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Childe doesn’t know how to garden.
His mother used to grow beets and potatoes in the garden — one of the few things that she could keep alive in the icy plot behind their cottage — but he never really helped her. Tonia was the one who preferred to dig her little trowel and break up the sod and find the little treasures buried beneath the soil, but as a child, Ajax preferred ice-fishing and the thrill of the catch.
Now, he squats in the lush soil of Lumine’s newly acquired adeptal realm and stares at the tiny, delicate seedling in his hand. His first instinct is to curl his hand into a fist, crushing it and watching it fall. That’s what he was always taught to do, no questions asked. But he doesn’t. He can’t. After all, she asked him to help her.
“What’s wrong?” Lumine calls out, several plots over. “Do you need any help?” She stands up and brushes off her hands, heedlessly leaving long streaks of dust and dirt on her white dress. A small smile plays around her lips as she pads on over, and she chuckles, “I didn’t know that the 11th Harbinger of the Fatui didn’t know how to garden.”
“It’s not really in the training regimen,” he grumbles. He blows a strand of hair out of his face and says, “Speaking of which, why did you ask me for help? Aren’t you the hero of Liyue now? Would look bad if you got caught entertaining a Harbinger in your new little prize of sorts.”
Lumine squats down beside him and sighs, “It’s my teapot now, and Granny Ping didn’t tell me that I had limits on who I could or couldn’t invite.” She looks up at him, and Childe tries not to notice how long her eyelashes are and how they perfectly frame her beautiful eyes. He swallows hard as Lumine continues, “Besides, shouldn’t the rest of the Harbingers be annoyed with you too for spending time with me? I think I must have routed at least twenty Fatui camps by now.”
“I don’t care what the rest of them say,” he says. “And that’s not really answering my question.”
Lumine laughs, and oh , it’s beautiful. “I’m just doing what you always do to me,” she says as she prods Childe’s side.
“Hey now, I treat you with kindness and good manners,” Childe sputters. “Remember all those dinners I treated you to? The free Sigil of Permission?”
Lumine raises a brow and starts ticking off on her fingers as she says, “First off, the sigil was a fake that you had your lackeys forge. Second, you always avoided my questions about what you were actually doing and only told me the truth when you threw a giant whale at me. Consider this repayment for the Golden House.”
“I’d rather spar,” Childe mutters under his breath.
“And I’d rather garden,” Lumine says. “Do you know how much of a pain it is to harvest wild violetgrass? Much easier to plant here. If I can get my hands on some qingxin seeds, I’d love to plant those too, but for now, we’ve got these seedlings on our hands.” She reaches over to cradle Childe’s hands in her own, gently guiding him, and Childe’s cheeks flush scarlet red at her warm touch. “Here,” she murmurs. “This is how you do it. Simple, isn’t it?”
Together, they loosen up the hardened soil around the seedling’s roots and plant it into a small divot in the tilled soil. Lumine lets go of Childe’s hands and watches him try to settle the dirt around the seedling without brushing too hard against its delicate stem. “Where did you learn?” he finally asks.
Lumine sits back on her heels and muses, “A couple of worlds back, Aether and I landed in a world where everyone lived in large trees and grew things in the hollows and divots of the bark.” Her gaze unfocuses as she recounts the memory, and in that moment, she looks older than she’s ever looked before. Sometimes, Childe forgets that she’s not really part of this world, and she’s about as foreign as it gets for Teyvat. She smiles and continues, “It was nearly impossible to get to the surface and survive there with all the monsters around, so everyone just lived in the trees and grew everything they needed there. One of the gardeners there taught us how to grow our own food and how to grow the mosses into beds. After we left, I kept up the hobby. It has its uses.”
“Monsters…” Childe echoes. It sounds an awful lot like the Abyss. Childe hasn’t told Lumine about his past. He isn’t ashamed of it necessarily; it taught him valuable skills that he uses to this day, and he learned how to protect the weak from the strong. He fights so that he can constantly improve, and he fights to chase after that illimitable thrill that he feels once fear fades away and adrenaline takes its place. He used to be so afraid. Childe wonders if he should say anything about it, but if tells Lumine, another one of the few, invisible lines drawn between them will crumble. He doesn’t know if he wants that or not, but it’s something that still remains between them during their spars and adventures in the wilderness.
“Is something wrong?” Lumine asks.
Childe blinks hard. He didn’t realize he was sinking deep into memory, just like Lumine a few moments ago, and he says, “No, I was just thinking about old times.”
“Nostalgic, aren’t you?” she hums.
Childe digs another divot into the dirt with his trowel as he says suddenly, “My mother used to grow beets and potatoes.”
Lumine settles another seedling into the hole and asks, “Really? Why didn’t she teach you then?”
Childe tries to be gentle as he pats the dirt back into place around the seedling, but he still crushes one of the leaves with his trowel. He tosses the trowel down on the ground and starts using his hands instead. “She offered, but I wanted to fish with my father,” he answers. “Fishing seemed more fun than sticking my hands into dirt. Besides, my younger sister, Tonia, liked doing it more than me.” There’s a small voice in the back of Childe’s head that says, you wanted to impress your father more. It’s not wrong but it’s not something that he particularly likes thinking about. So he just turns back to the dirt and starts digging again.
“Perhaps the Fatui should include a gardening segment in their training camps,” Lumine offers.
“Ha! Not a chance.”
They squat there in the plots, quietly gardening, and the silence is comforting. They fall into an easy rhythm where Childe digs holes for Lumine to place the seedlings into. It works out a lot better since Lumine’s far more delicate with the seedlings than Childe is, and they make a decent amount of progress. The scent of loamy, damp earth floats around them, which is different than the icy sod that Childe remembers from home.
The two of them manage to make it to the second to last plot when Lumine finally says, “You know, I invited you here because I consider you a dear companion. Yes, they’re calling me some sort of hero now, just like they did in Mondstadt, but I’m just a traveler looking for her brother. I don’t really care what they have to say about me.” She sighs, and when Childe looks at her, her eyes are dim, far dimmer than they normally are. “Do you ever get tired of working?” she asks.
Childe considers it for a moment before replying, “Depends on what you mean by that, girlie. Being a Harbinger means you’re always on your toes, so I’m never bored with work. I get tired of being away from home for so long though.”
“Home,” Lumine echoes. She wistfully says, “I can’t remember the last place I called home. I’ve been wandering for so long, and the only real constant I had was Aether.”
“They say home is where the heart is,” Childe tries.
Lumine glances at him, and in that instant, she seems as otherworldly as she claims she once was. With where they are right now, the light of the setting sun illuminates her with orange and gold and gives her a veritable halo. Her eyes are still that liquid gold, but there’s some unidentifiable emotion in them now. “Aether used to be that home,” she starts. There’s a brief silence as she struggles to find her words, but then, she reaches a hand out to pat Childe and says, “But I suppose here is feeling more and more like home.”
Childe’s chest feels vice-tight and he can barely get out the words when he says, “It’s the Snezhnayan hospitality for you.” He wants to say something, act upon this sliver of a hope that he desperately wants, but he knows that the thin, invisible line between them still exists. She’s the Hero of Mondstadt, the Savior of Liyue, an outlander who just happened to land in his world and got trapped here. It doesn’t matter how much she doesn’t care about her reputation; it still exists and everyone else will look at her as such. As for him, he’s a Harbinger, and his loyalty lies to his Tsaritsa, gentle and sharpened by the world into ice. He looks at Lumine, framed in golden sunshine, and he aches.
Lumine returns to gardening, laying the violetgrass seedlings and mint seeds into the ground with a loving touch. He watches her, watches the shape of her, and although it’s a silly, stupid thing, Childe has always been so good at falling into things without heeding the consequences of them. So, he reaches out and taps Lumine on the shoulder, dirt staining her white dress even more.
“What is it?”
“Ajax,” he says, quick so that he doesn’t lose the impulsive urge of it. “Ajax is what my mother named me. That’s what they call me back home. They don’t know who Childe or Tartaglia is.”
“Ajax,” she repeats, and oh, it sounds so different on her tongue. It sounds like home, and again, he aches so deeply at the sound of it. Although it’s unspoken, he hopes that Lumine understands — he yearns for it, in fact. She, out of all people that he’s met here, should understand.
Lumine looks at him, and although neither of them say anything, there’s something that settles between them. The line hasn't been crossed yet. Childe digs another hole and passes Lumine another violetgrass seedling, careful not to crush it in his ungentle hand. Lumine murmurs, thank you Ajax, when she takes it from his hand, fingertips brushing up against his bare palms.
The line hasn’t been crossed yet, but it blurs.