Columbina was currently on the lunar surface, taking her countless-th stroll.
She had tried making little rabbits out of moon dust, carving words into stone, and even attempted singing to that blue-green planet.
Just as she was pondering whether to go back to the statue’s middle finger to check out those troublesome “special effects,” a speck of silver light appeared without warning on the moon dust not far ahead.
It wasn’t a reflection from a distant planet, nor was it the statue’s own Glimmer; it was a small, suspended plane that looked as if it were formed from condensed mercury.
It hung there quietly, about half a person tall, its edges rippling slightly like a mirror discarded at random.
“?”
Columbina tilted her head, looking puzzled.
Was she so bored that she was starting to hallucinate?
She approached cautiously and reached out a finger to poke it.
It felt cold to the touch with a strange resilience, her fingertip sparking ripples of silver light.
She tried to push it; this “mirror” was as light as nothing, drifting along with her movements, and…
it seemed to have taken a liking to her.
Wherever she went, it followed slowly, always maintaining a distance of about three steps.
“What is this?
A lunar pet?”
Columbina made a few faces at it, but the mirror didn’t react at all.
“Whatever, an extra piece of furniture isn’t a loss.”
She quickly accepted this surreal new furnishing and even began trying to use it to reflect the distant planet.
On the other side, late at night in the city.
Inside a cramped room, Sandrone fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
The kerosene lamp on the table had gone out, but the ornate box under the bed quietly underwent a change amidst her steady breathing.
After the first lock disengaged, the precise internal machinery did not stop operating.
Deep within the engravings of strange symbols on the box’s surface, a layer of silver Glimmer, barely perceptible to the naked eye, flowed out and spread along the established patterns.
The second lock—the two brass dials covered in symbols—began to rotate slowly on their own, each stop precisely corresponding to a specific combination of scales.
“Click.”
An unlocking sound, even fainter than before, rang out.
An imperceptible crack popped open at the edge of the lid; silver light seeped from the gap and then vanished.
The box had quietly opened.
And the fast-asleep Sandrone was completely unaware of this.
On the moon, Columbina, who was trying to perform a Khulri dance using the “mirror,” suddenly noticed that the mirror surface was no longer calm.
The ripples fluctuated violently, and the center area was no longer a reflected silver, but instead blurred into a scene—dim lighting, a rough wooden ceiling, and a narrow space.
“Hmm?”
Columbina leaned in closer.
The image gradually became clear: an extremely simple little room, the perspective seemed to be…
Looking out from some box placed on a table?
She could even see the bulging silhouette of a person under a quilt on the bed opposite.
Curiosity overrode everything else.
Tentatively, she reached her hand, clad in a white silk glove, toward the center of the mirror where the fluctuations were most intense.
There was no resistance.
Her arm passed through easily, as if reaching into a mass of cool mercury mist.
Immediately following, a pull from an unknown direction was felt.
Columbina didn’t resist—she was bored to death on the moon anyway—and she leaned her whole body forward, following the force.
The next second, Columbina landed in a cramped space.
She stumbled slightly, steadied herself, and looked down at her hands—they were still the same hands, with white and blue sleeves, but they had become somewhat transparent.
She reached out to poke the table next to her, and her finger passed right through it without any tactile sensation.
“A spiritual body?”
Columbina raised an eyebrow.
She tried passing through a chair and then a wall; there were no obstacles, just like a real ghost.
She was having a blast, floating around the room until she tried to float out of it, when an invisible force pulled her back, as if a rope were tied to her, dragging her back in.
“Hmm?”
Columbina frowned and tried again, but was still pulled back.
She looked down at her feet, and her gaze landed on the open box on the table—that silver mirror was glowing faintly.
She floated over and found that as long as she stayed near the silver mirror, she wouldn’t be pulled; once she moved away, that force would appear.
“So the range is restricted to the vicinity of this mirror.”
She realized with a start and muttered softly, “How stingy.”
Her gaze fell upon the person sleeping soundly on the bed.
Her spiritual state seemed to grant her excellent night vision, making details in the darkness clearly visible.
It was a curled-up girl with dark brown hair, her face youthful yet bearing traces of exhaustion; even in her dreams, her brow was slightly furrowed.
Columbina floated a bit closer to examine the face carefully.
She looked a bit familiar.
Where had she seen her?
It wasn’t the abstract familiarity of the lunar statue, but something more specific…
a character model.
Searching memory bank…
She lightly tapped her temple.
“Marionette!”
She remembered!
The Seventh of the Fatui Harbingers, [Marionette] Sandrone!
Only the one before her looked younger and more…
destitute, but that face, especially the temperament that faintly showed even while asleep, was very similar.
“So, this is Teyvat?”
Columbina looked around the shabby room, her heart filled with immense confusion.
“That can’t be right…
Has the Fatui’s salary and funding dropped to this level?
Letting a Harbinger live in a place like this?”
She thought of Sandrone’s exquisite and massive mechanical creations and, comparing them to the scene before her, felt a strong contrast.
“Or is this…
some kind of disguise?
Experiencing life?
Or…
were her allowances docked completely?”
She floated near the table, wanting to see if there were any documents for clues, but she was limited by her range of activity and couldn’t reach.
She had no choice but to float back near the bed to continue observing “Marionette.”
At that moment, perhaps due to the subtle temperature change brought by the spiritual body, or perhaps due to intuition, Sandrone’s eyelashes on the bed fluttered a few times, and she opened her eyes dizzily.
Her vision was hazy at first, then she instinctively turned toward the faintly glowing white presence in the room.
Time stood still for two seconds.
Sandrone’s eyes snapped wide open, her sleepiness instantly blown to pieces.
She sat up with a start like a startled cat, her back pressed tight against the cold wall, her fingers clutching the thin quilt.
Her face was deathly pale, and her mouth was open, but she couldn’t make a sound immediately due to excessive shock.
After a few seconds of suffocating silence, a question, suppressed until it was out of tune, finally broke through her throat:
“Who?”
Columbina tilted her small head, her diamond-shaped eye mask covering most of her eyes and leaving only a section of her fair cheek visible.
Her voice was soft and sweet, tinged with a bit of confusion.
“Who what?”
Her ethereal voice sounded exceptionally clear in the silent little room, yet it lacked emotional fluctuation, as if she were simply repeating a simple phrase.
After a pause, as if she had just remembered social etiquette, she added in that melodic yet flat, chant-like tone: “Good evening, Sandrone.”