Chương 140: A promise

"You can't force me!" a girl 7 years old with neck-length purple hair petulantly said crossing her arms.

Her deep purple eyes seemed to shine with a purple glow, and she was now looking with a narrowed look at the beautiful woman in front of her.

"Elea, if you don't clean your room, I won't share my dangos" Ei looked at her daughter with a firm expression.

"You wouldn't dare..." the little girl quickly wore an unbelieving expression. "You would violate the sanctity of dangos to further your own agenda.... how cruel."

"Then clean your room" Ei said, standing up to leave the room. "I will wait for you on the first floor, and we will have the dangos in the Plane of Euthymia after that."

"....." Elea narrowed her eyes, looking at her mother leaving the room.

"I told you" a voice reached her ears, and she glared at the one who spoke. A calm boy with ash-coloured hair and deep amber eyes.

"Shut up Ken" Elea muttered, but obediently tidied up her room.

"I will help you" the boy clearly had more sense than the girl, and between the 2 they cleared the room quite fast.

"Hmm, I approve of your help my squire" Elea nodded magnanimously, making the 7-year-old boy wryly smile. "I will give you on- no, three dangos."

"How gracious of you" Ken said, before both children burst out laughing.

"How is Aunty Dust?" asked Elea, walking down to the first floor with a happy expression now that dango time was approaching.

"Why do you call my mother that?" asked curiously the boy.

"Don't know, is what I see when I look at her" Elea shrugged. "But it's too blurry, maybe it's something else."

"My mother said your father used to say the same" muttered Ken with a thoughtful look. "She also said that your father was able to see a lot of things more when he was 5."

"Ah, I forgot my dead father is your idol" it was Elea's turn to wear a wry smile.

"Well, he beat your mother, right?" asked Ken with a smile.

"That's....true" Elea didn't think much of his father, as she hadn't met him. All she knew was that people usually said he was amazing, but she was still not sure of what it meant. "Beating mother is...amazing. In my training with her, I can't even graze her."

Elea was training how to fight under Ei, a part of that was to learn how to defend herself from all the dangers that roamed through the world, but Elea quickly fell in love with fighting.

So now Ei had someone to teach how to fight, and that made wonders to her precarious mental state.

"But you shouldn't imitate him" Elea spoke to the boy next to her with a frown. "He was a womanizer, look at Yae and Sara, they are sad all day."

"Better sad than angry" Ken sweat dropped. "The girl called Shenhe sometimes destroys mountains when she is angry."

"Hmmm, yes" Elea was happy to live in Inazuma, a lot of people loved her both because of her open personality and her father, but the main reason she didn't want to live in Liyue was that crazy woman called Shenhe.

Elea couldn't see souls as precisely as Kenshin could, in fact she was only able to get a 'feel'. And she felt like kicking her own mother after sensing all the anger Shenhe had inside of her.

"I wonder how Aunt Jean is, I haven't seen her in months" mused Elea, remembering the gentle woman who likes to tell her stories about her father. One of the things Elea liked the most about his deceased father was his books.

She LOVED the Radiant Knight, and knowing it was her father who wrote them filled her with pride.

"I saw her last week when mother took me to Mondstadt" revealed Ken, making Elea look at him. "She was so busy with work that mom forced her to sleep. Mom said that she is trying to get distracted."

Elea shook her head in sadness, as she knew that Jean was also hurting.

"We are here!" Elea shouted, all her problems being forgotten at having some dangos with her mother.

"Did you clean up your room?" asked Makoto with a soft smile.

"Of course" Elea recognized the one talking, but to her, it didn't matter.

"Did Ken help you?" Makoto asked with a slight smile, looking at the shy boy look away.

"Of course" Elea nodded again, not seeing the need to hide anything.

"Then you will split your dangos with him" Makoto's words made Elea pout, but the child shrugged.

"Fair" she said, but quickly wore an excited expression. "Did Jean send some of the ones in Mondstadt?"

"Yes, she knows they are your favourites" Makoto softly laughed, but she looked at the suddenly confused Elea. "What's wrong?"

"I-I....I don't know?" Elea asked, feeling disoriented. "I feel-...."

"Elea!!" Makoto shouted, approaching her daughter who had fallen to the ground. "YAE!!"

A minute was all Yae needed to arrive from the Shrine sensing the signal Makoto sent.

But seeing the unconscious Elea, scared Ken and panicking Makoto, she understood what happened.

"Let me see" Yae said, moving the panicking mother to one side.

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"W-Where am I?" asked a scared Elea, who found herself in the middle of a dried-up plain with an enormous tree trunk in front of her.

All the leaves were dried up, but Elea thought that the scene when the tree was healthy must have been amazing.

Looking around, and seeing that there was nothing here, she approached the tree.

"The Radiant Knight is brave, I can be too" Elea psyched herself up, and with a firm expression she approached the only thing she could see in this place.

The tree's bark was rough to the touch, having dried up long ago, but Elea felt it gave her some sort of security, even if she didn't know how a tree could do that.

"....." the more time she spent here, the less fear she felt.

After a quick inspection, she saw some fruits that had grey colours.

Some were big, some small, but Elea somehow was able to discern that once upon a time they had been majestic.

"This one is different" Elea mused, approaching one that had a faint purple colour. "Hmmmm, it seems somehow familiar."

She inspected the fruit, but didn't dare to touch it. She was normally a decisive girl, but she felt that a single touch would make it fall to the ground.

And she liked this dried-up tree, she didn't want it to lose all the colour it had.

"Oh" Elea saw that there was something else that gave this sad tree some colour.

A single leaf on top of it, with a dull purple that reminded her of her own eyes.

She approached the leaf that seemed so small and tiny that she felt that if she blew, it would simply fly away.

"..."

But she opened her eyes wide when her ability to sense how people were feeling told her something.

This leaf wanted to say something to her, and as the curious girl she was, she approached even more.

"....."

"Are you...sure?" Elea felt stupid for talking to a leaf, but after sensing what it wanted, she couldn't be sure.

"....."

"O-Okay" after the leaf transmitted the same thought, Elea nervously...

Tore it from the branch.

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"Urgh" Elea felt her head hurt, and her purple eyes looked again at the ceiling of the Tenshukaku, her house.

"ELEA!" Makoto hugged her daughter, tears of anxiousness streaming down her eyes.

"W-What happened?" asked a still groggy Elea.

"Are you okay?" Yae had a worried face, her long hair disheveled after coming from the Shrine in a hurry.

Elea looked around, and saw Ken in a corner with a scared expression that turned into tears of relief seeing her, Yae looking worried and Sara wearing a stony face that also turned into one of relief.

"Y-Yes" Elea muttered, and grimaced when her ribs groaned in pain due to the force her mother was hugging her.

"Makot-Ei, release her, you are hurting her" Yae, now relieved, slightly hit Ei's face who upon hearing she was hurting Elea, took a step back in panic.

"Hmm?" the observant Sara saw something weird, and asked about it.

"Elea, what do you have in your hand?" she asked looking at Elea's closed hand.

Elea looked confused at her clenched hand.

"....." she opened it, and the group saw a small and almost dried purple leaf.

"What is that?" asked Ken curiously.

Elea didn't know how something that came out of what seemed to be a dream could appear in the real world, but she said what she had felt from the leaf.

"A promise" Elea said, showing everyone the dulled purple leaf. "A promise to come back."