#the tiny seed of hope - genshin story | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

doiefy · 2 years

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dandelion seeds // lee donghyuck

part of the visions series; inspired by and set in the world of genshin impact.

Childish wishes made in the wind.

pairing: lee donghyuck x gn. reader genre: angst, fantasy word count: 1.5k warnings: discussions around death and suicide, implied suicide, major character death

taglist: @jenoxygen @zlmzym @vantaecult (dm, ask or reply to be put on/taken off the masterlist for this series)

finally finished inazuma archon quest today. no clue why it took so long but sheesh the cutscenes still have me shaking in my boots.

YOU WERE SEVEN when you met him.

Your first glimpse of him had been beyond the cobblestone walls of the city, in the dandelion fields—where the wind whispered sweet melodies and foraged a shifting path through the tall grass. It carried the aroma of sweet flowers from the wilderness and freshly-baked bread from the bakery, and a multitude of golden specks as the children scattered the dandelion seeds. Hopes, dreams and visions carried off into a boundless expanse of sky; you’d always hoped one of yours would one day reach the gods. It was a common wish amongst the children, but apparently not for the boy who sat alone at the edge of the field.

He did seem rather sullen. Not exactly hostile or withdrawn from the rest of you, but sulky. He always looked a little too busy to join the others, poking images into the dirt with a stick and mumbling to himself. When you walked up to him, he had a single dandelion in hand—one that still hadn’t turned white and wispy, with yellow petals that matched the golden glow of his eyes. He was tearing the petals out one at a time in some sort of silent temper tantrum, flinging them into the tiny pile of sand and pebbles he’d collected earlier.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” you told him bluntly. He looked up at you in surprise, and instantly froze—a stark contrast to whatever sass you were expecting from him. “Mother says dandelions are…” You wracked your brain for the word you remembered her teaching you the night previous. “Scared.” That wasn’t right. “Scar… sac… sacred. That means they’re special. So you shouldn’t hurt them.”

“And you shouldn’t tell other people what to do,” he mumbled, looking away once he’d overcome the initial shock and embarrassment of being confronted. The other children didn’t usually talk to him. “I’m making dandelion wine.”

The bitter yellow liquid adults drank. You looked down at his pile of rocks, and then the wooden cup of water he’d scooped up from the lake. “I don’t think you can drink rocks.” He looked unimpressed, so you stopped to think of a better argument. “The rock god made rocks for us to dig up and make into things like… houses and jewels and jewellery! Not to… drink.”

He scoffed. “I don’t believe in gods.”

“Why not?”

“Just because.”

“Oh.”

You’d never heard of anyone who didn’t believe in the gods. They were real. You knew they were. You could even see them in the sky: a jagged formation of stone and marble far beyond your reach, where all the greatest heroes went after their time on the earth.

“What’s your name?” you asked him curiously, though you had secret intentions of running home and telling your mother about the strange boy you just met. She would surely give you a lecture for being out at play while dinner grew cold on the table, but you already had the most wondrous stories dreamt up to recount to her.

The boy shrugged, but his eyes flashed with a sort of mischievousness: specks of gold in his iris like scattering yellow petals and amber bits of stone. He handed you the rest of his dandelion—albeit half-destroyed, but a silent peace offering. “Donghyuck.”

So began your friendship.

You were fifteen when you received your Vision.

Bright red, inlaid with flames, infused with a fervent passion and determination you didn’t even know you had. It appeared soundlessly on your desk while you were scribbling a letter to your older brother, and you didn’t even notice it until you’d returned from the postal office. Too tired from the day’s work, you could only attach it to your jacket and put out the candles with your newfound abilities before collapsing into bed.

“How come you get a Vision?” Donghyuck asked the next day, while the two of you skinned and cleaned the carcasses of the rabbits he’d hunted. He was a good shot; a single arrow through the eyes of all of them.

“It’s not like I’ll use it for anything,” you shrugged. “Why are you so upset? You don’t even believe in the gods. They’ll never give you one if you keep up with that attitude.”

“I never said I don’t believe in their existence,” he countered swiftly. “I just said I don’t believe in them. They’ve never been here for us. And they never will be.”

Donghyuck received his own Vision only a couple days later, and he immediately flung it off the highest tower of the cathedral. Though unsurprisingly, as a gem crafted by the archons themselves, it survived unscathed.

Donghyuck was only upset because the stone was turquoise and inlaid with the sigil of your own patron god, the one who’d disappeared long ago. In his eyes, it was mockery. A reminder of all the tragedy in his own life, and how the supposed supernatural beings in the sky had no intentions of doing anything more than giving him a stone and some vague instructions to fix everything on his own.

But he got over it quickly. Soon, he was dousing your flames with gusts of air strong enough to blow down the entire house. He was summoning wind currents and gliding around the city with you, grabbing your hand and bolting down the streets when the knights learned of all your mischief. He was charming girls in the park and stealing bread from the bakers simply for the thrill, running as free and wild as the wind in your hair.

You were eighteen when you noticed.

Sometimes, Donghyuck jumped from the church towers and unfurled his gliding wings just a little too close to the ground. Sometimes he went diving off the cliffs and swimming in the freezing ocean water without telling anyone. Sometimes he walked too close to the edge of a drop, like he was just waiting for a breeze to knock him over. Sometimes, you thought the freedom his Vision had granted him would make him do something he regretted.

“Wonder what it’d be like,” he murmured to you one night, when you’d climbed up to the highest windmill in the city. He was looking up at the mountains, where the peak met the cosmos in a swirl of snow and ice. “To go up there.”

“How would you get back down?” you asked, without really thinking too much about what you’d just insinuated. The adventurers who loitered around the tavern—even the most seasoned ones—always said it was easier climbing up than it was climbing down. The winds made it too difficult to glide, and the slope was always noticeably more slippery on the way down.

And besides, Donghyuck would never go that far, would he? He was a trickster, a tease, a show-off; he jumped and did things he wasn’t supposed to only because he wanted to show off. Because he wouldn’t actually—

“Jump, I guess. Hit the ground hard,” he shrugged. “Or just never come down. They say the temperatures are low enough to kill you in minutes.” He took a thoughtful pause. “I’d reassure you and say I wouldn’t do something like that, but I suppose I can’t lie to you either.”

You couldn’t find any words, so he continued.

“Mom’s sick again. Holed up at the apothecary’s place with medicine that doesn’t work and people telling her she’s gonna make it when we all know she’s not. And you know Dad turns into a demon when she’s gone,” he laughed. “It’s selfish, I know. But I’m just so… tired.”

“It’s not selfish to want to avoid pain,” you said. “But you know, there are people who are willing to help carry those burdens.”

He gave you a soft smile, and again you wondered why he hadn’t been given the same red stone you wore on your back; Donghyuck was all warmth and comfort when he was with you, like an open hearth and a glass of dandelion wine. “I couldn’t possibly put you through that now, can I? Couldn’t possibly be selfish if it would hurt you.”

His lips brushed against your forehead like a cool breeze, ever comforting and gentle, ever reassuring—though some part of you felt as if he was simply holding off the inevitable.

You were twenty when he left.

Renjun arrived early at dawn with the news, teary-eyed and shivering in the frigid air of an early winter. When he’d gone, you went down to the field where you first met Donghyuck, where you felt as if there could be some remainder of his rocks and dandelion petals. The dandelions were gone this time of year, their seeds had already been carried off in the wind—but you knew his dreams were with them someplace beyond the horizon.

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