Chapter Text
"Kazuha."
He always said it with reverence. Each syllable was attributed its own sort of awe.
A ship, a force of nature akin to its captain, flame-sailed and manned with no more than twenty, docked along the coast of Galesong Hill just as the tides shifted with the turn of the seasons.
Its most notable passenger was a young man clad in armour - like a rare onikabuto of burnt cherry and blackberry, he scuttled from deck to nest and back, always on the lookout, always seeking. It seemed he had found his treasure the day he set eyes on the land of the winds.
Captain Beidou proclaimed land ahoy! and the ocean heeded her unspoken command; it allowed the wooden Crux to moor safely to the abrading shore. Kazuha was not so obedient. It took some coaxing to get him to stand tall on the planks, excited though he was.
“You’ll always have a place with us, if that’s what you want, Kazu,” his eyepatched skipper told him, “but I’m not sure it is. And anyhow - I thought you planned on seeing all the realms this world has to offer. Where’d those sea legs of yours go?”
Kazuha didn’t want to say that a nation led by an anemo archon seemed too good to be true. He smiled weakly, stood taller, and bowed his thanks before plunging down onto the steady soil.
“Don’t get lost, sailor!” was the only thing Beidou left him with. A lean over the gunwale; a promise of impermanence. The rest, she knew, he’d scavenge on his own.
And scavenge he began, with every morsel of will he possessed.