Chapter Text
The words of the book he had been reading - or rather attempting to read for the past handful of minutes - kept strolling through the lines, wandering around the page as they pleased.
Alhaitham pinched the bridge of his nose with fingers that trembled slightly. He squinted his eyes, but the headache would not mitigate.
His whole body was stiff and his joints ached a lot, like when you are sick and your bones prickle under the skin or like after a heavy hangover your body refuses to cooperate as it should. Not that he was used to recovering from hangovers. In fact, his roommate was definitely more used to it than he was. However, even Kaveh didn’t fare any better in that case.
From the kitchen, a clatter of shattered pottery on the floor, followed by a series of expletives, made the scribe flinch.
Slowly, to give his own eyesight time to chase away some annoying specks that danced before his view when he got up from the couch, Alhaitham walked toward his companion. He found Kaveh leaning against the cupboard with one hand supporting his forehead and the other firmly anchored to the furniture. On the ground in front of him were some fragments of a cup.
“Is everything alright?”
The other nodded slightly but kept his gaze down. "Yeah, I wanted to make some coffee to try to get this damn headache to go away, but my hands aren’t cooperating as they should."
Alhaitham understood the feeling very well, because he was experiencing it himself. Any sudden or too rapid movement risked making him dizzy.
Without saying anything, he picked up an old towel and slowly bent down to collect the fragments very carefully to avoid injuring himself with the sharp edges.
Meanwhile, Kaveh took two more cups from the cabinet - this time without dropping them - and placed them on the table. He poured the coffee and sat down, crossing his arms and hiding his head between them.
Alhaitham folded the rag with the secured fragments inside and sat down in turn. A few drops of coffee scattered on the table didn’t escape his eye, but he pretended not to.
"This is worse than the worst hangover I've ever had in my entire life!" Kaveh complained, his voice partly muffled by his clothes. "It hurts all over!"
The scribe shrugged his shoulders, bringing the cup close to his lips to take small sips of the hot drink.
"That seems like a minimum price to pay to regain opposable thumbs." He muttered. "Nahida said it’ll take at least another half day of rest before these side effects disappear completely."
The little Archon had kept her promise and had done all she could to make them human again, succeeding in the task but with some unpleasant side effects.
The process hadn’t exactly been painless, on the contrary.
The transformation into a fungus was as if one's body had been compressed and fused together, from bones to internal organs, like soft, malleable clay.
The reverse process instead was quite unpleasant, with the snapping sound of bones, back in pieces and in their exact positions, still filling in the ears of the two roommates. Their limbs stretched and pulled to their normal size, and the world finally shrank leaving them quite disoriented.
Despite Nahida's efforts to banish some of the pain from their minds through memories, the collateral and concrete effects on their bodies continued to manifest themselves in practice as a really heavy hangover.
At first they hadn’t even been able to cheer for the result, that Kaveh was already losing consciousness.
Nahida had felt mortified that she hadn’t been able to offer them a less traumatic transformation, but Alhaitham with a wave of his hand reassured her that it didn’t matter. She had turned them human again, and that was the most important thing.
A few moments later, Alhaitham found himself in the same situation as his companion.
The Archon assumed that it would be best to make them regain their energy by forcing them to rest, but she soon discovered that there was no need for her intervention to make them fall asleep as they had both collapsed on the ground.
When the two awoke several hours later, they found themselves dazed and confused in a bed richly decorated with leaves and flowers, surely made by Aranara.
Nahida had insisted on visiting them again to check their physical condition, and the two had let her do so without argument. Not that they had the strength to object.
After ascertaining that the entire transformation had gone smoothly, they were allowed to return home.
Greetings were brief but definitely too loudly. Although the two roommates would have liked to properly thank the Aranara for all the help and hospitality, their bodies simply protested the effort to stand up and greet those - now small in their eyes - exuberant creatures.
So they limited themselves to brief goodbyes with a promise to return to meet everyone very soon. Araja nodded, announcing that they would always be welcome in Vanarana. Aranima beside him cheerfully waved his hand with his usual smile on his lips, imitated by the whole Aranara crowd.
The Dendro Archon powers, together with those of the Aranara, were enough to make them teleport exactly to the door of the house they shared in Sumeru City.
The blond shifted his head a little, revealing besides his forearm a ruby eye peeking through his bangs.
"Speaking of Nahida, where is she now?"
"Mmh...?” Alhaitham emerged from his thoughts. “She said she wanted to meticulously check the whole area, to make sure there were no remnants of the Ley Line or further withering zones. As soon as she's done, she'll come back to us to take another look about our conditions."
The architect sighed deeply, stretching his arms and moving the fingers of his still stiffened hand. He drank a long sip of coffee.
It was strange to be immersed in that silence, in their home, as if it were a completely normal day.
The chaotic din of the city was distant and muffled, totally different from the noises and sounds that had accompanied them for the past few days in Vanarana.
Alhaitham lingered over the mountain of flowers that towered over the table where they were sitting.
The Aranara had been very insistent that the two bring with them all the garlands and flowers they had given them.
At the moment the flowers seemed the only tangible proof that it hadn’t been just a dream, but that the whole fungi adventure had really happened.
"We can make a composition and try to stabilize the flowers, what do you say?" Kaveh suggested, looking lost in turn in the multitude of colors and shapes of their corollas. "We could ask Tighnari if he has any advice. Some buyers I worked with appreciated using wax to stabilize the flowers and make them last as long as possible."
Alhaitham nodded silently. It wasn’t a bad idea.
Staring at the flowers, he noticed that not a single Viparyas was present.
He furrowed his brow.
How strange… He was totally sure he had seen them among the garlands before, yet now they seemed to have all disappeared. Moreover, he was certain that the day before the Padisarahs weren’t so numerous.
He hoped that the transformation hadn’t altered or compromised his memories. Just as happened to most children who claimed to have seen the Aranara and were then influenced by adults to such an extent that, as they grew up, the vivid and real memories turned into mere fantasies or childish daydreams.
It would have been a shame if this had happened to them as well.
Of course, maybe some embarrassing moments would have been better forgotten, but deep down he would have been sad either way.
The last few days had been crazy, weird and exceptional at the same time.
They had discovered that an entire species of forest spirits, considered by most to be just a legend or myth, actually existed, hiding from everyone's eyes and living in a magical place outside of time. All of this was simply astounding!
Humans, who prided themselves on being the most intelligent and cultured species among Teywat creatures, once again knew virtually nothing about the earth beneath their feet. Figuratively but also literally.
"Hey, Alhaitham." Kaveh continued. The scribe turned his head to look him straight in the eye this time. His deep red rubies stared into his companion's orange-teal ones. "It wasn't just a dream , was it?"
Alhaitham would never admit it out loud, but that blunt question was the same one that had been on his mind since they had set foot in their home again.
A simple question on the surface, with a complex answer in some respects.
He pondered for a while and in the end he shook his head, putting aside all the reasoning he had done on the matter. The answer might have been complicated if he was the one to make it so. On a practical and logical level, instead, that question had a very simple answer.
"No, it wasn't." He whispered in a breath with a firm tone.
Kaveh, who up to that point had sustained the other’s gaze with seriousness, gave a deep sigh of relief, falling back in his chair and tipping his head on the backrest.
"Thank Archons." He sighed, staring at the ceiling. "I'm glad it wasn't."
He ran a hand over his face as if to slide away all the worries that had gripped him up to that moment. The fear that it had just been a hallucination or a blow to the head.
The scribe cast a distracted glance at the now empty cup he still held in his hands. He got up to put it back in the sink and wash it, noticing that his migraine was already beginning to fade.
After that brief conversation, his body also seemed more relieved, slowly returning to his normal self. It could very well have been an analgesic effect from the caffeine, but whatever it was, this could only benefit him.
The sound of a cup being placed vigorously on the table, combined with a refreshed gulp, let him know that someone else had also finished his coffee.
"Are you busy in the next few days?" He asked, putting out feelers.
The architect leaned sideways in the chair, curiously raising an eyebrow at that unusual question coming from someone who rarely took an interest in other people's schedules. He scratched his chin, trying to make up his mind.
"I should schedule some meetings with buyers, but given my absence in the last days, it would be best to hear from them before agreeing on a specific date. In addition, I should also retrieve the equipment from the other project I was working on, the one left unattended in the midst of the Eremites ruins… Assuming it's still there, of course, if someone hasn't already come by and looted it.” His tone darkened as he finished the sentence. His hope was obviously to find all his material, although the odds were not very high, being a crossroads where Eremites and monster sightings were not that unusual. Sighing again to banish the pessimism from his mind, he turned to his companion. "Why?"
The latter meanwhile placed the clean cup to dry, in the corner of the cupboard. He turned then to lean his back against the edge of the cabinet, crossing his arms now that he could again make that gesture.
"I thought I'd go do some shopping at the Bazaar. I don't know… Fruits, vegetables, fresh stuff, maybe even exotic ones." Alhaitham shrugged casually, tilting his head sideways over one shoulder. "And then, precisely, stop by and see if we can retrieve your equipment. We could also take a tour around Vissudha Field, maybe, while we're at it."
Those turns of phrase weren’t typical of Alhaitham, who was usually blunt and direct. There had to be something going on, Kaveh thought.
When a hypothesis popped into the blond man's mind, his face suddenly lit up, with a huge smile plastered from cheek to cheek. "We might as well visit some friends…" He said excitedly.
Alhaitham smiled sincerely too, welcoming the other’s suggestion.
"Why not. After all, we have a debt to repay."
❀𖤣𖥧𖡼⊱✿⊰𖡼𖥧𖤣❀
It's Fanart Time!!!
We've reached the end of this fic, yaaayy!! To celebrate, I drew these matching chibi floral Kavetham icons, totally free to use if you like them! 🥰🌱🏛️💚
I really enjoyed writing this adventure between these two Sumeru dorks and I want to thank you all so much for sticking around until the end! Hope you enjoyed this silly fic too! 🍄
Follow me on tumblr, x (twitter) or insta for more Genshin fanarts or (who knows) future news about upcoming fics… I already have some more possible fic ideas that I would like to write down better, but I don't want to spoil anything eheh 🤭🌻
See you around! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✿