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i. to be a god
Zhongli does not remember his birth.
He remembers only that the world had been dark, and suddenly there was a blinding light.
He remembers the ores in the world, calling out to him as like calls to like. The Noctilucous Jades a bluish radiance, the Irons swooping under his command, and the Cor Lapises who gave him his name.
He remembers his first polearm: a marvelous weapon carved of the first jade. It had perished in an ancient battle, but Zhongli still recalls fondly upon its steadfastness as it brought down his adversaries. When dawn broke, he would wipe ichor off its blades with the gentleness of a father.
And throughout the eons, Zhongli always knows this to be true:
To be a god is to remember.
ii. amid the glaze lilies
In those days, what is now known as Dihua Marsh was but a prosperous field. The now-rare glaze lilies lay in plains of blues, pure and untouched by the shadows of war, loved and cared for by mortals and lower divinities alike who basked in its beauty. The wind would carry their songs, and the blossoms would bloom in silent gratitude.
This, too, meant nothing to the Morax. The fields were but a small piece of oasis in a karma-stricken world; a beautiful illusion, yet an illusion all the same . And the God of Contracts dealt only in verifiable realities.
Soaked in the grime of his enemies, he desired nothing but a swift path to a running bath his underlings had prepared. His dragon form would have surely made transport faster, but the recent battle had exhausted him.
The sound of a beautiful melody, however, strayed him away from his path.
It was a foreign sound—timeless and present all at once, like petrichor in the post-rain afternoon or the discovery of a long-lost treasure. He found it impossible to tear away. Before he knew it, he’d reached the source; a lone figure with billowing sleeves, in a sea of glaze lilies.
She was a young woman. Her long ivory hair flowed freely in the breeze, and her eyes were shut serenely. As she sang, the lilies seemed to bloom at the sound of her voice.
The conductor of this symphony had a human voice; warm and heartbreakingly elusive, so unlike the thundering bellows of Celestia. He would have mistaken her for one too, were it not for the celestial glow encasing her figure in a golden light.
Like calls to like , his Gnosis whispered as the immortal before him extended her hand in invitation. Her eyes were open now, and Morax found himself lost in the depths of amber; this moment, here and now, suspended in time.
Gods do not sing, for the act in itself is an indulgence. To sing is to bask in worldly pleasures, and gods have always existed in a transitory place; between now and tomorrow, life and death, Teyvat and Celestia. The present was a luxury they’d denied themselves, for how could they—when decades pass by with just a blink of an eye?
This was a fact Zhongli knew very well. And yet, as the god of rocks took the goddess’ hand in his own, he wondered if Celestia would let Morax embrace the present, if only for a moment.
iii. the mark of our pledge, my challenge to you
In many ways, Guizhong had been an earthshaker.
She was an earthshaker when she raised the grounds with him to build Qiongji Estuary. Had been one on the day they met, like an earthquake Morax could not evade, its aftershock still chipping away at his hardened edges.
Then they were atop Mt. Aozang, sipping osmanthus wine. The sweetness of the alcohol still lingered on his lips as she pulled out a stone dumbbell, a cubic form of sorts that glowed with the essence of her power.
“My friend,” he’d frowned. “I have no use for catalysts.”
She laughed, and it knocked the air out of him—it always had.
“It is not for you to use, Morax.”
“You know I hardly keep what I cannot use.”
There was a knowing smirk on Guizhong’s face.
“This is the mark of our pledge, and it is also my challenge to you."
It was a silly thing, what she’d said. There was no contract between the two of them, no pledge made official with a golden seal. They were merely companions, walking the same path for reasons of their own.
He hesitated. “Surely this is not one of your tricks?”
For all her intellect, Guizhong was equally fond of mischief. It was one of the many reasons why she and Barbatos got along so well. Well, that, and their shared love for annoying him at every chance they got.
She rolled her eyes, “Take it, would you? All my wisdom is hidden within this stone dumbbell."
That did intrigue him enough to accept the gift, and so he did. The weight of the dumbbell felt foreign in his palm, but not unpleasant. Later it would become his most familiar possession, an object he would twist and bend countless times to no avail.
Something akin to Guizhong, something akin to home.
iv. dust to dust
Death was a foreign concept to most gods, but the God of Dust had always been more human than most.
In the end, she was the best of their kind.
Zhongli remembers holding her dying figure in the fading light, amidst the glaze lilies she loved so much. If historians cared to remember her as much as they did he, then what a beautiful sculpture this moment might have made. Memory of Dust, the plaque would read in a Liyuen nobleman’s private gallery.
Later, Zhongli would come to appreciate the beauty of tragedy, and would come to understand the human fixation with catharsis. But at this moment, grief tore into him like icy claws—a pain even rocks and steles could not seal away.
He remembers the slight tremble in her voice as she spoke, “It seems that our journey together has come to an end.”
She continued with a weak smile. “As for that stone dumbbell, forget about it, would you?”
As if he could forget the token of their friendship. As if he could forget her . He’d tried to memorize the lines of her face then, a desperate attempt at slowing the process of death, but he did not have to. He never had to memorize anything. Such are the terms of his curse.
Perpetual remembrance, the Cloud Retainer once sneered.
“But if you can unlock it—”
Zhongli never did get to unlock that stone dumbbell, or know what might have followed that sentence. For Guizhong had dissolved into the finest of dusts, akin to a symphony forced into an abrupt stop.
Never again would he be led astray by the sound of a beautiful melody.
Over the years, the wild Glaze Lilies, too, dwindled till at last they were no more.
v. time of departure
They buried her—what was left of her—in the stone forests of Guyun.
The funeral was the hardest part. Gods do not die, not really. And Morax knew his friend’s spirit would continue to thrive under the soils of Liyue, giving birth to new blooms.
Still, the knowledge could not dull his anguish.
It was a simple ceremony; the burning of incense atop the highest cliff in Guyun. Too simple, he’d mulled over. For someone so far from it.
Their friends had left almost immediately after it ended, as if the pain of loss dug deeper the longer they remained.
Later, Zhongli would devise elaborate rituals to commemorate his friends’ passings, and then his own. But for now, he simply remained.
Upon his feet were freshly planted sprouts of glaze lilies. They lay limp in the dying evening light, as lonely as the Qingxins overlooking the sea of clouds. He knew they would not survive in isolation, and when tomorrow came, it would be as if they’d never been there.
The God of Geo opened his mouth, and sang.
But the land, for once, did not stir.
vi. plain of nostalgia
“With your brawn and my brains, this city would surely become a great one.”
And a great one it became indeed.
The bustling city is a far echo from the tiny civilization Liyue had been. It had looked grand at a distance, from the mountains of Jueyun he’d perched upon, and even grander at closer inspection. As he strides across its pavements, Zhongli sees now that the Hanfeng Ironmongers flourish as always in its centuries-long business. Everywhere he looks, the Millelith patrols diligently as children flutter by in laughter. He is grateful to have witnessed the way Chihu Rock has completely transformed itself from an inconspicuous hide to the very heart of Liyue Harbor.
It has been thousands of years, yet Zhongli never tires of the sight.
“Will it be the usual, Mr. Zhongli?”
A chirpy voice snaps him out of his thoughts. In his line of sight stands Xiangling, stoking the fire as she looks at him expectantly.
He clears his throat. “Yes please.”
“One Wanmin Restaurant Boiled Fish, coming right up! Should we bill it to the Northland Bank again this time?”
Zhongli nods. This is far from his first visit to Wanmin Restaurant. In fact, it is his favorite restaurant in Liyue Harbor, and Xiangling, his favorite cook in all of Teyvat. The young chef has never forgotten his order, and always worked on them with precision even he could admire.
Later that day, he would go up to the Pearl Galley. He would greet the historians that had longed for an audience with the famed consultant. They would challenge him to a battle of wits, and he would face them head-on. Then they would dare him to retell the Battle of Osial, as their kind always does as a test, and he would oblige.
He would tell them of the wicked sea creatures that once plagued the people of Liyue. How these slimy things crawl their ways into the tiniest of openings, and how Rex Lapis had gone door to door to cleanse these creatures, now sealed away in the depths of Guyun Stone Forest.
He would watch, with amusement, the way their eyes shifted from skepticism to fascination, to belief, then to hunger for more. And what is a god, if not a listener of his people?
So stories spill like ink into the night. Stories of Havria, the god of salt too gentle for this cruel world, slaughtered by her own people. Of the Yakshas, the war-waging warriors with their own debts as true enemies. Of the wild glaze lilies, and the kind-hearted god who loved them so, and how they withered together like dust in the wind...
vii. fragrance in thaw
“That woman beside you—you do see her right, Mr. Zhongli?”
Zhongli pauses, the teacup halfway to his lips. The 77th Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor is no stranger to jest, in fact, the two are nearly married to each other. Yet, as he studies Hu Tao’s expression, he finds none of the telltale signs of a prank. And he would know; the lilt of a voice, the twitch of an eye, a smirk threatening to break free.
He raises his eyebrows in question. “The woman beside me?”
“Yep, she’s very pretty. Silver hair and all… ring a bell?”
For a while, Zhongli could only stare in shock.
It feels as if the wind had knocked his heart out of his chest, dropped it in his tea, and devoured it in a ripple. But when he whips his head back, he sees nothing but Tea Master Liu Su on the stage and the other half-listening customers.
No sign of a silver-haired beauty, much less an old friend.
A ghost of a smile starts to form on Hu Tao’s cheeks, her eyes gazing somewhere beyond Zhongli. “She wants me to tell you not to worry.”
Zhongli attempts to conjure an image of Guizhong; her smiling eyes, the way she would chastise his unmoving nature, but never with real malice. It has been so long, too long, yet Zhongli could still perfectly picture her beside him now, talking animatedly to Hu Tao like a pair of gossiping friends.
Gods pride themselves on their omniscience, but even they know not of the afterlife. Some days the absence of knowledge brings him respite. Most days, its hollowness would hang over Zhongli’s head like a thread he could not detangle. And he would spend hours upon hours, days upon days, circling the stone dumbbell on his palm as he searches for an opening. Was there something his beloved had said—a hint to this puzzle? A key to this lock? A method to this madness?
Nothing would come out of it, nothing ever has.
The problem with immortality is that Zhongli has come to view every moment in retrospect, even as they are happening. The burden of being transitory, never at one place or another. And such, too, was the manifestation of his grief. It ended just as it began.
He had not raged for his friend, had not bargained with Celestia. Had not learnt to carve the makings of this agony, had glossed over its crevices in the guise of wisdom.
How arrogant, Zhongli almost laughs. To think oneself above the passage of sorrow...
When the Former Lord of Geo takes his stroll in Yujing Terrace that night, the air tastes sweeter than he remembers.
For the first time in forever, the glaze lilies are shadowed not by memories of dust, but illuminated with a light so radiant Zhongli wonders how he could’ve missed them. Its blossoms have opened under the moonlight, and transformed the lively cadence of the harbor into a gentle fragrance.
The scent follows him home, nestles itself into the nooks and crannies of his apartment.
And faintly, but surely, the stone in him weighs a little lighter.