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Furina grumbles as she feels something prodding her cheek. She does her best to ignore it and bury her face more firmly in her pillow, but whatever it is is very insistent.
“Furinaaaaa,” she hears Lumine call. “Wakey wakey!”
Furina rolls onto her side and cracks her eyes open to glare at her girlfriend. The world, she thinks, is far too bright — Lumine is an indistinct golden blob to her still-bleary eyes.
“Don’t wanna,” she mumbles.
She feels Lumine’s hands slip into her own and pull her into a sitting position despite her weak attempt at resistance, and then she’s being hugged tightly as Lumine peppers her face with kisses.
“Have you forgotten what today is, sleepy?” Lumine teases.
Furina blinks slowly, trying to think of what Lumine could mean. It’s not her birthday, she knows that, and she doesn’t think it’s a holiday of any kind…
“…I think I have,” Furina admits sleepily, nuzzling her face into Lumine’s neck.
“It’s our first anniversary, silly,” Lumine giggles, fingers trailing through Furina’s hair. “We’ve gotta make it special!”
Furina jolts upright, head slamming into Lumine’s chin and drawing a pained groan from both of them.
“How did I forget that?” Furina moans, suddenly feeling wide awake.
She’s a horrible girlfriend, Lumine has got to be so angry with her—
Her thoughts are cut off by her girlfriend’s lips brushing against hers gently.
“Probably because you’ve been so busy lately,” Lumine whispers, hands entwining themselves with Furina’s. “Consulting for three troupes at once is running you ragged… in the future, I think you should limit yourself to two at most. One at a time would be even better.”
“…You’re right,” Furina admits softly. “I thought I could handle it, but…”
It’s felt like she’s barely had any time to herself, even with her consultancy time limited to specific blocks of the day for each troupe. She’s been a lot more tired than usual lately, and she knows Lumine has been worried.
“Still safer than some of the times I’ve bitten off things I couldn’t chew,” Lumine says, body contorting against Furina’s in a way that suggests she shrugged. “Did I ever tell you about the first time I tried fighting a Primo Geovishap?”
“I don’t think so,” Furina mumbles, shaking her head.
“It was really, really stupid,” Lumine sighs, shaking her head. “I, uh… I saw a cave, right? So I ran on in, as one does… and there was this really big Geovishap sitting there staring at me. So I tried to stab it.”
Furina pulls back to stare at her, and Lumine blushes.
“Look, it’s what we adventurers do, okay?” Lumine defends. “But, um… My sword just kinda bounced off of its skin, and it stared at me. It didn’t even bother attacking me, it just. Went to sleep. …So I left.”
Furina bursts out laughing. She has no idea what a Primo Geovishap looks like, but she’s imagining Lumine and a giant lizard staring at each other blankly with Lumine’s sword uselessly pressed against its leg, and the mental image is hilarious.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Lumine pouts. “I figured out how to use Geo and Anemo to increase my sword’s cutting power after that — if I ever had a rematch with the big guy, I’d win!”
“Yes, of course,” Furina giggles. “I’m sure you would.”
“…Actually, maybe I should go do that tomorrow…” Lumine muses, staring into the distance. “It might be fun.”
“No,” Furina says firmly, amusement draining away and replaced by fear. “Please, no… it didn’t do anything to you, right? You have no reason to risk yourself like that — can’t you just leave it alone…?”
Lumine stares into Furina’s eyes for a long moment, then sighs and nods.
“You’re right,” she murmurs. “I just, um… thought it might impress you if I did.”
“Idiot,” Furina huffs, lightly smacking her fist into Lumine’s chest. “I don’t want you getting hurt for something stupid like impressing me… I just want you by my side. Just that is already everything to me… I love you.”
Lumine’s eyes are suspiciously shiny, and Furina finds herself pulled into a tight hug, her face pressed into Lumine’s neck as her girlfriend tips over to rest her own head on a pillow.
They don’t speak, Furina hugging Lumine back and doing her best to pretend she doesn’t realize her girlfriend is crying. Lumine isn’t good with tears — sometimes she’s okay with letting Furina see her cry, though it hadn’t happened until they’d already been dating for half a year… but other times, like now, she makes a vague attempt to disguise it. Even this, though, letting Furina be with her while she cries, is already an incredible sign of trust. With almost anyone else, Lumine would have held it in until she could be alone.
“I love you too,” Lumine eventually whispers, and Furina smiles as she presses a kiss to Lumine’s throat.
Lumine smiles as she feels Furina’s lips against her throat, and kisses her girlfriend on the head in return.
She’s a little embarrassed by how easily Furina’s words had made her cry, and normally she thinks they wouldn’t have, but…
It’s their anniversary, the celebration of their first year of being together, and what Furina had said was a reminder that she’s wanted and cared for. With most of Teyvat seeming to see her as a combination of storybook character and errand girl, the few people she considers truly close friends mean everything to her… and Furina, her girlfriend, is special even among them.
…If, when she reunites with him, Aether isn’t willing to stay in Teyvat with her… she’s going to have to ask Furina and Yoimiya if they’re willing to leave Teyvat with her. At this point, she doesn’t know what she’d do without her girlfriend and best friend — she thinks she might feel almost as lost as she did when she woke up on the beach in Mondstadt and realized she had no idea where her brother was.
“Lumi?” Furina calls softly, breaking her out of her musings about the other friends she’d like to bring with her, if she had the chance (Ayaka, of course, and Paimon, and—).
“Sorry, I was just thinking a bit too hard about the future,” Lumine laughs, squeezing Furina gently. “And how much I want you in it.”
The squeak Furina lets out is adorable, as are her reddening cheeks. As much as the answer was partially true, it was also intended as a distraction — and it had clearly succeeded at that.
“Y-You’d have a very difficult time getting rid of me even if you wanted to,” Furina stammers, just a hint of the haughty tone she used to use during her act slipping into her voice. “I intend to cling to you as tightly as a barnacle.”
“Oh really?” Lumine teases, attempting to wiggle free from Furina’s arms.
Her girlfriend responds by tightening her hug and bringing her legs up to wrap around Lumine’s waist. Lumine could probably break free, if she used enough force… but she’s not about to do anything that could hurt Furina, so she ceases her struggling and sighs dramatically.
“It appears that I’m trapped,” Lumine laments, pressing the back of a hand to her forehead. “Doomed to rot to death in bed, never to fulfill my plans for the day—”
“Plans?” Furina interrupts, her curiosity obvious in her voice.
“I thought we could bake a cake together,” Lumine says. “I got all the stuff yesterday and everything.”
Furina releases her immediately, hopping to her feet and grabbing her hand to tug her along.
“Why didn’t you say that sooner?” Furina demands, eyes sparkling. “Let’s go already!”
Lumine laughs as she lets herself be dragged along. She knew that would get Furina moving.
Furina is practically salivating as she drags Lumine to the kitchen. She hasn’t had cake in nearly a week, and while her sweet tooth isn’t quite as extreme as she had played up during her act, that’s still far too long a wait.
When they arrive, she releases Lumine’s hand so that she can search out the ingredients. It’s not long before she’s got everything laid out on the counter and is washing her hands in preparation for baking.
She’d always enjoyed it, even back in her days as Fontaine’s ‘archon’ — there’s something about it that had caused her to find it much easier to learn than she did cooking. Still, she’d started enjoying it even more after she and Lumine began dating and had made cooking into a couple activity.
Their first few pair baking sessions had been a bit of a disaster — Furina had still been fairly new to her apartment’s kitchen layout, and neither of them were used to needing to maneuver around others in an enclosed kitchen space — but at this point, the awkward crashing into each other of the past is gone, replaced with fluid teamwork that doesn’t even require them to trade words. If Furina holds out her hand, Lumine is already offering her what she needs, and when Lumine needs to move past her Furina will have already ducked out of the way.
“How have the troupes you’re working with been doing, anyway?” Lumine asks as she cracks some eggs into a bowl to start on the batter.
“Well, for the most part,” Furina answers, beginning work on the icing. “Did I ever mention that one of them licensed the script for ‘Roses and Muskets’ from Xavier?”
She can’t remember. She and Lumine don’t actually tend to talk about work much, preferring to focus on doing things together — but in downtime like this, she catches Lumine up on what shows she’s been consulting for and listens to her girlfriend’s stories of adventure.
“You didn’t,” Lumine says, shaking her head. “I didn’t know it had been turned into a stage play.”
“That’s because it hadn’t been,” Furina says, smiling as she passes the sugar over to Lumine. “It’s why they hired me — since I was responsible for adapting the book into a movie, and I’m me, they wanted me to take the movie script and adapt it for the stage.”
“I’m sure you did an amazing job,” Lumine praises. “Do they seem like they’re going to put on a good performance? Maybe when it debuts we should use it as a date night.”
Furina hums, mixing the icing feeling almost meditative and helping her focus her thoughts.
“They’re doing an acceptable job,” she says. “Neither of the leads are as good as Ayaka was, which surprised me a little since nobody in this troupe is an amateur like her… and the director isn’t nearly as skilled as me, of course. Oh, and the assistant director might as well be a joke next to Yoimiya — if I had my way he wouldn’t even be mentioned on the playbill! Yoimiya did all of an AD’s work even though she was ‘only’ my director’s assistant, but this clown isn’t even qualified to brew a pot of coffee. And then there’s the costume designer—”
“Yes, yes, we had a real dream team,” Lumine cuts in with a laugh, rolling her eyes. “I wasn’t asking you to compare them to our crew, though, just… will it be a good show?”
Furina stops to consider that. It certainly won’t be one of the greatest performances Fontaine has ever seen, and anyone going to it in hopes of it matching the movie are in for disappointment, but…
“It will,” she admits, shrugging. “The troupe’s not bad, they’re just a little below my standards.”
Lumine stops mixing to jab her whisk at her.
“When you’re comparing them to Ayaka and yourself and Yoimiya, I think you’re being a little unfair,” Lumine says. “Ayaka’s not an actor, but she’s got plenty of practice controlling herself, and like you said, she was a bit of a prodigy. You’re a theatre genius, and you have five hundred years of experience… and Yoimiya’s just a genius in general. I’m pretty sure if the three of you worked together, you could put on the greatest show in the history of Teyvat… and our costume designer was Chiori. You can’t expect an ordinary tailor to be anywhere near her level. When you add her skills to the rest of yours, it’s just not even a contest.”
“You’re probably right,” Furina admits with a smile, shrugging. “But after tasting perfection, how could I be satisfied with anything less? Do you think there’s any chance we could convince them to move here?”
“No, definitely not,” Lumine denies immediately. “Ayaka takes her duties to her clan way too seriously to abandon Inazuma, and Yoimiya… well, it might not be hard to get her to visit for a few months, but I don’t think she’d want to leave it forever either. Not without a really good reason, anyway.”
Furina pouts, and Lumine smiles as she pokes her silly girlfriend’s cheek.
“We could always move to Inazuma, though,” she suggests, only half-joking. “You could start your own troupe there. They’ve got their own theatre traditions, but it’s not really a national pastime like it is here… it might be fun to see if you could change that, don’t you think?”
Furina’s eyes seem to unfocus for a moment, and then she smiles softly.
“You know… I might like that,” she admits. “After everything… I’m not sure I want to stay here in Fontaine for the rest of my life, it’s just too full of reminders of what I went through. Inazuma doesn’t sound like a bad place to settle down… I’d need to brush up on my Inazuman, though — I’m sure my accent is atrocious. And it couldn’t be any time soon, because I still have a number of troupes that I’ve agreed to consult for this year.”
Lumine blinks in surprise. She hadn’t actually expected Furina to agree — part of her has longed to live in Inazuma ever since Yoimiya had first spoken to her about having a place where she could lay down her burdens, but she hadn’t been ready at the time to commit to trying to stay in Teyvat. It was falling in love with Furina that changed that, and since Furina lives in Fontaine, Lumine had accepted that Fontaine would be her home.
(She tries not to think too hard about what she would choose if Aether refused to stay, and Furina refused to join them. She’s afraid of what her answer might be, and of what she might lose.)
“Of course,” Lumine agrees, doing her best to keep her thoughts out of her voice. “I’ll start looking to see if there are any houses for sale that we might like the next time I’m there, though… just in case.”
Furina hums in agreement, and Lumine returns her focus to finishing up the batter and pouring it into the cake pans. Soon enough those are in the oven and she and Furina have snuggled up on the couch, each immersed in the latest book they’ve been reading.
This sort of quiet time together is something that Lumine cherishes — the chance to just exist with the girl she loves, the world and all of its troubles feeling distant with a book in her hand and Furina nestled against her side.
She hopes that someday, she can lay down her sword and experience this feeling for the rest of her life.
Eventually, the cake has been baked and has cooled to the point that it can be frosted. Furina bounces on her heels as Lumine carefully adds a thick layer of icing on top of one half of the cake, then places the other on top of that.
“My turn!” Furina says eagerly, half-pushing Lumine out of the way.
She’s always loved decorating cakes, and as she spreads the first layer of icing over this one she’s reminded of why. It smells so good, and seeing a cake go from looking boring to looking delicious is a lot of fun.
Furina flinches slightly as her (admittedly perhaps slightly overenthusiastic) motions cause a glob of icing to land on her cheek as she yanks the spreader out of the bowl.
Before she can move to wipe it away, though, she feels Lumine’s warmth against her back as her girlfriend wraps her in a hug from behind. A moment later, a warm, wet sensation appears on her cheek, and she freezes as she realizes that Lumine is licking the icing off of her.
“Lumine!” Furina whines. “You could have at least scooped it off first!”
“That wouldn’t have been as much fun, though,” Lumine giggles, tongue swiping at Furina’s cheek again. “Hmm, maybe I should have skipped the cake and just covered you in icing…”
“…No thank you,” Furina mumbles, grimacing. “That sounds… sticky.”
“Good point,” Lumine admits. “You’d need a really good shower after that, huh.”
Her words are somewhat undercut by the way she hasn’t stopped licking Furina’s cheek. There had been a lot of icing, and Lumine appears determined not to waste even a single drop of it.
Furina does her best to ignore it and return to frosting the cake, but Lumine is very good at distracting her. When her girlfriend’s licks cease and are replaced by kisses, Furina reluctantly pushes her away.
“Cake now, kisses after,” Furina mumbles, rising onto her tiptoes to brush her lips against Lumine’s. “Okay?”
As much as she loves kisses, the smell of the half-decorated cake is driving her insane. If she doesn’t get to eat a slice soon, she might chew on Lumine instead.
“Fine,” Lumine pouts, stepping back. “I’ll start cleaning up while you do that, then.”
Furina smiles at her in thanks. She takes a moment to wash her cheek, then returns to her task.
With the distraction resolved, it’s not long at all before she’s got the cake nicely covered with an even spread of icing. She adds the strawberries they’d prepared, then begins to add some extra flourishes — little blue and yellow hearts and flowers made of icing to decorate the top and sides of the cake, and in the middle of the top she writes ‘1st Anniversary’ with letters alternating between those same colors.
“I’m done!” Furina announces.
Lumine practically teleports to her side, peering down at the cake.
“It’s so cute!” she gushes. “Almost too cute to eat…”
“We’re eating it,” Furina says flatly, glaring at her girlfriend. “We did not make a cake so that it could sit here and go bad.”
“Oh, fine,” Lumine laughs. “I suppose we can…”
Furina can’t help a small smile at how ridiculous Lumine is as she picks up the cake and carries it to the table.
Her life hasn’t been an easy one, and she and Lumine had definitely had a rocky start. But as she sits across from her girlfriend on their first anniversary, cutting them slices of a delicious cake they’d baked together…
Furina thinks it was all worth it in the end, because she can’t imagine a happiness greater than this.