Work Text:
Kazuha has a notebook. Very big, very ancient and very thick. The pages are sticking together, the cover has darkened with age. Kazuha carries it with him everywhere, but never shows what's inside. He says: "You'll see when the time comes."
Scara knows that Kazuha collects herbarium. He puts leaves and petals between the pages of a notebook and then writes something. Every time he caught him doing this, he noticed a dreamy smile and a slight blush on his cheeks. He really wanted to know what Kazuha was writing, but every time he asked to show it he heard the same "when the time comes". At first Kazuha himself asked to bring him rare leaves and herbs. Later, Scara got used to it himself. Every time he looked at a tree, a bush or a flower, he wondered if Kazuha had one. He remembered every petal he brought him. Maple leaf, cecilia, padisarah, cuihua and sandbearer tree leaves... Every corner of Teyvat remained in his notebook.
He realized that the time had come when he returned from a distant land.
When he was going on this trip, Kazuha asked to bring a plant that he hadn't seen before, something that would seem important to Scara, something that would remind of him.
Scara laughed, he said that over the years Kazuha had become too romantic and sentimental.
Now he understood.
The notebook was a heavy weight on his lap. Now he didn't want to know what was written there at all, as if he had already felt the bitter taste of despair on his tongue. But the time had come - that was his wish. So he opened the book at the first page.
Under the maple leaf, which had almost crumbled to dust, there was a short signature:
Maple leaves rushing like a whirlwind
among the autumn mountains.
A new beginning.
He remembered this leaf. How he caught it flying in the wind and tucked into Kazuha's hair and said something stupid. They had only recently met, and had barely begun to get to know each other. They were young. He was young.
On the second page there was a cherry blossom petal. He plucked it from a tree that time when Kazuha after much persuasion brought him to the Narukami shrine. He said that he wanted to draw a fortune slip. The slip, by the way, was also on the page of this notebook, promising eternal happiness, calling sakura the lucky object of the day.
Gentle cherry blossom.
My heart is blazing
next to you.
Trembling hands turned the page.
The leaves protect
the fragile buds of naku.
It's you.
The page is a little crumpled with dried drops and streaks. He remembered that he had ripped off this naku during their conversation about the past. It seems Kazuha was crying. Something inside painfully shrank from understanding.
All the pages of the notebook are dotted with lines with memories, every flower, every leaf is about him. About how gentle his hands are, like the Amakumo fruit, how his eyes shine, like the buds «Of Promises Unkept the Night Flowers Speak», how every second is unique, "Like the Dangling White Stars", how it was easy and simple to breathe next to him, as if under the shadow of «The Color of the Wind".
The lavender melons
of the Cuihua tree
are in your hands.
Your heart
is blooming like buds of
scarlet dendrobium.
He no longer holds back the tears dripping onto the pages. He presses his hands to his chest, almost feeling the phantom heartbeat. He loved to cuddle up to him in his arms - Kazuha always said that this way he could share his heart for the two of them.
The last page is empty. There is neither leaf, nor bud. Just line:
Only love is eternal.
He puts viparyas he brought with him and whispers:
Earth will remember
and viparyas will bloom.