Just as Columbina’s perception focused on Sandrone’s peaceful sleeping face in the mirror, the smooth surface suddenly rippled with irregular waves, like a pond into which a stone had been thrown.
The scene of Sandrone’s room blurred, quickly replaced by a patch of dim, flickering firelight.
She leaned in closer, his perception probing through the fluctuating mirror surface, but she could only capture scattered fragments—an inconspicuous small statue stood in a dim room, and a man was piously bowing to it, an indescribable aura lingering around him.
“…I pray for the gaze of the unknown, and listen to the pleas of the humble…”
The man’s voice came through the mirror, suppressed with anxiety and longing, “…If you can grant a chance, I am willing to offer…”
A prayer?
Columbina tilted her head.
She looked around him at the eternally unchanging grey-white lunar soil, so desolate that there wasn’t even any wind.
Grant a chance?
What could she give?
She couldn’t exactly have the other party come to the moon to dig dirt…
Hmm?
Wait.
A nonsensical thought arose.
She bent down and casually scooped up a handful of fine lunar soil.
This grey dust lay quietly in her palm in the vacuum.
Tentatively, he gently sprinkled this handful of lunar soil toward the center of the fluctuating mirror.
There was no resistance.
The grey powder vanished from this end of the mirror as if passing through an invisible film of water, and in the next moment—
In the scene on the other side of the mirror, points of Glimmer emerged out of thin air above the crude small statue.
Then, a small amount of grey dust shimmering with starlight rustled down, landing right on the stone altar in front of the statue.
The man’s prayer stopped abruptly.
The room fell into a dead silence.
The man seemed stunned, his eyes fixed on the dust that had appeared out of nowhere.
A few seconds later, he lunged forward, his fingers trembling as she pinched a bit, brought it to his eyes, and sniffed it cautiously.
“…Star…
Stardust?!”
He had once seen Stardust in the Bishop’s collection; it was the dust carried by falling Sky Stones, a supreme treasure that could help an Beyonder ascend past their bottleneck.
But the Stardust before him was several times purer than the Bishop’s treasure!
His voice cracked with extreme shock, “Praise!
Praise you!
Great unknown existence!”
He hurriedly prostrated himself on the ground, his forehead touching the floor, his tone becoming incredibly reverent and fearful: “This dull believer presumes to pray, yet does not know your Honorific Name!
I beg your forgiveness, and…
and please grant your holy title, so that we may correctly spread word of your grace!”
Columbina looked at the man’s fearful yet expectant expression in the mirror; she felt it was necessary to give this person an answer.
She thought for a moment, his fingertip lightly tracing a line on the silver light of the mirror, writing two words—Moon Goddess.
She chose this name on a whim; after all, the place where she was now was very close to the moon.
When the man on the other side of the mirror saw these two words, her pupils dilated sharply, and his breath hitched for a moment.
Moon Goddess!
She murmured to himself with an unbelievable tremble in his voice: “Moon…
Moon Goddess?
You are…
the great existence who wields authority over the bright moon?”
She immediately thought of the deity worshipped by her own Church of the Goddess of Night, who also held authority related to the moon.
A storm of shock instantly erupted in her heart, yet she didn’t dare to scrutinize the connection.
She suppressed her churning thoughts and asked even more respectfully, “Lofty Moon Goddess, you have granted such a precious grace.
How should your humble servant repay you?
What kind of offering is required?
Please instruct me!”
Repay?
Columbina thought for a bit.
She didn’t need anything from this strange world for the time being, especially when the situation was unclear.
She transmitted a vague thought of having no needs for now.
The man understood immediately, feeling both relieved and an even deeper sense of awe.
He bowed deeply once more: “Thank you for your mercy and gift!
Your servant, Grey, will keep your name in his heart and serve your will in silence!”
As the words fell, the mysterious connection quietly broke.
The man dithered for a moment and looked up; the Stardust was still there, but the divine aura had vanished without a trace.
He hurriedly stood up and carefully gathered the Stardust from the ground, putting it into a pre-prepared sealed box, afraid that even a sliver of the beyonder energy would dissipate.
He looked at the fine silver-grey sand in the box, his face full of ecstasy, his hands shaking as he held the box.
With this Stardust, his ascension was just around the corner!
The images and sounds on the mirror gradually blurred and receded, finally pulling back like a receding tide, stabilizing once more into the still scene of Sandrone’s room—the Damselette was still fast asleep.
Columbina withdrew his gaze and looked down at her hand that had just grabbed the lunar soil.
She clearly felt that when the man calling himself Grey uttered “Moon Goddess” with gratitude and awe and expressed his faith, a sliver of peculiar power flowed through the mirror connection that hadn’t been completely severed and merged into his body.
It was as if a trickle of spring water had seeped into a dry riverbed; though the amount was small, it gave him an indescribable sense of fulfillment.
“Faith…
power?”
She pondered this novel experience.
In the morning, Sandrone stuffed the silver mirror, which was carefully wrapped in old flannel, deep into her sturdiest and only canvas satchel without holes, then pressed several heavy mechanics textbooks on top of it.
She tidied his collar in front of the blurry, broken mirror in the room, took a deep breath, and forcibly categorized last night’s bizarre and unreal nightmare as a hallucination caused by too much pressure.
The urgent matter was to get rid of this hot potato in exchange for the capital to survive.
“Black market…
I need to find a reliable middleman.”
She calculated, took a small bite of the rock-hard black bread, washed it down with cold water, and walked out the narrow door.
The streets outside had already awakened, and steam carriages drove by, puffing out white smoke.
On the moon, the floating silver mirror faithfully reflected the dim interior of Sandrone’s satchel and the edges of the books swaying slightly with his steps.
But Columbina’s perception could penetrate this obstacle, clearly seeing the streets Sandrone walked on and hearing the clamor of the marketplace.
“Tsk, tsk,”
Columbina sat on the lunar surface, resting his chin on his hand as if watching an immersive movie.
“Is this Snezhnaya?
It’s a bit different from what I imagined.”
She felt the air from that side, which wasn’t piercingly cold but rather slightly damp and cool.
“It’s actually quite warm?
Isn’t it said that the Tsaritsa’s kingdom is shrouded in wind and snow all year round?”
She tried to recall the fragmented background settings from the game.
“Could it be…
because the Tsaritsa’s power hasn’t completely covered it yet?
Or, does Snezhnaya actually have brief, less cold periods?”
She wasn’t quite sure; after all, she wasn’t some lore expert.
The buildings on both sides of the street also puzzled her.
Stone-built houses, pointed or domed windows, small balconies with iron railings—this style…
“Why does it feel more like certain areas of Fontaine or Mondstadt?
Where’s the Russian…
uh, Snezhnayan-style heavy and magnificent snow fortresses?”
Columbina began to doubt his judgment.
Could this not be Teyvat?
But Sandrone’s face matched.
She watched as Sandrone bought the cheapest, dry-looking wrap from a roadside stall, eating it in small bites while walking and keeping a wary eye on his surroundings.
“She gets hungry, he eats from roadside stalls…”
Columbina’s attention shifted to Sandrone himself.
“There are indeed no clockwork interfaces on her back, and her body movements have a completely human texture.”
She remembered Sandrone’s panicked, pale face last night, as well as her meager breakfast this morning.
“So, the current Marionette is a…
normal human Damselette who needs to worry about food and warmth?”