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Sore. Sore all over. 

He stopped assessing.

Instead he heaved himself up into a sitting position, and looked around him. Green grass, cliffs, the sound of a river. He looked towards the nearest tree and there was a huge purple bird sitting on a branch.

That was probably fine. Probably normal for this place.

The bird looked like a raven but made out of light instead of regular raven stuff, which Aether didn't find particularly reassuring, but if it hadn't swooped in to peck at him when he was laid out looking dead, it probably didn't mean him any harm. But it looked at him with a persistent fixed gaze that made Aether a bit nervous.

And, because he was nervous, he raised his hand and waved at the bird. It cocked its head at him, and he felt silly.

Strange birds aside, Aether had other things he ought to be doing. He stood up, brushed off the dirt from his clothes--he winced when he saw the crater he'd left behind, but hopefully whoever owned the vineyard didn't begrudge a little crash-landing--and then he rolled his shoulders.

He suppressed the twinge of panic when he realized his wings were gone. He'd felt them shatter--had seen the way Lumine's own wings splintered off into shards moments before her face turned into a mirror of his own panic--but he wasn't sure why the rest of him felt this awful. He stretched out his limbs carefully, and called his sword to his hand, but everything felt sluggish. Trying to reach for his own power just resulted in an uncomfortable pins and needles sensation, not so much in his body as on his soul. It was disturbing, so after a few experimental swings of his sword, he sent it away and put the matter aside for now.

He needed to find Lumine. She'd fallen away from him, as whatever force struck them threw them into different directions, but she had to be in a similar situation as him. They just needed to find their way to one another.

But as Aether looked around himself, he had the sudden realization that he had no clue which way to go and find her.

Well, when you didn't know where you were going, one direction was often as good as any other.

He began heading towards the manor he could see looming in the distance.

As wake-up calls went, getting poked in the face was one of Lumine's least favorite. She huffed, moved to brush away Aether's hand, but there was a twinge of pain in the motion, and as her eyes snapped open, it was not Aether looming above her.

She froze in place for a moment, staring at the masked figure above her.

"Yaya?" the creature said, and a chorus of similar muttering came from all around.

Lumine was still in the throes of utter bewilderment as she scooted back, away from the creature's poking fingers, and sat up.

Unfortunately, sitting up only revealed a half-dozen other masked faces turning towards her at the same time. The one poking her jumped back at seeing her move, and tension crackled as Lumine got her bearings.

"Uh... hello?" she said, waving weakly.

This was apparently some kind of mortal insult in their language, however, because all the figures around her bristled. One mask, gleaming white in the moonlight, rose up above the heads of all the others, and only belatedly Lumine noticed it belonged to a much larger one of the creatures, hefting an axe that was as long as Lumine was tall.

She scrambled to her feet, sword appearing in her hand in a gleam of gold. The creatures brandished their own weapons--rocks, torches, clubs--screeching some defiant battle cry, and Lumine braced herself.

And in the fraction of a second before the fight broke out, something zipped through the air--arrows, Lumine realized, as pained screeches followed. A laugh followed, echoes bouncing off the cliffs. And then, with all the aplomb of someone making a dramatic entrance and knowing it, a gangly young man jumped into the fray, two liquid blades in his hands and a cocky smile on his face.

It all happened so quickly, that Lumine only had time to sit there blinking as the stranger demolished his way through the band of masked creatures.

Was the situation even that dire, when the young man seemed to be having this much fun?

What a strange place.

It seemed to Diluc that not a day in his life could pass without something utterly stupid happening, but that particular day really kicked off early. He had spent most of the night prowling Mondstadt and eliminating threats, so he was understandably still a bit slow as he was woken by an early-morning courier, bringing a note from the Dawn Winery.

He had to read it three times over before concluding that the contents were indeed as strange as they appeared at first glance. It was probably not Adelinde's fault, because he could tell she had done her best to explain the situation. The fact that a lost outlander had wandered up to the manor last night was unusual enough, but Diluc didn't even want to know why there was a 'jurisdictional dispute' over this.

Diluc rubbed the bridge of his nose. Maybe he should have headed back to the Dawn Winery the night before instead of lingering in the city, but he couldn't see that turning out any less troublesome either. He really did have business to attend to in Mondstadt, even if it was the kind that involved hitting things with a claymore.

But, jurisdictional dispute? What did that even mean?

The coach ride to the Dawn Winery was uneventful, and once he arrived there, he couldn't see anything amiss. Adelinde waited by the door, as dutiful as ever, but she did not appear particularly distressed, only somewhat rueful.

"I apologize for the disruption," Adelinde began, but Diluc waved off her concern.

"Where are the troublemakers?" he asked instead.

Adelinde's lips pursed together before she led him into the dining room.

A full breakfast spread had been laid out on the table, and usually Diluc wouldn't have been so generous towards unwanted guests, except in this case that might have been the most efficient way to quell them. Every eye in the room turned to him as he strode into the dining room. Fischl and Oz, from the Adventurers' Guild, sat on one side of the table. Albedo and Sucrose, from the Knights of Favonius, across from her. 

Diluc's eyes went directly to the one he didn't recognize, a young man with blond hair, dressed strangely, sitting at the head of the table, between the two investigation teams. According to Adelinde's letter, he was the outlander who had just wandered onto the property the evening before, not even speaking the language, and appearing quite lost. 

He didn't seem all that bothered by his circumstances now, as he devoured his way through a plate of eggs and sausages.

"Hark!" one of the other dinner guests declared. "The proprietor of this demesne makes his appearance, at last!" Then, with a flourish that was completely unnecessary when handling a butter knife, Fischl smeared butter across a roll in a long, dramatic streak. 

Perched on the back of her chair, Oz bobbed his head in greeting. "Ah, Master Diluc. Good morning."

On the other side of the table, Albedo didn't even look up as he spread jam on his toast, meticulously ensuring the layer was perfectly even.

"Adelinde insisted we wait for you," Albedo said, somewhat more subdued than Fischl. "And here you are."

Sucrose, sitting next to Albedo, seemed to be channeling the worst of both worlds: she was as high-strung as Fischl, but concentrated only on sectioning a pancake into perfect squares and avoiding everyone else's eyes.

Diluc tried not to sigh too audibly. He decided to save that for later, when it would feel more cathartic. He sat down at the table, instead.

"Good morning," the outlander said suddenly, and everyone in the room looked at him in surprise.

Adelinde, in the process of pouring a glass of grape juice for Diluc, paused to look at him also. Albedo perked up, and even Fischl looked taken aback.

"I thought he didn't speak the language," Diluc said.

"I didn't think he did," Adelinde admitted. "He certainly didn't seem to last night."

"He must have picked it up from hearing us say it," Albedo said, leaning forward in his chair, completely entranced by the outlander like he was an exotic specimen. "A fast learner."

Or he knew more than he was revealing, Diluc thought.

"Hey," he said, looking directly at the outlander. 

The outlander looked up at Diluc, though he was probably reacting more to the sound than anything, and stopped chewing as he saw Diluc staring right back at him.

"What's your name?" Diluc asked.

The outlander began chewing again, slowly, and swallowed. He seemed to be thinking, though Diluc couldn't tell if he understood much of anything. If this was pretending, it was a very nuanced act. But to what end would that be?

"Name," Diluc repeated more simply. This was still met with blankness.

"He may not know that word yet," Albedo pointed out. 

"We should, um..." Sucrose spoke, before trailing off nervously. But Albedo looked at her with patience, and she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose before continuing more confidently, "If we introduce ourselves, he may pick up on the pattern and give us his name as well."

"You've been bickering over him all morning and didn't bother to ask his name yet?" Diluc asked.

Sucrose turned red, hunching in her seat, but even Albedo and Fischl looked sheepish.

"The moment was inauspicious for the attempt," Fischl said, which Oz translated as, "We would have gotten around to it eventually."

"Still, Sucrose's idea has merit," Albedo said, and turned towards the outlander, drawing his attention. Albedo put a hand to his chest, saying his own name slowly and clearly. "Albedo," he enunciated. Then, pointing to Sucrose, said her name as well. By the time he gestured across the table to Fischl, the outlander had a spark of comprehension in his eye, but Albedo proceeded to introduce Oz, Diluc, and even Adelinde, who was standing behind Diluc's chair.

Finally, the introduction came full circle, and Albedo gestured towards the outlander.

"Aether," came the answer on cue, as the outlander tapped his own chest.

Everyone around the table watched with rapt attention, waiting to see if more words were forthcoming, but Aether merely dipped a piece of bread into the runny yolk of his eggs and popped it in his mouth. The moment passed, and it became obvious Aether had nothing more to add, and everyone leaned back in their seats.

Albedo took out his notebook, and jotted something down. 

"Right," Diluc said. "As fascinating as that was. Why am I here?"

"It is your home," Albedo replied, so straight-faced that Diluc couldn't tell if he was sincerely pointing out the obvious or being a mouthy teenager.

"I mean why have I been called back here on your account," Diluc gritted out slowly. He'd been initially relieved that Kaeya wasn't the one here on behalf of the Knights of Favonius, but now he wasn't sure Albedo was all that preferable.

Fischl made another one of her little theatrical gestures, pointing to Albedo.

"We are at an impasse, caused solely by the recalcitrance of this alchemical scholar and his intrusion upon the interests of our stalwart organization."

Diluc looked to Oz. He liked Oz. Birds were vastly preferable to people in Diluc's experience, and this experience was doing nothing but compounding that feeling.

Oz was merciful. "My mistress wishes to help Aether on behalf of the Adventurers' Guild, but our counterparts from the Knights of Favonius disagree with that course of action."

"We would be more qualified to identify whether the outlander is a threat or not, and by what means he reached our world," Albedo spoke more sedately.

Diluc felt like he missed a step somewhere. "What do you mean, how he reached our world?"

"He fell from the sky," Albedo said, in a way that explained nothing. "It's why we've sought him out."

"People don't just fall from the sky," Diluc said, because he thought that was something obvious and reasonable to point out. Evidently it was not, judging by the condescending looks he was getting in return.

"They might, if they are from another world," Albedo said.

Fischl took this as her cue. "Which is precisely why I, Fischl, Prinzessin der Verurteilung, as a fellow traveler from a world beyond these stars, am most qualified to take up this task." She swept her hand imperiously through the air, and raised her chin in perfect regal pose.

There was a beat of silence in the dining room, as all those assembled tried to think of the most diplomatic way to counter that declaration.

To everyone's surprise, it was Sucrose who spoke, red-faced as she looked into her plate and pushed around pieces of pancake without eating.

"Pretending to be a fictional character doesn't qualify you for anything, Amy," she muttered, almost to herself. But in the profound silence, the words must have come out louder than intended, and Sucrose flinched, looking instantly regretful.

There was the smell of ozone as the air became static, a physical manifestation of Fischl's indignation. Fischl rose from her seat abruptly, pushing it back with a screech and forcing Oz to flutter his wings to rebalance himself on the backrest. 

Sucrose, in the same moment, turtled in on herself, her shoulders rising up around her ears, and her face turning even redder. If her ears hadn't already been flat against her skull, they would have gone so then.

Diluc rose from his own seat a moment later, meaning to intervene if conflict arose. Albedo, perhaps thinking the same, raised an arm in front of Sucrose, protectively.

But Fischl didn't attack, or do much of anything except plant her palms against the table top, and lean forward.

"You dare!" she barked, the very image of an authoritative princess, except her own face was also red, and there was a tremble in her voice that might have been upset rather than anger. 

As mortifying as it was to put up with Fischl's act on any given day, Diluc was uncomfortable with this genuine woundedness even more. He would take a fight against a horde of Abyss Mages over a since crying girl any day of the week.

The outlander--Aether--with even less context for what was happening, was wide-eyed as he looked from Sucrose to Fischl, clutching a napkin in his hands like a lifeline. But he also might have been more on top of the situation than anyone, because he reached across the table to place a hand against Fischl's forearm.

Her head snapped around, bristling at the contact, but as Aether looked up at her with placid golden eyes, pleading like a puppy, Fischl only stared at him in return. The moment drew out for a few breaths more, tension crackling through the air like electricity, before the fight seemed to go out of her. Fischl's shoulders sagged, and she threw her hair over her shoulder in a final haughty dismissal as she sat down again.

There was a beat of silence.

"At any rate, we have been arguing this point extensively since arriving here," Fischl continued, as if the tense interlude hadn't even happened, "and we have established nothing but that we are at an impasse. We beseech you, Master Diluc, for your advice on the matter. Who do you believe would best be entrusted with the fate of this traveler?"

Diluc looked from one side of the table to the other, and then to Aether, guileless in his ignorance, and if he was completely honest with himself, Diluc thought the answer was that neither should get him.

He decided to be a bit more diplomatic than that, however.

"I'm sure we could work something out," Diluc said. "Surely there's nothing urgent."

"Mayhaps there is," Fischl pronounced, her countenance grave, "if we seek to locate both his companion and the one who assaulted them."

"...Ah," Albedo made a little sound to himself, like something just occurred to him. 

Sucrose rubbed her cheek, looking chastened. "Yes, we did lose sight of that, didn't we," she muttered quietly to Albedo.

"Let's take a few more steps back," Diluc sighed, "and explain to me what that's about, as well.

But the full story would not prove any more edifying than the abridged version, anyway. Diluc could only take comfort in being well-informed, if still clueless. He'd make do.

Xingqiu breathed in the crisp morning air with relish, and even his novel lay in his lap forgotten as he watched Chongyun go through a light workout at the edge of the water. Chongyun always was a stickler about keeping up with his rigorous training regimen, even when they were traveling. Xingqiu didn't mind it as long as he had reading material to occupy himself with, but that morning, he was too distracted for even his favorite pursuit.

He looked around, instead. Dihua Marsh wasn't always the safest place, but they were close to the road, and the Millelith always kept these well-traveled routes as safe as possible. Xinqiu perched on top of a rocky outcropping, and watched the early morning traffic. A smattering of merchants, some locals going out to fish or trade or eat at the inn. Travelers, as always.

Strange travelers.

Stranger than usual, that day.

Xingqiu wasn't sure why he fixated on the two at first, what exactly about them made something itch at the back of his head. But a possible reason occurred to him as he took in the gray of the man's uniform. 

That individual was a Fatui. Xingqiu had seen him around Liyue Harbor several times before, at Northland Bank or at some of the higher-end restaurants in the city. He was more important than other Fatui in some esoteric way that Xingqiu didn't completely understand, because he had little knowledge about the inner workings of their diplomatic corps.

Well, Xingqiu thought as he tapped his chin, a Fatui diplomat wasn't necessarily up to no good by default. Sure, if the rank and file Fatui caught anyone alone out in the wilds, where they were always roaming about on highly suspect business, they would kill witnesses with a kind of impunity that made the whole organization seem suspect at best. But that didn't mean this one particular high-ranking Fatui was out doing something evil right at that very moment.

No, Xingqiu was perfectly capable of keeping an open mind.

But what he wasn't willing to do was fail in his chivalric duty, and as he looked to the Fatui's companion, it was very clear she was not Fatui herself, or even Snezhnayan. She was dressed in more exotic clothing than that, though Xingqiu didn't think before now there could be a more distant place in Teyvat than Snezhnaya. And the Fatui man was sticking close to her, like he didn't want to let her stray too far. He didn't quite touch her, but his palm hovered near the small of her back like he intended to herd her along.

Xingqiu tried to put his finger on what was strange about their body language as he watched them pass on the road. He settled, finally, on a conclusion: there seemed to be a lack of familiarity between them that was at odds with how closely the Fatui stuck to his companion.

Yes, that was it. The situation was obvious to him now. The young woman was clearly being held hostage by an evil Fatui agent.

Xingqiu snapped his book closed with such verve, that the resounding thud startled Chongyun out of his exercises. Chongyun looked at him oddly, and as he took in the expression on Xingqiu's face, with a bit of trepidation on top.

"Delay your training, Chongyun. There is a matter that requires our immediate intervention!"

Chongyun could already see he had no choice but to go along with Xingqiu's latest impulse; one wondered who the real hostage was.

Catching up with the two was not difficult. The young woman had stopped to pet a dog by the side of the road, and she was kneeling in the grass, ruffling its fur while making cooing sounds when Xingqiu spotted her next.

The Fatui, unfortunately, was not far away. He was standing behind her with his hands in his pockets, affecting the pose of a carefree and harmless young man. The closer Xingqiu got, however, the better he could see that he was no such thing; his eyes were blue and cold, scanning his surroundings constantly, and the easy smile plastered across his face was fake and empty. This was undoubtedly the countenance of a villain.

Xingqiu had barely stepped in their direction when the Fatui pinned him with his sharp gaze. His expression turned to a 'move along' kind of smile, or at least a 'keep your distance' kind of glower.

Now was the time for some clever maneuver that Xingqiu was sure would make a compelling scene in one of his martial arts novels. Unfortunately, Xingqiu was not going to be seen through this by a clever writer's pen, but solely his own wits. Still, not an inconsequential weapon in his arsenal.

Xingqiu gave his most guileless smile as he approached.

"My liege, you appear foreign to these lands. Do you require directions? To the Wangshu Inn perhaps?" Xingqiu asked.

"I think I can find my way," the Fatui replied, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the Wangshu Inn looming in the distance.

Right, that was a stupid question now that Xingqiu thought about it. But he was not so easily foiled.

"And your companion?" Xingqiu persisted.

The young woman's attention turned from the dog to Xingqiu. Her eyes were a warm gold color and held no particular fear, just simple curiosity. Xingqiu wondered if he'd misjudged the situation.

The Fatui moved smoothly in between the young woman and Xingqiu.

"She's fine," he said. Then, with a more sardonic twist to his smile, he added, "Didn't anyone teach you not to try picking up women at the side of the road?" And then the Fatui flicked Xingqiu's forehead, so quickly that Xingqiu did not have time to do anything but to sputter.

"That does appear to be sound advice," Chongyun agreed mildly.

"Whose side are you on?" Xingqiu said, turning shrill in his indignation.

Chongyun raised his hands in appeasement, and the Fatui snickered.

"Beat it, kid," the Fatui said, slipping his hands back in his pockets like he didn't even consider Xingqui a threat. 

"The road is public, my liege, and you needn't concern yourself with maintaining the flow of traffic," Xingqui replied acidly.

Chongyun, always the cool head, placed a hand on Xingqui's forearm, squeezing in warning.

"Hey," Chongyun said, voice pitched low and soothing. Xingqui didn't realize until then that he was losing his temper, which he put down solely to the Fatui having an astounding talent for making his gorge rise.

But while they were thus occupied in this repartee that was turning out more comedy troupe routine than martial novel scene, the dog that the young woman had been petting had come up to Xingqiu to sniff at his feet, and that was the moment all present noticed that the young woman had slipped off as well.

A moment of bewilderment shared between Xingqiu and the Fatui as they cast their gazes about, trying to locate her.

The Fatui saw her first, and sprang off to intercept her as she walked up to the nearby statue of Rex Lapis.

Xingqiu could have cut his losses right there; surely a real hostage would have taken the opportunity to run off from her captor, and not to gawk at statuary like the most common of tourists. But he still didn't like the way that Fatui ran after her. He moved in what Xingqiu would describe as a predatory lope.

Chongyun sighed audibly as Xingqiu followed.

"Xingqiu--" he began, but any reprimand melted off as Chongyun had to run to catch up.

The Fatui skidded to a stop next to the young woman. Xingqiu halted more gracefully a few steps behind. Chongyun ran directly into Xingqiu's back, nearly toppling the both of them.

The young woman, either oblivious or indifferent, reached out to touch the statue, and Xingqiu wasn't entirely sure what happened next. There was a flash of light, or--no, more like a pulse. Some bright overflow of power that Xingqiu could see even through his eyelids as he blinked, and then the hovering symbol of the Geo element, sparking to life over the young woman's hands.

They were all still frozen in place, staring at her, as the young woman inspected her own hands, even she herself baffled by what had happened.

What had happened, anyway?

"Uh..." The Fatui gathered himself. "You alright there?" he asked uncertainly.

The young woman didn't take much notice, instead turning away from him and extending a hand.

The Geo construct sprang up so suddenly, that they all flinched, including the young woman herself. But after a beat, she seemed to recover, and spoke something in a language that Xingqiu did not understand and could not identify. She skipped over to the Geo construct, rounded it--

As she clambered onto the cylindrical shape she had created with Geo, Xingqiu peered at her closely. The embellishments on her dress glowed softly amber, but he could not spot a Geo Vision.

"Could she do that before?" Xingqiu asked, looking to the Fatui.

The Fatui was scratching his cheek, looking just as puzzled as Xingqiu felt, but at the question, the man scoffed.

"Hasn't anyone taught you to mind your own business, comrade?" the Fatui asked, fixing Xingqiu with a cold look and a cloyingly fake smile to match.

"I've been taught to mind several kinds of business, in fact," Xingqiu sniffed.

"You wouldn't like the lessons you learn in my line of work," the Fatui said, before his voice took on a sharper edge.

Xingqiu had his own sharp retorts to match, but Chongyun grabbed his forearm, and his grip was tight and cold.

"Leave it," Chongyun said low. "Let's go."

Xingqiu let himself be dragged away, as the Fatui watched with implacably cold eyes. But he did not see this as giving up, merely a tactical retreat.

"This isn't over, you understand," Xingqiu told Chongyun, once they were out of earshot of the Fatui.

"Yes, I gathered," Chongyun said. "And there really is something strange going on with those two. Though, if it's a Fatui plot, we may not be the best people for the job."

"But we are the ones here," Xingqiu argued.

"And therefore, we will be the ones to help," Chongyun agreed.

Xingqiu smiled. He knew there was a reason he liked dragging Chongyun off on these adventures. Maybe Chongyun was learning the lessons of chivalry after all.

Despite their spike of alarm, Aether was obviously skilled enough to handle a single hilichurl with ease. Unfortunately, the melee had attracted the attention of five more, and a mitachurl on top, and so they rushed in to help him. Albedo had already produced a sword as he set down a solar isotoma, and jumped into the fray alongside Aether.

Fischl and Oz, working in tandem, shot both arrows and electric projectiles at the hilichurls, and Sucrose flitted along the edges of the group, keeping the hilichurls crowded in close with bursts of Anemo.

Aether and Albedo ended up flanking the remaining mitachurl from different directions, and when the mitachurl swung its shield towards one, the other dashed in to strike it from behind. They could have chipped away at the gargantuan creature for the rest of the day, but Sucrose released into the air her Isomer 75/Type II, and the specimen fluttered its wings, catching the Electro from one of Oz's spitting shots, and making its crackle through the air with the sharp tang of ozone. The mitachurl yowled, dropping its shield, and slid to the ground next as well, disappearing into golden dust.

Thus they managed to defeat the hilichurls with impressive efficiency. So quickly, in fact, that afterwards they were all still left blinking, looking around, expecting some second wave to come down upon them. But the only movement was the wind blowing across the rolling grass. The fighting was over.

"Well," Albedo gestured towards the broken masonry that Aether had been heading for, "may as well proceed. That is why you came this way, isn't it?"

Aether, if he understood at all, caught the tone of the words, and grinned at Albedo: a bit sheepish, but entirely luminous. 

They did not reach Mondstadt by evening. In fact, they ended up camped by the road, huddling around a fire as they argued over what to cook. 

Sucrose offered to cook a balanced and nutritionally adequate meal, but had been shot down by Fischl, who'd done the hunting and insisted on appropriating everyone's ingredients for her own preferred dish, which Albedo shot down because from Fischl's description it sounded like nothing but a mound of meat on a plate. Sucrose silently agreed, because she had seen Fischl order food at Good Hunter before, and she knew Fischl had the palate of a picky pre-pubescent boy.

Between the contents of three bags, and what Fischl had hunted, it wasn't like they lacked options. It was only that they wildly diverged in personal tastes, and in the case of Aether, it was hard to say what his preference even was. 

But Aether seemed fascinated with the ingredients arrayed on the blanket, and even as Sucrose and Albedo bickered with Fischl over the food options, they could see Aether pick up one thing or another, touch it and smell it and nod in apparent recognition. Albedo, whose investment in the argument grew lesser as they failed to reach a compromise, looked to Aether instead.

Aether lifted a jar of crab roe, unscrewing the jar lid and smelling it. 

"Crab roe," Albedo said at Aether's questioning look. Albedo flipped to a particular page in his sketchbook, a quick drawing of a crab he'd made once. "Crab." Pointing to the jar, "Crab roe."

"Roe," Aether repeated slowly. There was a slice of fish among the ingredients, and Aether pointed to that. "Fish?" Albedo nodded. "Fish roe?" Aether asked, making a spinning gesture with his finger in the air.

Sucrose watched the gesture curiously. It must have been some cultural peculiarity from wherever Aether belonged, but she thought it meant he was asking about the general existence of fish roe, like he was testing out the rules of language. Albedo regarded Aether for a beat, quietly reaching the same conclusion as Sucrose, perhaps, because he nodded.

Fischl, seeing herself without an opponent for her verbal sparring as Sucrose and Albedo lent their attention to Aether, still could not resist inserting herself.

"If the traveler is familiar to the accouterments of gastronomy, he may yet resolve out conundrum by taking up the responsibilities of sustenance for the eve," Fischl said. Then without waiting for Sucrose or Albedo's opinion on the matter, she picked up a metal skewer and handed it to Aether.

Aether accepted the object with only mild puzzlement, before Fischl pointed to the fire and back to him.

"If it is your desire to cook for us," Fischl said, "you may proceed with whatever dish you believe would suit your Prinzessin."

Sucrose thought Fischl was biasing the experiment in the favor of a meat dish by offering the skewer, but she supposed Fischl did not care about scientific rigor much to begin with. At the least, this solved the ongoing argument.

And the skewers that Aether made were not bad at all, balanced with meat and vegetables and mushrooms for a good nutritional profile. Sucrose thought she would very much enjoy more of Aether's cooking.

Albedo ate Aether's dish slowly, eyes shining with barely bridled curiosity.

After Childe finished his own meal, and Lumine began her foray into the dessert menu, he walked over to the nearby merchants, who'd set up temporary stands in front of the inn. He stayed in sight of her, and Lumine glanced his way as well, as if assuring herself he wasn't just walking off, but the almond tofu was keeping her sufficient company.

Childe proceeded to have a talk with one of the peddlers, selling wares that had given him an idea, and the exchange went relatively quick.

Still, by the time he returned to the table, annoying gnats had already gathered and were swirling around Lumine;  those guys again.

The skinny geek from the road and his friend had caught up at the Wangshu Inn, and were currently seated two tables away, trying to act inconspicuous and failing miserably. The geek was hiding his face in a book, nose practically pressed to the pages at a distance that certainly wouldn't allow for reading, and his friend was sitting as stiff as a board, staring fixedly at some point in the distance, probably because he'd been instructed not to look at the people they were obviously there to stalk. Unfortunately, far from making him less conspicuous, the way he was looking into the distance bug-eyed was making him seem unhinged.

Childe sighed to himself. He would have known these two were up to something even if he wasn't a Harbinger, though the fact that they both had Visions and carried themselves like warriors would have pegged them as potential dangers anyway. Something about that geek with the book, especially, was making Childe's palm itch for a weapon.

But no, Childe had seen this look on his younger siblings: the skulking of children engaged in some scheme they thought was utterly brilliant, but that was probably just convoluted and stupid. Were these two idiots really willing to poke their noses in Fatui business? Probably. Would it work out for them? No, but Childe was going to smack them upside the head and send them along when they tried anything.

For the moment, Childe pretended to ignore them.

He slid into his seat instead, and grinned at Lumine as she scraped the last crumbs off her plate.

"I heard the almond tofu at this place is so good, it's the favorite of an adeptus," Childe said conversationally. "But you probably don't have much use for trivia at this point, huh?" he added at Lumine's blank look. She gave him a small smile in response, like she'd guessed what he said. "Anyway, I have something for you."

He presented her with the item he'd just purchased, instead. With a shake, the glider fanned open, the spokes of its wings snapping into place as it revealed the swirling patterns on its brown and yellow fabric feathers.

Lumine's attention was immediately drawn to the object, eyes sparking with excitement. Good, she got it.

"Glider," Childe said helpfully.

"Glider," she repeated, reaching out to touch it reverently. Her voice ran over the word with no evident difficulty or accent, like it was already smoothed by usage on her tongue. Maybe it was some kind of magic, Childe thought. Or maybe she just picked up on things quickly.

If it was the latter, then hopefully she'd pick up on this quickly as well. The sooner she stopped giving him heart attacks by dangling herself over cliffs, the better. Though, considering the height from which she'd fallen after getting shot down from the sky, maybe he was worrying about nothing. Still, he thought she'd have fun with this, and any diversion was useful if it kept her from thinking too hard about Childe's intentions.

Instructing her on how to put on the glider and snap it open it was easy enough. Gliders were made to be pretty fool-proof, anyway, and since this wasn't Mondstadt, she wouldn't even need a gliding license. 

Wanshu Inn was also a great spot for take-offs, a fact that the vendors who sold their wares took notice of. But he planned to start her off a bit closer to the ground. Which was to say, they clambered up the first flight of stairs and stopped at the lowest landing, overlooking the terrace. She climbed on top of the balustrade, teetering on it and looking down the relatively short distance to the ground with a trepidation that Childe thought was misplaced considering her usual shenanigans. But it was not the drop making her nervous, because her hands kept going to the straps of the glider and adjusting their unfamiliar weight.

Childe was just pondering whether pushing her off would come across as mean, when she jumped by herself and snapped the glider open with a brusque tug. Her legs flailed comically at the unfamiliar sensation, but she managed to glide the short distance without incident, and she even figured out how to change direction mid-air by herself, avoiding collision with a table.

When her feet were finally on the ground again, she hopped in place with excitement, and turned to look at him with glowing pride. Childe applauded and shouted congratulations.

"You want to try again?" he laughed as came dashing back up the stairs. He stopped laughing when she dashed clear past him and began climbing up to the inn itself. He had a sudden, sharp premonition of what she intended. "Hey! Whoa, slow down there!"

But she did not slow down, and Childe turned to follow the quick tap of her footsteps up to the inn, where she doubtless sought the highest point possible for take-off. He'd barely turned, however, when he heard a different pair of footsteps approaching.

"My liege, if I may have a moment?"

Childe repressed a sigh. It was the skinny geek again, coming up the stairs with an intent look on his face. One might've looked at the boy, noticed his expensive silk clothing and the cultured cadence of his speech, and dismissed him, but all Childe could see was the posture of a swordsman, the intent of a warrior. There was something sharp and dangerous under the guise of a rich merchant's son.

"Didn't I tell you to buzz off?" Childe said, and glanced around the terrace for his little friend in white. Nowhere to be seen.

"Such rudeness," the boy huffed, "I cannot see that your companion would abide it, if she knew better."

Annoyance flashed through Childe, that this stranger was poking his nose directly into Fatui business like that. If it had been on his own behalf, Childe would have trounced the kid on the spot, just to teach him a lesson. But since he didn't need to attract unwanted attention at this juncture, he had to be circumspect instead.

This was clearly a ploy. This one was here to distract him, while his friend went to work on Lumine. And what, convince her to go with them? When she didn't even speak the language and had no idea who they were? Fat chance. She'd already placed her trust in one shifty stranger, and that was Childe. These two didn't know what they were doing, and weren't going to get very far persuading Lumine.

So he only intended to scare the kid a little. Run him off quickly, so he could reach Lumine before anything really inadvisable happened. Childe didn't even take out his bow, and called his water blades to his hands. He moved quickly, but he expected it completely when the kid produced his own sword and stopped the attack.

Didn't quite expect that much speed, Childe had to admit. And he was momentarily distracted by the slash of water through the air--he was on the upper step, and taller than the kid, so he wasn't expecting the counterattack to come from an upward angle, but he disengaged from the parry and switched to a spear instead.

Now Childe could see it: the fire in the kid's eye, the skill honed to something far beyond what was expected from his age. Childe flattered himself a bit by thinking this might be what all of his opponents felt when they first came up against Tartaglia and discovered he outmatched their expectations, but then, Childe didn't think he was going to be outmatched by this Liyuen ponce. 

Still, he felt a smile crawl across his face as he realized this was going to be a good fight. Lumine could take care of herself for a bit. He had something to learn here, after all.

The symbol of Mondstadt was the first thing they saw: branches of the great tree reaching towards the sky. Aether squinted uncertainly in its direction, and then, as they continued walking towards it, his eyes widened.

"It is a trick of perspective," Albedo said. "From far away, it may appear smaller, but once you come up close, its size may surprise you."

"It's big," Aether said bluntly.

"Yes," Albedo agreed, "it's big."

They encountered no notable obstacles, save a few slimes that were quickly dispatched. Fischl's arrows popped them like balloons before either Aether or Albedo could even reach for their swords. Even if begrudgingly, Albedo had to admit to Fischl's capabilities.

The statue of Barbatos at the foot of the tree was the only other notable landmark in this place. Anemo crystalflies were more abundant here, and Aether looked at them with wide eyes, but he seemed just to circle in place for a few moments, awed by the canopy above him; distracted by the statue before him.

Albedo would have launched into a lecture about what might have caused the tree to grow to its current proportions, so large compared to other local flora, but Aether was unlikely to understand it entirely. So Albedo decided to merely let the Aether act under his own agency, and observe what he was going to do. 

As such, Albedo took out his notebook from his pack, and sat pretending to sketch some crystalflies. He signaled for Fischl to come closer, not out of any particular need, but only to ensure she would not interfere with his test.

She huffed, but trotted up next to him, a hand on her hip. She made no pretense of helping, instead scanning their surroundings with her one visible eye. 

Albedo plucked a windwheel aster, held it with his thumb against the page of his notebook as he began to sketch it in the negative space created by the short notes he had jotted about Aether.

"What does it appear to you that he is doing?" Albedo asked, to see how her observations measured against her own.

"He is gawping at his surroundings as a tourist would on his first sojourn abroad," Fischl replied.

"That could be true," Albedo hummed, and watched Aether out of the corner of his eye. 

Fischl, of course, made no such pretense, watching Aether openly and flipping her hair over her shoulder with an impatient flick of her hand. But she had all the appearance of a look-out instead of a scientist, and so Albedo considered her influence on Aether's behavior minimal.

"Do you think this is his first journey?" Albedo asked.

"I do not. I would sooner think he is well-traveled and yet easily impressed," Fischl replied. "Now he is climbing the tree."

"...I've just remembered he doesn't have a glider," Albedo remarked.

"Then we best hope he will not need it," Fischl replied.

Aether came back down again, following a little seelie spirit as it drifted along. His hands came up around it, though the spirit itself was not something that could be grasped physically. Still, the way he held his hands was like someone attempting to cup their palm around a candle flame in the wind; protective, if anything. Aether's face was grave with a sweet kind of concern.

What followed as he returned the seelie to its court was brief delight over found treasure, though after rifling through the chest, and bringing fistfuls of mora to Albedo and Fischl, Aether lost interest and wandered off to stare at some ducks. 

Albedo considered settling down for lunch, when Aether rounded the tree a final time and walked up to the statue of Barbatos.

He looked up at it again, like it was a puzzle he was trying to figure out, but this time he approached, setting a palm against its base.

Albedo had been looking at him only from the corner of his eye, and so, when the strange surge of energy happened, he saw it only as a flash, leaving an afterimage on his retina.

"What was that?" he asked.

Fischl had been looking directly at Aether, but she remained quiet for a moment, the look on her face unreadable. Albedo tried to stamp down his frustration, because Fischl was not Sucrose, to provide a report as quickly as he asked for it. Instead, she seemed to be choosing her words carefully.

"A strange power, to be sure," she said quietly, "but if I were to guess its kind, I would say... Anemo?"

Albedo walked up to Aether, who was staring at his hands, perplexed.

"Are you injured?" Albedo asked, and took Aether's hands in his, inspecting his palms.

Careful in his movements, Albedo slipped the gloves off Aether's hands, and Aether allowed it. But the skin was unblemished, and his fingers moved with no obvious injury. Albedo passed his fingers over palms rough with calluses and noticed nothing wrong.

"Does anything feel amiss?" Albedo asked.

Aether tilted his head, a thoughtful look on his face. 

Then he turned away, extended out his arm, and a blast of Anemo sent leaves and blades of grass flying. Albedo and Fischl stared for a few seconds.

Then Fischl gave a bark of laughter.

"'Tis as I said, then! Anemo." And she nodded to herself, like the fact that she was correct was the salient detail in this entire strange situation.

They were going to require a whole lot more tests, Albedo concluded.

Xiao tried to ignore some of the odder people who passed through the inn. He did not let himself get dragged into the tedious affairs of humans when those affairs did not concern him or his duty. But the Wangshu Inn really did attract an improbably high number of oddities, and today he was having difficulty quantifying this--whatever was happening--on the usual scale he used to determine whether his involvement was necessary.

There was the fight that was happening down below. From the balcony where he usually spent his time, he couldn't quite see it. He could hear a clash of blades, but mostly he sensed... a pulse. Some strange energy at the very edges of his perception, corrupt in ways that felt foreign. One moment it felt like nothing but the flare of a Vision's power, and in between one heartbeat and the next, he thought he could sense something darker and more dangerous being obscured by the brilliance of that Vision. More like something he could see only the afterimage of.

The second thing, that distracted him from paying attention to the first, was the girl with the glider, clambering up onto the balustrade.

This was another thing Xiao didn't generally concern himself with. If a human wanted to jump to their doom, it was not his business to interfere in that silliness; not that he'd ever seen one do so at Wangshu Inn until now. But this one, especially, possessed the means to glide to the ground safely, and so he should have been paying even less attention to her.

Except, this was another piece that did not quite fit. Another foreign element, and Xiao looked at her more closely than he would have otherwise. He might have dismissed her as merely an outlander looking at her from afar, but instinct told him not everything was as it seemed.

She was ready to jump off when another human came trotting up to her. Xiao recognized this one as an exorcist--his aura, tinged with the coolness of Cryo along the edges, glowed with positive energy. And yet it was no spirit that drew him up here.

The exorcist reached up to grab the girl's hand.

"Oh, hey, please don't jump!" he said quickly. 

This stopped her short of jumping off. She didn't get down from the balustrade, but she gave the exorcist a curious look. For a moment, it seemed like she was going to listen, climb back down.

But the sound of clashing swords suddenly rang clear and loud through the air, and her attention snapped towards the ground below.

Xiao had been listening to the clash for a while; long years of fighting had made him particularly sensitive to the sound. But the sharp echoes of it were rising in intensity, and that dark energy he was sensing seemed to pulse to the same rhythm. 

At the very least he would have to investigate.

He hoisted himself over the balcony ledge. The exorcist had not noticed him, as was Xiao's wont not to be noticed by mortals, and as for the outlander, he did not care to ponder whether she either noticed or understood. 

A few dashes through the air, a burst of Anemo to carry him in the correct direction, and then a plunge directly towards the ground brought him thundering down upon the two combatants. 

One of them, small and light on his feet, dashed out of the way with surprising agility for a human.

The other, taller and lankier, brown-haired, with a mask over his head, was not so quick to get out of the way. He rolled out of the way only as much as was necessary to avoid the direct impact, and then jumped directly into attacking Xiao with his blades.

The air was wet with Hydro energy, but something like sickly lightning crackled around this one. That pulse of corruption came from his Vision, glowing strangely and darkened by something that tasted vile and dangerous in the back of Xiao's throat. The smile on the man's face was wide, almost ravenous.

They split apart with glancing blows, and rounded one another in predatory prowls, taking stock of each other. Xiao was certain of the source of that corruption now, but this only complicated things. The one possessing that dark energy was human, and Xiao had been bound by contract to fight gods and demons. 

It made Xiao... pause. Uncertainty gnawed at him in the face of this confounding situation, but he might still have smote the evil before him if not for the fact that plenty of other mortals were nearby, and likely to be caught in the radius. Distressed inn guests and the vendors who plied their trades in the inn's shadow had all scattered like startled birds, but the inn employees were peering down over banisters and clustering at the margins, looking like they might interfere.

This was beginning to look like an ill-advised endeavor, and Xiao suspected he shouldn't have interfered in what may well have been just a mortal brawl. But whoever this demonic human had been fighting before, he'd scattered when Xiao entered the fray. He must have had some good sense, even if Xiao was starting to feel like he himself didn't.

"Fine by me," the human said, sounding more cheerful than he should about getting to fight an adeptus.

Xiao prepared to vault into the air and come striking down on his opponent.

And he would have. Certainly he was in the process of doing so.

In a laughable imitation of what Xiao had done just a minute earlier, the outlander came plunging down as well. Her shadow was only a fast-growing sliver in the moments before both Xiao and his opponent noticed her coming down, and they dodged back to have her land between them, her sword sending a shockwave as it rammed into the ground and splintered the wood. 

Geo energy roiled and heaved around her in a circle, jagged crystals stabbing outwards. Xiao jumped only just in time to avoid being impaled.

He thought, for a moment, that she intended to fight him--or fight his opponent at least. Fight someone. But instead she planted herself between them, her golden sword being held like a switch meant to threaten disobedient children, one hand on her hip, and she glared at the human.

She spoke something out loud to him, her tone scolding but her words incomprehensible.

To Xiao's bafflement, the corrupted human, steeped in dark energies, ready to fight as he had been just moments ago, had his berserker's smile wilt in the face of the outlander's indignation. He grimaced, instead.

"This really isn't the time--" he began saying to her, and she pointed a finger right to his face.

"No!" she said very clearly, like she was chiding a dog, "Bad!"

Then, apparently not through with this spectacle, she turned to Xiao next and did the same. 

"Stop," she snapped with more authority than Xiao thought anyone had endowed her with.

"You have no say over my actions," Xiao began, quite reasonably. "I have been bound by contract with Rex Lapis to protect the safety of this land--"

"Yeah, you can knock it off, she doesn't understand the language," the corrupted human said.

Xiao found himself wishing for the simplicity of monsters trying to kill him. At least he wouldn't be subjected to this kind of confusing rudeness coming at him from all sides.

True enough, the outlander began scolding the human in her foreign tongue, a rapid-fire stream of words apparently meant to cut him down to size.

The human looked rueful, to say the least, and his weapons dissolved like dew under the sun. The corrupted pulse of his Hydro Vision subsided until it was indistinguishable from the regular power of a normal Vision, and the tension of impending battle dissolved into something more like mild embarrassment.

Xiao shifted from one foot to another, uncertain if his intervention was necessary, or if it ever had been.

He ended up watching as the outlander took the strange human by the ear and dragged him off, still scolding.

Only belatedly, Xiao realized he had not noticed her to have a Geo Vision. He didn't know what to make of that, either. But after a while, he headed back up to the inn, pretending nothing had happened.

Aether waited patiently enough where Albedo had invited him to sit, though he couldn't help swinging his legs as he did. 

This would not be the first time Aether saw the inside of a laboratory. Glowing flasks, strange equipment and scattered notes would have clued him in regardless. Along two of the walls, blackboards had arcane calculations and diagrams scribbled onto them. 

It was also a bit messy, but Aether squelched the instinct to start tidying up, because he guessed Albedo and Sucrose knew where to find the things they needed even despite the apparent chaos. Currently, the two of them had their heads together, looking over notes and speaking rapidly about something. It looked important, but Aether didn't understand much of anything, for all that he thought he'd overheard his name a few times.

He wondered what Lumine might be doing right then, and where she might be. It caused an anxious knot in his stomach sometimes when he turned and she wasn't right there next to him to talk to, but if he'd learned anything, it was that the two of them stuck out whatever world they went to; it wouldn't be difficult to find one another, and then they would have plenty of interesting stuff to talk about.

Aether glimpsed a flash of red out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head to see a little girl in a red coat dash across the room and throw her arms around Albedo's middle to clamp onto him in a tight hug.

Albedo broke off from his conversation with Sucrose to pat the child's head, and as she started talking rapidly, he even knelt down to nod seriously at whatever she was saying. Aether thought it was kind of cute. She seemed like a little sister or something, if for no other reason than because she seemed a bit young to be a lab assistant.

Albedo spoke to her gently, and Aether guessed he was saying he was busy. He was startled, however, when Albedo gestured towards him, and the little girl turned around to look at him with large, bright eyes. She turned suddenly shy in that way little kids sometimes did around strangers, and she pulled on the straps of her backpack, adjusting its weight.

But Albedo said something to her that must have been reassuring, because she glanced up at him once, and then back at Aether with interest.

She approached Aether confidently, and stuck out a hand.

"Hello! I'm Klee," she said, and then added rapidly a few more words, and Albedo's name.

Aether tried to parse the sentence starting with the words he recognized as nouns.

"Big brother?" Aether repeated, tilting his head curiously.

Klee nodded like Aether had actually understood something important, and then began speaking excitedly again. Albedo interjected a remark, a short conversation ensued, and by the end of it, Aether was relegated to a table in the corner of the laboratory where Klee was busy showing him her crayons and her drawings.

He didn't think this was just to keep him or Klee out of the way, because Albedo sat at the farthest end of the table with his notebook, alternately sketching on one page and jotting down notes on the opposite one. But Klee was the one leading this lesson, apparently.

She handed Aether a sheet of paper, very seriously, and then opened the crayon box and shook it to slide out the crayons. She chattered happily as she began drawing, and Aether watched her as she drew. He was hesitant to begin drawing on his own sheet, unsure if she expected him to produce a specific image. 

But as Klee's picture came together, she drew herself--a red blobby figure holding something in stick-like fingers--and then a taller figure that looked suspiciously like Albedo, and she finished off the image by framing the two figures with an alarming amount of fire. Aether looked at the red and orange crayons closely , and sure enough, they were much stubbier than all the other color crayons. This was a common subject matter for her, apparently.

Having finished her drawing, and apparently satisfied with it, judging by the nod she gave to it, Klee picked it up from the table and brandished it towards Aether with a smile. 

Since Aether couldn't express his appreciation verbally yet, and because he didn't want her to think he didn't like it, he smiled widely and clapped his hands.

Klee looked bashfully pleased by this, but when she peered at Aether's paper, she frowned. She pointed to the blank sheet and pouted as she spoke in a disappointed tone of voice. Then, apparently concluding that Aether was a bit slow, she picked up the black crayon and placed it directly in Aether's hand, pointing to the paper more emphatically.

Aether glanced to Albedo, but Albedo was studiously sketching in his notebook and avoiding eye contact. And Klee was looking at Aether with wide, expectant eyes, so Aether began drawing.

He wasn't any better than Klee, strictly speaking. He and Lumine had drawn before, had roughly imitated everything from styles of art they encountered to children's chalk drawings, but always with an amateur's hand--always for fun. He supposed this had to be for fun too, so he tried not to fret over getting it right and just go with whatever seemed appropriate.

He used the black crayon for outlining the two figures, but moved on to the yellow and brown and blue crayons to color everything in. In green, he drew a couple of hills as no more than curved lines at the bottom of the page, and in blue he sketched a few filler lines for the color of the sky. But he used the yellow and brown to draw himself and Lumine, wings spread, swords at the ready. Since Klee had drawn herself and Albedo holding hands, Aether used this little detail for his own drawing, and the slightly lopsided drawings of himself and Lumine held hands.

It was around the time Aether was adding little lines of blue on Lumine's dress that he felt how closely Albedo had leaned over in interest. The crayon faltered and stopped on the page, and Albedo looked up to see what had caused this interruption, and suddenly they seemed to be even closer even though they had not moved their places so much as their angles. Albedo blinked. Aether blinked back.

And then Aether broke off the gaze and looked down to hide the heat rising to his face.

Klee, fortunately, noticed his drawing just then, and chattered happily. She clapped her hands, just as Aether had.

Albedo's excitement was not as visible, but quite politely, he pointed to the picture, and tilted his head in a question. Aether pushed the page towards him, nodding stiffly.

The following half an hour or so was spent on a mission to decipher the drawing's meaning. Aether told them Lumine's name, and he managed to make it clear she was his sister, assuming the words he'd just learned meant sister and brother. They ran into a bit of a hitch when trying to explain relative ages.

Yes, he was older, but whenever that question came up, Lumine would reply, with a deadpan stare, 'We're twins, we're the same age'. Which was also technically true. He didn't know the word for twins in this language yet, so Aether resorted to using the crayon and tracing a dotted line between their heights on the page, demonstrating how they were the same. This was also not quite true--in real life he had a few inches of height on Lumine--but it was a helpful metaphor.

Klee was the one to understand this before Albedo--little kids could place a lot of importance on heights, and a taller kid usually signified an older one--and she ran to one of the laboratory's shelves, retrieving a book. She opened to an illustration of two people in knight armor, their features identical.

"Twins!" Klee said. Then, more shyly, as if asking confirmation from Aether, "Twins?"

Aether nodded, and Klee hopped in place, apparently quite pleased to have figured it out.

Albedo looked utterly fascinated by this, and opened his notebook to jot something down. That was when Aether saw what Albedo had been working on: a detailed pencil sketch of Aether bent over the table, drawing in crayon. 

He averted his eyes quickly, like he'd seen something indecent.

After drawing came a variety of small, strange tasks, such a logic puzzle that involved matching colors on a cube, or a balance exercise that required traversing the room with a flask of water on his head without spilling any of it. Aether wondered if these tests were devised for Klee's amusement, because she did seem entertained enough by them, and even tried a few herself. But it wasn't an unpleasant way to spend an hour or two, when it came down to it.

Later on, Fischl made her appearance at the lab, and Albedo broke off to go talk to her. He had taken Aether's crayon drawing and was showing it to Fischl, which Aether felt mildly mortified by, considering his skill level, but he heard Lumine's name, and it occurred to him that they might be planning to track down his sister. His heart did a little hopeful leap at the thought.

Klee took Aether's hand and tugged on it, and when he turned to her she introduced him to the toy dangling from her pack. Dodoco, she said its name was--or at least that was what Aether understood.

He thought it was getting much easier to understand people, but Klee in particular. Children already knew how to communicate simply, and tended to be more expressive than adults. Aether suspected that Fischl and Albedo used more words than the average person in this world tended to.

Which was to say, when Klee conspiratorially asked if he wanted to go 'fishing', he thought he had a good grasp on what that word meant, and he nodded agreement.

She had clamped onto Childe's hand as she dragged him away pretending to be cross, and he had followed with the mien of a scolded child until that moment, but now that the jig was up, he dug his heels in and stopped Lumine in her tracks as well. He turned his wrist smoothly, and the grip she had on his hand turned to him grasping her hand instead.

He asked a question of her, incredulous and a bit offended, and Lumine could gather he was asking if she was only pretending to be mad at him.

Which, yes, obviously. That was a great trick that she and Aether used all the time to get out of tricky situations, especially when they weren't sure what was happening. People didn't like to get in the middle of fights between two strangers, and all it took was just a couple of minutes of dithering due to social awkwardness for her and Aether to make their escape.

Childe wasn't in on the plan, though he played along perfectly, and now Lumine felt a little jab of guilt that he'd thought she was genuinely angry at him.

Well, she'd been a bit genuinely angry. That seemed like the last place anyone should be starting fights, and she ruined the woodwork  quite a bit as she stomped down and interrupted. But she got a chilling sense of power radiating from that person Childe was rearing to fight, and she didn't much like the aura of danger Childe had been exuding either. That had the signs of a lot of impending collateral damage.

She couldn't very well explain this to him--or she couldn't explain it well--but she thought maybe he was smart enough to understand. So she looked up at him, wide-eyed and pleading him to understand.

He looked back at her with a thundercloud over his face, but the tension seeped out of his shoulders slowly, and he sighed, shaking his head. Maybe she was forgiven, because he raised a hand to tug on a lock of her hair--not hard, more like playful--and he muttered something she couldn't quite understand before snickering.

He pointed over his shoulder, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the inn, and asked a question. What... did she... something about what she thought would happen?

She couldn't explain, but she demonstrated: raised a finger to her throat and made a cutting gesture, accompanied by a squelching noise.

He laughed, shook his head like he was utterly certain he could have won that fight, but Lumine didn't quite believe it. She'd seen Childe fight a little, but she suspected there were more dangerous things in this world than him.

The argument, hindered in its communication as it was, ended as Childe took his bag from her, and swung it over his own shoulder instead. They began along the road again, heading south at a leisurely pace. 

He didn't release her hand. If anything, he adjusted his grip, lacing their fingers together.

This flustered Lumine at first. She'd never had someone hold her hand quite like this; she and Aether still clasped hands like little kids when they needed each other's support, and across the numerous worlds they passed through, local custom sometimes had her having to hold someone's  hand for one reason or another, but the way Childe was doing it felt decidedly more intimate than she was used to. 

His palm was warm and rough, but strangely pleasant, and his thumb rubbed idle circles against her skin. She kept glancing up at him, trying to figure out his intentions, but he wasn't looking back, instead walking at the same languid pace.

So as she was overthinking what this all meant, it took her a while to notice that he wasn't. Letting. Go.

The purpose didn't even occur to her at first. But as she was distracted by interesting things along the road--a lizard or a weird rock or a bush of berries--she would sometimes drift off towards them, and be stopped short by Childe's unyielding hand-holding, and be flustered anew as she was reminded of it. Nearly an hour passed and the shadows were slanting long and red along the landscape before she finally understood that he was trying to keep her from straying off.

Which, well... had she truly been that terrible about it?

Only now she just wanted her hand back, to stretch out her fingers and shake off the palm sweat, and he still wasn't letting go. She stopped subtly trying to squeeze her hand out, and halted in the middle of the road, digging in her heels as he had done earlier that day.

Childe continued for two more steps, probably thinking he was going to drag her along, but that misconception lasted only for one arm's length before he was yanked to a stop like coming to the end of a tether. He turned to Lumine with a gobsmacked expression on his face, and tested his pull once or twice before concluding that Lumine wasn't going anywhere she didn't care to, and he gave her a questioning look instead.

Lumine raised their joined hands and wiggled her fingers.

He blinked, before letting go of her hand with a sheepish grin, and rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. 

They were not very far off from a small stream; she could hear the trickle of it in the distance, and as they continued, the road intersected with the stream, and a small bridge passed over the water. A tree grew right beside the bridge, laden with fruit, and Lumine pointed to it excitedly. Those were apples, she was sure. She'd seen them often on other worlds.

She ran to the tree, picking up a few of the apples on the ground, but they were bruised and dirty.

In a fit of gallantry, Childe used his height to his advantage, and picked a few apples from the branches Lumine couldn't quite reach. He offered the apples to her with a flourish, and she pretended to consider them gravely for a few moments before nodding in approval.

The sun was starting to set, and perhaps Childe had meant for them to spend the night at the inn, but it would have to be out on the road now. The hollowed ruins of an old tower proved an adequate enough spot to camp for the night, especially once Childe cleared out the nearby hilichurl camps. Lumine didn't really think those hilichurls were close enough to bother them, but Childe seemed to have a lot of energy to burn off.

The apples would make an adequate enough dinner, especially with the large lunch they'd had, but Lumine wanted to wash them first, and so, as Childe cut his way through the hilichurls across the stream, Lumine knelt down by the water and started washing the apples.

The water was clear and cold, and it tasted almost sweet when she drank it. The landscape around them seemed vast and ancient in its own way; maybe it was the ruins that littered the placidly rolling hills. But it felt more than that, like the ground itself was compounded with history. Lumine forgot the apples by the stream as she rose to her feet and tried to look more closely at the surrounding.

Had there been a war here, long ago? Was this why there were ruins stretching into the distance?

A step. Another step. She strayed, again, going farther away from the campsite than she intended.

A curious sight: slumped against the crumbled remains of an old wall, a massive metal automaton sat motionless. She'd been to worlds where things like this were used as weapons or soldiers, or some uncanny combination of both. Was that what this was? Or was it something completely harmless? Surely, this close to the road, nothing dangerous would be allowed.

She stepped closer, but the thing still didn't move. When she leaned down to touch it, the metal was cold. She didn't know why she expected otherwise.

She turned back, deciding she would investigate the next day, when the sun would be up, but after only a few steps, she heard a metallic click and whir behind her, and some terrible instinct made her stomach swoop in alarm. Childe had been coming towards her, but he looked up and over her head with wide eyes, and then he drew his bow.

Lumine had her sword out as she whirled around. The giant automaton turned its head towards her, a single glowing eye fixing her with its gaze. It took a step, before an arrow came flying right into its eye.

The mechanism seemed to jam for a few seconds, the gears clacking in a broken staccato, but then the second arrow missed its eye by quite a wide margin, and the automaton righted itself, straightened--fixed its gaze back on Lumine.

She'd gotten the idea by now, however, and even as it leaned down to catch her between its large hands, she was already dancing out of its range. It rose upright again, attempted to follow her, but there was something she wanted to try.

She called up the strange power in her fingertips, and a rocky construct burst from the ground, rotund and jagged. It was large enough to jut against the front of the automaton, and the mechanoid creature paused for a moment, before figuring out how to go around it. But Lumine already scaled the construct in two swift steps, and when the burning single eye turned back towards her, she struck it with her sword. It smashed to pieces.

Before the automaton could recover, she jabbed the entire length of her sword point-first into the broken orbit of its eye. The hilt of the sword juddered so hard it made her teeth rattle, but the mechanisms inside stuck and jammed around the length of the sword. 

The automaton fell back into a sitting position again. Lumine stood in place, a bit surprised that the fight would be over so soon, but that was when Childe came down like a tsunami wave, waterblades tracing arcs of droplets through the air as he proceeded to segment the automaton into tinier pieces than Lumine thought necessary.

This wasn't overkill, either, because right before Childe finished disposing of the thing, it tried to get up again. It couldn't quite move all its pieces anymore, however.

Lumine clambered down from her rocky construct, and Childe turned towards her, his nostrils flaring as he breathed heavily, hair tousled and damp. For a brief moment, there was something wild in his eyes, but when his eyes fell on her, whatever it was receded like a wave into the ocean, leaving behind a too-friendly smile; wide but hollow.

She patted his arm, asking if he was alright. He patted her head in return, probably asking the same.

"Alright?" Lumine repeated.

"Yes, are you alright?" he repeated.

Lumine huffed a bit, wondering why she wouldn't be, but she jabbed a finger at his chest to punctuate each of his words as she repeated them back at him.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

He paused for a second--honestly, he was a bit slow on the uptake--before nodding slowly in response.

"Good," Lumine said. Then, "Apples for dinner?"

He squinted at her with open suspicion. Maybe he was wondering how much of the language she knew, but really, it wasn't that much at all. Maybe a little more than he guessed, but she was content to keep him guessing, so she looked up at him with large, guileless eyes in return.

He snorted in the end, and gave the lock of hair framing her face another playful tug, before ushering her back to the campsite.

Kaeya liked to believe he was quite good at his job. It was no small feat, keeping abreast of everything going on in and around Mondstadt. He had an entire flock of little birdies to tell him things, and he still had to keep an ear to the ground himself to make sure nothing was missed.

That being said, some things were easier to hear about than others.

The explosions were distant, but not so much so that it didn't make windows rattle in their frames. Somewhere on Cider Lake, the fish were running scared, Kaeya was certain.

He waved off the knights who were about to break off from their patrols to go investigate, and they nodded their acknowledgments tiredly, because they knew from experience what the commotion was about, and thus not terribly eager to go intervene. Kaeya, for his part, was not exactly enthused by the prospect either, but he still hurried past Mondstadt's walls, and across the bridge towards the lake shore.

He didn't have to walk far, just a short stroll towards the Whispering Woods, and soon enough he came across the source of the explosions, even though they ceased as he got closer.

Klee was the expected perpetrator, of course, but not her companion, so Kaeya stopped just out of sight of them, peering from the shade of the foliage, unnoticed.

The stranger in exotic clothing was holding one of Klee's explosives over his head, while Klee was jumping up and down, demanding her bomb back. The stranger shook his head, trying to look stern even with a child bouncing in circles around him and whining.

Kaeya watched in quite some amusement, because Klee was rounding the stranger, trying to find some angle at which she might jump and snag the explosive, but the height difference was not in her favor. She must have realized that as well, because she stopped her jumping and looked up at the stranger, obviously reassessing her tactics.

What Kaeya expected, in truth, was for Klee to burst into tears, whether out of sincere frustration or in some last ditch effort to emotionally manipulate.

What she did instead was reach for the stranger's long blond braid and yank on it, hard enough that his head whipped back and he yelped. The explosive almost dropped from his hands, and that was when Kaeya decided it was time to intervene.

"Well, well," Kaeya declared, as he sauntered out of the woods as though he was only just now coming across them.

The blond stranger turned startled golden eyes towards Kaeya, freezing in place.

Klee turned around with a gasp, before she came running towards Kaeya, her lower lip wobbling and her arms spread wide. She was right up to him, ready to latch onto his legs, when Kaeya caught her up in his arms instead, and picked her up to perch her on his hip.

"Kaeya, tell Mr. Aether to give me my bomb back!" Klee demanded in a long whine.

Kaeya smiled thinly, already given a name to go with the stranger's face.

"Aether, huh?" he asked, looking the stranger up and down. "Have you been bullying out little Spark Knight, then?"

Kaeya's voice was chilly with fake cheer, in that way that so many people found threatening, but Aether stared back a little bit confused, and not at all alarmed.

"Oh, Klee forgot!" she smacked her forehead dramatically. "Mr. Aether can't talk because he hasn't learned yet." Then, more thoughtfully, "Maybe that's why he won't give me my bomb back even though I asked for it. But you're really really tall! You can get it back for me!"

Parsing this interesting string of information, Kaeya could only raise an eyebrow. So the stranger was not just foreign, but so much so he didn't speak the language? Where could such a person have come from? 

Well, it explained some things, at least. He probably just took Klee's bomb away because he didn't know how to ask her to stop.

"I'll give it a try," Kaeya said, placing Klee on the ground, and walking up to Aether.

Aether looked warily at Kaeya. He cradled the bomb to his chest at first, unsure, looking at Kaeya's extended hand. Kaeya waited patiently, holding out his hand in what was an obvious request, and after a few more moments of deliberation, as Aether slowly concluded Kaeya must have been a responsible adult, he reached out and surrendered to him Klee's explosive.

"Can I have it now?" Klee asked, already jumping up and down again while holding the straps of her backpack in place.

"Ah, ah," Kaeya chided, keeping it out of her reach, "first I'd like to know where you met such an... interesting character as your new friend here."

"He's big brother Albedo's friend," Klee replied, her eyes fixed to the bomb in Kaeya's hand like a hungry dog staring at a piece of meat. 

"...Is he?" Kaeya wondered.

Albedo's friend from somewhere far away? How far, and where? He looked Aether up and down more closely. Searching for something Kaeya was sure he would recognize.

"Klee, why don't you go home? It's almost meal time," Kaeya suggested, half-distracted.

"I'm not hungry," Klee pouted.

Kaeya handed her the bomb, and she made a gleeful little sound.

"If you blow this one far away enough from Mondstadt and don't break anything," Kaeya said, "you'll have just enough time to get back home before you get really hungry, don't you think? I can make it an order, and then you won't get in trouble."

"Really?" Klee gasped. Then, more seriously, "I mean, yes sir, Clavarary Captain," she said, not even close to getting the word right, and too excited to notice.

Klee skipped away, bomb cradled to her chest and she sang a little song.

Left alone with Kaeya, Aether was just now starting to look nervous.

"As for you," Kaeya said, smiling sharply, speaking a language he hadn't practiced in years, "you wouldn't happen to have come here from Khaenri'ah, now would you?"

Aether tilted his head. Not a flicker of comprehension or recognition. Kaeya wasn't expecting much anyway.

"Not from that dreary place, then," he concluded in the common Mondstadt tongue, and tapped his chin in thought. "Still a mystery though." 

Kaeya grinned then, one of his warm and friendly expressions that this outlander had not yet learned to be wary of. He extended one hand, gestured to himself with the other, and spoke his name clearly.

Aether shook Kaeya's hand, a small smile cracking across his face like a summer sunrise.

"Hello," Aether said, revealing that he did, in fact, learn some words of the language. More suspicious if he played completely dumb, after all.

If this was an act, Kaeya thought, it was a masterful one. He was already wondering how he could help Aether along. Undoubtedly very dangerous if Aether was so inclined.

Ushering Aether back to Mondstadt was not all that difficult, when it came down to it. Aether came along with Kaeya without any protest or difficulty. He probably thought he was going to get returned to Albedo's lab, like a wayward chick returned to its mother's nest, but Kaeya considered himself a man with better things to do.

No, he took Aether to Angel's Share instead. 

The tavern was bright with the clamor of the evening patrons and the bards who plied their trade there, and Aether looked around with evident interest. He sat at the bar when Kaeya gestured him towards the seat, but he also stared at the menu completely dumbfounded, and then looked at Kaeya with a helpless cast to his face.

"Ah, I suppose you will have to rely on my good taste to order for you," Kaeya remarked, because he was certain Aether understood more than he revealed.

"Is he even old enough to drink?" groused Diluc from the other side of the counter, where he was wiping some glasses. 

Kaeya expected him to be there; Diluc did insist on helping on busy nights, especially because this was his own quaint way of keeping an ear to the ground. Now Diluc was looking Aether over attentively, though to someone who was not as familiar with Diluc as Kaeya was, the expression might have just parsed as grumpiness.

"So will you insist on inflicting grape juice onto innocent visitors to our grand city?" Kaeya sighed theatrically.

Diluc snorted. Not that Aether seemed to notice Diluc; one of the wait had staff passed by with a place of hash browns, and Aether's nostrils flared at the smell. He sat up straighter, craning his neck to see the food, and then turned towards Kaeya, tugging at his cape like a hopeful little puppy.

"It doesn't seem our visitor is as interested in libations with an empty stomach," Kaeya said, grinning. "I hope the proprietor takes no exception to eating as he does to drinking?" He raised an eyebrow at Diluc, who leveled back a stare.

"I'll have something made for him," Diluc said. 

Maybe it was the prospect of food, because Aether turned around in his seat at the bar counter, and only then noticed Diluc.

"Hello, Master Diluc!" he chirped, waving his hand in greeting.

Diluc bobbed his head in greeting, before turning to give some instruction to the kitchens.

He conveniently failed to look at Kaeya, who was in the rare position of just picking his jaw off the floor. Diluc knew Aether? Where had they met? How long had Aether been in the city? Was this not his first time in Angel's Share?

Head buzzing with suspicion, and a kind of professional envy that Diluc of all people had learned of something beforehand, Kaeya gave Aether another once-over. His curiosity when entering Angel's Share had been genuine, so perhaps he had truly never been inside before. But then, where else would Aether have met Diluc?

Any shock Kaeya experienced was not very long-lived. One could not let the unexpected throw them off for too long in Kaeya's line of work, so he leveled out to cold rationality soon enough, and tried to think about the situation objectively. Diluc could be a more trusted source of information than Klee or Albedo, as long as Kaeya navigated the situation carefully.

Diluc returned from the back, and took out the ingredients to mix Death After Noon--a bottle of absinthe, a pitcher of iced champagne--without Kaeya even asking. Kaeya propped his chin on his  fist as he watched Diluc through lowered eyelashes.

"May I order for our new little friend before he wastes away from starvation?" Kaeya asked.

"I already ordered the kitchens to make something for him." Diluc said in response.

Kaeya raised an eyebrow and gave his best cat-ate-the-canary grin. "Ohoho, so you're well-acquainted enough to know even his preferences!" 

"I know the size of his appetite, at least," Diluc muttered. He continued mixing in silence, and as he placed the drink in front of Kaeya, it became apparent he wasn't going to be very forthcoming at all. If Kaeya was going to fish for something useful, it seemed he was going to have to put some effort into it.

Diluc proceeded to pour out a glass of apple cider as well, placing this one in front of Aether.

"I trust this means I won't have to be picking up the tab for the both of us?" Kaeya asked, gesturing vaguely towards Aether.

Diluc hummed in thought, and crossed his arms as he thought.

"You might, actually," Diluc says. "I don't know if he even knows what mora is, much less have any."

This statement was so absurd, that Kaeya was certain at first that Diluc was joking. Not as rare an instance as people assumed of Diluc, and when it happened it was with the same flat affect. But Kaeya eschewed assumptions, and looked to Aether instead. 

Aether was sipping his cider delicately through the straw in the provided glass, his expression turning from focused to delighted as the aroma of the drink registered.

"Do you have any mora, Aether?" Kaeya asked, speaking slowly and clearly.

Aether's guileless golden eyes turned to Kaeya, and some manner of thoughts were visibly ticking behind them.

"Mora?" Aether repeated, mouthing the word like it was the first time he'd said it. Might well have been.

Kaeya took out a shiny coin, flipped it once, twice; the gold caught warm lamplight, and Aether's attention. When Kaeya placed the coin on the counter top, Aether leaned in to inspect it.

"Mora?" Aether repeated, looking at Kaeya for confirmation.

"Yes," Kaeya said agreeably. Then he clicked his tongue, almost chiding. "My, what a curious individual you are, Aether. One would assume you have been living under a rock until now."

Where had Albedo unearthed such a person?

Like why Xiangling and her friends were peeking out of the kitchen and looking in their direction in the least subtle attempt at covert surveillance Zhongli had ever witnessed. Childe did not notice, mostly because he was so busy scowling at the chopsticks and painstakingly carrying small bites of food to his mouth without dropping anything. 

But Xiangling, along with the second son of the Feiyun Commerce Guild and the young exorcist who was always in their company, noticed Zhongli looking over, and scrambled back to hide behind the doorframe.

Lumine was restraining a smile--poorly--and that might have been at Childe's antics, but she had a clear line of sight to the kitchen door too.

"Perhaps just this once," Zhongli said while rising, "I will ask Xiangling whether she has alternate cutlery."

"Hah, you don't need to do that, Mr. Zhongli! Really!" Childe protested, but by the wide relieved smile on his face, he probably didn't mean it.

"It's no bother, though there is a chance Xiangling may not be able to accommodate this request," Zhongli forewarned.

Childe groaned and pressed a hand over his face.

Nobody stopped Zhongli from slipping into the kitchen, where Xiangling was standing by the oven throwing a random assortment of ingredients into a wok, the second son of the Feiyun Commerce Guild was sitting in a corner with his face hidden entirely in a book, and the young exorcist was sweating profusely with a whole carafe of ice water pressed to the side of his face.

"Oh, Mr. Zhongli, what are you doing back here?" Xiangling asked, as if she'd been so focused on her cooking that only now she noticed him. One of the items thrown into the wok was a whole unpeeled onion, but Zhongli chose not to remark on this.

"I couldn't help but notice the attention that my dinner companions seemed to have garnered," Zhongli replied.

This provoked a reaction, at least. Guilt on Xiangling's part, embarrassment from the exorcist. 

"We... we were just..." Xiangling began, at a loss. "Uh..."

The exorcist, his face turning a shade of red that couldn't be explained by the heat in the kitchen alone, upended the carafe of water over his own head.

Zhongli and Xiangling both looked at him, stumped. But the second son of the Feiyun Commerce Guild snapped his book closed decisively, nothing but accusation in his face. What was his name? Xingqiu. Zhongli remembered now; a talented young man. Well-educated and well-mannered.

"We need not explain ourselves to him," Xingqiu hissed to his two companions, with the desperation of one who knew his accomplices were prone to inopportune confessions. 

Zhongli cleared his throat.

"Perhaps a contract will help ease your mistrust?" he offered.

Xingqiu gave Zhongli a long, searching look, though his interest had nonetheless been piqued. Given Zhongli's pretext for being in the kitchen, however, they did not have time for extensive negotiations.

"If you tell me why you are following the young woman at my table, and I judge your reasons well-founded, I will aid in your endeavor," Zhongli offered.

This must have been a better offer than they were expecting, because there was a palpable sense of relief among the three youths.

The story they hastily told him was intriguing to say the least, though doubtless filled with both holes and exaggerations. Lumine did not seem to be a hostage or in any way distressed by the situation, but Zhongli also guessed she did not know enough about this world yet to judge correctly who to put her trust in. And Childe was perhaps not as bad as some, though the fact that he nearly came to blows with Xiao was not exactly inspiring Zhongli with confidence.

No, whatever the Fatui as an organization may have had planned for Lumine, it would not be Childe's fault, but neither would Childe hesitate to execute on such a plan. Zhongli could see why concerned strangers may wish to intervene in this situation.

When Zhongli returned to the table, he bore a set of cutlery for Childe, and Childe in turn looked endlessly relieved.

Lumine still appeared to have no issue with the chopsticks, and ate at a pace that outmatched them both. She also had a curious expression as she looked between the kitchen door and Zhongli, raising an eyebrow as if in question.

Zhongli only smiled, attempting to look reassuring.

New winds blew into Mondstadt every day. The gates were always wide open to travelers, even under the watchful eyes of the Knights of Favonius, and though it was not nearly as cosmopolitan a place as Liyue Harbor or Fontaine, there was always someone new to meet.

Venti knew this better than anyone. After all, he had to acquaint and reacquaint himself with all of Mondstadt's inhabitants every time he woke up again.

But there was something altogether more peculiar on the air this time around.

A strange taste. Cold, but prickling on the tongue, like bubbly wine. The way stars would taste, Venti thought, if one were to distill the night sky into a bottle and try to drink it.

It clung to strange places: the great tree in Windrise, his newest favorite tavern in Mondstadt. Perhaps whoever had brought in that taste of the stars was long passed. But he had only just woken up from his slumber, and so he was particularly sensitive to everything new and everything that had stayed the same.

He had to make certain everything was in order, after all. Though he had woken with the thought of seeking out Dvalin, he did not yet know if there was anything else in Mondstadt that needed to be set right y him. Weakest of the archons as he was, Venti had learned to apportion his strength carefully.

He spent most of his drowsiest days after waking up in Mondstadt's streets, strumming his lyre and singing his songs, and he watched the people carefully for any trace of worry or fretfulness. Yet, the concerns of Mondstadtians were commonplace, and entirely mundane, so the absolute worst development Venti had woken up to was the dismaying news that there was now a minimum drinking age for purchasing alcohol in taverns. A reaction to the disruptive behavior of some adolescents in centuries past, for which Venti now found himself punished because of his youthful appearance.

Ah, but if the worst thing he had to contend with would be Mondstadt's much stricter vendor laws, Venti considered himself lucky. Dvalin could be his primary concern, and considering the rough state that the dragon had been in the last time they'd seen each other, Venti could only hope he had not slept too long to make a difference, or too little to have gathered the strength he needed to help.

Still, Venti found himself restlessly wandering Mondstadt's streets, trying to find anything amiss.

It was mere chance that he looked up one sunny afternoon, all the way to the great statue of Barbatos, and spotted the small figure sitting in the cradle of its hands. Venti squinted at first, surprised and dismayed, but that was undoubtedly a stranger occupying his usual spot; and a particularly carefree one! Did Venti look like that when he sat there, legs swinging in over the edge, no concern for falling? He hadn't thought he had imitators until now.

It was no effort at all to take a gale of wind up to the statue's hands. He had done this countless times. Yet he felt himself drop into the stone palms flat-footed. There was the aura of stars again, but also the familiar tang of Anemo beneath, his own power reflected like a familiar wine in an unfamiliar container.

He noticed Venti quickly, for all that Venti's arrival had been no louder than a breeze, and he turned around with wide golden eyes to stare at Venti.

Venti bowed with a flourish of his cape, and gave a winning smile. "I didn't meant to startle you, though I can say your own appearance is just as unexpected! I am Venti the bard. And who might you be?"

"Hello," the stranger greeted, mouth shaping the word slowly and carefully. "I am Aether."

The words were accented like a Mondstadtian, but spoken slowly and carefully like a second tongue. Venti had a good ear for that kind of thing.

Venti walked up next to Aether, seating himself on the fingertips of the hand Aether did not occupy.

"I don't mean to assume, but I get the sense you are much newer to Mondstadt than most people," Venti said.

Aether's face flickered uncertainly, and he seemed to have to think about it before nodding slowly, "Yes?" Again, each sound painstakingly enunciated.

"Perhaps I can try something to make communication easier," Venti suggested, and gathered in his palm the essence of Anemo.

Words, after all, were carried on the breath, and the winds could tell him more than just the words of every song--though in all honesty, that was all Venti tended to use this aspect of his powers for. Language tended to change rapidly, and he would have otherwise had difficulty keeping up with every tongue considering how rarely he woke.

But for once, the wind was silent. Wherever this stranger was from, his language was not one spoken in Teyvat, and the glowing ball of Anemo in Venti's hand simmered and frothed without yielding anything at all.

Venti resisted the urge to look up to the sky, so he looked at Aether instead.

An aura of stars, indeed, and Anemo that had nestled inside Aether, but no Vision on his person. He was something altogether stranger than just a stranger.

"Well," Venti said, somewhat surprised. "It was worth a try, even if it didn't fly."

"Fly?" Aether repeated. He was enthralled by the glow of Anemo still in Venti's hand, and reached over to touch. The energy was intangible, so his fingers went right through it, but when Aether pulled back, the Anemo clung to his fingers, and he waved his hand to release the tendrils of energy.

Venti gave a little giggle, and Aether gave a suspicious little frown in response.

The Anemo dissipated from Venti's palm, returning to the wind like dandelion seeds; Aether sneezed like a little kitten when the motes tickled his nose, and Venti couldn't help an actual full-bellied laugh this time. Aether looked affronted in response.

"Shall I soothe with a song?" Venti offered, and brandished his lyre. Then, more curiously asked, "You do know what a song is, don't you?"

"Song," Aether repeated in that careful way of his. "Music. Singing. A bard." Then he pointed to the lyre, and gave Venti a questioning look. "A...?"

"Lyre," Venti supplied.

"Lyre," Aether repeated, and then his face scrunched up in thought. "Liar? Lie?"

"Ah, two different words! A lyre does not lie, even if played by a liar. What lay in a lyre's play may be to the crowd's dismay, but no less true for the way the bard may choose to convey."

This time Aether's face lit up with a wonder that transcended language. "Poetry," Aether said.

Venti grinned, and strummed his lyre. "Yes."

Aether nodded, as if to himself, apparently pleased to have identified it just by the cadence. Venti, for his part, always appreciated an audience member who enjoyed a piece even if they did not understand all the words: the way small children delighted in songs, or the pleased enjoyment of crowds listening to a song in a foreign language they did not know.

There was a familiarity to this situation, too: it recalled too swiftly to mind Venti's first attempts into teaching Dvalin Mondstadt's tongue. It brought a pang of longing to his chest, for old friends and different times. Maybe not better times, but ones he shared with people he now missed.

So it was with this in his mind that Venti strummed his lyre and sang of Dvalin.

The sun was hanging heavy at the line of the horizon by the time Venti finished his performance, going an overripe golden orange as sunset approached.

Aether, who had been reverently quiet throughout the performance, but whose feet had tapped a rhythm in the air the entire time, applauded at the end, and Venti mimicked a sweeping bow as he sat.

"Dragon," Aether said afterwards, a single word standing in place of an entire sentence that he perhaps did not have all the words necessary to phrase.

"Yes, Dvalin is a dragon," Venti confirmed.

"Like... Durin."

An unpleasant shiver ran down Venti's back at the mention of that name--cold as the shrieking gales over Dragonspine.

"Where did you hear that name?" Venti asked, though careful as to not reveal his displeasure.

"Albedo's... lab," Aether replied.

Venti cocked his head curiously. Albedo. The alchemist. Oh yes, it was hard not to learn about Albedo, when so many in Mondstadt sighed dreamily at the mention of his name. Venti had even seen him from afar, a youth not nearly as young as he looked, pensive gaze underlining his air of maturity.

Mondstadt welcomed everyone, of course.

But... Durin had been an enemy even the entirety of Mondstadt hadn't been able to overcome on their own. And the small stab of uncertainty that Durin's name provoked justified some investigation on his behalf, did it not?

"Could you show me?" Venti asked lightly, smiling as though it were only a small thing.

It wouldn't hurt to check, would it?

Albedo's laboratory was housed by the Knights of Favonius in their headquarters, and though Aether was apparently given free rein to walk in and out, Venti himself had far less excuse to be there. At least Aether did not question why Venti skulked the hallways and concealed himself with illusory winds whenever they ran across someone, but Venti also suspected that was more a limitation of Aether's vocabulary.

They arrived to the laboratory without any great incident, and Venti was all too prepared to sneak inside. But Aether knocked, loud enough that the sound echoed the whole way down the corridor.

Well, it was worth checking to see if Albedo was inside, of course, but then, when there was no answer, Aether turned and shook his head apologetically.

"Not here, is he? Hm. Best we wait inside," Venti said, and made to pass by Aether.

Aether frowned and set himself in the doorway, blocking Venti's path.

"Bad," he said, shaking a finger.

"Oh come now! In the City of Freedom, one should do as one pleases," Venti wheedled. "What is the point of a door if one is not meant to open it?"

But Aether remained unmoved, and Venti could hardly persuade with words someone who only understood a fifth of what was being said. He did continue to try as Aether gently pushed him out again.

Still, at least Venti knew where Albedo's lab was. And judging by the draft of the wind under the door, he now also knew it had a window. Aether might not have been helpful in getting inside, but as they said in Mondstadt-- Barbatos helped those who helped themselves.

Beidou liked to think she was prepared for anything life or the high seas threw at her, but that didn't mean she woke up every morning knowing what to expect.

For example, on that particular sunny day in port, she didn't think she'd have Furong come up to her to inform her that there was apparently an angry Snezhnayan wanting to talk to her. And when she stepped down onto the dock, she certainly didn't expect the angry Snezhnayan to be some wisp of a youth bristling with bloodlust.

"Heard you got complaints," Beidou said, tone almost bored. She shifted her stance casually, and if it happened to be in a position that would allow her to take out her claymore easily, that was just so the Snezhnayan minded his manners.

He seemed the type to get that sort of message, because though he smiled at her, it was an expression that had too many teeth and eyes much too cold and flat to be honest sentiment.

"No complaint, I just thought I'd warn you about your stowaways," the Snezhnayan spoke, tone light and almost playful. "I'll be happy to take them off your hands, in fact."

If he thought he was delivering some piece of news to her, Beidou was pleased to disappoint. The Alcor was her ship, so she was the last person who'd miss the pitter-patter of wayward teenagers coming aboard. Xiangling was a common fixture, and always welcomed warmly by the crew. That she happened to have a few friends along this time didn't strike Beidou as strange or an imposition until she had this little creep come knocking down her door.

"Anyone who's on board right now is meant to be there," Beidou replied gruffly. "We can handle our own headcount, thanks," she added, tone lowering dangerously.

That cold smile widened on the Snezhnayan's face. There was a Hydro Vision on his hip, but Beidou was far from being intimidated by that alone. Still, the way he slouched into a predatory stance just then put her on guard, and she found herself setting her feet to block him from rushing the gangplank.

Before she could react to any perceived threat, someone reached out and put a hand on the Snezhnayan's arm. Beidou's attention shifted to this other guy, who until now had seemed just part of the background, though now that she looked at him, she couldn't say why she hadn't noticed him earlier. He was Liyuen, but looked much like what even Beidou would describe as a gentleman: dressed in a sharp suit, and exuding an air of unflappable professionalism.

"Perhaps it's best to take a step back and reassess," the gentleman suggested, tone even and calm the way his companion wasn't. If the Snezhnayan was a sack of knives, this man was an unmoving pillar. What an odd couple, but Beidou wasn't one to judge.

She was grateful the Snezhnayan seemed to take the advice, and with a roll of his shoulders, unbristled enough to step back. His smile lost a fraction of its sharpness.

"Sure," he said. "Yeah." Then he nodded his head to Beidou in a mockery of a polite greeting, and turned to stalk away. The Liyuen gentleman nodded far more politely before turning to follow.

Beidou walked back up to the deck to find Xiangling, Xingqiu and Chongyun looking a bit embarrassed but not very repentant.

"Alright, you lot, what've you been up to, riling up a guy like that?"

Xiangling gave a sidelong glance to Xingqiu--the ringleader, given that Chongyun was also giving him the same sidelong look. Xingqiu cleared his throat and straightened up, back straight and feet arranged reflexively in a swordsman's stance.

"It's all for a good cause," he assured. "We were helping an innocent young woman escape the clutches of that suspicious individual."

"Was that guy hassling Xiangling?" Beidou asked, cracking her knuckles.

"No!" Xiangling said quickly. "He didn't bother me, it was just--"

In that moment, all three of the youths looked around, struck by sudden realization. Beidou gathered they'd lost a fourth of their number.

"Chongyun, where is she?" Xingqiu burst out.

"Wh-- where...? how should I know?" Chongyun asked, dumbfounded.

"You were supposed to be watching her!"

A brief bout of bickering ensued.

Beidou let them sort themselves out as she looked up. And sure enough, Kazuha was right where he usually sat, perched high and listening to the winds. When he saw Beidou looking at him, he gestured higher yet, to the crow's nest, and Beidou squinted against the glare of the sun to catch a glimpse of unfamiliar white material flapping in the wind. Well, mystery solved--for Beidou, if not for the three still bickering in front of her.

The clutches of a suspicious individual, huh? Beidou hadn't liked the look of that Snezhnayan brat not one bit, now that she thought about it.

"Alright," Beidou said, and the three fell silent, looking up at Beidou shame-faced. "I can take it from here."

"But, Lady Beidou," Xingqiu started, clearly pumping himself up for a long and eloquent argument. Beidou ruffled his hair, and all that came out of his mouth was an indignant squeak.

"We were heading out for Dornman Port anyway, we'll just be getting a move on a bit quicker. Anyone not heading to Mondstadt, I suggest getting off now."

She spoke with such confidence, that Xingqiu, ready to make his case, slowly closed his mouth and nodded instead.

"That would be us," Xingqiu said, hooking his arm with Chongyun. "Xiangling?"

"Oh! I was planning to go that way a bit later this week, but can you swing by the restaurant and let my father know--?"

"Sure," Xingqiu agreed readily. "And you'll take care of our rescuee?"

"At the very least I'll keep her well fed," Xiangling promised cheerfully. "Don't worry, Guoba and I will keep an eye on her. Right Guoba?... Guoba!"

After that, Beidou turned her attention to the sailors around them, all of whom had been eavesdropping on the conversation anyway, and thus were already running to get everything ready before she even gave the order.

Xinyan also made her appearance soon enough. Beidou didn't know if Xingqiu and Chongyun had been helpful enough to let her know about the expedited departure time, or if she had simply arrived early, but either way, with Xinyan there, they could ride out at high tide that evening.

All Beidou had to do before leaving was take stock of the new passenger on whose behalf they were leaving so precipitously.

Luckily, she'd climbed down from the crow's nest at some point, and now wandered the deck with plain interest on her face as she watched the sailors at their task, and alternately followed Guoba around as the strange creature poked its nose around crates and barrels.

"Hey, kid," Beidou called out. The girl didn't react in any way until Xiangling went and nudged her, and then pointed out Beidou to her.

She approached Beidou with a baffled expression on her face.

"Kid?" she repeated, pointing to herself uncertainly.

"Kid," Beidou confirmed, and ruffled her hair the way she usually did to Xingqiu, though this one reacted with a startled giggle instead of indignation.

"What's your name?" Beidou asked.

"Lumine," she replied, pointing to herself more certainly now. Something about her mannerism was strange, but Beidou couldn't put her finger on what, exactly.

"So where're you coming from and where were you heading to?"

This time, Lumine looked at Beidou with large, guileless eyes, and bit her lip like she didn't know what to reply.

"Um, Beidou, she can't really speak the common language," Xiangling interjected. "Or, she can, but only a few words? She doesn't seem to have that much of an idea what's going on around her. Xingqiu says it's probably because she's from somewhere far away."

Beidou looked at Xiangling, then back at Lumine, whose hesitant body language suddenly made more sense to Beidou.

"Alright, well, what does she speak? Common language is out, I'm guessing the Liyue dialect is new to her. Let's see..."

Beidou tried asking something in Mondstadt's main dialect, then Snezhnaya's, in short going through every language on the continent until capping it off with Inazuman and finally, in desperation, a few of the pidgin languages more common in ports, among sailors and merchants. Lumine merely stared, not reacting to any of them. Beidou knew her accent in some of those languages was pretty atrocious, but she thought there'd be at least some flicker of recognition, even if it was accompanied by a cringe.

"Well, consider me stumped," Beidou said in the end. "You sure your friend's from Teyvat?"

She didn't want to think about the terrifying places beyond Teyvat that she could be from, but then, what was left?

Xiangling was just as confused as Beidou, however, and shrugged her shoulders.

"Okay, well," Beidou gestured helplessly to Lumine, "what do you speak? Talk a bit. Out loud." She mimicked lips flapping with her hand.

Lumine apparently caught on, and drew in a breath, beginning to speak in a strange language with softened consonants and drawn out vowels that Beidou had never heard in her whole life.

"Well," Beidou repeated. She really was stumped, and now thinking about the Snezhnayan who'd tailed Lumine to this ship, that entire incident took on some more sinister dimensions she wasn't anticipating. "I'm gonna go down below deck for a bit, I need to send off a message off before we leave. You all stay out of trouble."

"Is Xiangling in charge of dinner?" one of the sailors threw in the question, and Beidou put a hand on her hip and gave a mock-glare in response.

"Only if she thinks you've been working hard enough for your meal!" Beidou said.

"Of course they have!" Xiangling said, with more sincerity than anyone else present. The sailors burst into peals of laughter, not at Xiangling specifically, but clearly cheered by the thought of her food. "Come on," Xiangling continued, taking Lumine by the hand, "you can be my assistant."

"Assistant?" Lumine repeated the word.

Beidou watched them leave, at the very least relieved Lumine was going to be learning something useful. It would hopefully make up for the other words she was going to learn when surrounded by sailors.

When she first became Captain and it became her responsibility to deliver regular reports to the Knights of Favonius headquarters, Eula was not necessarily enthused to be returning to Mondstadt regularly. She enjoyed her patrols through the wilderness, her troupe of scouts who knew her and respected her and didn't give her any trouble once they settled into the group dynamic. Anyone unwilling to give Eula a chance was whittled pretty quickly out of the Reconaissance Corps. Mondstadt, by contrast, was full of cold-eyed civilians, constantly wary of her if not outright hostile. 

It was unavoidable, of course, but at least it was better than when she had first joined the order. The other knights, even if not openly warm towards her, managed to at least maintain a facade of respect towards her nowadays, and the other captains had never acted less than professional towards her--even Jean took all of Eula's threats of vengeance in stride, despite being on the receiving end more often since becoming Acting Grand Master. 

And, of course, then there was Amber, who was always openly friendly with Eula everywhere they went in Mondstadt, like she thought if she did it consistently enough, she might model this behavior for everyone in the city. It didn't always work, but rather than be discouraged by the limits of her success, Amber was only buoyed whenever she managed to make inroads with any of Mond's citizenry on Eula's behalf.

Eula couldn't even say when, over the years, Mondstadt had become so much more tolerable to her. Time was she would come through the gates at dawn, drop off her report on Varka's desk, and vacate the city by noon so she could be back in the wilds and starting a campfire to cook lunch. Nowadays, if she decided to linger, multiple businesses were even willing to sell her food and basic necessities. Sometimes they even did so when Amber wasn't around.

Sometimes, as Eula walked through Mondstadt, people waved. At her, specifically. The first time it happened--when a merchant she'd extricated from a band of hilichurls saw her in the city and greeted her cheerfully--she'd been so startled, she'd sworn to make him pay for it. The merchant had been baffled, and Amber had laughed nervously and explained Eula was kidding. Even though, when she thought about it, Eula wasn't sure if she had been jesting about it at all. Scorn, contempt, vulgar remarks, she could all deal with. She still had no clue what to do when someone was... nice to her. It left her oddly flustered, and she had no protocol for how to deal with that.

Which was to say, whenever Eula happened to return to Mondstadt, she tried to keep her head down and finish her business as quickly as possible. She strode through the city with a scout's eye for observing her surroundings, but projecting the icy disregard of an aristocrat for everything she did see, and this served well to make people avoid talking to her.

At the end of the day, however, she was still a knight, and she couldn't just ignore suspicious behavior when she came across it.

Especially when the suspicious behavior in question was somebody sneaking in through a window of the knights' headquarters.

In broad daylight, no less.

Eula spotted him just as she turned a corner. With a tinkling laugh and a gust of Anemo, the perpetrator fluttered all the way up to the second floor, quickly enough for Eula to see just the ends of his cape as he hopped in through a window.

Before she even thought about it, and spurred on by instinct alone, Eula broke into a dead run. Her Vision flared in a fog of snowflakes around her--a puff of cold air in response to her burst of adrenaline--and jagged icicles formed like steps up along the exterior walls. She scaled to the second floor in mere seconds and hopped through the window so quickly, that the interloper hadn't even taken stock of his surroundings before Eula dropped to the floor right behind him.

"Freeze!" she said, grabbing his shoulders and feeling him flinch in surprise like a spooked cat. 

When she spun him around to get a look at him, she was met with wide blue-green eyes and a slack-jawed expression.

"Identify yourself right now," she barked, and the interloped blinked at her, looking remarkably innocent for someone caught breaking in through a window.

"Oh my," he said, voice sweet and high and utterly guileless. "Pardon me, but I do believe the alchemist will protest at your presence if you haven't been permitted to come in here. But don't worry, you can still slip out before he returns and I won't tell!" He accompanied this statement with a conspiratorial wink.

For a split second, in the face of his utter confidence, Eula almost felt herself wondering if she was the one mistaken. A quick glance around confirmed that this was an alchemical laboratory--not Sucrose's lab, which Eula had been in before, so it must have belonged to the Chief Alchemist... Albedo? Right. Albedo. She'd crossed paths with him, knew what he looked like, but never actually spoken to him before.

Still, this stranger was not Albedo. By his clothing, she would have guessed bard, but what would a bard be doing poking his nose through an alchemist's laboratory? 

No, her first instinct was right, this was suspicious and possibly criminal behavior. Her grip on his shoulder became more firm. He had an Anemo Vision, and she knew how easily those lot could give the slip when they wanted to.

"Why don't we ask the Chief Alchemist personally, then?" Eula said with a stern glance at the shorter man before her--boy? He was one of those people whose age was difficult to parse at first glance. Right now her guess was delinquent teenager going through with a stupid dare.

"Oh, no, that's not necessary!" the bard insisted with a wave of his hand and a laugh, but there was a definite note of nervousness to it that Eula immediately zeroed in on.

"Oh, but I insist," Eula retorted, and marched him towards the door even as she saw him starting to reel through excuses in his head.

However, before even reaching the door, it swung open, and the very proprietor of the lab stepped in, visibly confused by Eula and the interloper's presence.

"Captain Eula? May I help you with anything?" Albedo asked politely, even as his gaze shifted between Eula and her captive. Obviously he expected some kind of explanation for the trespass.

"You should get a lock for your window," Eula advised dryly.

From behind Albedo, a second blond head poked in, giving Eula and the bard a curious once-over. Once he saw the bard, however, this newcomer's face twisted into exasperation, and he squeezed in past Albedo, pointing an accusatory finger to the bard.

"Venti! Bad! I told you no!" the blond young man snapped.

"...Ehe..." The bard scratched his cheek awkwardly. "Did you? So sorry, seems I might have misunderstood. An honest mistake!"

"Was it?" Albedo wondered, looking to his blond companion.

"I found this person--Venti, you said?--scaling in through the window," Eula pointed out. "If this is an honest misunderstanding, I will be happy to acquaint Venti with the typical visitor entry he may use, as well as a thorough instruction on the correct protocol for booking a visit. If it's not a misunderstanding, then I can deal with him even quicker."

Venti did not quite pale at Eula's tone, but he became visibly concerned.

"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Albedo said. "I hardly have anything worth stealing, so I admit some curiosity regarding what he was looking for. And, of course, if he is a friend of Aether, I am sure he meant no ill. I'd like to hear his explanation for this... unexpected visit."

Eula did not share in Albedo's trusting attitude, and she hardly knew this Aether person, so she didn't release the grasp she had on Venti's shoulder yet. But...

"Well, I'd like to hear it as well," she said.

"Ah, of course, of course," Venti rushed to agree. "However, may I have full use of my arm first? I think my lyre may help with the explanation."

Bards, Eula thought in a huff of exasperation. If he thought he could charm them all with a song, he was going to be in for a shock. But she appreciated the guts he had to even try, so she released him, throwing her hands up.

True enough, once he was free, Venti did not make a run for it--which would have failed anyway, because Eula was fully willing to tackle him if he tried--but he pulled out a lyre and began plucking the strings. Albedo and Aether looked on in interest as the melody began, sweet and somewhat sad, but masterfully played.

Then the bard opened his mouth and began, "What is to be sung transpired in days of yore, when the divine Archons still walked the earth. A dragon cast his curious gaze on the world below as he parted from the heavens that gave his birth..."

"Fascinating." Albedo tapped a finger against his chin. He'd been deep in thought since the bard's tale ended, but he mumbled to himself now, oblivious to everyone else. "To study the corruption on a living specimen could yield valuable data..."

Venti had at least accompanied his song with a more mundane outline of his intentions towards Dvalin, and that had seemingly gripped Albedo far more than Venti's recitation.

Eula remained quiet, leaving Albedo to his important alchemist thoughts, but she kept an eye on Venti regardless. Venti, for his part, was sitting in one of the available chairs, strumming an idle melody on his lyre and radiating an aura of angelic innocence as if he wasn't at least perfunctorily under arrest at the moment.

Aether was something of a puzzle, because Eula did not know him and he seemed to have more air than brains between his ears, but there wasn't anything ostensibly suspicious about him, just an appearance of being an outlander. It seemed like he didn't know the local dialect too well.

"Captain Eula, your Reconnaissance Company keeps tracks of Stormterror's activity, does it not?" Albedo asked.

"Not regularly," Eula replied. "Since Stormterror emerges from his lair only rarely, when it's quiet, we have a standing commission with the Adventurers' Guild to keep an eye on the area. If adventurers report anything out of the ordinary, we take over instead."

"Hm, I'd hoped to find out if they'd noticed any physical remnants of the corruption," Albedo muttered, more to himself, as he tapped his chin. "Crystallized blood or other bodily emanations."

"You mean like this?" Venti asked, and produced a red teardrop crystal. It hovered just over her open palms, pulsing with a nauseous aura. "It's one of Dvalin's tears."

"Yes!" Albedo said, suddenly animated by scientific interest. He extended his hands, palms open, and Venti passed the teardrop to him. He inspected it for a few long moments, eyes peering deeply into the facets of the cursed thing, and apparently discerning something interesting. "Captain Eula, I don't suppose your scouts have ever seen anything like this?"

He passed it to Eula next, who accepted the thing with some reluctance. She did look at it closely, but could not say she had ever seen its like.

"No," she said, "but again, you'd have more luck asking the adventurers were commission for this kind of thing. I believe that girl with the raven gives regular reports."

Eula passed the red drop to the next nearest person, which happened to be Aether, who'd inched closer to gawk even though he apparently did not have much to contribute to the discussion. He accepted it with plain fascination, watching it closely as it hovered above his own palms. Eula returned her attention to Albedo.

"You mean Fischl?" Albedo asked.

"Yes, I believe that was her name. Because her raven can fly closer by itself, we often commission her for this task. It's better than endangering anyone by sending them there in person, and spyglasses don't have quite the same range as Fischl's little... friend. At any rate, if Dvalin sheds these things regularly, this might not have jumped out in a report unless there was a distinct change in quantity or any other irregularity. The key isn't to report everything strange that happens around Dvalin, but anything that changes drastically."

"And Dvalin has been quiet these past few years, it's true," Albedo agreed. "Past reports indicated he emerges rarely, but we may be due for him to stretch his wings again."

"If he's healed," Venti said, quiet and hopeful, "he's never going to hurt anyone again. Isn't that worth trying?"

"True," Albedo agreed. "I think we can start by using the tear you've brought us to test out a few possible--"

But when they turned towards Aether, he was no longer holding the red, bloodied crystal. It shone bright white as it hovered above Aether's hands. They all stared wordlessly for the length of a few seconds, while Aether just blinked back, looking just as puzzled at they did.

"Aether," Albedo asked very carefully, "how did you do that?"

"I don't... know?" Aether replied.

But in spite of this answer, Albedo had a spark of interest in his eyes that Eula could already tell was going to put them through a lot of trouble.

This was not the first time the Alcor had ever moored at Dornman Port, but this time, as Kazuha looked towards Mondstadt's windmills in the distance, with their blades rotating lazily in the wind, he felt the draw of the city. He jumped off the mast, and landed as lightly as the forgiving breezes of this land.

"Beidou," Kazuha said, as he approached her, and he needn't have said more, because Beidou gave him one long look and then grinned.

"Debarking, huh?" she said. "Take it we shouldn't wait for you?"

Kazuha inclined his head, smiled. Beidou understood, because he did such things on occasion. He would leave the ship at some port or another, but always somehow find his way back to Liyue and the Crux. There was a spirit of wandering in Kazuha that occasionally surprised even him; that he had ever been content to be contained only in Inazuma was a wonder these days.

But Beidou understood, and so she sent him off with her blessings every time, and welcomed him back just as easily when he eventually came back.

"Hey, but do me a favor," Beidou added. "Watch out for the weird kid. She's stepping off in Mondstadt too. It's not that I don't trust Xiangling to look out for her, but..." Beidou made an ambiguous gesture with the wave of her hand. Kazuha understood, because even he, on occasion, had seen Xiangling become singularly focused on her culinary pursuits to the detriment of common sense.

Xiangling had, in fact, spent much of the current voyage waxing poetic about Springvale boar. Inadvertedly, she gave quite a few people cravings for pork. Even Kazuha thought he could almost taste the steak juices of the recipes Xiangling kept drafting out loud in anticipation.

Lumine had been listening quietly, and though she perhaps didn't understand all the words, even she began looking decidedly hungry at one point. When the fish dish was served at dinner that evening, she looked comically disappointed, but that was not a state of mind anyone could sustain once they began eating Xiangling's cooking.

Now Lumine stood at the end of the dock, alert and curious, head swiveling as she took in everything. Xiangling was adjusting her pack, cheerfully chatting about Mondstadt's philanemo mushrooms.

"Oh, Kazuha! Are you visiting Mondstadt too?" Xiangling asked as she noticed him approach. "Do you want to go to Springvale?"

"I was not planning on it," he said, before looking to Lumine. "Were you? Or did you want to see Mondstadt?"

Lumine looked at him blankly for a moment, before shrugging. Mondstadt or Springvale, they were all foreign places to her. Perhaps it made no difference, really.

"Maybe she should see Mondstadt first," Xiangling muttered, tapping her chin in thought. "Or, um, maybe she doesn't like big cities? Do you like cities, Lumine?"

"Cities?" Lumine repeated a bit airily. She looked towards Mondstadt, then back at Xiangling.

"Here," Kazuha gestured for her to follow, and he stepped off the  dock and into the wet, sandy ground just beside it. He leaned down and, in the wet silt, sketched out one large circle with the mere outcropping lines of buildings within it--and the silhouette of a windmill, as well. Then, a little ways off, he drew a smaller circle, with the boxy, stylized shapes of smaller houses in it. "Mondstadt. City," he said, pointing to the bigger circle, then moved to point to the smaller circle. "Springvale. Village."

"Oh!" Lumine pointed towards Mondstadt. "City! Yes!"

"Do you want to go... here? Or here?" Kazuha asked, pointing to the crude sketched on the ground.

Lumine seemed to ponder the question quite deeply before her eyes darted between Xiangling and Kazuha uncertainly.

"Hey, you can go anywhere you want, it's okay!" Xiangling reassured. "You can visit lots of other places too. I hear Windrise is really nice! Oh, and they have this cliff overlooking the sea--I know because I saw it on a postcard once, and--"

"Perhaps Mondstadt is best because it's closest," Kazuha suggested, as Xiangling began talking at speeds beyond Lumine's comprehension.

"Mondstadt," Lumine repeated, nodded. "Yes."

For all her singular appearance marking her as clearly foreign to the land, Lumine had a peculiar gift for fading into a crowd.

Kazuha was used to garnering at least a few curious glances anywhere he went outside Inazuma, especially since the borders closed and his countrymen became a scarcer sight abroad, but one would think Lumine would stick out even more. Instead, he'd almost lost sight of her several times just walking from the port into the city.

This time, she had stopped to watch one of the performing bards in the cathedral square, and Kazuha went nearly three steps before realizing she was not at his side.

Still, it was hard not to be endeared. He backtracked and joined her as she watched the bard's performance with an intense expression of interest. Kazuha listened to the bard's recitation as well, though he found Lumine's reactions more fascinating to observe. Her eyes were catching the sunlight, gleaming gold, and her lips parted in a soundless gasp as the music rose to a surprisingly sctrong crescendo.

The bard's performance wound down to an end, and she thanked her audience as they applauded. Lumine applauded as well, brightly smiling.

There were other bards in the square, but Lumine's attention swung wide again, fixing into the distance. She watched the windmills for a moment, before looking back to Kazuha, and tilting her head in question.

"We can go anywhere you'd like," Kazuha said, more because he was enjoying the experience of following wherever Lumine decided to meander. Mondstadt was a good place for meandering, he thought, and this was one of the joys of living untethered as a wanderer. When one had no strong feelings on the destination, any place was as good to end up as another.

Lumine's head tilted back and she looked up again.

"Ah... yes, they're quite eye-catching, aren't they?" Kazuha remarked. "Shall we go up?"

Lumine perked at the suggestion.

"Up?" she mouthed, pointing to the windmills.

"Oh, yes." Kazuha squinted against the sun as he looked up towards the catwalks at the upper levels of the windmills. "I believe gliding requires a permit in Mondstadt, but we have other means at our disposal. If we're creative. And if the wind is on our side." With a sufficient burst of Anemo, he was confident he could get them quite a lot of the way upwards. And judging by how Lumine scaled the masts of the Alcor, climbing the rest of the way would not be difficult either.

Lumine cocked her head, curious. "The wind?"

"But first, supplies," he said, and gently ushered her along into Mondtadt's streets.

It was hardly difficult to find a tavern in Mondstadt. In fact, one might say it was harder to avoid finding one. But Kazuha went by sailors' gossip, and when he came upon the sign advertising Angel's Share, he recognized the name enough to trust the service.

The tavern was still quiet at this early time of day, and Kazuha judged by the attitude of the patrons that they were regulars. There wasn't the sour smell of a cheap establishment, and though there were quite a few people well into their cups, they were not rough or rowdy. Even the food smelled fresh and delicious, more homey than the simple greasy fare some taverns contented themselves with serving the undiscerning patrons. If Kazuha hadn't already formed a plan for the day, he wouldn't have hesitated to dine at this place instead.

When Kazuha walked up to the bar counter, the red-haired man standing behind it gave him a searching look, before his eyes moved to Lumine, even more skeptical. Not quite friendly, but not hostile. He was dressed too well for a bartender, and so Kazuha had to assume he was more akin to the owner.

"Is there a food menu we may consult?" Kazuha asked, and the red-haired man presented the menu promptly and wordlessly.

Kazuha retreated a step to consult with Lumine. True to his expectations, she couldn't read the local dialect, but luckily the menu also had drawn etchings of each food item next to its description, and so Lumine confidently tapped her finger against the picture of a local specialty pizza.

"A good choice," Kazuha said, before consulting his money pouch. Though he got payment for Beidou before disembarking, he had learned from past experience to be judicious with his spending when he was away from the armada.

But Lumine, upon seeing him peer into the pouch and count his coins by feel of the finger, produced a money purse of her own, clinking much more heavily than his, and emblazoned with the logo of the Northland Bank.

"For food," she said, and pushed it into Kazuha's hand.

"Thank you," Kazuha said, before adding, with an excess of caution, "But where did you get this?"

"It was a... gift?" she said slowly, life testing out that last word. Maybe she didn't completely know what it meant.

Kazuha looked inside the bag and had to wonder who on Teyvat had given Lumine one hundred thousand mora as a gift and why. His thoughts drew a straight line to the Snezhnayan fellow Beidou had had to run off. Curious, if not a bit sinister.

He decided not to voice that out loud.

"Then this will pay for the food and I will pay for the wine," he said.

Lumine put a hand on her hip, and jabbed a finger insistently at the money bag she'd given him. Clearly she meant for her money to pay for everything, and Kazuha appreciated her generosity, but he also rather thought she didn't have a good sense for spending yet, or how handy this sum would be in her travels if she didn't squander it.

But, in lieu of explaining that, he merely said, "It's only fair."

He turned to put the order in with the man behind the bar, for food drinks.

The red-haired man narrowed his eyes at Kazuha's request for a bottle of dandelion wine.

"How old are you?" he asked, and Kazuha belatedly remembered that Mondstadt had an age restriction for purchasing alcohol.

"Old enough," Kazuha assured with an unperturbed smile.

They stared at one another for a few long seconds, the red-haired man with a penetrating glare, and Kazuha with the serene smile of the completely innocent, and the man must have been convinced, because he made a sound in his throat and relented first.

But then,

"What about her?" the red-haired man asked, gesturing towards Lumine, who was, at that moment, fascinated by the bard performing next to the door.

"In all truth, I'm not sure," Kazuha admitted. "We have had some... minor hurdles in communication."

"Have you now?" The man narrowed his eyes as he looked at her again, something very obviously percolating behind his eyes. But he didn't say anything, merely reached under the bar to retrieve of a bottle of fruit juice. "Did she fall out of the sky, by chance?"

"I... wouldn't be the one to know," Kazuha replied after a long moment, but now that he mentioned it, maybe that was as good of an explanation as any. This man seemed dead serious when putting forth the notion, and so Kazuha was forced to consider it as well. "She has something of the stars about her."

The man made a sound in his throat.

"Come back this evening," he said. "Might have something for you."

Kazuha didn't get the sense that 'something' might be another bottle of dandelion wine, but then, he also didn't get much of a sense of danger. The man was gruff, and there was an unmistakeable capacity for combat evident in the way he moved, but he didn't strike Kazuha as hostile or conniving by nature. He had that refreshing trait of Mondstadtians, to show every emotion on his face plainly. In his mind, this man had evidently connected some pieces of information, and whatever he had for them, it must have invitably been related.

So Kazuha inclined his head, picked up his order, and departed afterwards.

From the topmost catwalk of the windmill, Mondstadt was spread out before them; not just the houses beneath, and the cobbled stone streets, but the glitter of Cider Lake beyond the walls, and the suggestion of rolling green hills in the distance. The afternoon was bright, but the glare of the sun was softened by cool breezes.

They sat with their legs dangling over the edge of the wooden walkways, passing the bottle of dandelion wine back and forth to take sips as they ate. Neither of them hastened to down the whole bottle when they were this high up, but Lumine did enthusiastically make her way through half a pizza before they'd even consumed a third of the wine bottle.

They were high enough, that every sound from below was dampened by distance. The gentle creak of the windmill blades was the loudest thing either of them could hear, except for the occasional stumbling exchange of words. At one point, Lumine spotted someone gliding through the air, and pointed at them, and Kazuha was put in the interesting position of having to explain a gliding license through simple words and miming.

They finished eating, and would perhaps have a few more hours to walk around Mondstadt, except as Kazuha looked up at the clear blue sky above, he couldn't help but notice a change in the winds. A prickle of static energy, a scent of something sharp in the air. A storm on its way, despite no cloud being in the sky.

"I think we should climb down," he said, and he thought himself overly-cautious for it before he heard the beat of heavy wings getting closer.