EN & FR | Lumine Ship Weeks 2021 | ᴄʜɪʟᴜᴍɪ

DAY 2 - Her light repelling the darkness

⇧ EN // FR ⇩

Image at the beginning of the chapter: @akmr_knst_ on twitter

Prompt 1: Tears / Home / Dreams

Tartaglia, the number Eleventh of the Fatui Harbingers, was doing a commission on behalf of the Tsaritsa. His goal: to find something hidden in Dragonspine. After an entire day spent in researchs, to no avail, he set camp into a nearby cave he had found while exploring, so that he could eat something and get some rest. After he laid down on his back into this glacial environment that didn't bother him that much, he quickly fell asleep, exhausted after all the back and forth he had done in the snow and the cold, and even sometimes crawling and climbing to reach higher spots to get a better view in hope to find what he was looking for with more ease.

He hoped to get some rest, but the Archons didn't listen to his silent prayers. All he obtained was a wonderful nightmare, causing him to wake up with a start in the middle of the night, only the slightly red lukewarm ashes and remains of the firecamp he had built pushing the darkness away.

Childe immediatly felt something run down his cheeks. He wasn't the type of guy to express clearly all his feelings and emotions, but he couldn't do anything with that.

Those tears. He wanted them gone, he wanted them gone, he wanted them gone-- But they kept coming back over and over again.

Dragonspine was the perfect place for him because the cold reminded him of all his childhood in Snezhnaya. And yet it felt so distant. He wasn't in his homeland, with his siblings, with his parents, with the ones he had known for years since he was a little kid. He wasn't home.

Precisely because he was in this icy mountain, all his souvenirs of what he had lived in Snezhnaya rushed into his brain each time he set foot here. He kept dreaming over and over again of his home he missed so much.

All the dreams he had were all the same: they started with him as a kid, going ice fishing with his father and his older siblings, listening to his tales. Then, they continued with all the time he spent playing hide and seek with the little ones as he was some years older. And they were always finishing on this painful memory of him falling into nothingness, only darkness surrounding him during all the time it took him to finally hit the bottom of that dark path leading to the Abyss.

It always used to finish like this, and he hated it. He hated to remember again and again about this powerless fall he couldn't stop, let alone climb back to the surface, to his continent, to his home. He hated it.

But today was different.

Today, as he was in Dragonspine, he didn't wake up with a start, he didn't have tears flowing down his cheeks because of this nightmare, he didn't even have a nightmare.

All he ended up having was a wonderful dream of him playing with his siblings and parents, then all the time he spent with a person dear to him. This person was right next to him, laying down profoundly sound asleep, holding him tight as if he were a gigantic plush.

All the nightmares he used to have when he had to spend time in Dragonspine were gone. They were gone to his great pleasure, and the reason was simple: he felt at home wherever he went with her. She was his reason to live, so as long as she came with him, he would feel safe, protected and loved.

Her comforting warmth, her gentle breath on his neck, and her soft skin were the only things he was living for. She was his bright sunshine repelling the darkness that had blackened his heart ever since he came back from that desolated place where only nothingness was reigning and where the law of the strongest was the only credo.