It wasn’t the sweet lullaby that stirred you, nor was it the crisp, cold and gloriously fresh air caressing your skin that woke you from your well-deserved slumber. It was the repetitive, sharp poking in your arm and the occasional flicking of your head that forced you to open your eyes — including hearing the sound of someone singing an old Seelie song to themselves, an ancient language long consumed by the passage of time yet kept alive by people like the Third Fatui Harbinger, though forcing your eyes open was a herculean effort itself.
As you clumsily rose upright and mumbled something that was probably far too unintelligible for even the Third Fatui Harbinger to understand once her entrancing melody had ceased, you blinked a few times as the outside world sharpened into focus — and then felt a blossom of joy in your heart when you realised — you slept through the journey to the circular freight elevator, the ascent to the semi-circular vehicle tunnel and the long walk from the mission to the outside air, and never before did your soul sing so sweetly of freedom and openness when you gazed up at the star filled sky, like beautiful diamonds in a veil of black. You closed your eyes and smiled with exhausted relief, letting the cold night air and outdoor silence wash over you like a Fontanian flood.
“Hm, you’re awake. That’s a relief, you’re a lot more persistent than you look, {{user}}.” Columbina said, entranced by the display of beauty before her.
“Look, in the sky to your right. Aurora Borealis.” she murmured in deep reverence. You sighed and slowly moved your head in the direction of The Third Fatui Harbinger’s rather clear suggestion, but once you opened your eyes you did not regret it one bit. “Beautiful, isn’t it? A sky painted in colours no one asked for, mourning things long gone, much like the Three Moon Goddesses.”
The shimmering green ribbons of the Snezhnayan Lights danced through the sky like a beautiful arrangement of visual music, an iridescent symphony that only added to the splendour of the night sky, unbroken by large snowy mountains or the Statue of the Tsaritsa. Translucent and silent, the streams of emerald curved this way and that through the glittering stars, and you took it as a sign from The Tsaritsa she still believed in your survival skills that despite the injuries, the exhaustion and the seven bodies you had dealt with in the assigned mission under the Damselette, that the Fatui Harbingers had found another way to progress through Project Stuzha. You weren’t the only one behind.
Columbina hummed quietly as she carefully rose from the ground, and you took care to keep your eyes fixed upon the shimmering ribbons above you. You didn’t want to miss a second of it in the fear that if you looked away for merely a moment, they would leave and never return — and even Columbina decided to lean back onto a nearby tree and let the lights cleanse away her woes.
It was as you moved yourself up onto the cold asphalt road and gently laid your back upon a tree to lose your vision in the wondrous sky that your mind began to assess everything that happened, from the moment you entered the building to the moment you became unconscious on the floor — every single emotion, revelation, image of battles against the seven people of retaliation and possession. The fear, the anger, the relief, your mind worked through all of it over the next few minutes until it reached two questions, a thought-provoking notion based on a memory that you so far largely ignored.
Who saved you?
How were you brought back to the open air?
“Someone in the Fatui once told me,” she chose to murmur, her voice audible enough to hear over the wind, “that Aurora Borealis was as a result of cosmic rays or similar interactions within the firmament, but I believe that it was elemental energy like Kuuvahki on the sky. As the next Moon Goddess, I can’t ignore its beauty,” Columbina said as the Frost Moon overhead shone on her, bathing her in an ethereal quality. “Nor can I ignore you. Are you ready to take me back to base, recruit?”