Chapter Text
A warning:
There are certain things that you do not step into, participate, nor stop for.
The heavy fertilizer bags weigh precariously on Tighnari’s right shoulder. He sets the heavy bag full of clean soil - detoxified from the Akademiya folks’ madness - and pulls the bag strings loose. The noisiness of the waterfall functioning and the technician’s yelling over the dam silence his footsteps, heavy and laden with weight as he turns to haul more of these large, rectangular plastic bags vacuum sealed with the sort of soil he commissions from the merchants at Caravan Ribat. He was glad that they work at a cost effective price without criticizing his reasoning; although it wasn’t a cause these politics-free merchants would have liked to hear anyways. They’re people like him, for granted.
People like him. Tighnari halts at that thought. They’re hard to come by these days, people who avidly pursue their dreams. Societies require a slot in their industries and people fill them for some pocket money, maybe a stable income, but enough to keep them living. Sumeru City is filled with folks like that. He doesn’t blame them, of course, but he does wonder if that’s all people have in their minds. Work, eat, sleep. The pattern that starts as adulthood approaches, and the pattern that follows them to their grave.
Sunlight swells through the translucent glass of the greenhouse. Tighnari strides over the well-tended fields that perhaps cost him thousands to design and fill, and re-stacks the boxes of chrysanthemum and beetroot seeds that he fought tooth and nail to keep from the Matras and scholars alike. Just a small portion of her little colony, he smiles. He’ll see this field thrive into a nation more grandiose than what the Akademiya could only imagine in their wildest dreams. And dreamless people they were.
Just as water corrodes stone in eons of time, a nation experiences its glory and downfalls upon the canvas of a history. Various unexplained phenomenons were causes of a catastrophe, one that the Akademiya fails and defiantly denies ever occurring. Toxins began to seep into Teyvat unknowingly as multiple, then triple, then quadruple of acres of land were rendered unlivable. What was once Avidya Forest was floored to a low, desolate marsh of rotten logs and the decomposing flesh of crocodiles and sumpter beasts alike. Dark scales, one of the many culminations of the catastrophe, creep up delicate skins of many. He knows this from the deathly pale complexions of the Akademiya scholars, the sickly atmosphere that persists over each and every residence within Sumeru City, and the rapid decreasing of genuine smiles across peoples’ faces.
‘Tis like they’ve been robbed of life, Tighnari thought bitterly as he doused his dirt-covered hands in water. He wraps up his boxes of seeds with great care and re-stacks these plastic boxes - he’d negotiated for cardboard, but even that is low in stock - within a gadget he’s built for himself. It opens up to him happily and swallows these seeds whole, alongside the boxes.
Its name is Karkata. Lots of folks find naming mechanisms an act worth scoffing at, but similar to how Kaveh so fiercely rebuts against these claims with his baby Mehrak, Tighnari shares the same sentiment. All lifeforms are equal, and it always will be meaningful for him to bestow a name upon it. He even feels some remorse for naming the little crab-like mechanism, for no life can be dictated by any other in any way. Though, if the gentle flashes of light in its monitor was any indication of its affection and affirmation to go by, he assumes that it’s happy with what it gets. Or it could be from the seeds…
Water, with fragments of dirt in its embrace, writhes across the dry pavement. Tighnari spares a final glance at his little trove full of flora in bloom, before exiting through the glass sliding door of the greenhouse. The dusk sun hits his face, warm and tempting him for a good nap. Outside a hammock strung with skillful hands rests by the waterfall’s cliff, and all along the edges of the cliff blooms various flowers of vast origins, fenced up with polished stone. A little path paved with gravel and sand leads to a small cottage just slightly below the waterfall cliff. It’s his own paradise here.
Tighnari ducks under the windchimes he had strung up, that swayed to and fro with the wind and made ephemeral chirin, chirin noises. Choruses of deeply sonorous, basso tones intertwine with high, soft falsetto ones as he slides into his little abode, taking care to flatten his ears that brushed against the doorframe.
Valuka Shuna, a specie long lost in the Sumerian civilization. People of his race are scattered like glass shards across a beach, far and wide across Sumeru. Highly intelligent and shrewd with large ears and tails that complement their intelligence with heightened senses, they are seldom to be seen out in the wild. Or populated places, even. They live secluded lives, and Tighnari was no exception. The greenhouse and the lone little cottage were the best example. His wits and determination allows him a little place here on a cliff that oversees the capital of Sumeru instead of the endless experiments in one of the labs in the Akademiya, divided from the rest of civilization. Here he is the closest to what remains of Sumeru’s flora and fauna, where he is the happiest as a natural botanist.
The warm candlelight that illuminates the small hallway flickers lazily as Tighnari passes by in his sleepwear. Despite his refusal to install anything even remotely related to electricity and technology in his home, he doesn’t refute the suggestion of a television - by his oh-so-good friend, the mastermind architect behind half of Sumeru’s buildings, Kaveh. The thirst for knowledge is still rampant within the Sumeru City and hasn’t receded an inch in the past centuries, and Tighnari too, as a scholar and a person of the Valuka Shuna’s race, sees no need to disregard the obtaining of knowledge through technology.
And that’s how he ends up with a 80-inch television with elaborate designs and tiny gadgets designed all over the edges in that warm August afternoon. ‘’For better viewing pleasures!’’ Kaveh had exclaimed in response to Tighnari’s disapproval when he received the (heavily) modified television at the front of his door. “The beauty of arts and craft can coexist with the intake of hard facts and logic!’”
Tighnari had scoffed and retorted, “I can’t see the screen with all those patterns you’ve got.”
Kaveh was indignant. “It adds a natural feel to your cold and hard screen of a television!”
“Practicality over beauty. Kaveh. What use is there for a TV when it can’t serve its original purpose?” Tighnari quickly continued before Kaveh manages to toss back with a string of arguments for why beauty, over practicality, is very much relevant in matters of technology serving the purpose of communication and entertainment. “Besides, why don’t you help me in assembling these spare segments onto the wall? I’m not as well versed in…” He paused, an impish smile hanging by his lips as he searched for a fitting response. “Hmm, architectural assemblation as you are.”
“You better be as inexperienced as you make it out to be, ‘cause I’m not doing this for you for free.” Kaveh scoffed, but a light grin makes its way onto his face as he begins to screw the TV onto the mounting bracket. “Seriously though, were you ever, y’know, actually considering for these old geezers’ proposals? I’m not the way on the receiving end of their endless mailings, but even I think that they’ve been pestering you for far too long… Hey, give me a hand here.” Kaveh grunts as he hoists up one end of the large TV and Tighnari rushes to lift up the other. “Anyways, I would’ve blacklisted their address a long time ago if I were you. I’m surprised that you haven’t yet.”
“The Akademiya’s valuable enough for me to endure their pestering.” Tighnari helped Kaveh attach the mounting plate to the TV. “By valuable, I mean the scholars who still sought for knowledge in a pure and unsullied way. I’d like to mentor one one day.”
Kaveh raised a brow. “You? Teaching?”
Tighnari narrowed his eyes and regarded Kaveh in a scrutinizing, albeit playful manner. “Am I unfit to be a teacher?”
“Ah, no, none of the kind.” Kaveh hastily laughed. “I just, uh, take it as ignorance to your person.”
Tighnari hums.
“I wonder how Alhaitham handles you, Kaveh.” He thinks aloud and smiles to himself. Reaching over to the remote and tunes to Sumeru News, he shakes his head lightly. “Or really, with how he’s like, I suppose he doesn’t at all.”
Kaveh would have responded with an indignant retort, but he doesn’t; For it has been years after that bright August afternoon, and they were no longer the best of friends that stuck together indefinitely.
—-----
Night falls.
It’s never too cold in Sumeru, especially in the rainforest sections. The tropical weather makes it hard to ever be. Although, it is ever so rainy and does have its monthly precipitation laced with borderline toxic substances - unwillingly to all of Sumeru’s citizens, of course. But nature has its course, and so rain falls relentlessly and embraces Sumeru City in a chokehold. It slaps and hustles against the translucent, stained glass of Tighnari’s cottage and its greenhouse that creaks against the pellets of rain.
Light footsteps, fitting for a fox hybrid, reverberates through the thin wooden walls of his home. Tighnari adjusts the air conditioner to a comfortable temperature as he plops down onto a lumpy, over-cushioned sofa surrounded by overflowing amounts of plants. Lavender, basil, calendulas, and rosemary emanate pleasant scents that fill the room with warmth. Ivy and spider plants drape over the jade green covers of the sofa, and a small cacti thrives happily in front of the large window to the left of his sofa. Paying no attention to these floras, Tighnari instead runs his fingers over the stems of the venus flytrap he’s planted in a cluster on the windowsill. He watches with mild interest as a small house spider nimbly navigates its way through the pot by edging around the lobe and down to its stem. It’s when he notices that one of the violet tinted flytraps has gotten a large house fly in its grasp.
Tighnari blinks in disbelief, not out of the astonishment that the flytrap has caught something, but rather the surprise that it was able to - they’ve been de-evolving for far too long that they could no longer catch anything beyond some ants, maybe. Scooting a little closer to the violet flytrap, he examines this particular bud with mild curiosity. It was no different than the others, save for particularly sharp outer edges and trigger hairs. It dug into the corpse of the fly, impaling it onto the lobe of its bud. Violent.. Was an understatement.
He chuckles. These venus flytraps weren’t completely decorative afterall. Drawing away from the flytraps, he tugs his tail over to his front and strokes the dark green fur comfortingly, untangling the knots and picking out small dirt and debris pieces from underneath the thick coat of fur. The other hand pats around for the remote thrown carelessly onto the mattress, but instead feels something hard, round, and just slightly smoother than sanded stone.
Pebbles? Tighnari looks over to the hand that was stuck between two mattresses and a pillow - god forbid knowing why his hand thought his remote would be there in all places. He digs a little deeper into the couch and comes up empty handed. The unidentifiable object seems to have slipped away.
“Ah, don’t tell me it’s sentient.” Tighnari sighs.
He grips tightly onto the mattress and lifts it over to the other side. What was revealed were loosely stewn food wrappers, pieces of discarded lined paper, strands of hair from his tail, his TV remote lying innocently on the left, and a marble sphere.
Tighnari sighs again, this time heavily. Of course he recognizes it - A gift from Kaveh on his eighteenth birthday, one of the twelve marbles enclosed in a glass box. It’s merely a beautiful decor to Tighnari, but Kaveh claims that it can tell one’s fortune. Each marble is of a different color, and each color signifies a different fate. The eleven marbles, unfortunately, have been collecting dust atop his bedroom shelf for years now. And the twelve sits in his open palm, a clear, deep shade of violet tinted with gold. The color of ambition and power.
“Really… I thought it was something invasive.” Tighnari shakes his head. The color he despises the most in the set, not for its color, but for what it represents. Power and ambition have been the rise for many great scholars, yet the downfall for more. It does not promise stability, but is the stark opposite, the exact outcome Tighnari fears in his life.
Thunder sounds outside, and illuminates his lounge with far too bright a white light. He shudders lightly.
Rain continues, and Tighnari goes to store the twelfth marble in its glass casing back in his bedroom with no further thought, or rather, the reluctance of thinking any further. Thinking that isn’t rational sometimes gets the better of him, and it’s doing exactly that now. He will obtain his TV remote and that will be the sole objective in his mind for the next two minutes.
————-
BREAKING NEWS:
‘Aaru Village representative Candace schedules meeting with Haravatat Sage Alhaitham for discussions about increased tariffs on Sumeru City products.’
‘Relationships worsen between Corps of Thirty and Ayn-Ahmar: the future looks bleak for Eremite individuals within the Desert.’
‘New breakthroughs on studies of Eleazar sweeps through the Amurta Darshan of the Akademiya as scholars scramble to test valuable findings.’
‘Mysteries of the massacre of Tanit tribe plague Matras as General Mahamantra Taj Radkani continues investigations throughout the Desert.’
‘New theatrical play [ The Sages of Buer ] from Zubayr Theater, starring Nilou, is scheduled for grand opening on June 23rd, 3:00pm! A must-see for all theater enthusiasts!’
Tighnari’s eyes survey the colorful headlines that appear as the turquoise haired broadcaster speaks animatedly through each. She becomes extra excited when she mentions Nilou - probably a big fan of her dances and songs. To have such an artistic passion in nowaday Sumeru is, indeed, much more tolerable than it was centuries back - and he’s grateful for it. He’d take a train ticket to Liyue if those horrid traditions from historical Sumeru continued to the present days. Although, modern days aren't much different in terms of terribleness.
He’s always hated stuck up people yet there never seems to be a shortage of that anywhere in the world. Grand Sage Azar is one of the most prominent. Tighnari’s worry for Sumeru grows tenfold for each second he’s on the throne. The rising tension between Desert and Rainforest isn’t a good sign - it’s centuries of peace that that old man’s disrupting, and that leads to war. War is never good for anyone.
But he supposed that there needs to be a balance out in the world: say, while three people are of good valor and wits, there’s bound to be another three that are of bad qualities and-
He was tempted to say ‘stupid’, but stupidity isn’t a trait that needs to be seen as wholly negative. Perhaps corrupt. maybe hateful. How about… immorality?
Yes, immorality. People with no bottom line that they make notes to shouldn’t cross.
Anyways; where there are three people that’s good, another three prove themselves to be immoral.
Tighnari laughs at the little mental note he’s made for himself, and as he presses the power button on the remote, he sneaks a last glance at the monitor seconds before it darkens. The scenery that it displays at its last second was of a photograph of Aaru Village and the wastelands surrounding it, the village’s street lights flickering as if a power outage was to occur any second.
He cuts off the broadcaster’s final words before the screen goes black. The roaring rain has skidded to a stop outside, and he does hope that his greenhouse doesn’t get completely ransacked by nature tomorrow morning. He stretches out comfortably on the sofa, and wills for a sunny day tomorrow.