Chapter Text
What Kazuha had gathered of the language of Liyue was as followed:
– Learning the differentiation between its four tones was remarkably difficult after almost two decades of Inazuma pronunciation. He was still a bit in awe thinking of how effortlessly Thoma seemed to be able to jump back and forth between one and the other.
– It's not just the pronunciation that is different — Kazuha becomes Wanye, Lady Ayaka turns into Lady Linghua and when Kazuha reads Captain Beidou's name out loud for the first time she fell into a loud, chesty cackle and slapped his shoulder with perhaps a little too much force, which he took to mean that he just said something extraordinarily funny.
He'd been at sea for a week now, give or take (time had started to feel strangely muddy after the flight from Tenshukaku) and for the most part, the crew of the Alcor communicated in writing with him. The absence of the syllabic alphabet Inazuma used next to the Liyue writing they'd adopted a few centuries ago had initially been jarring, but now he was slowly but surely getting used to it.
Even if he was unsure about how to read the messages out loud, he had yet to come across a message with a meaning he'd completely misinterpreted — i'd appreciate help with the sails, and this might get a little bumpy and the Captain wants to see you.
The Captain usually wanted to see him late in the evenings, where she'd sit with him on the quarterdeck and teach him how to navigate. Kazuha no longer remembered how they'd stumbled into their shared nightly activity but it probably had been prompted by the hours he spent curled up in the Crow's Nest, where the wind whipping around him had made grieving more bearable.
Now, it had devolved into Captain Beidou using whatever morsels of languages she had gathered over her years at sea to describe what exactly she was doing. She wasn't the Alcor's navigator, that task fell to Miss Huixing, but "if you spend as much time on a ship as I have, you learn as you go."
Kazuha has no doubt she is downplaying things not out of a need to seem humble, but because she might not be aware others can't always keep pace with her razor-sharp wit.
Yet again Kazuha was reminded of how callously the elitist education he enjoyed growing up treats anyone born from less fortunate circumstances. Beidou told him about a fishing village between gentle touches helping Kazuha with handling the navigation tools she'd borrowed from Huixing and he only understood perhaps half of it, but the rest filled itself in through the timbre of her voice and the way the air around her changed when she skips over the most painful parts of her story.
Kazuha listened and followed her instructions pliantly, eyes trained on the sky. Part of him worried that if his eyes strayed from the path set ahead he might drown in her presence.
Overhead, the stars hummed a wordless lullaby as if to accompany her tales.
Stretching his hand out, Kazuha's fingers traced the lines between them — the Sleeping Dragon, the Manticore, the Dog of War, the Hell Butterfly–
"Beidou."
Kazuha savoured the syllables in his mouth, tried to remember how the crew pronounced it. He still felt clumsy navigating his voice through the two dips. Beneath his fingers, the shape of the Big Dipper took form.
He heard the rustle of Beidou's hair brushing over the fabric of her cape.
"Hm?"
"Beidou," Kazuha repeated. "The stars we are following."
For a moment, astonished silence filled the space between them.
"Yes," she agreed, correcting his stance a little. Her hands were firm against Kazuha's upper arms, her chest warm where it touched his shoulder blades.
"Beidou," Kazuha repeated, finally daring to tilt his head to catch her gaze.
"That's right. I'll guide your way."