𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄 ; diluc ragnvindr

𝐓𝐖𝐎 ; of mondstadt and nights

HE WANTED HER.

In all his twenty-three years of life, this was something Diluc Ragnvindr was completely and utterly sure of: he wanted the girl, and he wanted her badly.

There was no other explanation whatsoever. He wanted her, just as Kaeya did with most girls ninety-nine percent of his drunk time; the way his eyes trailed over the women as though completely entranced, his grin unable to fade from his face, the way he ran a hand through his hair and looked away every time someone glanced at him.

He'd been besides a flirt for god knows how long already: he knew what it was, and he knew that he wanted her.

Because this customer- this customer, whoever she was, was beauty to his eyes the way he had never seen another person's before. Hair the color of apple cider on a bright summer morning; eyes piercing blue as though seeing something no one else could, like a seer's; light, smooth frame with its graceful movements; the way she'd turned, just a bit, but more than that, it was just... the world, and how it had been.

The world had changed, for the briefest of moments.

He had seen it, and it was just as he remembered. The way the world was, before the truth about the Knights of Favonius had been found out, before his father had died in that attack dubbed an 'accident'; as he saw the world, when he was in his teen years. Bright, colorful, and filled with buzzing energy he found all too useless now.

There was no doubt just who she was. A traveler, and by the looks of the brooch on her cloak, part of the Adventurers' Guild. A poet, by the way she talked. She downed glass after glass of apple cider and scribbled down words in her notepad that he prevented himself from spying on- barely- and looked up at him to give him occasional smiles and an exchange of a word or two. The hum of a melody he had heard before somewhere never left her lips, and she had a habit, he noticed, of tapping her pen against the counter when she was stuck on something.

To notice such things... it was unlike him, but at the same time, so like him: like the him from long, long ago.

It had been three days, and he had not caught a flash of the colors again.

No streak of white, hair flying behind her as she gazed upon Mondstadt; not since the first time he'd seen her, the first time he'd talked to her, the first time he'd seen her in the tavern and immediately fled, Charles' confusion trailing behind him: his coat hastily swung over his shoulder as he rushed away. He'd fought nearly a dozen hilichurl camps that night, scavenging high and low to look for them. There simply had been nowhere else to place what he'd seen.

And then the next morning he'd returned, there was no trace of her anywhere: not in the floors she'd once walked in, not in the records Charles kept for those renting a room upstairs in the inn; not anywhere. She was, completely, gone.

He did not know what to say if, if they had their next meeting, nor did he know what he was finding her for, but he knew, this one thing for sure, as sure as he had been when he had joined the Knights of Favonius years ago. He had to find her.

People thought him stranger than usual, of course. Not that he cared. He seemed not to be in a good mood but came to the tavern anyways, three days straight with his eyes scanning the crowd for a flash of the face he had seen, the face he barely remembered. He tried so hard and failed at every one of them.

He simply could not find the girl.

Whoever she was, however, he was not even sure his memories were even that accurate. How could they be? He'd seen her for a bare fraction of a second, nothing more; and he- regrettably- had no such thing as a photographic memory.