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Xiao is at his room in Wangshu Inn, minding his own business on a bright spring day when Verr Goldet says those wretched words.
“Xiao,” her voice issues from the communication talisman, muffled and staticky. “You have a visitor.”
“Verr Goldet, I don’t take visitors,” he replies, twirling his spear absentmindedly. He has the room at the top of the Inn, with a large window that frames Guyun Stone Forest perfectly. The spirits have been quiet after Osial’s re-sealing, but still, he must remain vigilant.
“Well, this visitor is rather—“
Her voice is cut off by the sound of Xiao’s door flying open, and a cheerful “yahoo!” from the one person Xiao most definitely does not want as a visitor.
“Venti,” Xiao replies. He stops twirling his spear and sheathes it, crossing his arms as he turns to face Venti. “Leave.”
“How rude,” Venti pouts. The door swings shut behind him, sealing Xiao’s fate. “Can’t you hear me out first, at least, O Honorable Yaksha?”
Xiao rubs at his temples. “You need help?” he asks. He’s not one to leave someone be if they actually need help, but Venti needing help is usually something inane or a straight-up lie. “What is it this time?”
“Glad you asked!” Venti replies, perking up instantly. With a flourish of his hands, he brings out a small bouquet of flowers that Xiao does not recognize. There’s a round, blue one that glows softly even in the sunlight, and a red one shaped like a pinwheel, and a whole host of other blooms. “Here!”
Xiao takes the flowers before he realizes that he doesn’t care for flowers. Great. He’ll have to give these to Verr Goldet later; maybe she can put them at the reception desk.
“This doesn’t answer my question,” he says.
“This is Flora’s specialty bouquet,” Venti says. “It’s very expensive! You should be grateful you got it for free!”
“That still doesn’t answer my question.”
“Okay, okay,” Venti replies. “So straightforward! Always wanting to get to the point! Well, that’s one of the things I like about you.”
“What,” Xiao says, “is the point. Venti. What do you want?”
“Flora wants to expand her business!” Venti announces with a dramatic sweep of his hands. “All the flowers she has are from Mondstadt, but she was thinking of selling Liyuen varieties as well. She asked me to find some, since she heard I travel a lot, and being the gentleman that I am, I couldn’t refuse her!”
“You want me to help you pick flowers,” Xiao sighs, choosing to not address the gentleman comment. He turns around. Guyun Stone Forest looms in the distance. “Go bother Rex Lapis if it’s flowers you want. I’m sure his knowledge exceeds mine. It seems to be all he does these days, making flower arrangements. Some Inazuman thing.”
“No, no,” Venti skips around the room to face him again. He leans close with a smile, and Xiao leans back. He has a bad feeling about this. “Have more confidence, my dear Xiao! Do you really think I’d rather listen to Zhongli lecture me for fifteen straight hours than spend time with you?”
“That’s not what I—“ Xiao begins to protest, but Venti has never been particularly fond of listening. He hops over to the balcony in front of the window and gives Xiao a wink.
“I’ll be waiting at the entrance!” he says, and jumps off the ledge.
“Venti—“ Xiao begins, but Venti has vanished into the sky as quickly as he appeared. He was always one for dramatic exits. With a long-suffering sigh, Xiao grabs his things, drops off the flowers with Verr Goldet, and sets off to meet his fate.
The first flower to seek out is an easy choice, considering they’re already at Wangshu Inn.
“This is a silk flower,” Xiao gestures to the bushes that line the walkway in front of the inn. Pale pink flowers peek out at them, surrounded by deep red leaves and petals. “They’re used to make silk.” Indarias used to use them all the time, her workshop always filled with vats of dye and the scent of flowers. She made all their clothing, back then. Even now, human clothes have not come close to the ones she gave him.
Venti squats down next to the flowers, looking over them carefully. “They’re a bit creepy-looking, don’t you think?” he says, poking at one with his finger. “With the… spindly things.”
Xiao tilts his head.
There is another fact he knows about silk flowers, besides the obvious. He’d been surprised the first time he saw Zhongli’s boss—that human, Hu Tao—strolling along the walkway in front of Wangshu Inn, plucking them. She loves plum blossoms, he knows that much—the branch that adorns her hat is carefully and painstakingly maintained, and her eyes, too, bear the shape of blooms. But on this occasion she was carrying an armful of silk flowers.
“Why are you picking those?” Xiao had asked. She’d simply grinned at him and told him that they looked like the flowers that adorned the gate to the underworld, the barrier that separated life and death.
“Red spider lilies, they’re called,” she’d said, voice light and lilting as always. “But I can’t pick those.”
“Why not?”
Hu Tao had looked at him as if the answer were obvious. “They belong on the other side.”
(Xiao wonders if Indarias is able to pick the red spider lilies, on the other side.)
“I’ve heard they look similar to the flowers in the underworld,” Xiao says, to Venti.
“The underworld, hm?” Venti muses. He plucks one with a snap, and twirls it between his fingers, a thoughtful look on his face. Xiao isn’t sure what he’s thinking about.
It’s none of his business, anyway.
The next stop is Huaguang Stone Forest. To Xiao, this place is almost as familiar as Guyun Stone Forest, but for vastly different reasons. Amongst the peaks of Huaguang Stone Forest, he can be alone, and very few people, besides the most intrepid of adventurers, ever bother to find him at such a high place.
But first, they have to get up there.
Xiao stares up at the mountains that reach far into the clouds. He can get up to any of the peaks that span Mt. Hulao and Mt. Aozang in the blink of an eye, but he’s not sure how to explain any of them to Venti without him possibly overshooting and finding himself flailing in midair.
Well, whatever. “Follow me,” Xiao says as he strides towards the nearest mountain, preparing to climb.
“No, no,” Venti shakes his head. “You’re not the only one with tricks, you know!”
Xiao turns and raises an eyebrow. Venti winks at him, and then closes his eyes, standing perfectly still. The air around him begins to shimmer, charged with some strange kind of energy. With a dramatic (and probably unnecessary) flourish from Venti, it begins flowing upwards.
“Isn’t this so much easier than climbing? ” Venti beams, looking quite proud of himself.
Xiao doesn’t answer. Instead he unfurls his glider and soars up in the updraft Venti created out of seemingly nothing, reveling in the feeling of the wind beneath his wings. Over the years, the sense of marvel, of wonder he feels at flying —it’s never quite left him.
Xiao thinks about the first time he’d used a glider, how proud Guizhong had looked presenting it to him, how small she’d looked from the ground after he’d flown up. Less godlike. So puny. Almost human.
And in the end—well. There’s nothing to be said about that, anymore.
Venti floats up through the air and stops next to him, giving him a cheeky grin. “What do you think?” he asks. “Pretty cool, right?”
Xiao mutters something under his breath. He lopes an arm around Venti’s waist, marveling at how light he is—how insubstantial, like a wisp, like he might float away at any moment. He tries not to think about how warm he feels, and instead tightens his hold.
“What are you—”
Without any warning, Xiao barrels forward towards the neared peak. Venti’s yelp of alarm turns into whoops of joy as they soar forward. Xiao feels the barest hint of a smile creeping onto his face, but it ends all too soon when they reach the solitary patch of qingxin he was aiming for. It never fails to wonder him how they survive all the way up here, where the wind whips at his face with a bitter cold. They stand tall and proud, despite.
“We’re here for these, hm?” Venti asks. Xiao’s arm is still around his waist, but Venti makes no movement to extricate himself. He just leans forward, peering curiously, until Xiao lets him go. Reluctantly. Maybe.
“That’s qingxin,” Xiao explains. Then, because this trip is supposed to be educational or something, he adds: “Ganyu likes to eat it.”
Venti blinks slowly. “She likes to… eat it?” he asks. He looks thoughtful. “Does it taste good?”
Xiao shrugs. “A bit bitter,” he admits, though he’s loath to reveal the source of that knowledge. “But edible.”
Venti looks at the flower again, a strange expression on his face, and Xiao has the premonition of what he’s about to do mere seconds before it happens, powerless to stop it. (Though he’s not sure he would have stopped it, even if he did have time.)
“By the Seven,” Venti swears as he spits flower petals out onto the ground. “A bit bitter? A bit ?”
“You’re being a baby,” Xiao says. Without another word, he picks another qingxin flower and bites down on it, leaves and all.
He chews. Venti stares.
It’s about as bitter as he remembers. He doesn’t know why Ganyu seems to enjoy the taste, but it’s really not that bad. “See,” he says, after he finishes. “Easy.”
Venti is silent for about five seconds, which is five times longer than any period he has been silent since they set out on this trip, and then he says--
“Xiao, are you a masochist?”
They somehow make it to Dihua Marsh in one piece. Xiao had thought they would have to go to one of the Statues of the Seven and make their way along the footpath, but Venti had shook his head.
“I’ve been,” he said, with no further explanation.
They walk along the coast until Xiao sees what he’s looking for, a single small patch nestled near some rocks.
Venti runs over before Xiao can say anything, and plucks a glaze lily from the ground and twirls it between his fingers. Xiao’s eyebrow twitches. It takes all his self-control to not grab the flower right out of Venti’s hands. Glaze lilies—they’re sacred. One doesn’t simply pluck them, not if they don’t want Ganyu summoning them out of their dreams in the middle of the night to teach them a lesson. But he knows Venti means well—always means well, despite the thin veneer of mischievousness he wears like a mask.
“This flower,” Venti says. “What is it called?”
“That’s a glaze lily,” Xiao replies. Venti hums.
“So that’s what they’re called,” he says, softly. “Glaze lilies.”
“Have you seen one before?” Xiao asks. Venti’s reaction to this flower has been different than any of the ones before, and while he doesn’t remember Venti ever meeting her , he supposes they could have met while he wasn’t around.
“I have,” Venti says. He’s still twirling the flower, but he’s not looking at it. “Zhongli... a very long time ago, he came to find me in Mondstadt. He was a wreck, back then. Covered in blood. His eyes… they were—lost. I’d never seen him like that before. Or since.”
Xiao nods quietly. He remembers those days too—that day, in particular. How could he forget?
“He needed my help getting across the desert. And I don’t think… I don’t think he could have finished the trip alone, anyhow. We went to Sumeru,” Venti looks down, and cradles the flower in his palms. “He had one of these. He begged—Zhongli, begging , can you imagine?—the Archon of Wisdom to save it.”
Xiao can, because he saw it, with his own eyes, underneath the blood-red sun. Begging Celestia—because how could Zhongli beg God, when he was one—to bring her back. To make it all a bad, bad dream.
This is what Zhongli must have been doing the week after, when Xiao was drifting in and out of consciousness at Mt. Hulao.
“It never gets easier, does it?” Venti says. He looks up at Xiao, his face solemn. “Saying goodbye.”
No, it never does.
Xiao knows that it is a human thing, to leave. To be transient, to not last. But Guizhong, Bosacius, even Pervases—they were not human, and yet, they are gone. Only Rex Lapis remains, and he too has laid down his mantle. He too has left Xiao.
If even adepti cannot survive the weathering of time, then why would he bother with humans?
Why does he bother at all?
“Come with me,” Venti says. He takes Xiao’s hand in his. It is warm. It is alive. “It’s my turn to show you something.”
Xiao finds himself following Venti in Mondstadt, up a grassy slope dotted with patches of white flowers. Venti walks past them, all the way up to a solitary bloom at the edge of the cliff. It’s night now, the sunset bleeding away to stars, and in the distance Xiao can just barely see an island dusted with faded ruins.
Venti sits down on the edge next to the flower, dangling his feet over the precipice. It’s dangerous, Xiao wants to tell him. Get back before you fall.
Venti, falling. For some reason the idea is laughable. Instead Xiao finds himself seated next to the flower as well, thinking about how far it is down to the sea, how quickly he’d be able to catch Venti if he did tip, like a drunkard, over the edge.
“I once had a friend,” Venti begins, looking out upon the water. “Many, many moons ago. He was human.”
Ah. Xiao knows how this story must end.
“This was back when Mondstadt was… it was different. A tyrant was in power. The people were oppressed. But there were some who thought that things could change. That they could be better. He was one of them.”
Xiao thinks about Bosacius, about Menogias. Their smiles, their cheerful faces, the way they flopped onto the floor at Wangshu Inn whenever they came back from whatever mission with the relief, the pride of a job well done.
“We thought we were heroes,” Venti gives a soft, bitter chuckle. “Like something out of a fairy tale.” He looks down at the flower, touches it gently. “And we were, in some ways. We succeeded. We liberated Mondstadt from the tyrant’s rule. The people were happy. They were free.”
Xiao tries to picture Venti in battle, surrounded by warriors. Faceless, nameless, fighting for something they believed in, something larger than any one of them. What a grand adventure, they must have thought. What a brilliant, burning life they led.
“But heroes don’t lose,” Venti continues. His voice is quiet, trembling, but only barely. “They don’t die.” A deep breath. “But they died. All of them, in that tower.”
Xiao does not know how to respond. I understand sounds trite, sounds false. Because while he knows something of grief, of being left behind—what memories does Venti carry that make that grief so strong? What kind of life did he live with them, that he will no longer have? How many lives is he carrying with him, even now?
(The goodbyes never get easier, because none of them are ever the same.)
Xiao reaches out, hesitant. He doesn’t know what to say, but he can do this much. He grasps Venti’s hand in his, marveling at how light it is, feather-light, as if Venti might be hollow-boned, like a bird; uncaged, free. Xiao does not know how to be kind or gentle, but when he holds Venti’s hand like this, he thinks he might be able to learn.
“But I’m still here,” Venti says. “You know that, right?”
Xiao does not know how this story will end, but perhaps—
“I’m here,” Venti says again, their fingers still intertwined. Xiao can feel the blood rushing through his veins. Warmth against his skin.
Wind beneath his wings.
Venti is here—Venti has always been here, is still here, and for Xiao—
That is enough.