shipwrecked || furina & neuvillette

🫧 15 🫧

Neuvillette watches Furina across the room of other important figures from across Teyvat. She's talking to Ei, a glass of wine in her hand. She looks happy, her eyes bright and smile wide.

He stands in the corner of the room quietly hoping that no one decides to come and talk to him. His glass is filled with water - the special kind that he saves for moments like this. The last time he had this water was the night of Furina's trial, and here he is again, drinking it while knowing that he's having to let her go in a few hours.

It would be a lot easier if he didn't know - if he just woke up tomorrow morning and Furina was gone. But the fact that he knows her plans, and has to let her go... that's the part that kills him. It's the part that makes him feel like he's a hurricane, threatening to flood and crash through everything in sight.
"Let's go for a walk, Neuvillette." A quiet voice says from behind him. The Dendro archon stands beside him. "It might make you feel better."
"Thank you, Nahida. But please, don't drag yourself away from the party. It is not often we get to enjoy having a large amount of Teyvat all gathered in one space."
Nahida laughs. "Parties have never really been my specialty. Besides, you seem sad."
Neuvillette smiles. "I'm not sad, don't worry about me."
Nahida gestures for him to follow her, and even though he'd rather stay clinging to a wall, he decides against it and follows her.

Furina knows that she shouldn't be drinking wine. The stuff never agreed with her at the best of times - let alone with all of her worries going on in her head. But she wants something to take the anxious buzz away. And it does the trick.
"Really?" Ei replies with a small smile. "I haven't given many of the books from Fontaine a chance - I really only find myself reading what Miko brings me."
"Does it get lonely?" Furina can't help but ask - she can see the subtle wave of emotion that falls across the Electro Archon's face every so often. "I'm sorry... I have no right to ask that." She looks down at her feet, wishing she could glue her mouth shut.
"I think that you know all too well how it feels, Miss Furina." Ei's voice is soft, a gentle knowingness in it.
Furina finds herself nodding.
"Although, while I find myself isolated entirely from everyone and everything... you were isolated amongst a crowd of people, under a blinding spotlight. I can't imagine how that must have felt for you." Ei glances around the room. "To be in a room full of people and not able to be oneself is a different form of loneliness entirely."
Furina takes another mouthful of wine, even though she doesn't overly like the taste of it. The words that Ei is speaking, the tone of which she says them, they make Furina feel like the woman has just plucked them right out of her soul. "You must give yourself credit for doing so for so long, Furina. I do not believe there would be many others with the willpower it appears you have."
Furina feels her cheeks growing warm.
"And although often it may go unrecognised, it is not lost on me." Ei smiles. "Or Miko - she's quite often talking about travelling to Fontaine to see one of the shows you have either directed or been in. Sometimes, when she came to visit me, all she would talk about it is what role you had taken on next."
Miko laughs as she joins the two of them.
"Oh please, Ei - you know that you enjoyed every ounce of entertainment that I give you." Miko nudges her. "I'm very supportive of your meditations, but one has to know when the time is to simply... enjoy a few moments of reality."
Ei gets distracted, looking across the room.
"Talk to him," Miko whispers, and Furina takes the moment as her turn to leave. It seems like a private conversation that she does not want to intrude on.
She hears Ei sigh.
"Perhaps another time."

The conversations continue through dusk, Furina eventually forces herself to drink water rather than alcohol. She makes herself stop drinking alcohol sometime between her conversation with Miko and Ei, and Neuvillette's arrival back inside with Nahida.
Because she's already in a heightened state of anxiety, with everything she knows she must do tonight, the water stings as it goes down. She hates it. She hates the way it tastes, how it feels, the feeling of the cold glass in her hand. She dreads the time that's coming, dreads the fact that every inch the moon rises... it means it's closer to when she'll walk out of Neuvillette's room. It's for the best, it's what she has to do... but it doesn't mean she wants to.