"Back already?" Cid smiled as he watched little Eula return.
"Mm…" Little Eula responded softly.
"Speaking of which, did you come to Dragonspine alone? Or did someone else bring you?"
"There was a cousin from the family skilled in etiquette who was arranged to bring me." Little Eula didn't seem happy about it.
The people in the Lawrence family…
I don't know if their brains are damaged or if they've been driven foolish by exclusion.
The era has already passed, yet they still fill their minds with the glory of the Lawrence family.
Poor enough to only have a chair left, yet they can still ensure they have a set of clean clothes.
Day after day with the attitude of "I am a noble, the greatest—you should all kneel to welcome my arrival."
Nothing else to say about it; only the free and tolerant people of Mondstadt could endure it. If in these past few years someone with a bad temper had appeared…
Heh, whether the Lawrence family bloodline would even continue would be questionable.
Ah, surely it can't be that the people of Mondstadt enjoy watching the Lawrence family perform as clowns, which is why they've allowed them to exist until now, right?
"Do you like your family?" Cid had a rather bold idea.
Little Eula froze for a moment. "I don't know."
"Then talk about your experiences as a child. Maybe once you sort them out, you'll know?"
Facing the uncle who saved her life, little Eula had no intention of hiding anything, but…
"I don't know what I have to say." Little Eula seemed very lost.
"Then what have you been doing since you can remember?"
"Noble martial training, the glorious history of the Lawrence family, lessons in noble culture…
They always talk about glory,
but I don't understand
why the glory they speak of so proudly…
is despised by everyone else."
Little Eula seemed to recall something unpleasant; her expression didn't look good.
The uncle rubbed little Eula's head.
"Because their glory is false—at least the glory that has now been tainted is false." Uncle Cid said this with absolute certainty in his tone.
Little Eula stared intently at Uncle Cid's face, as if expecting answers from him.
Uncle Cid wasn't good at persuasive talking; he could only explain his thoughts to little Eula bit by bit.
"The glory of the Lawrence family was earned through the hard work and struggle of their ancestors.
The qualities required in that struggle are the true glory of the Lawrence family.
It's just a pity that the later generations of your family only remember the splendor achieved after the effort,
yet forgot what that splendor was achieved through."
Uncle Cid spoke very slowly—after all, he had to think it through himself, and he wasn't good with words.
"The Lawrence family fell in the midst of splendor
because their eyes were blinded by greed,
and in the end they committed countless grave mistakes.
The people of Mondstadt remember this history—
this blood debt committed by the Lawrence family.
Then their descendants showed no remorse,
thinking that by preserving some trivial details from their time of splendor, they were still in splendor.
It's utterly ridiculous."
Cid looked at little Eula's expression and felt she seemed to half-understand.
My head hurts. I actually understand it quite well, but I just can't express it.
An uncle who looks mature on the outside but has the expressive ability of a child feels despair.
"I think I understood a little, but also like I didn't." Little Eula seemed somewhat troubled. "Is it saying the process is more important than the result?"
"Both should be important."
The uncle thought for a moment and decided to be more direct. "Some things can't be conveyed to you through words—you have to experience them to understand.
Do you want to wander around outside Mondstadt with this uncle?
Experience some things out there.
It's always better than being discriminated against in Mondstadt because of the Lawrence family's glory."
Uncle Cid really sounded like a human trafficker trying to abduct a child.