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It's a dizzying rush of vertigo, again and again, that disquieting re-realization of the missing pieces of his mind. Unpleasant jolts felt only in their absence, like the gap where a tooth should be, sucking and hollow, like tripping and falling, only the sickening lurch never ends.
Memory, identity, all out of reach. Even the present moment is difficult to maintain, the details of his surroundings slipping from his grasp, no purchase to be found without any context to tie to. As soon as he takes his attention off any one thing, it's gone. He might as well be floating in some formless void, some nothing purgatory, dim and ceaselessly gray.
Focus, he tells himself. Open your senses, look closely around you. Take in the nature of your existence.
In his hand, a leaf: fan-shaped, a startlingly bright burst of yellow. He looks up to find he's standing under a tree alight with such leaves, branches teeming with their vibrant hue, blotting out the sky.
Is it daytime beyond that canopy? Night? Or does the world end there, past the limits of what he can see at a time?
He looks back down at the leaf in his hand, and sees that there's someone else holding it with him. Handing it to him. Black fingers—no, fingers in black gloves—that release their hold as he watches. He follows the motion of its retreat, that gloved hand, to see he is not alone under this canopy, in this little soap bubble of a world.
"Touch me, Azhdaha," invites the somber statue of a man standing with him, who looks like flesh, but has a presence like stone. "Place your hands upon my eyes, and let me remember for you."
The words awaken weak sparks within him, tenuous attempts at connection, recollection. His name is Azhdaha. When he touches stone, he can perceive their memories, though he has none of his own. And this man before him is made of stone.
So he does. Drops the leaf, where it twirls away to nothingness, and lifts up his hands. They're shaky, uncoordinated, but there's a light guiding him, the light in those eyes as bright as amber, like precious stones themselves. Just before he makes contact, he utters a name in reverent whisper, and only remembers when he hears himself speak it: "Zhongli."
Those eyes smile before they close, and his hands close over them.
Immediately, the world floods into life, into memory.
He sees a tree aflame with golden leaves against a brilliant blue sky. There is a great boulder lying under the tree—no, a creature, surely. The perspective closes in, and he realizes he's moving closer. No, it's Zhongli who's moving, his eyes that Azhdaha watches through, his memory that Azhdaha greedily drinks in through his fingertips.
It's lovely.
"The tree you see before you is ancient," says Zhongli's voice in his ear, outside of the memory, "one of the oldest extant species to remain in this world. It has outlasted every creature that it once evolved to coexist with. All of its pollinators are extinct, lost to history; no living animal still makes diet of its fruit. Yet, it remains to this day, and remains alone."
"How strange," Azhdaha says. "Then why does it seem so familiar to me?"
"Why, indeed?"
There is something so soothing about Zhongli's voice, as if Azhdaha has heard this story before, or perhaps merely the tone, the easy recitation of facts esoteric and impossible to know. He's eager for more.
"What is that creature?"
"What creature?" says Zhongli, with bone-deep patience.
Unable to point in the memory, Azhdaha fumbles instead for the right description. "The stone-like dragon. Dozing under the tree."
There is a brief pause. Then, Zhongli sighs. "Of course. Your sight was always the worst of your senses."
He doesn't know what to make of that.
The dragon in the memory looks over, head turning ponderously, great jowls scraping across chest. Despite having features of stone, it bears a pleased expression. Its mouth is moving, but no sound emerges.
"If you wish for the memories of my ears as well," Zhongli prompts, "you need only touch them."
With that, Azhdaha pulls back into the present, where he has his fingers clamped over Zhongli's closed eyelids. It can't be comfortable, but there are no complaints. More gingerly this time, he grasps Zhongli's ears, one in each hand, between the tips of thumb and forefinger. Strokes the soft lobe, and then lightly brushes into the delicate whorl.
Immediately, he can hear the great rustle of leaves overhead, sighing in the wind, and the quiet, ancient creak of stone beneath, buried deep in the earth. All of these fine details, preserved in the memory, one that he suspects is older than he knows.
"Morax," the dragon is saying, in a voice deep and rumbling, at once familiar and strange, "what have you brought for me today?"
"The finest honing powder, which the humans use to polish their jewels." Zhongli's voice within the memory sounds younger, but it's distinctly him. He lifts up a basket in each hand, one piled with soft cloths, the other filled with a sparkling sand. "I thought we would experiment with this, as I fear the cliffs around us couldn't bear much more, if you continue to itch your hide against them."
He uses the cloth to smooth the grit onto the dragon's back, and then wets a second with clear water to wash it away. Soon he's buffed an entire patch of skin to a gleaming, mirror-like finish, and switches to his bare hand instead, long smooth swipes along the dragon's hide that produce a great shiver with each stroke.
"Do you wish also for the memories of my hands?" interrupts Zhongli, in the present.
What Azhdaha truly wishes for are the memories of that dragon, to know what it is to be caressed, and with such tenderness, by this man. But what's offered is not something to take lightly, either.
Bowing over Zhongli's hands, he presses a kiss to the back of each one, and peels the gloves off, carefully, finger by finger. When the pale flesh is exposed, he clasps them in his own, palm to palm, fingers to wrist, and the contact makes him shiver just like that remembered dragon, a muzzy, warm pleasure, like sun soaking into stone.
At the same time, he can feel the dragon's hide as if he's touching it himself, and it is stone after all, smooth and cool under the shade of the tree.
He has a strange thought: if touching stone can grant him its memory, and touching Zhongli can grant him his, then touching a stone dragon, even one remembered... is there any trace of memory to be had?
With nervous anticipation, he focuses on coaxing them out, this time through Zhongli's palms, rather than his own.
What follows is an explosion of information, pure sensation, faint but all-encompassing, like walking into a swarm of monarch butterflies, a shower of brilliant gingko leaves, those golden wings light and fluttering over every part of him.
He jerks away from the dragon (from himself), away from Zhongli (from Morax, his old friend), and finds himself in a present no longer dim, but exquisitely colored by experiences from a life ancient and fleeting all at once.
Morax smiles at him sadly, and he realizes that they must have done this before. That he has known extinction, and revival, many times over, with only Morax to patiently keep watch through it all.
Anguish takes him, but he feels nothing but loving patience in return. There is no hesitance in the way Morax reaches up to him now, cups the back of his head, and pulls him in close, touching forehead to forehead, nose to nose. The contact steadies him and undoes him all at once, and he melts into it, with wonder and laughter.
True, he doesn't know how long he has left of this blessed awareness.
But he does know that the present is miracle enough.