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Wanderer could not stop saying Niwa’s name.
Obviously, he learned the Isshin Art from Niwa. Wanderer did not need to say Niwa-sama said to strike in this rhythm or Niwa-sama worked the bellows like this, as if the man himself would be by to check their work any moment. Centuries passed where he had not once uttered Niwa’s name, where he had not known Niwa’s name, and now it shaped lips more naturally than breath.
“Ni—” Wanderer stopped. Inhaled. “Tilt the tongs a little more to the right. Yes, like that.”
Kazuha noticed the slip like he noticed everything. But he knew better than to lose focus with hot metal in his hands.
Each ring of his hammer faded into the next, bearing the sound into eternity.
When the Kabukimono first arrived at Tatarasuna, he had not known what he was made of, and Niwa had told him it didn’t matter. It felt strange to stand at the forge and shape an object, wondering if his mother had held him like this, clasped between slender tongs. The Kabukimono had worried about being too rough with the metal. But he liked the forge: Niwa always praised his forging. You’re strong, Kabu-kun. I would need a rest by now, but you’re just as steady as when you started.
At the forge, the nameless puppet learned about fire, and about the heart possessed by humans. His first sight of the dancing flames entranced him, but it was the heat that made him reach out: the blush of something foreign stealing into his body, changing him from cold to warm. Niwa snatched the puppet back just before his fingers could stroke the flame. The sudden grab and the wild racket in Niwa’s body had startled the puppet into crying.
It’s just my heart, little one, Niwa cupped the puppet’s ear to his chest, and let him listen until the thumping calmed to a strong, steady rhythm. All humans have one. But you don’t need a heart to be a person.
The ignorant puppet thought of hearts as little alarms. Maybe he didn’t need one, because he was so hard to break, but how could the puppet look after Niwa and the others without one?
The hiss of doused metal drew Wanderer back. Kazuha was looking at him. His work sat cooling to the side, the steam fading to nothingness as it reached the sky.
“There is no reason to deny yourself, if you want to say his name,” Kazuha said, gently. “I’m sure there are times when you wished you could.”
Wanderer threw his leather glove at Kazuha’s face, followed by his apron. Kazuha caught both with a smile. “That’s enough for today,” Wanderer snapped.
He left Kazuha to clean up, and walked back to the house to start dinner.
Their days in the teapot took a pattern very unlike their life on the road.
Kazuha had laid two conditions for Wanderer to atone for his crimes against the Kaedehara clan: Wanderer would pass on his knowledge of the lost Isshin Art to Kazuha, and escort him on his travels. For an unspecified amount of time. Wanderer thought him insane, but both conditions were within Kazuha’s rights to claim, when Wanderer’s work for Kusanali allowed.
And so Wanderer had been saddled with this morbid brat.
In six months they had paused their wandering to use the Traveler’s forge three times. Each stop had lasted two weeks. It was hard to say if they would have stopped more often or stayed longer if the teapot had not been modeled, either out of poor taste or spite, on the jagged landscape of Inazuma. Kazuha had made his peace with his homeland. Wanderer wanted nothing to do with it. Kazuha didn’t complain about the pacing of his apprenticeship.
Each morning, Wanderer stoked the forge while Kazuha ate breakfast. When they broke at noon for lunch, Wanderer practiced carving. The little wooden birds he made sat on the kitchen windowsill, and kept him company in the evenings as he cooked. Out of the window, they watched Kazuha strip down to his bare shoulders to rake out the forge.
The Traveler kept a full larder and Wanderer could cook anything he wanted. He never made Inazuman dishes, and Kazuha never asked him to. But between the landscape and the forge, the memories still stained the air like smoke.
Once Kazuha finished the day’s dishes, they parted. Kazuha roamed the hills with his zither; Wanderer read, or dealt with Kusanali’s business. He kept the window open, and the breeze brought Kazuha’s soft notes to nest in his ears.
✿✿✿
At night, they slept together, just as they did on the road. No reason to change things just because the Traveler had two bedrooms. Even if Kazuha would keep his hands to himself.
“You’re eager tonight, Master.”
Kazuha lay back, propped on his elbow. His other hand stroked down Wanderer’s cheek, strummed his cock-stuffed throat. Wanderer grumbled with his mouth full. What a thing to hear from him.
Sex took too much trouble on the road, but Kazuha was insatiable. Wanderer didn’t like dirt, or washing in cold water, so he indulged Kazuha in other ways: His mouth, too, was in Kazuha’s rights to claim. With the unblinking stars as witnesses, Kazuha would use his throat, sometimes for a few rough minutes, sometimes for an hour, petting Wanderer’s hair or playing with the seal on the back of his neck while he composed filthy, elegant poetry. Each time, Wanderer swallowed his seed—Once, twice, sometimes three times—then fell asleep at Kazuha’s side with a satisfied heat nestled in his belly while his own cock throbbed in his tight bodysuit.
Wanderer didn’t usually blow Kazuha when they had a clean bed, but he didn’t particularly want to chat tonight.
“Could you hum the tune you taught me that day we watched the sunrise on the Chasm’s rim?” Kazuha whistled a few bars, breaking off with a laugh when Wanderer pinched his thigh. “Come up here, Master. I want to kiss you.”
Wanderer glanced up. Kazuha smiled at him, eyes lidded and warm. No-one but Kazuha had looked at the puppet like that that for centuries.
Not since Niwa.
Kazuha was a real freak. At first, Wanderer thought he got some sadistic kick out of dragging his family’s ruin around all Teyvat. Perhaps he relished defiling the Electro Archon’s son, revenge for his fallen friend. Wanderer could respect both reasons. But Kazuha always failed to treat him with any malice. He laid out his kimono for Wanderer to kneel on when he fucked his mouth.
Kazuha’s hand in his hair, familiar as the weight of his own hat, pulled Wanderer up. Kazuha’s tongue flowed into Wanderer’s mouth like hot wine, warming all the space his blunt cock could not rub against. Wanderer twisted his hand into Kazuha’s hair and sank against him, knocking his tongue aside and forcing his way into Kazuha’s laughing mouth.
Sometimes Wanderer watched Kazuha coquet his way into a free round of drinks, and wondered if his patron would ever believe the sins Kazuha enacted upon the divine. Would his own mother be ashamed at how willingly the puppet spread his legs for the man who parried the Musou no Hitotachi? The puppet hoped so. She should not have made his body so flawed as to be susceptible to pleasure in the first place.
Kazuha pulled Wanderer into his lap, their naked cocks swaying against each other like wind-swept reeds. One of Kazuha’s lines. His stupid poetry got onto everything. Like spilled tea.
Kazuha’s fingers pushed into him until his bottom knuckles spread Wanderer’s rim. He offered no poetry to cover up the slick sounds of his fingers playing with Wanderer’s hole. Kazuha knew what his body craved, what would make Wanderer whine with frustration. Wanderer sunk his teeth into Kazuha’s shoulder instead, right where the harness for his vision would rest tomorrow. Kazuha’s chest fluttered under Wanderer’s cheek as he laughed.
“Since you’re in a quiet mood, why don’t you show me how you want it tonight?”
Wanderer didn’t have the patience to make Kazuha regret those words right now. He shoved out of Kazuha’s lap and arranged himself on his hands and knees on the futon.
“Ah, your favorite.” Kazuha used his own knees to spread Wanderer’s wider as he tucked up against him. His soft thighs, pillowed against Wanderer’s, flexed to stone as he pulled Wanderer against him. Gripping him by a hip, Kazuha bounced Wanderer on his cock. His other hand smacked full-palm down against Wanderer’s ass, and Wanderer moaned with all the breath in his lungs as heat engulfed him like the backdraft of a great flame.
The sweet, innocent Kaubukimono had touched himself in the dark and imagined being fucked like this. Niwa had known the puppet’s fair face would cause trouble; he explained sex early on. The puppet’s first glimpse had been much later: out in the woods, a man crashing down on a woman like a great wave, both of them making noises like angry gulls. The violence frightened the puppet at first, but as he watched, the intensity resonated with something frantic and fluttering in his own body. He began to imagine Niwa-sama grasping him with that consuming greed, making him human with own hands.
“Ni… Niwa-sama… Niwa-sama!”
Kazuha stopped.
Wanderer froze.
“Master?”
A horrible fever flared in Wanderer’s body. He shuddered. His cock leaked, aching with heat. He didn’t know which was worse—displacing Kazuha with his ancestor, or dragging Niwa into this filthy context. Disgusting and pathetic either way.
“It’s alright,” Kazuha said, like Wanderer knew he would. “I know that grief can take strange forms.”
“Alright?” Wanderer hissed, staring at the floor. “You really are a sick weirdo. Do you get off on screwing your ancestor’s hand-me-downs?”
Kazuha pulled away from the puppet, leaving him with nothing but his own emotions boiling him alive. Wanderer sat up, clutching the nearest robe around himself. It was Kazuha’s. Wanderer pulled the robe closer, breathing the tang of Kazuha’s scent into his body.
“I disagree with your analogy.” Kazuha rummaged up the other sleeping robe. “It would be more apt to compare you to a treasured family heirloom. But as you are aware, I willingly gave away all of the Kaedehara clan’s possessions. You can rest assured that’s not what attracts me to you. The ways that you—”
“Shut up,” Wanderer snapped. He cradled a hand to his face, shielding himself from Kazuha’s patient regard. Wanderer resented how easily Kazuha could douse his fury. He still needed anger for too many things.
“If I may…”
Wanderer grunted.
“Rather than fleeing your memories, have you considered embracing them?”
Wanderer peered between his fingers. “... You’re the last person I’d expect to tell me to cling to the past.”
“Do you recall the singing summer islands I spoke of?” Wanderer nodded. “During my time there, I learned there can be peace in granting the wishes of a former self. Even a valley will be buried in time, but its shape will linger in the bedrock. It might bring you some release, to give voice to the desires buried in your heart.”
Kazuha paused, waiting for Wanderer’s customary protest that he lacked a heart. Kazuha continued without it, “Should you consent to let me act the part, I freely offer my assistance.”
Wanderer’s gut roiled. He wished he were simply disgusted. As the idea took shape in his mind, his body ached with something like hunger. “... You’ve done something like that before.”
“I wouldn’t recommend such a course form a position of ignorance,” Kazuha answered with his customary lack of shame.
Due to Tomo, no doubt. Despite how his death had marked Kazuha, Wanderer could never summon any ire against Tomo, a man who had challenged the gods, just as he had. In fact, he probably needed to thank the man for screwing Kazuha up so thoroughly.
Wanderer knew the type that Kazuha liked to indulge: large, cocky. Plenty of them looked twice at dainty little Kazuha, and Kazuha strung them along with a smile and a story about someone else. Fools. Everyone they interacted with considered Kazuha friendly and gentle, because Kazuha showed them nothing more. He would not have told them of Tomo before he used them.
There was that Beidou woman, of course… Large and loud with an electro vision and a great, grasping paw that could span Kazuha’s lower back. Wanderer could summon plenty of ire for her.
Kazuha’s suggestion would never work: First of all, he was half Niwa’s size. He didn’t even smell like Niwa, not even after working the forge for days.
Kazuha doused the lamp. He beckoned Wanderer to join him under the futon’s covers and drew the puppet close with an arm threaded around his waist. Wanderer’s head rested above Kazuha’s heart and Kazuha’s scarred right hand, bare of its wrapping, curled around the back of Wanderer’s neck.
Kazuha’s whisper found his ear in the dark. “In many lands, it’s customary to offer those who have died that which they savored in life. Food, wine, the voice of a loved one calling out to them. If you cannot do it for your own sake, perhaps you can think of it as an offering to my ancestor.”
What a naive notion. No amount of prayer would reach Niwa now, an echo lost in the abyss of time. Not even the gods could resist erosion.
Wanderer buried his face into Kazuha’s chest. “Just forget it. It won’t happen again.”
✿✿✿
It happened again two nights later.
This time, Kazuha did not let him go. He caged over Wanderer, sweat dripping into the metal ports on Wanderer’s back. Wanderer would have come then with Niwa’s name on his lips and Kazuha’s cock in his ass, but Kazuha’s scarred hand wrapped around his shaft, sparing him that shame.
“Master,” Kazuha breathed into his ear. Feathery hair tickled the brand on Wanderer’s neck. “I offered my assistance and I meant it. But I do insist you not turn me into a ghost without my consent. Tomorrow is the last night we’ll have proper accommodations, so I suggest you choose soon.”
Wanderer shuddered, cold with nausea, hot with a need that seared him like an electro overload. The strength of it surprised him: this useless desire to scream Niwa’s name, to invoke him as the source of these sensations burning in every cell.
Kazuha was a freak, but not a fool. If Niwa could still do this to him after four hundred years, perhaps an offering could echo back through time, a vibration along the thread of fate.
“Fine,” Wanderer hissed. “Fine.”
“Very good,” Kazuha said. He flipped Wanderer over, then pinned him down with his body. Wanderer gripped Kazuha’s hips in his thighs, urging him closer. The sooner Kazuha started fucking him again, the sooner Wanderer could forget about how absurd his life had become.
Kazuha smiled at him, their lips a breath apart. “Since this is our last night here for some time—Allow me to make the most of it.”
✿✿✿
The next day passed like a low fever, restless and stifling. Kazuha drifted through the day with his usual serenity, but he smiled whenever he caught Wanderer’s eye. As if he welcomed this bizarre affair.
That evening, Wanderer sat at the kitchen table sorting through his flock of wooden birds while Kazuha made tea. Two of them he had failed to turn into whistles; the rest of them looked good enough to do something with. He would leave one for Kusanali—that childish god took delight in such trinkets. The others he could dump on the toymakers at Port Ormos or leave around for some superstitious mortal to find. Kazuha did that with his own work.
He shot Kazuha a dour look as he poured the tea. “I don’t know how you still expect me to act like a virgin after last night.”
Kazuha’s hand twitched, slopping tea onto the table. He wiped the spill up with an admonishing look indistinguishable from a smile. Wanderer doubted his face even knew how to scowl.
“I have something I thought might help with that,” Kazuha said, once he’d sat down. He pulled a paper-wrapped parcel out of his kimono. As soon as his fingers brushed the packet, Wanderer knew what it contained.
“You used to wear one, I believe. I thought it could serve as a blindfold.”
Wanderer lifted a corner of the paper. The veil was white, embroidered with puffy clouds of lotuses. The silk shined like polished steel, and it smelled faintly of forge smoke. Like Niwa. Wanderer decided not to ask Kazuha when he’d slunk off to find this. Or if he’d gotten the Traveler’s help.
He set the packet well away from the tea. “... You’ve done this before, so you must have an idea of what to do.”
“We can start simple. How did he address you?”
It felt like it should be difficult, to dredge up a name so long buried, but a few swallows of tea eased the constriction in his throat. “...Kabu-kun,” he mumbled. The warm weight in his stomach anchored his body in the present, and drew his mind to the past.
Kazuha nodded thoughtfully. “He educated you. Did he say anything on the topic of sex?”
“... He did.” Kazuha sipped his tea, listening. “At the time, I didn’t understand a single reason why humans touched each other, nevermind the concept of being closer to some people more than others. He told me what behavior to watch for, and said if I anyone wanted to have sex with me, I should speak with him first no matter what they said.”
“Niwa was a careful man.”
“He was…”
The unworldly Kabukimono could have only called Niwa wonderful. The Balladeer could have said nothing about Niwa at all: the mere thought of Niwa had been a black spike through his head. Now, Wanderer could draw on centuries of experience to describe Niwa Hisahide: a fair man, responsible, kind, shrewd. Many humans taught the puppet in his time at Tatarasuna, but few understood what it meant to know less than a human child. Misunderstandings always cropped up. But never with Niwa. Niwa always knew the right way to explain things, the right thing to do. Niwa understood the puppet even when the puppet couldn’t understand himself and that, more than anything, had convinced the puppet he could be a human.
Kazuha, on the other hand, was a shiftless wastrel who charmed people into giving him sake, shelter, and stories. Wanderer envied the smooth way he managed others, keeping miles between himself and anyone he shared a table with. He preferred solitude just as much as Wanderer. When Kazuha had first proposed they travel together, Wanderer had been sure Kazuha would grow sick of his caustic presence soon enough.
Yet here they were. Like his ancestor, Kazuha possessed insight into the hearts of others, even those who lacked a heart. Perhaps that insight was the truest secret of the Isshin Art, the forging technique that sought to match steel to soul. The technique that could teach a weapon to yearn for connection.
“Master? What are you thinking?”
“... Nothing.” Wanderer finished his tea. “Do you want to ask anything else?”
“I think that’s enough.”
“... You really think this is a good idea?”
“Afraid I’ll become a family heirloom to you?” Kazuha knew what Wanderer meant, like Wanderer knew he would. He took Wanderer’s hand and kissed the smooth pads of his fingers. ”Your nature is far too honest for that, Master.”
The brat might as well have called him transparent. But at least one of them knew what they were doing.
Kazuha stood. He poured Wanderer another cup of tea. “I’ll leave your robe in the other room. Come to bed when you’re ready.”
✿✿✿
The puppet never liked the night. Silence and sleep reminded him of the Shakkei Pavilion, of emptiness and loneliness. The first time he had seen Niwa asleep, the puppet woke him crying, fearing that fate had reversed his lot, and left him the lone wanderer in a world of dreamers.
The shining threads of the veil caught the moonlight, and blurred the world with a milky glow. Wanderer walked slowly down the shadowed hallway, sounding no footsteps with his light body. He stopped outside of the main bedroom. His stomach twisted into a cold, hard knot.
He slid open the door.
A figure sat up in their futon, blankets pooled at their waist. The moonlight washed them monochrome: pale all over except for a dark streak in their hair.
“Kabu-kun?” They said. “Were you feeling lonely again?”
A fierce shudder rattled Wanderer. Niwa’s words, thwarting the erosion of time.
The man held the blankets open. “I was having trouble sleeping, too. We can keep each other company.”
The puppet crossed the room, eyes on the floor. His sleeve whispered against the stranger’s as he shuffled his legs under the blanket. Heat from the man’s body seeped into his own.
“Is everything all right? You seem preoccupied.”
“Y… yes. It’s just…”
The man waited for him to finish without any sense of impatience. His presence offered shelter like a broad-branched tree.
“... I thought about what you told me the other day.”
“The other… ah, about sex?”
Wanderer nodded, keeping his eyes on his lap. The Kabukimono’s polite speech felt wrong in his mouth, as if his sharp tongue should cut each timid word to ribbons.
“I—I want to do it with you. To have sex.”
“Hm… Can you tell me why?”
Another shudder wracked the puppet, and stayed fizzing under his skin. Niwa had never taken the puppet’s naivete for granted—never assumed he couldn’t choose for himself.
“I… I want to try it. And I trust you the most… Niwa-sama.”
“Trust is the most important thing. Would you like to kiss?”
The puppet forgot to draw air to speak. “Yes, please,” he whispered.
A hand tipped his face, positioning his mouth to receive Niwa’s lips. The puppet found he did not have to suppress his instincts: his body obeyed Niwa’s touch, bound to mimicry like a mirror.
The puppet gasped as Niwa’s tongue slid into his mouth. Heat turned the knot in his gut to tinder, filling his body with hot flickering. It felt so good to have all of Niwa’s attention. When they parted, Niwa’s thumb rubbed the puppet’s lower lip, bladesmith callouses rough against petal-smooth divinity. “I’ll show you more. But I’d like to blindfold you. Is that alright?”
“It’s alright, Niwa-sama.”
“Kabu-kun,” Niwa chided gently. “You shouldn’t let someone do something to you if you don’t understand why.”
Hot pressure welled behind the puppet’s eyes. If only he had followed that advice. Then again, he wouldn’t have spent a second around Kazuha or his ancestor if he did. “W-why do you want to blindfold me?”
“It will help you focus, so you can tell me if something feels wrong.”
“That sounds good…” The puppet murmured. Everything was so easy when Niwa explained it.
Niwa’s blunt fingers brushed against his face through the silk. Careful not to snag any of the puppet’s fine hairs, he folded the veil until the overlapping patterns made the world into shadow theater.
“Is this alright?”
The puppet nodded.
Their lips met again, and their tongues, gentle as drifting leaves. Niwa stroked the puppet’s lower back through the robe, then tugged it open. He petted the puppet like a village cat, indulging in the softness of the puppet’s ribs and thighs until the puppet whimpered and arched into Niwa’s hands.
“Have you touched yourself, Kabu-kun?”
“... N-no.”
“I’ll show you how. When you do this by yourself, you can think of me.”
Niwa positioned the puppet to straddle his legs, face-to-face. The puppet’s hips twitched, rubbing his shaft and balls in the groove of Niwa’s covered thighs. He blushed. Would the Kabukimono been so wanton? Perhaps the little puppet would have instinctually chased more pleasure, ignorant of shame.
Niwa’s warm chuckle puffed against his cheek. “You’ve got the idea.” An oil-slick hand engulfed the puppet’s cock. The puppet clutched Niwa’s robe, digging his knees into the other man’s thighs to keep himself from bucking. Niwa took one of the puppet’s hands and guided it to his cock, twisting their fingers together to spread the oil.
“Move your hand up and down… Perfect, keep moving just like that.”
The puppet whined plaintively at the slow pace. Niwa laughed again.
“It feels better if you take your time. Be patient.”
Niwa kissed his mouth, his neck. He kneaded the puppet’s thighs, the flesh spilling between his fingers like soft wax. A hot tongue swirled around his nipple.
“Do you know what these are for, Kabu-kun?”
“Ah… f-for… for feeding babies? —Nhh!” Niwa sucked the nipple into his mouth, his teeth branding a circle around it. The puppet lost himself, jerking his cock.
“Mm… You like that idea?” Hands squeezed his hips, hard. Not like Niwa would have done it—could it be? Maybe Niwa would have been like Kazuha, a respectable, easy-going man in the eyes of others, a devouring beast for the Kabukimono alone. “You’re such a sweet, caring boy. You taste wonderful.”
“Niwa—Niwa-sama—!”
Niwa pulled both the puppet’s wrists above his head. The puppet’s wet cock bobbed and dripped as he rutted the cool evening air. “Easy, easy. I won’t make you wait much longer. I need to put my fingers inside you and get you ready for my cock. Is that alright, Kabu-kun?”
“Yes! Niwa-sama, please!”
Niwa breached him with a finger, hand curved between his legs. His flexing wrist rolled against the puppet’s sack with each thrust. The puppet squirmed for more friction, clutching Niwa’s shoulders. Niwa clamped his hip, stilling him while adding another finger to sate him. His body yearned again, not an emptiness but a great, overfull pressure.
The man laid the puppet down on the futon, because Niwa would not have fucked him on his hands and knees. He kissed the puppet as he entered him, his forehead, neck, and shoulder, leaving his lips free.
“Niwa, Niwa, Niwa—” The puppet shaped Niwa’s name in every way fate had not allowed him, the love, the anger, the sorrow, the joy he had been too young to understand. He begged, he implored, he demanded and blamed, for every time he’d stayed silent over the centuries for lack of a name to call out. Tears dripped past his ears to soak into the futon. He drowned in Niwa’s name, gasped in air and drowned again.
Though his mother had split a continent in two, Wanderer could make no greater mark on the world than himself. He had only a flawed vessel, too corroded by his own mistakes to withstand eternity, just strong enough to bear the legacy of one mortal man.
He could scream Niwa’s name for a thousand years it would only be a whisper against the roar of eternity, but each cry carved itself into the puppet, tempering him.
Niwa handled him as of he would tear, his strokes soft as a painters brush. Warm, bright sensation soaked the puppet through and spilled out of him in pearls of come. The puppet felt pattern of Kazuha’s burns brand into his hip as Niwa pressed in deep and poured his hot seed into the puppet’s core.
The puppet breathed in heavy gusts, something he taught himself when his own stillness felt like madness, or when too much motion frightened him. The man shifted on his side, waiting for the puppet’s breaths to slow down before he pulled the puppet into his arms.
Even after a thousand years, the sound of his heart was the same.
“I want to stay with you,” the puppet wept.
Scarred fingers cupped the back of his neck. “You will. We’ll stay together as long as you want.”