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A faint voice called down the hallway.
“Traveler! Paimon got the new banda…”
The door opened, accompanied by quiet tinkling and a trail of stars.
“...ges?”
What greeted Paimon was the Traveler, lying on their front with their cheek planted deep into the pillow, fast asleep in just their undergarment. Their usual clothing, their “battle suit”, carelessly cast aside on the floor.
Even though their eyes were shut and their breathing even, their eyebrows were scrunched together.
When they set out from their Serenitea Pot this morning, both Paimon and the Traveler had only anticipated another day of casual commissions and digging deeper into the leisure aspect of the new area that is Nod-Krai. No sibling shenanigans, no hunting down enemies, no saving the world. Just a normal day for a normal person.
But alas, the Traveler is no normal person, and troubles always find their way to them. A straightforward task of clearing out Hilichurl camp threw them into a series of maze-like ruins with never-before-seen puzzle mechanisms that were surely the work of some great civilisation that once lived on these lands, and long-buried monsters springing back into action upon the arrival of new meat (quite literally). The cryptic glyphs plastered on the wall were promptly ignored as the duo fought their ways through the ruins, having absolutely no interest in uncovering more secrets of the world. Perhaps another day.
What’s worse was that those unexpected and intense series of events tore open the wounds that the Traveler sustained recently from the run-in with Rerir, the Rächer of Solnari. Tissue fluid and even blood were slowly soaking through the bandages wrapped across their torso and arms.
Paimon noticed the situation when she was hiding, hovering behind the Traveler during a fight with a Radiant Beast. When the Traveler backed up as the monster loomed, Paimon instinctively pressed her palms against the small of Traveler’s back, physically and mentally attaching herself onto them. A reassuring gesture.
But at the moment of contact, Paimon was immediately met with dampness. She glanced down and saw red painting the white of bandages, crimson blossoming along snow white plain.
Paimon wanted to shout out, to notify the Traveler of the situation, but she stopped herself just before she did. Why wouldn’t the Traveler know anyway? If Paimon could feel the pain just from looking at a dressing of the wounds, why would the Traveler themselves not feel the deep-rooted pain? So she just opted for staying out of the way in the fight and offered to fetch new bandages after they successfully escaped the ruins. The Traveler nodded their thanks.
Neither of them said anything about the detour on their way back.
By the time they returned to their Serenitea Pot, it was already late at night. The light they placed in the realm softly illuminating the entryway.
“You go and rest up, Paimon will take the bandages!” With that, Paimon went straight to the storage, leaving the Traveler in their bedroom.
And that brought us back to the present.
Paimon carefully placed the fresh bandages next to the bed and floated over to the Traveler’s side, trying to shake them awake so as to better clean and wrap their wounds. But it seems the exhaustion over the past few days has taken a toll on the Traveler, for they were completely unresponsive to Paimon’s action.
“Traveler?” Paimon tried calling, but still no response, save for a quiet snort amidst their breath. It’s a lost cause.
Like well-practiced steps in a dance, Paimon maneuvered to where the old bandages were tied up and loosened them one by one. First were the arms and hands, then the legs, and at last the torso where blood still stuck. Paimon took extra caution extracting it from underneath the sleeping body, careful not to pull too hard on the wound on the Traveler’s abdomen.
Underneath the bandages revealed the tapestry of scars on the Traveler. Some freshly healed over, new skins forming just enough to cover. Some old and hardened, yet barely faded. Accompanying scars was newly spilled blood smeared across the Traveler’s lower back, drying up and sticking to the skin.
Huh, why didn’t Paimon think of bringing the wound cleaning supplies over? Silly Paimon. Paimon thought to herself as she flew out and retrieved some cotton and disinfectant.
Paimon came back hugging all the containers close to her, barely encircling the entire bundle with her arms.
With a pair of tweezers, Paimon dipped the cotton ball into a small plate of disinfectant and carefully dragged the ball across dark red, almost brown, streak of dried blood. It didn’t take long for the entire cotton ball to be soaked through with blood.
Throughout the process, while maintaining the same furrowed brows, the Traveler never once flinched, not even when Paimon cleaned right on the edge of the freshly closed wound. The lack of reaction may be surprising to some, but Paimon had known that even if she applied direct pressure on the wound, the Traveler would still be in deep sleep. Every time after some big encounter and the situation has settled down with no foreseeable threat in near future, the Traveler would pass out immediately into deep slumber every night for the next week, almost as if the body had learnt to preserve as much energy possible to prepare for the next big threat in a long and arduous journey.
And so the Traveler slept on while Paimon finished up with the cleaning, a small pile of blood-soaked cotton collected on the side.
Paimon just stared at her work for a moment, taking in the sleeping figure. Then she moved to grab the bandages and prepared herself to rewrap the newer wounds.
While the scars were not her own, Paimon could somehow remember how each and every one of them came to be. Well, maybe not all, given that she met the Traveler already looking a bit beaten up from their travel among the stars, but she could name all that came after they landed in Teyvat.
Starting with the most recent one, the cuts across the Traveler’s back and elbows when they were thrown to the ground by the kuuvahki canon, sliding along the rough surface and catching onto the jagged edges with their skin. Paimon slid the bandages underneath the Traveler’s body and wound them around the waist area a few times before tying it off. The elbows were easier to dress. Paimon took the creative liberty to finish the dressing with a bow lying on the outer side.
Accompanying the wounds were bruises, lots and lots of them criss-crossing on the Traveler’s body. The sheer amount of time the Traveler had been restrained was worrying, but Paimon supposed that was to be expected when you could rival even the gods. When you couldn’t fight someone, you simply hinder their movements. Still, that didn’t stop her gaze from tracing the black and purple lines. When Paimon had wanted to pull off Rerir’s hold on the Traveler, the hands only tightened more. The moment Traveler absorbed the Abyssal energy, Paimon could already see the steadily blackening lines forming. Yet the first thing Traveler did was to turn and run towards Columbina and get everyone away from the battlefield.
Just above the waistline of their underwear but below the bandages around their waist, there was a prominent sign of blunt force trauma that extended below the cloths. The accumulation of all the times Traveler fell back on their rear whether from being thrown around by enemies or the recoil of using a great amount of power.
Then there’s the scratches and burns that’s all over their body. Their legs, their arms, their face, their everywhere exposed. From training, from blades that got too close for comfort and from various explosions they encountered. These are the one which the Traveler didn’t even bother to put a plaster on. These wounds eventually solidified into visible measure of their fighting prowess.
After Paimon put away the bandaging equipments, she came back into the room and her eyes immediately caught onto one of the most prominent scar on Traveler’s back. A lightning scar that spread across their back like the veins of a leaf, reaching from their nape to just below their arms. Its sharpness had mostly faded, but its sheer expanse drew attention.
Paimon still remembered what happened that day. During the showdown between Raiden Shogun and the Traveler to defend Thoma’s vision, the Traveler suddenly disappeared, swallowed up by a black tide. When they finally appeared again in front of the public’s eyes, the Traveler had fallen down on their back, lying unconscious on the stage. Paimon recalled the desperation she felt that moment when she flew over to try and shake the Traveler awake, while the Shogun slowly encroached towards them, her shadow gradually looming over their figures. When the Shogun had pointed her Musou no Hitotachi in Paimon’s face and startled her away, Paimon’s mind was struggling to think how she could carry the Traveler’s unconscious body with her weaker build and escape from the Shogun’s wrath.
Fortunately, Thoma was able to get them both to somewhere safer at that time. When they had settled down, in a private, quieter moment, the Traveler had asked Paimon to check their back due to the persisting soreness.
The sight of the lightning scar, with remnant of electro energy coursing through the veins, drew a gasp out of Paimon. But when Paimon described to the Traveler as such, they simply brushed it off, saying it’s just another scar in their collection, as expected when their journey somehow got entangled with a nation’s fate again.
Thinking back to the past while draping the blanket over the Traveler’s figure, Paimon had genuinely thought that their journey would end right then, after just reaching their third nation. But they had gone so far now, with the meeting of the last archon just on the horizon.
Paimon knew that when the Traveler eventually reunited with their sibling, everything would shift, and she didn’t know where she would stand in the Traveler’s life when that moment came. But no matter what would happen in the future, Paimon could say with certainty that “guiding” the Traveler had been one of the most meaningful decision she would ever make. Despite the hardship they faced on the way, Paimon knew that she and the Traveler would always have each other’s back, even though it’s mostly the Traveler protecting Paimon rather than the other way round. Paimon could only hope she had provided just as much support to the Traveler as they did for her.
That was more than enough thinking for Paimon in a single night and she could feel her brain slowly began to shut down. She lay herself down next to the Traveler under the blanket. She carefully placed her hand in their much bigger and calloused hand and smiled when she felt the slightest tightening of their grip.
With the soft snore from across her and warmth spreading from her hand to the rest of her petite body, Paimon slowly drifted off into a dream.
Perhaps she should make a Paimon’s super-duper special healing drink mix for the Traveler in the morning.