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Starconches were small enough to hold between two fingers. They were smooth little things, barely the size of the palm of a hand, and though their blue bands seemed to match the hue of the ocean waves as light and shadow played across their surfaces, the small, silver star embedded at the centre of every spiral of every starconch made them deceptively easy to find, especially in the low tide.
Childe hummed absent-mindedly to himself as he turned the shell in his fingers, inspecting its familiar, beveled edges like there was any new information to glean from them. As though careful examination could reveal some deeper truth about life, human existence, or the universe at large.
Childe wasn’t selfish though—he’d settle for something much less grandiose than the very reason of being. He had simpler questions. Questions that didn’t challenge any ideologies or upset any dogmas. Questions like: did she fight any good battles lately? Was she staying safe? Has she eaten dinner yet? Was she keeping cool in the hot weather? Where did she plan to go next? Who did she help today? Did she make any new friends? Did she get his last letter? Would she write one back? Was she thinking about him too?
Childe shook his head.
No, that last one was definitely selfish.
And as for all the ones before that…well.
It was only natural, Childe reasoned, to be worried about a friend. A comrade, even. Wasn’t it? Besides, she was the one who gave him this starconch, so it could only stand to reason, that if it could even answer questions at all, it’d be ones about its finder. Right?
Childe frowned.
Definitely not right, but Childe was far from being in the mood to mull over the statistical improbabilities about his conjecture. In fact, he had been in the mood for precious little these days. He didn’t need a second opinion to recognise that he had been rather difficult to work with lately. His men, who typically looked to him with something that almost resembled reverence, now eyed him warily, eyebrows drawn in something like concern or fear or both.
Normally, a spar would have suited him nicely—nothing like a good fight to quell the nerves and squash any frustrations. But Childe had gone through and sparred with every able-bodied fighter of this regiment, recklessly wandered into every enemy camp in his periphery, and taunted every last monster he could find, all to no avail. Every fight had too many too’s: too easy, too fast, too predictable, too boring. He longed for an actually interesting fight, a—to put it quite plainly—good fight.
Was anyone even trying anymore? Surely, someone other than her could entertain him, if even for just a moment?
Admittedly, there was nothing that could hold a candle to the intensity, the rush, the sheer thrill of a spar with her, but it wasn’t as if Childe was asking for the impossible here. He wasn’t asking for a fight that excited him, that made his pulse race, that reminded him of her uniquely offensive riposte; he simply wanted a fight that didn’t leave him feeling so…unsatisfied? Unfulfilled? Unchallenged? As though whether a fight happened or not was more a matter of semantics than it was of recollection.
As a result, Childe found himself perpetually left in this annoying slump. Every night, he toyed aimlessly with a pretty seashell, eyes glancing periodically out to the ocean’s horizon, as though if he looked enough times, something—or someone—might appear.
Brooding. That was the word he had been hearing on people’s lips these days, tucked away in shaded corners and tight spaces where they didn’t think he was listening. Brooding, moping, sulking.
The smile that itched at his lips was almost sardonic. These new recruits were certainly molding a very strange image of him in their minds.
No, Childe was not sulking. He wasn’t the kind to mope, and he certainly has never in his life tried to brood.
He was just…being introspective. He was meditating. He was…engaging in self-reflection?
None of these sounded right either, but at least it didn’t make him sound like a wet dog. Of which he also was not. Wet, or a dog.
Another sigh escaped his lips, deeply audible and not at all comforting. And also, Childe wanted to add, not broody.
His gaze shifted from the little shell in his fingers back to the horizon, where there was really very little to look at. The ocean stretched out in front of him, vast and inky in the night. Moonlight reflected off of its glassy stillness, but it brightened very little: not the sky, not the water, and especially not Childe’s mood.
With so little on the horizon to focus on, he couldn’t help but let his mind wander. To what felt like brighter, simpler times. To the unique sound of rapid clashes between a weapon of iron and a weapon of water.
To the pretty sparkle in golden eyes peeking up at him while he wrapped his red scarf around her.
To the familiar taste of his seafood stew, made memorable only by the delighted surprise of his dinner companion.
To the now comforting smell of windwheel asters, clean wind, and something floral he couldn’t quite name.
To the cold touch of small, dainty fingers as they pressed another patch of clean gauze to his torso.
To back when he first got this starconch, presented to him on a warm summer's night, not unlike tonight. He had watched as she picked them up—two starconches curled in opposite directions, yet with matching bands of blue. She had rinsed them in the tide, cleaned them of any sand, and then she simply stared at them, nestled in her hands, like there was something particularly special about these two.
He said something then, though he couldn’t recall what. He wasn’t sure she was even listening either, because she didn’t respond. Instead, she had motioned for his hand, one that he hated to admit he offered up extremely readily, and she had dropped one of them in his waiting palm.
“Here,” she had said.
He had laughed, he remembered. Said something dismissively, teased her, asked her if this was meant to be payment for the dinner he had treated her and her pixie companion to earlier that night. She had ducked her head, hid her expression from him, and then shrugged. She had shrugged before looking up at him with a smile and an emotion in her eyes that he couldn’t place.
“I just think it suits you.”
Childe frowned, squinting further into the distance. This still counted as meditation, right?
How much longer did he have to wait before he could see her? Before he could hear her, or smell her, or talk to her? Childe was never inherently a patient man, and the forced wait clawed at his insides, drew scribbles on his mind until he could think of little else.
He took it all back—he didn’t want an answer to any of those inane questions from earlier. What he really wanted to know, what he really wanted an answer to, was this: when would they meet again?
Slowly, arguably foolishly, Childe lifted the shell to his ear, like it had the answers, like it knew, like there was more magic in the little blue conch than there actually was.
He waited and waited and waited, but all he could hear was the continued crashing of waves against rock, the rustling of long grass, the low howl of clifftop winds.
Of course. Obviously.
Obviously.
Childe didn’t know why he sighed—didn’t know when his breath became capable of holding disappointment like that.
He lowered the shell from his ears, the silent, innocent shell, and held it in his palm. This was by no means the fault of the starconch, he reasoned. It simply meant that starconches didn’t hold the answers to life, to human existence, to the universe. Starconches didn’t have the answers to the very reason of being or answers about their finders, and they certainly couldn’t perform miracles when asked to, even if the asking was bordering on begging.
But starconches could still be appreciated, and they could still be pretty.
Starconches—especially this starconch—could still be his favourite little trinket, tucked away in his pocket everywhere he went, there for him to hold onto, to run his fingers along its smooth groves, over its glittering star, and for him to imagine that he might have the chance one day to hold on to something else.
For now though, Childe pocketed the shell again, still toying with it in his fingers as he did so.
And as he turned away from the horizon, finally giving in to the tired ache of his limbs, he could only hope that somewhere out there, on the glimmering beaches of Fontaine, or the rocky cliffs of Mondstat, or perhaps even the sandy shoals of Liyue, where there were starconches aplenty, that there was a traveller, looking out at the ocean, matching blue trinket in her hand, hopefully blonde and hopefully golden-eyed, missing him too.