#just balemoon thoughts | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chucapybara · 7 months ago

Text

alright arlecchino hopping around in my head still so soft mornings with your darling knave!

oh, arlecchino being so utterly enamoured with you. she tends to wake up earlier than you do; a harbinger has many things to go about doing in a day, after all, and being one who manages the affairs of different house of the hearths across teyvat, it's no easy feat.

but on the off days, after a long night of making love to you, she finds herself trapped in your orbit, unable to escape. (not that she'd ever want to.) your soft, radiantly divine figure rests curled beside her, your breath tickling her cheek, and she loves it.

in the respite that comes, in this calm between the noise of her nightmares and of her day work, she finds that all the world is still when you are. an absence of howling, the absence of shades are substituted, if only for those few moments, with the gentle sunbeam that kisses your skin.

(she wishes she were the sun, for a brief time. oh, how her blood almost boils with envy for that heavenly star which gets to kiss you every morning before she does; and were it not for the fact that she loathed to wake you in such peaceful sleep, she may have done so already.)

arlecchino shifts, resting her head on her arm, facing you, observing every rise and fall of your unrobed shoulders, chest. her mind is quiet, silenced, lacking of any other thought except for you.

you, who is so precious to her, that she would rend heaven upon earth and bring down cities and crowns in your name if you asked her to. she who would raise armies and queendoms worshipping you—if she did not already dislike the thought of sharing you with another. (the notion of others gazing upon you with reverence to match hers is preposterous in its nature, so she strangles the thought in its crib.)

as she ponders her prayers for you, she notes how the blanket of your shared bed has dipped below your waist. arlecchino almost has the mind to tuck you back in, to preserve your comfort—all the more when she catches how you shiver, ever so slightly, when exposed to the naked air—but she realises doing so may only wake you.

and so she unfurls her wing of balemoon bloodfire, its crimson feathers catching the sun's rays, illuminating it as sunsets are wont to do. she drapes it over you in replacement for the blanket, mentally chiding it for doing a poor job at keeping you warm.

though, perhaps, this in and of itself was a blessing, too.

your expression eases, and so too does arlecchino's scarlet-eyed gaze soften. her wing rests soothingly around you, almost ticklish, exuding the hearthfire's homely coziness.

and it is this same ticklish sensation that rouses you, slow, steady. your lips part in a yawn, and you peek open a bleary eye, finding your sweet one already long having been observing you. your soul sings.

"good morning, lover," arlecchino murmurs fondly, pressing close. now that you're awake, she has no reservations about pulling you close. she loops an arm around your back, blackened hands ever gentle, ever soft.

you smile, still half-asleep, but savouring the affection. your own palm finds its way to arlecchino's spine, tracing delicately up and down, making your darling knave shiver.

(oh, how weak she finds herself at your touch. let all other things to which she be impenetrable, but for you, she spares a key.)

arlecchino is strong, and it shows in the grooves of her muscled form, tensing in the wake of your drowsed touch. she is especially vulnerable in the space just beside her wing, where you pay special attention, massaging lightly there and leaving tender brushes of your lips. fluttering kisses, with all the softness of rainbow rose petals on the gentle wind.

"morning, arle," you mumble in a wispy breath. you graze your fingertips some along the curve of her side, to the cursed ink on her arm (that is no more a curse than it is a part of the woman you love), tracing them as though you didn't already have every inch of arlecchino mapped out in your memory.

your eyes flutter closed, and your hand goes still, relaxed now on arlecchino's back once more as you are quickly returned to sleep's embrace—arlecchino cradling you, bloodfire wing secured around your form.

but this time, sleep itself has no choice but to share you with her.

all the time in the world could not compare to these tender, infinitisemal moments—your limbs tangled like vines, hair strewn across the pillows upon the bed that is only both yours to own, with you in her arms.

arlecchino's lips draw forth like a magnet, pressing tender kisses along your brow. "rest well, my dove."

and when she speaks, she hopes her faithful prayer follows you into your conscious, to warm your heart and remind you always of the devotion only your sweet knave holds, just for you. only for you.

#🌙 chuca drabbles #arlecchino #arlecchino x reader #god i love her wing so MUCH #i love how the tip of it flaps a little bit whenever you change directions while sprinting as her #if big wing why not use for hugs? embraces?!#rgrjrhrjrj arlecchino...#forever loving her wing raaaa!!!!

499 notes · View notes

torgawl · 7 months ago

Text

#all I know is that Celestia needs to rethink what they qualify as a 'lone seelie survivor' cause man do they keep popping up#and by god do they all do the most fucked up shit when in love#like I get the ban on seelie romance now#it was for the people's safety#and we've only been seeing the results of watered down seelies/kin imagine a full powered seelie in love #an underground seelie organization in Snezhnaya that hates the cryo archon would be so funny#like what the hell did SHE do

truly!!! isn't the tsaritsa the archon of love, too? it's a funny concept that they would have beef ahah but yeah, i do not know if they are actually connected to the seelies, one could imagine they would have similar goals after the heavenly principles basically wiped them out?! pondering

#in the Perinheri book the name khaenri'ah wasnt used was it?#it was a land established before the domestication of birds and yet the Alberich clan was already well respected...#did they rename their society after the fall of the Crimson Moon dynasty?

#fed from an unknown source... a beautiful dragon of jewels...#black dragon that spews red poison and the dragon that was fought on Fischl's summer island play#a transforming knave with powers that burn away peoples memories and Princess Fischl who forgot the land she ruled #'if you still care for humanity than drink from this cup' and so the crimson moon's king did#it was something like that wasnt it?#then I wonder#what led to that decision? had the dynasty known for taking in children from beyond their realm already learned forbidden knowledge?#and to spare the rest they took themselves out much like the snake in inazuma?#but they wanted to see the fall of the Eclipse dynasty as well though... hmmmmm...

that line from crimson moon semblance reminds me so much of this line in "a drunkard's tale".

it matches the "unknown source" and considering the abyss is linked to forbidden knowledge maybe the leader of khaenri'ah did indeed drink that wine, literally or metaphorically. it's also curious that - if "benevolant master who commands all" and "leader of khaenri'ahn noble families" are the same person - that his bloodline has gone blind in one eye, according to the weapon description. and some khaenriahns do indeed hide one of their eyes, although i don't think it's ever implied they're actually blind. again, not sure if this is a literal description or not since fictional books aren't trustworthy sources of information. the weapon also says during this time, before the pitch-black sun covered the underground, "the ancient honorable clan ruled the vast kingdom". could this be the alberich? the text goes on to say "by the time the pitch-black sun shone upon all, the name of the crimson moon faded", which i assume means the crimson moon was forgotten, even in khaenri'ah. was the irminsul affected during the "clan-extinguishing disaster"? they also divide people into impure, the ones who suffered the curse, and the spotless, untouched by fate. arlecchino references the balemoon as a curse, if kaeya doesn't have the power of the balemoon, it would mean (by that logic, if it makes any sense) he is untouched by fate - which could be connected to why he's the last hope of his people. obviously it's hard to talk about timelines and dynasties as we don't exactly know how long the crimson moon dynasty lasted or what cause the shift in the first place. irmin was also supposedly the last king of khaenri'ah but are we even sure there was another one considering there seems to be a connection between forbidden knowledge and the crimson moon?

diluc mentioned in the lore of "wings of concealing snow", nice!!

you know, i wonder if the owls in this story are connected to the underground intelligence network that contacted diluc in snezhenaya. his character story definitely refers to the "observer" as a third-party entity, considering diluc's distaste for the fatui, the abyss order and the knights of favonious we can rule all those options out of the way. the way they don't go into detail about it or even go as far as saying its name, mentioning how secretive they are, i assume they're not a group we've met/are aware as of yet.

going back to "wings of concealing snow" though, the story is very clearly about sal vindagnyr. the description separates the population, if i can call it that, in two different groups: falcons and owls. owls are described almost as if they were councelors while falcons are described as ambitious, with the desire to rule the skies.

from the information we have of sal vindagnyr, we know there's 3 important figures with higher hierarchy: the princess (prophetess and highly connected to the frostbearing tree), the scribe and the priest-king (the princess' 'father').

the princess was able to foresee the future - for example, she foretold what would much later happen with durin - and painted the murals we can still see in dragonspine. she was specifically called a lovely maiden and described as having beauty and skill that was thought to be as eternal and pure as moonlight. it's also relevant to point out the frostbearing tree was very likely an irminsul tree. if we know anything about symbolism in genshin is that moonlight, knowledge and the ability to foresee the future are all key-words that directly point to seelies. and we can parallel this princess directly to someone like sibylla, mentioned in remuria as advisor of god-king remus, who appears as a golden bee and who protected the irminsul where an ancient civilization was located in the abyssal depths. the form of these remuria bees are very akin to what seelies look like and there's also heavy implications she was a seelie. it would make sense that someone overlooking the irminsul tree in ancient dragonspine was also a seelie, or at least related to one somehow.

as for the concept of priest-kings, they're not something exclusive to sal vindagnyr. we've seen the exact same depictions of crowned individuals guiding populations in tsurumi island and the concept was also talked about in the "guilded dreams" artifact set (the set focuses on king deshret and a sumeru desert civilization).

i think it's not that crazy to think ancient civilizations had similar social foundations. the way seelies cohabited with humans, also learned from the chasm lore, implies they guided humanity in some way as divine envoys (words used in "flower of paradise lost", artifact set about nabu malikata). or, more specifically, advised civilizations' gods/kings.

the wings' description also goes on to talk about "birds of the land of the wind" and say the owls gained dominion in the absence of light while fledgeling birds stayed in their nests. this happened after the nail was casted upon sal vindagnyr and the darkness drowned the land (likely the abyss, in reference to forbidden knowledge). if owls and falcons are adult birds in this story, maybe the fledgelings refer to the basis of what would later become the mondstadt civilization. the line "the nestlings would never know who it was who saved them" followed by "the dragon ... would also be forgotten" imply the saviour of the people was someone who ended up being forgotten. as far as i'm aware, there's only one being who was worshipped in mondstadt and ancient civilizations like the one in enkanomiya who ended up forgotten, istaroth. so, there's that!! i also thought it was interesting that the owls that "once shone brightly in the darkness" would also end up with the same fate, although there's no mention they ever disappeared, which brings me to the next point.

"a flash of red flames would reveal his silhouette for but a moment in the darkness of the night, before he disappeared in an instant" sounds a lot like what the owls were like to the people of mondstadt. diluc also only started his darknight hero endeavours after he returned from snezhenaya, after entering the secret organisation and rising quickly in its ranks. and guess who, in the manga, wears an owl mask? an owl is also diluc's constellation and these are diluc and kaeya's respective voicelines in the section "interesting things":

coincidence that kaeya associated the owl with dragonspine? moreso, some of diluc's voicelines are very intent on judgement/punishment: "time for — retribution!" or even "lay waste to the wicked!" which parallels fischl's "no rest for the wicked...". fischl has also said the retribution voiceline in "summertime odyssey". these are interesting parallels because fischl from "the legend of the shattered halberd" and "flowers for princess fischl" has a red eye - auge de der verurteilung or eye of judgment/condemnation - and her mission is to observe and weave the threads of fate. fischl not only parallels kaeya but also king irmin, though it's still interesting this theme is also connected to diluc. but how does this connect to dragonspine? this is the ending line in the description of "wings of concealing snow".

whatever that "greater trial" is, it also implies some sort of payback towards celestia and/or the abyss. as for who are the "we", if not the seelies who got basically wiped out from teyvat, i can only think of the owls.

at last, i want to leave here the messages found in the scribe's box found in dragonspine that clearly belonged to the scribe in sal vindagnyr:

the first message shows resentment towards the skies (it almost sounds like tsaritsa's desire to burn the old world described in the cryo gemstone). the second message refers dust and wind which are very suspicious words considering they can be connected to concepts like alchemy, khaenri'ah and either the anemo god or the god of time. it also shows intent in finding imunlaukr (the hero from another land that left sal vindagnyr to fight what i assume was the abyss during the conflict). the fourth message directly states this person was the last to survive and that it made no more sense to keep watch (of what? the fledglings like the owls?), probably meaning this person left dragonspine. and, in the last message it directly references khaenri'ah's establishment and early days. could this person have fled to somewhere outside of teyvat, away from the gods, like khaenri'ah? this really isn't that surprising when we have in account sal vindagnyr and khaenri'ah share the same written latin-based language.

i actually went a bit more in depth about sal vindagnyr and imunlaukr on this twitter thread, if anyone cares, but i'm going to include here part of it. the name imunlaukr means "sword", being a direct reference to the god ullr - step-son of thor and the son of lady sif. sif was famous for her beauty and unique golden hair, said to be inherited by her children. genshin's imunlaukr went on to pass his name on to a clan in mondstadt that was known for raising brave and gifted warriors that fought hard and died young. the clan adopted their progenitor's viewpoint that combat was merely for the entertainment of the gods and as such would fight anyone and anything for the sake of fighting, as well as enact war tales. do you know who else is a sword, happens to be blonde and has connections to khaenri'ah? dainsleif, which translates to dáinn's heirloom. dáinn (or dain) means 'dead' and he's a character in norse mythology. most of the tales relating to him depict him as a dwarf or king of elves. hehe, break time to introduce fun facts about nibelung. the term in legend has usually referred to either a group of humans or a group of dwarves but the name in genshin is likely derived from richard wagner's four-part opera der ring des nibelungen "the ring of the nibelung", in which the dwarf (or nibelung) alberich creates a ring capable of controlling the world, using gold he stole from the rhinemaidens (or rheintöchter "rhine-daughters"). the conflict that arises over the ownership of this ring eventually leads to the destruction of the gods and their home. continuing with dainsleif, in myhtology, the sword is involved in a so-called eternal battle between kings, initiated by one man falling in love with and running off with another's daughter. dainsleif was forged by the dwarves whose god/king was alberich, and the sword was cursed with insatiable bloodlust and would not be able to be sheathed until it had killed and any wound caused by the sword would never be able to heal. maybe the connection between imunlaukr and dainsleif is a stretch - timewise, it wouldn't really make sense as dain seems to be exclusively from the eclipse dynasty but khaenri'ah was somewhat recent in the scribe's notes - but i really don't think the connection between khaenri'ah and sal vindagnyr is.

furthermore, dainsleif is called "bough keeper", a bough being a branch of a tree - like the irminsul. if you notice his design, one of his arms has blue lines akin to those in irminsul trees. blue lines also appear in his and pierro's mask. the introduction to his character is written by a self-proclaimed prophet and mentions the desire to see the skies burning - like the message in the scribe's box - as well as desire for atonement of bygone mistakes and mentions of alchemy (gold being the end goal as it's related to reaching the magnum opus and the philosopher's stone - elixir of life and immortality). the symbol the angel figure in dragonspine's mural is handing to the humans resembles a circumpoint, that can represent gold. it's also something that appears associated with rhinedottir in one of the videos about the hexenzirkel (which makes sense as she's such a proeminent figure related to the art of khemia and khaenri'ah, very much associated with the cataclysm).

not sure what the conclusion of all of this is but i don't think it's impossible this underground intelligence network and the owls might be something connected, directly or indirectly, to the person from sal vindagnyr that might have fled dragonspine all those years ago or even khaenri'ah. could diluc and kaeya work more closely together than we think? considering the third-party observer that rescued diluc is said to be from the north when that supposedly happened in snezhenaya, does this mean this north they speak of is beyond the land of the tsaritsa?

note: i wanted to make some type of connection to the book "anecdota septentrionalis" or anecdotes of the north, as the book not only talks about snezhenaya but also tells a very fantastical and non-sensical story that includes other nations but i understood very much zero about it other than the fact that north from where the major plot takes place there's a tall wall in the middle of the sea stretching into the sky with countless densely packed human figures suspended "and though they had neither bodies nor muscles, their forms could clearly be seen". whatever that means, so i can't really make any inference to what it beyond snezhenaya.

note 2: forgot to mention but owls besides being birds associated with wisdom, in sumerian, akkadian, and babylonian culture, are also associated with lilith. she was theorized to be the first wife of adam and is cited as having been "banished" from the garden of eden. it's just a fun fact if we think of seelies, divine envoys who are symbols of wisdom and guidance, that got punished by the heavens after their ancestor married a traveler from afar.

#i loved to read your thoughts thanks for adding so much in the tags i hope you don't mind i added them to the post :)#now i'm curious about fischl's story in summertime odyssey shdfsja #i don't know if i remember much but there's a part about their ruler not doing anything when the kingdom was engulfed by a #menacing shadow and oz coming into the realm with the sacred scriptures that contained prophecies (including a prophecy of good fate)#and that book was worshiped by the people #about crimson moon semblance:#there's also the mention of priests and how they were the ones who convinced the king to worship the crimson moon corpse #and the king is referred to as 'muddle-minded' so that's something. maybe the priests here still worshipped the divine as only the eclipse #dynasty seems to be truly 'godless' but we also have the abyss order that also worships the sinner so idk #there's the mention of 'pale-white fate' and how the only one left laughing after the cataclysm was the moonlight. no idea what that means!#and how 'the corpse of the balemoon has already anchored death upon you' you being fate hmmmmm #so there's a lot i don't actually understand but it's still cool they're giving us at least some crumbs to understand or at least #hypothesise what actually happened in khaenri'ah #regarding the seelies i just wanna say i think it's fun that deshret is represented as an eye and an eight pointed star and that nabu #malikata was a seelie and coincidentally there's a door supposedly related to khaenri'ah in sumeru desert. near tunigi hollow of all places #too (with dante's inferno's gate to hell quote too) so food for thought i guess xD

67 notes · View notes