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It was a dark night, the moon barely a sliver hanging between stars, the only path in the darkness carved by the torches lining the road. The superstitious farmers of Springvale attributed many things to spirits, and at this time of night Diluc was half-inclined to believe in such things himself.
A sharp, high-pitched squeal like the death of a shrew leapt from the silence. He jolted, slamming an angry hand to his chest. A cat darted across his path as something limp and white dangled from its jaws. It vanished into the darkness.
He let out a breath, glad nobody had been around to see him spook at something so mundane,
“Diluc!”
The voice was small but that helpless slur was unmistakable. He span on his heel and raced after the cat as it slipped into the shadows, adrenaline telling him to chase down the last thing that moved despite not knowing a thing about why.
Fire ran down from his elbow to his fist. As if whipping the air, he sent a lash of flame surging across the dry grass. The fire slammed down in front of the cat like garrison gates, then flared up like the crest of a wave. The animal’s tawny fur popped and it dropped the creature in its mouth with an ugly, miserable hiss. Diluc’s feet slid to a stop. The damp, white thing from its mouth now lay in a heap. It didn’t look like a mouse. He scooped it up.
It was so light that his senses barely registered that it was there in his palms at all. With a frown, he leaned in close, trying to figure out what it was that he was looking at.
It pulled itself to a sitting position, its beady little blue eyes blinking in the firelight. Its whole body jumped in a high-pitched hiccup. “Sssank you,” it said, raising a small, nublike hand beneath the sheet that covered it (or was a part of it, Diluc wasn’t sure).
A burst of wind engulfed the creature, suddenly pulling feathers, leaves and petals into a small tornado. He snapped his hands away and staggered backwards until he heard the dry rustle of brush under his heel. He could see nothing of the sprite until the wind cleared, but when it did, he saw Venti lying sprawled out in the long grass, rubbing his head with his hat bunched in his fist.
“You’re bleeding,” was all Diluc could think to say. He supposed he couldn’t be shocked. Venti was already the wind - the fact that he had a third form he had not yet seen should have come as no surprise.
“Mm,” Venti grumbled and pressed a hand to his neck. A puncture wound oozed blood down to his collar and stained the fabric. “That little guy came out of nowhere.”
Diluc reached over and hauled him to his feet. Venti banked to the side and threw his arms around him, stinking of ale and grass stains. He giggled, revelling in his good luck now that nothing hurt and no furry demon was dragging him off to Hell.
“You could have died,” Diluc said. His voice was blunt and tired. “Did you ever think about that?”
“It was an accident! I wasn’t paying any attention!” Venti declared as they began to walk. Diluc aimed them back towards the path, so that they could follow the orange streak back to the city. Everything else was blackness, both earth and sky, with barely a horizon to separate the two. “I was just minding by own business, though I did get trapped behind a window at one point…”
Diluc was struck with the mental image of the wind sprite, or whatever Venti was, repeatedly smacking into a window pane like a fly in the height of summer. Or, perhaps he was more like a butterfly and had tried to flutter his way through one top corner until some kind soul opened it for him. “The sssecond one,” Venti said, causing Diluc’s eyes to dart down to him again.
“Can you read my mind, now?”
“I’m too sleepy to put all that effort into hitting the glass over and over and over again,” Venti slurred, sometimes tangling his feet under Diluc’s and sometimes almost wandering back off into the blackness. Diluc kept a firm hold of his cape. “I got stuck.”
He hummed a bright and tuneful song as they walked. His cape became more of a leash as he weaved and wandered, his arms spread to keep his balance as his face turned to gaze at the pitch sky, the shadows of the countryside, and finally Diluc himself. He tugged on his cape accidentally as he stumbled around, but nothing seemed to bother him.
“How did the cat get you?” Diluc asked.
“Just came out of nowhere,” Venti repeated as he staggered into Diluc’s path, got tangled in his cape, and then fell back at his side as he tried to extract his arms from the twisting fabric. “You know how cats are. Silent killers.”
“And that would be it, then?” Diluc replied with terseness. “Two-thousand years of being Mondstadt’s god, only to be killed by a housepet? The city deserves better. At least Liyue’s Archon was assassinated.”
“Ehe~”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing,” Venti smirked, and for a moment Diluc was forced to remember that Venti was an ancient and unknowable thing. Then that knowledge vanished as said ancient and unknowable thing tripped over his own kitten heels and fell into the dirt. “Oops! Pick me up?”
He sighed and hooked his arms underneath him, then set him on his feet. It took a few attempts to balance him correctly before his knees locked and decided to bear his weight again. Then they continued.
“Anyway, I wouldn’t have died,” Venti continued, finally winding his arms around Diluc’s elbow and clinging on tight. He barely weighed a thing. “Can you imagine Lord Barbatos getting slain by a cat after all this time? That wouldn’t be a good story at all!!”
“You’re still bleeding.”
“Oop!” Venti slapped a hand to the messy puncture against his neck. “Well, it’s not that deep. It was just a cat’s fang, after all.”
They walked arm-in-arm down the path of light. Venti never seemed to sober up, though Diluc had to admit that he wasn’t able to judge with too much accuracy. All he knew was that Venti’s weight never left the tight and happy cling against him.