Chapter Text
Freedom is different for everyone. Zhongli is not any closer to understanding it or the winds. He does not know if he understands himself.
Xiao’s and Barbatos’s opinions on freedom and the wind sound vastly different, but if Zhongli understands them both, they are at their cores the same: Freedom comes with understanding, and yet nobody understands everything, when it comes to it.
A caged bird who longs for the sky is not free, but it may be if one lets it out.
A bird born into captivity may believe itself to be free, for it does not know that its freedom has been taken away from it. But who is to decide what its freedom is? Surely the nature of ‘freedom’ is such that only the bird can decide for itself, with sufficient knowledge of the alternative – but again, who would decide what ‘sufficient knowledge’ and ‘the alternative’ are? Would it not be cruel to teach a caged bird of freedom that it cannot have?
A pigeon looks upon the caged thrushes and tells them of flight. But they do not understand; what need have they for that which brings only fear? When the bird seller comes back, the pigeon flees and spends the rest of its day waiting on the roof nearby, swooping in to pick at the smatterings of bird food that fall onto the floor.
What of the bird who chooses to live in a cage with an open door? Perhaps Xiao is right when he says that it is the freest of all.
(Or perhaps that bird is the hardest to free, for its chains cannot be seen nor severed; for it knows too much of freedom and so it believes the perceived safety of the cage is the freedom it most prefers. This way leads to a train of thought Zhongli does not wish to entertain any time this millennium, so he shoves it away into a dusty cupboard.)
In any case, Zhongli is not a bird. The dragon has no predators, so it does not pay with its lifespan for the freedom of flying. Besides, who would dare to lock him up or bind him?
So then what does freedom mean for him?
He contemplates paying Cloud Retainer a visit, for surely no adeptus is as free as she. Just the way the thought sounds in his own mind is enough to put him off the idea. She was not able to attack him physically when he had visited her in her dreams. He would rather not push it, just yet.
Barbatos is the only god he knows who is alive and free, and he has already shared what he is willing.
Zhongli finds himself back at Guili Plains with a tea set and the last batch of osmanthus flowers Cloud Retainer had sent him, carefully dried and prepared.
Guizhong had been the most free-spirited of them. Not carefree, no, the problem was that she cared too much, and when those cares turned to woes she buried them too deep. Zhongli wonders if she has found freedom in her final form.
Few things are lighter than dust. Fewer still are more stubborn. It might seem to some that dust has no choice but to go where the wind blows, but in reality, when dust has decided to settle on a surface…
Zhongli sneezes. He keeps one hand over his teacup after filling it. Every six hundred years or so this part of Liyue experiences a summer of particularly heavy rain, and Guili Plains would flood again, for maintenance is long overdue for the drainage system they had put in place. Yet, no matter how many times the ruins experience torrential rain, dust clings stubborn still to every crevice of the land.
In life, Guizhong had not been one to seek freedom for herself. Has death and release from her responsibilities changed that about her? Likely. It might be in their nature, after all, to reach for freedom when there is naught to hold them from it. What would Guizhong’s freedom be?
Even if one is Morax himself, memories are often tainted by one’s own perception at the time. Perhaps if he took the pains to sieve through his memories to find the moments recorded most objectively, he would understand her better now than he did back then. It is not that he had not tried, only that he always returned from those trips down memory lane empty handed. Understanding the heart of another is not one of Zhongli’s talents, and the more he tries the more everyone else seems like an enigma.
(The dumbbell is no closer to being opened today, than the day they had met.)
He tries looking into his own heart instead. It has been more than six thousand years and yet he still does not understand himself – according to Barbatos, anyway. The statement does not ring particularly untrue to Zhongli, so he supposes there must be some truth to it. Perhaps this should have been what he first attempted, but he had not thought himself likely to make much progress. If he has not achieved it before now, then it seems improbable that self-awareness is something he is capable of achieving.
Then again, who is to say that Barbatos’s words are to be taken at face value, or, indeed, be taken seriously at all?
Nevertheless, some introspection would not hurt.
He thinks again of caged birds, and it occurs to him almost immediately that he had never known his options beyond his role as the Geo Archon. No matter that he had never resented his duty, shackles do not have to be heavy to be shackles.
And now he is as a pet hawk thrown into the wild. Even though he understands conceptually that he is free, now, he has no idea what to do with this notion of ‘freedom’. He still spends his days walking amidst the people in the harbour, watching over them and recording their lives in the stone that he has in place of brains, and imparting to them his wisdom whenever he can. Even if he no longer interferes in the city’s security and economy, in many aspects he has not changed the way he leads his life.
Then again, there are few things he enjoys more than teaching. He had not taken up a job as a funeral consultant for the sole purpose of organising his own Rite of Parting. And the whims his duties have prevented him from indulging are few and far between. Morax has never been a whimsical creature to begin with, nor does he seek that which is not his to have.
There is little that Zhongli wishes to indulge in that he does not already allow himself to. What freedom is it that he lacks?
He takes a sip of the tea. Tea and wine are two entirely different beverages, but the fragrance of osmanthus reminds him of the wine he had shared with Barbatos, when the wars had first ended. Then, Barbatos had often visited for no reason at all. He seemed to have no duties to attend to, for when he was not touring Teyvat he would be napping for centuries at a time.
They used to gather in Liyue, in part because Morax was the least willing to travel beyond his lands.
No, travelling across Teyvat is not what Zhongli wishes to do, nor does he wish to emulate the carefree lifestyle of the god of freedom. Back when the Seven had been friends, Barbatos had once convinced him to pay the other nations a visit. He had learnt much from it, and he holds memories of that journey dear, but overall it had been… not something he wishes to re-experience, especially with international relationships as tense as they are now. If travelling is Barbatos’s freedom, then Zhongli has already experienced it and decided that it is not for himself.
Liyue is where his heart lies. The land itself was formed upon his soul, and the city was built with his flesh and blood.
This is where he and Barbatos differ most. Zhongli and the adepti had taught the people to build, to craft, to farm, to cook and to trade. Barbatos had stolen the people from a tyrant and set them free, then…
In Xiao’s words, been content to waste eternity away without accomplishing a single thing of note, yet he is central to the lifestyle of the people of Mondstadt. And the winds of Liyue are but accompaniment to the mountains.
What about the mountains?
Towering over mortals and gods alike, unmoving unless Zhongli commands them. Yet the people have made their homes and farms on the unforgiving steeps, and the best known plants of Liyue are those that grow atop the stones.
(Zhongli would not go so far as to say ‘there is no Liyue without mountains’, only that a Liyue without mountains is not one anyone who knows Liyue as she is would recognise.
But there is no Liyue without its people.)
The mountains have not shifted for hundreds of years. They are relics of the past, the foundations on which the nation thrives. And they are content to be so.
Over the horizon shines the first rays of the sun, lighting up the sea that is now calm.
Zhongli rises, leaving his tea set and the cooled tea behind. As he turns to begin his journey back to the harbour, he sees a familiar figure jog towards him.
“Director Hu,” he greets when they meet halfway. “Will you humour me with your opinion on a rather abstract subject matter?”
He has already found his answer — Venti had spoken true when he had said that his freedom lies in understanding — but seeing her reminds him that in recent years those who are granted Pyro Visions often seem the freest of them all. Hu Tao is much like Venti in the way her frivolous manner belies the depth of her thoughts. And she is mortal, so perhaps she may have a perspective that is different from all of theirs.
“Sure,” Hu Tao says without seeming to give it any thought at all. “You know us poets are always thinking about the abstract.” She shoves him in the direction of the harbour, “But you’ll have to ask while we walk, and make it quick. I have to brief you about our latest client.”
“Suppose someone, who has been bound to a duty he does willingly, for a long, long time, is released from it suddenly. He is free now, but he knows not what to do with the freedom, for there is nothing he wishes to do that he could not do also before he had been freed. Thus, he feels as if the shadow of his duty still binds him. How would one who is free live his life differently from one who is bound?”
Zhongli is not being subtle at all, but Hu Tao has long had suspicions about his identity. As long as he confirms nothing, they will carry on as usual.
She startles him with a cackle. “Silly old man, what would I know about freedom? I’m also someone with a sacred duty, you know? All I know is that when I burn a client to ashes, sometimes the ashes flutter away into the sky, but sometimes they don’t because something weighs them down, and then I would find the spirit lingering somewhere at the border.”
But of course, Hu Tao is not concerned about freedom, only about having no regrets when it is time to leave. It is an admirable way to live; one that requires boldness in spades. Zhongli is sure Barbatos would agree that that, too, is a fine interpretation of freedom.
In a way, the answer he has come to is not so different from hers, though he is not quite so optimistic about death – the circumstances behind an immortal’s death are, more often than not, on the undesirable side. Beyond watching the people, listening to stories over a cup of good tea, and teaching them of forgotten customs, there is truly little else that Zhongli would like to do.
He is free now, so he will live a life he is content with. If a particular cup of tea would stir in him a desire to visit a certain old friend, surely Hu Tao would not begrudge him a day off. And if the sudden increased frequency of his visits surprise them… Well, they shall have a long time to get used to it.
Who knows, perhaps in time he, too, may grow a whimsical nature.