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The first day of the new year brings with it a heavy squall of rain, soaking through the delicate paper decorations — an optimistic investment, for the middle of a Fontainian winter — and pooling along the roads until runoff begins to pour down the walls. In the Vasari Passage, a magazine rack drips fragments of newspapers that had not been saved before they melted apart under the downpour.
A young businessman, wandering along the street with his briefcase above his head to keep his face dry, sees a shred of waterlogged paper that reads “Rouble In The Court of Fonta,” and thinks to himself, now there’s a good brand name. He will not get a chance to use it, but he will keep the idea in the family, until his great-great grandson gets a job at the Fontaine Research Institute and it finds its home on the label of a mildly-carbonated soft drink.
The rain had not, of course, been forecast. But the nation of Hydro is used to such things, and it is with nothing more than faint resignation that the parades are cancelled, and the parties moved indoors.
Neuvillette watches this all take place from his vantage point outside the Palais Mermonia. An emotion that may be “guilt” sits thick and sour in his chest — they had looked forward to this celebration, the people of Fontaine, though it is a celebration stolen from another land. It’s good for morale, Lady Furina had told him, and good for international relations. Besides, I would have thought you of all people would want to celebrate the year of the dragon.
Neuvillette does not want to celebrate the year of the dragon. Looking at the coiled, scaly banner above the entrance to the Happy Clam Seafood Market, he wonders if it is not too late to leave Fontaine entirely.
His sensitive ears catch the click of her heels against the wet cobblestone a minute or two before she comes into view, clutching a bejewelled umbrella with both hands. He sighs — another attempt to convince him to join her at one of the dozen parties of the night, no doubt. Still, he waits at the railing until she slips up next to him, lifting her umbrella so that it covers them both under its sail.
“I thought you might be here,” she says. It is something she says a lot; she seems to possess an innate ability to locate things, and to locate Neuvillette most of all. He has yet to figure out if this is an Archon’s divine affinity for the land they have sworn to serve, or if it is merely another piece of Furina’s sharp intellect, ever-moving clockwork behind that veneer of languid, shallow carelessness. Still waters run deep — in this case, clear shallow creekbeds may become bottomless abysses when one steps into them at the wrong angle. It has been two hundred years, and he still can never quite predict which angle that will be.
“I was…” he trails off. Was what? Standing alone as his own troubles lay waste to months of carefully-planned festivities. Sedene calls it wallowing. If you dwell too much on the past, she likes to tell him, you lose sight of the future. Better to put all that time and energy into something that will make your life happier now. It is sound advice in theory, but Neuvillette often finds himself struggling to pull himself back regardless. Human emotion is an unshackled, animal thing; a rebellious bird that none can tame. He cannot suppress it enough to stop the rain.
In this, he thinks, he and Furina are somewhat alike, although she has for the most part mastered directing the tempest that crashes over her at the slightest provocation. Perhaps if he could confine his rain to flowerbeds, or over himself, so that he might remain comfortably damp while the rest of Fontaine basked in the sunshine…
“I was considering the merits of reimbursing the public for their ruined property,” is what he says instead. “Many citizens have spent a great deal of mora in preparation for the celebration, with the assumption that they will be able to reuse their purchases in years to come. The decorations…”
Furina hums, and idly spins the umbrella, shucking a veil of raindrops onto the ground. “It would be hard to explain,” she says, “Unless you’re planning to tell everyone that you are the Hydro Dragon whose tears make it rain.”
The Hydro Dragon. The title stings, and he looks at his Archon so he does not have to see the fishmonger’s dragon sign in all its long, perfect glory. “That is not — no, I would prefer to keep my identity private for now.”
Furina pouts. “Hm, pity. You’d have made a much better centrepiece for that parade than a puppet.” Then she smiles, a rare gentle smile, understanding and a little sad. “Come inside, will you? I have something for you.”
They settle into his office, and Furina darts off to find a towel for his hair. It is wholly unnecessary — he would be perfectly capable of drying it himself, if he had the inclination — but he doesn’t protest as she manhandles him into the light and pats the excess water away. It feels… safe, somehow. Gentle. Like being taken care of.
He shakes the thought away. Failure of a dragon or not, he is the reincarnation of the Sovereign of Water; he has no need for such things.
Along with the towel, now tossed over the back of his desk chair, she had also brought back refreshments: bottles of wine and water, and a box of expensive chocolates Neuvillette recognises as a gift from one of her many admirers. A second box, barely the size of a pocketwatch and adorned with a little blue bow, is relegated to the corner of the desk without a second glance as she pulls him down onto the sofa and begins to pour their drinks.
The lighting in his office is warm and soft, but through the stained-glass windows the world has taken on the oceanic tint of coming nightfall. Neuvillette frowns, recalling the long list of social engagements that had been transcribed into Furina’s public schedule. “It is getting close to dusk,” he tells her. “You should get some rest before the party at the Cabinet d’Avocats.”
Furina makes a dismissive gesture with an empty wineglass. “Oh, they’ll be fine without me. Perhaps in my absence the guests will actually speak to each other, instead of queueing up hoping for my attention.” She pouts again, and then laughs. “Besides, after nearly three hundred years, those parties have become unbearably dull. They’ll have to spice it up a little if they don’t want their beloved Archon to drop dead from boredom.”
“Perhaps they are hoping to make a name for themselves in the history books,” Neuvillette suggests. “I imagine the first recorded case of an… underwhelming snack table being used as a murder weapon would cause quite the stir, even if you were not Focalors.” Usurper, he thinks but it feels more perfunctory than anything else.
“The audience at the Opera Epiclese would probably eat that up, wouldn’t they? Hm, I raised them well! Oh, speaking of eating — here, try one!”
She pushes the chocolates towards him, and a glass of water. He would like to ignore the sweets completely — the label on the water bottle had claimed it to be from the waterfalls of Watatsumi Island, a delicacy he has long dreamed of tasting — but Furina is looking at him with big, expectant eyes, and so he reaches over and selects the smallest chocolate he can see.
He manages not to shudder at the taste, but it is a near thing. But his Archon smiles again, the mischievous sharp-toothed smile she only ever seems to show him, and so it is worth it.
“But,” she continues, words muddy through her own mouthful of chocolate, “Most importantly, what could be more befitting of a god than celebrating the year of the dragon with the only dragon in all Fontaine?”
Neuvillette knows this to only be technically true, but he cannot help but find it pleasing, nonetheless — out of all the people in all the world desperate for her attention, she is choosing to spend this holiday with him. Perhaps the human obsession with reflected glory is rubbing off on him. Or perhaps it is just Furina, bestowing her presence like the most precious gift on those she deems worthy.
And she called him a dragon. He is not one — not like he knows he was, not like he dreams of being, long and covered in scales and one with the world again, the one true monarch of the sea. But it is… nice, he thinks, that she sees him that way. She has always been able to see him for what he could be.
If only that ability went both ways.
But he is curious, and the atmosphere is saturated with a hazy, familiar sort of warmth. He is not so foolish as to think them friends, but perhaps… “Did you celebrate the new year before your Ascension?”
Furina stiffens. It is almost imperceptible: only Neuvillette, with whom she has shared the opening dance of every ball since he took up the mantle of Iudex, would know the movement of her body well enough to notice. “I…” A heartbeat, and she seems to flicker between a hundred different faces before that familiar put-on dismissiveness takes over. “I don’t remember,” she says. “Why do you care?”
“I was merely curious.” He looks at the lapel of her jacket, where a silver brooch in the shape of a dragon glitters in the lamplight. “You know a great deal about my origins, and yet I know nothing of your own.”
“Unlike you,” Furina snaps, “I know what I am.” Neuvillette feels the comment hit, and he blinks against the unexpected pain as the rain outside picks up again, lashing against the windows. When his vision clears, she has gone very pale.
“Neuvillette,” she says — her voice is shaking, and her hand is too, one quick hard tremor before she pins it down against her thigh. The bluster is gone now, as quickly as the anger came, and in its place is an emotion he thinks may be fear. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“No, you are… correct…”
“I’m not. I’m sorry.” She reaches for her wineglass and takes a long drink. When she surfaces, her lips are stained red like blood. “I don’t want to fight with you. Can we just…” She makes a gesture, helpless, all-encompassing.
She looks small, he thinks. That should not be surprising — it was only three years ago that she had attempted to make five feet tall official as the “average” Fontainian height, so that she could confidently claim to be “taller than average” — but her presence is a living thing around her, taking up every spare inch of space wherever she goes. A Usurper’s arrogance, that thing they call ‘divinity’. Without it, she seems almost unbearably fragile, like a shell he could crush to dust with one wrong touch.
“I understand,” he says, because he does. It has been a number of decades since she last threatened to have him thrown out of Fontaine, but the sentiment still stands: the Hydro Archon has her secrets, and no matter how close to her Neuvillette feels sometimes, no matter how many umbrellas and bottles of wine and soft moments they may share, there will always be a distance between them, and she will not tolerate any attempts to close it.
There may come a day where he fights her on her lack of disclosure, on the lies and deflection she pulls about her like one of her fine coats. But today is not that day, and so he simply leans forward to take another chocolate from the box. It tastes no better than the last. He washes it down with his water and considers his next question carefully.
“May I ask why you made the decision to bring the Lantern Rite celebrations to Fontaine?” She had given him reasons when she first presented the idea, an irrefutable list of points about the economy and cultural appreciation and our neighbours across the sea. Still, he senses there is more to it than that.
And perhaps his mind is on dragons, lately. How could it not be, when every step he takes through the Court brings with it stark reminders of his serpentine inadequacy?
They celebrate the new year with banners of Morax, who merely ascended to dragonhood by the waterfall. By right, Neuvillette should be the one on those banners. But he is not, because without his true form, and without his full power…
…Can he truly be considered a dragon at all?
Furina tips her head back against the couch. A few strands of her hair stick to the silk upholstery, as if even the furniture is clutching at her with desperate, adoring hands. “I already told you. We need to work on better international relations, especially if we’re going to end up having to send people to shelter in a few years.” Her mouth thins into a tense, unhappy line, as it always does when the prophecy is brought into conversation. “Since I would rather not have to go through the tedium of a meeting with the Seven, that leaves us with limited options. In my infinite wisdom, I chose the one that would benefit my people as much as the Liyuen economy. After all, things have been getting a little boring around here lately, no?”
Neuvillette hums. Personally, he enjoys the peace, but he has long suspected that Furina’s inability to tolerate boredom stems from something far more dangerous than the simple desire to be entertained. Her mind may be sharp, but without something to focus on those blades invariably seem to turn in on themselves, and the soft underbelly she fights so hard to keep hidden. He has seen the magazines piled in the corner of her parlour, slashed through with red ink. The notes, and notes, on every perceived flaw in her own countenance, paper ripped like jagged teeth under the pressure of the quill.
“If you did wish to meet with one of the Usurpers, the year of the dragon may be a beneficial time to do it.” He ignores the odd discomfort that pools in his stomach at the thought of Furina rubbing elbows with Celestia’s lapdogs. They are not even truly friends; he has no reason to be feeling like some sort of territorial… familiar.
Furina has never shown the slightest scrap of desire for a familiar, and if, someday, that were to change — surely she would choose a complete creature to have at her side. Best not to entertain impossible notions. He banishes the thought from his mind entirely, and turns back to the conversation at hand in order to explain his reasoning.
“A festive atmosphere, at the beginning of a year celebrating… his kind, may appease Morax’s ego, and make him more willing to entertain our requests. Given the situations in Natlan and Sumeru, I believe Liyue would be a beneficial first step in establishing our… place on the world’s stage, so to speak.”
Furina looks pleased at the analogy. “That’s assuming he has an ego to appease.”
“He is a god. Of course he does.”
“…So, you think all gods have over-inflated egos, do you?"
He realises the trap as it closes around him, and Furina leans forward with narrowed eyes. A court-expression, it is, the unbreakable needle of her iron will skipping across his argument hunting for a weak thread. It is enough to cast fragile mortal criminals into cowering fear, but Neuvillette is far from mortal.
“If you have met one who does not fit such a description, I would be delighted to meet them.”
The intensity of her gaze splinters, and her cheeks go pink and round, like an aggravated pufferfish in a million-mora hat. “Slander! Defamation! Careful, Monsieur, lest I imprison you in my dungeon and throw away the key.”
“You don’t have a dungeon,” Neuvillette points out.
“Well, I’ll put you in a tower then. That horrible Tower of Ipsissimus — it might as well serve some purpose, instead of just hulking on the horizon being Fontaine’s worst eyesore.”
Furina’s vendetta against the Tower is not a new issue; she has been complaining of it since it began construction almost a century ago. A devout believer in the philosophy of maximalism, the building’s mechanical, stripped-down exterior is an affront to everything she stands for. Neuvillette takes another sip of water: the flavour is light and clean, with a depth to the aftertaste that feels like drinking whalesong. “Why did you approve the plans for it in the first place?”
“Monsieur de Petrichor,” says Furina. “He promised me it would be a landmark building, of a beauty and intricacy never before seen. But then there was a ‘marble shortage’, and a shipment of decorative tiles got ‘lost’, and then the Narzissenkreuz Ordo all died before I could force them to finish the job. So now we’re stuck with… that.” She makes an extremely un-Archonly face, and then brightens. “But now I have you to take care of all the boring administrative tasks, and if you approve something I dislike, I can have you locked up in it.”
Neuvillette recalls Furina’s piles of careful notes, the suggestions and drafts she slips into his paper tray each night. She cares a great deal about her reputation: hysterical, almost airheaded, living only for dramatics of the courtroom and her own public image. That she becomes so diligent the moment she steps free from the spotlight was not an easy thing to reconcile, in the early days of their partnership.
How remarkable, that one who is not human could end up teaching him so much about humanity. That one who is not a dragon could be his guiding light as he navigates the dark, dangerous waters of his own identity, hand-in-hand as he stumbles over hidden rocks.
He wishes, with a fool’s wholehearted longing, that he could be that for her in turn. Just once, until her heart knew calm, and the tired circles faded from beneath her eyes. Once.
Furina’s body relaxes again, careful tension uncoiling into a drunken slouch, and this, at least, feels genuine. For once, it is not a pose. She eyes the box of chocolates, as if considering whether it is worth the effort of movement, before casting a hopeful glance at Neuvillette. He sighs. “Would you like another, my Lady?”
“Well, if you insist.” He passes her two — a little ball filled with hazelnut praline, and a strawberry square he knows she will like. She puts them both in her mouth at once. “Mm, seriously, though,” she says, “My position on them hasn’t changed any more than yours has. They don’t know anything more than we do, right? It’s not like we were given instruction manuals on how to rule a nation.”
Neuvillette blinks. Somehow this is not what he had expected. He had pictured, lying in his lake centuries ago, those servants chained and muzzled on that island in the sky as their overlords informed them of their duties. “Did Celestia truly not give you any sort of preparation?”
“Ugh, I wish!” Furina slides down further on the couch, kicking up one foot in a halfhearted manner. Her shoe has come free of her heel; it dangles precariously from a toe, well aware that another erroneous movement will send it flying. “Instead, it was just—” She pitches her voice into a high, obnoxious trill, “‘—Here, Focalors, take this Gnosis, here’s a prophecy, try not to kill too many of your subjects, now, hmm?’ Really, I would have been better off reading one of those ‘self-help’ books that are making the rounds in Sumeru. It’s no wonder the Archons are in the sorry state they’re in.”
“You are aware that you are an Archon.”
But had he not followed smoke to Fontaine so that he might reclaim his stolen Authority? And here she sits, all that power tucked up inside of her, being frittered away on meaningless trials and bright lights, and communing with the mollusks that creep up to the shoreline each winter. So long as she is breathing things will remain this way, and Neuvillette will live on in this soft, strange body, with no tail to curl around himself, and no scales to protect him from harm.
Perhaps she is right, to separate herself from those arrogant thieves in other lands.
But Furina merely crosses her legs, and throws her arms up in a sweeping gesture, only narrowly missing the vase of marcottes Liath had brought him the day before. “Evolution, my dear Iudex! Just as humankind crawled to land from the depths of your Primordial Sea, so too must the gods learn from the mistakes of our forebears! The new Dendro Archon seems sweet enough, if a little spineless, but as for the rest…” she sips her wine and laughs. “Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? All that matters is that I am a new kind of Archon, and Fontaine’s future is all the brighter for it.”
“‘A new kind of Archon?’ And what kind might that be?”
“…The kind that wants another chocolate. Another of the strawberry ones, if you please.”
Neuvillette looks at her, mismatched eyes glowing faintly in the wash of darkness from the window at their backs — an unsettling, primordial shine, the sort he imagines his own eyes would have if they belonged to a true dragon — and suppresses a sigh. It is a game that makes no sense to him, fanning precious cards before his face yet skirting away the moment she threatens to reveal her hand, and it is clearly not a game she enjoys herself. But it is the game she chooses to play, time and time again, and Neuvillette is reminded of a swarm of moths, fluttering towards a bank of candles to burn themselves against the flame. He will have to be patient, if he ever hopes to know her.
He will have to keep watch, so she doesn’t cause herself harm.
It is something any Fontainian would do, he tells himself. Humans without a fragment of familiar’s instinct anywhere in their genetic makeup. It is nature — human, Melusine, dragon — to protect the things that are small and fragile, and the things powerful beyond measure. It would not be in anyone’s best interest to see Focalors hurt; like a wounded animal, she is all too prone to lashing out.
And she is hurting already, Neuvillette understands now, though he can see no possible reason for it. She has everything she claims to want: luxury, power, the love of each and every one of her subjects. She can do whatever she wishes, go wherever she pleases. The whole world is her stage, and yet here she is, perfect smile fixed in place as she stares blankly off into the corner of the room.
Exhausted and in pain. Unwilling to speak of it, or to let the mask slip from her face for more than a second.
Neuvillette flounders. He is not skilled in the act of comfort, and he rather suspects any attempts at such a thing would serve only to drive her further away. He thinks of a play Furina had taken him to see a decade or two ago: the exiled sorcerer, once a revered duke, who summoned a storm to bring his enemies to his door. His own emotions tend to pass with the rain — with a distraction, with Furina’s hair in his face and her voice in his ear as she whines and complains, teases and orders, drags him two-handed away from his own wallowing thoughts.
It is an unexpected realisation, and he sits very still, trying to process just what it means. He had been alone in the rain, and then she had brought him inside with a bottle of wine, raising a toast to him as if he were dragon enough to deserve one. Has she… always done this? Has she truly been comforting him all this time?
Had she brought Lantern Rite to Fontaine on the year of the dragon in the hopes of making him happy?
A distraction. Staunch companionship, disguised as a selfish request. It is something he will have to learn to replicate.
So when she says “What do you say to a little game?” he readily agrees, despite having no interest in the petty, manufactured contests that humankind have invented for their own entertainment. Furina beats him at “Scrabble” and “Trictrac” but loses at “draughts,” and by the time the old grandfather clock ticks over into midnight the rain has almost entirely ceased.
It is half-past one when she leans her head against her hand with a yawn. Her hair, damp from the fine mist that chokes the city when it rains, has dried into stiff little curls beneath that ridiculous hat.
The wine-bottle is empty, but the only sign that it has been consumed is a faint pinkness to her cheeks, barely noticeable as anything other than the fashionable rouge she has taken to wearing as of late. It makes sense, Neuvillette supposes, for a god to be so resistant to the effects of alcohol. A drunkard could hardly be expected to lead a nation, after all.
But even beings such as them are not immune to the need for sleep, and Furina’s schedule is a demanding one at the best of times. “Lady Furina,” he says, and she starts upright so fast she knocks the little velvet bag of scrabble tiles onto the floor.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” she snaps. Neuvillette blinks, a little taken aback by her vehemence, but she smooths herself over again in the blink of an eye. “Ahem, what I mean is… I was just resting my eyes.”
“It is past midnight,” Neuvillette says. “If you did wish to retire, you would be well within your rights to do so.”
Furina looks at the clock. “Oh,” she says, sounding a little disappointed. “We missed the fireworks.”
She is right. The year of the dragon had arrived without fanfare, as Neuvillette won his fifth game of draughts and Furina had thrown her pieces across the room in protest. He feels sad, of course — there is no world in which he does not feel sad, separated from his true body by an ocean of time — but he also feels… warm. Comfortable. Close, like she is really there, instead of buoyed beyond reach by her own divine pride, as distant as the moon watching over Fontaine as it slumbers.
“Ahem. I doubt explosive materials would have survived the rain.”
“Oh. Well… Hm, you’re probably right.” She adjusts her hat, and hastily adds, “I was, of course, invited as a guest of honour to a full night of festivities. But, since someone decided to quite literally rain on my parade… I suppose I might as well spend the time catching up on my beauty sleep. Not that I need it.”
“Of course not.” His own disappointment comes as a surprise — the thought of parting, leaving this little nest of soft warmth to return to their usual complicated clashing distance, pinches at something deep within him. But Furina is tired. Furina is tired far too often lately, and if Neuvillette can convince her to sleep it will be the first small step in repaying the debt he is beginning to suspect he owes her.
Still. “Would you like me to escort you to your rooms?”
Furina shakes her head, that sad smile stealing across her painted face again, though her voice is as upbeat as always as she rises to her feet and brushes non-existent dust from the cuffs of her jacket. “No, thank you. They’re my private rooms for a reason, Neuvillette. But…” She hesitates, and her eyes flicker behind him again, to the clock and the window, behind which the rain falls thin and fine as ocean spray. “There is an opera premiering tomorrow night — it’s a modern-day retelling of Agénor that I’ve had my eye on for a while, and it looks quite promising. Perhaps you would care to join me?” A quicksilver wing of insecurity passes across her face, there and gone almost before Neuvillette can register it. “That is, of course, provided you don’t have more pressing matters to attend to.”
“I would be delighted to accompany you,” he says, and means it.
Indemnitium becomes irrelevant; the Oratrice Mechanique d’Analyse Cardinale grinds to a halt. Furina’s smile could power Fontaine for weeks.
“Splendid! I’ll come and pick you up at six then. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear my bed calling me. Goodnight!”
She makes to depart, and Neuvillette watches her leave with the distinct feeling that she has taken a piece of his body with her. Strange — he has never had that reaction to separation from his Authority before.
At the door, she turns in a whirlpool of long white hair, and peeks back around the frame. “Oh, and Neuvillette?”
“Yes?”
“Happy ‘your’ year.”
And then she is gone, clicking away up the guarded stairwell to her quarters, leaving behind a scattered mess of gamepieces and glass and a dragon, stripped of everything that should grant him that title, but whose year it now is nonetheless.
He picks the little counters up so that Sedene does not feel obligated to do it herself come morning, and tidies the empty bottles and chocolate packaging into a neat little pile in the corner. He thinks of the strawberry filling, and a shoe come free of its heel, and the evolution of gods. Then he moves back to his desk, where the eternal flow of paperwork has only increased in recognition of ‘his’ year. If he can finish the majority of his work tonight, he will be able to take the evening off tomorrow without falling behind.
The little box is still there.
Neuuvillette had forgotten about it, too distracted by the soft towel drying his hair, and then the tantalising possibility of answers long thought unreachable. It had left Furina’s hands and so it had disappeared: a magic trick unique to the Hydro Archon herself. Now, he reaches for it, unsure of what to do. Had she left it here by mistake? Should he scale the stairs to return it? No — he will not risk disturbing her sleep. He turns the box over in his hands and sees his name, scrawled in glittering ink, a familiar hand almost illegible for all its flourishes.
…For him?
Beneath the bow, and the thin crêpe paper that tears at his clumsy touch, is himself. Neuvillette’s awkward human breath catches in his throat as he lifts the golden cufflinks from their wrapping, tipping them towards the light so the little coiled dragons shine. He has never told Furina the specifics of the form he envisions himself as — has never told anyone, too pained by the knowledge that it would only be wishful thinking, and too protective of his privacy — but almost every detail is perfect nonetheless. These are not merely dragons; they are leviathans, and they are everything he has ever dreamed of being.
How did she…?
There is a note, tucked into the box’s dark satin lining, and he pulls it free with great care. It would not do to tear this. Her words to him are too important.
You,
Happy New Year! I had these commissioned from a jeweller by the foot of Mont Esus, the granddaughter of the goldsmith who made the original Medals of Peace. Her apprentice is a Melusine, who I think will go on to do great things — she received twenty per cent of the commission, and I’m told the detailing on the fins was all her work. Let me know if they got anything wrong, and I’ll take them back to be fixed.
Even if you can’t yet be ‘you’, I hope this gift from ‘me’ makes bearing that weight a little easier.
- Furina
He removes his usual cufflinks, the square brass ones he had chosen at random when his outfit was first fitted, and fastens the dragons in their place. They are not heavy, but there is a weight to them nonetheless: the weight of recognition, and history, his hope for the future and his Archon’s care. A Melusine, diligent, tracing hair-thin lines into hammered metal under the gentle tutelage of a family who has always meant them well. An opera, reflected from the stage onto the wonderful face of someone who may very well be a friend.
Neuvillette smiles to himself, and settles in amongst his documents and his dragons, as beyond his window Furina’s beloved subjects revel in a new era and the rain, at last, clears to make way for the moon.