Archive of Our Own

Nights in the winter palace are cold but never silent. Most of her colleagues keep strange hours, and Sandrone is no exception. Still, the palace is large enough that she has the privilege of indulging in relative peace and quiet in a secluded, forgotten corner with only her creations for company.

Her workshop is located in an abandoned hall which she has repurposed to put all her equipment and machines, filling the silence with a faint buzzing of machinery. She hadn’t bothered with the crumbling architecture, leaving untouched the faded murals and tapestries which line the walls, gilt peeling off of the bas-relief carvings that wound their way up the columns and curled at the edges of the walls and ceiling. In the very center of the ceiling is a domed skylight like a clear glass eye, allowing in plenty of natural light during the day. It's not much help during the night, but Sandrone gets by with artificial lighting. And sometimes, on clear nights, the moon will deign to shine its lovely presence down the atrium, a curious pupil peering in and bathing the worktables in a pleasant silver glow.

It's been a long day. Sandrone carefully welds the metal plates together and knocks on the surface after, relishing in the neat, hollow noise. Only three more sections left to go, and then she'd get to run the ammunition tests with Pulonia tomorrow. The prospect fills her with glee. After spending the last week grueling over repairs for the Tsarista’s newest mechanical soldiers, she'd finally get the chance to work on her own projects for once. Anyway, she'd have a much better time working if not for the absolutely grating noise that had begun once again outside her workshop. Singing.

Sandrone forces herself to take a deep breath. She feels her eyebrow twitch. The singing continues, the same melody, over and over and over again. She stands up, a couple of screws clattering to the ground, and strides over to the entrance, throwing the doors open. “Columbina!”

The Damselette trails off in her singing, placid expression completely unperturbed. Archons, Sandrone hates that about her. Always the picture of perfect innocence, an empty, mirror-like calm on her face like an undisturbed lake. She knows it's all an act, of course. No truly innocent damsel could have claimed the third seat of the Fatui. Sandrone scowls down at the Damselette. Something about her practiced aloofness makes Sandrone want to rip her calm, serene visage to pieces.

Her eyes aren't even open, but Sandrone can somehow feel her curious gaze probing her skin like little needles as Columbina turns her attention to her. 

“Shut,” Sandrone hisses, “the fuck up. Some of us have work to do.”

“Sandrone,” the Damselette says, her voice like the murmur of the wind. “I didn't mean to disturb you.”

“Well, you did,” Sandrone spits, turning on her heel. “Either be quiet or get lost. I don't have the patience to deal with the likes of you.”

“What are you working on?” the Damselette asks.

“I–none of your business!” Sandrone glares over her shoulder. The Damselette is still sitting on the floor, robes pooled out in the patch of moonlight cast from the window down the hall, her closed eyes watching. “Don’t you have something better to do or did they recruit you just to waste my time?”

“I have nothing better to do,” she says plainly, and nothing about her tone suggests that she's hurt or offended or even particularly upset. She just sounds confused. Which is how she seems 90 percent of the time; some otherworldly creature who had mistakenly stumbled into this frenzied banquet of lunatics and masochists and fools. Sandrone would almost pity her if not for the fact that she was extremely annoying.

She sneers. “And what do you expect me to do about that?”

Columbina tilts her head like a curious bird. A dove, Sandrone thinks, with no small amount of disdain. “Can I see what you're working on?”

Let it be clear that Sandrone did not join the harbingers to make friends, or even acquaintances. She is self-aware enough to realise that she has no place in all that human relationship bullshit and besides, she's never once seen the appeal. She has Pulonia and her machines and her own brilliant mind for company and that was enough. Anyone who has tried to convince her otherwise does not last long after she's had a few jabs at them. But Columbina? 

“She keeps singing the same stupid melody outside my door like my ears have stopped working or something,” Sandrone says, slamming her teacup down with more force than necessary. 

The Knave gives her a commiserating look that Sandrone knows is the same look she gives to her sad little orphans when they complain about their childish inconveniences. The implication that Sandrone is being childish here further incenses her. “And that's not even the worst of it! I brought her into my workshop once to stop her pestering me and now she barges in like she owns the place! I’ll walk into my own workshop and find her already there lounging on one of the workstations."

“How terribly inconvenient,” Arlecchino demurs. She picks up her own teacup and takes a delicate sip. “I must say, the Damselette becomes more of a mystery the more you try to understand her.”

“One does wonder why she was even recruited in the first place,” La Signora says with a sniff. She sits across the room at the grand piano, listlessly plucking at random, offtune notes. Nobody in this palace knows how to tune a piano.

“Right? It's ridiculous,” Sandrone says. “Third seat in our esteemed organisation and all she does is sing and wander like some lost sheep!” The words are bitter on her tongue. Third seat. Columbina gets to sit in high esteem, the top three of their cohort, and all she does is languish in melancholy and ennui while Sandrone has to work her joints rusty trying to keep the Tsaritsa’s mechanical army alive and functioning. And what does she get in return for her efforts? A lousy number seven.

“I cannot stand her,” Sandrone snarls. “And I've expressed that multiple times to her face but she still tries to act all buddy-buddy. Sickening.”

“Don’t fret, Sandrone dear,” La Signora says soothingly. She is putting on that contrived persona of maternal grace that she often uses to bribe small children into liking her. “I'm sure the girl will get the hint soon.”

Sandrone seethes. They just don’t get it. 

“Does he have a name?” Columbina asks in a feather-soft voice. She’s perched lightly on top of the robot’s shoulder, wings trailing behind her like a blanket of snow.

“Pulonia,” Sandrone says curtly. “My personal assistant."

“He doesn't seem to be very helpful,” Columbina notes.

“That’s because I'm fixing him right now, idiot,” Sandrone says, popping out a screw with more force than strictly necessary. She glares at Columbina. “Why are you here again?”

“Your company is interesting,” she says.

Sandrone scoffs. “Yeah, right. What are you here to do then? Loiter?”

Columbina tilts her head. “I could be a stand-in assistant,” she says. “While Pulonia is under maintenance.”

“Like you know half the terms I use when talking about my equipment.”

“I’ve observed you plenty,” Columbina says, “I know where you keep your things.”

Sandrone watches her with narrowed eyes. Columbina’s expression stays perfectly amicable. Archons. “Stop looking at me,” she grumbles, turning away.

“My eyes are closed.”

“You’re still…oh, Archons, what do you want?”

“I would like to help,” Columbina says.

Sandrone slams her palms down onto the workstation. “Fine! Fine. Get me the Type D-36 Kuuvhaki sensors. Not that one, the other one.”

Sandrone has to admit that work goes by a lot faster with an extra pair of hands. Usually Pulonia would be that extra pair, but as established, today was the exception. 

“There,” Sandrone says, standing up and stretching out her joints. She’ll need to remember to oil them later; they stiffen up so easily in the cold, especially if she'd been stationary for a while. “I’ll just need to restart his settings tomorrow, but right now he needs some time to process the new software I’ve just uploaded.”

Columbina presses her hands together with a pleased hum. “I’m glad I could help.”

“I didn’t ask,” Sandrone grumbles, but then she catches the minute shift of Columbina’s expressionless face to a slightly crestfallen but still mostly expressionless face. 

“But you were…helpful to have around,” she grits out. “I didn't know you were that mechanically inclined.” Truth be told, if someone had told Sandrone a couple weeks earlier that the Damselette was merely an empty, brainless shell containing an endlessly looping music box, she might have believed it.

Columbina’s expressionless face brightens up a few notches. “Can I come by to help more often?”

“It’s not like you’d actually stay away if I say no,” Sandrone scoffs. “You basically invite yourself into my workshop anyway.”

Zapolyarny Palace is a maze. It took Sandrone the good part of her first week stationed here to fully map out the place in her neural database. Sometimes she still has to consult it. Benefits of being antisocial, though, as well as non-human, was that she could get away with cooping herself up in one specific corner of the Palace and staying there except for big, serious meetings. The only place other than her workshop and her living quarters that she visited was the room where she’d hosted her tea parties.

When she first had the idea, sifting through her implanted memories, she had immediately set about finding a suitable room in the palace out of the many that lay in various states of disrepair or disuse. She’d repurposed the old drawing room in the west wing; swept away the layer of dust and grime to find a cozy enough space with a small fireplace, tall glass windows and a full set of tables and chairs. A plush chaise that smelled like dust and mothballs sat in a corner, while to the opposite side of the room was an old piano that the Fair Lady later took a liking to. 

Anyways, it was perfect. Out of the way enough that people couldn’t stumble past without having been explicitly invited, with all the furniture required, and plenty of natural light. No flowers; it was too cold here to grow any, and the windows were permanently frosted over. The sky outside revealed nothing but a white-grey haze of fog and blizzard. The wallpapers had long-since faded and hung in strips off the walls like peeling, water-damanged skin. The brass filigree of the mantelpiece and the lightless chandelier above was rusty. But the windows reached to the floor and you could open them to let in a stiff breeze on rare sunny days.

Sandrone sets the table with her third-best set of china, the one from Mondstadt that the Fair Lady had gifted her. The second-best she saved for special occasions and her favourite set was only for herself to use. The porcelain, polished to glint even in the dull grey afternoon light, is decorated with a delicate pattern of rosebuds. Carefully, she lifts the teapot, pouring the steaming tea evenly into the cups as the delicate floral scent of Darjeeling fills the air. 

Her guests, meanwhile, settle in as they trickle into the room; Arlecchino, punctual as always, sitting in her favourite armchair by the fireplace, poking at the glowing embers. La Signora sweeps in and drapes the massive bunch of fabric she calls a dress onto the piano, already complaining about her subordinate or the other. Sometimes Pantalone drops by if she’s preparing a specific blend of jasmine tea. Pulcinella has been once or twice out of curiosity. Honestly, Sandrone had never set out to establish some kind of gathering between her colleagues, but one thing had led to another and now, more or less, her tea parties had become a staple of life in the Winter Palace where once in a blue moon, when she was feeling particularly generous and willing to socialisise, she'd organise a little get-together between the harbingers.

Today, it’s just Arlecchino and La Signora, the latter plucking at the piano with a listless melancholy. Sandrone ducks out of the room to refill the now-empty teapot, and when she re-enters, she spots a newcomer, perched on the end of the chaise.

Sandrone sets down her tray with shaking hands and clears her throat. “Excuse me,” she says, “But who the fuck invited you?”

Columbina looks up, a faint smile playing on her lips. “I invited myself. I heard the piano and got curious.”

La Signora trills out a slightly off-tune D-major scale. “Have you ever played, Damselette?”

“No,” she says. “I never had the chance to.”

Sandrone plops down at the table and pours herself a fresh cup of tea, her fingers clenching tight around the handle. “Would anyone like a refill?”

“I can do my own,” Arlecchino says with an incline of her head. “The Damselette hasn’t had a cup yet, though.”

Columbina, at the sound of her name, glides over to the table. “May I have a try?”

Sandrone begrudgingly pours her a cup and shoves it towards her. She watches as Columbina takes a cautious sip, both hands holding the teacup clumsily as she drinks. 

“What, have you never had tea before?” Sandrone scoffs.

Columbina shakes her head. “It’s different than what I expected,” she murmurs. “It tastes bitter.”

Sandrone blinks at the open curiosity on Columbina’s face. She’s like a child, sometimes, the way she gets enthralled by the most ordinary things. “Well, that’s what it’s supposed to taste like,” Sandrone grits out. “And don’t hold the teacup like that. Honestly.”

Somehow, Columbina becomes a perennial guest of her tea parties; certainly not because Sandrone herself had explicitly allowed it, but Columbina had an unfortunate habit of clinging to habitual spots like a limpet on a rock. It doesn't help that both the Knave and the Fair Lady tolerate her presence; the former with the same blanket geniality she offers everyone she meets and the latter with a strange mixture of condescension and affection of an older sister looking down on a hapless little sister.

Arlecchino sits at the tea-table, picking at a Conch Madeleine on her plate while Sandrone busies herself with a bowl of coffee bavarois. 

“Never a proper tea party without the right refreshments," Arlecchino says. 

Sandrone inclines her head. “Indeed. I had these pastries imported from Fontaine according to my specifications.”

“Attentive to detail as always, Marionette,” Arlecchino says. “I appreciate your commitment to observing the proper etiquette of any given situation.” She lifts her teacup, bracing it with her other hand. Their Fontainian background was one of the few things Sandrone had in common with the Knave; more often than not they discussed Fontainian cuisine and all the nuances that came with preparing it correctly. Neither had the luxury of claiming allegiance to Fontaine, of course, but even so, Sandrone supposes on some level she understands the Knave’s affinity to the culture and people of a nation that she originated from. She cannot say the same for herself; whatever connection she had with Fontaine was merely coincidence, a matter of hard facts wired into her body that she considers with emotionless neutrality.

La Signora, as always, is playing the piano, experimentally plucking at chords and scales that ring out off-tune in the heavy silence of the Palace. Her nasal voice forms words in an unfamiliar dialect long-lost to time as her fingers dart across the keys.

Mild und leise, wie er lächelt, wie das Auge, hold er öffnet; Liebestod. Or, as Signora had called it, Love-death. Columbina watches in fascination as the Fair Lady sings about the doomed lovers, voice rising and falling to the music. Her face, usually twisted in some expression of snobbery or disgust, looks strangely vulnerable, a shade of melancholy tinting her cold eyes. It makes Sandrone’s artificial skin crawl with how alien it feels, to feel so deeply about another person that centuries later, even after surrendering all her memories to the eternal flame inside her, the sense of grief remains, ringing, a hollow centre.

“It’s beautiful,” Columbina murmurs in her soft dove’s voice, leaning on the chaise to listen. Sandrone bites down a scoff. How very typical of the Damselette; sentimental to a fault over something she had no way of understanding or experiencing, and never would. “You must have loved them very much.”

“I suppose I did,” Signora says, voice distant as her fingers slow to a halt. “I don’t remember much about him. About what it was like to love him.” Her face is empty and expressionless as a frozen lake, but her eyes burn with something Sandrone cannot name. “The only thing I remember is rage.”

The thing with the tea parties is that they’re Sandrone’s pride and joy, her dominion, as it were. None of the other harbingers would dare comment on how or when it was organised. Their role was to simply participate; anything other than that was overreaching, and here in this circus of eclectic yet powerful individuals, most weren't that foolish as to test each others’ boundaries. 

And so the tea parties were unquestionably hers. Sandrone makes a point of being an excellent organiser, serving tea and refreshments diligently. So far, she has figured out her recurring guests’ preferred blends of tea; Pantalone has a penchant for the bitter jasmine blends she specially sources from Liyue, Signora the fiery spice of Sumerian Chai, which she’d frequently drank during her time at the Akademiya. Arlecchino likes her tea black, but truly prefers coffee, as does Sandrone herself; but for the sake of a ‘tea’ party, both gravitate towards stronger blends of Darjeeling and Assam. 

Columbina, however, is a conundrum as always. She just drinks whatever she’s offered with the same maddening, unruffled expression, along with a soft hum as she considers the flavour. After her first intrusion into Sandrone’s circle, the next time Columbina showed up, Sandrone had prepared a more flowery herbal blend, which received a similar response. Since then, Sandrone has come up with increasingly ridiculous blends to try and gauge her tastes with no avail. 

Sandrone watches as Columbina drinks her cup of Rooibos now, specially brewed for her, and narrows her eyes when Columbina coughs slightly on her first sip.

“So?” she asks, tone accusing. Columbina looks up from her teacup and offers her a placid smile. “It’s alright,” she says. “Thank you for the tea, Sandrone.”

“You’re welcome,” Sandrone grumbles. After the trouble she went to include Jueyun peppers in the tea. Not even the slightest reaction out of the ordinary. 

Of course, while Columbina is oblique about her tea preferences, her sweet tooth she displays prominently. The first time she tried one of Sandrone’s recipes she was positively glowing. As she should; her recipes, tweaked by analysing data samples of the best performing patisseries in Fontaine, is quite possibly the best to ever exist. It’s a matter of pride, she tells herself, that she has then gone on to bake her own treats for every tea session. To show off her skill, yes. 

La Signora has taken it upon herself lately to teach Columbina the piano, an offer which the latter gratefully uptook. Signora smiles like a proud mother as Columbina settles on her usual seat on the chaise to lavish her attention on Signora’s playing. She starts on a chord with a flourish of her hands, before turning to Columbina with a practised air of matriarchal benevolence. “Now, see these notes here? This is what we call a chord.”

“Ridiculous,” Sandrone mutters under her breath, spooning a mouthful of bavarois into her mouth. “What good is she going to accomplish learning the piano? We’re a military organisation, for Archons’ sake.”

Arlecchino taps one perfectly manicured-to-a-point fingernail on the table to the rhythm. “At the House of the Hearth, we like to encourage a comprehensive education,” she says.  “If my children wanted to sing, I'd let them, so long as they’d still be able to wield a sword afterwards.”

“Columbina’s not a child,” Sandrone says. 

“No, she’s not,” Arlecchino agrees.

Sandrone watches as she follows Signora’s movements, the chords ringing out in broken bits of a melody. “She’s just—clueless. She doesn't know the first thing about being a harbinger.” Or being a human, she adds to herself privately; but then again, who is she to judge, with her mechanical insides and implanted memories?

Seeing Columbina with her guileless expression, learning some sappy love song from Signora like she could even understand the significance of such an emotion makes Sandrone want to break something. Not her third-best set of china, of course, and there’s little else in the room that would give her any satisfaction to break anyway. She sits back, settling for clenching her fingers tight around the handle of her cup. Signora’s voice, low and throaty, weaves into a melody accompanied by the chords. 

Du, du liegst mir im Herzen

du, du liegst mir im Sinn.

Du, du machst mir viel Schmerzen,

weißt nicht wie gut ich dir bin.

Ja, ja, ja, ja, weißt nicht wie gut ich dir bin.

A love song. Columbina mouths the words, her lips forming the right shape, but Sandrone knows she doesn't understand. Like Sandrone herself doesn't understand. 

You, you are in my heart,

you, you are in my mind.

You, you cause me much pain,

you don't know how good I am for you.

Sandrone has no true heart to speak off; not that fleshy organ that pulses in a human’s chest. Sometimes she wonders if La Signora still has hers, or if it's been burnt to a crisp, along with everything that had made her Rosalyne, a name Sandrone had learned long, long ago and never heard again. None of the fools in the Tsaritsa’s little band of war criminals have a heart, the kind that other humans would long for. 

And yet here they are, listening to the Fair Lady warble a love song, and Columbina, in stumbling, halting notes, following her in a pointless mimicry of human emotion, fumbling for the strings of deep-seated grief that rattle in Signora's now empty chest. A child playing pretend.

"That's it,” Signora coaxes Columbina, as her familiar, airy voice shapes unfamiliar syllables in a language she doesn't speak. Even so, she makes them sound ethereal in that voice of hers, harmonising with Signora as the latter plays on the piano, sounding for all the world like a lovelorn maiden.

Sandrone gazes past them, outside the window, to a still white scene of settled snow and a clear, cloudless sky the shade of a robin’s egg; a fragile kind of blue like spun sugar and stained glass. She can almost imagine the warmth of the winter sun, lingering on her skin. The melody continues, a faint humming in her ears, as if from worlds apart.

Yes, yes, yes, yes you don't know how good I am for you.

Columbina gamely accepts the offered teacup and takes a careful sip, her expression blank as ever.

“Well?” Sandrone raises an eyebrow. She'd been particularly satisfied with this blend; bitter-melon herbal with a medicinal aftertaste that clings to your throats. She feels the slightest curl of satisfaction when a small furrow forms in between Columbina’s brows, which she forces herself to smooth out.

“It's interesting,” Columbina says, face perfectly impassive once more. “Thank you, Sandrone.”

Sandrone resists the urge to upend her entire tea tray. “Glad to hear it,” she seethes.

It’s a matter of pride, she tells herself. Sandrone is the official host of the tea parties; she has to know every one of her attendees’ tea preferences, even if said guest had invited herself spontaneously and decided to remain here in spite of Sandrone’s growing frustration.

There has to be a tea that the Damselette likes. There has to be. Of course, not once does Sandrone ever consider asking her outright, because that would be beneath her.

Like she said. A matter of pride. 

The light of the full moon catches on the pale gossamer of Columbina’s dress like spun silver. She reaches for the handful of screws and drops them in Sandrone’s outstretched palm. She’s humming that insufferable melody again, the tenor of her voice trembling like the wings of an emerging butterfly. Something delicate. 

Sandrone fixes the metal plating in place, turning the small device over to inspect the bottom. She’d been researching Kuuvahki-powered machinery lately, at the Tsaritsa’s behest, though she’d be lying if she said she didn’t harbour any personal interest in the work as well. The moon gleams from behind the skylight, and Sandrone can almost feel the ebb and flow of the lunar energy reverberating in the chamber of her workshop.

Columbina turns her head towards the moon, robes rustling as she shifts. In the silvery half-light she looks almost translucent, bathed in an otherworldly glow, a shade from a different space-time. Her singing trails off as she reaches out at the filaments of light trickling down into the sanctum of Sandrone’s workspace. 

Sandrone tears her gaze away from Columbina. “What is it now?” She means for it to sound accusatory, but it comes out with a begrudging curiosity, if anything. Definitely not concern, Archons banish the thought. 

Columbina hums. “It’s a full moon tonight,” she says.

“I have eyes,” Sandrone replies tetchily. 

“I can feel its pull beckoning me. Like I’m remembering something that no longer exists.” Columbina swings her legs on the workbench, a touch of melancholy in her expression. Like a lost child looking up at their mother, “I wonder if the moon feels lonely up there.”

“How lovely that you get the luxury of pondering the emotions of celestial objects,” says Sandrone, but even as she says it there's no real heat behind the words. Columbina’s origins were murkier than most, and while the occasional title of ‘moon-goddess’ floated around, Sandrone suspected that most of her colleagues had no real inkling of everything that title would entail. 

What they do know is that Columbina’s feet never seem to quite touch the ground. She hums an alien melody, eyes closed but seemingly all-seeing, and she drifts through the corridors aimlessly, a wandering shade wrought in the fine filaments of moonlight.

“I suppose it is a luxury,” Columbina says, voice distant. Like this, she seems so far away, illusory, a vision from a dream that would dissipate at the slightest breeze. “The Tsaritsa has been kind enough to shelter me here, in the Winter Palace.”

She scoffs. “Kind is not the word I’d use to describe Her Majesty.”

“Sandrone,” Columbina says. “Where would you be, if not with the Harbingers?" She tips her head like a bird, and Sandrone gets the unsettling sense of a gaze unseen, of the Damselette’s closed eyes watching her behind the moon-white veils of her eyelids. Smudged crescents in the smooth milky pond of her face. 

“None of your business,” Sandrone snaps, least of all because she isn't sure she would have an answer for that. Isn’t sure that she would like it if she did. 

What is your deepest desire?

She didn't have an answer then, and she wouldn't now. Sandrone brushes the memory aside and turns to Columbina. “What about you, then? Did you just appear fully formed in an oyster with that song stuck inside your throat like a windup toy?”

“That song is the only memory I have of where I came from,” Columbina says. Her face is turned towards the night sky. “Always just out of reach.” She grasps at the moonbeams dancing on her fingers. Illusory. “I don’t even know what these lyrics mean.”

From Sandrone’s angle, Columbina’s face is obscured, but she can hear it plainly in her voice, the way she reaches for something as intangible as moonlight and yearns for its embrace like a lost child. There is something pitiable about it, like watching a crippled bird stumble, again and again, flapping its mangled wings in a futile attempt to fly. Sandrone knows better than to offer any sympathy. Every one of them has their place in the Tsaritsa’s menagerie.

“None of that matters now,” Sandrone says. “You’re a Harbinger. Act like it.”

Columbina smiles faintly at that, lips stirring like a ripple across a lake. “I’ll try.”

Death is a distant, rarely considered notion amongst the ranks of the Harbingers. Obviously it was not impossible for people like them to succumb to ordinary death, but it was highly improbable nonetheless.

This meant that none of them were prepared for Signora’s death, as sudden as it was surprising. Being labelled diplomats of the Tsaritsa usually offered a blanket protection from foreign governments during their international missions; and yet Signora comes back from Inazuma as a pile of ash tucked neatly within a lacquer box, the particles still thrumming with residual electro energy. 

The will of an Archon, manifested.

They prepare a coffin for her, and a funeral service, as ordinary people do, and it all feels surreal. She cannot remember the last time all eleven - ten? nine? - harbingers had gathered in the room, much less to pay respects to anyone. They were meant to be untouchable; normal human rules of mortality and death didn’t apply to them. And yet.

Even the Crimson Witch of Flames was a mere mortal, in the end. Sandrone supposes it was only a matter of time. She gazes at the lightless black of the coffin, sitting at the far end of the frigid hall as the rest of her colleagues gather around a long table dressed in mourning black furs; and she cannot bring herself to feel even a single ounce of pity. Why mourn for something that was bound to happen sooner rather than later?

How utterly laughable.

Still, something feels off-kilter, sitting at a table with one less face in the throng. The Damselette is singing, some sort of requiem as she drapes herself over the coffin, a peaceful expression on her face as if she were singing its occupant to sleep. A soft smile graces her lips, the pale disc of her face illuminated in the cold light of the moon, like a marble statue of a grieving angel adorning the coffin; detached, immaterial, distant, the notes of her song dissipating like dew in the moonlight.

Her hair spills over her shoulder as she leans over the coffin, voice dropping to a murmur, and Sandrone can almost picture it, Columbina sitting by Signora’s lap; an obedient little dove tracking the movement of her fingers, the thrum of her throat, the sun slipping further down the sky and illuminating the tea room in a gilded shimmer. Signora's indulgent smile, Columbina’s fascination with something so mundane, so utterly meaningless. 

She watches Columbina now as she sings that blasted moon-song, a gentle and cajoling lullaby, as Signora slips into eternal sleep. 

In the wake of the funeral, the harbingers disperse to their usual posts, and the palace is frozen in its deathly silence. A raging blizzard rattles the windows, plunging the palace into murky grey shadows that shift like water. Sandrone finds herself wandering down its familiar hallways, having sent Pulonia back to the workshop. She feels strangely restless, gazing out at the blank white fog beyond the palace, feeling the numbing cold creep into her mechanisms. In the corner of her eyes, she can just about glimpse the sweep of rustling fabric, disappearing around a corner; the sound of heels clicking against the frosted tiles worming into her ear, but when she turns around the hallways are, of course, empty.

When she hears the opening notes to a familiar tune she almost dismisses it as yet another product of her imagination, some default of sentimentality causing her sensory systems to malfunction, but the song continues as she heads towards the drawing room.

The door is ajar, and as Sandrone approaches she hears the halting melody.

Du, du liegst.. mir im Herzen

du, du liegst mir im Sinn.

Du, du….

She pushes the door fully open. Columbina’s voice trails off as she turns to face Sandrone.

“There you are,” Sandrone says. “I thought I could hear your annoying voice all the way down the hallway.”

“Ah, I hope I wasn't disturbing anyone,” Columbina says, lifting her fingers from the piano. And then, with a small curve of her lips, “Is my voice really that annoying?”

“I told you not to sing during the day,” Sandrone grumbles. “We’re all on edge as it is. We don't need to throw in even more distrust between our colleagues.”

“Colleagues,” Columbina mouths the word. “Is that how you view the rest of us, Sandrone?”

“Well, I'm not wrong, am I?” Sandrone tamps down the flare of defensiveness in her voice. “I just want to keep things professional. I respect the other harbingers to varying degrees, but I recognise that we are all, supposedly serving the same Archon towards the same ends.”

“Is it the same? The Tsaritsa’s goals, and your own?”

“My goals?” Sandrone blinks. “Well, I – of course,” she snaps. “Why would I agree to work for her if we didn't have the same goals?”

“I agreed to work for her in exchange for shelter,” Columbina says. “Protection. I do not know what she wants from me. But I will give what I can to the best of my ability. That is the price I pay as a Harbinger, is it not?”

Her expression is so, so calm; a lake frozen solid. It grates on her, to see her so emotionless all the damn time, pasting that aimless empty doll-like smile on her stupid face. Sandrone swallows down the pit of roiling anger in her throat and paces across the room to sit on the chaise, on Columbina’s usual spot. “I cannot stand you,” she mutters. Columbina just looks at her. Or not. She faces Sandrone, as if waiting for something. 

Sandrone sighs. “What were you playing?” she asks, even though she already knows.

“Rosalyne said it was a love song,” Columbina murmurs. “She said her lover would sing this to her, and even though he was really bad at playing the piano he still learnt to play this melody while singing along, because he knew she loved the piano.”

“I’m surprised she remembered something like that,” Sandrone mutters.

“Only sometimes,” Columbina says. “She got these moments of clarity sometimes, when the flames subsided.”

“Du, du …. What was it… oh yes. Du, du machst mir viel Schmerzen, weißt nicht wie gut ich dir bin. Ja, ja, ja, ja, weißt nicht wie gut ich dir bin.”

Columbina’s fingers stall on the piano. 

“Well? What's the next verse?”

“Rosalyne never got around to teaching me the other verses,” Columbina says.

“Oh.” Sandrone shifts closer, sees the shift in Columbina’s expression like dark clouds enveloping the moon on a cloudy night.

“I don’t understand," Columbina says. “Her song is still here. Her quarters are untouched. Her chair remains. But she's never returning,”

She turns towards the windows, the swirling blizzard wrapping the world in a thick layer of white, stainless snow. “I wish I could've finished that song for her,” Columbina says. “I know it probably meant a lot to her. But I have no idea what it means.”

Her hands settle featherlight over the piano as she plucks out the same few notes again, and she shimmies in her seat, straightening up, just like how Signora used to. 

“Your voice,” Sandrone says, and Columbina swivels her head towards her. “It’s not…it’s not annoying. I like your singing,” she says. “Just not when you're singing directly outside my room when I'm otherwise preoccupied, but, well. What I'm trying to say is—”

Sandrone takes a deep breath, ignoring the stutter in her mechanical pulse. “I’m sure Rosalyne would've been proud of you,” she says quietly, the soft syllables of the name curling around her usually harsh tongue. Rosalyne. She’d never thought of the Fair Lady as just Rosalyne, before.

For a moment, she thinks she sees her pale, haughty face, the impression of it ghosting across the panes of the glass window, before scattering away into the white haze of the blizzard.

“Thank you, Sandrone,” Columbina says, and she’s smiling again, fingers skirting over the chords of Rosalyne’s unfinished love song, playing the same verse over and over again in a broken loop, a machine trying to understand itself even as it devolves into crude repetition, repetition without meaning, meaning without substance. Yes, yes, yes, yes you don't know how good I am for you.

Life marches on. Tea parties come and go, and Sandrone tries not to be hyper aware of the empty seat, the extra teacup she always takes out habitually before realising. 

Columbina languishes on her chaise, or sometimes on top of the piano, humming fragments of a song she doesn't know, stringing notes together in a gradually unravelling pattern. She hasn't played the piano since; just sits there, quietly singing to herself, like the rest of the world had melted away. Arlecchino is as cordial as ever, and steers their conversations when Sandrone finds herself at a loss. She finds herself missing the music of the piano sometimes, when the conversation lulls. 

It's how it's always been, hasn’t it? Sandrone has never seen the point of forming connections with others, in all the centuries she’s lived. Surely she would not start now. People come and go. Work continues, life continues, news of Teyvat making its rounds throughout the Palace; the Tsaritsa sits cold and distant while her other colleagues scurry around with agendas of their own. 

Sandrone throws herself into her research, spending days on end locked within her workshop. Occasionally, she retires to her personal quarters, whether it’s to look for further research in her documents or simply to bask in the blessed silence of solitude. It’s just her luck that Columbina manages to track her down anyway.  

The first time this happens, she tamps down the surge of irritation, almost instinctive at this point, and marches to the door, where the faint melody is growing steadily louder. 

She opens the door with a huff. “You again?”

“You weren't in your workshop,” Columbina says plaintively, white robes rippling around her as she sits crossed legged against the wall next to the door-frame. “I was looking for you.”

Sandrone narrows her eyes. “Why were you looking for me?”

“I wanted company,” she answers, standing up – or, Sandrone supposes, floating up; the laws of gravity have always made an exception for Columbina. 

“I don't see why that concerns me,” Sandrone says.

“It’s just,” Columbina says. “There's no moonlight tonight.”

Sandrone raises an eyebrow. “And?”

Columbina smiles genially and switches the topic in an entirely graceless manner. “What were you doing? I hope I've not disturbed you.”

“Too late for that now, isn't it? And no, I wasn't doing anything important, just organising some of my old harddrives, so no need to get all put out over nothing.” Sandrone crosses her arms. “Well?”

“Could I stay with you tonight?”

“I—” Sandrone blinks. “What? Why?”

“I like your company,” she says.

Sandrone looks at Columbina, who is gazing expectantly at her. “I cannot believe this,” she says out loud. Then, “come on in, then, you buffoon.”

Sandrone settles herself back at her desk as Columbina floats over to Sandrone’s bed; the covers are made and have been untouched for the last week or so. Columbina brings her knees to her chests as she settles onto Sandrone’s neat, crisply made bed. “Do you not sleep often?"

“No need to,” Sandrone says curtly. “I prefer to spend my time doing more important things.” She pushes a stack of old manuals out of her way and gestures for Pulonia to return them to the shelves. “I’m just gonna sort the rest of my stuff out,” she says over her shoulder as Pulonia lumbers across the room, Columbina’s fascination rolling off her in waves. Sandrone rolls her eyes. “Conduct yourself as you see fit. Just don't touch any of my things.”

Columbina just hums in acquiescence. 

Sandrone shakes her head and grabs the first file in the stack that Pulonia brings over. By the time she remembers to check on Columbina, who has been surprisingly quiet all night, she discovers why.

Columbina is fast asleep on top of Sandrone’s bed, her robes pooling around her like a halo of moonlight. Her hair spills across the pillows and she murmurs, soft whistling sounds like wind in a willow tree as she sleeps, chest rising and falling slowly. 

“Pulonia,” Sandrone says, “fetch us some tea and snacks, can you?”

She sits herself onto the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under her weight. Columbina shifts as she stirs; her breathing quickening and evening out. Her perpetually closed eyes give her the impression of a sleepwalker as she sits up, eyes still shut, and reaches for Sandrone. “Oh. Sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep. Your bed was very comfortable.”

“You know, you've got this habit of apologising to me for things that you nonetheless keep doing,” Sandrone says. “Pulonia is getting us some tea. I’m taking a break from my work.”

“Oh, that would be lovely,” Columbina murmurs. “What time is it?”

“Archons know,” Sandrone says. Her room boasts only one tiny window that is permanently encrusted in grime that Sandrone has never felt bothered enough to clean, and so any light that made its way into this corner of the palace was always dim and grey. Sandrone preferred the artificial yellow bulbs anyway.

“It's very nearly morning," Columbina says, head tilting to feel out some unseen frequency. “Did you stay up all night?”

“What do you think? You were hogging the bed.”

“Oh.” Her face falls. “I didn’t–”

“Like I needed to sleep anyway. I've had a very productive evening, thank you very much.” Sandrone flicks Columbina on the forehead. “At least you were quiet for once.”

Columbina follows the motion, brows knitting together. Then she sits up straight, face lighting up. “Does that mean I can come again?”

“You’ll come even if I say no,” Sandrone mutters. She clears her throat. “Pulonia!”

“I wouldn't if you didn't want me here,” Columbina says earnestly.

“If I genuinely did not want you here, you would know,” Sandrone says with a sniff. “Youre still on thin ice for following me to my personal quarters, but I tolerate you well enough. Now, stop with all the emotional vulnerability and let's have tea.”

Pulonia emerges with a tray balancing two teacups. “Be careful with that," Sandrone snaps. “They’re my nicest set of china.” Alongside the tea is a plate of madeleines, baked to a perfect buttery gold. Columbina perks up, reaching for one; she holds it carefully in her fingers as she takes a tentative bite.

“I baked them myself,” Sandrone says, “with some help from Arlecchino, who suggested some adjustments for the recipe. You can't get good quality Fontainian pastries here in Snezhnaya; if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. I spent –”

She looks down at the tray, where there had been four madeleines. Now there was one left.

 “Oh, for Archons’ sake,” she says. “Columbina.”

“They were really good," she says. Her cheeks are full. “Sorry,” she adds. 

“You’re not sorry,” Sandrone sighs. “Are you.”

Columbina beams.

“Three, two, one, here I come!” 

Tartaglia uncovers his eyes, doing a dramatic lookaround of the room. A muffled giggle comes from behind the curtains.

“Where are you,” Tartagila trills, as he makes a show of sweeping the perimeter of the room, peering behind columns and chairs.

“I suppose this is a part of their training as operatives of the House of the Hearth?” Sandrone says with a raised eyebrow as she sips delicately from her teacup. Arlecchino folds her hands over her lap and offers her a demure smile. “Stealth is an attribute we drill into the children from an early age.” She picks up her teacup, swirling the fragrant Earl Grey within. “Lynette always used to win. Why, one time, she’d been so determined to stay hidden we had to lure her out with the promise of extra dessert.”

There is something Sandrone would almost call fondness lurking in the depths of Arlecchino's eyes, if she didn't know better. Maybe she doesn't. Arlecchino’s fingers curl around her teacup as she watches Tartaglia scramble around the curtains chasing after two giggling children who dart out of his reach, that strange, unknowable fire in her eyes mellowing to a gentler flame.

Columbina, who is currently draped over the piano, turns her head to follow the chaos that is a fully grown man diving behind a sofa. The ensuing squeals and Tartaglia’s triumphant shout must mean that he succeeded in his objective.

“Speaking of the twins, I believe you’ve heard the news?”

“The next steps of the Tsaritsa,” Sandrone says. “I’ve heard talk.” As a reclusive researcher, gossip trickles down to her at a slower pace than it would for the more public-facing members of their cohort, but her men make an effort to stay informed. Knowledge is power in the Winter Palace. Sandrone cannot afford to drift in the clouds. 

“I myself am leaving for Fontaine soon,” Arlecchino says. “The twins and Freminet, will, of course, play a pivotal role. How fast the world changes, does it not?” She takes a sip of her tea. “The Tsaritsa’s pieces falling into place.”

“And you? What of your agenda?”

Arlecchino does not smile with her lips, but her eyes gleam like the curved edge of a scythe. “I will set out to do what I have always sworn to do. Protect my own.”

But at what cost, Sandrone wonders, watching the Knave’s gaze roving over the children, her children, her House, her own. And at the end of the day this is what separates them; there are things Arlecchino would kill for, would die for, but Sandrone?

Her false heart beats, the hollow sound of metal ringing inside her chest. She never took Arlecchino to be the self-sacrificing type. Like how she had never understood Alain, Renee, these people who would sacrifice themselves for the sake of the world. Who had something they thought worthy or meaningful enough they would stake their existence on.

What is your deepest desire?

A knock comes from the door. Sandrone, who has been so engrossed in her work she isn't even sure when the last time she stood up was, grits her teeth in irritation. “Tell Columbina to fuck off,” she tells Pulonia.

Pulonia obediently goes up to the door and opens it, peering down at the Damselette, who perks up. “Sandrone!” She ducks underneath Pulonia's outstretched arm and floats into the room, gown trailing behind her. 

“I said tell her to leave, not invite her in,” Sandrone grumbles. “Don’t test my patience, Damselette, not now.”

“It’s been a week since anyone in the Palace has seen you,” Columbina says.

“So? I don't care what you cretins think about me.”

“Have you been working all this time?"

Something about the soft concern in her voice makes Sandrone snap. “What does it look like, Columbina? I've been here for days trying to get any semblance of progress in this stupid research project so I can report back to the Tsaritsa with something.” With effort, Sandrone smooths her expression back into one of general distaste. “Now if you don't have anything useful to contribute, I kindly request that you vacate the premises and go… languish beneath a moonlit window or whatever.”

“I know,” Columbina says. “You always isolate yourself when you're hyperfocused on one thing.”

“I didn't ask,” Sandrone spits. “Was I not clear about the getting out part? Shall Pulonia escort you?”

Instead, Columbina reaches behind her back and pulls out, in her other hand, a mug of steaming…coffee?

“For you,” she says. “I heard from Pantalone that coffee gives people more energy.” 

“I'm a robot, Columbina, do you really think caffeine will affect me?”

Columbina pushes the mug in her hands. “Take it,” she says. “Take a break.”

“I – Archons, Columbina,” Sandrone says with a sigh, suddenly feeling very tired. “I didn't ask for this.” Not to be coddled, to be cared for, to be subject to pity and concern, least of all by Columbina.

“But here I am,” she says, placid. “Coffee, Sandrone. The way you like it. I asked Arlecchino for advice.” She settles on Sandrone's bed and pats the spot next to her. “Sit.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Sandrone mumbles out of habit, but settles down next to Columbina anyway. She smells like rain and evening wind, her body emanating a strange, smooth sort of coolness like a rain-wet stone, rather than the usual heat of human bodies. It's oddly refreshing. Sandrone takes a sip of the coffee, earthy and rich just how she likes it, and tries not to look too pleased. Columbina seems to sense it anyhow, and smiles at her. “Feeling better?”

“Well, I’ve still made zero progress on my project since… I don't know, Tuesday?”

Columbina sinks back onto the mattress, limbs sprawling like a snow angel. "I'm sure you'll figure something out, but you won't do it by pushing yourself and cooping up in here alone.”

“I don't need your advice,” Sandrone snips. “Besides, you're a social recluse too. Surely you understand the need to distance yourself from the rest of these unhinged fools we call our colleagues. I couldn't afford any distractions.”

“All the same,” Columbina says. “I didn't know if you were alright or not. I was worried.”

“No reason to be,” Sandrone says airily. “The palace is under the Tsaritsa’s protection. Nothing can truly go wrong in her domain.”. 

Columbina shrugs. “Well, maybe I just missed you, then.”

She snorts. “Come here for my riveting personality, did you?”

Columbina sits up and bumps her shoulder against Sandrone’s. “I just like being around you,” she says. “Even if you're mean to me.”

“You deserve it,” Sandrone says imperiously, and Columbina actually laughs at that, flopping back down onto the bed with a featherlight sigh. Her hair spills over the sheets like a stroke of an inkbrush gone awry.

Sandrone looks down at her own ink-stained hands as Columbina starts humming under her breath, the notes breaking the sterile silence.

“That song of yours,” Sandrone says suddenly. “They have lyrics, right?”

Columbina, who is swinging her legs to the gentle, lulling rhythm, tilts her head upwards. “Yes. I don’t know what they mean, though.”

“How does it go?”

Columbina’s lips part a little. “Oh, um… it goes like—

Dormi cara columbula

O columbula mea

Splendeat fenestra

Adsint somnia flora

O cara filia lunae

Neve plumam pulvis foedet tuam

Nec iam complexum alma

Capias bona somnias a luna.”

Sandrone studies the shape of her mouth curving around unfamiliar syllables of a long-lost tongue, the easy familiarity these syllables fall out of her lips and weave themselves into a well-worn melody. “Do you miss it? The moon.”

She shrugs. “I don't know what I miss. I don’t remember what it was like to be there. But there are days when I’m so sure that it is the only place where I will truly belong.”

“And what about the other days?”

“I suppose I belong here, with the Harbingers,” Columbina says. “I’m not sure, really.”

Sandrone scoffs. “Humans have such a strange attachment to the idea of belonging to a specific place. It's bullshit. I don't belong to anyone or anywhere other than myself. This,” she says, waving an arm at her research, at her quarters, “is simply a means to an end. As long as I can do what I love, I honestly could not care less where I was or who I’m with.”

“That must get pretty lonely,” Columbina says.

I don't get lonely, Sandrone wants to say, but something in Columbina’s expression makes her pause. From where she is lying down on the bed, her hand is lying, palm facing upwards, next to Sandrone’s own. She shifts her hand closer until the sides of their pink fingers are grazing each other. Columbina is cool to the touch, wrapped, almost, in a layer of rippling Kuuvahki that Sandrone’s sensors pick up.

“I suppose,” is what she says, watching Columbina’s breathing even out, the melody still echoing in her mind, over and over again, the repetitive drone of it more like the buzzing of rain against a window; background noise.

The tea parties get smaller. It’s just the three of them now, plus a fourth, empty chair, sitting around a table, sipping tea and exchanging rumours. Once Arlecchino departs, only the pair of them remain. Columbina savours every pastry Sandrone makes, holds the teacup in her hands as if it were something of utmost importance. She hums quietly to herself when she hangs around Sandrone’s workshop, outside Sandrone’s room. She knocks on Sandrone’s door but enters if it’s unlocked. She sleeps on Sandrone’s bed, snug in her sheets, hand grasping Sandrone’s and clutching tightly at her fingers. Sandrone works interchangeably in her workshop and in her own quarters, and Columbina’s presence at this point is something she expects, eerily accurate in her timing to show up to the right location at the right time.

It's gotten to a point that Sandrone always prepares extra snacks when having tea in her quarters in anticipation of the knock on her door.

“You’ve been more detached recently,” Sandrone says, sipping her tea. Columbina shovels a spoonful of tiramisu into her mouth, nodding in acknowledgment.

“The Tsaritsa has kept me busy,” she says quietly. 

“That explains why you look like a drained battery,” Sandrone says. 

“I feel so weak,” Columbina says. “Like I could be dragged off to the moon at any time.”

“Have you had time to rest?”

“Not properly.”

“Go to sleep then, idiot, finish your tiramisu quickly. I've got files to organise anyway.”

“I don't need sleep,” Columbina says, almost petulantly. “You know that.”

“I don't care,” Sandrone says, flicking her on the forehead. “Lie down, you look like a stiff breeze could scatter you.”

“Only if you lie down with me too,” Columbina says stubbornly. “You’ve been working so much recently.”

“Oh, for Archon’s—” 

Columbina wraps a cool hand around her wrist. “Rest, Sandrone.”

Sandrone huffs, but she lets herself be dragged to the bed. She climbs stiffly onto the covers as Columbina falls softly into the pillows with a drawn-out sigh.

She drops her head down onto her side of the bed with a heavy plop. “Happy?”

Columbina smiles, beatific. “Yes.”

It gets to a point when she doesn't even have the energy to banter with Sandrone, like a faded mural clinging on to material existence with a string. So Sandrone probes her with prickly barbs and cups of steaming tea and desserts, like a child grasping at a rapidly ascending balloon, and it should feel ridiculous and pathetic but then Columbina smiles, gentle and genuine and real, and despite it all Sandrone manages to fool herself into thinking it’s worth the effort. 

“Do you like being a harbinger, Sandrone?”

“What has that got to do with anything? It gives me access to resources I need. Anything I do is in return for this.” A space to research to innovate. To exist as Marionette, as Sandrone, as a harbinger; not a defunct out-of-date piece of machinery. 

Columbina sighs as she blows at her tea. “I guess. It's just…”

“It wasn't what I thought it would be.”

Sandrone rolls her eyes. “And what did you think it was gonna be? Sunshine and rainbows?”

“I came here for shelter. I didn't expect to have to give up so much of myself.” Columbina puts down her teacup. “It’ll be over soon, I suppose. Once I’ve done my duty, I will have no reason to stay anymore.”

“You think you can leave?” Sandrone scoffs. “We’re Fatui. The Tsaritsa’s guard.”

“Sandrone,” she says in a small voice. “I’m tired.”

“Then get some rest,” Sandrone says, arching an eyebrow. “You monopolise my room often enough.”

She smiles, but just barely. The sight of that sorry excuse of a half-smile irks Sandrone more than she thought it would, but she turns away all the same.

Columbina becomes even more distant after that, a mere echo drifting along the occasional hallway. As if the tether holding her here has begun to shorten.

Arlecchino, who has recently returned from Fontaine and is currently staying a couple of days at the palace to sort out the report for the Tsaritsa, takes a sip of her black tea. They’re exchanging news about the world for updates in Snezhnaya. Columbina isn’t here today. Sandrone hasn’t seen her in a while, long enough that despite herself, she’s beginning to worry.

She doesn’t say as much to Arlecchino, of course, but Arlecchino, being Arlecchino, sees through her facade anyway.

“No need to fret, dear Marionette,” she says smoothly. “The Damselette is simply carrying out her duty to the Tsaritsa. After all, she is a Harbinger, first and foremost.”

“Right, of course,” Sandrone says. “Not that the rest of us have any idea what her duty pertains to.” She laughs, feeling equal parts mad and desperate. “What, does she just sing for the Tsaritsa all day like some sort of overgrown canary?”

“Oh, Marionette,” Arlecchino says, and there is something almost pitying in her usually flat tone. “We both know that you possess both the capacity for deductive reasoning and enough pertinent information to make a very educated guess.” She gazes out the frosted glass of the window, the faint imprint of the moon gleaming like a pale shadow in the deepening dusk. “It won't be long now.”

Sandrone grits her teeth. “Not long until what?”

The Knave does not reply. She sets down her cup, now empty, and holds her hand up to the light of the window, fingers outstretched like a web across the glass. Black, spindly fingers like the legs of a spider. Her hand closes around nothing, and she stares down at her loose fist for another second before speaking again. “Those who do not belong to this world always pay a steep toll for existing within it. Even more so when they tamper with the rules.”

She cuts a glance across at Sandrone, then, the red cross of her strange eyes flaring. “She cannot outrun her origins,” the Knave says. “Just as none of us here have been able to live beyond ours.”

Sandrone starts awake when the pulse of Kuuvakhi energy ripples across the Palace like a crashing wave; her modules and faculties kickstart groggily as the eddies of the pulse echo and tingle against her sensors. A familiar energy signature. She follows it down the winding corridors to the old greenhouse, long abandoned, now more a grimy glass prison for mildew and mould than anything. 

Columbina sits in the centre under the glass atrium, moonlight falling on to her body with the graceful fluidity of mottled brushstrokes. She’s singing, her outstretched hand cradling small flowers which have sprouted by her feet, petals glowing Kuuvahki blue.

“What are you doing here?” Sandrone says, before she notices the tremble in Columbina’s limbs, the way her pale skin seems to soak up the glow of the moon, leaving the atrium dim even in the light of a full moon.

“A full moon,” Columbina says, her voice the faint rustle of feathers. She looks like a downed bird, her wispy gown like broken wings draped across her legs. 

“That’s not an explanation.”

She manages a weak smile. “Sandrone.” She has always said her name with such care. “I will miss our time together dearly.”

Sandrone shakes her head, irritated. “What are you talking about?”

“I'm tired of all of this.” She lifts her head up, her closed eyes fixed directly ahead. “I don't know why I'm still here.”

“Stop speaking in circles, Columbina,” she says sharply. “Get to the point.”

“The Tsaritsa,” Columbina says. “What more could she want from me?” Her face turns skyward. “I want to go home, Sandrone.”

“Home? You mean to the moon?” Sandrone laughs disbelievingly. “What’s waiting for you up there?”

“I never asked for this,” Columbina murmurs, almost trancelike. “I never asked to be taken here, to become a harbinger.”

“Tough luck,” Sandrone snaps, moving across the room in purposeful strides. She pulls at Columbina. “Come on. Up you go.”

“Sandrone, please,” she says. “The moon. I can hear it calling me. I have to go.”

“Why are you telling me this? I know you've never been the most conscientious but this is — you can't leave.” Sandrone says, swallowing the edge of desperation in her voice. “You can’t.”

“There is no reason to stay,” Columbina says, so matter-of-fact, like Sandrone was the one being unreasonable. “I have served my purpose at a great cost.”

“Oh, it must be so difficult for you, mighty Damselette, to sit around doing absolutely shit all the whole day. I can't imagine what that must feel like, to have the respect of a high rank while doing absolutely nothing to deserve it.”

The words taste bitter on her tongue, but she can't take them back now. This is what she does; hurt when someone hurts her. Push someone away when they start to leave. Delude herself into thinking that she is the one who breaks ties and not the one who is left behind. A discarded toy with discarded memories.

Columbina’s expression is unfazed, but her hand trembles as it reaches for Sandrone, settling feather-light on her wrist. “Wouldn’t you leave if given the chance?”

Sandrone yanks her arm away. “Where would I go, Columbina? This is all I have.” Her voice cracks. “You—”

The moon watches them like a baleful eye. Sandrone looks away. “There is nothing back there for you,” she says. 

“There is nothing here for me either,” she says. “I want to leave, Sandrone. I have wanted to leave for a long time.”

“You think you can just up and leave?” Sandrone laughs. “We are Fatui. We are given influence, power, resources, manpower, at the cost of obeying the Tsaritsa. Unlike you, we earn that power not by lounging around singing but by carrying out her orders. I am a very busy woman, Columbina. I have duties to fulfil. If you are one of us, you'll understand that.” 

Columbina doesn't answer. Shrouded in the pale moonlight, Sandrone forgets for a moment that she is flesh and not simply light; it is the first time in a very long while that she remembers Columbina is alien. Too far to reach. A distant reflection of a moon that scatters as soon as it is touched. She stalks out, mechanical heart hammering against her chest. Hands grasping at nothing.

Even as she hears the familiar, featherlight footsteps approaching, she doesn’t look up from her work. “Get out.”

Columbina hovers by the ajar door of her workshop. “I wanted to say goodbye.”

Sandrone slams her wrench down onto the worktable. “This again?”

“You told me once we give our all to the Tsaritsa as Harbingers,” Columbina says. “I have already done so. What other purpose would drive me to stay here?”

A million words crowd onto Sandrone’s tongue. Most absurdly is the thought that she never did manage to figure out Columbina’s favorite tea. Likely, she never will. She bites down on her tongue; swallows the words like the bitter dregs in an empty teacup. 

Columbina is still by the door, white robes fluttering around her like passing moonlight, and suddenly Sandrone feels very tired. 

“Leave if you want,” she spits, with all the venom she can muster. “See if I care. We’ll see how you fare without the Tsaritsa’s protection.” 

“For what it's worth, Sandrone,” Columbina says. “I'm going to miss your tea parties.”

Sandrone whirls around, incandescent. “Don’t you dare,” she snarls, and Columbina backs away just as she slams the door shut in her face so hard the window-panes rattle in their frames. “Don’t you fucking dare,” she whispers, to Columbina, to herself. 

She’s used to goodbyes. Of course she is. Why would this one be any different?

A memory, a file, of a quiet night spent sitting next to a grave, still wet with the residue of rain. She is alone. The moon keeps her company.

She did not realise how quiet it could get without the soft sounds of breathing from a living human. Now there is only the faint whir of her machinery. She looks out into the empty night.

It feels as if the only companion I have left in this world is the moon.

The tearoom feels emptier than usual. Arlecchino is the only other person there; she sits next to Sandrone, eyes tracking the movement of a spider in the upper left corner as it weaves its web with utmost precision. 

“The Damselette is missing,” Arlecchino says. Her eyes are still focused on the spider.

Sandrone peers down at her murky reflection in the teacup. It frowns back at her, disdain curling her lip. “Did they try the courtyards?”

“She’s defected, Marionette.” Her tone is sharp, almost accusing as she turns her lightless eyes onto Sandrone. “She’s gone.”

Her fingers slip. The teacup in her hand shatters in an explosion of noise and scalding hot water. Sandrone blinks. Her skirts are soaked and chips of ceramic lie glinting on the table, on the floor, in her hands. Perfectly good tea, wasted. She had gone to all the effort of procuring Sumerian spice tea for Columbina to try, and now it was all over her skirts.

Columbina.

“Sandrone?” Arlecchino’s eyes bore into her, two scarlet crosses burning into her skin. “Did you hear what I just said?”

“So she’s really left,” Sandrone says, and for the briefest movement feels the ridiculous urge to laugh. She takes a deep breath. Air in, air out. Her throat feels clammy. “Good fucking riddance.”

Arlecchino narrows her eyes and brings out a thin document. She pins the papers onto the table with a sharp fingernail. “See this, Sandrone? The Tsaritsa issued a warrant for her this morning. Rumours say she’s fled to Nod-Krai.”

“Coward,” Sandrone hisses. “I knew she wasn’t like the rest of us.” 

She knew, and she still let her into her workshop, into her tea parties, into her room; from one outsider to another. She let her trample all over her space with the assumption that she would stay, of course she would; took her presence for granted and like a coward she didn't think to care until it was too late. 

Sandrone stares at the broken shards of the teacup, seething, the bitter taste of hatred and regret mingling like motor oil at the back of her tongue. “And now that she’s gone and made a mess of things, we’ve got to clean up after her. Splendid.”

Arlecchino’s silence weighs heavy in the room. They are the only two left. She stands when Sandrone makes no move to clean up the spilled tea, brushing off her immaculate coat-lapels. “Let’s get going, shall we?”

The Palestar Edict, that's what they’re calling it; the Tsaritsa’s official orders that send Sandrone packing and relocating to an experimental bureau in Nod-Krai, where she would be stationed for the time being as her forces combed the area for their missing harbinger. At least they had state-of-the-art equipment and lab facilities. Small consolations, Sandrone thinks to herself, as she sets up her workspace in her newly-minted laboratory, Pulonia and a couple of her subordinates lifting her stacks of books and data files into the lab. 

She sits down at the workbench, thumbing through the schematics and diagrams as well as some other documents she forgot to sort out. She picks out a half crumpled paper in which Arlecchino had written down a recipe. A file of La Signora singing, and Columbina singing along with the voice of a tone-deaf toddler. A few scattered white feathers, luminous in the dark, eerie bowels of the bureau, that had somehow gotten caught in the barrage of items. 

No lights anywhere, just the dull blue glow that emanates from everything. Her room and her workshop had no windows whatsoever. The whirring of machinery almost seems too loud in the still, unmoving silence, with no window to offer even the slightest reprieve of gossip.

Sandrone sits down at a table, and clicks open her toolbox. She almost asks for the screwdriver before remembering she has to take it on her own.

Pulonia clicks and whirs at her. She startles from her reverie. “I'm fine, Pulonia. I'm fine.” She pushes the images out of her head. “Let’s get to work, shall we?”

Somewhere outside her windowless box of a workshop the moon rises, the lovely white gaze of its glow falling upon the world, but she won’t get to see it tonight. Nor ever, if she stays in here, metal wall upon metal wall upon metal wall. 

The whirr and hum of the machinery fade away, leaving her in mind-numbing silence, broken by the muffled tick-tick-tick of her own systems, echoing in her hollow limbs. 

It's strange. She's always preferred working in artificial light anyway, but for some reason she finds herself missing the soft, silver glow of moonlight; the caress of a lover, featherlight. 

It's so quiet here.