Chapter Text
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Mumei has never taken care of anything in her life.
From the darkest beginnings of fire and brimstone, Civilization has forged onward with or without her. If she tries to wrap her head around conception and thought, of every way she was created from hope and love, she’ll get a headache. She’s not built for understanding how she works. She’s a half finished idea, a culmination of millions breathing together and uttering the word guardian.
She is their guardian. In an age of darkness and terror, she was made like an imaginary friend to bring comfort and warmth. She wasn’t made by the gods like the other concepts.
She thinks that makes her unfinished, a creation with its screws loose and held together by duct tape. There’s things wrong with her that aren’t wrong with the other concepts. Her memory, for starters. It’s short and fleeting. She never had a name, at least she can’t remember if she was given one, but she’s also had many names. Throughout her travels, from kingdom to kingdom, city to city, by horseback and by taxi, she’s been given new names. It’s taken a long time for her to find a name and actually keep it. The others didn’t have to struggle with that.
She’s a culmination of humanity, a vessel of their emotions. The softness and gentle hands of the hard working but also the cutthroat, the hungry, and the ravenous. She is a guardian as much as she is an executioner. When she was first conceived, it was an age of growth and opportunity for Civilization. It was back before the Council had mortal forms.
It was the beginning of the war.
Mumei remembers the feeling, the emptiness inside her skin of something unwritten, fresh and unexplored. She was naive. The only one she knew was Kronii and she had thoughtlessly sided with her during the war, where Nature’s wrath collided against Time and Mumei had to stand, a small mite compared to the overwhelming pressure of Space. Civilization trembled and bared its teeth, like a newborn wolf fighting for its life.
Mumei thinks if the gods hadn’t intervened and forced them to get along, she would have been erased. She was put in a chair on the Council, the Council that made up the very essence of the universe. She felt small in her chair. A cold indifference had settled over the room when Baelz was made their leader, their powers severed in half as they were all bound to mortal forms. The war was over and she was alone. She was alone for a very, very long time.
(She thinks, often, if she had called a Council meeting back then if anyone would have responded.)
It was better not to talk to them anyway. The war had made relationships between the members frigid, excluding Bae and her exuberance. She was the only one they listened to, but she didn’t call upon them after they parted ways. The Council was formed, but only in name.
For hundreds of years, Mumei walked alone.
She stands before a battlefield. The ground is ashen and smoking. Gunpowder stinks in the air. There’s dead horses lying between fallen knights. A fire had caught onto the forest, a hissing blaze that blots the sky out into black clouds. Mumei had seen much the same and similar in her travels. The sight of it stops her in her tracks, where her boots sink into filthy earth and she listens to the crackle and snap of tree limbs falling around her.
The worst, she thinks, is that she can feel this too. Her hand twitches, this hungry itch to grab a sword and walk headlong into battle. The need to run away from battle, afraid for her life. The emotions of the humans that had fallen sneak up her spine. She’s used to it, she thinks. She’s a part of them and she feels it. The violence of humanity is under her ribs.
She’s distracted by a little noise, nearly indiscernible under the roar of flame. Mumei tilts her head. Her first thought is a survivor. She doesn’t see any movement over the battlefield aside from the falling of trees. It’s curiosity that drives her after it. Her boots kick against broken metal. The underbrush is trampled over this land.
She finds a small bundle of clothes, tucked into the side of a fallen horse. She thinks it’s a fallen rider for a second. The crying is too small. The human is much too small.
They’re swathed in clothes too big for them. Mumei knows how young a human looks when they’re born. This one isn’t a newborn, but they don’t look like they can walk yet either. Blonde hair is messy and wild on their head. They’re injured, she notes, crouching down by the clothes to tug some aside. Little cuts and burns over the child's skin.
Mumei has talked to humans before. She blends in with them. She walks with them.
She says, “Hi.”
The child has a shirt over their head. They’re peering up at with watery eyes, hiccups and sobs as they remain huddled there. Are they old enough to talk?
“Hi.” Mumei repeats. Maybe she sounds too bright for this area. There’s death in the air and fire overhead. Should she sound sad? She whispers instead, “Hi.”
They’re still crying. Mumei folds her arms against her stomach, a strange helplessness finding her. She can’t recall in her terrible memory if she’d ever interacted with a child. She doesn’t know what to say. This situation felt especially odd too. It might be better if she kept walking and pretended she never saw the child.
(Is that what the Council thought too when they parted ways from her?)
She hesitantly reaches her hands out. The child doesn’t flinch or scream. She struggles with finding a way to grip them, under their arms, their legs, she hasn’t a clue. It takes a minute to safely unearth the child from the swatch of clothes and into Mumei’s lap.
She’s wearing traveling clothes, a thick coat and hood aligned with white fur. Her boots are tiny and cute in Mumei's palm. She’s a girl.
“Hi.” Mumei keeps saying, mostly because she hasn’t a clue how to talk. She feels like a baby herself. The child is sniffling and looking around them in an upset manner. “I guess you can’t talk.”
She stands, listing a little from her legs being sore. Her arms are instinctive about where she puts the child, cupping her arm underneath them and propping them on her hip. She pauses as she does this. Her body had reacted as if she’d done this already. As if she knew. It’s the feeling she’s getting, from around her, underneath smoke and death. I don’t think I’ve ever held someone like this. But a human did, once.
“Where’s your family?” Mumei asks. The fire was becoming troublesome the closer it got. She’s moving away from it, careful steps around broken bodies and weapons.
She doesn’t get an answer, not that she was wholly expecting one. She focuses on getting away from the heat, humming in her throat for some sort of noise, conversation, anything to get this awkward feeling away. At some point it registers that the child is gripping her cloak. She glances down at this. There’s a burn along their wrist she’s distracted by.
“We can get you patched up.” Mumei says, more to herself. “Do you want that? I think you do. It has to hurt.”
She notices talking is calming the child down. She’s more than happy to do more of that then.
“Do you have a name? You probably can’t tell me. Do you know it, maybe? I don’t know if I wanna keep calling you the baby, you’re not really a baby, you’re like, an ascended baby. Big baby.” Mumei rambles as they leave the battlefield behind, emerging into the thicker part of the woods where it takes longer for her to step over roots and foliage. “Well, you are kind of a cry baby.”
The crying had all but stopped now. The child had her face buried against Mumei’s shoulder. Mumei slows down, looking at the little thing with fascination. She can’t get into this kid's head. Usually, she has an idea of what a human is thinking. Kids were a whole different story.
“Are you sleepy?” Mumei asks. “I dunno if I’m that comfortable. I’m kind of flattered. If you’re tired, you can sleep there.”
Mumei thinks the child is well behaved, because after the initial crying, all she gets is quiet hiccups and exhausted sniffles. Mumei pulls the hood up over their head, the woods slowly enveloping them. There’s a smokey haze overhead still, but the sound of fire is behind them. A part of her wonders when she’ll find a town. She’s not sure what she’s doing, but the idea of just dropping the child off somewhere strikes her as odd. Her mind is buzzing with you’re gonna leave her behind like you were?
“I wasn’t left behind.” She protests. “That’s so dramatic. Do you think I’m being dramatic?”
No response. She pulls up the hood to check and finds the kid slumped against her in troubled sleep, exhaustion and pain wearing them down. Mumei frowns. She tucks the hood back over her head.
“I’m being dramatic.” She announces softly. “I mean, I could have left you there or anywhere. I could leave you right here. What am I doing?”
There’s no one to answer her.
“Okay.” Mumei says. She figures thinking is overrated anyway and sets out to find a comfortable place to rest for the night.
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