"...I CAN'T." WERE THE ONLY WORDS TO GREET HER BACK AS THE STUNNED SILENCE HUNG OVER THE TABLE.
She blinked.
There was, of course, no reason she would be hallucinating, which was obviously why that was out of the question; but there was the question of the man sat across the table, agitatedly shaking his head as his hair pricked at his eyes. As she watched, he glanced up at her through dull eyes and said absolutely nothing.
It made no sense whatsoever. He was the one who had introduced the notion of this 'muse', and she'd fully expected him to accept- even if not happily on the outside, because as she had figured out, he wasn't exactly one for human emotions. In fact, she could even say she was a little- if not a lot- agitated, because she had thought over this quite some bit. Or a lot. Or maybe, it had occupied most of her thoughts.
Those words. Simply three words, strung together hastily, but it almost seemed to tug at her heartstrings and wrap around her wrists, to yank her closer to this curious man in front of her. This man so different from another she knew, the difference in not just appearance but the very essence of their soul.
Be my muse, he'd said, and even though he claimed he knew not of it, she knew much better.
Yet when she looked at him, and into those eyes made of supernovas and fire-flowers and everything that was the furthest from her as possible, all she could think of was that she could write poems about those.
No, not just poems. Prose. Whole verses and sentences and paragraphs and chapters upon chapters, acts upon acts, a never-ending soliloquy of bittersweet rhythm and rhyme and words flowing off her pen and onto the paper. It was those kind of eyes, the only ones she could think about, the ones that she fell in love with that she found in so little people.
They were different colors- opposite sides of the spectrum, in fact. The emotions held in them so different. But the same; always the same.
And finally, she said, "Why not?"
Because that was- in the end- the biggest question, was it not? She'd pondered over it, she'd seen something in him, and she'd agreed. To spend her precious few months in Mondstadt as none other than his muse, as the core of someone's living, breathing creativity.
But he'd said no. Why?
"I don't think I can."
"Yes." She continued, tapping at her now empty glass of milk agitatedly, "But why?"
Diluc was staring at her. She looked up: he looked flustered, to say the least.
She hadn't been aware that someone like him could even look so flustered, with a face so deadpan now cracked in the seams with something building up underneath like a shard of ice stuck in the middle of solidity and liquification; right in the middle of the transition as neither. His definition of flustered was so much different from other people's, most likely. Everyone had their own definitions.
"I just can't." He repeated. "Do you need a detailed explanation?"
"Yes, that would be good."
He crossed his arms, giving her a pointed look. "I know not your name, your origin, anything about you-"
"Which you'll find out if you keep up to the words you'd said."
"-not to mention I have no artistical inspiration as of now." He scoffed. "I am not a bard, nor do I have any time to play around with colors on a palette. I have no need for a muse; those words were simply a slip of the tongue, that's all."
YOU ARE READING
𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄 ; diluc ragnvindr
Romance𝐁𝐄 𝐌𝐘 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄 ; She is his muse, his first breath, his morning star- an anomaly in the stillness of his life. She makes alcohol taste sweet, and small talk feel like verses of beautiful poetry. She is Helena Saturnalius, and she is his first an...
