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“What was his name?” you ask. “Your friend.”
Venti doesn’t look at you, swinging his legs slowly over the edge of stone fingers. “I returned it to the wind,” he says after a long moment. A quiet huff, barely a breath of laughter. “That is to say, I don’t remember.”
He gazes out, past the walls of Monstadt, across the fields towards Windrise. The clouds are wispy among the stars. He watches the land. You watch him. His cap is slightly askew, and the hem of his cloak is twisted beneath him. There is a breeze caught in the ends of his braids.
“I’ll forget your name too one day, outlander,” he says softly.
The night is very vast from where you are standing. It swells up from below like the mouth of some ancient beast.
“I think your friend must be very happy, traveling with the wind,” you say, “and happy that you chose to set him free.”
“Is that so,” Venti murmurs. There’s a shade of a smile in his voice, somewhere between dreamy and grave. “I wonder if one day he might return and tell me all about his adventures. Everything he saw after the walls fell.”
“He tells you about them every day,” you say. You open your hand, palm up, and the wind comes when you call, gentle and buoyant.
“Ah, so he does,” Venti says, and then he says nothing more.