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Paimon missed the Traveler.
She missed the time before they returned to stardust.
She missed floating through endless flower fields, exploring caves and ruins that made impossible mazes. No matter how often it happened, it was always astonishing how easy the Traveler made solving them look.
Another surprise was how light they made Paimon feel as the two of them would drift down the winds of Qingyun Peak.
Who knew that although she never really left the air, there were things that made everything seem so much more weightless.
People to make her reconsider if she really needed as much energy to stay afloat as she thought she did, just so she could see them smile as she let them eat the last bite of their shared home-made Sticky Honey Roast.
And as time passed, whether they were trapped on icy peaks that made Paimon believe her head was freezing off, or stranded in the middle of an ocean, because the Traveler had seen the hints of an unmarked island just outside their vision and their Stamina just had to run out at the worst time imaginable, no one could deny that they had started finding home in one another.
She missed when the two of them would make camp under the Teyvatian night sky, laying down and pretending to sleep like they didn't know it would take only a few minutes for them to quietly shuffle together and over from under their tent, looking out to face the vast blue.
They used to count all the visible constellations they knew, crossing them off and pondering what they might be named if they did not know.
Ever so often the Traveler would end up frequenting Layla to ask about those stars, which always ended in an exhausting but certainly fun day. Paimon vividly remembered chasing a so-called “Wisdom Seelie” all around the Akademia!
It was especially after days like those, that Paimon would quietly look forward to falling asleep next to her companion, as they pointed to the sky and told her about a star they had visited long before her time.
Paimon missed when she believed said sky was real.
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