okay i think everyone on my dash is caught up with the last genshin aq, i'll still tag it but no read more for this - namely, a brief summary of nahida's state of mind after these events, specifically around snezhnaya and the fatui and sumeru's safety moving forward.
despite nahida putting on a brave face throughout this entire quest, this has been A Lot on her. from taking over irminsul's role as teyvat's main data processor, feeling, to quote her, like a rotten fruit being eaten by insects (or something to that effect - it will have its own dedicated post), to battling with dottore while barely just recovering from the whole thing (thank you apep), to having her entire essence and consciousness uprooted form irminsul and transplanted into aaru... physically and mentally, nahida feels like she has been put under a bulldozer and rolled over ten times over. thankfully, she is stubborn, she was prepared, and she is now recovering at a good pace.
this will deserve its own post too, but i cannot emphasise enough how this entire endeavour was successful because nahida has been preparing for dottore's return since the conclusion of sumeru's archon three years ago. she has been consistently, patiently planting the seeds necessary to ensure that should there be a day that she, the dendro archon and irminsul's avatar, would be incapacitated, her friends and allies would be ready and in position to act without a moment of hesitation. she is very, very proud of the way everyone came together at a moment's notice, and kept their people and nation safe while rolling out their contingency plans until she was able to return.
of course, sumeru was not left unscathed by the whole ordeal. sumeru city has endured considerable destruction and needs rebuilding, its population has been displaced to caravan ribat and the desert, and it will take time before the city is rebuilt enough that all its residents can return. in a twist of fate that proves how cyclical history is in sumeru, the people of the rainforest are essentially refugees among the people of the desert, until their home is rebuilt. and likewise, the tribes of the desert have no doubt suffered from the sandstorms that raged on before the gang's intervention.
which all essentially makes it the second time that dottore, his goons, and by extension (especially with pantalone's complicity) the fatui, caused significant harm to the people of sumeru. needless to say, nahida is pissed. she may not show it in public so that she and everyone can focus on repairs and healing, but her stone cold treatment of dottore in his final moments is only a small glimpse of how angry she is.
needless to say, she has reached the end of her tether and patience with the fatui and with snezhnaya. pulcinella's letter did nothing to impress her, and she is less than impressed with the tsaritsa's and the fatui harbingers' handling of their supposedly rogue colleague. either they were completely aware of dottore's actions, and pulcinella's 'diplomatic' letter is insulting her intelligence by pretending they did not... or they really didn't, and she must question just how incompetent snezhnaya's and the harbingers' leadership is to not notice the doctor's schemes, especially after he had already done it before. in the same nation.
and she communicated exactly those feelings to pulcinella in her reply to the harbingers and the tsaritsa. she accepted the aid that was sent, because she is a pragmatist and sumeru needs all the assistance it can get, but she made her sentiment extremely clear, in no uncertain terms. as for the aid in question, the corps of thirty and the matra have been mobilised to receive it at the borders, and coordinate to direct it into the city and the desert. snezhnayan military forces and fatui agents are not allowed within sumeru's borders under any circumstances, with extremely few exceptions who will be under heavy surveillance from the matra. as for the harbingers - they are all naturally banned from stepping foot in the country until further notice.
thinking about sneaking in would be extremely ill-advised. while nahida will not turn sumeru into a surveillance state, just remember that she has an army of invisible beings across the entire nation, all too happy to alert her should they suspect any foul play. and let's not forget either that while she respects people's privacy, she is more than capable of reading minds and infiltrating dreams on a planetary scale, with the only know exception being mare jivari, and that she watches over the dreams of everyone who find themselves in sumeru at any given time. if somebody who isn't supposed to be in sumeru, is in sumeru, she will know.
