Flora and Fauna

Deep rooted longing for a fareaway dream

The heavy fertilizer bags weigh precariously on Tighnari's right shoulder. He sets the heavy bag full of clean soil - detoxified from the Akademiya folks' madness - and pulls the bag strings loose. The noisiness of the waterfall functioning and the technician's yelling over the dam silence his footsteps, heavy and laden with weight as he turns to haul more of these large, rectangular plastic bags vacuum sealed with the sort of soil he commissions from the merchants at Caravan Ribat. He was glad that they work at a cost effective price without criticizing his reasoning; although it wasn't a cause these politics-free merchants would have liked to hear. They're people like him, for granted.

People like him. Tighnari halts at that thought. They're hard to come by, people who avidly pursue their dreams. Societies require a slot in their industries and people fill them for some pocket money, maybe a stable income, but enough to keep them living. Sumeru City is filled with folks like that. He doesn't blame them, of course, but he does wonder if that's all people have in their minds. Work, eat, sleep. The pattern that starts as adulthood approaches, and the pattern that follows them to their grave.

Sunlight swells through the translucent glass of the greenhouse. Tighnari strides over the well-tended fields that cost him perhaps thousands to design and fill, and re-stacks the boxes of chrysanthemum and beetroot seeds that he fought tooth and nail to keep from the Matras and scholars alike. Just a small portion of his little colony, he smiles. He'll see this field thrive into a nation more grandiose than what the Akademiya could only imagine in their wildest dreams.

And dreamless people they were.

Just as water corrodes stone in eons of time, a nation experiences its glory and downfalls upon the canvas of a history. Various unexplained phenomenons were causes of a catastrophe, one that the Akademiya fails and defiantly denies ever occurring. Toxins began to seep into Teyvat unknowingly as multiple, then triple, then quadruple of acres of land were rendered unlivable. What was once Avidya Forest was floored to a low, desolate marsh of rotten logs and the decomposing flesh of crocodiles and sumpter beasts alike. Dark scales, one of the many culminations of the catastrophe, creep up delicate skins of many. He knows this from the deathly pale complexions of the Akademiya scholars, the sickly atmosphere that persists over each and every residence within Sumeru City, and the rapid decreasing of genuine smiles across peoples' faces.

'Tis like they've been robbed of life, Tighnari thought bitterly as he doused his dirt-covered hands in water. He wraps up his boxes of seeds with great care and re-stacks these plastic boxes - he'd negotiated for cardboard, but even that is low in stock - within a gadget he's built for himself. It opens up to him happily and swallows these seeds whole, alongside the boxes.

Its name is Karkata. Lots of folks find naming mechanisms an act worth scoffing at, but similar to how Kaveh so fiercely rebuts against these claims with his baby Mehrak, Tighnari shares the same sentiment. All lifeforms are equal, and it always will be meaningful for him to bestow a name upon it. He even feels some remorse for naming the little crab-like mechanism, for no life can be dictated by any other in any way. Though, if the gentle flashes of light in its monitor was any indication of its affection and affirmation to go by, he assumes that it's happy with what it gets. Or it could be from the seeds...

Water, with fragments of dirt in its embrace, writhes across the dry pavement. Tighnari spares a final glance at his little trove full of flora in bloom, before exiting through the glass sliding door of the greenhouse.

The dusk sun hits his face, warm and tempting him for a good nap. Outside a hammock strung with skillful hands rests by the waterfall's cliff, and all along the edges of the cliff blooms various flowers of vast origins, fenced up with polished stone. A little path paved with gravel and sand leads to a small cottage just slightly below the waterfall cliff. It's his own paradise here.

Tighnari ducks under the windchimes he had strung up, that swayed to and fro with the wind and made ephemeral chirin, chirin noises. Choruses of deeply sonorous, basso tones intertwine with high, soft falsetto ones as he slides into his little abode, taking care to flatten his ears that brushed against the doorframe.

Valuka Shuna, a specie long lost in the Sumerian civilization. People of his race are scattered like glass shards across a beach, far and wide across Sumeru. Highly intelligent and shrewd with large ears and tails that complement their intelligence with heightened senses, they are seldom to be seen out in the wild. Or populated places, even. They live secluded lives, and Tighnari was no exception. The greenhouse and the lone little cottage were the best example.

His wits and determination allows him a little place here on a cliff that oversees the capital of Sumeru instead of the endless experiments in one of the labs in the Akademiya, divided from the rest of civilization. Here he is the closest to what remains of Sumeru's flora and fauna, where he is the happiest as a natural botanist.

The warm candlelight that illuminates the small hallway flickers lazily as Tighnari passes by in his sleepwear. Despite his refusal to install anything even remotely related to electricity and technology in his home, he doesn't refute the suggestion of a television - by his oh-so-good friend, the mastermind architect behind half of Sumeru's buildings, Kaveh. The thirst for knowledge is still rampant within the Sumeru City and hasn't receded an inch in the past centuries, and Tighnari too, as a scholar and a person of the Valuka Shuna's race, sees no need to disregard the obtaining of knowledge through technology.

And that's how he ends up with a 80-inch television with elaborate designs and tiny gadgets designed all over the edges in that warm August afternoon. ''For better viewing pleasures!'' Kaveh had exclaimed in response to Tighnari's disapproval when he received the (heavily) modified television at the front of his door. "The beauty of arts and craft can coexist with the intake of hard facts and logic!'"

Tighnari had scoffed and retorted, "I can't see the screen with all those patterns you've got."

Kaveh was indignant. "It adds a natural feel to your cold and hard screen of a television!"

"Practicality over beauty. Kaveh. What use is there for a TV when it can't serve its original purpose?" Tighnari quickly continued before Kaveh manages to toss back with a string of arguments for why beauty, over practicality, is very much relevant in matters of technology serving the purpose of communication and entertainment. "Besides, why don't you help me in assembling these spare segments onto the wall? I'm not as well versed in..." He paused, an impish smile hanging by his lips as he searched for a fitting response. "Hmm, architectural matters as you are."

"You better be as inexperienced as you make it out to be, 'cause I'm not doing this for you for free." Kaveh scoffed, but a light grin makes its way onto his face as he begins to screw the TV onto the mounting bracket. "Seriously though, were you ever, y'know, actually considering for these old geezers' proposals? I'm not the way on the receiving end of their endless mailings, but even I think that they've been pestering you for far too long... Hey, give me a hand here." Kaveh grunts as he hoists up one end of the large TV and Tighnari rushes to lift up the other. "Anyways, I would've blacklisted their address a long time ago if I were you. I'm surprised that you haven't yet."

"The Akademiya's valuable enough for me to endure their pestering." Tighnari helped Kaveh attach the mounting plate to the TV. "By valuable, I mean the scholars who still sought for knowledge in a pure and unsullied way. I'd like to mentor one one day."

Kaveh raised a brow. "You? Teaching?"

Tighnari narrowed his eyes and regarded Kaveh in a scrutinizing, albeit playful manner. "Am I unfit to be a teacher?"

"Ah, no, none of the kind." Kaveh hastily laughed. "I just, uh, take it as ignorance to your person."

Tighnari hums.

"I wonder how Alhaitham handles you, Kaveh." He thinks aloud and smiles to himself. Reaching over to the remote and tunes to Sumeru News, he shakes his head lightly. "Or really, with how he's like, I suppose he doesn't at all."

Kaveh would have responded with an indignant retort, but he doesn't; For it has been years after that bright August afternoon, and they were no longer the best of friends that stuck together indefinitely.