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To Zhongli, who is dear to my heart:
I came across the most interesting line in a book that I was reading today. It said, “half-gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.” So naturally I was inclined to think of you. Did you know, how many of the altars they dedicate to you are topped with baijiu and qingxin stalks? They have shops dedicated specifically to that sort of thing. I have been tempted to purchase from them, on occasion, though merchants around those parts always seem to give me the stink-eye whenever I draw near. Anyway, have you ever heard that before? I wonder if it means Rex Lapis is a half-god, or a real one.
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Dearest Tartaglia,
I should think this attempt at philosophy does not suit you very much. If you must know, Rex Lapis is dead. It does not matter who, or what, the people choose to worship. For at the end of the day, their oaths to the divine will lead them to the same outcome; at least for the future of Liyue itself.
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My Dear Zhongli,
You’re missing the point. I ask you this: how long has it been since you last felt the rush of blood (you do have blood, don’t you) in your veins, that thrill in your spine when a blade is drawn to your skin? Your past is not exactly a secret history. I can’t claim to know you as well as I’d like to, but what I do know is the spark of violence when I see it, and you must surely have that same itch within your bones.
Where I am, at night, the earth bleeds dust and willows into what’s left of my wounds. Everything is holy when you are made of sin, it seems. Abandoned camps made shrines to ruin. Treasure Hoarders lay siege to hillichurls in their moments of hubris, all the better to pick up the pieces where I find them. Where you’d find them, if only you’d join me.
Tell me you’re still better off there, working for some half-pint half-ghost of a girl.
She said it herself, shouldn’t the dead be laid to rest? What are you still doing, then, haunting the city while it’s still in grief?
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Dearest Tartaglia,
If you miss me so much, why don’t you come home instead?
I will not draw arms if it is not necessary to do so. Nature’s whims will always be the force that threatens life outside of your control, my dear heart, there is no need for me to add myself to that list. I will not be the god that claims your being for my own, though I suspect you have already given it up to the one I once called a friend.
You ask if I am a half-god? Very well. You already know the answer. But if I have to spell it out for you, then: promise me this, though it is hardly fair. Promise me: your heart belongs to no one else but you and you alone.
Never bleed for anything less.
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Dear Zhongli,
You’re right, it is profoundly unfair. I’ll let you in on a secret of my own: the world that shaped me was one profoundly absent of the divine. I am tooth and nail, bolt and cutters, crawled out of the abyss with my own two hands. You think I bleed for anything but myself? I cannot seem to stop. You must understand, we are the same in such regards. Beyond redemption, beyond retribution.
Tell me, Zhongli, what do you bleed for, then?
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Dearest Tartaglia,
As of now?
I bleed for you.
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Dear Zhongli,
Bullshit.
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Dearest Tartaglia,
Your laugh haunts me. A ghost in its own right. I see your silhouette in the stages set for puppet-shows, operatic retellings of long-lost tales. You have woven your name into the blur between my past and present, sewn your smile into the line that divides mortal and heavenly. It was you who struck the killing blow to the archon, you know. Reached into his chest and ripped his heart right out from where it had grown rust and weary, far too weary. Now it flutters in the palm of your hand. Traces the cracks in your skin to the vein that leads to the very epicenter of you, only you.
You, human, what do you know of love? Only these fleeting moments that crumble to dust within the blink of an eye. You can only give up what little you have to give.
You want to know what it’s like to be loved by a god?
When the world erodes to ash, when the face of every being who has walked this earth has been distorted and distilled beyond repair, when everything in every corner from the heavens to the dirt arrives – in its eventuality – to its ultimate end,
I will remember you still.
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Dearest Zhongli,
Is love not a transaction, to you? Is devotion not an oath? Is faith not woven in spirals around the arcs of your ribcage – wound tight around your vessels, is love not worship, to you?
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Zhongli, please
if you are the ground that i walk on, then how low will i have to bow to be beneath you?
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Dearest Tartaglia,
You forget yourself. There was never any oath, never any promise but the one which you refuse to keep. Forgive me, will you? I would like to indulge in a bit of greed, if only just for this.
Yes, love is a transaction – it is also a sacrifice. It is never worth the price we pay. Yet we give up parts of ourselves anyway, whittle us down to our bare bones, if only for this brief taste of divinity. I must ask you not to give in to that temptation, not merely out of concern, if you will permit me to be selfish for a moment.
The Tartaglia that I love is unchanged, unmoored. He must survive at all costs. That I will ensure.
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Dearest Zhongli,
Only for you.