Chapter Text
This being is old.
He is much older than her — hundreds of years older — so old that Kuuvahki flows not around him but through him, with him. She is a goddess of the moon but he seems made of the three moons’ elemental energy. At the very least, he is simply attuned to it due to his age and status among his Snowland Fae kin.
She knows a bit about them, the beings that had occupied Snezhnaya under the Belyi Tsar’s rule.
“He fell to the Abyss,” the Tsaritsa had told her of the former Cryo Archon during one of their few audiences following her appointment to the Fatui Harbingers and her new designation: The Damselette, Columbina. “His people are…loyal, but hardly a threat.” The Tsaritsa’s lips had curled coldly at the corners, accentuating the sharp lines of her face. The disapproving gleam in her eyes matched the frozen colour of her sceptre.
Everything around the Tsaritsa had been still and she — now called Columbina — was still as well.
“You brought me here for a task,” Columbina had said, standing as still as possible at the foot of the Tsaritsa’s throne. “When may I begin?”
The Tsaritsa’s hair hadn’t moved when she had tilted her head down, frost visible on her long eyelashes. “Columbina, that time has not yet come.”
Some of Columbina’s brethren had spoken of how difficult it was to look at the Tsaritsa directly, but she had never shared in their difficulties.
The Tsaritsa is just another being like her.
Now this being, ancient and fickle, is difficult to look at directly. He fades into everything, easily becoming one with the fabric of Nod Krai itself, like he’s been there since its creation.
She watches him from afar sometimes. He’s aware of her presence, flicking his eyes in her direction whenever she arrives, but leaves her be, presumably recognizing that she is no threat to him.
Whirling gracefully, ornately-decorated polearm in hand, he fights pockets of the Abyss like he’s dancing. She closes her eyes and sees a gold and crystal ballroom, couples spinning so merrily it makes her dizzy enough to open them and he finishes the remaining Wild Hunt spectres with a posed flourish, raising his lantern high above his head.
He is more of a god to this land than she is, more present and far more formidable.
He is called Flins.
*****
This being is conflicted.
He arrives in Nod Krai noisily, with a loud laugh and a broad smile and a small scouting guard that sets up camp at Lake Amsvartnir.
After a long nap — she’s feeling a bit stronger — she goes to watch them. Their flags flutter in the wind, green and silver with a bold coat of arms. They call themselves the Knights of Favonius and Fifth Company. He calls the fierce man who stands at his side Lohen, and the yellow-haired boy with maps tucked underneath his arm Mika.
One day, he turns his head towards the grove of trees where she sits and narrows his eyes. The next moment, he’s studying a map laid out on the table in front of him. He doesn’t acknowledge her presence. Perhaps he was simply staring absentmindedly at the forest.
“I came here for the moon.” His words slur and join together as one after he’s had too much to drink and his smile never cracks, even though his eyes become heavy-lidded and melancholy. There’s a weight to them that she recognizes; however, she couldn’t begin to know of what specifically he speaks.
He’s stronger than most, charismatic, and kind.
Sometimes, she can see the sea of flowers in Silvermoon Hall through her hands. Her body fades into nothingness. She feels her fingers, can move them, but cannot see them. She hears the prayers from the Frostmoon Scions and the occasional desperate plea from the more cynical inhabitants of Nasha Town.
She cannot answer them.
He wouldn’t understand any of this. He’s the type of being who willingly gives everything he has at the cost of himself.
She gave everything she had for a place promised — a home — that was only empty words from the Tsaritsa’s pale pink lips.
He is called Varka, or Grand Master.
*****
“You’ve known all along, haven’t you, my friend?”
She cranes her neck in their direction, half-listening to the two alchemical beings’ conversation, half-engrossed in the delicate dance Flins and Varka have begun to follow, neither of them taking the lead.
When Varka doesn’t answer, Flins hums, amused. “Now that was an awkward silence.”
She stares at the high flush on Varka’s cheeks. It looks out of place, like it doesn’t belong to his sharp features. His long blond hair falls into his piercing blue eyes as he shakes his head sheepishly. “Let’s just keep this between ourselves,” Varka tells Flins in what he probably believes is a whisper.
She hears it from across the room.
“Probably best if Illuga doesn’t know, hunh?”
“That goes without saying,” Flins replies. His words are lightly-said but his eyes bore into Varka with purpose. “You have to be careful what you share with youngsters, after all.” When Varka laughs, Flins’ eyes dart in her direction, catching her eye before returning to Varka. The lines around them soften the more Varka laughs. Varka steps forward until the tip of his boot brushes against Flins’ heel.
They know each other, truly know each other, a vulnerability that few beings openly allow.
She hadn’t expected it of either of them.
This world still holds many surprises.
*****
“Welcome home, Moon Goddess.”
“My dear Moon Goddess, welcome home.”
“Welcome home, Moon Goddess!”
Voices all around her herald her arrival, welcoming her home. She feels their prayers — requesting nothing, giving love and friendship — reverberate in her heart.
Nasha Town glows with warmth. Chatter bubbles up from the streets, mixing with the swinging motion of the hulls softly scraping against the docks in the harbour. She stops in the centre of the street, closes her eyes, and listens.
“Now now, Grand Master, I am almost insulted that you do not recognize me. You are one of the few to have seen me in this form and this form alone.”
“Yeah, took me a minute. Albedo said you had a stall.”
The laugh that answers is smooth and familiar to her ears.
“Lightkeeper Flins, what a surprise to run into you here.”
“I thought that the festival air of Moon Prayer Night would be just the thing to counter the melancholy of Final Night Cemetery and the Abyssal void of the Wild Hunt.”
She opens her eyes at the hitch of emotion in Flins’ voice. Across the street, Varka holds his fingertip on top of Flins’ lantern, standing over it with a fond grin.
“Now, Grand Master,” Flins says, clearing his throat, “all of us carry a magical creature in our hearts—”
Varka explodes with a booming laugh that fills the street. “So this is what you’re doing!”
She watches him brush his lips over the top of the lantern and take a large step backwards. He claps his hands. The sound is almost as loud as his laugh and just as warm.
She smiles, thinking of how they’ll all continue without her.