Work Text:
"Traveler, can I… ask a strange question?"
Navia almost laughed at the result. Lumine's eyes bugged out over the mouthful of fish and chips, for a single moment looking like nothing as much as a cat that had just heard the bathtub turn on. The composure by which she chewed, swallowed, and then reached for a napkin was more typical, but simply heightened the contrast. "That… depends a lot on the question?"
"Fair enough, fair enough." It wasn't as if there were plenty that the Illustrious Traveler had to dodge on a daily basis. Things like where is your vision, and I'm having trouble placing your accent, or just someone less scrupled than Charlotte cornering her for a tabloid interview about the flood.
But it was vindicating that Lumine didn't flee, just thumped herself lightly against the chest to make sure everything went down as it should have. The patches of light that radiated from her chest and wrists flickered and settled, in a way unlike any magic or technology. They passed very easily as ornamentation when you weren't watching closely.
Navia decided this would go less awkwardly if she didn't look like she was watching too hard. Those elusive questions were on her mind. The Spina generally knew everything it needed to about people of import. Even if it was for a favor, not knowing about Lumine… irked.
This question wasn't innocent, in that sense. But, "That… joke, between you and Paimon, where she's… emergency food supplies? How did that get started?"
Some people would joke about eating any small, charming creature. Navia could recall her father doing so, when she had been younger and he'd more of a sense of humor. Lumine didn't seem the type- at least, it had never been directed at anything but Paimon, to the latter's immense chagrin. Even now, just bringing it up, the little pixie groaned and put her head down on the tavern's table, her circlet (halo?) making a muffled clink.
"Okay, that's a long story." Lumine's hand came up as soon as Navia raised an eyebrow. "It's fine, we don't exactly have anywhere to be. It's almost more at my expense than Paimon's, really?"
"You say that, but Paimon's the one who has nightmares about getting eaten."
Navia nudged the basket of macarons Paimonward in the hopes of dissuading interruption.
"When I first…" Lumine folded her hands in her lap. "Well, when I met Paimon, I wasn't doing very well. I'd been hurt pretty badly, and I didn't know anyone or even where to go for help. I had a camp, but most days all I did was crawl out of the cave and forage the surrounding area for food."
Golden eyes held their usual playful warmth. Lumine's unscarred, strong shoulders had no indication of ever having been as fragile as that. Even her tone was so… even, that Navia could almost believe it hadn't bothered her.
The picture was still a harrowing one. And it wasn't just projection. Navia had grown up surrounded by people- but she knew Lumine had a brother. Somewhere that the Traveler couldn't find, these days.
Lumine seemed to sense the turn of the atmosphere and waved it away with a raised hand. Her smile was only slightly fixed. "Well, I wanted fish that day. So I put together a makeshift rod, and sat down with it, thinking, I can at least get myself a good meal, when my line, hooked…"
"Okay THAT part is kinda funny at least," Paimon was easily bribed by a combination of snacks and participation, like always. Compared to Lumine, she was such a comically simple creature you could overlook that no one had any idea what kind of creature she was, even. "Here's Paimon, waking up from the worst nap ever and she's hanging from a string like a sad harpastum ornament!"
"I had no idea what to do," Lumine shook her head. "Like I said, I wasn't at my best, so I just stood there for a minute until she comes to, and starts…"
"I can imagine," Navia said, and it wasn't a turn of phrase. In her mind's eye, the tinny wails, AAAAH! Who are you? How'd I get here?!
But there was a gleam in Lumine's eye. "You'd think but it was worse than that. Because right away, we both realized there was a problem: Neither of us could understand each other."
"…Huh?"
"And it wasn't Paimon's fault!" Tiny hands thumped the table. "How do you think Traveler knows how to talk to people in every place we go? Paimon had to teach her ALL of it!"
Lumine was laughing. "I'm usually a quick study, but who was I going to learn from? The crabs? And she's running through five, six different dialects in a single sentence and I'm standing there, no idea what to say,"
"And then you did start talking and it was even worse! Though, that was probably because Paimon's brain was full of seawater…" It was hard to take even a grimace from Paimon all that seriously, her big eyes and chubby cheeks pushing it into a cartoonish look.
As if saving her companion from drowning again, Lumine took over smoothly. "We finally figured out how to get somewhere with drawing pictures in the sand. She had no idea how she'd gotten into the sea in the first place, and I hadn't been expecting her, so it was pretty boring for a few days. But both of us were happy to have the company."
"That's adorable," Navia couldn't suppress.
"I mean it when I say she's the best Travel Guide in Teyvat."
Paimon's beaming smile was a sunrise in the Fleuve Cendre.
Navia almost felt guilty for prying: "So when did you start teasing her?"
"Well that was-"
"BEFORE WE EVEN UNDERSTOOD EACH OTHER," Paimon bodily intercepted.
Lumine caught Paimon's head with one hand and steered her back to her seat. "Okay, let me tell the story. Because we didn't have any languages in common, we had to start out doing that thing, you point at a stick and say 'stick', I point at a stick and say 'stick'… it gets really boring. But we had almost nothing else to do, so we chatted a lot to each other even before we understood all of what the other one was saying."
How charming. How… deeply lonely.
"I might've underestimated how fast she was picking things up," Lumine admitted, scratching the back of her head in that sheepish, natural way that never even ruffled the perfectly preserved flowers nestled in her bangs. "It was kind of the first thing we understood between us, so…"
"Only because you won't drop it!" Paimon was still too agitated to settle fully into her seat, her heels kicking in the air beneath her. "Paimon told you sunsettias taste better when you eat them with friends and you were calling her dinner the whole time!"
"Now let's make one thing clear, Paimon, I explained to you what [ ] means," and the word flowed so perfectly off Lumine's tongue it took Navia a moment to realize she could barely describe it. A consonant-less susurrus, something clear as a bell and yet- "it doesn't mean 'dinner', it means rations. So as long as we don't run into an emergency bad enough to warrant it,"
And they bickered, and it was ordinary, and warm, and exactly the sort of thing Navia already enjoyed from them, so she didn't interrupt.
It was a funny story. The sort of thing you shared with friends.
It just had to mean,
If the Traveler was from further away than that… thing, that was rising out of the sea, that nearly drowned Fontaine,
How lonely it was, to know they'd fought, laughed, cried, saved each others' lives, and this was the first time Navia heard Lumine even imply anything about where she came from.
But that wasn't the kind of thing you could bring up over tea. Here and now Lumine was making a joke about borrowing Escoffier's cold press,
"That'd just invite trouble," Navia forged back in, as if she had never fallen silent. "Then you'd have to hear about how you haven't balanced Paimon's flavor profile correctly."
The burst of laughter was unguarded and genuine. Lumine's flickering glow blazed brighter, warm and earnest, while Paimon wailed in the background about NOW IT'S SPREADING, and swearing that neither of them were allowed to even joke about it to Escoffier.
Navia didn't have the answers to do, or think, anything about that. But she knew she had to make the Fleuve Cendre not feel like being alone in a cliffside cave. That was her job as a friend.