Chapter Text
The wind never stopped to sing in his ears, and, to thanks it, he always felt the need to accompany it. Together, they could be the most beautiful Duo of Mondstadt. He wouldn’t dare try to beat Barbara in any solo, because she was so sweet and so beloved, but the Duo? He won them. All of them. It was said, when the wind sung, it meant Barbatos was keeping an eye on the Children of Mondstadt. Maybe it was true? Or perhaps, he was just trying to enjoy a too long life where the music and the wind had always been his most tender friends.
Nothing could stop him when he entered in trance, being one with the wind, yet… yet, in the middle of one of his best performance–according to himself–something echoed within him. An echo so sudden and powerful, he felt like the wind left his body.
Welcoming back the wind within him, and retrieving his complexion, he tried to localize the source of this change.
Windrise?
The distance between him and that statue was important but what was even more important was to discover what happened. If Mondstadt was in danger…
Calling the wind to his aid, he crossed his Nation in a jump. Seven leagues swallowed by his boots and his will.
He fairly hoped this wasn’t a problem of Dantean proportion, yet, if he had to deal with it, very well, he would.
As he reached the Barbatos statue, his most important and beloved statue, he looked down to see… a woman. A young woman. She had climbed a part of the statue and felt asleep in his arms. Could he consider those rocks arms like his own arms? Should he be embarrassed?!
“Excuse me?” he asked, sliding along his rock arm.
The young woman growled. She finally felt in the slumber realm and here was someone disturbing her sleep? Perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing. She slid her hand on the guard of her sword.
“Hello! I’m Venti!”
He held out a friendly hand to the young woman.
“I’m Lumine,” she replied. She stared at the hand, visibly trying to discern if Venti intended to produce a dagger or something else. Obviously, using her imagination, she could argue the stranger might try to strangulate her with the cords of his lyre, but she decided to shake his hand anyway. “Glad to meet you.”
“Same. I never saw anyone using the statues like that!”
“Probably not climbing them neither, then? Wouldn’t he be upset for you to trample his head like you did?”
She pointed out at the mud trace over the head of the statue. And slightly frowned, looking at the stone face.
“AH!!!” Venti said, moving his hands to drag her attention on him. “At least, you have the delicacy to fall asleep in his arms! That’s quite romantic! I could sing songs about that!”
She stared at him and her eyes seemed to lighten. “You’re a bard!”
“I am!”
“I never met a Bard before.”
“You never?” Venti repeated with surprise. “From where do you come?”
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“You… don’t know?”
She nodded to approve those words. It was definitely not something easy to explain and she shouldn’t tell everything to a stranger. Although, better be a stranger she would never see again rather than someone who could judge her for the time to come, isn’t it?
“I’m coming from far away, and I lost myself. He told me to come back to the Statue if I lost myself and he’ll come pick me up but… it’s been too long now.”
She sat in the statue’s bend elbow, and Venti sat on… his shoulder?
“He?” Venti asked. “I can help you to find him back, perhaps?”
“It’s my brother. He looks like me,” she said, showing her face. “But… with longer hair.”
“I see! But never saw him.”
He observed her.
“We arrived this morning. I was supposed to help undo the boxes but I ran away.”
She stuck out the tongue, closing one eye. And Venti observed her even more but with a smile this time.
“Oh! You must come from Mondstadt-city or Springvale! I can lead you the way if you want to! I didn’t know you were new to the cities! Any of your choice is such a lovely choice!”
Lumine shook her head. “We aren’t in a city.”
Venti thought. There weren’t much village or city in Mondstadt. For some reasons, his land remained quite the property of the nature. He wasn’t against it. The high building of Inazuma would have been a treat to the winds if he allowed them to be. The Cathedral itself was, sometimes, a treat but Venti didn’t mind. It was one city. And the big mountains on the East coast were just alike. He would forgive anything to his children as long as they tried to do it good.
However…
He really didn’t know where this young woman could come from in this case.
“What does it look like?” Venti asked with a smile.
“Hmmmm… It’s near a pretty lake. And… Next to a mountain!”
Venti kept smiling but she wasn’t helping him. He didn’t mind since she didn’t know the Nation but, for him, it was approximatively… well anywhere in Mondstadt.
“There are lot of field. I think they used to work there, but it had been changed overtime. We arrived at the Sunrise and from this place, the Sunrise was peculiarly beautiful.” She looked up at the sky. “I hadn’t seen a Sunrise like that since an eternity.”
“And what about a Sunset?” Venti asked.
“I have seen so many Sunsets. But if it’s at this place, it must be beautiful!”
“If we can reach your place in time, perhaps we can see the Sunset then!” Venti jumped on the floor, the wind discreetly accompany him and laying caress on his round cheeks. “Come on!”
Lumine looked down at him and smiled as he held out his arms to her.
“Do you think you can catch me?”
“I think I can!”
She laughed. “I’m fine!”
She jumped from the arms of Barbatos to land just next to Venti, the veils of her dress floating around her as if she was a living cloud. Venti blinked as he watched at her. The wind sung differently in his ear and its melody was beautiful. The breeze caressed her tanned skin, played with her hair and swirled around her in a delightful hug.
“Oh no…” Lumine said.
She had raked her hair to push them away from her face.
“What is wrong?” Venti worried.
“My flowers…”
“Your flowers?”
“I lost them! My brother offered them to me.”
She swirled on her heels to run in the wind and hope finding them back.
Venti grabbed her hand, their fingers brushing. “I’ll help you. But running like that won’t help you!” He taped his side, his fingertips landing on a blue-green jewel. “I got a vision from Barbatos himself! Let me do!”
Most of people only needed that to believe him. Who could know someone blessed by his Eye would never be able to do what he was about to do? They could command the air and the wind, but certainly not talk with him and ask which breeze had stolen away the precious flowers. No one could demand the wind to come back on his track and to let go of the flowers to make them land in their hand.
Venti could.
And it was done in a flurry.
“Here we are!” He smiled and crouched to pick up a windwheel aster. “And this is from me!”
She smiled and approached him. She leaned her head, in a trustful attitude. Venti went on his tiptoes. His fingers brushed the golden hair and he felt the wind playful as he placed the two white flowers at their place. The wind took in the red petals. Lumine moved her hand, her fingers brushing Venti’s wrist, and made a barrier between the wind and them. At least for the few seconds Venti needed to install the stem amongst the soft hair.
“Sorry for the wind,” he said, stepping away.
“Sorry for the wind?” she replied with a chuckle. “It’s not your fault!”
Venti smiled back to her but he honestly wondered if it wasn’t actually his fault. Of course the Four Winds could do absolutely what he wanted but being the Master of the Wind, didn’t he want what happened? At least a little?
It had been so long since he hadn’t touched a Human! Been so close of someone! The proximity of someone was pleasant. And the way she smiled and looked at him made him happier. He had composed so many melodies about surreal beauty like her by the past…
“Anyway!” Venti said, trying to focus his mind away from the music and the betrayal of the wind for a few seconds. “Tell me anything about your place? If you have the name of a place nearby, it can help! I know Mondstadt like the back of my hand!”
“If you say ‘oh what is this thing on my hand’, I run away!” she warned with a warm smile.
Venti observed his hands. “Nop! I definitely know them! And I also know their prodigies! You can trust me on this!”
“Very well.” She tried to remember anything about the landscape. “It’s a gigantic house and around it, a few abandoned houses, but not very closes. The field have been replaced but the way it grows over it, it’s clear there was something before there and…”
“Wait! Are you… No, it can’t be.” He thought. “And yet… Ah! Are you sure you had to wait him at this statue? And who is he?”
“My brother! And I’m absolutely sure of this. He showed me this statue then I lost myself and… I want to find him back!”
“I’m sorry,” Venti replied. “We will find the place. If you think it was this statue, then…”
He tilted his head on the side. Perhaps it was better to ask to come back to the Capital. Someone might recognize her. For a moment, he had an idea from where she was come from, although it seemed impossible, but now, he was at the same point.
Where was her home?
He could try to be a Knight instead of a Bard, for a change, but he wasn’t very gifted at this, it seemed. And, for once, he couldn’t even blame his frivolous and joyful nature.
“Lumine…”
A soft and calm voice came from behind them, up in the air.
Venti turned the head and couldn’t help a smile, quite tensed, when he saw the blue-green vision shining at the wrist. But also… this stranger stood on the head of the statue. Can people stop trampling him, perhaps?
“Is this your brother?”
“No!” She chuckled. “My brother looks just like me except he is a boy!” she reminded. “And he has longer hair. And he doesn’t wear the same clothes as me. Except that last time.”
Venti looked at her with a soft smile then turned his head towards the other man. He couldn’t feel his energy in the invert of his children’s. And the contact of him and his statue made something born within him. It wasn’t as powerful and distinct than for the girl, although.
“He lives with me! So you can tell him where we live, perhaps?” she added to the young man.
Said young man kept staring at Venti from the top of the statue. Which was bringing a strange dread within Venti. Imagine someone looking down that way at you while also trampling your own head.
“Are you sure you can trust him?”
“I don’t need to have trust,” Lumine replied. “And that’d be helpful anyway. I waited in the statue, like asked.”
The young man jumped down Barbatos’s rock head. “Not this statue.”
“Not this statue?” Lumine repeated.
Venti couldn’t help a light giggle. “There are a few statues of Barbatos in Mondstadt! You must have lost yourself and mistaken this one for the other!” Then… was it possible? Could she come from… “Is it the Dawn Winery?”
Lumine looked at him as if he had spoken an unknown language.
The other young man frowned. “Lumine, we should head back home,” he said.
He held out his arms to her but she stepped backward. The mischievous expression on her face made flare a poem in Venti’s mind.
“Race me!” she said.
“You don’t even know where…”
The young man definitely seemed done with Lumine, where Venti would have loved racing her. He didn’t even know for what thrill since it wasn’t what ruled his life, perhaps for a few new seconds of something. Something… different? No one had ever made stop the wind to be one with him so this young woman was impressive for sure. And the mysteries around her only drew him towards her. From where did she come? She appeared as if she had been spurted from a fable, a dream. He might be the youngest Archon from the old time, it didn’t change the amount of singularity he had been the witness of, yet, she was all new. New, enchanting, intriguing, like nothing, no one had been able to grasp her interest since long…
And when he saw her run away, challenging this young man who stared at him with disdain, the shroud of mystery appeared like the veils of her dress, floating in the wind. She had weaved a web with so shiny thread, so intriguing adornment, Venti wanted to be a little fly fool enough to fly right to it.
Was she a dream?
Was she the heroine none of his poem could create?
Was she an image he better had to forget? But he couldn’t forget her.
Alone with the wind–so was he really alone?–he turned towards the statue, and walked to it. He slid his hand on the rock infused with his energy. Perhaps he could understand what called him here.
It had been long since he didn’t believe in Fate anymore yet, it was the only reply his sense and his mind could give him.