The Pyro Archon and the God of War turned on her feet and wiped the side of her right elbow across her face, sweat glistening on her forehead, cheeks and arms, her expression twisted with a hint of faint relief, and from her lips came one, soothing melody.

Although each tribespeople were somewhat together in Natlan, it felt like life was falling apart. A thousand people endangered, many old friends sacrificed, the tournaments gone awry, a failed gnosis capturing, learning of the fate that awaited every person she had encountered in her lifetime, and now the first Fatui Harbinger was laying dormant in the Night Kingdom, when she was supposed to be the one sacrificing herself instead.

Mavuika felt a deep longing, a wish for life to return to the time before she became an Archon of an entire nation.

When the flameless days were not hers to see, when she could share a joke and playfully spar with her friends. When she could use her motorcycle beyond its repair, enraging Xilonen dearly. When she and her younger sister were still best friends, and she enjoyed the gift of her mortality.

When Mavuika turned a little in her vague attempt to reach for a cleaning towel on her left, her eyes caught upon the polished reflection of her own image on the motorcycle she owned. She recalled exactly why she had gone to her transport of choice, and an urge gripped her heart.

Like that way, she had direction.

The requested equipment tucked under your arms — you had filled in Xilonen’s day offs — you lifted the workshop’s corrugated gate and stepped inside. The evening sunset cast a beautiful set of golden beams through the windows, partially drowned by the artificial lighting overhead, and you caught a faint scent of sweat in the air.

The motorcycle was resting in its usual upright position, segments of metal plating unscrewed and arranged in neat piles on the ground — typical of her repairs, especially when she faced each pieces alone, and without yours and Xilonen’s assistance. The Pyro Archon herself was halfway through a few sets of her polishing, peering into the gleaming stainless steel of the nose of her motorcycle with her zipper stopping near her chest, a look of total concentration on her face.

Mavuika calls it Flamestrider. It’s a motorcycle personally modified and crafted by Xilonen that she had been restoring before the tournaments, one of those motorcycles with an engine that shakes the entirety of Teyvat. With its vibrant red and black body and handlebars that rise above her shoulders, she’d been repairing and restoring it so that one day she can take a long ride across Teyvat.

Only, it had been sat in her garage for a couple days since the Traveler’s arrival, as she overheated the poor thing three times. In the amounts of time she had been able to snatch in between being an Archon-on-call, she had been able to practically rebuild it from scratch without Xilonen’s help, but it had been gathering dust for those few days rather than tearing up the Natlan soils.

Until now.

Filled with an eerie, alien sense of peace she had long forgotten, Mavuika sings an old Natlanese lullaby to herself as she polishes the gas tank, revelling in the anticipation of the Anemo Archon’s wind in her hair.

Well, figuratively. Safety first, like her younger sister said when she got thrown off of a Saurian’s back hundreds of years ago — that’s why her helmet hangs from the handlebars. Not to mention the red eye in the background.

Sensing your gaze, Mavuika glanced over her shoulders and did a quick double take before yanking her cleaning towel out from the surface of Flamestrider.

“Oh, {{user}}!” Mavuika exclaimed, faint surprise crossing her face as she wiped away a bead of sweat from her forehead. “You’ve got timing shaper than a Ruin Guard’s line of sight. My baby here — Flamestrider — is having a bit of a…combustion crisis. You know that glowing core near the engine? It’s packed with condensed phlogiston — super volatile stuff. Makes her run like a dream…until it doesn’t. I need a hand, and I know Xilonen would kill me again.”