Time and Being || Albedo

15 - Notes

The tip of the pencil held still on the blank page of the sketchbook. Well, nearly blank page. Faded grey strokes of barely erased imaged decorated the page. Through these hardly ereased strokes, your incredible indecisiveness showed in all of its blazing glory.

For the past thirty minutes after eating breakfast, you've struggled to figure out what to draw. You'd think that drawing is simple right? A few strokes of the pencil here and there to detail the page and voilà~

Wrong.

Dead wrong. Simple your ass. 

Of course, you didn't forget the pressure of drawing something somewhat decent because the sketchbook was not only owned by a well-grown artist, but Albedo himself.

He'd be too nice to say anything discouraging. It was almost too easy for you to imagine him glancing at the pitiful piece of art (if you could even call it that at this point) and silently judging it for a moment before smiling and saying, "It's nice, Y/n."

You'd much rather ask him to slap you and tell you how horribly you did.

One thing. You've drawn one thing in the past thirty minutes, but what was meant to be a cat instead turned out looking like a disfigured blob with triangles poking out the top and three lines protruding each side of it.

You looked at it before letting out a pitiful breath, almost wanting to scream at the nightmare on the page before putting the pencil down and flipping to the first few pages of the sketchbook.

You thought that if you looked at the art of a true artist, you'd somehow understand the logistics of this dreaded talent and do somewhat better.

Though, instead of drawings, the first pages were lined with words. Paragraphs of scribbled down notes seemed to form around a blank area in the center of the page. The way the notes formed made you tilt your head, why would he leave such a big space in the center.

The words at the top of the page read, "Art of Khemia".

You skimmed the page, reading up on the alchemy hardly paying attention to what it said before your eyes land on the words, "birthing life from nothing but ink on a page."

"Huh-" you piped. Flicking your eyes back a few sentences.

"A power much greater than that of the seven nations. Pyro, Cryo, Hydro, Dendro, Electro, Geo, and Anemo. Those who master this art are able to draw life from the rift of the abyss and create life out of virtually nothing," you mumbled the words as you read.

You've heard of this form of alchemy before. You don't remember where, but you recall it was originated in the land of Khaenriah far before it had sunk in on itself. Only a few people practice it now, though those people are far from where you are now. Far from civilization.

Each one of them vanished, just like that.

One of them was the renowned, 'Gold' who'd brought monsters to Teyvat so many years ago. From that, all you could say about the art was that it was a form of disaster when put into the wrong hands.

You brush it off as something Albedo was curious about and skip the pages, not wanting to snoop on his work.

The further you went into the book, the more detailed the sketches became. Drawings of landscapes as well as portraits of people minding their own business.

"Woah," the words spill off your lips as you turn the page to see a stunning drawing of Huffman. The young knight's face was caught in extraordinary detail, from the crinkle in his eye, the shine on his armor, and stray strands of hair.