Chapter Text
i.
People say the more years you see, the more you understand the world you live in. After living for more than three decades, Ningguang should have understood how the world works—how the choices she made years ago played a part in the routine she built; that chances and luck were something the gods controlled, not mere mortals.
Ningguang often found herself imagining. A bunch of what-ifs that never got her anywhere. Empty fantasies that had the odds failing. It was hypothetical. Chimerical. Romantic.
Nothing in Teyvat ever ends romantic. It was the stuff you find in children's fairytales, and Archons know how Ningguang is far too ancient to believe the sort.
Yet, on a windy, full-moon, smoking her pipe, the Tianquan ponders.
For what? To what end would her discernment—or perhaps, lack thereof (she does not know)—displease her until the crescents of her nails bled into her palm, her shoulders quake, her lips quiver, her lungs voraciously craving for poison?
Until what end should she keep repeating this vicious cycle of nuisances, a never-ending bane?
She could feel it now. She felt it months ago. (Or was it years ago?)
It crawled through every crevice, tensing her joints, numbing her already addled mind, constricting her chest, caging her slow, pulsing heart.
Her secretaries caught on quickly (when have they ever not?), fashioning all sorts of tea, incense, oils—anything that could calm their lady so. Ningguang never dared to reject their efforts. She knew they would not work. She knew her affliction was not physical. It was something deeper, darker, and unnamed. Admitting to it was a weakness, a liability, a curse.
It ached. Terribly. It gnawed at her. It bit. It ripped. She wasn't sure if it could fester into something much more unmanageable. Something that she could not control. It could be months, weeks, or days from now that the whole of Liyue Harbour would taste the shortcomings of their infamous Tianquan.
Ningguang could imagine how her secretaries would view her: their golden lady on her golden throne smoking her golden pipe to keep her nightmares at bay.
Or, perhaps, their lady was already mad. A shackled monster waiting for a key to let it loose. She could imagine the tales from that.
If her secretaries were scared, hesitant, or intimidated, they did not show it. They kept to her side. Always.
Ningguang should have been grateful. Appreciative of their companionship throughout her battles, her maddening outbursts, her sudden tears. But she could not. Why can she not feel grateful? Why could she just abandon their efforts as though they meant nothing to her? They do, they do, yet—why?
It is as if peace—or any semblance of it—refuses to meet her, to hug her close, to whisper her words that would pull the burden of serving her nation off her heavy shoulders.
Sometimes, she would try to sleep. Trying was fickle. Her secretaries had admitted to her once that they had offered blessings to the Adepti to aid her in slumber.
(To think of hearing those words during Ningguang’s many attempts at sleep made her want to weep. What could she say to them, when their prayers were for naught, when all she could do was close her eyes, steady her breathing, and let her mind race until the sun rose?)
If sleep did reach her, it was another punishment to endure. It was tranquil, albeit temporary. Her dreams were sweet enough to lull the ache within her bosom. Sweet enough to forget the strain of a country on her small shoulders.
But as the gods foretold, she was a child of Liyue. An honourable lady of the Qixing. A golden sovereign flying high atop her palace in the skies.
It was her promise under the night sky. The humid, summer night on the banks of Yaoguang Shoal. She had spent her youth lusting for a life—a career—in the Harbour. She wished under shooting stars, to Rex Lapis, to the Adepti, to any deities she thought might listen.
Ningguang doubted they had heard a young, green girl of ten wishing for greatness so impossible for her station. Nevertheless, as seasons passed, as the sun rose and fell, as decades ticked by, she was watching the same stars she had prayed to all those years ago—now, in the comfort of her office overlooking the mountains of Liyue.
It had not come to her instantaneously, the fact that the gods had answered her. It was like a vine growing across every ridge of her psyche, tainting it with a realisation that should have captivated her.
Yet, it did not.
Whenever she looked at the night sky, shooting stars or whatnot, a tiny, quiet part of Ningguang tugged gently at her. It was once a mild nudge to her disposition—a fleeting occurrence that would disappear as she worked her duties as the Tianquan, she figured.
Now? Now—Ningguang wanted to go back. She wants to feel the sand beneath her toes, the cold ocean waves lapping at her in the stifling, salty air. She wants to go back to the days when all she ever had to do was to sell, sleep, and dream.
It was no good.
She was the Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing. There would be no thoughts of slumber and pining, not when she was still in power. Not when she holds the entirety of Liyue in the valley of her palms. Not when Lantern Rite preparations were underway. Not when the people greet her, regard her, revere her, bow to her.
Greed does not help anybody. Its benefits are temporary; its pleasures are fleeting. It does nothing but drain the heart dry of blood, until all that is left is a husk echoing its last woe.
Ningguang does it anyway.