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shalomniscient · 2 months

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you’re seven years old and barefoot on the beach of yaoguang shoal with sand between your toes and salt-brushed wind in your hair when ningguang makes her first and only promise to you.

“when we grow up, i’ll marry you.”

the words are big, heavy on her child’s tongue but she speaks them with conviction nonetheless. her hands are laced with yours, your small fingers slotting perfectly with one another. the sunset makes her eyes glow like how you imagine the amber does at jueyun karst. you’re too young, too childish to really understand the weight of her vow—but you nod with a smile, squeezing her hands tighter.

“i’ll wait for you,” you say, hoping she can hear the sincerity in your voice. it’s a foolish hope, because you know that ningguang knows you better than you even know yourself. she returns your smile with one of her own, her hand never leaving yours as you walk back to your village, the sunset at your backs. the light paints ningguang in gold, and you can’t help but think at seven years old that this is how things should be—hand in hand with the girl you know you love before you even knew the meaning of the word, barefoot together in the sand.

you’re seven years old when you learn how things should be, but you’re fifteen years old when you learn how things are.

ningguang leaves for the city. she tells you before she goes, of course, holds you close as you weep selfishly into her shoulder. her hands are gentle as she sifts them through your hair, along your scalp and down the nape of your neck before wrapping around your slim, hunger-carved shoulders. i have to go, she’d said, or else how will i afford our wedding? and you’d wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter at all what kind of wedding you had, as long as she stayed with you—that all the riches in the world are worthless without her. but for as much as she knows you, you know her, and you know that ningguang is not to be deterred once she sets her mind on something, so you send her off with a delicately packed mora meat and a prayer in your heart that she’ll come back soon.

you’re fifteen years old when you learn how things are, and you’re twenty-one years old when you learn how things will be.

it’s been six years since ningguang left. even in the backwater village you call home, tales of ningguang’s exploits reach your ears. how she runs circles around liyue’s businessmen and businesswomen, how she effortlessly finds her place amidst liyue’s social elite, how she’s rising, rising, rising like an unstoppable eclipsing star. she keeps writing to you, always keeping you updated on her progress, and you always write back, filling your letters with the mundanity of your day-to-day life—about the way the glaze lillies have been blooming, or about the way everyone around you says you’d make a fine wife.

my parents are getting restless, you confess in one letter. i’m getting older, and they think i should get married soon.

the reply that returns the next week is simple, but succint. i haven’t forgotten. wait for me, please. and you know she hasn’t, which is why it kills you when your new husband forbids you from ever writing to her again. you weep yourself to sleep on your side of the bed for the next week following your wedding night. the distress of wondering—if ningguang is worried, if she’s upset, or worse, if she’s hurt by you—drives you near insane to the point you worry yourself sick. your husband only tells you to stop holding on to naive childhood promises and perform your duties as a wife. it is the only thing you are good for, now.

you’re twenty-one years old when you learn how things will be, but you’re twenty-nine when you learn that things can change.

in the years you have been married, your husband has grown—not in character, but in wealth. he is rich enough, now, to take you and himself from your village and to the big city to further his business. a small spark flickers to life in your chest that you might see her again, but it fizzles out when your husband makes it clear that you are just to stay at home. you don’t have to worry your pretty little head about anything other than the house, he’d said. i’ll give you everything you need. and you know better than to argue with him, so you resign yourself to staying at home, spending your days gazing up at that palace in the sky and wondering if its lady even remembers you—or if she, like you, has decided to let go of naive childhood promises. after all, she has the world now, can see it from the edges of her floating sanctuary. what need has she of the memory of being barefoot in the sand at seven years old?

(selfishly, you pray she hasn’t forgotten, even if she has no need for remembrance. you pray she chooses to remember.)

change comes when a woman in a white fur jacket and the prettiest emerald eyes you’ve ever seen breaks into your house. it’s certainly a very unorthodox meeting, and you come dangerously close to throwing the knife you were using to finely dice some cabbage at her. the woman only laughs, nimbly prying it from your hands and setting it on the counter. before you can even ask her what in rex lapis’s name she’s doing in your house, she says the words that make your blood run cold.

the tianquan wants to see you.

ningguang wants to see you.

the woman promptly leaves after delivering her message and additionally telling you not to breath a word of it to your husband, leaving you standing in your kitchen reeling from the shock. the mora meat you were working on putting together is forgotten as you swallow your nerves and take the chance you’ve waited nine years for. you’re nearly sick with it by the time you’ve ascended to the jade chamber in all of its opulence, feeling like you stick out like a sore thumb.

but the moment you see ningguang again, everything else fades to white noise. archons, she’s as beautiful as the day you last saw her. she was lovely dressed in commoner’s clothes, and she is just as lovely dressed in finery no doubt worth more than a year’s worth of your rent. she will never be anything other than lovely in your eyes.

“it’s been a while,” she says softly, the first to break the silence. you nearly cry at finally hearing her voice again. instead, you stifle it with a wet chuckle.

“only took fourteen years.”

ningguang manages a small laugh, lips curving upward in a smile you know—you remember—is reserved only for you. she offers you a seat by her desk, and two secretaries file in to place a tea set down by both of you, before disappearing as quickly as they came. and then ningguang is telling you about the real reason she asked to see you; your husband, as you are quite unsurprised, is involved with some sort of fraud, and the prosecution—the tianquan’s office—needs a witness. namely, you. after all, who better than the wife of the man himself? you try not to let your disappointment show, though, and you bite your tongue to stop yourself from asking her if she remembers—or worse, if she missed you. your conversation with her is pure business, and when you descend from the chamber later, it’s only with the taste of sweet tea on your tongue and half your heart; the other half you seem to have left with her, up in the clouds.

your husband, to his displeasure and rage, finds himself in millelith custody the very next day. and the very next week, you, to your pleasure and joy, find yourself lacking a husband. the millelith who take him away politely point you to an office down the street ran by a pink-haired half-adeptus, who takes care of your divorce affairs with a cheery smile in less than four days. you’re both scared and impressed—is this just how people move in the big city…? you don’t have time to dwell on the question, because unfortunately, without your husband you are also without your income, and without your income you are also without your house. which would be a very big problem; were it not for the fact that ningguang once again invites you to the jade chamber, but this time, to stay with her. you nearly decline because of the sheer insanity of the request, but the part of your heart there with her wins out. you relent, and now, you find yourself playing house with the tianquan of the liyue qixing.

it’s almost frightening, how quickly you fall back into old habits. ningguang, you find, hasn’t changed much. she is still whip-smart, still as cunning as she is devious, but she is still just as kind as she was before. something in you aches viscerally when you see the way she speaks with the children, offering them candies and goodies as she goes. (things neither of you had the luxury in indulging as children.) you smile and tell her, you haven’t changed at all. she only looks at you and returns it with, have you? the answer eluded you at the time, but thinking about it more, you would say that yes, i have. but the parts that loved you never did.

(you don’t say this out loud, of course. it’s too early, and the chasm of years between you both yawns achingly large. but by the glint of her eyes, you think she knows. and if she didn’t, the time and care she spent relearning you would have told her as well.)

since you’re not sure how long ningguang will let you stay, you decide to make the most of it. you’re almost thankful for the nine dull years you spent with your former husband—since at the very least, it taught you how to be a half decent wife. it’s all you’re good for now, after all. ningguang’s meals are cooked by you, and you’re the one who brings her tea in the afternoons and evenings. you talk with her over your cups like nothing ever happened, and you walk with her round the perimeter of the jade chamber as the sun sets, her hand close enough to hold. rumors dance in the wind like dandelions about the tianquan’s new companion; some call you an old friend, others, a lover. the answer is somehow both, yet neither. she is everything to you, and more.

(and you are everything to her and more. the infinte she has been searching for her whole life is right there in your eyes. it always has been.)

you’re twenty nine years old when you realise things can change, and you’re thirty years old when you remember how things should be.

ningguang takes a rare day off, and invites you on a little excursion to yaoguang shoal. it’s been a year since you started living with her. a year since you’ve been freed from a man you never loved, and a year since you’ve come to realise that it’s because you’re still in love with ningguang—and that perhaps, you never stopped. it’s not as difficult as an epiphany to come to terms with, but it does make your chest ache every time you look at her. especially now, in this place, where the waves carry salt-brushed wind and memories of a distant time. the sun hangs low in the sky, and ningguang is kicking off her heels, barefoot in the sand. all of a sudden you’re seven years old again, watching her watch the waves and wondering if her eyes glow the same like the amber at jueyun karst. you slip your own footwear off too, standing by her side in the sand, the water lapping at your ankles. she speaks first.

“i still remember,” she murmurs, and your heart catches in your throat. when she looks at you, it’s with all the bare innocence she looked at you with twenty-three years ago. “do you?”

“of course,” you answer, without a beat of hesitation. “how could i forget?” how could i forget you?

ningguang smiles. “then you remember what i promised you here?”

“yes,” you breathe. “i remember.”

the woman before you exhales, the sound nearly drowned out by the sigh of the waves as they crash onto the shore. her geo vision glimmers, and a crystalline box manifests in her hands—her hands that tremble as they open it, revealing a simple golden band inside. “will you forgive me for taking so long?” she whispers, and you clasp your hands over her own, steadying them. you rest your forehead against hers, caught halfway between a sob and a laugh.

“i would have waited for you forever, ningguang.”

she exhales again. catches her breath. “then, will you let me fulfill my promise and marry me?”

you answer her with the only possible answer, catching her lips in a kiss twenty-three years in the making.

yes.

#sev.scribbles #ningguang #ningguang x reader #haha what is pacing #dont know her #anyway first ning piece go brr #also yea she might have pulled some strings to get ur mans into a jail cell #but he was a dick anyway so isallgood #anyway. cranked this out in like 3 hrs and it is now 3am so if its bad. well you know why

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