Work Text:
She wakes to the sound of her own heart beating like a drum. Waking up sweating, painting, and terrified is nothing new. She knows fear; she knows how it tastes; she's lived with it slurring through her guts for a long time. At this point, she should be used to it—used to the tingling on her skin and the burning reminders it brings, the memories of needles and hot steel.
The steel, the metal, the remains of a dead god, its corpse mingling with hers. It was dead. It had been dead for a very long time. But her? She was still alive, and a corpse has no business being one with her; the dead have no place among the living, especially the echoes of the long-gone past.
A rare memory slips into her mind: eyes like shattered glass, sharp teeth, hair almost white in the pale lighting, and a voice deep and poisoned with madness. She doesn't remember much from that time. She doesn't want to remember anything at all. She doesn't want to think about it; it's behind her, and she's past it. The storm always leaves puddles behind, and that's what it is: a puddle after heavy rain.
She doesn't like it when she remembers. She knows she's justified in her aversion. Her master once told her to never forget the past because it always stays with her for it feeds the present. Said that a person was an accumulation of memories and experiences; forgetting the past would be forgetting herself. And yet, she thinks she has a good reason for wanting to forget. She can't bear them. Not yet. She has them locked away in a tiny box deep within her soul, as far away from the surface of her mind as possible, because they burn. They bring back feelings of unease, agitation, and helplessness and. Her nerves spiked, and... Her hands are shaking. Her fingers are twitching, and she feels tears stinging behind her eyes. And suddenly, she's back, strapped to a cold table, her hands and legs immobilized, and her eyes covered. A voice speaks to her softly; it's warmth, and it's sticky sweet, and it's reeking with a cloying stench. It talks as if its intent is to soothe, as if it's not at all responsible for all this.
No, she tells herself, snap out of it. She's not there anymore. Now, her body is her own. Now she knows of a fire that doesn't burn.
She focuses on her breathing and listens as she takes the air in her lungs and pushes it out again. She focuses on the rhythmic beating in her chest.
Awareness slips back into her, and she looks around, searching for red. But all she finds is her room shrouded in darkness, just as she left it before she went to sleep. Her eyes run over tiny trinkets scattered all over the place, some made by her own hands and others gifted to her by other forest watchers. She really ought to have a quick clean-up soon. The trinkets deserve a place of their own; they're all well-loved presents. The only light in the room is coming from the moon outside, low in the sky, looming, unbothered, and ready to descend.
She thinks back to the legend of the moon sisters she heard about in Mondstat, who thrived in their lunar palace. She thinks about their silver carriage riding through the heavens and how one of the sisters' corpses, still hanging, lights up the night sky with her soul still clinging to the body, desperate to not let life escape her. She thinks that the moon is bothered enough by its own past, inescapable as it is.
Lisa, in her purple, tea, and sugar, said that she found the tale beautiful. However, Collei personally did not understand the grace behind the tragedy. What's so beautiful about death and ruin? In response, she was told not to think on it too much since, after all, it was just a bedtime story. But Collei didn't agree; she thinks that it's pitiful at the very least. And the fact that children learned about the burdens of the moon at such a young age, during her kingdom's rise, was something messed up. She thinks she can understand the grace behind that particular tragedy, even if it is cruel. It feels like a betrayal of the moon herself to teach children about her failures so. It's hard to forget something learned so early on; not even the gods are immune to failure, it seems. Perhaps this is what Lisa meant too, in a silent agreement. In the end, they decided to leave the matter entirely alone in favor of enjoying the night breeze. It was a sleepless night for them both.
She takes a deep breath, trying to push down the panic trying to rise in her chest (her master had said that not thinking too much about what she had been through would help, for now. The looming promise that she would have to face it one day was not lost on her, though) and clear up her thoughts a bit. When she sits up, she realizes that the feeling in her left leg is gone. Although she could move it, she couldn't register anything below her knee. She reaches for the thin sheet covering her, drops it to the ground, and takes a closer look. Even in the dark, with faint silver barely lighting up the room, she can see the dark scales growing out of the side of her calf. Running her fingers over the hardness and pressing down a little, she notes that she can't feel much of it—more like she can't feel any of it. Usually, she can at least discern a vague sense that she has been touched when she touches the scales, but now it's completely blank. Normally, when one touches their own body, they feel it twice. That was just a fact of life. It was disturbing to only register the coldness through her fingers. The feeling in her calf was so detached that it felt like the darkness wasn't even growing out of her. The skin around it was pale and freezing, as if her own blood wasn't running through it.
This wasn't the first time something like this had happened. The numbness wasn't new to her either. She was born with it. But that didn't mean she welcomed it either. She's known it all her life. No matter how long it had been, it never started to feel familiar. It made her feel like a puppet with cut strings. A part of her body she can see but can't control. It was too similar to how it felt back then.
She tries to stand up, but her left leg won't hold her weight, so she stumbles. She catches herself on the edge of the bed, and the scales scratch the wooden frame, leaving deep marks. Feeling a little defeated, she realizes that her leg must be more impaired than she initially thought. She lifts herself back up and, with a deep sigh, drops back into her bed. The numbness should go away soon; it always does and returns even worse later on. As she tries to nudge her leg to get the motion going, she can't help but feel dread creeping up her back. She looks up at her ceiling, her eyes focusing on nothing in particular. The damp air of Avidya Forest is stuffy and hot, as it tends to be at night. Her nightwear sticks to her body, making her feel heavier than she is. She tries to take a peek outside to at least get a sense of what time it is, but the sky looks no different than when she went to bed; only a bit of pink shines through from the horizon. She went to bed at around the end of astronomical twilight, too busy gathering supplies for the long patrol she needed to accompany Master Tighnari on to go to sleep any earlier. (Come to think of it, she still hadn't received the route for that, which was a rare occurrence; her master was more competent than that; she would need to speak to him about that later.) And if the sky looked no different now, it meant that the night had already passed and that morning was approaching, though she mostly gathered that from the pink leaking over from the mountains. She would need to get up soon, and she would need a working leg for that.
She still had some time until she was needed, though. She knew that if she told Tighnari about this recent addition to her ever-growing collection of scales, he would insist that she take a day off. But she can't afford to slack off now. The withering zones have been popping up more and more lately, and since she was a vision holder, that also meant that she was one of the people qualified to go in and deal with them. One or two new patches of scales growing out wouldn't do much. Pushing through the discomfort was something she could do. Sacrificing a little rest now wouldn't hurt.
(It would hurt, and she knew that. These days she felt more exhausted and lifeless than ever; she should really be taking advantage of the few days the forest watchers have reserved for resting. It was as if her body insisted on wasting all her energy on mundane little tasks. Seriously, who gets tired after just delivering travel supplies to researchers in the nearby area? She knew Tighnari noticed her fatigue too; it was impossible for him not to. In recent times, her master's only been giving her tasks that didn't require long-distance travel (like checking on the nearby lamps? Daily?) and that alone spoke volumes about just how much he actually knew about her current condition.
Maybe he hasn't said anything out of respect for her privacy; maybe he trusts her to take care of herself without too much of his interference; or maybe he wants to see how much she cares to do so.)
Soon, the pink strings would hang from the sky. With her leg shaking, her heart heavy, and tendrils of dread curling in her gut, she knew that she would have to face the day head-on.
The morning was coming, and Collei was not ready.