umm umm okay so listen… childhood friends… silly little fox and baku running around together tumbling about and being silly… imagine miko pranking ppl by trying to scare them into having nightmares for mizuki to eat the nightmares even tho they're probably not supposed to do that but its fun and silly hehe

somewhere along the line miko becomes ei's familiar, and obviously has an infatuation/crush on ei The Cool Electro Archon('s Sister?) and maybe thats all she talks about for a while, and poor little mizuki who has been kind of dreaming about kissing cute pink fox for a while having her dreams crushed…

do you think she does weirdly coy things… i can see it… like kiss miko's cheeks when ei is around / in the vicinity in a friendly way but also not but like nobody rly gets anything about her emotions and baby is tearing apart

anyway there's this weird-ish dynamic and then BAM BAM BAM cataclysm makoto dead suddenly ei is archon then nightmare abound and mizuki is constantly exhausted having to help with cleanup, i wonder if she was kind of head of baku even back then since she is now… so they kind of dont have time to hang out for fun stuff in the midst of all that bcos theres So Much Horrors and Clean Up and its always business talk between them mostly now

and yae is suddenly thrust into grand narukami shrine head priestess and then very quickly ei going into the plane of euthymia and now miko is there… having to hold and tie the nation who lost literally all their political leaders and advisors almost at once when she was barely a little pink fox a while ago… and i think mizuki has very complicated feelings about the whole thing because they were equals before but now miko is head of grand narukami shrine and thats like a whole high up there position so their status position had suddenly widened MASSIVELY especially when ei is new electro archon and mizukis not close the way miko is so theres this gulf that wasnt there before the war that IS there now

they havent talked as friends for so long… its just war business and cleanup and the nightmares and in public she probably has to refer to miko more formally as well ESPECIALLY since she would be a new head priestess rn and needs to solidify her power so mizuki "undermining" her would hurt her and a part of her wonders does she have to in private? is it now required? are they still friends?

i also think mizuki should have complicated strong negative feelings about the plane of euthymia situation… most of inazuma dont know so maybe miko, having spent so long trying to repair and help inazuma recover with the unexpected sudden burden placed upon her only ~100-200 y/o self, the day it happens, finds mizuki at night. maybe shes crying, maybe shes not, but ei really did it and is gone possibly forever and now its just miko and this puppet and the shaky three human commisions who she has to try to maintain and it's so lonely

i think she would be upset on miko's behalf… i am unable to help my friend whom i've loved for so long the way i want to, and ei has the priviledged to be loved by miko and she does so much for her and only for her to not even look at her? consider her feelings in the situation? just leave?? i imagine she might say smt not very nice about ei but miko is so fond of ei i dont think she would have taken it very well… idk imagine raining and maybe some yelling / cutting words from both sides and them going separate ways and the next day mizuki is out of the country…

shes not good enough as she is to help her friend rn, she cant solve anythimg that needs to be solved and she needs to Get Better RIGHT NOW and so she travels to learn and improve from liyue from sumeru from natlan…

and then play mizuki's sq for the last part where they have their awkward little rivalry-reunion vaguely tense situation but they both still clearly care for each other a lot situation and now mizuki is more confident in her ability and she's come back ready to fight actually, she will win that rivalry and show that she can be better and smarter than yae miko in some ways too and try to capture her attention the way she has always always wanted to