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"Kumi! Breakfast is ready~!"
I closed my eyes and rolled over in bed, trying in vain to ignore the beautiful, lilting voice from downstairs. After I'd helped her with her research on the sea creatures of Watatsumi Island, she moved in with me to continue working on her thesis; I was excited about it at the time, of course, but now...
Footsteps came stomping down the hallway, and I hid my head under my pillow, aware of what came next and powerless to stop it. "Kumi~" Anisa called once again, "I'm coming in! Are you decent?" Without waiting for a response, the door burst open; I snuck a peek and saw my temporary housemate, her voice's beauty matched only by her own physical form's, barge into the room, bearing a tray of what could, if one were feeling quite charitable, be called food.
"Mrrrrngrhbhlrgh," I grumbled from under my pillow. "I'm asleep."
I don't know very many people. In fact, I think I only know between one and three people, depending on if I count that blonde traveler and her odd floating companion. Suddenly cohabiting with the one person I could maybe call more than an acquaintance led to some... odd situations. Her questionable cooking, for one, though I was working on that. Even looking forward to helping her with that, which confused me to no end. Her cooking was terrible, but teaching her how to cook in the kitchen, despite how she would stubbornly ignore my instructions, despite how bad the result tasted, despite her cute giggle and the way her eyes would light up whenever I made a face at it... it was fun, somehow.
But even more than that, I kept finding myself staring at her: her mischievous eyes; her fluffy hair; the curve of her lips. Were all people this beautiful, I wondered, and I'd just never paid enough attention to anyone to notice before? Or maybe I'd only begun paying attention to her at all because she was uniquely beautiful... it was quite the conundrum.
"Heeeey, you've got that look in your eyes again!" she accused me as she set the tray down on my bed. Actually, that was another thing—it was actually our bed now. My house was too small for a second room, and while I'd slept on the floor before, when I offered to do that for her she just laughed nervously and said it wasn't a problem at all.
"No I don't," I said, "I'm asleep."
She giggled, a sound like a thousand tiny chimes blown by a gentle sea breeze. No wonder friendship is so important to other people, if you get to see your friends in moments like this.
I decided that suffering through her cooking was a small price to pay for friendship and sat up. "I'm awake now," I explained.
From the cute little smirk on her face, I don't think I managed to fool her at all, not that I expected to. She was far too clever for such an obvious ploy. "Good morning, Kumi! Look, I made you Fontaine toast!"
I breathed out a sigh of relief. The battered, fried bread was one of the few dishes I'd taught her to make that her eclectic choice of spices—mostly cloves and nutmeg, and far too much of each—actually improved, once she learned the right amount to use in it.
Anisa set the tray down at the foot of the bed, then nudged me with her hip. "Scoot over, silly! It doesn't count as breakfast in bed if I don't get to join you!" That sounded like a dubious claim to me, but I happily followed her instructions. "We've got a big day ahead of us, after all!"
"Oh, right, the trip," I said as I picked up a piece of bread and dipped it in the small plate of honey she'd brought on the tray with it. I closed my eyes as I took a bite, letting the taste of the still-unfamiliar spices wash over me.
"Yep! I chartered the Alcor to pick us up in an hour, and Captain Beidou said she'll come and kidnap us and force her to work on her ship for a year if we're even a minute late!" At the look on my face, she waved her hand and laughed. "Don't worry, I'm pretty sure she was joking."
I raised an eyebrow, but kept eating. We'd been planning this trip for the last week, and I was looking forward to it to much to let us be late even without threats from the strange captain my friend had hired.
Today was the day we finally went searching for Kuntira's children.
---
The Alcor was a strange ship, and none of the crew exemplified that quality so much as its captain.
"Avast! Welcome aboard, ye scurvy landlubbers! Be ye ready for plunder, pillage, and all around nefarious deeds?" Captain Beidou of the Crux Fleet cried out as we boarded her ship. She brandished her massive claymore at the sky and angled herself so we couldn't miss the unmistakable purple glow of the electro vision at her side, the small, magical orb that signified that she'd earned the favor of the gods.
Or one god in particular, really. In this case, it was the Electro Archon. Or, as she was known here in Inazuma, the Raiden Shogun, deity and ruler of the land. Beidou must have had it for quite some time; the Raiden Shogun had famously stopped granting people visions years ago, for reasons I don't think anyone quite understood.
Deep in thought, I walked onto the deck and brushed past Beidou, with Anisa right behind me.
"Hey!" Beidou shouted at our backs. "I worked hard on that greeting!"
I smiled politely. "I'm sure you did. It was very impressive."
"But... I'm a pirate! The scourge of all upstanding citizens of the land, especially in Liyue, where my rel—I mean, rivalry with the Tianquan is the stuff of legends! Aren't you going to... I dunno, shiver your timbers or something?"
"Oh!" I realized too late that I had already committed a social error. "I'm very sorry, Captain Beidou. I can assure you, my timbers are very well, um... shivered."
"No, I can tell you're just saying that," Beidou said, hanging her head in defeat. "You're not even a little scared? Just a bit?"
I shook my head, disappointed that my quick-thinking deception hadn't worked. "Anisa hired you, so I'm sure I wouldn't be in any actual danger from you or your crew."
Some of the life returned to Beidou's eyes, joined by a smirk. "Ohhh, so that's how it is. I see... very interesting..." Before I could ask what she meant, she'd already started wandering off. She lazily waved a hand in someone's general direction. "Juza, show them to their cabin and make sure they're comfortable. I'm gonna... go do captain things." Surprisingly, she seemed to be telling the truth, as a few minutes later I felt the boat start to move.
Once we were situated in our cabin and Juza—apparently the Alcor's chief mate, whatever that meant—left us to ourselves, Anisa turned to me with a strange look on her face. "You're really okay that I hired a pirate to take us out to the middle of the ocean?" she asked nervously.
"Of course. Why wouldn't I be? You know what you're doing, after all."
"I'm... not sure I'd go that far," Anisa admitted sheepishly. "I've never gone on one of these expeditions on my own before, so this is all sort of new to me. Usually my advisor takes care of all of these sorts of details."
"I trust your judgment," I shrugged, finding that I truly did believe in her. Kuntira, a massive sea creature known to some as an umibouzu, was my childhood friend. My only friend at all, before I met Anisa. But an umibouzu's lifespan is much shorter than a human's, and she'd died while I was out of the country. Anisa was the one who told me that Kuntira must have had children and given me the hope of meeting them, even if I couldn't see my childhood friend again; she knew how important this was to me, and I knew that I could trust her completely and without reservation.
"But even if something does happen," I continued, "it will be fine. I'm here to protect you, after all."
I wasn't sure how I'd accomplish that, exactly, but I was a decent swimmer, at least. That had to count for something.
Anisa blushed and looked away. "Kumi... y-you really do know all the right things to say to a girl, don't you?"
"That seems unlikely," I answered truthfully. "I've never had a human friend before, so I don't really know what I'm doing."
"Coulda fooled me," she said quietly, and with that, we lapsed into a comfortable silence.
---
Just an hour or two later, we spotted movement in the distance.
"There!" Anisa and I shouted simultaneously, both of us pointing in the same direction. We looked at each other and shared a laugh at our synchronicity.
"Xu Liushi!" Beidou called up to the crow's nest. "See anything?"
After a brief pause, the sailor called back down. "Aye, captain, looks like some umibouzu alright!"
"Take us there, Juza!" Beidou shouted.
"Already on it, captain!" came the chief mate's response, and sure enough, the Alcor had already changed its heading accordingly.
We spent the next few minutes tense with anticipation as we got ready to go meet the umibouzu. The Alcor had a few little rowboats that the crew would use to get between the ship and shore in the absence of a dock. We were going to take one of those while the Alcor stayed back to avoid disturbing our subjects.
At first there was talk of sending one of the sailors with us in case something were to go wrong, but we quickly decided that only Anisa and I would be in the boat. It was a fairly cramped space, especially after accounting for all of Anisa's research notes that she'd inevitably spread out around herself—a habit far more adorable than it was inconvenient—and limiting the number of people would decrease the chances that we'd scare the umibouzu away.
Finally, the ship dropped anchor and we climbed into the rowboat. The wait felt like an eternity, and we were both excited to go, even considering the fact that this might be a completely unrelated group of umibouzu. We could always try again, after all, and just the chance was enough to get our blood pumping. Before we could get started, though, Beidou walked up to us with an uncharacteristically serious look on her face.
"Be careful," she warned us. "The waters out here can be deadly. We've got a line attached to your boat," she gave the rope a tug to demonstrate, "but if you fall in and get unlucky, a current could carry you too far away for us to come get you, or just drag you under to drown. One way or another, they'll get anyone short of a creature of the sea; even I'd be dead if I got caught in one, and I've got a vision and a hell of a six pack." She tugged up her shirt to demonstrate that, too, then clicked her tongue when neither of us looked particularly awestruck.
That was another point for my finding Anise's beauty particularly compelling instead of having missed it in everyone else, I guessed.
"Listen," Beidou sighed, pulling her shirt back down, "just be careful out there. The crew's taken a liking to you two, and I don't want to have to deal with them sulking if one of you bites it out there. Now, go make history, or revolutionize the world, or whatever it is you kids're up to!" And with a big grin and a thumbs-up, she lowered us into the water and we started paddling toward the umibouzu.
As we approached the herd, I felt a strange certainty growing in my chest. It was hard to describe; it felt like coming home, almost. A sense of belonging that crept up on me like a blanket pulled close against the cold. I didn't know what to make of it at first, but when we drew up next to one of the creatures, something clicked in my head, and I knew what the feeling meant.
"This is them," I said with a certainty that surprised even me. "These are Kuntira's children."
"Oh? How can you tell?" asked Anisa.
"I just can," I tried to explain, at a loss for words. "Maybe it's part of the connection we shared, maybe it's something else, but I know these are her children."
Anisa had pulled out her notebook and was frantically scribbling in it. "Fascinating..." she said under her breath. "That's... that's a deeper connection to humans than I thought possible. This could be just the breakthrough I need..."
I blinked. "You... you believe me?" Even I had trouble believing myself; friends or not, I hadn't thought she'd accept my word for it so easily.
"Of course," she said without a moment's hesitation. "Your knowledge may not be formalized like the academia's, but there is no doubt in my mind that you are an expert on these wonderful beings; one was your best friend, after all. So if you say you know something, even if you don't know why, I trust your judgment." She paused, then added, "You trusted me with the Alcor, after all."
Anisa flashed a little half-smile, and between the way it lit up her face and her casual declaration of trust I was struck speechless. She must have taken my silence as an invitation, because that half-smile turned into a mischievous grin. "You know," she said in the same tone of voice she used when trying to convince me to add more nutmeg to a dish that was already oversaturated with the spice, "as Kuntira's best friend, it probably falls to you to name her children, and as your gi—I mean, um—as your best human friend, I'm happy to do the honors, if you want..."
I rolled my eyes. "We're not naming them 'Nutmeg'."
"What?! No! Of course not," she objected not at all convincingly, though the next words out of my mouth made me believe her anyway. "I think this one looks like a Kumiko, don't you?"
I gaped at her. "You can't be serious."
"Of course I'm serious! That way, she'll carry around the legacies of both her mother and her favorite Auntie Kumi!" Anisa looked inordinately pleased with herself.
"I... fine, do whatever you want," I huffed and crossed my arms. Sometimes, I had learned, it was easier just to let Anisa do her thing. And honestly, I couldn't say I minded the smile that sprung up on her face as I acquiesced, nor the dazzling gleam in her eyes. It was cute, and despite everything, I liked to think moments like this were part of why we made such good friends.
After deciding on Kumiko's name, she went back to excitedly talking about the potential implications of this new discovery and carefully taking notes. I felt a wave of contentment wash over me as I realized that I could do this—sitting back and listening while she spoke animatedly and passionately to me about her research, only each other and the ocean for company—all day, as many days in a row as needed. It was like a puzzle piece that I didn't even know was missing had slotted itself back into my life.
I sighed contentedly and let a smile creep onto my face as I did my best to memorize every word.
---
Despite my willingness and Anisa's eagerness, we only had the Alcor's services for a limited amount of time, and before long we found ourselves boarding the ship once again.
"Soooo," Beidou drawled once we'd climbed out of the rowboat, "any luck?"
Anisa and I both smiled and nodded eagerly. "That was them!" we announced simultaneously, then laughed when we realized we'd done it again.
Beidou just raised an eyebrow at us before breaking out into a broad grin. "Lucky lucky!" she cried. "Now, we're spending the night here, so we're not gonna turn around just yet, but I think this calls for a bit of a celebration! Whaddya say?"
Before we could respond, a rousing chorus of 'Aye aye, captain!' went up from the crew. I looked at Anisa, who beamed at me and nodded. "Sounds good," I said, certain that the smile on my face rivaled my dear friend's.
With that settled, Beidou muscled her way between us, put her arms around us, and practically dragged us belowdecks, where a few of the sailors had already begun rolling out barrels of alcohol and setting up tray after tray of surprisingly delicious-looking food.
"We've got a chef friend in Liyue who sets us up with these pre-cooked meals," Beidou explained when she noticed the look on my face. "With a little help from a few of our more elementally-gifted friends, we set up a whole system to preserve and reheat them whenever we need them, so they last longer than you'd think! Good thing we saved some for you two lovebirds, eh?" She winked at us, and for some reason Anisa blushed and looked down at her feet.
What followed was an evening of the most unrestrained revelry I'd ever been a party to—not that I had much room for comparison. We ate, we watched the crew drink—Anisa and I split a cup of whatever liquor everyone else was drinking down like water, and that was more than enough for both of us—and we witnessed what surely must have been one of the most intense arm wrestling tournaments Teyvat had ever seen, culminating in a marathon ten-minute final match between Beidou and one of her sailors, both of whom had mercilessly crushed the rest of the competition without breaking a sweat.
Beidou laughed good-naturedly when she finally pinned her opponent's hand to the table. The newly-crowned runner-up, who had previously seemed so indomitable, smiled meekly and shook her captain's hand. There was a dusting of pink across her cheeks, probably from the alcohol; I hadn't noticed her drinking during the tournament, but given the rest of the crew's habits I was sure she'd snuck in a few drinks somewhere in there.
Eventually, once it was long past midnight and we were exhausted from the festivities, Anisa and I stumbled arm-in-arm back to our cabin, climbed into our bed—the cabin had two beds, but we'd become so used to sharing mine at home that the thought of sleeping separately didn't even cross our minds—and, after a pair of murmured 'good night's, fell right to sleep.
---
As usual, I woke in the morning to an empty bed, Anisa having gotten up just a little while before me. From the warmth still present in her side of the bed, I guessed she hadn't been gone long, and after taking a moment to change into fresh clothes, I went up to see if I could find her.
Sure enough, as soon as I got up the stairs I saw her leaning against the rails, staring out at the horizon. We mustn't have slept for long, because she was watching the most beautiful sunrise I'd ever seen, and in this case, I'd seen quite a few. It probably helped matters that the way the pink light of dawn framed her silhouette made her look otherworldly, taking her already abundant beauty and making it something ethereal and transcendent. It was a sight I immediately knew I'd treasure for the rest of my life.
I froze there for a moment, drinking in the view, but eventually I managed to put one foot in front of the other and walked quietly, reverently toward her, not wanting to interrupt whatever she was thinking about.
That, as it turned out, was a mistake.
As I approached, two things happened in quick succession: first, the plank I stepped on made a loud, sudden creaking noise, which startled Anisa; and second, a big wave hit the boat, making us both lose our balance. I hadn't noticed, distracted as I was by Anisa and the sunrise, but the seas were especially choppy that morning.
I regained my footing quickly, but Anisa, who'd already been off-balance from my sudden approach, didn't fare so well. Time seemed to slow down as I watched her lose her balance completely and tumble over the railing.
Anisa's eyes locked onto mine in the moment before she fell. Maybe it was the panic and fear I saw there, or maybe it was something else entirely, but without a second thought—or even a first—I dove in after her. I'd do anything never to see that look in my dear friend's eyes again, I realized as I pierced the surface. Anything at all. Even...
Even dive into rough, choppy waters with deadly currents that would lead us to certain doom far too quickly for anyone on the Alcor to save us.
Still, as I dove down under the treacherously beautiful blue waves and pulled Anisa back up to relative safety, I found that I didn't have any regrets. Standing by and doing nothing didn't even occur to me in the moment, but even now that it had, I couldn't imagine doing anything differently. Not with Anisa's life on the line. Not ever, even though it meant risking my own.
We surfaced, and though she coughed up some seawater and was clearly shaken, she seemed otherwise fine, much to my relief. Unfortunately, Beidou's warning about the fickle currents in the area was proving true—we hadn't been trapped underwater and drowned, but the Alcor had already grown smaller as we were carried away from it, leading to a death no less certain, if less imminent.
But before we even had time to ponder our impending demise, we were interrupted by something just as deadly as the currents, if not moreso: a massive creature brushed against our feet, once, twice, then began to surface in a single slow, shuddering motion.
We panicked and clung to each other, fearing the end.
It didn't come.
Instead, one of Kuntira's children from earlier surfaced beneath us, and we went from desperately treading water to almost relaxing on the creature's back. Somehow, despite not having had the time to memorize any of their distinctive markings, I could tell that this was the one Anisa had named Kumiko.
"You came to rescue us," I said reverently.
"And you came to rescue me," Anisa whispered, her gaze locked with mine. There was a look in her eyes that I couldn't quite place, like a word on the tip of my tongue. Suddenly I wanted to be closer to her than ever before, to wrap my arms around her and hold on tight and never let go.
So I did.
She let out a little squeak, and I felt a nameless emotion grow in myself, too. "So this is what having a friend is like..." I murmured as I held her tight.
Anisa smiled and laughed that wind chime laugh of hers, then returned my hug, her warmth quickly spreading through my soaked body. "Kumi, dear," she said, breathless and teasing, "I think we've gone a bit past that point, don't you?"
I tilted my head in confusion. "What do you mean?"
She sighed. "I mean... have you ever thought about... about, um..." She hesitated, seeming to search for the right word. "T-touching me, maybe? About me touching you?"
"Yes?" I ventured. "We already do that." Neither my bed nor the one in the cabin was made for two people, after all. We'd occasionally share brief touches outside of that, too, especially when we were cooking together.
"No, no, I mean more than that. I mean..." She blushed and broke eye contact, but continued on as she awkwardly gestured at her breasts and hips. "Touching me here, or here, or... somewhere else, even. Have you thought about that at all?"
I'd always admired the way her academic's robes fell on her, and there was something appealing about her nightclothes that I'd not been able to identify, but it never occurred to me that I might want to touch her, to see her without those lovely garments and touch her then, too. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, my face flushed and tingles of electricity shot through my back, traveling down into my stomach and lower, pooling between my legs.
"O-oh," I stammered, and that, too, was new to me. I stammered around strangers, of course, but Anisa was the opposite of a stranger, someone I knew better than anyone else, though suddenly that wasn't quite enough any more. I wanted to know everything about her; I didn't even know the entirety of what I wanted to know about her, and I found that that was what made me nervous and excited all at the same time. "I... I think I understand," I managed to say.
"Then... what about kissing me?" she asked, her face as red as I realized mine must be, and suddenly I knew exactly why she kept blushing around me back at the house.
Just the thought of her lips brushing against mine sent another jolt of heat and electricity coursing through me, and before I could help it I let out a faint gasp. "That... that sounds... may I?" I asked breathlessly.
Instead of answering, she leaned forward and kissed me first. Her lips were even softer than I'd imagined, and I heard a sound that I slowly realized was a moan coming from... me? Her? Both of us? It didn't matter, I thought as I deepened the kiss. All that mattered in that moment was that she tasted faintly of the spices she loved to add to everything, and slightly more strongly of the ocean we both loved so much.
I realized that this was the best those spices had ever tasted to me and stifled a laugh before it could ruin the moment. I considered saying something anyway, but she snaked an arm up around my neck and brought her other hand up between us to grab at my chest, and before I could say anything I was gone, lost in these new feelings, in her touch, in the way she tasted, her scent, the way our moans harmonized with each other.
After what had surely been the better part of an hour but felt like mere moments, a voice called out from above us. "Ha! Called it!" We looked up to see Beidou peering down over the ship's railing and grinning at us; apparently our aquatic friend had brought us back to the ship while we were... otherwise occupied. "Alright, anyone who thought they were just friends, pay up!"
"Nobody thought that," the chief mate said, fondly rolling his eyes as he tossed a rope ladder down to us. "Nobody could possibly look at them and not see a doting couple. Even their argument was romantically charged."
Beidou stuck out her tongue. "You say that, but Lumine's weird little edible friend couldn't even tell with Ganyu and Keqing, and if they were any less obvious than these two I'll eat my hat."
"You don't have a hat."
We clambered up onto the deck just in time to see Beidou sweep into a deep bow, her eyes twinkling. "I rest my case, your honor."
The rest of her crew groaned in unison at their captain's antics. A crew member—the runner-up in the arm wrestling tournament, I realized—came over to gather up the ladder behind us, but before they could start, she pointed down at the animal, which had stayed put even after we'd climbed off its back. "Hey, you two left something down there," she called out to us.
We turned around to look, but Beidou beat us to it. "Well I'll be..." she said softly, and before we could react she'd jumped over the railing and onto Kumiko's back. She gathered whatever it was that we'd left there and climbed back up almost faster than we could blink. "Ha! Looks like we weren't the only two cheering for you two kids to get together." She held out two glowing, purple orbs, both of them crackling with electricity. Both of them a perfect match for the electro vision hanging at her side.
"Congratulations, you two: looks like you're the first electro vision recipients in two years. Be sure to give thanks to the big, zappy lesbian in the sky, yeah?"
We reached out in unison and carefully took the visions from her hands. After a few moments of staring into them, we laughed in unison and traded with each other. Both visions looked identical, and they felt the same, too, but something about receiving them from each other rather than Beidou felt... right.
Our new visions in hand, Anisa and I kissed again, and this time, the electricity I felt crackling over my skin wasn't just from the feeling of our bodies pressing together.