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i. glaze lily
“You can sense it too, can’t you?”
He blinks away the glare of sunset, and Guizhong is kneeling by his feet, fingers stained an earthy brown by the soil beneath her nails. There is a metal clipper in her left hand, one Morax knows has been sharpened to a point over many afternoons. She turns to him and tilts her head, the tips of her hair just grazing the glaze lilies. “Unrest just beyond the borders of the assembly, Morax. Moving closer with every day we spend at peace.”
It’s a truth he’d prefer not to think about, he decides. Not when the sun is warm on his back, filtering through the gingko leaves like flecks of gold, not when the lilies around her knees have begun to open ever so slightly, greeting the moon just below the horizon. “It’ll be hard to tell when they plan to attack, or how they’ll enter.” He resists the urge to fidget with the ends of his hair. It is ugly and divine, how the heavens demand that he consider such uncertain things, plan for death and loss like they are subjects to whip into line.
She smooths away the fallen leaves that have gathered on her skirt, takes the head of one lily in hand. “But you’ll know what to do, won’t you?” And it is so much like Guizhong to continue onward, to pluck his unspoken will I? out of the air before it has had the chance to even settle. “I have never doubted you.” The blades of the clipper close around the lily’s stem, and the blossom comes away clean.
“Do they regrow? If you cut them like that, I mean.”
Guizhong laughs softly, tugs him off the bench and onto the ground with her, allows him to change the subject with all the finesse of a wild boar. She has always been better with the uncertain than he has. “From the stem, no. But elsewhere…” She presses the blossom into his hand, alabaster against stone, and clears a circle in the earth. “We can plant just the head, and it will grow without fail.”
The glaze lily is almost too soft in his palm, fragile and near-translucent. He does not dare close his fist, slowly lowers his wrist to the ground as Guizhong’s eyes travel up his neck, along the curve of his ear and jaw. “How long will that take?”
“All that calls the earth its home will eventually blossom.” She closes his fingers gently, guides his hand into the shallow soil and coaxes it back open. The lily tumbles onto the ground, white and blue against clay. “It is only a matter of learning when and where to plant it.”
She smiles at him, gentle, knowing, and he smooths the earth back into place.
ii. violetgrass
In one afternoon, Morax becomes sick of the scent of violetgrass.
They are trekking through Wuwang Hill when it first begins: a cloying, medicinal scent, almost like spiked antiseptic. Though no one pays it any mind at first, soon even the Yakshas have begun to hold their noses and flinch, eyes fixed on the trampled purple beneath their feet. It is everywhere , hanging from the eaves of abandoned houses, growing in straggling clumps from the cliff faces they scale. A dusty and mocking tang, the acrid reminder of each step forward.
The locals hang violetgrass from their windows to ward off evil spirits , Bosacius had told them at the foot of the hill. Once used only for curative or culinary purposes, it had quickly become a sign of protection as the war had raged, spreading like wildfire across the plains and hills. Another stem crunches under his feet, and Morax flinches, thinks of the upturned fences and broken wagons they’d encountered on the way up, the shattered windows and walls stained red and purple and everything in between. Some protection it had brought them.
And perhaps it is selfish of him to consider and regret these things, to grit his teeth against a breeze so tainted with aroma. For it had been Morax, the warrior god, who’d declared conquest over the other gods of the region, hadn’t it? It had been Morax, the Prime, who’d decided that Liyue was worth freeing, worth fighting for, even if it was reduced to a wasteland smelling of blood and herbs in the process. It had been he who’d–
“My lord?” Alatus is looking down at him from over the cliff face, features gentle even as he descends the rocky terrain. “The others are far ahead of us.”
“Ah–” There is a sprig of violetgrass in his hand, and Alatus watches him fiddle with it. The air of Wuwang hangs deathly silent over their heads, almost begging for something to shatter the lull. “I must have fallen behind–”
“Is it true that humans once used the violetgrass to cook and mend wounds?” He looks up, surprised, and Alatus flushes a slight pink, studies the rocky path intently. Even now, Morax finds himself astounded at his curiosity, at the gentle way he’d reach out to examine things no one else paid mind to. “Forgive me, I was just wondering–”
“They did, yes. Some used it to make dishes a little bit sweeter, or to soothe muscles and cuts.” When Alatus had first emerged from the carcass of a slain god, Morax remembers, he’d watched the stars for what seemed like hours before turning to his master’s killer, bowing his head in gratitude. How did he do it, finding the peace and forgiveness to look at the world with nothing but wonder?
He holds out the violetgrass, and Alatus takes it with careful fingers, sets it down gently on a ridge protruding from the cliff face. Places what remains of its stem into the rough gravel. Would it regrow there, put down new roots? “Come, we have much ground to cover.”
Step by step, the violetgrass fills his lungs as he climbs, roots and leaves and flowers.
iii. qingxin
As Zhongli enters Ganyu’s new office, he finds her sitting amongst mounds of documents almost larger than she is. When she hears the door close and spots him over the leftmost pile, she rises to greet him, almost too formally. “Rex Lapis–”
“Just Zhongli will be alright.” Ganyu blinks at him, her neck turning red, and he hastily continues before she can apologize profusely “And I brought you some Qingxin, to celebrate your new post!”
He gently hands her the wrapped bundle, and Ganyu momentarily looks as though she is about to cry. “Thank you Rex– I mean, Zhongli. I’ll put them in a vase for later.”
“How is working with the Qixing? I hear that they’ve been quick to establish the laws for Liyue Harbor.” Every moment, Zhongli realizes, has slowly become a reminder that the war has passed. Outside the office’s window, wagons and merchants squabble over where to place new shops, while workers shoo children away from houses under construction. Ganyu’s bow rests in a glass case at the other end of the room, and the gloves on his own hands are a strange sensation. Things have changed, in ways both simple and complex.
“I have much to learn, I think.” She pauses, and Zhongli waits for her to continue. Ganyu has always been the type to feel things out, now more so than ever. Lost between the end of the war, the dispersal of the adepti, and fledgling Liyue Harbor, settling into mundane life has been difficult for her; he knows this all too well. “And so do the rest of the Qixing, and everyone in the harbor,”
Ganyu trails off mid-sentence, unwraps the Qingxin and places them into a glass vase filled with water. Translucent white petals flutter onto the tabletop, and she quickly sweeps them into a small bin by her feet. “But no matter how unfamiliar this place is, everyone sees it as home.” She places the vase in front of him, smiles in a way that reminds Zhongli of Jueyun’s peaks, of afternoons in the sun when time had once seemed to not matter. It is a tentative smile, uncertain but brave. “And I think I’ve begun to grow into it as well.”
He smiles. “I’m glad.” And he truly is, even if he does not completely understand the careful ease in her voice, the beginnings of a new perspective. A part of Zhongli, buried under strata and rock, longs for the same peace, the same hopeful abandon, and he tucks it away for reevaluation in a hundred years time, maybe a thousand. Perhaps he’ll know by then.
“Lady Ganyu, what lovely Qingxin!” A secretary has come in from the outer chambers of the office, and Ganyu bows to her as she enters, ever polite. “Be sure to pick them up by the end of the day though, or they might grow roots and become less tender–”
“Oh!” And before he can react, Ganyu has taken three of the Qingxin and polished off their flowers in a single bite, leaving the poor secretary pale as she backpedals towards the doorway. “I’ll finish them right away!”
He cannot help but laugh as Ganyu continues to eat, a simple happiness evident in each bite. Putting down new roots is possible after all.
iv. silk flower
“Director Hu, are you busy?”
Hu Tao looks up at him from her game of tic-tac-toe. They are the only ones left in the funeral parlor, and Zhongli does not know who she is competing against, nor does he want to find out. “Might I have a moment of your time?”
“What is it?”
He coughs, toes at an uneven plank of wood. “A new shipment of silk flower cuttings arrived at the parlor last night. After some measurements, I’ve discovered that we’re actually in surplus of what we’ll need for the coming funeral season.”
Hu Tao narrows her eyes at him, and for strength, Zhongli reminds himself that he is more than a hundred times her age. “I was hoping that you’d allow me to use the excess to plant a silk flower garden? I’ve done the calculations, and with only a fourth of the parlor’s backyard, we’d be able to save over thirty thousand mora on–”
The director bursts out laughing, and Zhongli does not blame her. Even he does not understand this sudden urge to start a garden, on professional property, no less, but something about the idea calms him. He can see the small plot of land he’d marked out from his desk by the office’s window, thinks about watching the blossoms from there, graceful stalks swaying gently in the wind –
He steels himself. “If you’d like, I can show you the figures I drew up–”
“No need, Consultant. Feel free to use as much land as you’d like.” Hu Tao gets up from her chair and heads towards the exit, a peculiar skip in her step. “Lock up for me, Zhongli-xiansheng, and–”
Something more gentle creeps into her tone, and it is times like this when Zhongli feels almost mortal under Hu Tao’s gaze. What exactly does she understand that he is only beginning to know? “And feel free to work on it whenever you’re ready.” Then she is gone, and Zhongli carefully folds up her game of tic-tac-toe, places it into his desk drawer for safekeeping.
The next morning, Zhongli finds himself on his knees in Wangsheng’s dusty backyard, digging shallow and uneven holes into the scratchy gravel. It is wholly unbefitting for a god of Geo, he thinks, but he presses on, pushing a blunt shovel into the dirt over and over until his knees ache. To be completely honest, he does not know if silk flowers will grow from cuttings like these, bruised and crumpled as they are, but he places them into the soil anyway: a seedling here, a sprig with leaves there, roots and leaves and flowers.
A final stroke of his shovel seals the last hole, and he thoroughly waters each site with Hu Tao’s ghost-patterned watering can. There , Zhongli thinks, before getting to his feet.
And oh , as he rises, the entirety of Liyue Harbor becomes visible from the parlor’s backyard. Rooftops glinting gold in the sun, the smell of chopsuey in the air and the yells of merchants, lanterns coming on one by one in the wake of twilight. It draws something like a sigh from his lips, and finally, blessedly, Liyue feels less a place he has built with blood and sweat and stone, more like a thrumming heart that he is ever fortunate to witness. Perhaps, after all this time, he has learned.
Two weeks later, the first of the silk flowers finally blossom from the earth, shades of red and pink glinting in the sunset.