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I know it’s you before you even speak. There’s no mistaking the fragrance of cecilia on the gentle breeze that seems ever present around you. I close my eyes and breathe you in as the strands of my hair dance across my forehead.
You always appear without warning. It’s been a hundred years since we last met, but the tenor of your words hasn’t changed in the slightest. Erosion has thankfully left your presence unmarred in my mind, and I can hear the smile on your face in the melodic lilt of your voice.
You slide into the seat next to mine at the table, and we watch Iron Tongue Tian recount Azhdaha’s tale with animated flourishes. We both know the fable differs from the reality, but it matters not because your knee touches mine gently under the table, and it’s so easy to imagine that you never left at all.
Your smile is impish as you lift a familiar bottle. The dandelion wine is crisp and floral on the tongue, as if the verdant hills of Mondstadt were distilled into liquid form. It tastes of sunshine and summertime, of the days we spent lying in the shade of the great oak at Windrise. Memories fill the empty space in the bottle, and when you kiss me, there is a bitter note below the honeyed sweetness.
In the darkness of my quarters, you beckon me over the slope of your shoulder. Your fingers are deft and light over the layers of my clothing, and I quake beneath your touch as you press your smile into the dip above my hip bone. Your clever mouth produces the loveliest rhymes, but it’s in the silence against my near feverish skin that you create a composition all our own.
The years fade away as our bodies meld together. Your dark hair falls around your flushed face, and you are as beautiful in pleasure as you are in song. You whisper my name as you come, and I have never loved the sound of it more than when invoked by your lips like a blessing.
Longing and remorse flit across your face as you untangle your fingers from mine, for our time together passes just as quickly as the wind you personify. Your eyes are the color of the most brilliant jade, and I allow myself to linger for just one moment longer.
You kiss me one last time, the musk of desire still thick on your tongue. There is an unspoken promise to return, only neither of us knows when. You teasingly remind me not to miss you too much, but we both know that that’s an impossible order. I would worship you every day if only you’d let me, but you are freedom incarnate—nothing could ever hold you down. I’ve long learned to stop trying, for how can the stone seek to weigh down the very wind that erodes it?
I watch you leave once again under the faint cast of moonlight, limbs as heavy as the earth I control. All that remains after you vanish is the faint trace of cecilia, ephemeral for all its beauty.