In the quiet heart of Mondstadt, where the winds whispered secrets through the leaves of Windrise and the stars watched with indifferent grace, Nicole carried a miracle that defied the heavens themselves. She was no ordinary woman—once an angel of Celestia, her essence still shimmered with faint starlight, even after the curse that had threatened to reduce her to a wandering Seelie had been broken. Now, bound to Varka in love and mortality, she bore their children: twins whose hearts beat in rhythm with both divine prophecy and mortal storm.
But pregnancy, for one touched by the stars, was no gentle bloom. Nicole’s whims came like celestial storms—unpredictable, intense, laced with the remnants of her otherworldly heritage. Varka, the mighty Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius, who had faced dragons and abyssal horrors without flinching, found himself utterly outmatched.
It began with cravings that no earthly kitchen could sate. “Varka,” she would murmur in the dead of night, her azure eyes glowing faintly in the dark, “I need starfruit from the highest peak of Dragonspine—picked under a full moon.” He would groan, rubbing sleep from his eyes, but rise without complaint. Armored against the biting cold, he scaled the frozen heights, battling blizzards and cryo slimes, only to return with frost-kissed fruit that she devoured in moments, her hand resting on her swelling belly as the twins stirred in response.
Then came the moods—swift as Anemo gales. One afternoon, as sunlight filtered through the manor’s windows, Nicole wept over a fallen dandelion seed. “It’s so fragile,” she sobbed, clutching Varka’s cloak. “Like our love—beautiful, but gone in a breath.” He held her, bewildered, murmuring reassurances while Jean discreetly handled his duties. By evening, her tears turned to laughter, demanding he recount tales of his most embarrassing battles to “entertain the little ones.”
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Her special needs went beyond whimsy. Nicole’s angelic blood demanded rituals forgotten by time: baths in moonlit springs infused with Qingxin petals to soothe the divine energy surging through her veins; meditations under Irminsul echoes to temper the prophetic visions the twins already sent flickering through her mind. Varka learned ancient incantations from Alice, who cackled at his stumbling pronunciations, and gathered rare herbs from Liyue’s adepti trails, bartering with yaksha guardians for vials of star-essence dew.
He struggled—oh, how he struggled. Nights without sleep, fetching “just one more” crystal ore from hilichurl camps because “the babies crave the crunch.” Mornings spent massaging her feet while she projected visions of future battles into his thoughts, leaving him dizzy. Once, in a haze of exhaustion, he mistook a Seelie for a lantern and chased it across the Whispering Woods, returning empty-handed and covered in mud, only for Nicole to giggle and pull him into bed.
Yet through every trial, Varka’s love burned fierce as Natlan’s flames. He held her during the pains that felt like celestial rifts tearing open inside her; he whispered vows beneath starry skies, promising to protect their family from gods or fate alike. “You’re my miracle,” he told her one dawn, as she rested against him, the twins kicking gently. “And these whims? They’re just stars reminding me how lucky I am.”
Nicole smiled, tracing his jaw. “Our children will be extraordinary. Like you.”
In those months of struggle and starlit wonder, Varka learned that true strength lay not in claymore or command, but in the quiet endurance of love. And as the twins’ arrival drew near, Mondstadt’s winds carried a promise: a family forged in defiance, ready to face whatever heavens or horizons lay ahead.
