Archive of Our Own

It’s springtime on Watatsumi Island.

Kokomi is lying on the ground.

Kokomi is lying on the ground, arms at her side, dress askew, her hair splayed out behind her like the grooves of a clamshell.

“...I lost my train of thought,” she says.

Shizuru, standing a distance away, says: “Tariffs on value-adding services...”

“Ah, yes.” Kokomi exhales. “Division Two, Article Forty-five. I was saying... the Kanjou Commission ought to have conceded that point to us. It’s worth so much less to them than the foreign import duties. They... They’re not yielding, they’re not explaining why.”

“Valuable ground, you said.”

“Yes. They perceive this tariff as worth defending. Because of its value to them? Or to us?”

Shizuru clicks her tongue at a certain pitch, signalling that they’re not alone.

A few seconds later, Kokomi, too, makes out the sound of footsteps. A tentative voice calling out, “Your Excellency?”.

She sighs. “Um... is it strictly financial, though? The... We should check the artisans who were working in West Yashiori before the war... Not just the financial projections but names...”

“You think we’re encroaching on some minor Kanjou family’s fiefdom?” says Shizuru. “I’ll get the scribes look into it.”

“No, this is... this will require some digging. Send one of your assistants, Perhaps... um...”

“Your Excellency!” Gorou sounds relieved as he enters Kokomi’s little hideaway cave and sees her. “People were saying you’d been missing since last night...”

“I skipped the banquet, yes, Gorou,” says Kokomi, rolling her eyes. To Shizuru, she says: “...perhaps Kumiko? She did well with those Ritou officials last time...”

“She’s got a silver tongue,” Shizuru agrees. “I’ll send her to investigate; it’ll be good experience for her.”

“Meanwhile, we should consider the very real possibility that the Kanjou Commission cedes the import tariffs instead,” Kokomi says. “I’ll have to look into how that affects our bottom line...”

“Um, Your Excellency,” says Gorou, “when was the last time you ate?”

“...and see if that’s a deal worth taking.” Kokomi motions to the handful of Sunsettia cores on the floor just out of arm’s reach.

“You’ve been here since yesterday,” says Gorou, “is that all? Four Sunsettias?”

“And a fried egg this morning,” says Kokomi. To Shizuru: “They’ll have to concede on something. My, um, penpal, has made it pretty clear that even Tenshukaku wants to see this special administrative zone happen.”

“Aren’t you hungry? You can’t just...”

Whatever General Gorou is about to say, he is wrong. Kokomi, in fact, can. Her rebellion succeeded, the Shogunate made massive concessions during the peace talks, Watatsumi has a real seat at the table for the first time in millenia. There’s the possibility of a wholly self-sufficient Watatsumi within two or three centuries. One, if she plays her cards right. What that means is that Sangonomiya Kokomi is a gods damned hero, that the islandfolk worship her like she’s the second coming of Orobashi, that she could lie down here for a whole week without eating if she wanted to.

Kokomi does not want to. Or rather, Kokomi would, all things considered, rather not want to want a week of lying down, but want she does, and if her stomach has been gurgling since midmorning and she feels slightly faint then that’s just another bodily want she needs to take care of in due course.

Kokomi is made of wants, is ravenous with want.

She wants food security for her people.

She wants statues of Orobashi in every corner of Teyvat.

She wants the stress and the thrill of the long campaign, the endless nights huddled in darkened tents anticipating the enemy’s plans, burrowing into their stimulus-response loop.

She wants the war to have ended with a resounding victory, to have figured out those final virtuoso tricks to playing Masahiro and Sara like a shamisen. Not this business with capitulation handed to her on a silver platter, some boring story of gods and whims.

And Kokomi wants, needs?, craves, that alertness: the sharpness of mind that came with responding to a surprise incursion, with personally leading a guerilla force miles behind enemy lines.

She wants a life-or-death situation.

She wants to not need a life-or-death situation just to feel awake.

Kokomi doesn’t recall when the bloodlust and the desire for victory was joined by the desire for indolence, but it feels like forever ago; during the war, maybe before.

“...or worse?” Gorou is saying. Hopefully to Shizuru because Kokomi is not sure how long she has been tuning out his words for.

(Kokomi is lying on the ground.)

“Kokomi has a Hydro Vision,” Shizuru reminds the general. “She won’t die of thirst.”

“Yes, but... Your Excellency, this can’t be good for you...”

Oh, come now. Kokomi taught Gorou better than stating the obvious.

“Just Kokomi,” chides Shizuru. “You know she hates standing on ceremony. It’s just the two of you here.”

“And you,” says Gorou.

Shizuru doesn’t count, he should know that. That’s like saying the Yashiro Commissioner is never alone because of the ninja trailing him.

(Watatsumi kunoichi are skilled at social camoflauge, at sabotage. They have always needed to be, because Watatsumi has always existed at the mercy of a foreign god. Shizuru and her hand-picked “assistant” shrine maidens represent the island territory’s oldest self-defence tradition, from long before the local militia was worth a second mentkon.)

“Your Exc—” Gorou pauses, starts again. “Lady Kokomi. Are you hungry?”

Kokomi twitches her neck muscles in the slightest of nods.

“Then eat something.”

“I can’t,” says Kokomi. “I’m working on the Tri-Commission negotiations.”

Gorou crosses his arms. “Lady Kokomi, when have you ever stopped working during a meal?”

Kokomi hears Shizuru’s quiet snort, which means Shizuru absolutely wanted her to hear it. She shoots Shizuru a betrayed look, plaintive eyes and pout and all, which the spymaster pretends not to see.

“Touche,” Kokomi says to Gorou. “However, you’ve forgotten the tactical situation.”

“Tactical situation?” Gorou’s face is puzzled.

“Mm, yes, the facts on the ground,” says Kokomi. She waits until she sees him realise she means the fact that she is on the ground, then cuts him off before he can begin to groan. “In all seriousness, I can’t digest food while horizontal.”

“Then... you could sit up?”

“Tired,” pouts Kokomi. “Don’t wanna.”

“You’re always ti—” Gorou cuts himself off at Kokomi’s sharp look. “Sorry. That was out of line.”

“Telling the truth isn’t out of line,” says Kokomi. Operational doctrine: information must travel where it is needed. A chain of command people are afraid to tell the truth to is doomed to never hear it. “But telling me what you know I already know is just inefficient, Gorou. And the point stands...”—and here she resumes her pout—“...don’t wanna.”

“What if I help you sit up?”

Oh. Yes, that is an option.

“An acceptable workaround. Good thinking, General. I shall— wait, already? No, you can do that once there’s food.”

“I brought food with me. There’s chashu don just outside.”

“You’re bluffing.”

He’s not. The kind-hearted general has, of course, brought food with him, and with actual boar meat, too. She would have eaten seafood if she had to, but the prospect of not having to is actually enough to make the walk to the cave entrance quite bearable.

She sits, takes a second to make sure a fainting spell isn’t about to hit her out of nowhere—it’s been a taxing week, she’s probably due one—and she eats, and she lets her mind drift to the negotiations for the West Yashiori Special Economic Zone.

“Division Three, Article Two,” she says, in between bites of rice. The Yashiro Commission finally provided their first draft proposal regarding public holidays and religious observances. “Shizuru—or Gorou—read it to me, if you would?”

“I’m happy to—” begins Gorou.

“Three pages long,” warns Shizuru.

“...listen in.”

Kokomi smiles, closes her eyes, and inhales the scent of roast pork belly, mixed in with the fresh air carried in by the breeze.

It’s not a particularly good day, but nor is it a bad one.

Kokomi is sitting up. Energy minus one, energy plus two; net gain of one. Minor, so far as victories go, but a wise strategist does not discount the minor things.

Kokomi’s Vision makes her a healer, a battlefield medic. With but a thought she can close wounds, restore lost blood, knit severed tendons back together, calm tremors of the limbs. It is not a matter of understanding anatomy; it is a matter of letting the water take its path, sweeping the injured upstream back to good health from where they first were.

When Kokomi directs her Vision over a group of soldiers, those who are injured get better. Modus tollens, those who do not get better, were not injured.

This is how Kokomi knows she is not injured, that her body is not broken. She can sit for hours in the glow of her summoned bake-kurage, running her fingers across her body from scalp to toe, and no amount of healing magic changes anything. The tiredness does not go away.

Kokomi is, by every measure she and her shrine maidens can find, in perfect health. Her skin is as ruddy as it should be, her heart beats slow and strong, her digestive system functioning perfectly—at least, on those weeks where she succeeds in feeding herself properly.

The lethargy seems capricious, intense on some evenings and faint on others. It’s at its worst after dealing with people problems, trading small talk with local officials for hours. Almost as if it’s psychosomatic—

“Nonsense,” says Guuji Yae, on their second day together in person. Outside the Kanjou Commission headquarters, the Irodori Festival is nearing its end, the stalls and displays across Port Ritou settling into a languid, balmy mood, a siesta after a few weeks of much-needed excitement.

—almost as if it’s psychosomatic, Kokomi continues.

“Come, now, you can’t really believe this lethargy is your subconscious throwing a tantrum,” says Yae. She tops up their teacups. “If a mind as cunning as yours was capable of such self-sabotage, I’d expect sophistry and rationalisation, not idiopathy and... bewilderment. No, your story is nothing so tawdry.”

“Mm,” says Kokomi nonconmmitally. “Are you going to tell me I’m overworking? Pushing myself past human limits?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to insult you with the suggestion that I understand you,” coos Yae.

Kokomi’s eyebrows raise. “Why would I be insulted by that?”

“The same reason I would be,” is the Guuji’s matter-of-fact reply. “It would be boring.”

And perhaps Yae Miko has that much right: the kitsune may not be a general like her counterpart, but she has the personality of a strategist, the kind of personality that understands that “being predictable” is tantamount to losing the war before it begins. Kokomi doesn’t mind being known in the broad details—homebody, strategist, contemplator of a thousand possibilities, architect of a thousand deaths—but if anyone were to understand her better than herself after a few brief conversations, then, immortal youkai or not, Kokomi would detest that someone just as much as she would detest the revealed weakness in herself. Sangonomiya Kokomi could not afford to be predictable, could not stand to be.

“Maybe you’re working yourself too hard?” says Gorou, watching her revise the zoning plans for the new development on west Yashiori, her eyes fixed on her notes even when she pauses to scarf down one of his specially made ramen bowls. “There’s only so much energy people can give in a day before they need to rest.”

He speaks timidly, afraid to offend, despite knowing full well that Kokomi would never hold a grudge against him, not when he’s helped hide her weakness from the rank and file, when he’s let her crash in his bed on the frequent nights when she knows making the walk back home from Bourou Village would take tomorrow from one productive hour to none. Gorou, curled up awkwardly on his own floor, refusing to yield the futon to Her Excellency when an actual mattress was right there... Gorou knows Kokomi thinks the world of him, would never raise a hand against him, and yet still, still, he tiptoes around her like a prey animal would a predator.

What does that say about her, that even among her closest confidants there are those scared to make sudden movements in her presence? How must her actual foes feel?

(Sometimes, when the exhaustion is in her bones—metaphorically, for she is in perfect health!—and her head is swimming and it’s two in the morning and Kokomi can’t sleep... sometimes when she wants to feel something, she loosens her bedclothes and stretches out long, and she thinks about her actual foes.

“Nathan from Mondstadt”, the saboteur. Shizuru had brought him to her, quite literally hamstrung, in a spot of post-war “housecleaning”. Kokomi had commended him on the damage he’d done, asked him to make it up to her, and the Fatuus had sneered and said that compared to the Harbingers, she didn’t scare him one bit. Kokomi had taken that as a challenge.

Kokomi was a healer, unlike, say, Il Dottore. That afforded her more leeway.

“Nathan” did not talk, to the very end. But the challenge she’d set herself hadn’t been extracting information, the challenge had been scaring him. And that final month, she’d surpassed that challenge with flying colours. The way the Fatuus’s pupils contracted when she appeared outside his cell, the way he’d whimpered at the sound of her wringing water out of the strip of cloth for another round—that?, that was fear.

Kujou Sara. The Shogun’s perfect little right hand woman. The tengu general who had come to save her brother Masahito’s war effort from near-total outmaneuvering. There were many parts of the war Kokomi would rather not relive, but one exception was the challenge, the back and forth, the constant game of cat and mouse that she and Kujou Sara had played out across the breadth of Yashiori and Kannazuka.

On those sleepless nights, breath heavy, toes curling, Kokomi remembers how she did the impossible. She held the line for over a year against an army led by a supernatural bird-demon whose Vision could steel resolves and prevent routs even as they begin. Kokomi learned Kujou Sara’s mind, learned her tactics, learned the way she assessed situations. Kokomi learned how to get inside the other woman’s head from the other size of Inazuma.

And the peace talks—gods, her breath hitching at the memory—that one moment at the peace talks. Right after the temporarily breakdown had been resolved and the agitators in both camps had been quelled, Kokomi had been standing, conversing with Kujou Sara, and while gesturing, entirely unintentionally, Kokomi had brushed her hand against the other woman’s shoulder. And for a split second, before Sara composed herself, the other woman’s eyes had betrayed terror.

For countless nights afterwards, Kokomi had wondered just how far into the enemy general’s head she had gotten. Whether if, in a moment of selfishness, she had held Sara’s gaze and told her to sit back down, in front of all their combined soldiers, whether the prey instinct would have compelled the tengu to yield.

Kokomi calculates at least a one in four chance it would have worked, and what an intense feeling of triumph it is to be sure of that much.

Oh, predator and prey. Celestia and Abyss, predator and prey. To be a predator seeing your prey see you. Predator and prey—)

“It’s just a thought,” Gorou adds timidly.

Kokomi closes her eyes, pushes back the feeling of victory in her blood, tries to remember what they were talking about.

“Oh, pardon me,” says Kokomi, “I was half-asleep. Do you mind repeating that?”

“I...” says Gorou—and she knows he knows she is the scariest thing he will ever meet, and it feels glorious, but now is not the time, Kokomi, be present—“...I was wondering if, maybe... maybe you’re tired from doing too much? You... it seems like you’re taking on more work than anyone could be expected to...”

Kokomi shrugs.

“Mm, perhaps,” she says. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and so on.”

Gorou seems a little surprised at the agreement. Emboldened—if only slightly—he says, “I guess that saying’s true, isn’t it? You’re trying to negotiate this peace treaty and this new special zone and... and you’re still running everything day to day. All the ceremonies, all the local villages and councils, all the petitioners... it’s a lot for any one person.”

“I’d hand it to someone else if I could,” Kokomi tells him, as she has many times before. “But the role of Divine Priestess is the duty of the Sangonomiya bloodline. It’s... it’s part of what connects Watatsumi to Enkanomiya... our history, the days of Orobashi. I don’t get to just ask for applications for my successor.”

An oversimplification, yes, but also Kokomi is fairly sure this discussion isn’t going anywhere useful.

Is Kokomi trying to do more than most people could? Almost certainly. But her exhaustion can’t be a product of most people’s limits; it could only be a product of her own, if anyone’s. And Kokomi knows her potential, knows how studiously she handled the role of Divine Priestess in her first years wearing the robes. Kokomi remembers how much sharper her mind was, back then, even on the tired, gloomy days.

Kokomi is not anywhere near her limit, her theoretical potential. She hasn’t been since after the war. Maybe since sometime during. Maybe before.

Kokomi is sure it wasn’t always this hard, that she wasn’t constantly wading through waist deep water with every event on the agenda, every walk from one room to the next. Kokomi is sure she’s capable of more.

“Overwork is an oversimplification,” Ayato agrees. The Yashiro Commissioner sits with her in Komore Teahouse, his Shuumatsuban escorts and Shizuru’s kunoichi staring each other down while Kokomi obligingly loses a game of shogi, her energy too precious to spend on both the game and the conversation. “People like us”—Hydro Vision users?, monsters in human skin?—“sacrifice many things for what we believe in. I believe the metaphor of bargaining with youkai may be apt here.”

“Sacrificing pieces of ourselves for the greater good,” says Kokomi. “Except there are no souls or firstborn being traded in my case. What would the metaphor be—my life essence? My vitality?”

“Vitality would seem a fitting word,” says Ayato.

Ayato asks Kokomi if she knows that his parents died young. She does; she does not know the details.

Neither does Ayato. The illnesses seemed to come from within. No traces of poisoning, no contagion, just... a gradual breaking apart, a life force spent when the body ought to still have been in its prime.

“Do you think we’ll have silver hair by age forty?” Ayato wonders aloud.

But for all his talk of falling apart, Ayato is doing no such thing yet. He works his seven day weeks; he trudges, exhausted but capable, through the tasks he sets himself.

If Kokomi could trudge, she would. Trudging through everything would be preferable than constantly encountering a wall, an impassable barrier. One always has the option to stop and rest; one rarely has the option to walk through the wall.

It’s Tsuyuko, one of her most trusted shrine maidens, who suggests approaching this as a research project. Tsuyuko never finished her degree—she was needed on Watatsumi many years too soon for that—but she carries the optimism of someone who has spent enough time in the Akademiya: the feeling that the collective human enterprise of solving difficult problems together is the bedrock of civilisation, that for every question there will one day be someone who just so happens to know where to go hunting for the answer.

And Kokomi is tired, very literally, and Tsuyuko offers to draft the letter, all Kokomi needs do is review it and sign, and... why not ask the scholarly community what’s wrong with her? It’s not like there’s anyone of import she’s still hiding it from. Yae knows, and therefore the Electro Archon would know if it was strategically relevant. The Shuumatsuban, or perhaps just Ayato, pieced it together from a few weeks’ observation. Even Kujou Sara knows: at least twice now she has encountered Kokomi lying prone, waiting for the world to deign to give her a little more energy. Sara clearly doesn’t understand: she seems to think Kokomi’s languidness is an affectation, another ruse among many. (Ah, well. Appear strong where you are weak. Perhaps Kokomi will have a fainting spell in front of Sara one day and the Tengu will assume she’s been framed for assassination or something.)

The point is that Kokomi’s most respected (potential) foes know at least something of her ailments, and that at this point she’s mostly hiding it from acquaintances, the general public, people whose concern or counsel would be nothing but burdensome. She revises Shizuru’s draft slightly and sends it to the Akademiya.

To Kokomi, there’s no shame in what other people might know. The shame is entirely within herself, directed with a sharpshooter’s precision at the sense that she’s failing in her responsibilities, that she’s failing where she once operated with ease.

The shame is in the possibility of having allowed herself to deteriorate, to have squandered herself as an asset.

The reply comes sooner than expected. Sumeru Akademiya writes back to her, saying that they’ve consulted with the Birmastan and attached some notes on Eleazar, which they caution is next to unheard of outside of their nation.

This isn’t all. Inside the envelope lies another, smaller one, which turns out to be from an ex-Akademiya healer named Tighnari.

Lady Sangonomiya,

On behalf of this nation and the Dendro Archon, I apologise for whatever nonsense the Amurta Darshan has indubitably given you. For centuries, research out of the Akademiya has ignored long-term disease, by and large. The rare exceptions focus on Eleazar and its variants, and, in most cases, only concern preventative measures or palliative care... rather than, for instance, aetiology, treatment, or anything else you’ve sought advice for regarding your patient.

If your anonymous patient is still seeking a diagnosis, there are a few pharmacists I’ve previously consulted who are knowledgeable in diseases with no obvious cause. I’ve listed a few overleaf, in order of which are least likely to explain their techniques through archaic Liyuean terminology about “yin energy” and the like.

I’ve also been led to believe that the Knights of Favonius in Mondstadt are actively researching this topic, though to what end I cannot say. Their librarian, Lisa Minci, is a former classmate of mine and a first-rate researcher, so it’s possible, however unlikely, that she can dig up something that the wider medical community wouldn’t have heard of.

In terms of lessening the symptoms, I can suggest a few botanical remedies, which I’ve listed alongside contraindications and my preferred protocols...

The Eleazar information is intriguing, but the symptoms are distinct enough from Kokomi’s that she puts it aside for lazy day reading.

She sends a few letters to the named pharmacists, and a letter to the Knights of Favonius which attempts to be as tactful about the “I heard a rumour you’re researching this” part as possible. It helps that they’re a government body and she can bury the medical questions alongside some actual diplomatic correspondence.

A month passes...

...and Mondstadt replies to her: a purple-bordered envelope with a letter in matching paper, signed in a neat, cursive script which identifies the writer as “Lisa Minci, Librarian, Knights of Favonius”, who says:

If this is a prank, I’m not laughing and nor will you be.

If this isn’t... then I offer you my help, Lady Sangonomiya. The records on this subject are difficult to piece together, and I’d be delighted if my research here benefits anyone else.

I can’t promise you a whit of improvement with your troubles.

But I promise, you’re not alone.

Some days, writes Lisa, I make it out of bed just to end up lying at my desk or on a couch for hours at a time.

Does it hurt?, Kokomi wonders, does it sting when all you’ve outwardly done that day is trade one form of indolence for another?

There’s a certain melancholy in knowing your tea is getting cold but not quite being able to sit up for it.

Is it any consolation that nobody’s looking to you as a role model? That there’s no heroic idealised version of yourself you must somehow endure comparison to?

I know very little about your “patient” or her circumstances, but I am sorry to hear she does not have the time to take the rest her body seems to demand of her.

That’s just my duty, thinks Kokomi, that’s simply the role of the Sangonomiya bloodline. Kokomi never has time to slow down. And yet, sometimes she’s convinced that’s all she does: slow down.

It took a lot for me to realise I had the freedom to choose how I spend my time.

Good for you. You’re just a minor figure in the Knights of Favonius, having deliberately chosen a role where nobody reports to you. You were able to walk away from the Akademiya because nobody was depending on you for their continued existence. We don’t all have the luxury of anonymity, of disappearing into the background.

That doesn’t change the guilt that comes from waking up expecting the world of yourself—

—and going to sleep feeling like you may as well have not existed today, thinks Kokomi, reads Kokomi. And... really? If this woman owes nothing to anybody then why would she feel conflicted over giving nothing? Is even the escape from responsibility not enough?

You’d think the lack of day to day responsibilities would be enough to ward away the self judgement, writes Lisa.

That’s what I just said, thinks Kokomi. That’s... that’s maddening. And this is supposed to be of any comfort?

Not much comfort, I know. But I don’t want to do you the disservice of sugar-coating the truth.

What truth? The one Kokomi’s already living?

The truth is that everyone’s already their own worst enemy.

Perhaps, but—

But the tiredness, in my opinion, has a way of exacerbating that.

This, thinks Kokomi, is true.

You say it’s been a few years at least, and from what I hear you’re a smart woman. Accordingly, you have my deepest sympathies.

“I need to go to Mondstadt,” says Kokomi the next day.

The members of her inner circle assembled in the room—Shizuru, Gorou, Tsuyuko, a few other shrine maidens—glance at each other. None of them, to Kokomi’s slight chagrin, seem shocked to hear this.

“Not this very week,” Kokomi clarifies. “But soon.”

“We have a couple of ideas,” says Tsuyuko.

‘We’. Gods, Kokomi hates being predicted. But all the same, it’s exactly the skill she wants in her subordinates.

“Run me through them,” Kokomi sighs.

“I don’t like sea travel,” sighs Kamisato Ayaka. “All those waves.”

“If you’re feeling nauseous...”

Ayaka shakes her head. “No, but thank you, General Gorou. It’s... afterwards. I can never sleep for days after reaching shore. It’s like I’m still being rocked by waves in my mind.”

Kokomi glances up from the latest volume of A Legend of Sword. “Unmoving essential oil,” she says. “Three drops to a cup of ginger tea.”

Ayaka and Gorou blink in unison.

“The... Geo-clarifying combat potion Shizuru always supplies me with?” says Gorou.

Kokomi nods. “I find it weakly correlates with an improvement in dizziness, on those days I’m sitting and standing too fast.”

Ayaka nods thoughtfully. “Grounding of chi... I’ll need to check my books, make sure it’s safe for my constitution, but...” She dips her head. “Thank you for the suggestion, Lady Sangonomiya. I greatly appreciate it.”

The two women and their respective aides are visiting Mondstadt on a cultural exchange of sorts, following the generously sized delegations the windswept land sent to the Irodori Festival. The optics are excellent—the Yashiro Commission inviting Sangonomiya Shrine to engage with their work as peers of equal standing. The flexibility of schedules works well, too.

It took a little convincing to get Shizuru to stay behind to cover internal affairs, but in the end the spymaster conceded that Gorou was a perfectly acceptable bodyguard, and that he really did deserve a month or two in an entirely different country to the Yae Publishing House.

Kokomi wanders the length of the boat, feeling in good spirits with the sea all around her and the skies as clear as her schedule for the coming weeks.

Towards the cargo hold, she stumbles across a woman in distress.

The woman is using her arm as a cushion as she bangs her head against the wall, slowly and rhythmically. In her other hand is an expensive looking mechanical contraption, all weights and sliding pieces and hooks, which she is spinning around like a nunchaku or maybe a children’s toy.

“Every time I go to Mondstadt,” the woman sighs. “Every time.”

(The Liyuean accent suggests she is not an elk youkai, contra Kokomi’s first guess.)

“Are you all right?” says Kokomi.

The woman looks startled to find she’s not alone. “Oh! You surprised me.” She laughs awkwardly. “Hi there! You’re Inazuman... You must be the Tri-Commission delegation registered on the manifest?” She stops fidgeting with her sliding-spinning device immediately, looking a little sheepish. “Oh, whoops... anyway, I glanced at it when I boarded... never hurts to know who you’re at sea with.”

“Indeed,” says Kokomi. She takes a seat on a nearby crate. “You boarded at Liyue Harbour, I take it?”

“Hah, yeah.” The woman rolls her eyes and grins self-effacingly. “Pretty obvious, huh.”

Some strangers—the majority, even—require a lot of energy to interact with, but here, Kokomi feels rather at ease. She’s used to this level of nervous energy and chattiness from some of the shrine maidens. Not to mention the Liyuean woman exudes the same sort of innocent non-judgementalness that Sara and Ayaka do.

“May I ask what was troubling you a second ago?” Kokomi asks.

“Well, I’m not supposed to be working right now, but I was playing with my steelyard...”—she waves the device she was spinning around, which does look a bit like a scale now that Kokomi looks—“...and something was messing with the readings, right? Like a magnet near a compass, but instead of messing with directions it was devaluing everything nearby... so I thought to myself, hey, I already read all the textbooks I brought with me, I’m bored, maybe I’ll try to figure out what’s going on here... solve a little mystery, maybe impress the shipping company while I’m at it. And then it turns out...”

The woman stills.

“Omigosh,” she says, “I should have led with that.”

“Led with what?” says Kokomi.

“Half a dozen crates in this hold have custom tamper-proof seals on them,” says the woman. “The kind the Abyss Order uses.”

Kokomi takes this in, and reconsiders the slightly chastened look on the woman’s face.

“...and I’m sitting on one of them, aren’t I,” she sighs.

The Liyuean woman nods.

“Every time I go to Mondstadt,” she says. “Eula’s never going to let me hear the end of it... say, I don’t suppose that Hydro Vision of yours has ever seen combat use?”

“Once or twice,” smiles Kokomi.

Kokomi has seen the Traveller fight, seen Sara spar with Ayato, seen armies clash. She has never, until now, seen someone open three throats in a single strike.

At least, she thinks that’s what happened. The moment the Abyss mages’ shields went down, Ayaka planted her back foot firmly on the ground, as if about to draw her tachi... and now, a split second later, she is halfway across the cargo hold, crouched low, sheathing her blade. Ichor rains down through the space she just crossed.

“What,” says Gorou, “the hell.”

The Liyuean businesswoman mutters something to the same effect.

“Well,” says Kokomi, trying not to look too awestruck, “that would explain why the Fatui gave up on using her as a hostage to draw her brother out.”

Ayaka is whining about having gotten bloodstains on her kimono. (“My lady,” Thoma is saying, “that is clearly the minestrone you spilled during lunch... whoa, whoa, no need for tears, you’re right, my apologies, the Abyss Order are to blame here...”)

Recovering her composure, the Liyuean woman announces that they’ll all need to provide witness statements when the ship docks. Would any of them like to get a head start? (“I’m actually registered as a notary for the Ordo Favonius,” she says. “It’s, um, a long story—I lost an arm wrestling contest, if you must know. Aaanyway, if anyone wants, just grab one of these green forms and...”)

Mondstadt City is beautiful.

Hilly, though.

“I can carry you,” Gorou reminds her, on their fifth post-staircase break.

“Not on day one,” says Kokomi, determined. “That would be a terrible first impression.”

“The welcoming party saw us all covered in Abyssal ichor.”

“The townspeople, then! I will not have them think of me as an invalid,” says Kokomi, hands on her hips. “I don’t want their pity.”

“I don’t think pity is the right word,” says Gorou uncertainly.

I don’t want my pity, Kokomi corrects herself, but no way in hell is she saying that aloud.

“How many more staircases?”

Gorou consults a map. “One more long one, two short ones like just then, and then... the building itself, I guess.”

Kokomi sighs. “Alright. Let’s do this.”

“It’s not too late to go take Sir Amber up on her offer with the cargo hoists—”

“Gorou, no.”

“Well, aren’t you just a siren,” says Lisa.

Kokomi can’t help but laugh. They exchanged introductions scarcely half a minute ago, and this is not the turn she was expecting the conversation to take.

“Gorou—the aide I brought with me—likes to compare me to an anglerfish,” Kokomi muses. “An enticing light in dark waters...”

“...but a trap?”

“A trap,” agrees Kokomi. “Teeth, teeth, teeth.”

She grins impishly.

“Your actual teeth do undercut the effect somewhat,” muses Lisa. “A little rounded for a carnivore.”

“Hardly my fault I was born in human skin,” says Kokomi. “I hear the dakini of Sumeru have fangs.”

“An urban legend. There are no dakini in Sumeru,” says Lisa. “Now, the Adepti, on the other hand... have you had the pleasure of meeting Ganyu of the Liyue Qixing?”

“Not in person,” says Kokomi. “But the Narukami Ogosho’s familiar is a five-tailed kitsune. That smile is disturbing.”

“Would that we could choose what skin we’re born to,” said Lisa. “I rather think I’d have picked a slightly more resilient form.”

Ah, yes, the topic du jour. “I’m still not sure whether my issue was congenital, lurking in the background... or whether I made some mistake along the way.”

“Must misfortune stem from mistakes?” said Lisa.

“I’m a general and leader,” says Kokomi. “I’d be a poor one if I blamed all my shortcomings on others.”

“And you’d be a poor leader if you blamed poor weather on yourself, castigated yourself over elements outside anyone’s control,” Lisa counters.

The librarian shows Kokomi to the conference room reserved for Knights leadership. At one end of the room sits a chaise longue, a Fontainian design featuring tufted lavender velvet and a matching sumeran and cushions. It looks entirely out of place amidst the staid birch chairs and faded blues of the rest of the room.

“This,” Lisa announces, “is the nap lounge.”

“This is the Knights’ main conference room,” says Kokomi, incredulous. “They let you just... you just...?”

Lisa laughs breezily. “There’s maybe six people who turn up to these meetings with any regularity,” she says. “I’m one, and I’m... fraternising with two others. If Jean has the audacity to schedule a meeting before noontime, it’s hardly reasonable to expect me to be vertical for it, is it?”

“Your colleagues don’t raise a fuss?”

“Anyone senior enough for these meetings knows about my condition.” Lisa pauses. “No, that’s not true, Hertha and the Traveller still take me literally when I call myself lazy. But also I have a reputation for being... not worth angering.”

Kokomi has so many questions. For one, how does Lisa lie down during meetings without feeling self-conscious? For another, how can she be sure her colleagues aren’t talking about her behind her back? What if there’s an assassination attempt when she’s half asleep? How does she concentrate on the meeting when everyone can just see her show of inadequacy...?

“Want to try?” says Lisa. “You are our guest, and I do think you’d like it.”

The librarian’s voice is teasing in the manner of a chronic flirt, not unlike Tsuyuko. The offer is clearly genuine, in any case.

Kokomi accedes.

The back support is ridiculously good. There’s a soft layer of give that lasts maybe a handspan before hitting solid, evenly distributed resistance.

“Mattress springs?” Kokomi guesses.

“Indeed.” Lisa smiles, satisfied by the answer. “A few Fontainian factories have the right technology for low area pocket springs, and a few were willing to do one-off production runs, for a reasonable markup.”

Kokomi tells Lisa she’d love more details. “How much did it cost?” she adds.

“Ask Hertha, the logistics Captain,” says Lisa. “I don’t recall what we haggled down to.”

Kokomi laughs incredulously.

“You got the Knights to pay?” she says, impressed.

Lisa smiles. “Naturally, my siren friend. I can write a very good requisition request when I have to.”

“You’re sleeping with Sir Hertha,” Kokomi guesses. Then, seeing Lisa’s enigmatic shake of the head, she tries again. “No. With the Acting Grandmaster?”

“A lady never tells,” says Lisa. “Why?, you want courting advice?”

Kokomi laughs. “I’m here to strengthen relations between our respective nations, not complicate them.”

“Are those mutually exclusive?”

“Mmm... I’d rather not commit to that kind of bridge building without some basic cartography. Explain to me which of the Knights are and aren’t dating?”

Lisa sighs. “We’ll need the blackboard for this.”

“Forgive my ignorance, but... what is the proper form of address for yourself, esteemed High Priestess?” asks Sir Alberich, Cavalry Captain of the Knights.

Kokomi stamps on Gorou’s foot before he can say a word.

Jean Gunnhildr, Acting Grandmaster of the Ordo Favonius (essentially the Mondstadtian government), shoots her underling a chastising look, but there’s an undercurrent of relief, then guilt at the relief, on her face.

It’s an amusing choice of question, baiting Kokomi into declaring herself “Her Excellency” while sitting right next to the Yashiro Commission’s next-in-line. Possibly this Captain Alberich is a bored troublemaker, possibly he’s fishing for information on the status differential between Kokomi and Ayaka.

Either way, it’s too bad for him that he’s chosen to try the “harmless fool” routine on her of all people. Kokomi is an expert at “vapid airhead” and will not bested here.

Kokomi blinks pensively at the Mondstadtians. “I’m sorry... mm, I’m not sure I follow? You’re correct, I am the high priestess of Orobashi... is there some religious issue with acknowledging me as such?”

Ayaka, bless her, catches on. (If the rumours about her are to believed, the younger Kamisato knows this game too.) “Oh, Miss Kokomi is a dear friend!” she says enthusiastically, leaning over to hug Kokomi. “You can just call her Kokomi, and I, Ayaka, if you’d like!”

“Oh, but isn’t that improper?” says Kokomi, in exaggerated worry.

“Nonsense!” says Ayaka, “these are all very nice people, they wouldn’t—”

The Cavalry Captain bursts into laughter (to Sir Gunnhildr’s evident mortification). “Touche, touche,” he says, clapping slowly. “Well, I can’t say I was expecting our guests to be such fun.”

(“Sir Alberich,” hisses Sir Gunnhildr.)

“First names, then? I’m Kaeya, and you’ve already met Jean...”

(“Do I strike that from the minutes?” the boy at the corner of the table whispers.

“I... um... perhaps?” the young lady beside him replies. “This is most irregular.”

“So... yes?”

“Um... I’m not sure if the Handbook covers such a scenario ”

“So... should I strike that from the minutes?, or should I leave it there?”

“Um... oh!, oh, goodness me, our guests are nearly out of coffee! Excuse me, Sir Mika.”

“Wait, Miss Noelle, what do I do...?”)

Kokomi wakes with dawn, and knows before she opens her eyes that today is going to be one of those unproductive ones.

The warning signs aren’t tiredness, exactly, nor pain. Those can be there on better days, too. It’s some other sense that Kokomi feels, one beyond the usual five, subconscious the same way General Gorou can tell when it’s raining soon without looking out the window.

Speaking of which.

Kokomi props herself up against some pillows, calls for Gorou, and sends him to inform the Knights she will need to reschedule her meetings for today, and to relay her apologies.

Okay. That’s the most important step sorted out. Now to regroup and replan.

Or maybe... just a quick nap, to see if that helps?

Sliding back down, she falls back asleep.

She is woken up a little while later by some commotion in the common room of their rented flat. Thoma can be heard chatting with two Knights—Sir Amber and Noelle, the frilly one from yesterday—and though their voices are muffled, Kokomi can make out the gist. They were passing by anyway and thought they’d provide some breakfast because sometimes they do that for Miss Lisa, and they had no idea what Miss Kokomi ate so they just brought a lot of different things.

“I didn’t have the heart to explain to them that you don’t like fish,” Thoma says, when he knocks on Kokomi’s door. “Or that valberries and mochi are not Inazuma’s equivalent of jam toast... Or that egg drop soup is nothing like chawanmushi...” He scratches his head and chuckles. “They were so earnest... it would’ve been rude not to accept, wouldn’t it?”

He goes on to say that the soup is an easy liquid breakfast, so perhaps Kokomi might like that. (She gladly accepts.) As for the Fisherman’s Toast, his Lady can have that when she returns from her walk. And the frankly baffling quantity of pinecones and valberries that Amber and Noelle dropped into his hands can probably be... okay he has no idea what they were thinking, but he can probably turn them into a cake.

“Thank you for not letting them see me like this,” says Kokomi. “I’m grateful for the gesture, truly, but I wouldn’t want them to see...”

“Of course,” says Thoma smoothly, as if Kokomi’s lethargic spell is the most normal thing in the world. “And thank you for trusting me to see you like this.”

“You’re bringing me breakfast,” says Kokomi, nodding at the tray Thoma has set down. “How would that work without you seeing me?”

“Oh, quite easily,” Thoma replies. “Ayaka and Ayato have had me brew and serve tea while blindfolded. It’s mostly a balance test. You get used to it.”

Kokomi gives Thoma a look which hopefully conveys her bemusement in full.

“...they lied about that being an Inazuman tradition, didn’t they,” he sighs.

“Look on the bright side. I think that’s their way of saying they like you.”

“An ‘unproductive’ day?” says Lisa the next morning, when the two of them meet up for breakfast. “You rested and so averted what could have been many more awful days, and that’s unproductive?”

“Sophistry,” says Kokomi. “It’s... mmm, oh my gods, this toast...”

Lisa titters. “I know, right? You can be quite sparing with the butter, it’s quite fluffy already.”

Kokomi takes that advice. “It’s not unproductive in that nothing was achieved,” she clarifies. “But... I have responsibilities. Things I’d much rather get done on a given day than delay.”

“Ah, you’re effectively the head of Watatsumi’s government, aren’t you?” says Lisa.

“Vassal state politics aside, yes.”

“And that’s a hereditary role, right, my little siren?”

“Mm.” Kokomi smiles despite herself. “‘Your’ siren, Miss Lisa? That’s a little soon, don’t you think?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not nearly so possessive as I may sound,” Lisa purrs. “It’s more... an indulgence, you know? I like that way of talking, and why deny myself something so fun when there’s so much else I miss out on?”

“So I definitely don’t need to worry about a surprise betrothal or anything?”

Laughter. “Indeed not.”

“And we are splitting the bill, right?”

“Nice try, darling. You’re my guest.”

They continue the conversation as they finish their breakfast. Then Sara, who runs the restaurant, comes by to ask if Lisa wants her usual tea (she does) and whether Kokomi wants anything to drink, herself. Kokomi declines coffee and inquires about tea, and with Lisa and Sara’s combined advice she decides on a simple dandelion brew. It comes in a stout little teapot whose lid nearly falls off as Kokomi pours.

Lisa returns the conversation to talk of productivity and responsibilities.

“Jean has inherited some weighty responsibilities, a bit like you.” The librarian shakes her head and sighs. “It seems like a terrible bother.”

“It is what it is,” Kokomi says. “For as long as I can remember, I was told that one day Watatsumi’s wellbeing would be in my hands. I’ve never had any illusions about being able to do what I want with my life.”

“So this role you’ve had thrust upon you... It’s not what you want to be doing?”

Kokomi crosses her arms. “It’s not like I’m against it! I mean, I enjoy a lot of parts of the job.” Planning. Strategising. “And... I still find time to do other things. Pearl diving. Reading.”

“But it’s not ‘doing what you want with your life’,” Lisa quotes back at her. “So what would be? What do you really want to achieve?”

“Exactly what I’m supposed to,” Kokomi replies without hesitation. “Protect Watatsumi. See it thrive.”

“And if you managed that? Found the right people, delegated the right duties...?”

This is not a topic Kokomi enjoys talking about. It always makes her angry. (Why wouldn’t it? Thinking about what one can never have is unpleasant.)

What Kokomi wants to be doing with her time are the things that make her feel alive. Getting inside the heads of complete strangers, and charting a course to victory... not just on the battlefield, but on the negotiating table, too. Turning ragtag collections of individuals into self directed teams equally capable of raiding supply lines or running a festival.

And she gets to do that, sometimes. But she does so much more that is draining, that anyone else could probably do better. Dealing with people face to face. Bland inspirational speeches. Ceremonies. Meetings that might as well be ceremonies.

“I want to... just be an advisor in the background,” she says eventually. “Military affairs, big-picture politics... but not in the fray, not nearly as often. Not being paraded around and shaking hands without doing anything.”

As she says it, she makes the mistake of allowing herself to imagine it, and... oh. She could paint such a detailed picture of how she’d put herself to good use, of how she’d operate at her best. She must have been carrying that picture around with her for quite some time because now that Kokomi is talking about it, more ridiculous details spill out.

Kokomi describes changes in bureaucracy that would let her focus her attention differently. Enough specialised subordinates, picked for purpose, that delegation would actually be a feasible strategy. She talks about flights of fancy, too. Uninterrupted weekends spent pearl-diving. Joint military exercises with the Tenryou Commission. Kokomi is full of want and now that she is staring that mess of want in the face, it’s not so ugly a thing as she thought, but it grips her, and that grip hurts. She talks, and perhaps she cries a little at one point, and perhaps her tea turns cold while she’s trying to explain what she means by “operating inside an adversary’s stimulus-response loop” and how she wants to reform the entire local government the way she molded the militia with her bare hands, and perhaps it feels little bit like swimming, weightless, so very dark and cosy in the depths, so much easier to breathe.

Half an hour later, their tea is finished. As per her earlier insistence, Lisa pays.

Kokomi catches up to her as she’s handing change to Sara.

“Melon-cauliflower stew?” Sara is saying. “I don’t think that’s ever been on our menu...”

Lisa’s eyes flash. “I’ll repeat,” she says, voice icy, “Vera’s Melancholy, Volume Two. Fantasy novel. Trip to the stars. Sound familiar, darling?”

Kokomi watches, befuddled, as Sara’s face goes whiter than the god-bleached soil of Watatsumi’s shores.

“I... oh Barbatos, please have mercy,” Sara whimpers, and have her eyes...?—yes, her eyes have taken on that delicious prey look, the look of an insect at the mercy of a boot.

“What in Teyvat is going on?” Kokomi whispers, as Sara scrambles into the back rooms to retrieve something.

“Multitasking,” Lisa replies.

Noelle, the Knight-in-training serving as the Ordo Favonius’s unofficial maid and housekeeper, bustles into the room carrying a motley pile of sundries.

“Ah, your Excellency,” she says, voice bright and cheery. “Master Jean said to show you these old reports. I’ll set them down here.”

“Mm, thank you,” says Kokomi, glancing up from the latest volume of A Legend of Sword to flash the Knight-in-training a grateful smile.

“Do you want some tea? I just brewed...”

Noelle trails off, her face paling.

“Oh, dear, um... Lady Sang... uh, that is, your Excellency?” she stammers.

Kokomi quirks an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“This is... well, the thing is...” Noelle lowers her voice conspiratorially, whispering: “You’re lying on the nap lounge.”

“I... know...?”

“If Miss Lisa finds out, I’m... I’m not sure your diplomatic status will... I mean, I’ll protect you if need be, but...”

“Oh!” Kokomi gives the Knight-in-training a reassuring smile. “Lisa invited me to make use of it.”

Noelle blinks. “Oh!” she says. “Oh, I see! Goodness. Um— forgive my impertinence—”

“No apologies required,” says Kokomi, in the same voice she uses to soothe Gorou when he’s flustered. “I might take you up on that tea, though.”

“One sugar? Two?— Oh, no need to get up, there’s an end table right here, let me move that for you—”

“I had the next dozen papers planned out,” says Lisa. “Supplementary investigations into the movement of Elemental energy from environment to Vision to wielder and back again. Quantitative experiments, establishing the extent to which Visions enhance existing thaumaturgy. Perhaps even devising a standardised metric for mastery over Elemental reactions.”

“But then you had to stop?”

“Oh, I didn’t have to stop after graduation.” Lisa’s lips purse together. “There’s the rub. I could have kept going. I could still keep going. If I went back to using my power properly, I could be chasing down the fundamental laws of the Elements just as voraciously as I did in my student days.”

Kokomi nods, motioning to Lisa to go on.

“Three years, maybe four if I’m lucky,” Lisa says. “Three years of top tier research output. Of advancing the frontiers of Elemental theory. I don’t just mean advancing them faster than they otherwise would have. I mean... advancing them. The kind of thing that changes the course of Elementalism, of technology, of...”

Lisa closes her eyes and takes a few deep breaths. Slowly, the fingers that were clenched white around her teaspoon begin to relax.

“And then after three years?” Kokomi asks, knowing full well that she shouldn’t, this is neither the time nor place.

Lisa answers: “And then nothing.”

The last word is pronounced with the finality of one plus one is two, heavy with truth.

On some level, it’s exactly what Kokomi had been expecting her to say.

After a while, Lisa takes a long sip of her tea. She sets it down on the saucer, meets Kokomi’s eyes, and resumes speaking.

“I very nearly continued, Kokomi, despite knowing the costs. Even though it scared me—I knew that no matter how much I craved erudition, I didn’t crave it nearly enough to pay more than I already had. But I very nearly kept going, regardless.” She interlaces her fingers. “Do you know why?”

Kokomi doesn’t dare guess.

“I thought I owed it to myself, owed it to... science. The wider world, in some sense. Does that make sense? I thought because I could, I had to.”

Ah. This feeling is one Kokomi knows. It’s the same one that hounds her in her every moment of rest.

“You thought you were obligated,” she ventures. “You thought your responsibilities—obligations—mattered more than whatever the cost of living up to them was.”

Lisa nods. “You see why I worry for you,” she says.

“But you didn’t,” Kokomi continues, emboldened. “You didn’t take that path, the one you thought you owed it to yourself to take. Because...” She ventures a guess. “...because perhaps there were other things you owed yourself more?”

Lisa stares at Kokomi with a mix of fondness and tiredness.

“No, Kokomi,” she says. “I don’t owe myself a damned thing.”

The afternoon light bathes one side of her face in honey and chamomile. The shadows at the edge of her cheekbones, by contrast, are a bitter violet, one that uncannily seems to match the witch’s eyes.

“...not unless I want to,” she amends. “Do you understand, Kokomi? If I choose to pursue one goal instead of a loftier one, I haven’t failed myself. I haven’t failed anyone.”

Kokomi feels like she understands, but when she opens her mouth to say as much, she falters.

Instead, she says, “It’s a lovely way of seeing the world.”

She ignores the way Lisa’s lips press together sympathetically.

All is according to predictions, Shizuru writes. The Kanjou Commission traded the import tariff markups for their nepotistic value add tax, and we’ve made inroads with the beneficiaries. They’re indicating they’ll play ball.

That’s it for the first draft?, Kokomi replies, carefully entering her writing into the little fish-box communicator.

That’s it, confirms Shizuru. First draft is up for public perusal. Citizenry seems positive after our joint education campaign with Kamaji. The biggest business groups have been in the loop from the start, so we anticipate no more than a few objection letters.

Writes Kokomi: Thank you. I don’t know where I’d be without you.

Shizuru’s response takes barely half a minute: Still atop the same throne of skulls. More tired, though.

Kokomi smiles and locks the communicator away.

It’s a relief knowing things aren’t falling apart in her absence.

No, more than a relief.

It’s hope.

Hope for what?, she wonders, but the feeling keeps its mysteries to itself.

The biggest sign that the Knights have acclimated to Kokomi’s presence is that they occasionally take meetings while she’s in the room. Case in point: today.

It’s ridiculous from an operational security standpoint, as Eula the Reconnaissance Captain points out—and Kokomi, half conscious, smiles in approval; at least someone has their head on straight.

Naturally, Kaeya interjects with some silver tongued nonsense about joint intelligence sharing agreements (ones that are still several revisions away from being called drafts, let alone being signed). And besides, he says, and Kokomi doesn’t need her eyes open to know he’s got an obnoxious smirk going, this is just the Abyss we’re talking about, not some political maelstrom.

(“Lady Kamisato has been helping Master Jean hunt hydro mages...” Amber muses. Eula folds shortly thereafter, muttering about how Lisa did say to treat Kokomi like a shorter version of herself.)

In any case, it’s rather lovely not being kicked out and being able to half listen to battle plans and whatnot while drifting in and out of slumber. Kokomi resolves she should get a nap lounge of own, back at home. And more importantly, she resolves to ask Lisa exactly how she managed to get everyone acting so normal about the fits of lethargy.

“The building supplies are of no use to them,” Kaeya is saying. “This is all steel from Natlan via Fontaine. Heavy stuff. Not suited to how the Hilichurl tribes quickly make and tear down their camps.”

“So they... they’re doing this just to spite us?” says the young lad by Eula’s side.

“Bait,” says Eula. “They want us spread thin. An ambush, a diversion, or both.”

“A diversion for what?” replies Kaeya. “Another attempt at the city?”

“No way,” says Amber. “If they were gathering numbers, I’d have been seeing more of them in Whispering Woods.”

The discussion continues like this for a while.

Kokomi opens her eyes, glances at the maps set up on the conference table and walls. It’s all pleasantly viewable while horizontal on Lisa’s sofa, and Kokomi admits she’s a little jealous of how easy the accomodation is, how nobody in the room questions her position there beyond that initial discussion about Lisa’s presence.

“The topography is up to date?” she mutters, blinking cobwebs from her eyes,

“Yes,” says Eula. She raises an eyebrow but seems otherwise unfazed by Kokomi’s sudden entrance into the discussion. “I vouch for Mika’s work, and it’s only a few months old.”

“Divide and conquer,” Kokomi says. The talking is a bit dizzying but it’s not too bad so long as she remains horizontal. “The lack of alternate paths through the area... if the forward party makes it past that vale, the Hilichurls just have to hold two choke points and they cut off the safer supply lines. Give it a fortnight before the Knights can coordinate from the other side, and it’s...”—she yawns—“it’s easy pickings, unless you’ve committed a lot of Knights to the excursion.”

Kokomi closes her eyes again before the tiredness forces her to do so. Better to choose it for oneself.

“...huh,” says Amber. “It’s the sort of underhanded trick you’d pull, Eula. And they can coordinate well enough, if Abyss Mages are around.”

Eula mutters something about the impropriety of a foreign guest trying to show up the Knights, which—if Kokomi remembers Lisa right—means she’s impressed.

“Lady Sangonomiya,” says Eula, “I’m told you’re a seasoned general. What would your counterplay be? Assuming we want those building materials back in the next few weeks before there’s time for the Hilichurls to scrap them.”

“Depends on their command structure,” says Kokomi. “If it’s disparate tribes unified under a shared banner, then I’d suggest...”

She trails off and yawns.

“I’m so sorry, I’m feeling faint,” says Kokomi. “Is there, um, any chance...?”

“We’ll poke you in fifty minutes,” says Amber without hesitation.

And once again Kokomi wonders how Lisa Minci has pulled this off, to be surrounded by such astoundingly kind people.

(She has Gorou, of course. She has Shizuru. But no amount feels like enough.)

She will later ask Lisa exactly this. Lisa will begin to say something inane about everyone being fundamentally kind, then pause.

“No,” Lisa will say thoughtfully. “No, I suppose that’s not a universal. I’d never have made a home like this in Sumeru.” A minute of silence later, she will add: “Maybe I could have but I wasn’t ready. Maybe it took coming back to Mondstadt for me to be ready to seek out kindness.”

And she will take Kokomi’s hand in hers, and say:

“I think there’s at least some truth there. It’s easier to find kindness in others when we’re already receiving it from ourselves. When we stop judging ourselves for who we aren’t and start forgiving ourselves for...”

“For...?” Kokomi will prompt the librarian as she trails off.

“I’m not sure,” Lisa will reply, puzzled. “Back then it felt like there was something I had to forgive myself for. But I don’t have any idea what.”

(In the here and now, Kokomi falls asleep on the nap couch, confident in Amber’s promise to wake her later. It’s one of those little promises that means the world.)

“I’d ask if we could keep her,” says Kaeya, while Kokomi is napping, “but one terrifying sleeping genius is more than enough for me.”

Kokomi and Gorou sit at a cafe, one near the Knights headquarters with an excellent view of the nearest windmill. Birds occasionally flit between the windmill’s ever-turning arms, as if showing off that they’re not afraid of any danger.

The expression on Gorou’s face is like someone being told he’s won a hundred million Mora. Or like a dog-eared general finding out Yae Miko has gotten bored of the whole Miss Hina thing and has moved on to other people to torment. Incredulity and an “am I being pranked?” paranoia layered thickly over the tiniest glimmer of hope.

“You’ve told Shizuru, too?” he asks Kokomi.

“Yes,” says Kokomi.

Gorou nods slowly, taking this in. With one hand he takes a sip of his iced chocolate—it upsets his stomach but his sweet tooth always overrides his better judgement. With his other hand, he discreetly pinches himself on the arm, but not so discreetly she doesn’t see.

“What prompted the change of heart?” he asks.

Kokomi smiles.

“Is it really a change of heart?” she replies. “I’ve always preferred studying ecosystems, not their components. Shoals, not individual fish.”

The most important things in the world aren’t individuals in isolation: they’re complex systems with unintuitive dynamics, and little is more satisfying than taking those unintuitive dynamics and intuiting them, understanding how they move, feeling out the strengths and weaknesses of those systems, knowing where they’re stable and where leverage lies.

(Kokomi is at her happiest when a brush of her fingers against the water’s surface causes a typhoon on the other side of the world.)

“You’re right,” says Gorou, “but... um, that’s not what I meant. I meant...”

The prey look is in his eyes, but he pushes past it. That’s called trust.

“You were always reluctant to share your burdens,” he continues. “You said it was your bloodline’s duty, and... what changed?”

“I don’t know,” says Kokomi. She looks towards the windmill, or rather, past them, eyes glazing over slightly. She could fall asleep here if she wanted. Perhaps she will.

“Because of Ms Minci?” Gorou asks.

Kokomi shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not. Causality is complicated. But I’m sure she’s a factor.”

Gorou nods. “So... how will this work?”

“When I get back, and my resolve slips, you and Shizuru will remind me just how serious I was about stepping back,” says Kokomi. “Acting more as a figurehead, helping train the shrine maidens to take over the smaller decisions. A functioning bureaucracy, something that can outlast me. You and Shizuru, you’ll need to remind me how good an idea this is.”

Gorou laughs, heartfelt and gentle. “Because you’re going to be stubborn again?”

“Know thyself,” says Kokomi, smiling with no small amount of mirth.

“That is indeed your expertise,” replies Gorou.

They sit in silence, Kokomi sipping at her juice; Gorou, his iced chocolate.

“I’m glad you took this trip,” says Gorou.

The windmill creaks onward, slow and steady.

“Me too,” says Kokomi.

“I have a slight confession to make,” says Kokomi.

Lying next to her in the shade of an apple tree, Lisa hums curiously. “And what might that be?”

“You’re... not exactly my type,” says Kokomi.

The sentiment is slightly undermined by their intertwined fingers, squeezing and stroking.

Lisa smiles, unfazed. “C’est la vie. And what is your type?”

“Meek.” Kokomi thinks. “No, not meek. Tamed.”

Lisa laughs delightedly. “Ah, a woman after my own heart. I...” Her eyes glaze over, somewhere far in the past. “...yes, I sympathise.”

“What’s a type anyway?” Kokomi muses aloud.

Lisa mulls it over. “A predictable preference?”

“Mmm. A general can’t afford to be too predictable.”

“That’s how they get you?” Lisa asks.

“That’s how they get you,” Kokomi agrees.

“Then you’ll be delighted to know, my little siren, that you’re not my type either.”

“And what,” says Kokomi, eyes sparkling, “is your type?”

“Well,” says Lisa, tilting her head, “closer to my height, for one thing.”

“What a shame.”

They kiss anyway. There’s no hunger to it, no passion, but there’s peace and care and all the other things that make the simple act of pressing lips together meaningful.

After all, there’s more to life to hunger and passion. Sometimes things are quiet, slow. Sometimes that’s more than enough.

(“Aww, look at that, they fell asleep holding hands.”

“Are you mocking them, Outrider? Ill-mannered of you as usual.”

“See, look, and the sunbeam and everything! It’s like a scene from a fairy tale...”

“Shh! Keep your voice down.”

“Aww, sounds like you’re embarrassed you find it cute, too...”

“I... hmph, that’s besides the point. Amber, do you want to be responsible for waking Lisa up mid nap?”

“...ohhh. Okay, yeah, let’s leave them be—oh shoot her eye opened for a second there, run run run...”)

“...what about you?” says Ayaka, one evening. “Has this trip been productive for you so far, dear friend?”

Kokomi hums. “Mmm... yes. In fact, I’m thinking of staying on another few weeks.”

“I’m glad,” says Ayaka. Gorou voices his agreement, and Kokomi finds it in herself to believe them.