Chapter Text
It’s been years since he’s flown. Sure, Amber gave him gliders just two months after landing in Teyvat, but when he spreads them wide and balances his arms out as he’s taken flight—no, not flight, just gliding, the premature version of flight—he can’t feel maneuver the way he wants through the air, can’t go up, can only fall. The closest he’s gotten was when Venti had lifted him up in the battle with Stormterror, but even that slim amount of control is miniscule in comparison to true flight.
Years, he thinks. Years of being grounded to this, where he wanders the land on two feet, running and swimming and climbing and while yes, he’s good at this, it also encapsulates years of gazing up at the sky and thinking, hoping, wishing for an infinite amount of what ifs.
It’s not like he hasn’t tried; hell, he’s tried—and failed—far more than he’s liked. First was the trip off Stormbearer Point, even though Vind cried after him to stop. That had landed in a wonderful crash landing on the beach where he had first met Paimon, and where she, in typical Paimon-fashion, berated him for making such a stupid decision.
“You can fly and I still had to fish you out of the water here when I first met you,” he’d retorted. “I don’t think you’re in any position to call this stupid.”
“Well, this was totally on purpose and avoidable!” she’d shrilled, stamping her little feet in the air. “Why didn’t you even use your gliders? They’re right there, and you can’t say that you forgot, because you’re really good at using them too! You don’t get to lie to Paimon about this!”
“Oh, come on,” he’d said. “I already told you why I jumped.”
“Yeah, but if you knew it wasn’t going to happen, then why didn’t you open your glider at the end?”
“Well, you know,” he’d said. “Maybe it was going to happen at the last second. You know, adrenaline, fight-or-flight response or something, and suddenly, boom! I’m flying!”
Paimon had looked majorly unimpressed by his boom. Maybe it was because he didn’t do the proper body motions; he hadn’t spread out his arms to enact an explosion; maybe that would’ve done it.
“The problem,” she’d said, rolling out the m, “is that you are now hurt like this! How is Paimon supposed to drag you back to Mondstadt for treatment when we’re all the way here?”
He had propped up a knee and attempted to get up, only to be stopped by the sudden pain that flared up when he put pressure on it.
“See!” she’d said. “What are we going to do if some hilichurls attack us now?”
He had only managed a grin. “You can protect us with your super Paimon powers!” he’d said before wincing as he tried to move again. “Right?”
“Paimon should leave you out to dry here,” she said.
“Oh, no!” he said, raising the back of his hand to his forehead and flopping over. “Whatever will I do if Paimon leaves me stranded out here!”
Paimon just frowned at him. “Drama queen,” she’d said. “Just get your bandages and herbs out here and treat yourself.”
“Yes ma’am,” he’d said, saluting before picking out the roll and herbs from his bag. “On it now.”
There are many times that he tries in between that and now, but they are small; lightly hopping, sprinting across the ground for a running start, climbing atop a stone and jumping. But the next time he makes a serious attempt, it is en route to Liyue, right at Stone Gate. He picks a few Jueyun chilis along the way, stuffing the red peppers into his backpack as the two of them hike their way up the cliffs.
“Paimon knows you’ve gotten the power of Geo,” she says, “but is it really enough?”
Aether winks at her. “Look, we won’t know until we try, right?” he says, grinning.
“The last time you did this, Paimon had to help you back to Mondstadt and that was maybe the worst thing ever! At least open your glider this time!”
He shakes his head. “No can do,” he says. “Maybe the whole thing about being in danger scaring me into flying will work this time.”
She folds her arms. “Or maybe you will just fall and hurt yourself again, and then Paimon will have to find some way to cart you back to Mondstadt or Liyue, and now we’re even further from either than Stormbearer Point is from Mondstadt. Can’t you think about Paimon a little bit more?”
“You can just fly me over,” he says. “Or float. Whatever.”
She stomps her feet midair. “Paimon will let you know, again, that flying is very hard work, and that you and your backpack are very heavy! Paimon most certainly will not!”
“Well, let’s just hope that it works this time, then,” he says. “Pray for me?”
“Paimon always hopes,” she says. “But we should still prepare in case it doesn’t happen!”
“Well, too late now!” he says. “Unless you wanna try to catch me?”
Paimon actually contemplates the idea. “Paimon can try,” she says.
Aether blinks. “Wait, actually?”
“Paimon just wants to make sure you’re safe!” she says. “Is that so hard to believe?”
He smiles at her. “Thanks, Paimon,” he says.
She just frowns. “How about you care a little bit more about your own safety instead!” she says. “So that Paimon doesn’t have to do stuff like this in the first place!”
“I’ll think about it,” he says, but Paimon huffs in response.
“Just actually do it!” she says. “No thinking about it!”
As for the actual jump itself, it ends about as well as the time before. Just as he sees the ground hurtling itself towards him faster and closer than he’d like, he looks at Paimon, whose eyes widen in fear and, her tiny arms and fingers curling in, darts away from him as he, predictably, crash lands on the ground. Again. Maybe he really should’ve opened his gliders like Paimon said.
“What the heck, Paimon!” he yells at her, rolling to lie back-down on the dust. “Didn’t you say you’d try to soften my landing a bit!”
“Ack, Paimon’s sorry!” she says, slowly floating out from her impromptu hiding spot behind a rock. “It was just instinct, okay?”
He shakes his head. “I guess I have to patch myself up again,” he says. “Really, Paimon, at least do what you said you’d do, would you?”
She puffs out her cheeks. “What, and you’d just run blindly into something falling straight at you?”
He gapes at her. “Blindly? Paimon, you knew it was me.”
“Well, you know!” she says, waving her hands around. “High speed, falling, it’s scary, okay?”
Aether just shakes his head as he starts making a salve. “And here I thought I could trust you,” he says. “Thanks for nothing, Paimon.”
“Paimon still tries her best!” she says.
“Haha, I know,” he says. “I guess I just overestimated you a bit.”
Paimon pauses for a moment, basking in withdrawn glory. Then comes her indignant hey!
They opt to stop at Wangshu Inn. Aether says it’s because it’s the nearest establishment and he needs the rest, but Paimon is not at all subtle about the other reason they stop, and she seems to want to make a point of it before Verr Goldet, much to Aether’s embarrassment.
“Don’t you want to go pay a visit to Xiao, too?” she says as she hands him the keys to their room.
Aether looks wearily at Paimon. “Really?” he says. “You’re really bringing that up right now?”
Paimon gives him a mischievous grin. “But you do, don’t you?”
He sighs. “At least let me make him a plate of almond tofu before we go,” he says. “It’s the least we can do if we’re going to be barging in unannounced.”
“I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you,” Verr says, and although it encourages Aether a bit, it also unfortunately makes Paimon push further than he’d like.
“See!” she says. “And while you’re making that almond tofu you can make me sticky honey roast too!”
“As long as you stop talking,” he concedes, and she lights up.
When the almond tofu is finished, Aether brings the plate up to the balcony of Wangshu Inn as he leaves Paimon to clean off the plate of sticky honey roast in the kitchen.
“Go see your boyfriend,” she says, and he has to swat her away as well as threaten to withhold her supply of sticky honey roast to keep those kinds of words away.
“He’s not,” he says, “and you need to stop saying that.”
Paimon just shrugs. “Whatever you say,” she says. “As long as I get yummy food.”
Typical Paimon. At least it’s easy to manipulate her into doing things. He can handle Smiley Yanxiao getting mad enough to kick him out of the kitchen. Alienating Xiao, on the other hand, would probably be unbearable.
As he steps onto the balcony, the breeze kicks up slightly as he looks behind him. Xiao appears behind him, his face still serious and emotionless, but at least it’s slightly softer than the appearance during their first meeting.
But contrary to their usual meetings, where Xiao makes it a point to eat first and talk later, he instead furrows his brows and frowns.
“Uh,” Aether says, giving him a sheepish wave, “miss me?”
“What happened to you?” he says, ignoring Aether to look him up and down, taking in the way-too-many bandages, some of which are stained through with blood. “There aren’t any fights that would best you like this here in Liyue.”
Aether laughs. “Ah, well, that would be because they aren’t from a fight,” he says, and then Xiao’s brows furrow even further.
“Then what happened to you?” Xiao asks. “You know if you need help—”
“To call your name,” Aether finishes seamlessly. “Yeah, I know. I was just trying to fly.”
Xiao stares at him.
“I never told you, actually,” Aether says. “I, uh, used to be able to. It’s usually something I keep from people, since it’d be kind of weird if a person was able to, you know, fly, but I figured you wouldn’t tell anyone. But basically, I haven’t been able to in a while, but since I’ve gotten a bit more power back recently, I wanted to try to fly again.”
Xiao makes a small, choked sound.
Aether blinks. “Sorry?”
The question comes out low, strained. “Why?”
“…Why what?”
“Why would you want to fly?”
Aether blinks at him. “Have you ever glided?” he asks, before realizing no, why would Xiao use gliders when he’s already a master of traversing air without them?
Xiao lets the question sit for a second before responding with a simple “no.”
“It’s just, uh, I mean, it’s not bad,” he says. “It’s just, kind of a cheap imitation of flying. And yeah it’s not bad, but it’s nothing in comparison to the real thing. Flight’s just kind of freeing. You know?”
Just as he finishes his sentence, leans slightly forward onto his toes towards Xiao, sees him open his mouth, the start of a sentence just beginning to peek its way through, Paimon floats up the steps and to Aether’s side.
“I’m back Aether!” she says. “Hi Xiao!”
Of course she had to show up now. He clicks his tongue. “You have the absolute worst timing,” Aether mutters under his breath, still eyeing Xiao.
Xiao just continues to frown. “I don’t see anything good in flying,” he says, and the words come out breathy.
Paimon mirrors Xiao’s frown. “What?” she says. “Oh, are you trying to convince him to not do stupid things too? Like throwing himself off cliffs in an attempt to fly? Of course, Adepti must have more sense than this one here!”
“It’s not like that, Paimon,” Aether says. “Maybe some people aren’t trying to crush my hopes as hard as you, you know.”
Paimon crosses her arms. “Paimon’s been telling you it’s a bad idea from the beginning. It’s not Paimon’s fault that you keep ending up like this, and Paimon thinks that most people would like to keep you from always getting hurt.” Then she gasps. “Wait, no way you were talking bad about Paimon’s flying, are you?”
“I wish,” Aether laughs. “No, it was about me.”
In the background, Xiao just continues to stare at the wooden floor of the balcony.
“There’s nothing to be good about flying,” he says, and with the way he spits the words at the ground, for a second, Aether almost believes him.
“Wait—” Aether says, stretching out a hand towards Xiao, only to be jarred into stillness by empty space left where he had turned away and disappeared.
“Are you sure he’s on board with you flying?” Paimon asks.
Aether just glares at her.
Xiao can’t remember the last time he had wings.
That’s a lie—they still lie with his scapula, and he can still sometimes feel the ghost of an outline that branches out from his shoulder blades, the nonexistent weight of empty, feathered bones. The cut out on the back of his shirt constantly exposes that section of skin to the elements, and sometimes, he shivers out of the lack of coverage. He’s worn this same type of clothing ever since signing his contract with Rex Lapis—2000 years, maybe. It’s been that long since he’s flown with wings, but who’s counting? Certainly not him; that is a count of despair that will never end, something better to not count at all. By far, he prefers the whistling of wind that blows through trees, tearing down all the leaves at once and scattering them, rotting to nothingness, gone.
Everyone says there’s something tantalizing about flight. Each year, Rex Lapis descended from the skies at the Rite of Descension, at least back when he had ruled over Liyue, coming from the heavens just like the god he was. Such is the power of flight; sustaining oneself above the mortal realm came with reverence and glory. He is familiar with things like that.
The folds of his wings contract just a little bit in his back, the first time he’s felt them move in decades, maybe centuries. It’s something he’s built up a long-standing habit to ignore as well as he can, for good reason. It nearly crunches between his scapula, folding between the gap that had widened there, letting his esophagus fill with acid. There is nowhere for it to go; up to his mouth, where it makes him wretch, or down to his stomach, where it fills him with nausea. He curls in a little further in his spot atop the roof of Wangshu Inn, where even Aether would not bother him.
It’s freeing, Aether had said. He knows Aether would never lie so blatantly, but out of all the things he’s heard in his life, it feels like the worst lie of all, crafted specially to split open the cracks he’d spent millennia trying to repair.
Aether’s wounds have always been quick to heal. Even by the morning, the pain has almost entirely subsided save for when he puts a bit too much weight on one foot. Verr Goldet gives them a small wave when they pass by the front desk in the morning.
“Good morning,” she says, slightly warmer than the normal good mornings that she gives to guests. “Don’t worry about breakfast, it’s on the house.”
Aether gives her a weird look. Paimon, oblivious, cheers.
“Why are you giving us free food?” he asks.
“Why are you complaining about free food?” Paimon says. “Aren’t you glad that you don’t have to cook for Paimon?”
“I’m not complaining!” he says, indignant. “It’s just… weird.”
“I’m not about to make you make your own breakfast when you’re injured,” Verr tells them. “Especially not when you’re special guests around here.”
There’s a pause. “Special guests,” Aether repeats, dumbfounded. “Didn’t you do something like this during the Lantern Rite?”
Verr gives no response save for a mischievous wink, which is far more confusing than if she had just given him a proper answer.
“That’s not helpful at all,” he says. “Please tell me you didn’t overhear our conversation yesterday.”
“I didn’t have to,” she says, far happier than it feels like she should be. “Dihua Marsh always bends to his will. The winds have kicked up a lot ever since you left the balcony yesterday. Some guests have even complained about it. You know about how they are here, so naturally there are a lot of broken windows. Hua’ain will be upset.” The way she says it makes it seem like Hua’ain’s anger is the punchline of a joke she’s been waiting years to tell.
Well, that makes it even worse. “Please tell me you aren’t going to commission me to fix them,” he says. Maybe if he plays up his wounds, she’ll let him off the hook.
“Why?” she asks, leaning forward onto the desk, chin on her lightly crossed hands. “You’ll be compensated fairly for it.”
“I know, but still, it’s just not what I’m here for,” he says. “You know.”
Verr Goldet needs to stop taking his silence as an invitation to fill up the space with the words he’d purposely left unsaid. Her and Paimon both had this problem, and he’s beginning to think that he should really figure out a better response for things like this. “You’re here for Xiao instead?”
Aether seals his lips. Maybe if he keeps up the silence, then Verr will get the hint. He’s given up on Paimon, but Verr should still be smart enough to figure it out.
“Well, the kitchen’s waiting for you,” she says. “Smiley Yanxiao’ll clear out for a few minutes whenever you tell him.”
“I know,” Aether says.
“Then what are you waiting for?” she says. “Don’t you have to prep another plate of almond tofu?”
She didn’t get the hint after all. “You didn’t have to say it like that,” he says, turning away.
She ignores him. “I’m sure he’s waiting for you,” she says. “You have a lot to make up for after yesterday.”
He’ll make an extra plate for comfort, but that’s all surface. The conversation will almost definitely be long, and from what he knows, winding, but necessary things are, well, necessary. It’s whatever it takes, whether it is pulling at strings, yanking out words, or fishing out excuses.
It also takes forcing Paimon out of the picture, which will deplete more of his resources than he’d like, but at least he can spend in the next few days replenishing his supplies, and buying more if necessary. Maybe he can even try to convince Verr Goldet to give him some extra portions of Jueyun chili chicken or matsutake meat rolls.
Anyway. “Paimon, what do you want?”
“Sticky honey roast!” she says immediately. “Sweet madame, fisherman’s toast, golden crab, jade parcels, and lotus flower crisp!” She thinks a little longer, then tacks on, “Oh, and mora meat too!”
Aether opens his mouth, ready to say no, Paimon, I know your stomach is an endless pit but even though I feed you every day there’s no way I’m cooking that much for you right now, but then he realizes that if he only cooks one plate of sticky honey roast for her, then she’d be back and interrupting before he even got Xiao to start talking.
“Okay,” he says. “Fine.”
“Yay!” She waves her small hands in the air, celebrating. “Well then, better get to it!”
“Could you be any less patient,” he mutters. “First Verr Goldet, then you. You just can’t give me a break, can you?”
Smiley Yanxiao, seeing the two of them descend the stairs, looks up at them with something akin to pity. “You get used to it around here,” he says. “She enjoys this kind of stuff.” He dries his hands on a towel and passes them at the base of the short staircase. “Anyway, I’ve left some matsutake meat rolls on the table at the boss’ request. Good luck.” He pats Aether on the shoulder before making his way out to the front balcony as Paimon eagerly begins tucking into the food.
Aether stares after him. “Well, I guess it’s time to start anyway.”
The almond tofu takes the longest, so he starts that first. Then comes the golden crab, then the sticky honey roast, then the sweet madame. Then the jade parcels, then the mora meat. The lotus flower crisp and fisherman’s toast are the quickest, and by the time those are all finished, Paimon has already finished the meat rolls and begun digging into her feast.
“And I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he tells Paimon before leaving, “so don’t come up looking for me, okay?”
She gives him a quick thumbs-up in acknowledgement before shoving another bite of sticky honey roast into her mouth and forgetting about him, as per usual when she eats. Satisfied, he makes his way up the staircases up to the balcony of the inn, holding two plates out first.
“Xiao?” he calls out hesitantly.
Xiao is there instantaneously. “Aether,” he greets. Then he eyes him up and down. “I’m glad you’re recovering.”
“Verr Goldet has been pretty generous to us whenever we come,” Aether says. “She always insists, so it ends up something like this. But nevermind that! Here!” He holds the two plates of almond tofu out proudly as a reconciliation present. “For you!”
Xiao takes the almond tofu and immediately digs in, and Aether starts talking immediately to try to repair whatever had gone wrong the day before.
“Okay, I know that just throwing myself off of a cliff was kind of reckless, and I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you.”
Xiao makes a quiet grunt, and Aether takes that as all the forgiveness he is going to get, not that he thinks he needs all that much, anyway.
“But why are you so against flying? I mean, don’t you”—he makes a poor imitation of ragged jumping motions—“do that kind of stuff all the time? I don’t get why you would hate it?”
Aether puts a finger on his chin, looking up at Xiao. “Isn’t it something that you’ve done before?”
Xiao almost chokes on the almond tofu. He coughs, and when the first plate is finished, he does not hesitate to reach for the second.
Aether does not talk. He must be used to Xiao’s silence by now, but there’s a kind of fervent urgency in that silence now that pertains to a need to seal his lips instead of just a lack of meaningful things to say.
When he does ask another question, it is with extreme gentleness, like the tenderness used to treat wounds, not that it does anything to soften the blow that it deals.
“Are you scared?” Aether asks. “Of flying again?”
Xiao pauses.
“Do you have nothing else to do?” Xiao asks in response, turning away. He puts the second empty plate atop the second, the china of the spoon clinking lightly against the plates as he sets it down. “There was no need for you to come here to apologize.” While waiting for Aether’s response, he makes the mistake of glancing back where he sees Aether pulling up the back of his shirt to reveal his bare back.
There lies scars, but even like that, Aether materializes his broken wings. They are dull and weak, barely brighter than the color of sand.
“I haven’t been able to use these,” Aether admits. “I tried flying normally. I tried a running start. I even tried to throw myself off a few cliffs in the hope that something would happen.” He shakes his head. “Nothing.”
“But,” he says, “I’ve heard that the great Conqueror of Demons was once called Alatus”—Xiao nearly flinches at the mention of the name, and Aether only barely notices as he pushes on—“the Golden-Winged King. Care to enlighten me?”
The silence that lingers between them is heavy and suffocating. “It’s…” Xiao says, the words ripped apart and trailing, “in the past. Nothing you need to concern yourself with now.”
“Nothing to concern myself with?” Aether says. “Have you ever considered that people help you out not because you need the help, but because we care about you?” He pauses, taking in a deep breath before continuing. “I don’t know what happened. And I won’t force you to tell me. But”—he gestures at Xiao, tracing a wide circle around the entirety of the adeptus—“I don’t like seeing you like this.”
Xiao frowns. “Like what?”
“Like, I don’t know, this ,” Aether says, drawing out a circle with his arms like that would make it clearer. “Ignoring your pain all the time. You can talk to me, you know. I don’t know what makes you hate flying and wings so much, but maybe you can just tell me a little?”
His wing shakes a little in the wind that has just picked up a bit. The way that Dihua Marsh always responds to him is made far more obvious when the wind runs through his wings. The slight flutter is not helped by the way the feathers are still so dull, even with obvious care.
But Xiao does not compromise. “Alatus,” he says, “is long gone.”
Disappointingly, he does not elaborate further. The conversation is carried on by the wind, a whistle that comes and goes.
Something flares a little in Aether’s chest. “But I’d like to know about him,” he says, crawling a little closer to place a hand a little closer to Xiao. “Please?”
“I don’t need to know,” he says. “But I want to.” He creeps forward, enough almost to place his hand on Xiao’s. But Xiao’s fist clenches beneath his open palm, and it stays even as he stops, so he concedes and sits back instead.
“Okay, fine, if you say so,” he says. “But I’ll always want to know, and I’ll always listen to what either of you have to say.” He smiles. “I’ll be waiting, then.”
He turns to carefully tuck his wings away, and then what is left behind feels far too lacking.
Aether descends the stairs of the inn down to the kitchen, where Paimon is just finishing the last plate of fisherman’s toast and licking her fingers clean. Just in time, too. When she looks up, she notices him and gives him a small wave.
“Hi Aether! Welcome back! Paimon was just finishing the last bit. Everything was super good!”
“Well, yeah, Paimon. I cooked it, and we both know how good I am at cooking, right?”
She scratches her head sheepishly. “Hehe, yeah, that’s true. Say, how did the conversation with Xiao go? He must’ve accepted your apology? What’d you even do to make him mad?”
A gust of wind blows through the window of the front door loudly. Aether just sighs. “I don’t know,” he says. Then he gestures up at the floor above them, where a few guests gasp at the sudden influx of air in surprise while Verr Goldet has to calm them down before Hua’ain actually gets upset with her after another dozen broken windows. “Though I guess that explains it all, doesn’t it?”
Paimon nods. “Yeah, it’s pretty hard to mistake something like that. What’s up with him?”
Aether sighs. “Think I might’ve bitten off more than I can chew with this one,” he says. “But still, I want to try a few more times.”
Rest is something that rarely plagues him, so more is the surprise that the world he finds himself in is one of thousands of years past. Rationally, there is no explanation for him to feel the need to steel himself against the darkness and fear that has embedded itself in this world, and yet there is a clench in his stomach that settles anyway, eating away at calm and reason.
It is dark. Here, it is always dark. A hand reaches out from the darkness, dripping sickly sweet and dangerous. His wings quiver, tightening and folding in like if he could bring them in fast enough, then they would be spared.
He’s trying to get away, his fingers scratching at solid wall. His fingers meet sandy texture, but nothing comes away, and all that comes with such desperation is blistered fingers, red and bleeding. Anything, he wants to shout, is better than this. When the hand’s fingers alight on the tips of his flight feathers, they fade from brilliant gold to faded yellow, musty and dust-filled.
He's in the sky, and there is a thundercloud above him. He should get down. He should take shelter.
Your mission takes first priority, her voice echoes in his mind. Don’t forget that.
He hesitates, a flap in his wings directed downward to come to a standstill in the atmosphere for just a second.
A clap of thunder. A 180 degree turn. The earth comes up to meet him as he falls, hard and unforgiving, but as he feels his bones snap beneath him, smashed and broken, he wakes to a reality where all that pain only manifests as a phantom.
It hurts all the same.
As they approach Wangshu Inn, the two of them chance upon a heron. Quickly, he tells Paimon to keep an eye on it, just to make sure it doesn’t fly away before he manages to meet Xiao.
Paimon stomps her feet. “No!” she says. “Are you serious? How is Paimon supposed to keep a bird here? Sure, Paimon can fly, but Paimon can’t keep a bird from flying!”
Aether sighs. “Please, Paimon,” he says. “I’m sure you can think of something. You know how much I need this.”
“You’re really going this far for him?” she asks, crossing her arms as she settles down. “Paimon’s only doing it because you said you’d make Paimon a lot of food after this.”
“Please,” he says. “I want answers to some questions.”
“You won’t even tell Paimon what the questions are,” she says. “Keeping it all a secret, for what? Knowing that yaksha, it’ll take a year before Paimon can stop trying to keep this bird here.”
“Hey!” Aether says. “I’m going to try my best, really, okay, Paimon?”
“The longer Paimon has to stay here,” she says, “the more you have to cook, okay? Paimon gets her choice of every single dish! One every minute!”
“That’s im—” he starts, then stops. He groans. It was the deal, unfortunately. “Okay, fine, I get it,” he says. “I’ll try to keep it as short as I can.”
Keeping it short means that, unfortunately, he’s only got enough time to take a few premade servings of almond tofu up to the balcony. He asks Verr Goldet for the price before she just waves him away.
“Keep those three,” she says. “Free of charge.”
He stares at her. “You know exactly what you’re doing, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
He clears his throat. “You know exactly what I’m doing,” he clarifies.
“Hmm, well, the wind really has been rougher recently,” she says. “Really, Hua’ain might actually get upset at this rate.” It does not carry with it the same joking demeanor that she had given him the time before.
He gulps. Her face does not hint at a smile. “We’re up to nearly twenty broken windows,” she says. “Better go up quick.”
From the roof, Xiao can hear the way Aether tiptoes his way up the steps to the balcony. When he reaches the doorway, he pokes his head around the edge and makes his way to the edge, plates of almond tofu in hand. Xiao just watches, waiting.
“Xiao?” he calls out hesitantly.
Xiao hops off the roof behind him. “What is it this time?”
Aether startles, the plates that had been precariously balanced on the tips of his fingers wobbling as he loses control. One of them falls entirely, the ceramic shattering against the wood beneath their feet, the almond tofu splattering ungracefully across the floor. Aether tries for a grin, only for it to be tossed aside entirely as Xiao looks at the spoiled food almost mournfully.
“I’m sorry,” he starts profusely, “I didn’t mean to drop it, it just happened, sorry you kind of startled me and—oh! I didn’t mean that you caused it, you don’t need to be sorry for anything, I just meant that I should’ve been carrying it better, you know, like more balanced, but you know, my hands are only so big—”
It isn’t really that big a deal, so Xiao shakes his head and holds out one of hands to the side of one of the remaining plates, ready to take. Aether hands it off to him, placing the edge of it firmly against the palm of his hand. Xiao takes it in silence, digging into it again with a spoon and then the next, polishing them off. Almond tofu may be a guilty pleasure, but at least this way he didn’t have to hurt anyone.
Aether smiles, then points off into the distance where a small pink figure, presumably Paimon is, well, at least she’s trying her best. Probably. Her small hands are perched atop her head, trying to protect her white hair as it spreads its wings and nearly hits her with one of them. Well, at least it hasn’t flown away yet. It’s a bit pitiful, the picture.
“Do you see that bird over there?” Aether says.
Xiao flicks his eyes over to where Paimon, although no longer cowering beneath her own arms, is still struggling. The bird turns away from her to poke between reeds, looking for food. Paimon chases after it, trying to keep it in place.
“What is that one doing,” he says, confused. Then his frown tightens. “A heron?”
“Oh!” Aether says. “Paimon’s just down there to keep an eye on it. I promised her a big meal to do it.”
Xiao stares at him.
“Oh, well, you know how she is,” he says. “She’ll do anything for good food. And, might I say, my food is pretty darn good.”
“Not that,” he says.
“Oh, the heron? It’s a nice bird, don’t you think? They look really nice when they fly. Besides, I’ve heard of quite a few sayings about them in Liyue.”
Xiao stays silent. The clink of ceramic rings in the air. He focuses completely on the way that the dessert dissolves in his mouth, the way it slides down his throat, and the aftertaste that lingers on his tongue.
“Say,” Aether says, “why do you think birds were given wings?”
Xiao gives nothing. There’s a constriction in his chest that clutches too tightly to his words, rigid enough to make them shake within his windpipe.
“Don’t you think they’re meant to fly?” he says, pushing harder.
Xiao’s fist tightens against where it sits against the floor, propping himself up. He opens his mouth slowly, unsure of how to respond. Can’t pull the words of course not from where they struggle beneath the crushing weight of I can’t look at my wings again, I can’t try again, I can’t be drowned beneath the crushing pressure of a lightened atmosphere.
“They’re just born with them,” Xiao says. “They fly because they have to.”
It’s the most mundane response of all—no fancy explanations, nothing like stories or origin myths. For a second, but he thinks about his disused wings, almost unfurls them, but keeping them tucked away is second nature to him by now. If he tries to unfold them now, maybe he’d find out that he’d forgotten how to long ago.
“And, that’s it?”
“There’s nothing else to it,” Xiao says. “They just can.”
“Then,” Aether says, because surely there must be more to this than just that, “what about you?”
Xiao looks at him. “What about me?”
“Why do you hate flying so much?”
Xiao freezes, the wind blowing nearly hard enough to pull the marsh’s horsetails’ roots from the mud. The trunk of a dead tree falls and splashes the water’s surface, letting ripples loose.
Aether fidgets a bit, picking up the spoon and dragging it against the plate, squeaking. “Like in battle,” Aether says, his chin settled between his knees as he looks forward, “you spend a lot of time in the air, but you never really stay. You always have to touch down on the ground after, like, a minute, max. Mostly it’s a few seconds. It’s like you can’t trust it to not be there. But it’s not like you’re afraid of heights. I mean, with all the mid-air fighting that you do, it’d be pretty tough if you were.”
That isn’t the point. It’s never been the point. Flight has always been fundamentally different from being in the air. It’s never been about being aloft, the soles of his feet being far above earth, surrounded by the warmth of invisible clouds. But suddenly, when there are wings, then with them come shackles and rules and orders to adhere to, and then there’s no such thing as being left to be, nevermind a concept as insane as freedom.
Of course, Xiao can’t say any of this. Even with those years being long gone, a scar ignored does not heal. But to acknowledge its existence was to tear it open and let himself bleed, and Liyue has no need of a guardian that bleeds.
There’s something to say, of course, of a solid ground that offered safety on landing, but only if you hadn’t dared to wander too far away, because if you did, it just turned one you with enough ferocity to kill. But blaming something else for his own failures opens up another avenue of weakness, one that he can’t show. He bottles those deep within his heart, pressing down on them as hard as he can until they’re crushed to pieces. He knows better than anyone that such hatred never goes away; they just stick until the pressure lets up enough to reform and resurge with a vengeance, but at least it’s saved for another day, when he knows how to better dispose of them. Of course, they’re never gone, not really; they simply get pressed down harder, time and time again.
“I do what needs to be done,” Xiao says. “This is just the best way I can get rid of the vengeful spirits that plague Liyue.”
Aether almost laughs. “Yeah,” he says, tugging a hand through his hair, some of the golden strands loosening from his braid to fall straight down. “And look where that’s gotten you.”
The bottom of Xiao’s lip curls, and Aether’s braid is whipped against the wall of the inn by the wind. He’s still here, isn’t he?
“Okay, I’m sorry,” Aether says. “I just feel like there’s more to life than just being Guardian Yaksha, Conqueror of Demons. You know?”
Xiao shakes his head. “No. This is more than enough to keep me occupied.”
“Even though it’s the age of humans in Liyue?”
“There has to be someone that can take care of things in case they fail.”
Aether buries his head in his hands. His braid comes back to rest on his back. “But even as Liyue’s protector, especially as Liyue’s protector, you should be able to have more than just”—he holds out his hands, as if desperation alone could reach out and grab the meaning of life—“this!”
Xiao places his palm on Aether’s arm, bringing it down slowly. “That’s enough,” he says. “I’ll honor my contract with Rex Lapis for as long as I live. That will never change.”
Aether buries his face between his crossed arms, slumping down. “That’s not what I meant,” he says, but the words are muffled and lost to the wind. “I just thought you deserved more than this.”
Aether heads down the stairs dejectedly and makes his way over to where Paimon is still, albeit less so, struggling with the heron. It starts to spread its wings, and she immediately starts panicking to get a grip on its legs to keep it down.
“It’s fine, Paimon,” he says. “You can stop now. Thanks for that.”
She immediately lets go of the bird, and it folds its wings back in undisturbed before wandering off for fish. “So! How did it—AGAIN?” She screeches the last word, loudly enough to drive off the heron and it flies a good few hundred meters away from them before settling back down again.
“I’m surprised you didn’t drive it off like that before now,” he says, forcing a chuckle. “So you can be quiet when you need to.”
“Hey! Paimon will let you know that Paimon isn’t always loud!” she says. “But the look on your face tells Paimon that it didn’t go well. Again. Isn’t that the important thing here?”
He sighs. “I don’t know what to do,” he says. “Xiao just refuses to acknowledge what I’m saying at all.”
Paimon nods. “Can’t say Paimon’s surprised,” she says.
He’s too tired to glare, but if he could, he would. “That’s very helpful, thank you.”
“Well then, what about Paimon’s meal?” she asks, brightening.
He waves her away. “How about we do that tomorrow,” he says. “I’m too tired right now, and you know what happens if I cook when I’m tired, right?”
“No! I don’t want bad food!” Paimon says, whining. “Okay, fine, but definitely tomorrow, okay?”
He nods, closing his eyes, and the swift winds make him feel like if he just loosened up a tiny bit more, then he’d be swept away altogether.
They come again. Aether is intent on dragging out memories of darkness that he’d just barely managed to keep at bay, and they take far more of a toll on him than he’d thought.
Alatus, his once-master whispers, dearest. Why did you do that?
The first time she’d asked that, he’d just gone for a short break, to stretch out his wings. After getting the cramped feeling from out of them, he is greeted by her upon his return. Her hand is gentle against his cheek, but it’s with cruelty instead of kindness.
He finds that he cannot respond. Not in any way that would matter to her, anyway. He is greeted by all the things he went through once and never again, things that break down and tame. She touches the first feather, going around the shoulder to the alula to the coverts to the flight feathers, ghost-light. Beneath her cold fingers, he shivers.
He fights to keep his wings still, because folding them in feels like it would end up with far more punishment than just letting her do whatever this is.
She coos, the tight skin of her lips brushing against his ear. You should know that you cannot defy me, not like this. And then suddenly, her fingers are flush against a feather, gripping on heavily where it had been so light before, and a primary comes out cleanly, the vane pinched between her thumb and forefinger. She passes it to her other hand, twirling it around at the shaft before letting it loose to the wind. When she looks back at him, she smirks.
He wakes with a start. The rising dawn from the window of his room at Wangshu Inn greets him, and he has to stop to let the pound of his heart slow. On the wall to his right, there is a full-length mirror that taunts him.
Slowly, he makes his way over. It’s just him: tousled dark hair, skin-tight white top, dark baggy pants, a plethora of charms to exorcise evil. Turning around, he looks at the V-cut in the back of his shirt, and from that, the cramped feeling that comes from centuries-long wing-folding.
He almost materializes them, just to look at them once, but he knows that that feather had regrown long ago, even if he’s closed his eyes to it.
Aether’s standing at Smiley Yanxiao’s spot again the next day, cooking up a fury for Paimon’s absolutely out-of-the-world appetite.
“Sticky honey roast, Adeptus’ temptation, Jueyun chili chicken,” she’d listed off, “black-back perch stew, butter crab, cured pork dry hotpot, golden crab, jade parcels, northern smoked chicken, stir-fried filet, sweet madame, Tianshu meat and rice pudding!”
“Paimon, even for you that’s too much, don’t you think?”
Paimon just crosses her tiny arms and puffs out her cheeks. “It’s barely enough for all the stress you put Paimon through! Besides, you did say it was Paimon’s choice, so you shouldn’t be trying to get yourself out of this!”
He sighs. It was going to be a long day, after all. Even if the favors he’s been asking for recently aren’t the typical kind of favors they usually look for in each other, it still somehow feels like he’s losing out when he looks at the spread of ingredients before him. All of the vegetables, condiments, meat, and grains take up nearly the entirety of the single table in the room, and all he can do is look at them and pick them out as they come up in each recipe.
Dutifully, the stove keeps running for as long as he needs. First the black-back perch stew, followed by butter crab and Adeptus’ temptation. When he places the next dish, the jade parcels, on the table, Paimon has almost finished the dishes that had already been finished.
“Don’t you think you should maybe slow down a bit?” he says jokingly.
“It’s delicious!” Paimon says, her mouth full. “Paimon wants to eat it all as fast as Paimon can before they get cold!”
It’s this when it feels like life isn’t as bleak as it really feels like sometimes, filled with constant rejection and failure. Paimon is more than content to stuff her face full of food, while Aether just has to measure out ingredients, fix them together, and dole them out somewhat nicely on a plate for her to devour, and he can take her leftovers or fight her for some of her portion which is always oversized, anyway.
He cooks the rest of the dishes, rounding it out with rice pudding. After setting that final bowl down, he sits on the bench opposite her and gathers some of the remaining food into his own plate and digs in. She complains a bit, but she settles down eventually.
Later, the two of them, with a bit of a fuss and a lot of walking, find themselves all the way at the top of Qingyun Peak. The wind here is unpredictable, but they tend to only come to bring him up at unexpected moments. It’s a safety barrier of sorts, or so Paimon says.
“You just refuse to open your wings or something,” she says, “and it’s too scary for Paimon to try to catch you, so this is the best compromise. It’s the least chance for you to get hurt.” He’d agreed just so that she’d stop nagging him about it, because surely it’d work out this time, right? If he doesn’t make progress with Xiao, then surely he could see progress here. Isn’t that how it worked?
He doesn’t bother to check how his gliders are. Paimon gives him a stink eye for it, but they both know by this point he isn’t opening them either way.
He dangles one foot off the edge, letting it hover just below the flat surface of the floating stone. “So we’re good to go, right?”
Paimon rolls her eyes. “We’re never ‘good to go’ because you’re never going to listen to Paimon and just open your glider,” she says.
“It’s fine!” he chides, swatting away her concerns.
“We’re like, ten times higher than we normally are!” she says. “Paimon does not think it’s fine! Why didn’t you just try from the Statue of the Seven like Paimon asked you to?”
“Well, if I try from higher, that means I have more time before I hit the ground, right?”
Paimon huffs. “Yeah, and more time to fall faster and get hurt worse. Seriously, are you not tired of hurting yourself like this?”
Aether thinks for a moment. “I mean,” he said, “I’m not trying to hurt myself, you know? Just”—he lets his wings loose, and they are just as musty and dull as every time before—“trying to get these to work.”
“Well, Paimon can appreciate you trying, maybe,” she says. “But maybe you could try a bit less hard sometimes.”
He laughs. “I think it’s worth it, Paimon,” he says. “Maybe you take flying for granted because you can already do it, but I can’t anymore.”
Paimon’s next words are quiet. “What about Xiao?”
Aether blinks in surprise, eyes wide, but he closes them and sighs. “I don’t know what to do,” he says, pulling his foot back. “I tried, but he just doesn’t seem to want to tell me anything. Is it really so wrong that I want to fly together?”
He flaps a wing, letting it flutter a bit in the wind. “Alatus, the Golden-Winged King. All this, and he won’t say a thing. Won’t acknowledge a thing.” Sighs at the slight movement of muted yellow. “Is what I say really so bad?”
Paimon shrugs. “Paimon wouldn’t know,” she says. “You never let Paimon near when you talk, anyway.”
He flaps his wings more surely, snatching control back from the wind. “Well, no use sulking over that right now! We’ll worry about it later.”
He scoots forward a little, letting just his toes dangle over the edge, then plunges down fast. Paimon is gone from his view, and it’s just him, the howling in his ears as he hurtles through the clouds, and the ground that approaches far too quickly.
He flaps his wings, hard. They push back giant wafts of air, but it’s not fast enough, it’s not hard enough, it’s not enough. He barely registers the way he’s breathing through his chest and not his stomach before the ground comes in contact with his body, and that pain reverberates from his back throughout his arms.
“What did Paimon tell you!” Paimon says, immediately at his side and trying to tug his backpack off to get at the bandages and wolfhooks. “Oh, why won’t you just use your gliders!”
He winces. “We’ve gone over this, Paimon,” he says, splitting open a wolfhook, but she’s already pulled out the bandages and trying to wrap them around his bleeding arm. “Hold on, you gotta wait a second.”
Dutifully, she sits back, the white strip of fabric still taunt in her hands. As he patches himself up, she helps him bind his limbs tightly with the bandage. It still hurts, but at least if he lets himself sit and rest for an hour or two, then he’ll be able to move instead of Paimon just threatening to either drag him all the way to Liyue Harbor or leave him behind.
“Ah, this sucks,” he laments, leaning back on his mostly-good arm. “Why’s flying gotta be so hard.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much if you just listened to Paimon,” she says. “There’s nothing to even do here.”
Aether looks at Paimon, then fishes out an emergency chicken-mushroom skewer from his bag. “Nothing to do?” he says, holding it just out of reach.
“Ooh, I’ve been hungry!” she says, eagerly stretching out her hands to retrieve it. He hands it over easily, and she bites into it, finishing the entire thing in just a few bites and tossing the stick wayside.
“That was good,” she says. “Of course, not as good as fresh, but still good.” There’s a pause, then: “Wait, you didn’t think that’d satisfy me while you rested for like, an hour, right?”
He shrugs. “Well, I was hoping it’d at least get your stomach to settle down for a bit,” he says.
She thinks. “I guess for a little,” she says. “But that’s mostly because of what Paimon ate this morning.”
“So you’re saying it was useless?” he asks. “Wow. Wasted a skewer for nothing.”
Paimon immediately shakes her head. “No! That’s not what Paimon meant! It was still very delicious, and Paimon really appreciates that!”
He laughs. “I know,” he says. “Just messing with you.”
Paimon puffs her cheeks, but she doesn’t say anything. The two of them sit quietly in the grasses beneath Qingyun Peak, looking at the occasional crane fly by, and from those, the occasional one that lands.
Something small and yellow catches his eyes. He squints at it, points, and then says, “Hey, isn’t that a butterfly?”
Paimon floats over, a hand over her eyes as she tries to follow his finger. When her eyes land on it, she glows up and says, “Yeah, it is!”
He shifts some of his weight to his feet, trying to see how much they can handle. Shakily, he stands, then tracks down the butterfly. It flutters between his fingers, flitting from one side to the other. He takes in a deep breath, then closes his fingers around it.
Luckily, when he opens his hands its wings are still fully intact, and he tucks them into a small box for safekeeping.
“What was that for?” Paimon asks as he places the box gently atop everything else in his bag, just to make sure it stays safe.
“I have a good idea for it,” he says, placing a finger on his lips.
“What?” Paimon says. “That answers nothing.”
Aether just smiles.
Aether steps onto the balcony of Wangshu Inn with a renewed vigor, just a single plate of almond tofu in his hand, the other around a small box that he carries around like glass. From the roof of the inn, Xiao almost thinks he looks like a new person. Below, Aether looks around, then calls, “Xiao?”
Xiao slips off the balcony. “If you think almond tofu is helping your case, you should probably rethink your methods.”
Aether turns, unsurprised. “Xiao!” he says, totally ignoring his words. “Here you go!”
He plops the plate in Xiao’s hands, then proceeds to immediately open the box. The wings of the butterfly are still bright, shining against the sun that beams on the open air. Xiao pays him no attention until the plate is clean.
“Look,” Aether says, “a butterfly!”
Xiao spares the insect’s dead body a glance and nothing more.
“I think butterflies are very cool,” Aether says. “They say that they go through something called ‘metamorphosis,’ which is how they turn from caterpillars to these beautiful creatures. It’s quite the significant change, don’t you think?”
Xiao hums. “Why are you telling me this?” he asks.
“Are you happy like this?” Aether says. “With Alatus?”
The name rubs against his ears, and he wants to strip it away and replace it with his current pride of Xiao , clutching onto this name reborn for dear life, even if it’s not his, not really. “Are you saying that things need to change?” he asks.
Silence fills the air, dragging out the awkwardness. Aether looks like he wants to say something, just doesn’t know what.
“Don’t you think I’ve already changed?” Xiao says, turning to stare at the ground.
“Yeah, but you’ve already changed several times, haven’t you? You haven’t always been like this.”
Xiao looks at him, eyes filled with a kind of disbelief that nearly mirrors disgust.
Aether’s voice turns a kind of soft that puts even the best silks of the nation to shame. “You wouldn’t still be here if you hadn’t, right? Fighting, protecting people you’ll never meet, never see, people who will never realize that you’ve been here for them all along. People who’ve always been violent would never be so kind.”
What is there to say to that? To deny it would be to shove a lie straight into Aether’s face, and although he’d normally be fine with that, there’s something so earnest in Aether’s eyes that Xiao almost doesn’t want to push him away this time.
Kind, he thinks. Who’s ever called him, a taker of almost infinite lives, kind? Who would? And yet Aether doesn’t deny the books, doesn’t deny the kinds of fights that Xiao takes on every day, doesn’t deny the blood that always inevitably ends up on his hands every day, and dares to call him kind.
“I do what I must,” he says.
“Yeah?”
Xiao nods. That’s all there is to it.
“Then what about these?” Aether rummages in his bag and pulls out a small pouch, loosening the drawstring to pour out its contents. What spills into his palm are a few crystalflies. They may be reduced to their cores, the fragile wings long since dissolved and returned back to their original state of elemental energy, but they themselves are still solid. Though the strands of his hair have long since been brushed off, being months upon months old, he still keeps them safe.
“They don’t look like it now,” he says, “but they used to look like butterflies. Can’t that mean something?”
And Xiao, for a second, wants to take back everything he said in that letter. It was a mistake to send that on his birthday. I thought that... it would look nice , he’d said.
They did look nice. The thoughts pop into his head unnoticed, unwelcome, and yet it’s so hard to dismiss them all the same.
“You insist on finding meaning in all of the most meaningless things,” he ends up saying. “It means nothing more than what I said.”
Aether frowns. “You say that,” he says. “But—”
Something drops in Xiao’s chest. He pushes the emptied plate back into Aether’s hands, then disappears.
He is just a few decades old, and the color of his wings have faded from a light touch. Their original gold color was bright; it is just a faded, ashy version of it now. If he isn’t careful, his flight feathers will fall away, torn off by sheer force. He curls up in a corner, suffocating, his wings folded and forced into a room far too small for them. He doesn’t dare to stretch them, but even if he tries to stretch them, they meet the walls before they’re even halfway open, the feathers straining against the cold.
He is just a century old, and he has just torn away more dreams that he cares to count. They taste sweet, soft, and delicious, a sort of drug that brings both sides to despair as he slurps them down.
He no longer keeps track of his age, counting the days in the number of times he presses the fear in his heart down and attacks. His hands are still clumsy on the polearm. Still, he drives his spear through each of his targets’ hearts. They fail around, their fingers flexing to try to catch onto what’s left of their life. It fades away. He leaves the body there to rot.
On one of the trips, a thunderstorm starts on his way back. As soon as he makes it back to the god’s stronghold, it quiets.
Alatus, what did I tell you about flight?
He gulps. It hadn’t been intentional. He’d just wanted to feel it for a few more minutes, back when he’d bought into the illusion that not being confined to the ground meant being free. He should’ve remembered that such freedom doesn’t exist, just a lie conjured up to brainwash the powerless.
I’m sorry, he wants to say, I won’t do it again.
His apology falls on deaf ears. I don’t need your promises, she says. Those are meant to be broken. What this is—her voice drips venom into his hallowed bones—will not be.
He wants to scream. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. The feathers feel like they’re withering. They’ll be back soon enough, she says, but soon enough is too far away when it sinks into every cell in his body, festering there until just before explosion.
He nods. In her presence, that’s all he can do. He bows his head, tucks in his wings, and learns to hide the pain where it will not show.
Aether leaves a plate of almond tofu as an apology, but he leaves a small note instead of staying. I’m sorry. As someone who thinks you deserve a whole lot more, I thought you should know that I don’t want to push you on this. I’ll wait for you, as long as you’ll let me. He doesn’t mention the selfish reason, that it was painful to let Xiao act like nothing hurts him when he’s always in pain, that there’s more to life than pain and chains, but he stays silent on those. I’ll be at Guyun Stone Forest today, though! he adds as a postscript on the letter.
So here he and Paimon are, standing atop the highest point in Guyun Stone Forest, wings out, wind tousling their hair.
“What if he really comes?” Paimon says.
“I doubt it,” Aether says. “I get the feeling he wants me out of his hair for at least the next month.”
Paimon tilts her head. “Really? Paimon feels like even if you went out and made him angry he’d still look for you within the next three days.” Then she tilts her head the other way. “No wait, would he even get angry?”
“Where are you pulling this from?”
She shrugs. “You two just seem that way.”
Aether doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just says, “So, are you going to spot me this time?”
“What if you got Xiao to catch you instead? He’d probably be able to do it.”
Aether glares at her.
“Okay, okay,” she says, holding her hands up in surrender. “Paimon will do her best!”
“So you’re not going to,” he says. “Isn’t that what you said when we were at Stone Gate?”
“That was then, this is now!”
He sighs, bracing himself for nothing, spreads his wings, and walks forward off the ledge.
This time doesn’t feel any different from any time before, probably because it isn’t any different from any time before, not really. The smell of salt fills the air, crusted against the giant rock spears that make up the entirety of Guyun. The ground is covered with sand instead of wet earth, but other than that, the wind is not really that much stronger or weaker, and most importantly, the way his body falls through open air is the same.
He braces himself for the fall, but this time it is cushioned by a small current of air just as before he reaches the ground and beneath him is the feeling of being carried. He blinks and turns, and Xiao’s face greets him. His eyes are wide open, uneven amber, and now that Aether concentrates a bit, he can feel Xiao’s arms shaking a little beneath him.
That’s weird, he realizes, because Xiao has no problem forcing his spear through the essence of gods, so there should be no reason for him to be trembling just from Aether’s weight.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Xiao asks. His breath comes out shaky, like the trunk of a dead tree standing in the face of a hurricane.
“I’ve been trying to fly,” Aether says innocently. “I told you I’ve been doing this.”
Xiao’s next words come out nearly as a growl. “Like this?” he says. “You could’ve gotten seriously hurt. So this is why you showed up like that before. You should try to be less reckless.”
Paimon nods along vigorously with each of his words, hanging onto them to hurl at Aether as a double whammy. “Yeah, please talk some sense into him! Paimon’s been trying to tell him this but he won’t listen!”
“I don’t know why you’re going through all this trouble for something as trivial as flight,” he says, spitting out flight like it’s some pure evil villain that was responsible for everything bad in the world, “but it’s not worth it.”
Aether wants to argue: it is worth it, why can’t you see that, you’ve found yourself chained for who knows how long that now that you’re allowed to be free, you refuse to let go of those chains, can’t you see? But Xiao’s words dumbfound him to the point of silence, and by the time he can recognize the shakiness and start to push out the words “hey, what’s wrong?” Xiao has already set him down and disappeared.
Paimon looks at him. “What happened with him?”
He looks at her. “I think we’re going to need and actual intervention,” he says.