Chapter Text
PROLOGUE: ACANTHUS
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The first act of selfishness in the world was done by man, whose fingers have been covered in clay, used to paint—line by line, crooked and uneven—the image of a bear. A bear who had been hunted and skinned to provide food and warmth.
Calling that selfish would be like accusing a lioness for oppressing and assassinating a group of gazelles—futile and idiotic, because there’s a thin line between selfishness and need.
Hunting was a need. Art was selfishness. It was from humans, for humans. With no apparent need to do it, no reason whatsoever other than entertainment. To tell a story, to leave a trace on the walls of a cave with no certainty that anyone will ever find them. But when they do, there will be a sign. I was here. I was here and I see you. From a human to another human.
When mankind made its first drawing, it created a distinct, clear line that separated us from animals. And from that point on, nothing would ever be the same. Species will evolve, others will become extinct in the seemingly endless path of life. But now, there was something to document it—art. Art, that followed humankind since its first steps, through wars, through empires that rose and fell, through the mundane and the extraordinary. Art is history with a pulse, the heartbeat and soul of countless people who had more to say to the world.
It spoke to her like the sweetest of melodies, ever since she was a little child with full cheeks and bony knees. Her grandfather—Pa, as she would call him, when the consonants proved too difficult to pronounce—spent long hours with her on his knees, speaking about greatness, about Archons and Gods and the meaning of life. She remembered that he had a book for everything, a title to answer her every question, which there were a lot of. Pa, why is the sky blue? Pa, why do people die? Where do they go, when they die? How did everything begin?
How will everything end?
As she grew older, her questions grew more complex. For every new answer she could double the questions, an endless cycle she could never get tired of. Her hunger grew until it seemed to spill from her childhood home, so she had to move out to find a place where it fit. It seemed to be satiated with what made her soul sing—the paintings that lined museum walls, the piano in her apartment, the books on her shelf or the notebooks on her desk, dormant, until it would spread its jaws again when the right topic reached her ears.
Eager to retrace the steps of us, she started studying history. Visiting museums and exhibitions proved to be more joyful when she could understand what the artist meant, when she could take a look into the brain of someone long dead and catch a glimpse of their bare soul. Soon enough, she started to make her own path through the endless bushes, tempted by whatever hidden meaning she didn’t know.
There was one mystery she still couldn’t solve. It had accompanied her since she was young, and not even her grandfather could satiate it, only feed it enough for it to grow.
Preir Stryae, was its name. The Nation of the Visionless, the Nation of Art.
It might as well have been a ghost Nation, from how little there was recorded about it. It had piqued her interest from the beginning, because how could an empire so great get lost between the threads of time? All that remained were songs, tales, mentions in documents of obscure languages she had to learn. But she never faltered, never lost her hope that one day, she would prove that it existed.
“It’s idiotic that Professor Autissier wouldn’t approve of your research. I read it, and it really doesn’t have anything worth the trouble.” The melodic voice by her side belonged to her friend, Faustine. It reminded her of the rich smell of oranges, vibrant and bittersweet. Faustine sat by her side, legs elegantly crossed as she played with the straw of her drink. Clad in gold jewelry, her bronze skin shining in the warm Fontainian sun.
“He said it’s too… weak, for a thesis,” Leonard answered. A tall, fairly built man. His personality was like what she imagined a night sky to be like—calm, menacing, mysterious. A figure picked straight out of a Gothic novel, with glasses that hardly fit his face, as heavy as they were. Sometimes it looked like they were the ones making Leonard slouch.
“Too weak? And Isabel gets to publish a thesis about clay and gets away with it!” Her offended huff was met with the sound of ice clinking against the walls of her glass, sharp and distinct. “But that’s because she sucks up to the professor all day, and he likes it. Old green man.”
“Aren’t you an eloquent, wonderful woman to speak with.”
Their conversation faded into the background as soon as she saw a butterfly land on the bush of blue flowers that was neatly cultivated in the small, well-kept garden of Cafe Lutece. She had always struggled to recall the name of the flowers. Greek Valerian, she was pretty sure.
The small butterfly sat on one of the flowers, letting it sway from side to side, wings fluttering before closing completely. The insect basked in the pollen that was offered to it, shifting and wriggling between the stamens and staining its legs with golden dust. Her straw was loosely held between her lips, forgotten in order to closely observe the careful activities of the animal.
“Are you listening to us?” Her friends were looking at her, it seemed, repeating her name to gain her attention. “What’s got you so caught up on that butterfly?”
The historian hesitated, as if weighing her answers in her mind, like it was something important to be mediated upon. Faustine raised an eyebrow, inquisitive and annoyed, and took a sip of her drink.
“Sorry. I got distracted,” she finally said with a hint of bashfulness in her voice. The details on why Leonard’s thesis got rejected—for the third time—escaped her mind at this point. Useless theories and critiques of Professor Autissier didn’t seem to end, like they both refused to accept that his research wasn’t strong enough to back up his point. But she could hardly speak, as someone so stubborn on finding proof of a Nation everyone had collectively forgotten about.
“Yes, that’s sort of what you do usually.” Faustine sighed, but she followed her statement with a smile. But they didn’t bother repeating themselves, hopeless in their task of even trying to keep her attention for longer than a few minutes. It never worked anyway, unless they brought some old junk she could stare at. “Since you’re not… interested in the topic, you’ll be pleased to hear that a new museum has opened up, just by the Court.”
The information made her blink, eyes sharpening to pay close attention to her friend’s words. The straw fell from between her teeth as she gave her a practiced, eccedentesiastical smile.
“Really?” she wondered rhetorically. The historian glanced at Leonard, who had turned his glasses in the direction of the people visiting the cafe. “I’d have to stop by on the way home, then.”
“Thought you’d say that,” Faustine hummed. She turned to Leonard, before reaching out and snapping her fingers in front of the scholar’s face. “Come on, do I have to paint a big red cross on my face to make you both pay attention? I get that you’re historians and all that, but you can make small talk once in a while.”
“I’m listening,” the man responded. But the other woman had already zoned out again, her mind traveling to the new opportunity that had presented itself to her.
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The light filtered through the window, painting a golden pattern on the tiled floor. Specks of dust danced in the air, peacefully falling and rising before a passerby disturbed the scene, walking through it. She watched how their clothes got set on fire by the evening sun, then bathed in the cold shadows again.
Raising her eyes, she focused on the various paintings that hung on the walls around her. The walls were painted an alabaster white, the tiles were a light brown marble. The whole museum was adorned with golden accents, airy curtains that draped to the floor. And of course, the paintings.
The historian had spent a long hour pacing around the halls, stopping before each painting that caught her attention and staring at it. A small golden tablet was drilled into the wall next to each one, with a bit of information on the era and author of the illustrations. She had stopped by a big canvas, clutching her notebook to her chest as her eyes took in the size and the colors.
It was a painting that covered a big part of the wall, standing tall and imposing above the visitors of the museum. The main focus was on a row of soldiers, clad in military uniforms from Mondstadt, dated around the aftermath of the Great Archon War. The soldiers, each adopting a position of weakness and vulnerability, held on with one hand to the soldier before them, blindfolded, waiting for their turn to be treated for the poisonous gas that burned their eyes. In the background, the eye could see another row of soldiers, waiting patiently for the same. Furthermore, in the distance, she could see soldiers that have left their uniforms, entertained by a football game.
The yellowed hues reminded her of the gas used in many wars that took place after the Archon War, where every Nation fought for their archon—fallen or not, faith didn’t believe in death—and tried to retrieve what they had before everything. The sun bathed the soldiers in warmth that they could only feel, not see. The blind lead the blind into a war with no winners, only people who had something to believe in and a leader to follow.
What a heartbreaking sight, wasn’t it? And the artist had represented it so crudely, so candidly. Standing before such a painting was an honor, a wonder and a cruelty on its own. To observe the suffering of the past with a cold neutrality—empathy was nothing but an echo of someone’s agony, dull and distant. Perhaps it was almost patronizing, belittling of their pain.
A soft click of shoes accompanied her through the rest of the visit. She liked spending long hours in the museums that Fontaine offered. It was almost a weekly visit, so regular that most of the guards had come to know her. These guards didn’t know her yet, but they probably would. When she arrived at the last of the rooms, a wide space with a lot of natural light, she found a smaller crowd of people looking up at a portrait. Her eyes ran up, met the eyes of the woman, and she froze in place.
It was a portrait of a lady. She sat in a Fontainian Bergère, dressed in a white gown with a silk gold sash tied around her waist. She was leaning back, her eyes looking straight at the viewer in an appraising, almost gentle manner. The smallest hint of a smirk tugged at the woman’s lips, a glint of something akin to mischief in her eye. There was a quiet challenge in her expression, a secret tucked into the corner of her lip that she was unwilling to share, but eager to hint at. Jewels hung on her ears, her necklace made out of gold, hanging above her shoulders in intricate patterns she couldn’t recognize from where she stood.
The historian stared at it with wide eyes, her grip on the notebook tightening. The longer her eyes ran over the stranger’s face, the more familiar she found the features. The glint, the shape of her bottom lip, the curve of her jawline. Her own eyes looking back at her, equal parts unrecognizable and familiar. In the same way a tune from your childhood brought back memories that were forgotten, a familiarity that was misplaced and wrong, because this wasn’t her.
She found herself staring at her own portrait, her face mirrored on a canvas belonging to the past.
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For once, the historian was grateful for the long rows of souvenirs that museums forced people to walk by before they left. Between the endless bookmarks, notebooks, and trinkets, she found a print of the portrait that had been brought to her attention, along with the scarce information the museum provided.
Now, the print laid on her desk. Staring back at her. No matter how long she sat and stared into her own eyes, trying to figure out the secret that laid behind, the Lady With No Name would not answer her questions.
She had searched through all of the books she had. The painting style was vague enough that it could be anyone’s work, but distinct enough that she couldn’t put a name to the artist. She hadn’t come across the painting despite studying history extensively. Like it had never existed and never been painted.
The woman sighed, stirring her body after many hours of sitting. She raised her eyes to the place she called her home, the familiar furniture, the couch that dipped in the exact spot she always sat on. The moonlight filtered through the curtains, a soft breeze touching the fabric and making it sway gently. It fell on the canvas she had piled up in the small space between the shelf and the wall.
There was hardly anything she couldn’t figure out with time. She liked to believe this, at least. But she needed some sort of clue, a hint about where to start. And now, with the books all over the floor and desk, the papers she had collected now unrolled and disorganized, she didn’t know where else to search.
Sighing, she stood up and stretched her back, carefully stepping over the papers and stopping by the balcony to open the glass doors and step outside. The soft wind kissed her skin when she leaned on the railing, her hair ruffled from long hours of searching.
The moon was so beautiful, staring down at her with a gentle gaze. It illuminated the lines of her face, caressing it like a lover, easing the stress of the day. The portrait of her own face and thoughts of Preir Stryae were all a buzz in the back of her mind, a fly she couldn’t shake off.
Preir Stryae. Following her train of thought, the woman found the canvas that leaned against the wall once again. She had spent hours painting that series of canvas. It was her best work, yet it stayed hidden in the corner of her living room, in the shadow, a part of her soul obscured by the curtains. Before her mind could be whisked away by curious whims and thoughts that led to nowhere, she walked back inside and shut the balcony doors behind her, before sitting down on the fallen spot on her coach and picking up her current read.
The exhaustion of the past few days caught up to her, nagging and stubborn. What she didn’t expect, however, was a knock rousing her from her nap. When she stirred and opened her eyes, the sun stared back at her, muted behind the curtains but intense enough to make her squint.
“Archons, who would be knocking at this hour…?”
Getting up from the couch, she found the lock on her door and ran a hand through her hair. She didn’t recall having any visitors, and especially not at her place. When she opened the door, she saw…. no one.
The woman frowned, her expression pinching in frustration. She couldn’t believe they’d just woken her up from a good night’s sleep for nothing. It was probably a bunch of kids having fun by ringing bells, or maybe a mistake. When she looked down, she found that it might not have been a mistake.
There was a simple beige envelope laying on her doorstep, just by her shoe. Crouching, she picked it up and turned it around. A golden yellow wax seal was stuck to the front, with absolutely no hint at who had sent it.
The historian found herself brewing a cup of tea before daring to open it. The meticulous process calmed her mind, as she always liked to deal with unexpected surprises with something to warm her hand. And only after she had sat down at her desk, pushing some of the scrolls from the night before aside, she took a letter opener. Pushing the small blade between the creamy paper, she tore the seal with a practiced flick of her wrist. Immediately, the faint scent of something warm and orange reached her nose. She leaned forwards to catch it better, humming as she smelled the scented letter. Whoever had sent it to her cared about appearances and elegance. Her point was only further proved by the exercised cursive that filled the paper, tilted harshly to the right in an unnatural way, as if the author was forcing their hand to make their handwriting appear inviting and serious. With a sigh, she started to read.
“Dear Mademoiselle,
I hope this letter finds you well. I sincerely wish that you will forgive me for my anonymity, but there are pressing matters to address, and I do not have the luxury to explain myself in detail.
The grand opening of the Recueil de Lumière Museum went just as expected. I greatly mourn not having the chance to visit it myself, but my informant assured me that it is very much worthwhile. But I digress—I write to you concerning the matter of a certain portrait that a historian such as yourself surely noticed. Said portrait lacks a name and any relevant information, and I can be certain that you won’t find anything in encyclopedias or books. It’s a great mystery, I must admit, and if my idea of you is close to reality, then you are as intrigued by it as I am.
To make this short: I have the answers you need. To explain it in a letter would be a waste of paper, as I’m afraid this matter is to be discussed personally. While I know this is a lot to ask, I formally invite you to visit Zapolyarny Palace.
This letter will be your ticket during the long trip, if you decide to accept my humble invitation. The seal will guarantee you a carriage and a place to stay the night. The decision is yours, Mademoiselle. I will be expecting you restlessly.
Sincerely,
Her Majesty, The Tsaritsa.”
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
The decision is yours, Madame. She wasn’t a stranger to making decisions. Nobody ever was, no matter how one may dread the thought. A day will come where everyone has to make a decision.
She was convinced this was the exact moment. Laying on one of the grass fields at the edges of the Court of Fontaine, the vague silhouette of the Opera Epiclese painting itself on the horizon. She reached out, fingers grazing the blades of grass with the delicacy of an artist admiring art.
A butterfly fluttered about, dancing around the flowers and making them sway. The woman stayed perfectly still, letting the small insect bumble about before settling on her index finger. Azure wings closed gently before opening.
One flap of wings. That was all it took.
As the insect eventually flew off her hand and made its way somewhere else, her fingers curled around the stem of a Rainflower and plucked it. The white petals were soft between the tips of her fingers, delicate and fragile.
To leave, or not to leave. To accept, or not to accept. She separated the petals, before pinching it and ripping it out.
“To leave,” she recited quietly, letting it fall to the ground. Another one was plucked and torn, the delicate flower threatening to disintegrate into separate pieces like a puzzle in her hands. “Or not to leave.”
Another one, broken and cast aside by her greedy hand. Her eyes narrowed, observing the plant like it had the answers to all of her dilemmas.
“To accept”—another—“or not to accept.”
White petals piled in a small heap by her leg.
“To go… or not to go.”
The pollen stained the pads of her fingers, getting under her nails. The historian grabbed the last petal, a fleeting smile painted on her lips as she ripped it with just a little more force than necessary.
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