Chapter Text
The girl with stars in her eyes does not believe in the divine.
Well, not exactly. She knows the divine exist, and acknowledges their presence and their past deeds. She does not condemn them—that would be unwise, Mona understands this—but she does not worship them. or even accept them as the mighty determiners that children’s storybooks make them out to be.
The gods, she has decided, hold no more power over the universe than common mortals, the ones bound to the earth without desiring the throne in the sky. The universe is vast and ever-changing, with the secrets to time and life able to be found in the paths of its stars and planets. This is the truth found by astrologists, who labor away under blue-black skies in secluded observatories, marking down the shifting of the universe with strokes of ink.
Mona has always thirsted for knowledge. As a child, she would hide in her bedroom in her family’s run-down Mondstadt farm, forgoing meals to read through the village library’s scant supply of textbooks instead, going over stacks of pure information that she imprinted into her mind. Her siblings would show her off to their schoolmates by having her recite the Sumerian names of the plants and animals they pointed out. After they ran out of flora and fauna to direct her to, her cheeks would be flushed and her gray eyes bright, proud of the knowledge that set her apart.
Even from her young age, Mona had always known that knowledge was a sacred thing, meant only for those who truly wished to pursue it wholeheartedly. So when an old woman entered the farming village on a cart drawn by a great black horse, speaking of the motions of the stars and planets, she begged her for an apprenticeship. Her parents were skeptical, but they recognized her insatiable desire to know (even if they didn’t understand it), so they granted her permission and watched her leave her childhood home at the age of ten, bound for the unknown.
The first thing Mona learned under her new master was that she knew nothing. Her master’s library took up almost all of her hilltop tower, dozens of shelves reached by ladders and staircases, with papers stuffed in drawers and slipping under doors, each page filled with lines of knowledge that Mona wanted—needed—to devour.
But as she aged under her master’s tutelage, she began to resent the old woman—she never let her read as much as she wanted, always hiding the documents that Mona knew divulged the true secrets of the world.
As she continued to grow, she began to form her own theories about the ways of the world, instead of simply learning those of others. The ability to create was equal to the ability to learn, she decided, and began to write down her own theories—what she called her “truths”—in a series of blank pages at the back of a misprinted copy of Wine and Song . That way, she reasoned, her master would never be able to see what she had divined and claim it as her own knowledge.
These “truths” ranged over many topics, but the vast majority had to do with the stars and the divine. The stars because, obviously, she was training to be an astrologist (she already considered herself one in qualifications if not in formality), and the divine not because she believed in heavenly power, but because she was fascinated by the concept of it. The truths, formed in cramped yet neat hand, included statements like Perhaps the Seven do not exist, and are only constructs of uneducated mortals who are unable to understand the world’s natural movements and The concept of the Vision is inherently patronizing; it is as if the gods believe that no human will strive for greatness without divinity being the ultimate goal.
At about the same time as she began writing the truths, Mona started to sneak out of her master’s tower at twilight and steal away to the grassy cliffs overlooking the sea around it. As she did, she would smirk to herself at the incompetence of her master—her only disciple was hiding astrological theories and trekking over the countryside in the dead of night, but the old hag knew of none of it. Her master was safe in the desert of her own learned ignorance, thinking that she was omniscient when she knew nothing that truly mattered.
How human of her, Mona thought.
Her master did not know anything that mattered, of course, because she did not observe the universe as it truly was. She stayed in the tiny observatory in the tower’s attic, hunched over leather-bound tomes in languages none understood, never observing the stars and planets except through her telescope’s narrow, distorting lens. Telescopes had their uses, Mona acknowledged, but information could only be gleaned from the night sky with the naked, unadulterated eye and the laborious tasks that followed—the writing and reading of star charts, maps, and reference sheets spanning books as thick as her two arms.
(Mona’s view on her master was similar to that of her view on telescopes; she knew that they attempted to find the truth, but due to their nature, they were irreversibly fettered.)
So after she stole down the tower staircase, often with a star chart or two tucked under her arm, she would run as fast as she could, as if the stars would disappear if she did not map them quickly enough. Breathing in the clear night air, she would arrive at the edge of the cliff and sit, throwing her head back and opening her eyes as wide as she could to drink in the source of all her knowledge, the speaker of her truths. The sky.
This would always bring some sort of implacable clarity, as if she were somehow connected to something greater than her own comprehension. As if she were both insignificant and the center of all the heavenly bodies, as if she were both connected to everything and severed from the world at the same time.
Mona never tired of staring at the stars; it would be to tire of breathing, to tire of living. The stars spoke the truth. Listening to them, observing them, mapping them—that, of course, would reveal the truth. And the truth is as essential to Mona as air and water are to everyone else.
She never asked herself what truth she was seeking. The answer to that question was simple—all of them. The origin of life. The origin of time. The origin of the people of Teyvat and their gods, as dubious as their powers were.
The truth of this world.
What could it be?
This was the question Mona Megistus asked herself, during all those nights spent alone on a grassy cliff. The girl with stars in her eyes does not believe in the divine, but she does believe in the turning of the world, of the significance of the past, present, and future. She believes in the truth, and will seek out its meaning until her dying breath.
Because she knows, and fears, that her thirst for knowledge is all she is, at her core. With all else stripped away, this pure hunger is her only identity.
If she is nothing but stars and truth, then will she ever feel full?
Her Vision came to her late into the night on the edge of that isolated cliff. She had been staring up at the pattern of stars, discerning the interlocking constellations, when a figure appeared beside her.
She didn’t cry out. She didn’t even twitch in surprise. Mona was sixteen years old at that point, and little ever fazed her; revelations and surprises were lost in her solemn gray eyes.
So she simply put down her star chart and stared at the woman, waiting for her to speak. She saw that the woman was tall and lithe, wrapped in a flowing blue cloak, with cornsilk-blonde hair glowing silver in the moonlight. She carried a sense of power and purpose, like she had appeared for a reason, though she would take her time getting around to fulfilling it.
This woman, Mona decided after just a few seconds of being in her presence, was a god.
She wasn’t fearful. She wasn’t in awe—the divine were only significant to her in relation to the theoretical exploration of the concept of heavenly rule. She just didn’t understand why a god would appear to her.
“The stars,” the woman finally said. Her voice was smooth and musical, and carried a faint wistful tone. She looked up at the sky with eyes like reflecting pools. Mona followed her gaze and realized the woman was staring at the dim outline of Celestia, the tilted heavenly palace at the edge of the night sky. “Can you comprehend them?” she asked after a pause.
Mona blinked. “Of course. I’m an astrologist.”
The woman nodded to herself and tore her gaze from the sky to look at the expanse of land beyond the cliff’s edge. “Ah. A star-seer. And after all your study, what do you think of the world, young astrologist? Of the gods?” She turned her head and peered down at Mona, pale eyebrows raised questioningly.
“The power of the gods is no greater than the power of mortals,” Mona answered immediately. She opened her mouth to continue, but the goddess-woman interrupted her before she could.
“No greater than the power of mortals, hm? And what do you think gives you the right to make that judgement?” Her tone was still calm, inscrutable.
Mona suddenly realized that voicing her...atypical views on the divine hadn’t been the best idea when she was standing before a deity. But she couldn’t backtrack—that would be lying, and Mona had spent all of her short life searching for the truth. “I...I don’t have the right to pass judgement,” she said slowly, carefully. Funny—she had never thought about that before. Was her truth a form of judgement? “I merely look for the truth and when I find it, I voice it.”
“But your truth could be different than someone else’s, yes? Do you aim to change that?”
The goddess’s tone hadn’t changed at all, but Mona still felt that she was treading on thin ice and would fall into a frozen lake if she made one verbal misstep. Interesting, she thought, how she had never feared the gods, but now that she was in the presence of one, even that view was wavering. Was this the power of the divine that she had ignored—to change even the most concrete of mortal beliefs?
No. That was not who Mona Megistus was. Mona Megistus, astrologist and seeker, searched for the truth, and nothing else.
“No, I don’t aim to change anyone else’s truth,” Mona said finally. “That is not my goal. My goal is to further my own knowledge and discover this world’s greatest meaning, to the furthest extent that I am able. That is my ambition.”
The goddess blinked, looking faintly surprised. All of her emotions seemed to be hidden behind a thick mist, with only slight changes in her expressions being the only clue to her reaction before she spoke. Mona wondered whether all gods were this way, thousands of years of life smoothing their emotions to imperceptibility. “An ambition...to comprehend,” she mused aloud, moving her hand in a peculiar circular motion. Mona glanced down and began to stare, transfixed, as something above her palm began to glow. “Tell me, young astrologist, what is your name?”
“Mona Megistus,” Mona breathed, still watching the light. Its glow was growing stronger, beginning to coalesce into a circular shape. Was it-
“Mona Megistus,” the hydro archon repeated. “Yes. Astrologists can see futures, yes? But they cannot see their own.” A Vision was lying in her palm, pulsing faintly with blue light, a gemstone seeming to encompass fathoms-deep oceans within it. “Each person in Teyvat is a judge. At least once in their life, each person will make a decision that means something to them; will decide a fate. You say you only look for the truth, with eyes unclouded by judgement? I doubt that.”
She pressed the Vision into Mona’s palm with cool hands. Mona could only stare dumbly at the stone—ambition made tangible, some called it. A path to godhood, others said.
“I understand that you do not wish to obtain one of these,” the goddess said, tone almost humorous. “But you of all people should understand that our fates are not our own.
“Who knows? Perhaps this will aid you in your search for what you call the truth. With my own limited knowledge—yes, even gods are limited—I can only say this. To judge the past and present is to be human. To judge the future is to be more than that. Which will you be, astrologist Mona Megistus?” The goddess had already turned away, looking once more at the distant castle in the sky. “Human? Or more?”
Mona didn’t know. Can a human, as a human, completely realize the truth of the world? The idea that that was impossible went against her very identity.
I don’t want this, Mona wanted to say as she looked at the deity bathed in moonlight. Take it back.
But she couldn’t speak.
And she couldn’t shake the feeling that this gemstone held loosely in her hand held a piece of her truth— the truth—within it.