Chapter Text
What plain elegance the bookmark holds.
If she is a red tether affixed to the inside of the book, then she is the red string connecting fated author and reader together. If she is an independent, homemade thing – a receipt of sale folded quickly in half, or a stalk of Horsetail pressed between the pages – then the reader is a headstrong and mysterious lover, departing for moons, uncertain ever to return.
… And? Should the bookmark be tailored for the art of reading? Perhaps a gilded birthday gift, metal sakura blooms or herons in flight – or a thing of delicate rice paper, made with the same care as the emperor’s bridal kimono…
Well? Shouldn’t it be obvious? Such a reader is emperor over the court of literature. They have a hundred suitors for every season, and their lust is unlikely to abate. Like the emperor, they demand the best. Like the lover, they are greedy and capricious. Like the pauper entwined by red string, their soul rests between the pages of a book, and the rest of the world is but a graveyard.
Regardless how they pursue the pages, every reader is worth seducing.
A profit is a profit is a profit… and profits are beautiful. There’s a majesty in the gold of Mora.
Is that sacrilegious for a shrine maiden to say? Permit the Guuji her occasional blasphemy.
There is no escape from the Grand Narukami Shrine. It is all Yae Miko can do to pace the boundary of the place, awaiting the next disaster, the next divine message… the next little flower to come along in need of blooming.
It’s not a violation of faith to indulge in fantasy. Oh, dear. Imagine the divine bolt that Ei would need to wield! The entirety of Inazuma would sink.
If anything, fantasy is the food of religion. To sigh in prayer, lips in motion as you whisper prayers you should so like to brand along the Archon’s flesh…
To feel the heart wrench in you, your accorded guilt the reminder that you will never again reunite…
To give ablutions to the head of the Kamisato Clan, that family line you saved so few generations ago – to hear him pray while knelt beneath you, pliable and submissive and waiting…
There is no harm in fantasy. It feeds the faith. It drives sales for the Yae Publishing House. It is the water spinning the wheel of the economy.
Undeniably, fantasy is a net gain for Inazuma… for the whole of Teyvat. Fantasy is a bookmark placed between the pages of love and agony.
And fantasy will never amount to anything. Five hundred years of pining evaporates in the face of a requited kiss in the Plane of Euthymia.
The instant of a mortal’s life slows when he cups your cheek, kisses the breath out of you.
The horrors of abounding love chase you down the halls of nightmare.
It’s just a little fantasy.
It can’t hurt you, darling. Take it from the Guuji.