#i feel like i’ve gotten progressively worse at tumblr-ing in the seven months i’ve been dead

[ethereal-kloud]

sorry uhhh life happened and took all of my motivation to write literally anything with it.

anyway umm suddenly genshin dropkicked me in the face a couple months ago but i also didn’t feel like writing any of the ideas stuck in my head but like

seelies.

admittedly, not much is said about them in the genshin lore (see the wiki) but what little history they do have is interesting.

first off, (the race) seelies are really, really old. probably-maybe before celestia kind of old. and there’s so many mysteries surrounding them (some caused by the lack of information) but that also gives way to a lot of fanfic ideas.

did they live like humans (who they guided) with limited lives? extended lives? god-like lifespans?

who cursed them?

what happened to that traveler that married a seelie? (separated and cursed to forget, but did they die like that???)

is them guiding the traveler to treasure the last gift they want because of their “purpose” when they were humanoid??,?

anyway the point is i have a lot of questions about this that will probably never be answered.

the thing is, seelies are old. if the wiki is even remotely close to being accurate, the race is probably far older than morax/rex lapis. existed long enough for whichever gods were in charge then to task them with guiding humanity. (teaching them, etc)

and even when they fell around the time morax was really young, even with a majority of the race losing their memories and knowledge, what they used to be is still remembered, if only barely.

when that seelie married that traveler, and calamity followed 30 days later, (probably) causing the seelie race to be “cast aside by the heavens”, they became the “seelie” shape out of grief. maybe because of what that first seelie’s actions caused for them (beloved/important role in their civilization, maybe?) and maybe partially because of the curse stripping them of their knowledge (something they were known for).

the seelie courts are also their “old dwelling places” and those forms are their “regressed forms” meaning that while seelies may have spent most of their time in beautiful, humanoid forms, they weren’t always like that. in fact, their current forms may be their original forms before they adapted (something they’re still good at, even in these forms! see: chasm and dragonspine and some in inazuma)

but! it’s canon that not all of the seelie race turned into the spirit forms immediately— (implied Goddess of Flowers, and the wiki even states “…a few managed to retain their humanoid forms” even without being named)

(warning ummm this is where i started rambling about a story idea that will,,, probably never be fleshed out)

but anyway this sort of vagueness leads to my brain going “what if”

there are also mini, baby-like seelies. those are canon.

seelies were tasked to guide humanity, traveling aside them and teaching them.

what if one of those baby seelies (or even adult seelie, really, i just find a baby one cuter) retained their human form? losing a majority of their memories as caused by the curse, but young enough and/or strong enough to retain just enough to remember their purpose.

seelies were probably more god than human (re: humanoid forms) and so they probably lived through quite a bit of teyvat’s history after their race’s fall. never lingering, but traveling and helping and being recorded in a few tales and bard songs, remembered by a too long scarf that almost seems to float at times, intuition that somehow allows them to know what people need and just how to get it to them, a manner that seems both too close and too far away from people, a soft song whispering in the wind being the only sign of their appearance or disappearance with the absence of it.

probably slept a lot like venti, to keep their memory from degrading even further, and they probably never hear of their stories, traveling and traveling and helping and sleeping and (“we have to teach them. what use is our knowledge of its all locked away with us—?”) and dreaming (“who are you?” “hello!”) and waking and repeat.

maybe they even came across abyss!sibling traveling with dain, remaining a faint memory to them after disappearing. (“you shouldn’t forget” “huh?”)

and then canon!genshin time.

then idk i just really liked the idea of still sleepy!seelie running into kaveh having some sort of problem, absolutely not willing to go to anybody about it (especially not his roommate, who probably would help but be infuriating every step of the way) and seelie having woken up recently, awake but not fully, cheerfully and groggy still, distracting him into playing a game of tag, somehow.

chasing them around sumeru city, always barely out of reach until he’s breathless and they’ve let him catch them at the grand bazaar, thanking him for helping them wake up, and before he realizes hey why’s a child just running around without parents???? why did they not question him chasing after one??? he looks up from the ground and they’re gone.

confused, but having things to do, probably as an adult, and perhaps this is before traveler gets to sumeru and he’s yet to leave for that project that kept him out of the drama when traveler did arrive, he continues with his day until he goes back to the house he live in with alhaitham and find a neat little gift wrapped box, with whatever he had needed earlier that day inside of it (if it was small enough idk what an architect needs actually)

he obviously asks his roommate about it, but he was probably out doing scribe things or reading a book, and why would he care about a package that kaveh received? (probably habit)

except it dawns, now, that the package means that whoever sent it knew that kaveh lived with alhaitham. and where they lived. while kaveh did complain about his roommate to almost anyone who would listen, he wouldn’t give out his address to non-friends, and alhaitham doesn’t either.

(i don’t think there’s post offices in genshin. the traveler has to deliver letters, sometimes, and it has to be given in person, so i’m pretty sure they just send a person and there’s no official record of where people live edit: nvm apparently at least sumeru has one??? new archon quest part immediately proves me wrong ig.)

and the gift doesn’t have a name other than his own attached to it.

(it barely crosses his mind that the child he’s played with that morning had said that they’d pay him back while he was breathless at the end. there’s no way that a merchant would sell something like what he’s needed to a child, right?)

and traveler running into them afterward, them wandering nearby during the beginning of their attempts to get to inazuma, perhaps, getting run into by that thief with a vision and letting kazuha and traveler catch up to them just a bit sooner.

kazuha, who is presumably more connected with wind than most is, can hear that seelie is possibly more than they seem. can hear a song unwilling to be forgotten, louder than normal people can, sense the way the wind seems to lift the child up playfully, lighter than air itself, and yet heavy with a grief they cling to.

seelie, who can’t activate his friend’s vision, either, but flinches when they touch it, act as if they’re about to cry.

(visions are human’s ambitions. their wishes. the traveler could see them even disconnected from their wielder, and yae miko knew that they persisted being taken. why wouldn’t seelie, again probably more god than human, a guide to humanity, be able to see those hopes?

they could see the determination, and a part of them wanted to cheer them on, wanted to see them succeed—

but they know what the colorless shade of the vision means)

nothing probably changes from that point; seelie doesn’t feel the need to head to inazuma even if they could beat traveler in a fight (they can’t) and traveler needs to find their sibling. they part ways, leaving traveler and kazuha mildly curious, but not enough to chase after them.

and idk when this would happen lore wise, but eventually, they would meet venti, and he would go on about knowing songs from the past, present, and future, and the longing that hits them is both expected and takes them entirely by surprise. it’s been so long. a melody in their ears, a soft voice, the end, but not for them. not for her, either, and yet they are truly the last now, and forevermore until they too meet their fate.

(“oh? do you have a song in mind?” the bard may ask, carefully strumming the strings of his lyre.

“…can you complete it?” they might beg. “it goes like this.”

the bard’s eyes may widen, a tune that existed long before he was a wisp, but one he does know. a song that should be lost in time, those who knew it having long lost the ability to sing.

but he does play it, nonetheless, and the seelie— they

[“don’t resent them, darling, for what crime did they commit? love? it’s okay, it’s alright, we are only crying because—“]

the seelie might cry.)

ummm i also wanted something with nahida since the goddess of flowers is heavily implied to have been one of those seelies that retained their humanoid forms, but i’m not quite sure how that would play out? with the end of the sumeru archon quest (they would forget, too, that rukkhadevata had been the one to know her, and maybe they knew her personally, or just from their society, and maybe they wouldn’t know how to react with a semi-amnesiac goddess that knew one of them after the calamity.)

rex lapis, too, since seelie would technically be older than him, but probably due to being asleep for years and years and never fully being raised would be more childish and/or naive than him. more willing to break rules, contracts, if it meant more people ended up happy and safe, and they learned something from it.

i like the idea that despite this, they would have their moments of ancient wisdom long faded, and share the knowledge of loss (archon war and them witnessing whatever happened in the halls of angels, where they played their final tune)