Work Text:
The Mondstadt bridge was, as always, crowded with the feathered subjects of the kingdom’s most unsettling young boy. Lisa, dressed in her best librarian finery, was halfway across when the shadow fell—not the shadow of a cloud, but the shadow of a truly impressive flock of pigeons taking to the air in a unified, unsettling movement.
Timmie stood near the railing, his face set in an expression of fiercely simple, possessive determination.
“Good afternoon, Miss Lisa,” Timmie announced, his voice carrying the unnatural, piercing clarity of a child who believes he is absolutely right.
Lisa paused, her lilac eyes already heavy with exhaustion, her movements slow and practiced to conserve energy. She offered a tired, practiced smile. “Timmie, darling. You look positively… purposeful. Did you manage to finally convince the Knights to allow you a full patrol route?”
Timmie ignored the sarcasm. His hands were clasped behind his back, a posture of absurd formality.
“I have come to inform you of a final decision, Miss Lisa,” Timmie declared, taking a slow step forward. “I have observed the Library. It is a confusing, dusty, and loud place. It is full of complications. And complications are making you tired.”
“Oh, you’ve noticed,” Lisa murmured, resting her hand on the bridge railing, trying to hide the faint tremor of fatigue running through her body. Her self-imposed power restrictions—a consequence of her accelerated mastery—were a constant, agonizing drag.
“A beautiful, perfect lady like you shouldn’t be tired,” Timmie insisted, his voice rising in petulant anger. He gestured sharply towards the empty field beyond the bridge. “You should be here! Where the air is simple, the food is simple, and the demands are simple! The pigeons understand simplicity! They understand perfection.”
The surrounding flock—dozens strong—gave a low, unified thrum that was not the sound of individual birds, but a single, resonant frequency of intense agreement. Lisa felt the air around her grow heavy with their will.
“Timmie, my dear,” Lisa said, trying to inject some genuine warmth to diffuse the situation. “My work is my passion. The dust and complication are, unfortunately, necessary for keeping the city from falling into ruin.”
“A lie!” Timmie shouted, his face contorted in frustrated anger. The closest pigeons shuffled their feet, their eyes—normally small and black—gleaming with a sickly, unified purple tint. “The ruin is in the complication! You belong right here, where I can take care of you! I have built you a nest! It’s clean, it’s low to the ground, and it’s full of crusts!”
He finally brought his hands forward. They were not holding flowers or a toy. He was holding a small, hand-drawn picture: a crude depiction of a birdhouse big enough for a human, labeled ‘LISA’S SIMPLE COTTAGE.’
Lisa felt a sharp spike of genuine terror. This wasn't the usual, annoying pursuit. This was a demand. And his will was infecting the environment.
“Timmie, that’s… highly thoughtful,” Lisa tried, slowly stepping backward. She needed to reach the city gates. She needed the safety of structured space. “But I can’t live in a nest, darling. I have an entire library to manage.”
“The library is wrong!” Timmie shrieked. “The books are full of lies and complexity! You should only have simple things! Simple food, simple thoughts, simple work! My pigeons are simple, and they are perfect! And you must be perfect, too!”
As he spoke the word perfect, the entire flock surged forward, cutting off Lisa’s path back across the bridge. They didn’t fly high; they formed a dense, bobbing wall, their purple eyes all fixed on her.
Lisa knew she was in trouble. The exertion of walking this far was already causing sharp, electrical pain in her temples. A single, uncontrolled Electro burst could put her in bed for a week, or worse, trigger the backlash that destroyed her.
She looked at the pigeons. They weren't just birds. They were the collective, horrifying manifestation of one little boy's uncomplicated, suffocating desire to own and simplify the beautiful thing he couldn't understand.
“Pigeons,” Lisa whispered, her voice tight. “You are becoming quite the cohesive organism, aren’t you? That’s some fascinating Ley Line instability you’ve managed to weaponize, Timmie.”
“They are me! And I am them!” Timmie cried, his arms spread wide in a gesture of simple, terrifying pride. “They want you to come home, Lisa! Where you will be safe and quiet and perfect!”
The flock began to close in, their combined thrumming now a deafening vibration in the air. Lisa could feel the edges of the feathers brushing her coat.
“If you refuse,” Timmie hissed, his eyes narrowed, mirroring the collective anger of the birds, “then you are being complicated. And we have to fix complication. We have to simplify you.”
The moment she heard the word "simplify," Lisa realized the nature of the horror. They weren't just trying to trap her; they were trying to de-intellectualize her—to scour away the messy complexity of her curse and her life until she was a blank, perfect object for Timmie's affection.
I cannot fight power with power. I must fight a simple will with a simpler redirection.
The birds were now inches away. She could feel the pressure of the flock-mind pushing against her consciousness, a sickening wave of bland, totalizing simplicity. Feathers were sharp now, their edges unnaturally crisp, ready to scratch and smother.
Lisa drew a slow, agonizing breath, focusing on the sheer, precise geometry of the bridge she stood on. She channeled a tiny, painful sliver of her Electro power—enough for a single, controlled arc, but nothing more.
“Oh, Timmie, darling,” Lisa purred, putting every ounce of her remaining energy into the performance. Her eyes flashed briefly, lilac electricity momentarily crackling around her.
The pigeons recoiled slightly, their collective will momentarily stunned by the concentrated magical resistance.
“You’ve created an astounding manifestation of will. It’s absolutely breathtaking,” Lisa said, forcing a gasp of awe. “But you’ve aimed it at the wrong prize.”
Timmie looked confused. “Wrong? But you are the most beautiful! You are the most perfect prize for my simple love!”
“No, darling. I am complicated. I am old,” Lisa refuted, gesturing towards the vast, chaotic complexity of the city behind her. “But look beyond me! Look at the most perfect, most simple, most constant element in all of Mondstadt! The thing that never changes! The thing that is eternally worth protecting!”
She didn’t point at the city. She didn't point at the Archon Statue. She pointed at the single, ancient, unassuming mailbox next to the bridge railing—the box where people left simple, uncomplicated messages.
“The Mailbox,” Lisa breathed, letting her voice drop to a conspiratorial, reverent whisper. “It never sleeps. It never grows tired. It is always there, waiting for its flock of letters! It is the true, simple sentinel of Mondstadt! And look how lonely it is, Timmie!”
She let the tiny Electro arc she had charged spark onto the metal mailbox with a soft zzzt.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The pigeons’ collective gaze snapped away from Lisa. The mailbox was simple. It was constant. It was metal. It held silent objects. It was a single, perfect focal point that never argued.
Timmie’s eyes widened, his anger dissolving into a sudden, pure, and overwhelming surge of simple, protective fascination.
“The Mailbox…” Timmie whispered, his terrifying will now completely transferred. “It’s perfectly lonely! It needs subjects! It needs crusts!”
The flock, released from its murderous focus on Lisa, descended upon the mailbox. They didn't attack it, but rather formed a perfect, protective guard around the base, their soft coos returning, a sound of simple, protective adoration.
Timmie ran towards the mailbox, clutching his drawing. “You won’t be lonely anymore! We will keep you perfect and simple, beautiful Mailbox!”
Lisa, utterly drained, slowly walked the final steps across the bridge and into the city, her heart pounding a weary rhythm. She had been one step from collapse, one heartbeat from a final, forced simplification, but she had won the day with a simple act of profound redirection.
She leaned against the city wall, taking several shuddering breaths, trying to gather the last of her strength.
A moment later, Diluc, who had been watching the scene unfold from the shadow of the gate, approached her.
“The mail delivery box. An interesting target for elemental manipulation, Lisa,” he commented dryly.
Lisa managed a faint, tired smile. “Oh, Diluc. My apologies. I simply used the most basic Electro-Arc of Psychological Constant Redirection. Timmie is an unstable entity, and I merely gave his focused will a more sustainable, non-human object to adore. The Library is simply too complicated a concept for his pure, simple mind.”
Diluc looked at the bridge, where Timmie was now enthusiastically lecturing the mailbox about the importance of quiet, simple living, while the pigeons formed a perfect, silent, fluffy shield around its base.
“It seems you’ve managed to turn the monster’s obsession into a mundane responsibility, keeping him busy and harmless,” Diluc concluded.
Lisa pushed off the wall, a wave of familiar, heavy fatigue washing over her. “Indeed. Timmie needs to be the shepherd of the simple, not the simplifier of the complex. And now, I need to go immediately rest before I have to rewrite a dozen scrolls in the language of the wind.”
She reached the library doors, pausing one last time to glance back at the bridge. Timmie and his flock were still there, the boy perfectly content, the pigeons perfectly focused on their new, inanimate ward.
Lisa was safe. Her complexity was intact. The terrifying, suffocating simplicity of Timmie's desire was successfully diverted, allowing her to keep her precious, dangerous, complicated self.