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Lumine can count the callouses on Skirk’s skin by memory.
She has memorised the scrape of her skin, the dip of her collarbones under the shadows of her bodice, the exact purple and fade of her Abyssal limbs, the curve of her fingers that can pierce like talons. She could tell you how much her middle finger juts above the rest, how sharp the gauntlets she keeps on her fingers are. She thinks of those hands often when she looks at her own, the cuts that groove her palms — a mirror of hard work, a testament to her own prowess on the battlefield.
Yet some days, it fills her with a deep, unshakeable sadness.
Some days, Lumine cannot sleep. She lays down on her mat as usual, the soft whines of Paimon’s snores a familiar sound, while vestiges of a little girl who had dreams bigger than the world torture her. It’s easy to forget that she too once had bones as fragile as a butterfly’s wing and a heart more so.
But Lumine does not forget.
She sits up in their makeshift tent, a glance at Paimon to check if she stirs (an unnecessary precaution, for her companion could sleep through a whole avalanche and remain none the wiser), and crawls out of the front flap of the tent. Their extinguished campfire greets her with silence, remnants of smoke permeating the air, and she walks towards the edge of the cliff.
This time, they’ve set up camp at the highest point of Glaze Peak, where the Qingxin flowers bloom with their heads in the clouds and the rest of Liyue sprawls far into the distance, as infinite as the sea. It had been a lofty feat to get up here, especially with a child essentially in tow, what with the several frights of rocks crumbling beneath her feet while scaling the cliff sides and the cold winds threatening to blow them both right off the side. But this is just how Lumine likes it.
They could meet in the dark depths of the Chasm, hidden in the swirling cave system that confuses even the best of explorers, but Lumine prefers the freeness of the Chasm’s peaks. Hardly anyone dares to challenge a climb this high, so oftentimes she is left alone in admiring the view from the top.
She is not always alone, however. Oftentimes, she has a visitor, and they sit side by side watching the false stars under a false sky, so bright and big and magnificent that they could almost touch them.
Today, she feels before she hears the presence of another, the soft crunch of grass underfoot. Lumine’s visitor wordlessly sits next to her, and she can see the pale periwinkle of her hair in the corner of her eye. She sees Skirk place her left hand on the ground between them. Lumine tries to make out the ruins of Qingxu Pool in the distance, unbothered by the silence that’s stretching out between them. One that’s become like a routine. But it’s not long before Skirk speaks, her voice firm.
“You’ve picked the Chasm for our last three encounters now. You’re getting easy to predict. Why?” Skirk does not wait for a response. “You should know that I’m not the only person who has eyes everywhere. Go wherever you wish. I will come to you wherever you are.”
“But the stars look beautiful from here, don’t they?” Lumine says, finding Skirk’s eyes. The deep wine of her eyes, though dull, never fails to enthrall her, and she thinks if she tries to stare at them long enough then she might just see the starlight reflected in them. They remind her of her old comrade, Skirk’s one and only disciple, Childe, a man whose eyes she has never seen shine. A lasting effect of the Abyss, it seems. A small sadness seeps into her chest.
Skirk remains silent beside her. Her lips part, and Lumine waits for her to speak again.
“In my homeland, the villagefolk would often tell us stories. Of life and death and stardust.” She pauses, and Lumine does not dare interrupt. “I was a curious child. I clung to their words like honey. I ruminated over their tales under the expanse of the sky, wondering if they were true. They used to say that when death came to claim us, we would return to the stars, returning to stardust as we once were, returning our dues to the universe. They used to say our ancestors and loved ones would live on and watch us from the heavens as stars. That as long as the stars in the sky still shone, we would never truly be alone.”
Lumine keeps the surprise out of her expression. This is the first time she’s heard Skirk talk about her past of her own volition — without Lumine as an expected guest in her memories.
Her fingers start to trace the back of Skirk’s fingers between them. Her hands are cold, as always, a result of the Abyssal phantasms her original limbs, damaged beyond repair, had been replaced with. She starts from the pointed gauntlet of Skirk’s middle finger, mapping out the bump of her hand she knows all too well, and slowly makes her way up the glittering amethyst of her arm. “Do you still believe in that?”
“Those tales were a hope for me. Nothing more. During the first few days in the disquieting darkness of the Abyss, I used to look to the sky to search for the stars. But I was met with nothing but the void. I had hoped I would eventually find my parents watching me, but their lights were doused in a world that was no longer my own. I was alone in the underbelly of a different planet, with no home. I realised the only way they live on is in my memories.”
“It must have been incredibly lonely,” Lumine says, and nothing more, and Skirk accepts her answer with silence.
She reaches the bend of Skirk’s elbow, where Abyssal purple gives way to human flesh. A long, straight cut marrs the skin there, a deep red, the skin rough when she runs her finger over it.
“This is new,” she says.
Skirk remains still, but Lumine can feel her slightly twitch when Lumine thumbs the cut again. “Think nothing of it, I’ve known far worse. This is the result of my own shortcomings. I’ve been refining my techniques once again. Grappling with newfound emotion during battle is something I will stop at no lengths to master.”
Now, the thought of Surtalogi fills Lumine with a rage so visceral she sometimes fears the very force of it would shatter her bones. He is an entity who was endlessly cruel, pushing a young girl far beyond the brink of pain and suffering, restoring her battered body anew come night so she may taste the acrid burn of agony again — all in the hopes that she might one day become the one to whom he can finally meet his defeat. (To which, Lumine thinks, he ought to venture to Dragonspine to throw himself off the Skyfrost Nail and see if gravity is a worthy enough adversary.)
He is a villain in every sense of the word, and though Lumine has traversed many a planet and immersed herself in many a civilisation, she cannot muster up a word in any language she’s learnt that could describe the depth of his depravity. To have power enough to rattle the universe yet have stripped yourself of emotion, of humanity, all in the pursuit of strength and challenge… What makes one any different from a monster?
But even then, Lumine cannot help but think that master and disciple are alike in more ways than one. Just as Surtalogi is someone who will see his oaths to the end, so does Skirk follow. Skirk had vowed to carry her emotional self with her to the end. And here she is — relearning a craft that is more than second nature to her to accommodate the part of her soul she had snuffed out under reason. A small, choking feeling, albeit not uncomfortable, emerges in Lumine’s chest, and she wonders when Skirk’s victories had started to feel like her own.
Though habits cemented with centuries of practice will need far more than Lumine to dislodge, she thinks, however foolishly, that a little comfort can still be learnt. Endurance and skill does not have to come at the cost of constant pain. Everyone has their breaking point, and it must be terribly exhausting to go beyond the barrier so often.
And so Lumine pulls Skirk’s arm towards her and holds it with her two hands, the way one may hold a hatchling in its first breaths of life. She draws her Hydro ability from within, channeling it to her palms. She imagines the Hydro magic weaving the threads of her skin back together. She watches as skin once blemished becomes smooth again, leaving no mark of an injury that could have been.
Skirk watches her movements silently. “Your elemental powers have evolved. Since when were you capable of healing?” she says, and Lumine feels a small satisfaction at surprising the woman with tools greater than man under her arsenal.
“You may not think of me as your disciple, but I was under your tutelage a while ago, wasn’t I? It was you who reminded me to draw from the experiences of my travels. I’ve made many friends in Teyvat. I learnt this trick from my friend in Mondstadt.” Lumine lets go of Skirk’s arm, watching it return to her side. “She’s the Deaconess of the Church of Favonius. She’s also a celebrity idol in her own right. People come from far and wide to listen to her sing. Some believe it is her melodious voice as sweet as honey that grants them cure. But that’s not the case. It’s her Hydro healing.”
“Do the people revere her as an idol or a saint?”
Lumine laughs. “Where there is life, there is hope. As long as humanity breathes, they will hope. And if they find hope in her singing, believing it will bring them respite, I can’t complain. At least it brings people to the church to have their wounds looked at that they’d otherwise given up on.”
Skirk nods next to her, and they both return their gazes to the starry sky. Lumine wonders what the stars were like on Skirk’s home planet, before it was razed to the ground with its people exterminated like ants. Did they burn brighter there? Were its stellar formations real, instead of dwelling a rotten fallacy in a fabricated sky?
She turns to the woman beside her again. The purple tint of her hair is washed out under the moonlight, making it seem like a shocking silver.
“How was training today then, Master? You can tell me. Or you could buy my silence. Paimon and I are still trying to figure out your source of Mora.” Lumine stops and mimes the gesture of a zipper through her lips. “I’m joking. My lips are sealed. You know no secret of yours has left my mouth. Knight’s honour.”
Skirk lets out what she would like to think is an endeared sigh. (It’s the closest Lumine can get to a laugh from her. Even Paimon had noticed it the first time she heard it, gasping with her little hands over her mouth, though she tried to—totally inconspicuously—cover it up through a succession of coughs.)
“It was tiring.”
There’s a jolt in Lumine’s chest. An admission once again.
“You know,” Lumine starts, leaning closer to the newly silver-haired woman, “my friend from Mondstadt also taught me another handy little trick for fatigue. Would you like to try it?”
“Go ahead,” Skirk nods.
So Lumine does something she has never dared to do, despite how much the thought had flitted across her mind. Lumine snakes an arm up to the back of Skirk’s head, holding it softly. She tangles her fingers in her hair, and gently brings it down to rest on her shoulder. Skirk stiffens for a second before settling. The press of her cheek against her shoulder makes Lumine’s blood thump wildly.
Her hand is still buried in Skirk’s hair, and Lumine marvels at how it is softer still. She runs her hand through the strands, so long and light and shining, before her hand settles at the skin of the small of her back. Lumine’s hands have never strayed this far before, usually only confined to the coolness of Skirk’s arms, and she wonders if that had been for good reason. Because now, as she touches the impossible softness of Skirk’s back, a terrible want racks her body, pooling low in her stomach.
And a yawning ache swells in her heart. Because there’s intimacy in safety, in trust, and here Skirk is — guard down, defences low, because although she may never say the words out loud, there is an admission of trust in the way Skirk allows Lumine to see her vulnerable, to hold her close as she recounts the memories of her past, as she gives voice to the worries she had never been allowed to entertain. And here, in the solitude of Liyue’s mountain peaks, Lumine can almost pretend that she can keep Skirk safe from Surtalogi’s unfaltering promise.
(But she knows, when the inevitable day comes, she will stand by Skirk’s side in whichever city or nation or planet becomes their battlefield, sword blazing, until the very end.)
She brings her other hand forth to hold Skirk’s in hers. Lumine doesn’t care about the hard gauntlets that cage Skirk’s fingers. She interlocks their hands, squeezing her fingers, and her thumb begins a soft rhythm against her hand.
“I’m in your debt again, it seems,” Skirk says.
“You can pay me back later.”
“Is this a part of the transaction too?” she says, and Lumine can feel her nod against her shoulder towards their intertwined fingers. “Or is it something you do for all your debtors?”
“I’ll put it on your tab.”
Skirk grows silent, so Lumine looks down at the face that is so close to hers. Skirk’s eyelids have fluttered shut, her long eyelashes fanning out above her cheeks.
“Where should we meet next to collect my debt?” Lumine asks, voice soft, and Skirk’s eyes do not open. “There’s probably no land on Teyvat you have not yet travelled. You have centuries of experience here on me. Perhaps the rainforest of Sumeru? The mushrooms in Mawtiyima Forest glow brighter than lanterns. I love the smell of the forest after rainfall. Or maybe Seirai Island? The sky is extraordinary, trapped in a perpetual thunderstorm. Or maybe not. I’ve been zapped there far too many times while trying to fish.”
Lumine’s only response is the rush of wind that blows around them, mussing her bangs around her forehead, and she wonders if Skirk has actually fallen asleep. But after a while, Skirk’s voice comes, quiet and the gentlest she’s ever heard it.
“Do as you wish. I will always find you.”