Chapter Text
When Diluc returns to Mondstadt, the staff surrounds him with concerned faces. He announces he is unaccompanied and Adelinde tries to soothe him the way she knows best: with some black Mond tea.
“I have something else we can try,” Diluc says, and as he unpacks his bags, he takes care to unfold the linen wrapping around his new Liyue tea set. It is a gift from Madame Ping, and though it lacks the color and detail of the cup he gave Kazuha, the porcelain is a brilliant bone white that Diluc knows will show off the true hue of the tea liquid.
Adelinde seems perplexed by the whole process when he shows her, but mostly she is comforted that he has something with which to occupy himself. When he brings his calloused fingers to the lid of the gaiwan to practice holding it in place, she watches wordlessly, but with much warmth emanating from her person.
The first series of steeps are disastrously unsuccessful – hot water everywhere. He sends a letter to Madame Ping to reiterate his thanks for her gift and to ask for advice on how to best use it. He is too afraid to waste the puer; in the meantime, the tea cake can age until he’s confident enough to try again.
-
The journal sits on his bedside table for a few days before Diluc gathers enough courage to flip through its pages in quick succession. He sees flashes of words and sentences. Fragments of Kazuha.
I hear the cry of the stag—
—superior in every way to fir—
—harmful passions, blurred state—
—in times of doubt, I turn to his—
—dear old friend—
—discreet perfume of Mond women—
—such foolish thoughts take me—
—is only natural that such a man—
—alone, but not lonely.
Diluc fears if he reads it in chronological order he will be tranquilized by the inevitability of time’s passing. As somebody with little skill in the art of reminiscence, he chooses instead to open up the journal to random pages when he has the impulse to read it - letting chance or fate or the gods or human error lead him to whatever entries they ordain he should read.
Of course Kazuha does not mark his entries except by separating them onto different pages. He prefers to couch them in seasonal and cosmological descriptors, and only through cross-referencing his own memory can Diluc pinpoint exact dates.
-
Fair season of layered haze.
I have found myself compiling facts about Diluc as I wander the oranging estate. I want to write them down for the sake of releasing them from where they fly about in my head. Nothing more.
His staff calls him Master Diluc only in his presence. When he is gone they are all quite friendly and casual. The vestiges of his lineage command more respect than he’s comfortable with, but he’s unable to correct them. Reluctant, or uncommunicative.
Diluc enjoys reading, and although I often catch him tucked away in a book on his lonesome, he prefers that I read beside him. So I have begun to acquaint myself with the estate library. A fair amount of the work is of the Mond canon. Stories of Decarabian’s reign, some of which detail the great ancestor of the Ragnvindr clan and founder of the Knights of Favonius. But there are other texts. Short stories from Liyue. Diluc does not know this, but his children’s books remain on the bottom shelf near the door, and when he is not looking, I look through the drawings in the margins. I wonder which of them are his and which his estranged brother scribbled. Looking at these shelved anachronisms brings to mind a poem:
‘Again we follow
the old pattern transmitted
from the ancient age
when songs of the past were placed
alongside those of the present.’
When we read, his head lolls to the side as if he wishes to place it on my shoulder. I allow it.
I have not felt this sort of curiosity in years. When we play chess, Diluc parks his chin in his hand and slouches. It is the only time I see him postured poorly. He does not seem to care that I know little of the game’s rules, or that I have no strategy in the game.
In the absence of strategy, there is experimentation. This is also the guiding principle by which we interface with each other.
The sex is another matter. I have not been touched in this way before. Diluc is frantic and loving and tender and hardened all at once. It shows most in the throes of pleasure. His dominant attitude is a transparent attempt to keep me in place.
I did not expect him to return my affections that first night. I don’t even know what came over me. Just that there was a fine mist of arousal over everything touched and said. It is even more unexpected that we’ve continued.
Ah, this is no casual thing. Not from what I have gathered, not judging by the way I write of him.
It is unclear what he wants from me as time goes on. Or what he expects. I have not come to a decision either.
Hmm. The temporary is safe in its own ways. But what of the desire to remain?
-
“Could we plant bamboo on the grounds?” Diluc finds himself asking Elzer one evening.
They’re looking over the grape crop. It is dormant - just as blackened boughs of trees live without leaves - and even though the vines give off no sign of life, it is important to tend to them regardless. The soil is checked. Water is delivered in appropriate doses. Hungry crystalflies are shooed away at marked intervals. Never before has Diluc recognized to this degree the clinical approach Elzer has in gardening. He thinks in quantitative steps - always measuring and dosing. Diluc is less inclined to see the vines in that way. To him they are enigmatic. Perhaps that is why he has given their care over to Elzer.
“Bamboo?” Elzer echoes, looking up from his ledger. Innumerable figures are scrawled across the page like a graphite smokestack. “Sir, I believe it’s an invasive plant in this region.”
“I knew it was non-native,” Diluc starts, bringing his gloved hand to his neck. A protective movement - one he subconsciously acts out when he feels the edges of memory at his mind’s periphery. “So it would be ill-advised?”
Elzer just blinks at him. “It is important to you to procure some bamboo,” is his observation.
Diluc flushes. He hadn’t meant to make it into a big deal, but his staff is so eager to please him that he can barely make small talk without being showered in attention and objects.
“It’s not a necessity. I merely enjoyed the groves in Liyue.”
Elzer gives off a low, vibrating hum and returns his eyes to the ledger, but his attention stays with Diluc. “It would certainly brighten the estate to have some foreign foliage.”
Diluc just nods. He knows if he protests out of shyness, it’ll only impel Elzer further in his desire to cater to Diluc.
-
The rain forebodes like divine punishment. I can sense it in the thick cloud cover. Only a fool would mistake it for heaven’s blanket. How much longer must I hide away from unforgiving weather?
A group of knights from the order of Favonius came by my humble camp today. Their leader was the only one who spoke, and he had an eyepatch much like Beidou. He mentioned that the residents living near Starfell had seen me wading about and expressed concern over my housing, which I found odd. In Liyue – and even Inazuma – people were wont to offer help and shelter to wanderers. If even in exchange for some company or labor. Mond people seem more interested in idle gossip than in communal service, and so I am hesitant to accept the offer to stay in the city after so long out in nature.
I fear I sound like I’m complaining. This is not the case. I am simply sorting through my feelings on this place. The wanderer’s task is to absorb that which adorns the sidelines of his path, and Mondstadt is no different.
My journey here is not for the purpose of sightseeing. I am on a holy excursion.
-
“I want to ask about your relationship with god,” Diluc says to Jean. “But please don’t feel obligated to answer."
He had not intended on visiting her, but he found himself passing by the headquarters, and one thing led to another. He did not enter, but he asked the guard at the front – who stood in a lazy contrapposto with his scabbard swinging at his waist – to send Jean his regards and an invitation for lunch at the Good Hunter.
She arrived quickly – within the hour, much to Diluc’s surprise. Perhaps those towers of paperwork were less entrancing than he’d hypothesized.
And so they sit across from each other as Sara brings out Bolognese and roast vegetables and sticky honey roast, along with an assortment of other dishes. Complimentary only because the Grandmaster has made an appearance.
Jean mulls over Diluc’s proposition while sipping at her lemon water.
“My sister is a deaconess,” Jean finally says with a plain expression – as if the fact of the situation should be enough to answer Diluc’s question. When he meets her with an equally unmovable countenance, she continues. “And I peripherally manage the Church, though they rarely need my assistance."
“Your relationship with her is hardly representative of your opinion on Barbatos,” Diluc says, stabbing at a bit of egg in his salad with mild interest.
“Well, if you meant to ask my thoughts outside of my position as Grandmaster, then my answer is probably unsatisfying.”
She’s not meaning to make it difficult – Diluc knows this. It always requires a bit of finagling for her to step out of her role and into the Jean he remembers – the one he knows better. They eat for a few minutes, and he watches the way she uses her knife to knock spears of asparagus across the plate – into the end of her fork. Jean exhibits proper manners. The two of them make quite the sight – a pair of nobles in broad daylight, cutting baked fish into diminutive bites.
It’s only once they’ve gone through the motions of some small talk that Diluc returns to his point.
“It was implied to me that a god had their fingers in my fate,” he says after a drink of water. “Kazuha’s too.”
Jean stills at that - fork raised so it gleams in the yellow sunlight - and Diluc can’t parse out whether she’s surprised by the idea or put off that Diluc dared to suggest it.
“You think an archon brought the two of you together?” She asks after a moment.
“No, I— Phrasing it that way makes the situation seem—“
“It’s alright. Regardless of whether or not you are willing to admit it, the two of you are a cute pair.”
“Cute—“ The word is odd in Diluc’s mouth. He takes another sip of water to wash the sensation away.
“If you’re intending on asking if I’d heard word of this from our resident god, then let me answer you now. I don’t believe Barbatos would set this sort of plan into action. Venti— he’s enigmatic, but not meddling.”
“You don’t believe he’s taken part in all this, but what of your involvement?”
“Mine?” She seems genuinely taken aback by that. Had she not known?
“Ningguang. She assisted me in finding Kazuha as a favor to you. I never had the chance to ask her to elaborate, so now that I have you before me, I might as well pose to the question to you instead.”
“A favor—“ Jean sets her silverware down and gives a light-hearted shake of her head. Her loose curls of buttery yellow tumble across her brow, and she looks up through her bangs at Diluc before she continues. “Oh, I’m afraid you might be mistaking her seriousness as drama.” A pause – not of hesitation, but of consideration – and she looks back to her plate. “The Tianquan and I exchange letters maybe once a month - if the weather is good and the carriers are fast. After my lunch with you, I let her know of the situation because it had been on my mind.”
“Was that the only reason?” Diluc asks. He gets the sense that her romance novels might be playing a part in all this.
“She and I don’t have an entirely professional relationship. I hesitate to call her my friend only because we have never confirmed it. No matter, I‘m grateful to have her as a confidant.”
“So you divulged somebody else’s business to her.”
Jean gives him a sweet-sour look - furrowed brow and little pout - but it’s not put-on in the way that Kaeya’s expressions often are. A rare glimpse of the Grandmaster, flustered.
“I did her a favor years ago. Just a small escort of Favonius knights while she was in southern Mondstadt. She often reminded me of the debt in our correspondence. There isn’t much she could provide to me that I can’t do myself.”
“Am I more helpless, then?” Is Diluc’s genuine response.
“No, but I had a feeling you would go to Liyue, and so I asked her to look after you should you arrive,” Jean says with an air of pragmatism.
She’s right; Diluc had expected something a little more theatrical, but considering Ningguang’s involvement with the quotidian and business, it’s realistic that the reason for the favor owed was as simple as this. Beidou is the one with the flair for the dramatic. He thinks of her talons at his throat like a starved seabird pinning a fish to a rock.
“Did you know of her… involvement with Beidou?”
“That’s the captain of the Crux fleet, right? She never explicitly mentioned their relationship, but I figured as much. Ningguang is careful to never let on the full truth of things.”
“I’ve noticed,” Diluc says. He hands off the check to Sara as she passes, apron fluttering like a cabbage butterfly. “So if it’s not Venti, then who? The Electro archon? That seems unlikely.”
“Hmm. Maybe this is Barbatos’ work. I take back my earlier conclusion.” Her eyes go elsewhere – in the vague direction of the towering Anemo god statue. “It’s impossible to know. Perhaps you should be asking for what purpose the two of you were brought together.”
Ah. Diluc leans back in his wooden chair.
“You think there’s more to it?”
“Given the history of our archons, I have the sense that this is only the beginning.” Jean sinks her chin into her cupped hand with a thoughtful expression. “And that whatever lies between you and Kazuha - love, maybe - was designed to help the both of you withstand whatever comes next."
-
Diluc comes home one evening to find a woven basket on the cedar card table in the parlor. It’s of a similar weave and craft to the ones he’d seen in Liyue, and when he sidles up to it, he realizes it’s full of bamboo shoots. They’re not as large as the one’s he’d dug up, but they have that same memorable shape.
Elzer enters from the hallway just as Diluc’s gloved hand reaches out to test reality.
“Ah, they arrived.” Elzer says in that unhurried, posh voice. “The vendor informed me they could be planted in most weather. So long as it’s not extreme cold or heat.”
The weather has eased up, and though snow still sometimes drifts down from the heavens in fat flakes, it doesn’t fall with the intensity it had in Liyue those weeks ago. Ah. That thought fits strangely in Diluc’s memories, and he tilts his head as if to sort it out. Had that much time passed?
Diluc looks down at the little armored shoots. Impenetrable, except by their own growing.
“Am I safe in assuming you’ve already prepared a plot?” Diluc asks.
“Sir.” The hint of a smile begins on Elzer’s face. “You know me well.”
-
Old friend, your cup is broken. And with it, so too has your memory fractured. These little pieces. Ah, they cannot be reformed, can they? We cannot return to a world before death. It has always been here, and no amount of kintsugi can repair the entropy of human existence.
I digress, but I also mourn.
Diluc’s hand was unbearably hot on my back when we looked for the shards, and it made me think: how does he tuck the feeling away? The feeling of death, I mean. It lingers in his shadow.
I am on the precipice of everything all the time. Like living on a blade. He is my hilt. I stagger toward stability. Slowly.
The two of you are very different people.
Barbatos is hot and cold with his responses. I can never pin him down to a specific time. I write to him only now that I sink to the depth of my sorrow:
‘If you are indeed
a god who vows to help men,
then please protect me:
do not let me wander lost
in eternal resentment.’
There are several entries in the journal addressed in some way to this old friend. It is the same person Kazuha had mentioned on the first meeting, Diluc thinks, and so that must also mean this person is dead. These are letters that cannot be delivered.
In the study of Kazuha, there is still much to be learned. In some ways the journal is a painful reminder of Kazuha’s constant privacy. Even this text – which is meant to be a naked portrayal of him – has its secrets.
-
Inviting Kaeya out for a conciliatory lunch is not as simple as it was with Jean. He resists the invitation – despite their exchange on the border – and makes a show of not coming by the tavern for the remainder of the week. His usual spot at the bar goes unfilled – as if the patrons are expecting him to come by – and even Rosaria drinks alone, though she seems unfazed by his absence.
“He’ll be back soon,” she says one night, her spiderlike hands wrapped around a full wineglass. The liquid moves around in accordance with the force of her rotations. “He can only stand Diona for so long.”
Even the warm lamplight does little to brighten her gray face.
Diluc doesn’t know what to say, but he does give her a free glass as belated thanks for all the times she had to mediate their tension. It was kind of her to try to reassure him, even if she delivered it in that signature cold tone. He knows deep within his body that Kaeya’s avoidance is not a symptom of his annoyance, but is instead a result of his drawn-out contemplative process.
Most nights, Venti watches everything unfold from his corner of the tavern, his glass setting watery rings into the fading polish of the bar top.
It is on an unusually warm day that Kaeya responds, and Diluc wonders if the temperature had roused him from his icy ruminations. Through secondhand messages between Huffman and Adelinde, the two of them decide that lunch would be inadvisable – mediating their order could be disastrous – and so the two of them settle on a horse ride. It is the sort of activity the two of them know well, and when Diluc catches the way Kaeya settles into his saddle with a flourish, it stirs up a painful bout of nostalgia in his chest. Something in his airways.
They go toward Windrise.
“You did not have to come that night,” Diluc says once they’ve established a gentle pace along the dusty path. “They could have sent for anybody.”
“Jean volunteered, but I was wary of her getting too involved in the situation.”
Kaeya looks at home on top of the horse. Diluc has not seen him ride in years, not since that fateful night, and the sight of it now is both nostalgic and new.
“She’s already inserted herself quite a bit,” Diluc adds.
He wonders how Kaeya has adapted to the role of cavalry captain. It was never a difficult position, but Diluc was a young adolescent when he took on the role, so perhaps they did not give him his full responsibilities.
Kaeya looks tired, Diluc notices. Purple skin beneath his eyes and a slight hollow in his cheekbones. It’s a question for another time - when things aren’t so fraught.
“Does it surprise you? She cares deeply for you,” Kaeya says.
“For you as well,” is Diluc’s quick response.
“It’s only reasonable. We’ve known each other since childhood.”
“It seems the two of you grew closer in my absence.”
“She is kind,” Kaeya’s reply is uncharacteristically short, and the silence that follows is unlike the comically tense moments at Angel’s Share. Those too are performances – entertainment for the patrons. Familiar roles. Easier then vulnerability. Diluc doesn’t know how to navigate this new tenderness with Kaeya, so he plies.
“To a fault, I worry. Her talents are wasted as a knight.”
Kaeya seems to receive the cue, because he shoots back an answer.
“Without her, Favonius would collapse in on itself.”
“No great loss,” Diluc says low, and his horse snorts off a singular fly.
“To some of us, knighthood is just another job. Not all people have the luxury of inherited wealth.”
“Jean is a Gunnhildr, and you—“
“In what world do I receive even part of the Ragnvindr fortune?” Kaeya says, and when Diluc looks to him he sees the past is also caught in his throat. His Adam’s apple bobs sporadically with abated frustration. “No matter my blood, you are the eldest.”
“Is this our fate? You fulfill the heroic lineage of the Ragnvindr heritage and I receive the mora? Nothing shared?”
“Well, up until this point you seemed rather uninterested in re-forging any sort of connection, so forgive me for thinking you’d prefer me dead.”
They crest a hill and the entirety of Windrise’s gargantuan tree reveals itself. The cold bloom of the winter sky illuminates everything in a caustic white.
“I—” Diluc starts. His body is trapped inside itself. “Contrary to everything, I have never actually wanted you dead.”
Kaeya’s response is cruel in its casual tone.
“Oh, forgive me. I misspoke. You wanted to kill me.”
“That is—” Diluc shakes his head as his horse does, and the both of them quicken their pace. Hooves and heart. “There is not always a place for rage except outward, but even that is a poor excuse. What I mean to say is I am so—“
“How did we end up here?” Kaeya interrupts him. The two exchange glowering, knowing looks. Can the apology ever be delivered? Is it too late? Diluc looks down toward retrospection and Kaeya continues. “I mean, what did Kazuha say to you that led to this meeting?”
“He didn’t say anything directly,” Diluc replies, his mind still half elsewhere. “Did the two of you speak much whenever he went into the city?”
“Occasionally. He spoke of you often. In a way that suggested he could not help himself.”
“Oh.” Diluc should blush at that, but the past is still sitting on his chest like sleep paralysis. He tries to exorcise it through deep breaths, through thoughts of white, billowing hair. “Kazuha only ever had kind things to say of you.”
“How flattering,” comes out of Kaeya like he wants it to be snippy, but it has an unavoidable air of gratitude.
“Did Kazuha tell you of his family’s story?”
Kaeya lets out a strangled hum. Is he also busy dislodging memory in exchange for this new conversation? They ride in silence for some paces while Kaeya’s head rolls about on his shoulders in recollection.
“Only that after the repossession of the clan’s ancestral home, he set out,” is his eventual answer.
“Yes, I can’t say there’s much more to the story beyond that. He is sparing with details.”
“He is vague in matters of himself.”
Diluc nods in agreement. Well put. “I am envious of him.”
“For his misfortune?”
“He would not describe his family’s fate as unfortunate.”
“So, you wish to dissolve the Ragnvindr name,” Kaeya says with a mocking musicality. “Please, by all means, go ahead.”
“You’re being obstinate. I—” Diluc says. His horse twitches beneath him, unsettling him on the saddle. “That is not the case. I should say I admire his approach to life. Even the Electro archon, who seeks to limit the freedom of the Inazuman people – even for her he is willing to give out sympathy.”
“You starting to speak in the same roundabout way he does.”
Diluc releases the air from where it had been trapped in his throat, and as it happens, he feels all his various parts settle.
“I don’t want to live with resentment burning away inside of me.”
Kaeya’s response is swift and embittered: “How soft.”
Diluc doesn’t know what to say. Or rather, he doesn’t know where to start. Kaeya hates apologies; so does Diluc. The shadow of Windrise - of the great Ragnvindr ancestor - encroaches.
“We’re the same, you know,” Kaeya says, his lone eye glinting cold – magnifying the angular, bleak air around them. He tugs his horse in the opposite direction while still looking to Diluc, who stalls his own mare on the path.
“Are we?” Diluc says, and the two words fall out of him in a sort of tumbling, helpless fashion.
Kaeya is facing back toward Mondstadt now – as if to illustrate the opposite of what he’d just said. “Anti-heroes,” he says.
And then he’s off, galloping back toward the city – returning to knighthood and an apartment Diluc has never seen and all things not Ragnvindr.
-
Diluc has little experience with gardening, and so Elzer must assist him. Adelinde joins too, but she seems more interested in watching her young master learn a new skill than she does in kneeling in the dirt. Her face wrinkles into a wistful smile when he trades the spade for his broad hands.
“When you were young, I found you out here many times. Playing hide and seek with Master Kae—“
Diluc tries not to pause. Dirt collapses all around his burrowing hands, no matter in what shapes he folds his fingers.
“Sir, would you like the staff to tend to this patch?” Elzer hands the first shoot off to Diluc once he’s dug out a pronounced hole in the dirt. The soil is cold, but not icy, and so he manages to get to the depth at which warmth remains.
“No,” Diluc says, placing the shoot into black earth. Another one. He tamps the soil back into place, taking some pleasure in the way it spring back with mild resistance. “I’m sure my schedule can accommodate.”
“These will grow quickly once spring arrives.” Elzer says, and Diluc nods in approval.
Once he’s planted all of the bamboo shoots, Diluc takes a step back and surveys the ground. There’s not much proof beyond the hand-tilled soil, but even that detail brings him gratification.
Gardening. He could get used to it. A nice alternative to swinging his claymore around.
-
Here at the Dawn winery, I am well kept. Much like an emperor’s pet. I am pampered with Mond food. It lacks the experimental flavors of Liyue’s cuisines, but it is comforting nonetheless. I particularly like the ratatouille that Adelinde often cooks. It has a way of reinvigorating me at the low points of my day.
Diluc did not come home in time for dinner. He did eventually arrive, but it was late and he retreated immediately to his room. He is in a poor mood. I’m not sure how to approach him, so I’ve let him be for tonight.
I ate alone with Adelinde and she expressed many a concern over her young master’s wellbeing. Adelinde is a perceptive woman. She carries with her the secrets of the Ragnvindr family. There are things Diluc dare not share with me. Even in the aftermath of love, he is reticent. It is difficult to discern what he purposefully withholds and what he is unable to locate in himself. Regardless, I have no interest in coercing him into sharing his past.
But Adelinde speaks. And even though she claps her hands over her mouth afterward, the words escape. Tonight, she said something about Diluc’s father: his death. It came out of her so heavy. This house is entirely inhabited by encumbered people, and I do not know how to alleviate their loads.
I am not dependable. I move. I am not constant. I move. There is little that can keep me in one place.
It is not that love dulls a blade, but that in its presence it is only respectful to sheath it.
‘You cannot know
the innermost feelings
of the evening smoke,
its heart too uncertain
to drift in one direction.’
I will brighten Diluc in the morning with a kiss or two, I think. Until then, I will sleep and go out on the sea of dreams.
-
“Two bottles,” Venti says from his spot at the bar. He’s already finished a few drinks, and his rounded cheeks are flushed. He’s emboldened tonight. Venti won’t stop plucking new tunes from his lyre, and even though it has little in common with a flute, he still thinks of Kazuha drawing music out from a mere blade of grass when the bard sings.
“What?” Diluc asks, setting the empty cup he’d just washed down into its place in the cabinet. His hair is pulled high - back and out of his face - so when he turns his head to await Venti’s clarification, he can feel the ponytail swinging at the crown of his head.
“Two bottles of dandelion wine and I’ll answer whatever questions are making your brow so furrowed.”
Diluc hasn’t realized his introspective attitude was showing so clearly on his face.
“One,” he counters.
“One and a half?” Venti smiles big. Absolute mischief. Is he really a god? How can such an irresponsible spirit be tasked with caring for Mondstadt?
“It doesn’t work that way,” is Diluc’s dismissive answer.
“Fine.” Venti leans forward onto one hand, his lyre forgotten beside him. “One.”
Diluc silently procures a bottle and sets it on the bar top with a dulled thud.
“I think I preferred the version of you that came about when Kazuha was here,” Venti says, immediately reaching for a bottle opener on the other end of the bar. Diluc slaps his hand away and pulls it out for him. “You were more wont to give me free drink then.”
“You were the one who called him here. So bring him back if you’re in such dire need.” Diluc says, and part of him hopes it works.
“Even I know not to use my heavenly gifts for such frivolities.” Venti sighs and the bottle pops open with surprising ease. For such a small person, he has strength. Diluc knows this; he has witnessed it firsthand. “Anyhow, that’s not how divine intervention works.”
“So you admit that you’re involved.”
“Involved? Well, it does seem I’ve implicated myself.”
Diluc’s hands settle onto the crests of his hipbones and he stands like that – arms akimbo, face caught up in a dissatisfied half-smirk.
“What is the purpose of all of it?” It is Diluc’s question in exchange for the bottle.
“Ah, so you think it’s some sort of trial, do you?”
Interesting choice of word, but if it fits…
“If not that, then what else?”
Venti leans in, suddenly serious. It is the face of a god - not a boy - before him, and Diluc recoils slightly at the intensity of it all.
“Something is coming. I dare not speak it. My gnosis, Rex Lapis’ supposed death, the Vision Hunt decree. What lies ahead is something even the archons cannot face alone. Humans are far more resilient, more inventive. Consider my interfering a sort of precautionary measure.”
Then Venti is leaning back in his precarious stool, bottle in hand. His glass sits, empty and useless, on the bar top.
“So it’s not about love,” Diluc says coolly, though something burns in his stomach.
“Love is beside the point, but it does have a habit of showing up in all things.” Venti takes a quick sip from the bottle. Like he’s testing it. Then, a long draw from it. The bottle is comically large in his slight hands. “It wasn’t quite my intention for things to go the way they did, but that’s the beauty of free will.“
“I don’t like being twisted around your finger,” Diluc says, and a low growl takes over his pronunciation of the word ‘twisted’.
A wry smile blows across Venti’s smile.
“You don’t actually believe I did anything more than summon him here, do you?”
“These feelings—” Diluc says. “How much of it is your design?”
“You seem to be forgetting that I have relatively little involvement in the lives of Mond people compared to my counterparts. Please find comfort in the fact that whatever went on between you and that wanderer is purely human invention, even if fate has woven itself into the fabric of our lives.”
“But fate—”
“Gods are as helpless to fate as humans are, Diluc.”
“So whatever is coming. It’s big,” Diluc says, solemn and low.
Venti just kind of hums, his lips sending the vibrations from where they’re attached to the bottle. So the archons are not all knowing; the future stirs up anxiety in them as well. Perhaps Diluc is not so different than the god loitering in his bar.
Diluc busies himself with arranging the glassware while Venti crowds his person around the bottle, perhaps fearing Diluc will refund his question and reclaim the drink.
“Did he like that cup, then?” Venti asks as he’s collecting his belongings.
“What—” Diluc spins in place, smoldering. “You also knew of this?”
“Knew about it?” A bright, airy laugh lifts out from Venti’s person as he pushes the door of Angel’s Share open. Night pours in. “Who do you think commissioned it?”
-
Madame Ping’s letter arrives on an oddly warm evening. Diluc spends his dinner reading it over and over, taking note on how to break off shards of tea from the cake, how long to heat the water over fire so it is resting on the baseline of boiling. She discloses to him the methods of pouring the hot water, of situating the lid into the porcelain bottom just so. He practices first with cold water, taking note of how unsteady the efflux is.
He surveys the disk of dark, aged, hard tea. The pick he is supposed to use to dismember it. His makeshift tray, his little gaiwan, his lonely teacup.
Does Kazuha have the means to drink tea out on the ocean? Overcome with the thought, Diluc retreats to his room with all the necessary supplies to drink in solitude.
Diluc lifts the puer pick from its place on the in the window nook and start to lift pieces of the tea off the cake. The task requires both delicacy and force - only one of which Diluc has mastered. His pile of foliage is more dust than chunk, but Madame Ping had said in her letter that so long as he places the lid correctly, the tea would still produce amber liquid.
He keeps Madame Ping’s instructions nearby for some modicum of moral support. He pours the rinse – the first steep that is not drunk – onto his makeshift tray. It’s a practice run of sorts. He takes a few deep breaths and repositions the lid in its place at the top of the gaiwan.
The first proper steep comes out better than Diluc expects. He fills his teacup to the very brim, and the amber pools until it’s bulging with surface tension. Diluc dips his head down, hands at the side locks of his hair to keep it from falling over the porcelain, and sips from the overflowing cup.
The flavor immediately takes him back to Yujing Terrace. Kazuha beside him. He leans forward, head heavy with the memory. Diluc is only able to drink through one more steep before reminiscence overrides the flavor of the tea.
That night, he falls asleep all at once, exhausted by his yearning.
It begins black, then everything blinks into color.
Diluc has never dreamt in such detail. He rouses into this other world of towering bamboo and golden sky with bleary vision and a low humming all throughout his body. He has traveled throughout Teyvat, but this place feels both hauntingly familiar and absolutely foreign to him.
He slips into nightmares more than he does dreams. Thunderous evenings under rain - with blood on his hands and a body at his knees.
The bamboo is dizzyingly tall, and it brings to mind the shoots he’d planted at the winery. He lifts himself up and notices he is not wearing his usual clothes. He is instead garbed in a plain, white robe. It’s not dissimilar to the one the hotel had given him, but this one has a drawstring at the side with which to secure the fabric. He tugs at it to test the physics of his dream, and it falls loose.
The air is uncannily still.
Diluc moves through the bamboo with floating movements. Gravity behaves oddly here – manufactured. The light filtering through the hollow stalks is an eerie orange. Not the color of sunset. It leans too yellow, even green. But the crown of the firmament is rosy and lavender.
The bamboo forest goes on for what feels like forever. Diluc continues in one direction, but he has no signals off which to base his navigation. He can sense the sun – or whatever it is – smoldering at a strange angle, but it’s not truly visible in the groves. He is caught amongst the overcast shadows. Long and needly. Overlapping in a one-dimensional pile.
He sees the edge of grove. Finally. Sprints toward it.
Diluc emerges and nearly flies off the edge of a cliff. He comes to a skidding halt at the end of a dilapidated stone path, and for a moment he goes into the sky, but then there is sure footing beneath him. Unexpected. He looks down to gauge the distance between him and the earth. There is nothing but pillowy clouds.
He turns and looks at the edge of his world. It appears to be a floating island. Part of him is shocked – only because it feels so real he’d nearly forgotten it’s a dream.
Feeling daring, he takes another step forward, and something lights up in sparse, brassy light. Another island lies far ahead before him, and connecting both landmasses is a nearly invisible strip of fabric. Translucent and golden gossamer – pulsating with otherworldly bloom. There are characters in its design, but Diluc does not recognize them, and he wonder if his subconscious pulled them from the altar at Rex Lapis’ statue.
“Diluc?” The voice is soft, curious, confused, and it echoes through his dream with an impossible quality. He knows well that lilt in the final syllable, that rasp. The delicate tap of a tongue.
“Kazuha?” He says, and his voice rings out endlessly.
Then – a flash of red and white on the other island.
Standing at the other side of the strip of ethereal ribbon is Kazuha. Or the dream version of him. Diluc’s heart flares up with longing and he starts to cross the wavering bridge before any words can form in his mind. He is in a dream – this is the realm of hidden knowledge, of somatic truth, of abstract logic – words are not necessary here.
Dream Kazuha stands there, dumbfounded, and when Diluc finally closes in on him, he pulls him in close and relishes in how real he feels. Familiar muscles flexing under fabric. Dream Kazuha leans into him and even in this other world, his skin radiates sea salt and white musk. They stand there for a moment, suspended in sleep time.
When Diluc pulls back, he notices that Dream Kazuha is also wearing the same starched robe, and he wills himself to resist untying its drawstring in one fell swoop.
Should he say something? He doesn’t know the courtesy used for speaking to figments of imagination. Dream Kazuha seems as perplexed as he does, and Diluc wonders if it’s his own subconscious refracting back onto him.
“I have not had such a pleasant dream in, perhaps, ever,” is what Diluc finally settles on saying.
Dream Kazuha furrows his brows and brings a hand forward to touch Diluc’s chest with a sort of psychedelic curiosity.
“You are also asleep?” He says, genuine confusion distorting everything about his person.
Diluc opens his mouth to gasp, to respond, but then the entire world is sucked away beneath him and he’s transported to a bottomless black pit. He feels his dream form slip away. The bamboo, the light, Kazuha - it all vanishes on the edge of his mind’s horizon.
It takes a moment before he realizes the ominous pitch he is gazing into is just the inside of his eyelids. Diluc wakes carefully, half-scared he’s still suspended in the dream.
But, now, even the word ‘dream’ seems inadequate to describe what he’d just experienced. It was certainly not the waking world – no place in Teyvat – but maybe some far off land. Something celestial, even.
The sheets cling to his damp skin. He twists about in his bed until he’s sat at its edge, hands cupping his face. His eyes go to the tea set in the window. Beside it is the journal, illuminated by the reliable, cool tone of the moon. Diluc pulls the sheets off his legs and stumbles over to the journal. He has ready many - but not all of the entries. Diluc lets his thumb guide him to his newest serendipity.
On today's morning made beautiful by autumn dew, I laid in my makeshift grass bed. I could do nothing but observe the downward descent of all orange things. I have spent many years of my modest life believing that these warm colors are the signifiers of departure, just as the leaves sojourn to the earth, but something new has taken up residence in me. A foreign sensation, fitting for this foreign land.
My thoughts go to the man I saw yesterday. He had a manner of standing in a dignified shape even when not watched. He was tall and strange and had the air of a nobleman. Such red hair! Soft and powerful. I might describe him as enigmatic in the same way an ajar door is; one cannot tell if it is meant to be closed or open, and the fact that it is not fully swung out only invites one to look inside. The desire to enter the unknown room overtakes me as I lay here and he is out of sight.
Even now I would like to know his name.
I can smell rain on the horizon.
There is writing beneath the entry, and it has the marks of freshness. The journal began in dark, black ink, and somewhere around the time Kazuha arrived in Liyue, the text changed to a gentle indigo color. A little more watery, it seems, as the margins are dotted with the occasional spot or streak of ink. Diluc has read enough of the entries - though not all of them - to know that the block of text at the bottom of the page is the most recent addition to the journal.
It is not often that Kazuha’s entries address him. More often than not they speak directly to his old friend, his future and past selves, and sometimes Beidou.
So when Diluc sees his name in indigo, his heart goes red in his chest like a forgotten coal under rough wind. Sparks pick up in his eyes, the thought of Dream Kazuha still fresh in his mind. He reads.
Diluc,
‘As ephemeral
as the goings and comings
in this transient world—
the floating bridge made of boats
drifting like my wretched self.’
Liyue remains frozen, but your flames at the stone gate have such presence that even I, in my daze, know of their encroaching red.
I learned of your arrival today. Beidou told me at tea with Madame Ping during the third steep. Those thirty seconds careened past, and in that span of thought, the momentum of time terrified me. I would like to see you, but I am scared. You are so impassioned, handsome, burdened... It is beyond language. No terms can properly describe you.
Adoration is a powerful sensation in the body. I feel as if my heart is in that unknown room. I need only pass through the door of you to retrieve it.
Again, my mind goes to medieval poets and hermit memoirists. People who cultivated their thoughts more than I. I cannot fit my self into verse, nor can I be measured in meter. And so I offer you this poem from a long-forgotten sage.
‘Yielding to a love
that recognizes no bounds,
I will go by night—
For the world will not censure
One who treads the path of dreams.'