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When Lumine suggested that Mona take her scrying services to Liyue, Mona expected to be giving out little fortunes about the usual things. How will the next harvest go? Does she like me back? Does he like me back? Should I be all that concerned about the rats in my cellar or is that a problem that’ll go away on its own?
Mona did not expect to be sitting across the table from a member of the Liyue Qixing.
“Shall we get started?” Ningguang asks, setting down her teacup.
Forcing herself to be unruffled, Mona focuses on the anticipatory hum of her Vision and how Ningguang has been a perfectly nice host so far. She’s intimidating in a way Mona suspects is totally accidental. She can’t help it when her house literally looks down on Liyue Harbour and the teacups before them cost more than Mona’s rent back in Mondstadt–to say nothing of the price of the tea leaves themselves, imported from a mountain in Nod Krai that Mona can’t pronounce.
Mona wiggles a little in her seat. She lifts her hands, conjuring a pool of floating Hydro magic over the table.
“Shouldn’t you ask what I’d like you to scry?” Ningguang asks.
“No need. I knew the instant we met. Only a poor fortune-teller wouldn’t.” Mona’s always been good at reading people. It comes with the territory.
The water pours into countless winding pathways, expanding into a broad map of starscapes, reflections, possibilities, inevitabilities.
Mona takes a minute to trace the movement of the water; it throws the glittering light of the room all over Ningguang’s face. She reads, calculates, and then nods, the baubles on her hat jingling as if to mark the certainty of her conclusion.
“Hmph. The lines of prosperity are worn so deeply into your fate that they’re as sure as rivers, really. Riches come easily to you. Your next few decisions… They’ll be tricky, but you needn’t worry. Your instinct knows the right way to go. As always.”
Talking about this stuff makes Mona’s skin crawl. Helping a businesswoman–a member of the Qixing–figure out her next move? A move that might tilt the politics or economy of Liyue? How undignified for an astrologer! It’s as if she’s Ningguang’s unscrupulous seneschal, whispering in her ear so she can play Liyue like a chessboard.
Mona shrugs, starting to unravel the water from its fortune. “I don’t see why you felt the need to hire me for this, since you’re so–”
“Yes, that would be foolish of me, wouldn’t it? Fortunately, that isn’t what I asked for.”
The water pauses, hovering in half-constellations and melty futures. “N–...no?”
“No.” Ningguang’s red gaze is level and chilly despite the smirk playing on her lips. “Perhaps Lumine recommended me a ‘poor fortune-teller,’ after all, if you read my heart so incorrectly.”
Mona’s ego wrestles with her tongue, wanting to insist that she wasn’t fooled, and actually, Ningguang did want a fortune about her, um, her fortune, Ningguang is just ignorant about her own deep-seated anxieties, but the words that squirm free are: “Wh-what do you want to know, then?”
Ningguang reaches over to a small box that’s sitting near the teapot. Mona had thought it was a part of the tea set, but of course Ningguang wouldn’t put tea leaves in such an ornate, cherrywood box with a gold latch. There’s obviously something more important in there–
Out comes a splintery, scuffed scrap of wood.
Ningguang places it on the table beneath the half-hovering half-hydromancy. Mona stares at it, sure that her confusion is all over her face despite her teacher’s best efforts to train that habit out of her.
“It’s from a ship,” Ningguang says. “Will this help you pinpoint the ship’s future?”
Ohhh.
As Mona gives a quick explanation on how she can do exactly that, she wonders about Ningguang’s stake in that boat. Maybe it’s carrying inventory she invested in? Maybe it’s going to a business whose shares and stocks she lords over? Maybe it’s packed with overpriced, overdesigned furniture for her ostentatious mansion-in-the-sky?
Mona resettles into the new facts. She doesn’t love Ningguang’s teasing, but fine, whatever, they’re back on track.
The water weaves effortlessly back into place. Mona closes her eyes, releasing her breath and letting a momentary weightlessness carry her magic up and away to find the ship in the wide world of Teyvat.
There. The ship shimmers to life in the Jade Chamber, taking the form of droplets of stars, smears of galaxies, flowing pathways to things that have been and will be.
“The ship is safe,” Mona says, relieved she has good news. “There’s a lot of excitement and pure possibility radiating off of it. Only fair weather ahead. Maybe not literal fair weather, but to them, it feels like that.”
Mona turns the wheel slightly to the right, pulling the ship and its crew and the world around it further into the future.
Her heart does a little leap.
It must show on her face again–oh, Barbeloth wouldn’t be impressed–because Ningguang straightens up, red eyes narrowing.
No sense mincing words.
“There will be trouble, however. I see…I see danger, but…” She tilts her head and her hands, letting this particular thread of water fill with more lanternlight. “They rise to it. They’re ready. And it’s still…their future, I mean…um…let me see…”
“Still what?”
“Despite all that danger, it’s still bright. Perhaps even more so.”
Ningguang folds her arms over her chest, the golden claws on her fingers drumming on her bicep. She’s glaring down the water as if she can make any sense of it. “Well, go on. Explain the danger to me.”
“The…the Abyss, it makes such stains on the future, like they’ve poured writing ink directly into the water.” She says, knowing it probably sounds insane, since tradesmen aren’t exactly known for their love of trouble, “Right in the middle of the darkest, deepest depths of it, the ship still has a glowing heart. Not even like a candle in the dark, but…more like how the sun is a supernova in the endless dim of space. Like that. Danger is what they want.”
What on earth is a transporter ship doing, fighting monsters and being so happy about it?
Mona adds, a little surprised, “There’s a Vision-bearer on the ship. Their constellation is interfering. Your ship will be safe as long as they’re aboard.”
“And they will be?”
“Hm?”
“They’ll stay aboard? You don’t see the mission going entirely sideways?”
Mona walks the ship as far as she can, though the further into the future they go, the hazier it all becomes. One thing stays clear, though, almost brashly so. “The Vision-bearer stays until they make land. Their light beats back any darkness the whole way; they’re too bright, I can’t tell any of the fine details, but in my experience, that’s a fortuitous sign…”
She glances through the web of water to Ningguang, hoping that’s enough. The tension has released from Ningguang’s shoulders, and her eyes are not so sharp. Mona has the sense that this is Ningguang’s equivalent to slumping in her chair in relief.
Mona folds the Hydro map away into the folds of time and space and magic. The fortune releases her with a little gasp. “...Anything else?”
“No. No, not for now.”
Ningguang lifts one of her gloved fingers and an attendant steps out of the shadows, scaring Mona half to death. She has delusions of the attendant silencing her, revealing that Mona was not a seneschal at all but merely a convenient, future-seeing pawn in the Qixing’s schemes that must now be swept off the board–but instead, the man places a bag of jingling mora on the table.
Mona stares. She doesn’t need hydromancy to know that it’s…a lot of money.
She never charges more than the cost of a couple meals (or a couple new ink bottles for her reports), and that is exactly the amount Mona charged Ningguang. Not this.
A blush lifts to Mona’s cheeks, hot with irritation. “Miss Ningguang” –is that even the right term of respect?– “this isn’t what we agreed on.”
“No, it’s more. You did a good job, besides that initial…hiccup.”
“I don’t do this for the money. Hydromancy isn’t something one upcharges like…like a haircut or a phony aura reading! One can’t plaster it with something as undignified as a price!” And what a price it is. Inside that bag is a new crystal ball, an immaculate copy of Esoteric Revelations: Volume VII, and some walking shoes to help kickstart her travel up to Chenyu Vale so she can finally test the way those enchanted waters interact with–
“Fine,” Ningguang says, her quiet, rough voice shutting up Mona’s fantasies. “If you feel that I’ve nicked your pride, then let me nick my own. I’ll lower myself to your level.”
“Excuse me?”
Ningguang picks up the scrap of wood. She holds it like it’s worth more than the gold in her hairpiece. “This doesn’t belong to any ship I own. It belongs to The Alcor. A dear…companion of mine sails it, and she tends to steer herself into the most deranged and delusional of situations, fancying herself a hero.”
Ningguang smirks, setting the wood lovingly back into the box. “I need to ensure she’s safe. For my own peace of mind. She bothers me so terribly that I hired a hydromancer when ‘fortune-teller’ and ‘scammer’ sound the exact same to my ear. That’s all.”
“...Oh.”
“So take your money and both our dignity with it, Mona Megistus.”
Mona does, tucking the heavy pouch into her satchel and standing. Her outburst stings in her own ears. That’s the kind of thing that dried up her prospects in Mondstadt; Lumine told her that people won’t see her anymore, not even for free, because she’s so stubborn and blunt.
Ningguang turns to her attendant again. “Walk her to the elevator and make sure she gets back to Liyue Harbour safely, please.” Back on that dizzying, floating rock, huh? Her tummy flips. “Mona, how long do you think The Alcor’s trip will last?”
Mona redraws the lines of her scry in her mind. “Two months until she returns, more or less.”
“Alright. She usually can’t stand to stay on land for more than a week.” Ningguang steps away, swishing in the direction of whatever hidden chamber locks away this elusive Qixing of Liyue. “I’ll see you in two months, then, once she’s set out on another ridiculous journey. And I’ll pay you whatever I damn well please.”