Chapter Text
SPLASH!
It always begins with that sound.
Not a scream. There is no warning, either. Just her whole world, splitting open with a SPLASH! Enormous, final, the sound a body makes when it hits water from a great height, when something was suspended into the air and now it’s suddenly, certainly not, and Columbina is always running, even before her eyes find the source of the sound.
The circles on the water are still moving outwards, and the ocean is a deep black and immense, further into the distance than her eyes can see. So she stops searching, and looks down.
There is something in the water.
Descending. Not fast - the water slows it down, the way it always does, graceless and unstoppable - and it is dark down there, the light failing to reach its borders, and what she can see is fragmented: the distant shape of a coat, loose hair, spiraling in the current as the body dragging it goes down.
The pale flash of a hand, extended upwards.
She- knows who that is, that grip in her stomach like a body preparing to listen to bad news before they are told. She knows. Her body understands before her mind consents - but she can’t let herself know that. Not yet. She can’t. There is still a moment, a handful of horrible seconds, where she hopes it is anyone else. Someone she doesn’t care about. Something she could give up. Someone that is not - that, please, cannot be -
The coat.
She knows that coat.
She has seen it, a hundred of times over, draped over a chair in the workshop, thrown over her own shoulders once as a joke that had not been one entirely, folded with the precise cleanness of someone who has strong opinions about fabric and how to care for it, and who doesn’t care if the rest think it is dramatic and -
NO, she thinks. A simple thought, a door opening with a gust of air. Everything rushes in, please, no, no no no! Not her! Please!
Columbina jumps at the water.
Her body does, the one holding the authority of the Moon, the one that bends the tide and calls down stars and does thing no human being should be able to do and does them easily - it falls to its knees and hands, and the cold wall is total, and immediate, and not a physical thing at all, instead the cold of being wrong, and too late, and -
She crashes against the tide, and it does not relent.
And Columbina is strong. Ever since her rebirth, she knows she is, she knows herself capable of things beyond human’s mind and body, capable in a way that she hasn’t dare thought much of yet because there is no reason to. Water below, as easily as the Moon above, should turn and bend at the whims of her mere desire.
So why does it not?!
Her hands move, and the motion is correct, diving into the black, cold water - and she is still exactly where she started, distant from the shape below, still descending slowly, taking the coat and the hair and the pale hand deeper into the dark. She sees it. Sees it crystal clear, perfectly, and the water just won’t allow her through.
Please, she thinks, over and over like a misplaced prayer, or perhaps says, the words dissolving like salt into her mouth before they are even finished in her tongue. The water doesn’t even push back - it does not resist, nor fight against her will. It simply stands, horrible and unfairly persistent, in a way that absolves all her force and returns nothing to her, continuing to exist around her as an impassable wall.
Columbina reaches still, her arms extended so far it hurts in the muscles of her back, fingers spread to their very limit - she is so, so close, almost enough to reach her fingerprints under the water - and she is not. She hasn’t moved. The distance between her outstretched hand and the figure below is exactly the same it always is.
The hair spirals upward, pale in the dark.
Sandrone, she names, and this time, the water’s coldness pierces her skin straight to bone and meat, and it’s like the wind breeze hits her from all sides and all fronts, all Sandrone, Sandrone, Sandrone, echoing against the space and ribs inside of her, a tide breaking against the sand - please.
Please, the goddess of Nod-Krai begs, every authority she has ever held brought to her feet to be used on the simple wish of get back her, and the water hears all her prayers and sees all her power and does nothing.
She feels that power, bursting right under her skin, pulsating around her back at the rhythm of her hopeless heart, even here in a place that is not even an actual place. Power, raw and present, humming its increasingly angry low note in the back side of her throat. She has never doubted it. She feels the humble way in which the very Moon itself crumbles in front of her command, ready to cast down her enemies and bring all she wises to the palm of her hand.
Below her, or perhaps above? The dark has deepened, and she can still see the pale shape of a hand, fingers open towards her, and Columbina -
Columbina doesn’t stop.
This is the worst part.
Not the helplessness, though it is so much bigger than her - nor the cold, or the dark or the water that stands as a barrier between her and her heart. She leaps diving herself downward. She keeps reaching. She says her name into the holy night, and watches it swallow it whole, like an offer of a sacrifice, and keeps fighting, because the alternative is standing still, oh so very still, and let fate pass her by and she cannot - will not - refuses to -
The hand disappears. The dark takes it into its cold embrace.
Quietly, unhurriedly, the way the night takes everything: simply by design. As surely as the Moon follows the path of the Sun.
Columbina looks around, fails to find her, and screams into the water.
Of course she does not hear it. She feels it, reaching into nothing, and the bubbles coming from the salt of her mouth cover her gaze and threaten to drown her, and she fights and cries and struggles and -
☀︎
The Hall of the Welkin Moon is… quiet, at this hour.
Well. It has been quiet for a month, by now. Lauma won’t say that out loud, but she has figured out the new routine perhaps before even Columbina did, the knowledge a heavy weight around her shoulders alongside the cloth she uses to come see her daily as a shield against the light drizzle, her footsteps a little too careful on the slippery stone floor, as if it would break under her path.
If Lauma has realized… anything, really, even when Columbina swears she has nothing new to share with her, she has not yet said so - and the goddess doesn’t think it’s a lie. Dreams and nightmares are not real, and therefore not something worth sharing at all. Neither has Nefer, even though curiosity burns bright in her emerald gaze the few times she has gone over to pick Lauma before the rain worsens to walk her home, hand in hand.
The Moonchanter brings offerings, too. More often than not.
Flowers from the Frostmoon Scions, Iceleas perhaps, and warmed meals wrapped in cloth that Columbina has let other animals share while pretending she doesn’t see them eat. Once, a week ago, or perhaps two or maybe a month - she took to her a small, earnest drawing of a dove with a broken wing from one of the children of the tribe, who had apparently understood that art was an appropriate answer to a grief that didn’t belong to any of them, even if they paid its price. Columbina had let Lauma hang it from some of the veins in the stone wall behind her nest of a bed, and there it had stayed as the days passed by.
It was still there, slightly curled at the corners now.
… What was Columbina doing, again?
… Ah, that’s right.
She sits at the entrance of her cave, watching the rain fall.
Columbina had been sitting there for a large portion of the past four weeks, something she is perfectly aware of, and that she finds it hard to particularly care about amending. Outside, Nod-Krai breathes its slow, cold breath - the frost pines heavy with snow, the distant lights of Nasha Town blurring a little in the far edge of her sight, bursting with activity in spite of the rain and the never-ending night coming with the moon raising; oh, and the moon, pulling its faithful tide of pale light across the rooftops.
All hers, technically. All of this, subject to the authority of the hand resting loose and open in her lap, capable - the people of Nod-Krai will tell this to anyone willing to hear, she believes, with great and earnest faith in the goddess they saw conquer death itself - of anything.
Anything.
She has thought of it, more than she would like to admit. In the sleepless, darkest parts of the nights that have gone on too long. The word turns over in her mind like a stone against a current, wearing it tired and smooth. Anything. The power to end winters early, to call the moon closer, to stop the flow of rain. To mend, change, turn the great wheel of sky and season with the notion of a single wish cast in the right direction. Nod-Krai believes this about her. The Frostmoon Scions believe it about her too, their faith warm and absolute as heart fire.
Columbina hasn’t corrected them, of course. It serves the land well to have someone still with faith on it.
But she knows, in the way she’d recognize a wound is deep before she looked at it by the feeling of the blood running down her skin and the numbing sensation of pain and the desire to lap at it until it closes or takes you down with it. There is one, and trust, only thing that the Welkin Moon knows herself incapable to mend.
She presses her palm flat against the stone underneath. Outside, just barely out of reach, a kuuhenki drifts past, slow and luminous in the diminishing sunset light, and pauses - she feels its attention, childlike and oppressive like a held breath - before it continues on. Even they have learned to give her this. Room to be still. Room to be something that does not ask anything of anyone else anymore.
She is cold. She doesn’t particularly mind anymore.
She stands still, and laps at her wound.
Arlecchino leaves on a cold Tuesday sunset.
She comes to say goodbye, which Columbina appreciates more than she is able to express in words, through the cotton-wool feeling that has taken up residence somewhere between heart and ribs. The Knave stands in the entrance of the Hall with her hands folded and her posture precise, unbothered by the light rain hitting her shoulders. It’s the same posture she has held since she was Peruere, and the world was different and smaller and full of sharper edges.
She looks at Columbina the way few people look at her, how few people dare to: without the shine of worship in it, and instead just steady, careful attention, polished by time.
“Project Stuzha calls for my attention under Her Majesty’s will,” she says. It is true: Columbina knows it is, and that though she now lives free of the Harbinger’s title and the purpose that comes with it, the same will never apply to Arlecchino, not until Death itself states its claim on her.
When she nods her approval, she is surprised to find that she means it.
“I know.”
“Stay safe.” A pause. A glance, to the cup of tea, completely untouched, that Columbina holds between two hands, and to the one by its side, Arlecchino’s, by now empty. If she also looks at the third cup, instead full of coffee, that lies in the small wooden table, she doesn’t voice it. “Lauma has sworn her intentions to keep in touch, and I have little need to doubt her words.”
“Lauma worries for me,” Columbina giggles, shaking her head. “Perhaps too much.”
“Lauma is correct to.” Arlecchino doesn’t soften it, and Columbina is glad of it. She had worried, once, that after everything - after Nod-Krai, after her death and rebirth, after her new found strength and the place in the world that came with it -, Arlecchino might begin to handle her like something out of touch. It’s great being wrong about something. “I will keep in touch with you, too.”
“I believe in that.” Columbina tilts her head up, and tires for a smile, managing what she hopes is something in the familiar shape of one. “Go. Your children are waiting.”
Arlecchino’s gaze lingers in her for a moment longer.
“Columbina.”
“Yes, Arlecchino?”
“I… miss them, too. May we meet again.”
Silence is all the answer she earns back.
Knowing she won’t get more, she bows to Columbina, nods, precise and final, and off she goes, the Hall quiet again.
Columbina opens her eyes, and lets her gaze follow her until she is barely more than a silhouette on the way to Hiisi Island’s port, and then looks up. The sun is shyly resting in the horizon, and Nod-Krai sleeps through the late coldness, mostly. One or two late lights stand in Nasha Town, and in the distant, constant Tower of the Lightkeepers, and that familiar, slow drift of kuuhenki continues surrounding the isles and going up and down through it, pulsing at the slow rhythm of her own heart. The rain lights up; it doesn’t stop, and Columbina doesn’t know if it ever will, but she thinks that a drizzle instead of a storm is preferable if it will keep Arlecchino safe from thunderclouds in her journey to the North.
The Traveler left two weeks ago, too.
She knew it would happen, of course. They always leave - it’s in the nature of the Title, really. A force running with the wind, racing through the world of Teyvat from mountains to forest to sea until every corner has been seen. And that has its own kind of loneliness, perhaps, different from the kind Columbina knows, but still a layer of it.
And now, Arlecchino is gone.
And, every morning, Lauma comes, and every morning Columbina is still sitting at the entrance of her Hall, her new temple of isolation, watching her talk to the air in hopes of an answer and then go to fulfill her duties, and Nod-Krai breathes under the rainy weight of her grief, and she thinks, she should be here.
Nod-Krai speaks of grief and eternal goodbyes with flowers and candles and songs written about the final moments together, a light guiding up a path. Columbina wishes her could be similar. Hers is more specific in nature: she should be with her, in that very Hall, investigating the kuuhenki, and arguing about coffee against tea, and she is not, because Columbina is not goddess enough.
She should be here.
She is not.
And the word anything turns over and over in Columbina’s mind until it loses all sort of meaning.
She closes her eyes.
Outside, the moon pulls the light slowly westward. She can feel it - that great, slow movement around Teyvat, the turn of the sky under her fingerprints a constant knowledge in the back of her mind. The authority of the dark side of the Moon hums near, low and constant, patient as deep water. It’s been patient for a very long time now.
Grief roars in her stomach and presses tears out of her eyes, and Columbina, alone, doesn’t really find it within herself to fight back. She sobs, and presses her face into her hands, and cries and cries and wonders, what was it all about?
If she knew her actions would lead her here!
If she knew it would all be for- for-
This!
Please, please, oh Moon, she thinks, prays, commands. She is not sure there is a difference anymore. It all leads back to this. Take me back, or let me rest!
The moon turns.
I just wanted…! I needed to…!
Sandrone’s cold, motionless body. A key that won’t move anymore, no matter how much she begs her to, even as she carries her in gentle arms and cries and screams as she holds to the only thing she had left to remember, nothing but a corpse to bury and -
… to say… goodbye…
Nod-Krai takes a deep breath under the rain.
Columbina’s heart stops, and falls into the darkness.
☀︎
The warmth is the first thing that differs.
Not the pale, winter warmth of the Hall, nor the careful heat of the tea Lauma brings her as her first thing to do in a usual morning. No, no, this is… different. Layered. A warmth belonging to a room actually occupied by someone who is always running hot, that can’t possibly understand the cold. Her own hum to herself is over-passed by someone’s angry rambles under her breath.
Columbina tilts her head, eyes sternly closed. Why did she ever open them?
The room is… familiar, in a way that is difficult to prove where she is. Smaller than the Hall. The particular grain of the wood in the walls and underneath them, held by marble under it, echoes sound and holds together warmth. The light comes from open curtains to her left, early sunlight tin and gold and so, so warm. She knows this place.
… No, no.
She knows this room.
The smell of oil fills her nose, thick and oppressive, demanding; metal, too, and the faint sweetness of burning wood, underneath a particular herbal scene Columbina recalls including once in the supply shipments she asked of the Tsaritsa because she had noticed it was running low. She breathes it in, and something in her chest cracks in recognition, like ice under a heavy boot.
She turns her head to the rambling voice.
Sandrone is at her workbench.
Of- of course she is. She is always there, whenever she can be, either reading or working on both, one text open in the table while her hands work something without really needing to look, fingers expert at her craft. Her attention is split in the comfortable confidence of someone who has long since stopped pretending she was capable of merely one thing at the time.
Columbina is not like that. Instead, she focuses all she has on her - her hair is… loose? Loosely held, at least, in a messy high ponytail instead of her usual braided bun, and she is bent slightly over her chair fixing a small robot in her hands.
And she is here.
She is there, and alive, and Columbina’s throat closes entirely.
She sits up, which disturbs the blanket she apparently was sleeping under, the one she remember from - not Sandrone’s room. The Flagship, perhaps? Back in her Hall? - and, and she knows this room, the big warm bed and the cushions to the side, and the workshop that takes half of the room, in an era not quite older but not after, either.
From before, back when the formula was still a problem, not a solution, and Columbina had been spending her time in her room under the technically accurate idea of visiting -
“Finally awake!”
Sandrone doesn’t even move. She has that particular tone of hers that she liked to use with Columbina, stating things without exactly expecting proof against, and her throat closes around the desperate rhythm of her heart.
“You’ve been there for most of the day. Don’t you have better things to do?”
“… rather than offer you my company, Sandy?” Columbina answers, when she finally finds her voice, and it sounds strange in her ears, as if she were speaking from under water. Too careful, too, full of something that she is trying very hard to hold in the right shape.
Is that really her?
Sandrone tilts her body towards her, without exactly turning back. Instead, she throws a quick look at her direction, perhaps to assess - something she is always doing, and it is so her, so entirely and painfully her - before returning her attention to the mechanism in her hand. “I made some tea. It has probably gone cold by now, because you sleep like you’re the Harbinger of Dreams, but it is there if you want some.”
“I like cold tea.”
“You don’t. At all.”
“It’s a matter of personal preference, Sandrone.”
“Cold tea is not your personal preference. Or anyone’s, for that matter. What’s even the logic of it? The point of tea is actually being served and taken warm, why would you…?”
The crack in her chest is widening.
She can feel it, and she is going to - no, no, she will not cry in her dream, she refuses to, because she cannot waste a single moment of this. Of Sandrone’s familiar, rambling voice, and the warm blanket reeking of her aroma and the warmth of the bonfire and -
She gets up, crosses the room, and puts her arms around Sandrone’s shoulders from behind, pressing her into a hug against her chest.
Carefully, because she always is in the matters regarding Sandrone, but fully, knowing the precious thing in her hands. Her nose buries in the back of her neck to breathe in the floral scent of her hair, her arms loose enough to have a chance to escape, holding exactly as hard she is able, allowed to, without making it a thing that requires asking for permission.
Sandrone goes very, very still.
She always did this, whenever Columbina held her. Completely lose track of her thoughts and - and Columbina has watched her do this a hundred times and the fondness for her routine burns, a stillness core to their hugs that makes them theirs and lasts three seconds, maybe four.
And, though then Sandrone shakes just enough to tell her that she needs to let go, Columbina feels the sense of her tickle all the way up her arms, her hands itching for her to dive in again, hug her against her chest and challenge the Tsaritsa herself to come and try take her, the heart against her ribs roaring in defiance. Take her from me, it seems to say, to the whole of Teyvat, I won’t let even the Principles get a single hold of her ever aga -
“Don’t we have a tea party today?” Columbina asks, stepping aside of Sandrone, dragging the words out of the back of her throat as if memory and soul fight against an imaginary enemy.
She is hoping she is guessing the day well, trusting that feeling deep within her guts that seems to know what memory this dream draws from. Or, perhaps, it’s simply her body trusting in the routine they held, once; it if is a day with a party, Capitano will arrive first, early as he always is, perhaps dragging Tartaglia with him in tow, or maybe with Rosalyne having her arm and his intertwined as they discuss the coldness of his skin. Arlecchino, too, will eventually come and meet them all as the moon sets in the horizon, and the whole afternoon will be gone in the comfortable argument-shaped conversation they all had, once, in a life that existed once upon a time.
“I am aware of my own social calendar, yes.”
“Just checking,” she murmurs, smiling. Seems her body was correct.
“I have two more components I intend to finish in the meantime.“ A pause. “Will you go back to sleep?”
“I don’t wanna.”
Another pause. She can almost hear Sandrone arching her eyebrows. “Go bother someone else, or help me out then.”
Columbina hums, taking a seat alongside her. The workshop smell is everywhere. Outside of the room, she thinks she can hear the distant sound of Nasha Town beginning its morning, the creak of market stalls opening, the kuuhenki humming around her cave, and Nod-Krai as a whole breathes, going on about its ordinary and irreplaceable routine.
She ignores it, in favor of Sandrone.
The texture of the wood of her desk under her arms as she rests on them, the sound of her even breathing and the tapping of a finger against metal. The small robot in her hold, brought back to life under the care of Sandrone’s careful hands. Columbina’s own heart, slow and at home for once.
“Hold this,” Sandrone says, dragging her out of her thoughts. She takes Columbina’s free hand, the one not being used as a pillow for herself against Sandrone’s desk, and places something in it. “Don’t lose it.”
“What is it?”
“A screw.” Simple. “The only one I have that size here, though, and I don’t want it mixed with the rest. Make yourself useful, if you insist on using my own room to idle while having a perfectly workable one.”
“I shall.”
“Don’t lose it.”
“I’ll guard it with my life.”
“Now you are just mocking me.”
“I would never dare.”
She can feel Sandrone’s half suppressed exhale, which is not exactly a laugh, but it is the closest thing to one coming from her. And Columbina holds the screw in her closed first, and presses her cheek harder into her shoulder, bitting the inside of her mouth to hold back a whine. A little longer. Just a little longer.
The light shifts again, and the sound of the town rises. Columbina’s awareness begins to thin at the edges, fuzzy around the memory, the dream blurring gently and inevitable around the corners -
- she reaches for it, strains against it.
Please, not yet, please please ple -
☀︎
She wakes up, trembling with a sob.
The Hall of the Welkin Moon is quiet.
The moon is lower. She can feel from the richness of the dark that it is perhaps two, three hours before dawn, yet people in the distance, in the direction of the Frostmoon Scions instead of Nasha Town, are already up and on the move. Nod-Krai, the exact same one she saw before falling asleep. A kuuhenki drifts closer to her, and looks at her, a question it is incapable of asking, a worry for her that Columbina wants gone the moment she perceives it.
… What… even was that…?
Columbina lifts a hand to her chest. Her heart drums wild and desperate against her ribs and ears and throat, so loud she fears it may echo down the cave and bleed onto the very ley-lines of Nod-Krai, and awaken everyone and let all the land know what just happened before Columbina herself even does, and that they will know she is still not over it, and maybe she won’t ever, because she knows what she just dreamed, and dreamed and dreamed and wished to stay there before anything else in this piece of lan-
“My Kuutar?”
She closes her hands into fists. Clears her throat, open her eyes. Checks her surroundings as sleepiness slowly retreats: her Hall is still all clear, and hollow, and her bed flower is the exact same way it was before. All good there.
When she turns back again, she recognizes now it was Lauma who spoke, her steps hesitating to get a bit closer from the entrance of the Hall. A few steps behind, Nefer stands under the drizzle, arms closed, and looking… almost, a bit worried.
“Good morning, Lauma,” Columbina says, voice secure and clear, in spite of the drumming of her own heart in her ears drowning the sound of her words. “How may I be of help?”
“Y-you? No, no. The other way- I should be asking.” Lauma clears her throat. Gazes at Columbina as if searching for a wound. Nefer, behind her, looks back at the moon standing tall onto the horizon, not yet on its way back to sunrise, and then turns back to Columbina, tilting her head. “Morning to you too, my Kuutar. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Not needed at all, my friend.”
She lingers, doesn’t move to take her leave. Columbina doesn’t dismiss her, either.
Columbina holds Lauma’s worried gaze, and in the deep green of her eyes, finds a question, repeated over and over again the past few weeks. Are you OK? She wishes she could give a different answer than the one Lauma knows will hear, should she ask out loud, but not a single word sits in her heart.
“Lauma was murmuring about you in her sleep tonight, miss Kuutar, which is saying a lot given her constant nightmares these past few sunset days,” Nefer eventually says, voice playful and rich, as if it could hide the warmth within. Lauma takes another step forward, and Nefer shrugs, seeking shelter from the drizzle inside the cave, her smile and gaze heavy on the Moonchanter. “I believe it may just be that Lauma’s natural worry for you is starting to drip all over me the more we share a place to rest. Still, we figured it wouldn’t be wrong to check since we were already awake.”
Columbina hums, almost amused, and when Nefer meets her gaze again, nods in recognition -
- and Lauma steps closer, enough to stand right in front of the stone she is sitting in, and she can’t even look up to meet her gaze again before she presses forward and catches Columbina into a hug.
And everything in her resists.
Lauma’s arms are lean and gentle surrounding Columbina’s body, pressing her to her chest as if she were to protect her from the world. She can feel the soft rumble of Lauma’s words in her ribs before they are spoken on a warm tone: “I am here to help you in whatever you need. You know that, right?” Lauma presses her just a tad bit closer. “I am here for you, my Kuutar.”
“So are our friends from afar, in the constant letters they have written to you,” Nefer murmurs, and for once, there is no mockery in the gentle tone of her laugh. Lauma’s influence, no doubt. “They think so much, so often about you.”
It’s a loving embrace, and strong, and so, so wrong. Columbina wants her to let go.
She buries her nails in one of her hands, instead, closed tight into a first to hold back a tremble.
Lauma loves her. She knows this. It’s only because of it that she has put up with all the grief Columbina has given her and Nod-Krai and her Frostmoon Scions, all with a smile and warm words to try and offer comfort, and it’s just a shame she can’t meet her there.
She tries.
She really, really tries.
Lifting her free left hand, she pats at Lauma’s arms, searching for her scarred, calloused hands instead of the metallic one she hopelessly expects to find, and holds it just for a second between her own slender fingers. “I keep it in mind, Lauma,” she settles for an answer. “You need not fear for my life anymore.”
“But know that I do,” she presses on, moving back to rest her big hands on Columbina’s shoulders, to give her a big smile. “As silly as it may sound, know that I hold you always in my worried heart, should another God be listening in jealously to my prayers to you.”
Columbina nods, words getting caught in her throat. Gratitude, heavy and haunting, gets a hold of her heart and settles there, an unpaid debt to an undeserving Goddess in grief.
Lauma turns, apparently satisfied, and waves her goodbyes with Nefer, swearing to come back later in the day with offerings and tea. Columbina doesn’t answer; she lifts a hand to wave them goodbye instead, and does so a minute later, when they can’t even see her. It is enough to watch them go together, the shy light of the moon following their joined steps until they are nothing more than a silhouette in the distance, and Columbina is alone once again.
She clears her throat. Thinking clearly, and consciously, I am awake in Nod-Krai.
The, she slowly, carefully and terrified, lowers her gaze and opens her right hand.
A hexagonal-head, fine-threaded, the kind used in small but detailed mechanical work, the metal just slightly warm from being shortly held within her grasp. There is a small irregularity on one face of the head, a mark she doesn’t quite recognize even as she looks into her memories, which means she had never seen it before.
She had never seen it before.
A kuuhenki drifts close, a second, then a third following in. They dance around the ceiling of her cave, and she can feel them in the way she has always been able to - curious, tentative, something like a shadow of a thought running through them that is not a question, but it isn’t an answer, either, instead something in the space between.
In her hand, the screw is very small, real, and cold.
Columbina closes her fingers around it again. Holds it tight. She brings the screw up to her lips, and presses a kiss against it. A thousand-breeze plays with her hair, as she breathes in, falls back into her flower bed, and rest her gaze on the kuuhenki playing nearby. Her mind adrift, busy as she is existing in her own time.