Work Text:
Script:
1:
You cannot trust the sea. Beidou knew of this, from long before she was able to shout out, “set sail!”
There are dangers everywhere. Typhoons — whirlpools, all the way down to the smallest of storms, which, if one were not to prepare for such inevitabilities, would spell ruin for all those lives aboard the ship.
It is in the morning, when she returns to the piers of Liyue, that she meets the lady who danced like the butterfly.
2:
Yes, it could have only been dawn when Beidou spotted the lady near the pier.
Beidou had heard about her, of course.
No one else could have woken as early as her to greet the morning. Her song, her speech, her bright roving eye —
And always, always, the foremost conductor of Liyue’s funerals.
3:
To speak of death in Liyue was akin to inflicting a curse upon oneself.
So Beidou sang instead, of the many exploits she had undergone, that her men had undergone, many fallen prey to the whims of the sea.
But her, the one blessed by thunder, she had survived. And she had seen the butterflies of flame, a trail gracing behind the lady of the funeral,
and she thought to herself, ‘who shall sing about her?’
4:
The lady would never have taken notice,
and Beidou would not mind.
5:
Perhaps one day, they would meet again by the shore.