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Barbara first hears about the mysterious traveler from Amber. The stranger dressed in white, with a floating companion and a sharp red sword. She’s looking for her brother, Amber whispers to her. She knows about the Traveler even before Jean, which sends a selfish little burst of joy through her heart. She watches from her position in the Cathedral how this stranger gets crowned Honorary Knight. (This sends something else selfish through her heart.)
The Traveler does not walk like a normal person. She refuses, it seems, to move any way like a normal person. Sometimes Barbara sees her sprinting through the streets, scaling the walls, gliding from cliffs like it’s nothing. Though she’s clearly not from this realm, she takes to the skies like her glider is nothing more than an extension of her being. Barbara wonders briefly whether the sanctimony of the church would be affected by the tiny blonde foreigner parkouring across its rooftops.
They finally meet at the Cathedral. Jean introduces them, and she makes her salutations.
The Traveler takes her hand with a beam. “Finally! I’m so glad you’ll join me soon, I’m running low on hashbrowns.” And Barbara has no idea what she’s talking about, but some urge other than polite etiquette compels her to take the Traveler’s hand. Her grip is unexpectedly strong.
Point is, they’re here for business. Somehow, the girl has defeated the nightmare that was Stormterror. Somehow, the girl has stolen the Holy Lyre der Himmel, from under the watchful eyes of numerous trained guards. Somehow, she has broken the sacred instrument to a state of terrifying disrepair.
(Barbara has a tiny bit of a meltdown.)
Somehow, the Traveler has befriended the green-clad bard that Barbara suspects is more than a witty street musician. He fixes the lyre, and she has no idea what’s going on but Barbara swears not to let this group of people anywhere near it ever again.
Like the Traveler is a magnet for danger, Barbara finds her and Venti lying unconscious outside the Cathedral. She heals them, because it’s what she does, but there’s still an unsettled feeling in her chest. The bard awakens and flees. Jean doesn’t let her stop the bard from leaving, and Sevens, Barbara wishes somebody would explain things to her.
And then, somehow, Barbara finds herself following the Traveler, the Honorary Knight of Favonius, the Hero of Mondstadt, on all her ventures.
For the Traveler’s innocent face and pure-white facade, her sword cuts clean and ruthless. She can’t be much older than Barbara. How, then, does her fighting stance rival that of the Cavalry Captain himself? Kaeya wears his scars with pride; badges of his experience. But the Traveler is unblemished as a cecilia. Where has she been? Who has she been?
Only the stars of Teyvat can answer Barbara’s questions. And they stay silent.
Barbara talks to Kaeya about her, when they’re at Angel’s Share on his day off. His eye glints. For all his cunning, he seems just as taken as anyone else in Mondstadt by this mysteriously skilled stranger.
“She’s cute, isn’t she?” He laughs, ruffling her hair. “Just like you.”
Barbara frowns as Kaeya takes another long drink.
There’s nothing she can do to stop him from joining her. “Please, guarding you sounds far more entertaining than any Favonius duty.” He does his weird flirting-insulting thing and the Traveler has the nerve to blush.
Barbara's torn.
Kaeya’s laid back, or at least likes to act like it, but still—it’s not like him to drop all his responsibilities to wander about with the Traveler.
It's his decision to make, she thinks, watching him put on that same easy charm. Clearly, he wants to go with her.
He still has duties within the Knights. Jean still paces the halls.
The Traveler is an Honorary Knight, after all.
In the end nobody says a thing, and so Barbara watches him shoot Cryo daggers at every Pyro slime they come across. The Traveler sends her alongside him, activating her own Hydro vision for that oh-so convenient Frozen effect.
They work well together, the Traveler says. Barbara just wonders why they always heed her bidding.
The Traveler has a fascination with Teyvat that makes Barbara wonder about her homeland. She makes detours to pluck every flower from the soil, though Barbara hears the jingling in her coin purse that could buy out Flora’ entire stock countless times over. She picks fruit by the bushel, tossing berries to Paimon as they walk. She plucks butterflies from the air and keeps their paper-thin wings tucked in her notebook.
It's reasonable, Barbara nods. It's good to be prepared.
They travel. A lot. And it’s nothing to be surprised at, but the Traveler comes and goes so much. She cuts through time and space and she takes Barbara with her as she teleports from the bustling Mondstadt downtown to the most remote peaks of Cuijue Slope. Everywhere they go, she talks to everyone like an old friend. Barbara sees with her own eyes how the young and old alike open up to her, how they offer her artifacts and fruits and mora by the handful. They smile even as the Traveler climbs up their houses and steals mushrooms from their shingles.
She has this unwavering confidence that Barbara wants to call foolish, but she can’t, not when everything seems to work out. They explore abandoned mines and ancient ruins, escaping not only intact but with the treasure that so many before had tried and failed to reach. They deal with ghosts long dead and terrible machines come to life.
The Traveler continues pushing forward with reckless plans of offense that really should’ve gotten someone killed. Barbara’s not a strategist, of course, but enough time watching the Knights spar would instill in anyone a general sense of combat. For all their Visions and wit and experience, they’re only human after all. But Barbara keeps healing and people continue to miraculously revive. And the Traveler keeps shoveling artifacts into her bag.
Resourceful would be the best way, she thinks, to describe her.
She ransacks the kitchen at Wangshu Inn every time they visit and Smiley, as Barbara has come to expect, does nothing about it. When they’re in Liyue, she steals singular blossoms from the carefully-cultivated silk flowers on display. The wreckage of an abandoned produce cart. The bone fragment of their fallen enemies.
Nothing is safe from her ambitious gaze.
Sometimes they find humans—Treasure Hoarders, petty criminals that don’t or can’t admit defeat. Those make Barbara hesitate, because the Traveler rifles through their abandoned tents and steals away whatever treasures she comes across. Aged journals filled with advice, flowers from an old sweetheart, polished pocketwatches still ticking away. They’re the enemy, Barbara knows. That doesn’t stop the Traveler’s bright smile from making her uneasy.
“I’m investigating.” She tells Barbara.
The Traveler takes and takes, and the world is so eager to give it to her.
Barbara begins to worry that the Traveler has a sadistic streak.
Once, in broad daylight, she swings a sharp blade at a townsperson. Barbara’s heart beats but her mouth refuses to open—but the man is absolutely fine and unscathed. He doesn’t seem even the least bit traumatized, swatting at her like a particularly annoying insect before returning to his conversation. His partner doesn’t care either. They continue talking about Stormterror and Good Hunter’s weekly special and the newest song of Mondstadt's favorite bard as if nothing happened. The Traveler smiles genially and does it a few more times.
When Amber’s around, the Traveler will have her cause havoc as well. One thing she particularly enjoys doing is approaching the bridge and having the Outrider shoot her flaming arrows at the pigeons that flock around Timmie. Birds squawk, feathers fly, and flames devour everything for a moment. The boy, in the same way the other townspeople act around the Traveler, is unhurt. Barbara watches with awful clarity as the Traveler dashes forward and picks up the scattered fowl thighs. She says a simple “sorry!” to Timmie, who besides looking miffed does nothing else in the face of this atrocity.
She chases a squirrel with childlike glee until her blade slices through its ribcage. The metal gleams sharp, and Barbara doesn't even know what's happening until it slumps over. The Traveler packs a cut of raw meat away.
They’re atop the sacred Mount Aozang, after an impressive amount of climbing. They shoot down an eagle.
The Traveler makes countless new allies on her journey across the land. It’s almost uncanny how she makes her way into the heart of every important figure Barbara’s ever heard of, and some that she hasn’t.
Amber takes her leave after the Darknight Hero himself, who turns out to be Master Dliuc, agrees to join the traveler. Barbara doesn’t fail to notice the Pyro Vision burning at Diluc’s hip. He’s a force to be reckoned with, certainly. That makes it all the more worrisome why he would act without question under the orders of the Traveler, not yet old enough to order at his bar.
He jumps into battle with power befitting the Ragnvindr name. His blade falls with certainty and crackles with energy that singes Barbara’s pigtails. The Traveler sends him out with Kaeya sometimes because Melt takes down their enemies with efficiency. It’s strange considering how all of Mondstadt knows about their age-old issues, but Barbara supposes the Traveler isn’t from Mondstadt. The unspoken rules that govern polite society don’t apply to her.
Master Diluc and Captain Kaeya fight at each other’s side as if they’ve done it their entire lives. They lack the animosity that everyone has come to expect, at least not on the battlefield. Maybe the Traveler knows this. Maybe she can make things better.
Barbara tries to approach Diluc one night as they set up camp on a cliff overlooking a grand Hilichurl base. Her tongue sits heavy with half-formed thoughts in her mouth.
His fierce scowl scares her away.
Barbara sees the bard around too, whom she’s now certain is the anemo archon. How does one of the original Seven concern themselves with such trivial matters as sweeping up rouge slimes?
The Traveler flies around Mondstadt with him sometimes, wreaking havoc. They abuse his wind currents to reach places that normally take far more effort. They both get turned away at Angel’s Share for looking too young. They take a picture after climbing the statue that sits directly before the church, which Barbara isn’t sure is sacreligious or not. They chase after stray cats in the alleyway.
(It’s with a strange dawning that Barbara realizes the Anemo Archon is allergic to cats.)
Venti’s immortal vessel sees what Barbara does not quite understand. She approaches him under the Windrise tree to ask about the Traveler. Why? She wants to say. Why, in the city of freedom? He’s far more personable than the Darknight Hero, although when Barbara opens her mouth, Venti only shrugs. “This is simply how things are.”
The Traveler stocks up on Cecelias.
The Hilichurls have always been something of an infestation, but at the rate the Traveler is going through them Barbara wonders if she’s witnessing the start of an extinction. Maybe it’s because she’s soft, because she was never any good at fighting, but Barbara feels something akin to pity when the monsters are swept away in the face of the Traveler’s storm. The Hilichurls seem carefree, singing and dancing and holding conversation in their gibberish tongue. Most of the time, they do nothing to incur the Traveler’s wrath except exist.
Barbara is usually sent out to heal once all the fighting is done. She puts out the smoldering fires that turn the grass to soot.
The Traveler humors a young prodigy who wants to learn more about Hilichurl culture. They refrain from attacking as the girl makes clunky but delighted conversation, and the Hilichurl, too, keeps its club down. Barbara wonders what it means for their civilization. Of course, the next time they find the monsters dancing around their campfire, they show no mercy.
The Traveler sighs after searching the smoking premise. “Not even an exquisite chest.”
They meet Andreas Lupas Boreas, who sends frost seeping into Barbara’s bones. The wild boy—Razor—protests with an aching heart.
The Traveler has cold eyes like frozen sunlight. “We need to.”
And he quiets, hefts his Claymore upon a scarred shoulder. Barbara shudders. It’s the cold, she tells herself.
The Traveler sneaks onto the Crux’s flagship—although the landing from the sky could not have been more conspicuous—and for some reason they are not killed. The Traveler has this presence, Barbara is finding, that makes even the most stubborn of wills bend. Except no, it’s not quite bending. It’s the pull of the magnetic poles. It’s the rotation of the planet. It’s how things are. So Barbara jumps all over the pirate ship with her and listens in on the gossip, which more than anything is unfettered flattery of the captain. Maybe it should be strange how they speak of Captain Beidou as if she is not standing right there, assessing her ship with pride sparking in her eye.
The crewmates all speak of waiting on Beidou’s return from Liyue Harbor. They have been anchored here in the Guyun Stone Forest for three days, they tell her. Beidou pulls out a jug of wine and says nothing. Not just pride, Barbara realizes; there's something else, darker and hollow.
She can’t. Not when she’s helping the Traveler, not any more than she can stop the globe from turning.
Barbara gets the idea that the Crux flagship might be waiting here indefinitely.
They take two hundred thousand mora from the Northland bank.
Maybe it’s something in the water—or the fried eggs the Traveler keeps feeding them—but she gets the Tianquan herself to come with them. Even Barbara, with her tragic lack of political knowledge, realizes that this is a very powerful figure indeed.
“I—” She stammers. Liyue Harbor is only a few thousand meters removed from Mondstadt, but for all Barbara’s aware it might as well be on the other side of the planet. How does one approach the empress/dictator/whatever she is, ruling over the wealthiest nation of the seven? “You’re. You’re Ningguang.”
Probably not like this.
Ningguang inspects her with bored eyes that glitter like expensive crystal. “Don’t wear my name out, dear.”
Barbara decides then it is too emotionally draining to think about why Ningguang (who has the mora to buy everything she’s ever touched and raze it to the ground without consequence) is using her jade screen to help the Traveler mine iron ore. Of course, nobody says a word about it.
The little thing called Paimon confuses her. She’s cute, for sure, and she does hold a certain resemblance to the mochi cakes their resident chef, Xiangling, sells. Barbara doesn’t know what she is, but “emergency snack” doesn’t quite fulfill the description.
She observes Paimon. She appears only when she’s not needed, making snide comments to the Traveler that everyone can hear. She floats with no mass, her scarf a galaxy behind her, while pinpricks of light dance around her like so many stars. Nothing touches her, not the passing arrow of an enemy archer, not Barbara's errant water droplets. Sometimes, she blinks through the air midmotion, like time is passing for her without Barbara's awareness.
Not even the Traveler herself is clear about Paimon’s origins.
Just what is she?
In Mondstadt once more, they make their acquaintance an eccentric astrologist. Mona, like her, is a Hydro catalyst user. Barbara fears, just the tiniest bit, for her position on the team. Though Mona seems fully aware the Traveler is of another world, she too complies without protest to anything she asks.
“Fate cannot be changed or reversed. It can only but be accepted.”
Mona looks at Barbara with pale shining eyes and Barbara cannot find it in herself to say anything.
Whatever talents Paimon has for making Barbara lose sleep, the Traveler shares them too. They are asked to meet with somebody at nightfall, though it is the middle of the morning. With that cryptic smile, the Traveler pulls out a clock unlike that which Barbara has ever seen before. Her head pounds as the world spins, and her memories become so fuzzy they might as well have never happened in the first place. When she lands on her feet once more, the sky is blazing with the sun saying its final goodbyes at the horizon. Barbara can only blink. The stars twinkle back at her.
“You—you can’t do that!” She manages. The townsfolk continue about their lives, flowing like a river around them. How can they just carry on, like everything is normal—she shakes her head to clear it. Barbara is constantly disoriented near the Traveler, it seems.
Paimon pops out of thin air. “We can teleport, what’s wrong with a little fast-tracking time?”
Nobody tells them it’s not normal to teleport either.
The Traveler once more fulfills her role as a trouble magnet. They’re in Liyue, preparing to experience some sort of sacred ritual. Of course it goes horribly wrong. Of course they get rescued by a Fatui agent.
Of course he joins them.
Tartagalia is sharp in his attacks and he switches between his weapons—and elements—with ease. He seems untouchable. But the Traveler asks him to scale a cliff for a single violetgrass blossom, and he does so, scarf flapping in the wind.
Later, when he thinks they’re harboring a god’s heart, he attacks without reservation. He laughs maniacally. Barbara thinks that she might be the one losing her mind.
Things continue in the world-breaking way the Traveler has made her signature. When the dead Morax joins them in fighting ruin guards, Barbara cannot find it in herself to be surprised.
But she does steal more than a few looks at him after battles, when tending to his wounds. The Traveler has decided to make her way through a hydro-based domain, where Barbara would be more of a burden than an asset. It’s a sigh of relief, to catch her breath during this pseudo-freedom. She sits with Zhongli under one of the Statues of Seven—it’s almost amusing that it’s carved in his image. His hand is calloused and human under hers, but his eyes still glow divine.
“This is also a type of contract, is it not?”
Gold comes in many different shades, Barbara finds. The amber of Zhongli's eyes shines warmer than she expects from a god. And the Traveler—her gaze cuts like white steel, like the brightest sunlight. Nothing can hide for long from her. Barbara thinks hazily of the absolute; of the truth, of something pure and untarnished.
They all come and go. Tycoons. Royalty. Mortals. Adepti. Children. The Traveler collects them, brings them to her side when they are needed. Barbara watches how duties are dropped and deadlines are pushed for the needs of the strange girl. She shapes this world, changes spacetime like candle wax in her hands. It makes Barbara’s vision blur when she thinks about it for too long.
Barbara wonders when she, too, will outlive her usefulness.
But the Traveler, it seems, has taken favor to Barbara for her healing ability. Though she cannot fight, she does what nobody else can, and that keeps her alongside the Traveler the entire time. Even as she's swapped out occasionally, Barbara remains the person who stays and watches the others rotate.
She doesn’t know what the feeling in her stomach is.
The Traveler discovers the Spiral Abyss, and immediately wants to find its limit. They step through the wormhole in the sky again and again. Things are different. They cannot eat, cannot miraculously revive. The Ley Line Disorders sink into their bones, slow their reactions and speed up their energy depletion. Barbara works hard to heal what she can, but still—the floors never end, and the Abyss Order only gets stronger.
It must be their twelfth consecutive hour as they awake outside the wormhole once more and the new day dawns. The Traveller is blank-faced as she swaps out their artifacts and levels up their weapons. “Let’s try it one more time, okay?”
Barbara is the first to jump back to her feet. She has to succeed.