Work Text:
Mondstadt was a young country, too young to understand how valuable these flowers truly were. They hadn’t heard the whispers from the north that if you sang to them with just the right tune, they would gift you with magic. The first one she found, she sang a somber tune that her mother used to sing to her in bed at night to get her to sleep. This flower was pleased, and gifted her a power she didn’t understand until she was much older. She would come to understand this as the Power of the Abyss.
Magic and alchemy were nothing compared to the ability to disappear, to meld through matter, to consume all light around you in an instant. She could move silently, unseen, through the night as if she owned it. She would go to these fields of flowers and sing to them, trying to see which flowers responded to which song.
She had done this every day for years, spending a few minutes at a time going to that field to sing. One day, she heard a song about turning back time and bringing back youth. In her old age, she decided she had nothing to loose. She went to the field and sang, and as she did she heard her voice become stronger, lighter, younger. When she was done, she opened her eyes and saw her hands, once wrinkled and spotted, now soft and supple once again. She felt her face, young and smooth. She ran for the nearby river and saw her young, beautiful face in the reflection of the water.
It took a few more tries to figure out which flower it had been. A perfect little golden one, surrounded by its colorful family. She cared for all of them, but she gave a bit more fertilizer to that one every now and then.
More years passed, and she lived longer than her friends and family. She lived long enough to see Mondstadt’s regime toppled, the King burned, the castle stormed. She lived long enough to learn of Liyue’s prosperous age and their advancements in medicine. Nothing that could rival the flower’s power, though.
She lived for so long, bouncing from village to village, watching Mondstadt’s very genes change from blond towheads to dark brown chestnuts. She found it amusing, how much people cared about their origins. In a few years, who knew, the genes of Mondstadt could be tan and red-haired. It would only take a resurgence of Venessa’s ancestors, which was not out of the question. She had known Venessa, after all. She would not let her people die off.
There was a long period of peace in Mondstadt, and such peace was filling her with apprehension. There was bound to be unrest eventually. And there was, but not in the way she expected. Apparently, the rumors of the flower field had reached all the way through Mondstadt, even into the castle itself. And the Queen was sick.
The country had been celebrating her pregnancy for weeks, months, but suddenly there was a coldness in the country. The thought that their dear Queen might die from bearing the heir to the throne filled everyone with a silent panic. She was determined to try and help, since Mondstadt was her home, but one thing she refused to do was tell them about the flower. She would volunteer to help ferry medicine from Liyue or search for experimental treatments, but she would not tell of her special flower.
Someone else knew about it, they must have found it somehow, or seen her use it. Royal Guards marched through the forest straight to her field. She watched, invisible, from the shadows. They had a guide who pointed to the golden flower, said it had the power to turn the clock back. The man didn’t know if it could heal her, but the Guard was willing to try anything. She watched them dig and free it from the ground after taking its petals proved useless. She followed them back to the city, stopping outside the gates as they took it away from her. As they took her youth away from her.
It was over. It was all over.
Not days from the taking of the flower did the Queen suddenly and miraculously recover from her illness. She also emerged from her bedchambers with the most beautiful golden hair the kingdom had ever seen. No one paid attention though, the only thing that mattered was that she was alive. Weeks later, she gave birth to not one, but two healthy little heirs. Twins, both with bright golden hair as well.
She saw these babies in the Royal Family’s parade and knew in an instant that they were her flowers. She hummed the tune of the song when she went to the Royal Viewing of the babies in their cribs and saw the faint glow of their little golden heads. She knew then exactly what must be done.
On a night clear as it could be, with nothing to hide her but the darkness itself, she slipped through the gates and into the castle. The babies were not with their parents, they were safe in their own little room with a balcony with large locked doors. Each child had small things dangling above them to help calm them, and a soft flame’s glow filled the room with light almost as golden as their hair. She crept closer, allowing herself to be seen by the children. One was asleep, snoring softly against their little arm. The other was wide awake, and stared at her as she got closer.
To her surprise, the little one reached out to her. It was as if her flower could tell who she was. She lifted them up to her face, were their little hand found her nose and felt it curiously.
“Hello, little flower,” she whispered. “I shall take you home now, where you shall be safe. Forever with me, you and I will live forever…”
A noise made her look toward the door.
“Let us make haste, small flower,” she said to the child, wrapping them up tight against her chest. “We needn’t gather a crowd.”
The baby giggled under the wraps and she assumed they must’ve agreed. She left through the doors, phasing right through them, and then made her escape over the wall. She was still young and agile, still glowing herself from the flower’s power.
She took the child, a little baby boy she found out when she went to change his diaper, to her field. The flowers were still there, though their light was dying slowly. She realized that the golden flower had been keeping the others alive this whole time. With its power gone, the other flowers would soon lose their abilities.
“Just one last wish,” she said to them. “Please, allow us to live here, safe.”
She sang to the Flower of Creation and it granted her wish. Though destroying itself in the process, it agreed to build her a tower atop this land. The flowers were crushed and buried under the new stone and wood that grew taller and taller until it was a formidable structure. A tower, secluded, safe.
The moment she heard word of the Guard coming after whoever stole the young Prince Aether, she cast a spell on the forest. It was rudimentary and weak, but it would be given constant power by its center, the little flower slowly growing in the tower. Every day, she took good care of him and sang to him, a song he would come to hum when he was old enough to understand the notes. He became a beautiful singer, painter, wood carver, illustrator, writer- he became everything alone in the tower. He flourished there under her watch. And in return, she would brush his hair and hear him sing and turn her clock back, staying young and beautiful.
This would last forever. This was her flower, her power, her eternity to spend with this beautiful little flower. It would never end.
It would never end.