In the ashes of burned-out lights

"A...x?" The echo rustled distractedly. It was intermittent, like a broken gramophone under a huge down pillow. A dream. Only this time it was weird. Yeah, there was something wrong with it. It was different from any dream he'd ever had before. There was... nothing going on in it, which was strange in itself. No bizarrely subconsciously distorted scenes of everyday life, no opportunity to re-live favorite battles in a state where a single strain of thought grants omnipotence, no aimless travel to places that didn't exist in reality. Just nothing. There was only pale yellow all around, as far as his vision allowed, and it was as if he was part of that vastness, but at the same time as if he was not. He was present, watching, but it was beyond all human effort to slip into the next dream, to tear away the colored veil, or even to shake it. The color is clear and immovable by itself. Only the golden haze created some kind of dynamics and allowed the eye to grasp something. Swirling without wind, it clumped into clouds: pinnate, cumulus, amorphous - and immediately flowed from one place to another. There were no unbreakable walls, no ceilings - a hollow, that's all. Only it felt like a kind of panopticon, the essence of which had been twisted and turned inside out. Feeling as if he himself were the center and the only meaning of what was going on, he felt as if he were not the sole caretaker of his own dream. His ego was easy to please: just show interest and the flattery was successful. This time, however, the alien attention was more wary than pleased. It was gratuitous, unconditional, oozing from everywhere and sticking mercilessly, depriving him of a sense of lightness, and inspiring an inner trembling. Fear? Just wariness and interest. A normal reaction to unusual occurrences, no more. As if all this were not enough, the relatively passive space suddenly exerted a pressure. It was as if invisible magnets had appeared at two points in it, and the gilded sand of the cloud swirls was attracted to this force. Something did what, for some unknown reason, he himself was incapable of doing: it transformed the dream space to its liking. The brilliance of the individual particles shone with two brightest suns. Their cores blazed amber, split from top to bottom. The omnipresent attention that had come from nowhere now settled in those crevices and turned to Ajax. It was clearly capable of much, but it was in no hurry to show itself, so it did nothing. Only the suns went out every few seconds, as if blinking, and that was it. Could it be that this entity had some purpose for its inactivity? Or was it constrained by something? Ajax was ready to find out right now, but he was beaten to it. The suns swayed slowly, as if balancing on the cups of a huge and heavy scale. "W...hy did... shut yourself?" Not a voice, no. Not the rumbling, either. The phrases arose in his mind, but he didn't think them through himself. It was an unformed thought brought by the unknown, and he simply considered the message as best he could. Aligned, the suns froze and mute attention pressed in a new way. Were they waiting for some sort of response? So is the solar entity intelligent? This was just some new kind of insanity: he was dreaming, and at the same time the dream was actually peering into him. Somehow it seemed familiar. "Ajax? Can you hear... e?" The end of the sentence blurred into an inaudible rustle that sounded like static from a broken radio. "The real name... where did it come from? It's only known to the family. Okay, not only family. Stupidly I blabbed it to someone else whose name..." A purple flash of lightning struck the luminaries. Two suns lost their amber brilliance. It faded and merged into one.

***

The light came through the silken curtains almost without resistance. A cloudy gaze opened to the midday rays and then hastily closed again. The new day was clearly not welcome here, nor was it expected, as if he were an uninvited guest. If you saw it through the peephole, it was a sin not to pretend that the owners were away and the house was empty. Tartaglia didn't want to sin today. After all, where else but in Morepesok could he afford to get a good night's sleep?  With a brief creak of the bed, Tartaglia wrapped himself in the covers and turned his back to the wall. Already resembling a silkworm in a cocoon, he burrowed into the pillow and sucked in air with his nose. The light odor of something woody and grassy had a soporific effect. Pleasant. Cozy. Warm. The sleep-dazed mind was not capable of any feats of thought,but it could not be silent at all. Thoughts were still intertwined, but the whole tapestry of judgments could not be sewn with such thin threads. In the worst case, even sheep could not be counted: their image was scattered all over the vast field of consciousness in separate woolen wisps. In a word, one step and you would fall back into the colorful abyss of sleep... Not this time, it seemed. Instead of a measured sniffle, he mumbled inarticulately but clearly displeased. Tartaglia reluctantly rolled over onto his other side, then onto his back. No matter how hard he turned, the whimpering in his muscles did not subside, and he could not find a comfortable position with enviable persistence. The feeling of having spent the whole night lying not in his bed, but on a sheet of plywood, was only getting worse. "What's the matter..." unwilling to open his eyes, Tartaglia raised himself blindly on his elbows and felt something crackling woodenly beneath them. "Twenty-five again. Third time this week." With a doomed sigh, he shouted louder: "'Teucer! If you've stuffed a larch tree in the mattress again, there'll be no mercy! You'll be shaking the dried needles out of the down yourself!" He listened to the barely restrained laughter to find out where to catch the rascal. But there was a setback. Either Teucer had finally realized that the prank would be much more interesting if he didn't reveal himself in the first few seconds, or he had left the room... or the house? Either way, Tartaglia's answer was silence. "Hey, did you swallow your tongue there?" Tartaglia focused on the sounds of the surroundings once more. "Teucer?" No stifled laughter a-ka fox snort, no serenading of the mad neighbor's rooster outside the window, no stomping of feet in the living room, no rumbling of the gas stove in the kitchen-the house seemed to stand still. It was too quiet, and the silence was more than alarming. This is not the way it works in large families. "Where did everyone go?" Childe jumped up on the bed. He looked around and froze heart and soul. Not pine cut by his father's hands, mahogany encased the austere rectangles of the squat furniture. Varnished to a thick sheen, its surface freely cast sun bunnies like metal. The ceiling of a couple levels hung low overhead, and for all Tartaglia's confusion, it seemed even dominating. The opposite wall in the room was obscured by a sliding screen. On it was a monochrome image of a migrating crane against a backdrop of smoky mountains. "What the...?" No. You'll never find interiors like this in Morepesok. By all means, the place where Tartaglia spent the night was definitely not his parents' izba. The thought of it was absurd, but at least it was at least somewhat concrete.  "I'm not at home," the certainty grounded the anxiety that had played out. Overcome by the shock of his strange discovery, Childe slid his feet to the floor without looking. His heels encountered something cool. Before he realized what he'd almost stepped on, it rolled under the bed with a glassy-minor "zing". With a disgruntled tsk, Tartaglia got out of bed to the crackling of the sheets. The bed rattled suspiciously again as he leaned on it with his hand to reach for... a wineglass? Why would such utensils be left in the bedroom? After looking doubtfully at the remnants of some ruby drink on the unharmed walls, Childe decided to leave the find on the dresser. He also remembered to look under the sheet, still naively hoping to catch a glimpse of Teucer's shenanigans. Again, no twigs of dried larch - only the bars of the mat, which had cracked. And a mockingly thin mattress. "How odd." Teucer often joked at his brother, but this one clearly couldn't have been set up. Having lived all his life in Snezhnaya, he simply couldn't know the ways of the more southerly countries. Moreover, it was the first time Tartaglia had ever seen such a thing in person. He felt unusual, too. Wearing only a shirt and pants, he didn't know where to get away from the hot, humid air. There was something else. It felt unfamiliar: his feet were bare but did not feel cold, and, in fact, the floor tiles even warmed his feet slightly. Getting used to it, Tartaglia headed for the window. The silk curtains slid aside without resistance, and the sash yielded just as easily. It seemed as if Childe had not fully awakened or had not left a very realistic dream at all. In any case, with the window he discovered a whole new side of Teyvat. The sea, completely free of ice, stretched all the way to the horizon. The sun looked so far away and lavished light and warmth on the streets, which were festooned with numerous outfits. To the accompaniment of foreign cackling, these colorful streams flowed into each other. Finally losing confidence in his own eyes, Tartaglia looked out of the window, this time up to his waist. The variety of color struck his eyes. There were many tiered buildings, passages hanging in the air between them, beams, fences, all painted red. The green or ochre roofs, wherever they were, shaded the buildings a little, and were just as different from the usual ones: what was worth only their bent up ends. The gold of the foliage fluttered against the calm azure of the sea. The densely populated city came into view. It looked exotic in autumn and attracted with its southern flavor, its novelty beckoned to step on the cobbled streets and explore the nooks and crannies. It was unfamiliar. It looked as if it had been taken from the pictures of Inazuma's scenery in the souvenir shops, and yet it was different from those images. At the same time, he... managed to disturb with his idle appearance alone. Tartaglia checked a couple more times to be sure he was awake, and the fact remained that the surroundings were real and tangible. He scratched the back of his head. Well... In between assignments every day one had to fall asleep on the outskirts of Snezhnaya, but after that not every morning Tartaglia woke up in a different part of the world. It was strange and confusing, but... On the other hand, was there really a good reason to be concerned? He had some idea of the kind of jokes reality could play on a person. Compared to his months of survival in the Abyss, this morning hadn't been all that exciting. The unfriendly ruins, unusual physics, and distorted passage of time posed far more of a threat... Childe stretched sweetly. His stale muscles tensed and then relaxed. Glancing once more at the busy city, he decided that the secret of this morning's strangeness would sooner or later reveal itself. There was Teyvat around, which was a good thing in itself. There were plenty of Fatuis in every corner. There'd be someone to contact anyway. And until he returned to the Tsaritsa's service, Childe could go in search of the owner of the house, or at least something to eat to give him more energy to explore the new place. Unhooking the yellowish-red petals from his heels - which had apparently fallen on the floor from an open window - he examined the apartment. The apartment appeared to be quite modest - only two small rooms. The bedroom and study were connected by a T-shaped corridor, and the hallway was quickly found at its end. To the right of it was the kitchen. That was where Childe planned to stay the longest. The clock showed about 2pm, and as expected, the owner was not at home. Strangely enough, the rooms seemed generally uninhabited. However, as soon as he stepped into the kitchen, Tartaglia felt inhabited for the first time in the entire time he had known the apartment. The kitchen had obviously been used recently. In the sink, forgotten plates were catching drips from the leaky faucet, and a bottle of alcohol stood nearby. On the stove - there was no limit to the happiness of a hungry stomach - was a pot of borscht, reddish and barely warm. Tartaglia whistled enthusiastically at the sight. He was lucky to be brought either to a countryman or to a foreigner who had been initiated into the culture of Snezhnaya! Who else would be hung over when they were cooking? "Oh yeah, we'd certainly get along with this indweller," Childe thought as he walked around the dining table and got closer to the cauldron. "Hope you don't mind sharing, buddy." There were few kitchen cupboards and all of them were about the same. In addition, there were no glass inserts in them, so at a glance it was unclear where to look for the right utensils. Well, in that case, Childe would have to do a bit of housework himself. Even if the host didn't give him permission to do so.  Looking at the cupboards again, Tartaglia had a rough idea of where he could keep the ladle, spoon and soup plate, and decided to check those places first. Everything was found on the first try and so simple that I could only think: "As we grew up in the same house." As he poured the borscht, a few drops fell from the ladle onto the bottle next to him. It rolled awkwardly down the sides of the bottle and blurred with beet stains at the base. "A mere trifle." Tartaglia thoughts. Exactly until he noticed that all this time the alcohol had been pressing some sort of note to the tabletop. "Shit!" Bottle to the side. Rag in hand - and off to fix it. Blotting the paper, he was able to remove the reddish smudges, but as luck would have it, the sheet had absorbed the pigment within seconds, and the pinkish streaks remained. It was so clumsy that Childe was almost upset. Though if the owner demanded it, he wouldn't be reluctant to make a copy... Tartaglia dabbed his eyes over the floating lines in the Snezhnayan language. Judging from the way the beginning was worded, he was holding some sort of personal letter. In addition to the ugliest handwriting, it was characterized by multiple corrections, which made it look like he was looking at some kind of intricate coding. For some reason the text looked suspiciously familiar, but Tartaglia didn't pay much attention to it. As he skimmed the beginning of the third paragraph, his eyes lingered longer than they should have on the mysterious word "Li Yue."  A spark of recognition flickered in the back of his mind, but it died out immediately. Childe has been familiar with the unwritten law "It is not nice to read other people's correspondence" since childhood... The law don't apply to Fatui. A sentence with an unknown word reads, "Does the 'Li Yue' mean anything to you? No?" No. Just nothing. Some foreign gibberish of two syllables - something akin to preskevu was ready to argue with it, swooping in again for no good reason. Childe snorted disappointedly. "Li Yue" was a useless set of letters to him, but the way it was written said a lot. The top of the "L" looked like a crooked loop with long ends. The "E" was written as if someone had lazily crossed out the "o". Something started to pop into memory again, but immediately sank back down. There were as many handwritings in Snezhnaya as there were people, but few allowed themselves such mockery of the written language. Upon closer inspection, it was obvious to Childe: these scribbles were written by his hand. The new discovery made him frankly hover for a few moments in thought. "Tsaritsa Almighty, where could my notes have come from in someone else's house?" - Tartaglia pondered how such a thing could have happened, but could not come up with an answer. Good morning. Or is it tonight? I don't really know when you'll wake up and be able to read this. Anyway, you'll probably be at home at this time. Well... (the dotted line is bolded. It was circled several times, as if the addressee was trying to delay the moment of writing or just didn't know where to start.) I know you don't know where you are right now, and you don't have an accurate idea of what day it is. I think it's worth clarifying this point. Does the "Li Yue" mean anything to you? No? In general, this will be good for the plan and for you personally. It's okay, there may be some difficulties, but you'll figure it out as you go along. Just keep in mind the fact that you're overseas in Li Yue Harbor. Okay? You've made a mess of things in the past, so don't expect a friendly attitude or hospitality from the people here. I know this may sound like nonsense, but listen to me. It just so happens that you don't remember anything you've done here during the last year. Why would you believe that? That's a good question. I don't know how to explain it in a way that doesn't sound like bullshit... You wrote the letter you're reading now, and you've probably forgotten how you did it, too. The memories will come back sooner or later. For your own good, I want it to happen as late as possible, but I'll talk more about that later. Stay calm and don't make hasty decisions when you encounter weirdness. But don't relax either, you're here on a mission. It's all about doing the Tsaritsa's bidding. Before I get to the heart of the matter, please read the brief information about the destination country: In short, Li Yue is the homeland of the universal currency in Teyvat. You can not buy anything without it. Merchants will ask for "'mora" in exchange for goods, and, be aware, they want gold coins with a three-pronged pattern. (The sender left a schematic illustration in parentheses.) You have plenty of them in your wallet. If it runs out, go to the Northland Bank and take a withdrawal from your account *******************... So many bold statements, and the last one was even brazen. It all looked like the very real disinformation prepared by the enemy. With a smirk, Tartaglia paused to immediately confirm his suspicions. In his memory, wallets scattered in pockets were never good for anything. It was always empty, no matter who owned it, and Childe didn't know why he carried it everywhere he went. It was probably a tribute to fashion - everyone around him did it for some reason. Fully convinced that the letter was lying, Tartaglia found one of his wallets. It was unusually heavy in his hands. When he opened it, Childe found a small surprise: more than half of the canvas pouch was filled with metal rounds. He pulled one out incredulously and twirled it in his fingers, studying the embossing. The coin matched both the verbal description and the drawing from the letter. Indeed: it glittered like gold, which always made Tonya's eyes filled with a delight that was precious to Tartaglia's heart. Is that what "mora" is? There was something obscurely familiar about the word, but on par with "Li Yue" it could be confidently taught as a new name. Tartaglia tried pronouncing "mora" a couple of times to memorize it, but quickly realized that it would take some time to get used to the sound. Although it seemed like a miserable couple of syllables.... Putting both the money and memorization aside until the end of the letter, he went back to reading. The main value in Li Yue is the contract. Their main principle is that the terms are fair and the exchange is equal. They are made to settle many matters. Some people even use contracts to organize everyday life. People care about performance in this regard, so be very cautious when agreeing to the terms offered. Fail to fulfill any of them and you could run into serious problems. And then there was a knock on the front door.