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Gloved hands carefully pour two cups of tea, delicate fingers holding one of the most beautiful pieces of tableware the priestess has ever seen, and she’s seen a lot during her long years on this earth.
It’s made of fine opaque glass, golden roses, and dandelions - dandelions, Yae smiles - sprouting from the top of the lid, the handle, the spout, and catching the light so easily they might look real from an angle. If there is anything close to real magic in this world, it must be the stuff this teapot is made from, as dramatic as that sounds.
Lisa Minci has always had good taste - and great powers, who knows what things she’s actually done. Yae knows of her work as a librarian. She’s kept her company during her afternoons cataloging tomes and straightening book spines on the shelves, has discussed the acquisition of copies of books from her publishing house.
Yae also knows about the restricted section of the library. How could she not when anything hidden is just the right spark for the fire of her curiosity. That same trick seems to have worked on Lisa too, maybe a little too well.
She seems pretty easy to read, at first, a soft beauty with lazy tendencies, teasing yet conciliatory until someone forgets to return a book in time, that is. That seems to be the extent of the problems she’s willing to handle herself. The rest of her time is spent among books, silent pages that have the bad habit of talking too much.
Yae knows she’s taken a fancy for the Acting Grand Master, the Gunnhildr child, Jean, so there’s that too. Lisa doesn’t appear willing to share much further than that.
“Thank you,” Yae says, taking her teacup into both hands. She’s been drinking tea from Inazuman-style cups all her life and Lisa never seems to mind when she holds hers wrong, so she sees no need to change her ways. “That teapot is marvelous.”
Lisa slowly sits on the armchair perpendicular to Yae with a smile that could almost look bashful, if Yae didn’t know any better.
“Jean had it made for me,” she says, her voice honeyed by the fondness she so clearly holds for the woman. Yae knows, there’s possession underneath the affection, the kind of jealousy that can’t be really shown, because the object of your desire is not yours. Yet.
“Oh did she, now?”
“For my birthday, yes. And I know what you’re going to say, but you’re not so well off yourself,” she smiles around the rim of her cup, in that way that makes her look like a sleepy cat. Miko is glad Lisa’s decided to be docile and that they’re on good terms because she has a feeling that, in some other universe, they are at each other’s throats. They’re too similar for their own good. Well, maybe Lisa is a tad less manipulative. Maybe.
But they have interests in common, and Miko finds their similarities amusing - their differences even more so.
Miko’s smile sharpens ever so slightly. “You got me there. Is that gold? It is, is it?”
“Yes. I would never ask for something like this, but Jean is… well, she’s just like that,” Lisa says as she places her cup back on the small plate on the table in front of her.
“Mh, like that …”
It’s honestly impressive, the level of devotion this woman has towards Jean, how fondly she talks about her and the things she does. Miko sometimes wonders if she talks about Ei the same way, she’s pretty sure she does, if only sometimes.
Lisa scoffs, but she’s smiling in full. “Oh, don’t play coy with me, Miko, you know exactly what I’m talking about. We both do.”
Yae’s sharp teeth glint in the low glow of the oil lamps of the library. “Indeed we do, Lisa.”
“So, how’s your side of things? Really? Expensive gifts and everything, I would expect you to have made use of that old interrogation room upstairs by now.”
Lisa leans forward, cheek in her palm, and the glance she gives Miko shows her she’s thought about it at least once.
“Well,” she starts, you’re not allowed to ask about that, she means, and Miko hears it loud and clear. “We were in her office the other day, after work, and we were talking, just talking,” and Miko almost laughs because if there is one thing Lisa refuses and will always refuse to share is the extent of their physical relationship. “I told her I cared deeply for her, that I cherished her very much.” Her expression then shifts to something between annoyance and resignation.
"All she did was smile at me in that frustratingly charming way and say that she considers me a dear friend as well and she's grateful for my affection."
Yae laughs, in that subtle, giggly way that would seem condescending if Lisa didn’t know her at least a little bit. “Oh, that's wonderfully painful. It’s okay, darling, they’re all dense like that.”
She thinks about Ei, about her crippling fear of committing to anything but her ideals because you can’t lose anything if nothing is all you have.
Even when Yae has been there, just been there, waiting and hoping.
And it’s not like she’s had it easier, she’s lost people, the same people, and clings to whatever remains like a lifeline, when Ei has seemingly decided to let it all go.
Ei is oblivious, or pretends to be, whichever - Miko struggles to believe she could build clones of herself, seal her own conscience inside of a weapon, rule Inazuma and still be incapable of getting the hint, sometimes.
But Yae stays, that’s her job, staying, be it one night or five hundred years.
She's never done it out of selflessness, all Yae did was for her own gain, too. The waiting, the scheming. She's selfish and possessive and she's fully aware of it. She'd do anything to keep what's hers.
She manipulated an entire country, her own country, to draw Ei out of her favourite hiding place, and she will never regret it. The world can burn, for all she cares, as long as she can have Ei and be by her side.
“Just give her time and be patient, she’ll come around, eventually.”
She’s overconfident in saying that, maybe she’s talking to herself, too. She does have a lot of time, and patience has been one of her strong suits for a long while. It wasn’t when she was younger, but she’s learned, as she did a lot of things.
Lisa seems to deflate, then, something in her dimming. She usually speaks in a soft, velvety tone, but she’s murmuring now.
“I don’t have much of that.”
Miko feels like laughing again, but not at her expense exactly, it’s just-
Miko usually doesn’t outright ask for details when it comes to Lisa Minci and the Acting Grand Master, she knows herself a good talker, and talk she does. And while she is sure Lisa is far from unaware of her little mind games, she likes to play, too, and lets Yae have what she wants, sharing sometimes and withholding others.
“What, patience?”
She can very well imagine Lisa getting frustrated at some point, being dismissed in favour of bureaucracy and duty. Yae knows how that feels and wouldn’t really blame her anyway.
Lisa sighs, almost shakily, and does something Miko has never seen her do. She takes her gloves off.
She does it slowly and carefully, as if it somehow hurt, and Yae’s eyes widen in surprise.
She’s seen it before, on Ei, on Makoto , and she assumed it only happened to gods or anything adjacent. Neither she nor General Kujo had ever had it happen to them despite their electro visions.
But this is-
Lisa’s delicate hands are covered in scars, lightning scars, purple veins running down her skin, and spreading, over the back, across her palms, crossing her wrists.
Lisa swallows. “Time.”
Since she was young and exuberant, Yae has refused to be still. With the prospect of at least a thousand years in front of you, remaining motionless means death. She’s always hated stagnation. So, she moved.
She can count on one hand the times she’s actually stopped, one for each person she’s lost, including Ei, the first time.
But that was five hundred years ago and the woman she’s drinking tea with was not born, nor her parents, or grandparents or half of her bloodline, really.
In eighty years, or a hundred, Miko will still be here, unchanging.
And Lisa and Jean and all of their love will be just… gone.
Not forgotten, if there is one thing that she has learned in all of her years it’s that remembrance is closest to eternity, remembrance is living a second, third, hundredth time.
For that, to be truly remembered, you have to be feared, hated.
Or loved.
She takes a deep breath and doesn’t ask, just waits, for Lisa to elaborate further. Yae knows something’s up, because a human existence is short, fickle, and fragile, but it grants some time. A hundred years well spent can be worth a lot.
Something in the way Lisa isn’t looking at her tells Miko she doesn’t have that luxury.
"Before demanding too many miracles from the gods, first, consider if you are willing to pay the price they ask."
It’s said as if she’d just read it from a book, as if she’d said it a million times already. Then, she chuckles, but it’s without mirth.
“I should have really followed my own advice.”
Miko’s eyes follow the aimless patterns Lisa is tracing on her hands, following a scar, then deviating and swiping across them, as if that could somehow erase them. She’s never seen her like this, doubts anyone has seen her like this, not even Jean, and Miko is not scared - being in love with a god will take the fear out of pretty much anything - but she’s intrigued, possibly concerned. Lisa’s life or anything that happens in it is not pivotal to Yae’s, but, despite appearances, Yae cares.
Lisa leans forward, elbows on her thighs and hands to her mouth, together as if in prayer. She looks thoughtful, and beautiful, even in this twisted, painful way.
“I asked, without taking into account that nothing comes for free. I received a gift and paid it back in full,” she says, and the glint in her eyes might be tears or a trick of the light.
Miko has no idea what happened, won’t ask about it either because it’s not her place to pry, this time.
Before she can say anything, Lisa… bursts out laughing.
“Oh, Archons, I’m sorry, Miko. I- Look. Let’s just pretend I never said any of that. It’s good, everything’s good.”
She turns to look at Yae and the only thing in her green, green eyes is sadness, even when a full smile is still stretching her lips.
Yae won’t question the way Lisa chose to live her life, spend her days, if doing the bare minimum feels like stopping time to her, then, good. But if this - this desperation and hesitation - is all that she gets from it, that’s no way to live.
Lisa's smile falters when Miko brushes the tip of her fingers on her temple, to get a stray hair out of the way, maybe to comfort her somewhat.
She decides to be the most direct she’s ever been in her life. She loves the games and the schemes, she’s always loved toying with humans, with or without purpose, but not with this one.
“You said it yourself, you don't have time to give. So, take it, make what's left of it entirely yours. What’s stopping you? Power?” Miko chuckles. “I have a feeling that’s not it. I know you and I don’t, but I know that a woman like you has it in her. Next time, tonight, just go to her and tell her, no pretty words, no dancing around it.”
Lisa stares at her for a moment, eyes swirling with something else, something different. And most times, different is good. Miko slightly tilts her head, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah?”
The tea in their cups is now cold.
Lisa nods, the ghost of a smile resting at the corner of her lips. “Yeah.”