliding across Jean’s back, and she places a kiss into Jean’s golden hair so lightly that Jean does not feel it. “It’s alright now.”
“You’ve been here all along,” she says, pulling back, and she stares at the witch with wide, perplexed eyes—for this is not magic she has ever witnessed before. “Lisa, what happened?”
“I was… distracted,” she begins, her faint blush deepening, “and I should have noticed that the ground fennel was in actuality powdered aniseed, but clearly I was not paying close enough attention. And so what was meant to be a simple allergy potion for Venti backfired on me rather spectacularly.”
Lisa sighs her embarrassment, blush spreading to her chest, pale skin burning crimson where her Vision ought to be. “An amateurish mistake, I must confess, so it serves me right for brewing while my attention was divided. Thankfully the magic would have worn off after 24 hours, and I would have been right as rain with no further complications.”
The timing is off, conspicuously so, and Jean’s brow furrows as her befuddlement grows. “But it has not been a full day yet.”
Lisa does not reply for several long moments. “No, it hasn’t.”
“So then how… ?”
Jean has never seen Lisa quite so red in all the time they have known one another, and she meets Jean’s gaze, electric and fleeting, before averting her eyes toward her hands, gloved and lithe, fingers tangling together like vines in her lap.
“Transformation spells can be risky and disorienting at the best of times,” she says, “especially so when they are accidental, and as I did not have access to my magic to turn myself back, I was therefore reliant on someone else to perform the counterspell or brew a remedy for me, or otherwise I’d just have to wait out the effects until they faded enough for me to reverse them.”
She pauses, hand rising to close habitually around her Vision, fingers curling into a fist around nothing against her chest.
Jean remembers with a jolt the Vision still clasped in her hand, and she offers it to Lisa, grateful and gracious, who closes her eyes when they briefly flare violet and breathes slow and steady as her body attunes to its power again.
Jean’s bewilderment has not abated in the least as she makes a significant effort to wrap her mind around what she has seen, and she waits until Lisa’s magic has stabilized once more before she tries to voice her question a second time:
“Lisa, that still doesn’t explain why—”
“Additionally,” she interrupts, not missing a beat, “as a divine object, a Vision cannot be altered by mortal means, so it remained untouched after the potion went awry. And while it would not have aided me in this situation—” she is rambling now, voice deceptively casual, refusing to meet Jean’s eyes with impressive diligence, “—the sudden loss of it was rather unpleasant, leaving me feeling more absentminded and bereft than I would have anticipated, which hindered my already limited ability to concoct an antidote—”
“But Lisa—”
“—so as I could not cast a spell, nor could I brew a potion, I would have had to wait those 24 hours,” Lisa continues, with a hesitant glance to Jean as she takes longer than necessary to thread her Vision back into place, “but in rare cases, it has been documented that the introduction of certain external emotional stimuli can be potent enough to bypass the Zauberman-Gupta Thaumaturgical Threshold and precipitate a retrograde reaction of various transmogrified energies if the internal emotional state is sufficiently in alignment—”
“Lisa—”
“There is a reason, Jean, that in the old stories, a kiss of true love could break any curse.”
Jean blinks for a few seconds, completely blown away, struck once again into a fishlike stupor. “... Oh.”
“And…” Lisa’s flush returns, a rich cherry-red, and after a breathless moment she raises a hand to Jean’s cheek, running her thumb along soft, chilled skin as she meets her eyes with love immeasurable, “for such a thing to work properly, the feelings would have to be mutual.”
“Oh.” Jean’s heart pounds a vital rhythm in her chest as Lisa quietly hums her agreement, and Jean twines her own hands in Lisa’s loose hair, marveling at the adoration alight in Lisa’s eyes that sparks like lightning from the depths of her chest to the farthest reaches of her body, equally as fervent and with twice as much heat.
“I love you,” she says, exhilarated and sweet, three words she has uttered to only three people, but now they rise to her lips as easy as breathing as Jean leans ever closer toward Lisa.
“I know,” Lisa replies, chuckling against Jean’s lips, and the warmth of her humour drives Jean to the brink of desire, but still she resists bridging the final gap between them. “I am human again because of it.”
However, Jean’s resolve quickly cracks from the ache that blossoms in vivid green eyes, and she brushes her lips against Lisa’s smile—feather-light and sublime and unbearably tender—and she revels in the quivering hitch of Lisa’s breath; the longing she exhales on a tremulous sigh.
“You love me, too.”
“I do,” Lisa whispers, leaning in for another kiss, and Jean’s eyes flutter shut as Lisa captures her lips, proper and deep and more glorious than the stars—everything Jean has ever dreamed of.
They pull back after a moment when Lisa shivers in the breeze, and Jean wraps the blanket more snugly around them both, Lisa nestling comfortably into the warmth of Jean’s body, her nose cold against the skin of Jean’s bare neck.
“I am glad,” Jean says, quiet and fond, “that today’s incident wasn’t nearly as catastrophic as I had feared it might be.”
Lisa lifts her head, meets Jean’s amused eyes with a dubious squint, notes how her lips twitch with her barely contained grin, and Lisa cannot suppress the laughter that echoes in the early morning emptiness, filling the meadow with her unfettered delight. “Darling, that was terrible. ”
Jean’s eyes seem to shimmer, bright as the moon. “I could not bear to waste such a purrfect opportunity.”
“Jean—”
“Fur-tunately for you, I have run out of—”
Lisa stops her mouth with a ravishing kiss, her hands on Jean’s cheeks as they fall into bliss and become lost in one another, cherishing the moment—exquisite and heavenly in the wind’s caress.
Jean thinks it likely that, for now, they will keep today’s events strictly to themselves, a secret sheltered with grace in the boughs of the tree, but when the time comes to share with their friends…
Jean smiles against pink lips, but does not say a word—
She and Lisa will tell quite a tail, indeed.
fin