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Yae Miko glides into his office, a spectre from the past.
She sits across from him with a slanted smile, and the sunbeams streaming between them bring memory with their warmth: she is a kit again, single-tailed, darting amidst Baal’s long sleeves and curling against Beezelbul’s stomach. He can still feel her cold nose on his cheek and her excited squirming. He can still hear her chittering squeals.
“Hello, Morax.”
Her mellow voice brings her face back into focus. She is fully grown now, and she wears her years with a sparkle in her eye. He is an ancient with a young man’s face. His ghosts linger beneath the earth—they do not walk so calmly through his door.
Zhongli greets her, shaking off the unreality of her presence. “Hello, Lady Guuji.”
“Morax, please. Call me Miko.”
“Miko, then. What a pleasant surprise.”
◇
The tea that Zhongli pours them is not his usual blend; Hu Tao is concerned about him. Her kindness is a spark of life, a new experience, a breaking of his most comfortable habits. He prefers this attempt over some of her more colourful.
“I see you haven’t redecorated since I was last here.” Miko sounds pleased beneath the judgement, and he wonders whether she, like her Archon, finds comfort in that which is slow to change. She gladly accepts the offered cup.
“The Sakoku Decree was not in place for so long.” Zhongli holds a deep appreciation for this room and its familiar edges; he would not simply evoke change for its own sake.
“Mm?” Her brow lifts. “I wonder if those stranded in Inazuma would see it that way.” She punctuates her words with a shrug. “And even before the borders closed, I hadn’t visited you in some time.”
Miko sits before him fearlessly, speaking of the passage of time as if she has not felt it keenly. She, who was born in the precious years before the Cataclysm, who barely knew the Raiden Shogun before Ei adorned herself with a facsimile of Makoto's goals and the fan she plucked from her twin's broken body. Before she played at emulation.
He does not allow his ruminations to impede the flow of their conversation. “How is Ganyu? She must have been pleased to see you.”
Miko crosses her legs and leans back in her chair. She exudes a curious kind of comfort—he would not have expected her to still find peace in his company after so many years. “She’s doing quite well. I must say, I didn’t expect her to have grown so much in so short a time. You know better than any of us that we long-lived creatures are often remarkably slow to change.”
Zhongli considers the edge of confidence with which Ganyu has recently completed her work for the Qixing; her unwavering—if occasionally flustered—dedication to the citizens of Liyue, and her newfound ability to handle Cloud Retainer’s lapses into eloquent nostalgia. “I observed such, yes. The Traveller seems to have made a positive impression upon her.”
“They brought Ei out of the Plane of Euthymia, and now she’s gone and developed a taste for more modern luxuries.” Miko’s voice is a curled lip, a light-hearted breath of laughter. “She was bound to grow tired of her endless meditation sometime.”
"I cannot say I am surprised," he murmurs into his tea, “as it was thanks to their assistance that I was able to retire at all.”
Miko doesn’t say a word, and so he mirrors her—it has been pleasant to catch up; he will not ruin the mood by asking the questions he truly has.
◇
When the second pot of tea has steeped, their conversation picks up with the rising, fragrant curls of steam. “I only wish I could have been there when Ei experienced her first taste of modern Inazuma.” Miko’s voice lilts with a smirk. “I’m told Ei read a few fanfictions based on herself.”
Zhongli was not anticipating this information; he chuckles at the concept. “Your publishing house has developed an appreciable spread of works.”
Miko laughs into the back of her hand. “Now, Morax, don’t pretend. You were such a naughty youth. You must know what all those little fanciful tales of yours have done for my business over the years, no? You wrote the very first fanfiction, and that created the demand for more. I'm simply capitalising on the opportunity.”
He looks away from her smile to where the sun spills over his bookshelves and wonders if he can attribute any of the literature he has enjoyed over his life to the whims of his youth. If so, it seems a charming kind of equilibrium.
“You do far more than that,” he says instead.
Miko’s expression changes, though he cannot identify the emotion that shines through. He sips his tea and decides he enjoys this blend as well. He will have to thank Hu Tao for her well-chosen gift.
Eventually, Miko speaks. “Morax, haven’t you ever considered the most painful deficiency in possessing such a long lifespan?”
“The most painful deficiency?”
“Our memories live so much longer than those of the regular mortals, but our minds are no more resilient to the creep of time than any other. How distorted those old moments we hold close must become, after so many years locked inside with only nostalgia to dust them off on the shelf.” She reaches behind her, angling away from him. “It would be far easier to write them down and spare ourselves the endless dwelling. Kinder, too, to the truth of the moment.”
The package she places upon his desk surprises him—not just by its presence, but by its lack of precedent. He does not waste breath asking what is inside; the unwrapping is a simple pleasure he will not deny himself.
It is a book, leatherbound and stamped. The title has been set in relief: At The Beginning, Dust. He opens it, an ache rising in his chest, and turns over the first page.
For Guizhong, and all who loved her. If his touch was gentle, now it is reverent.
“It’s a work-in-progress. You see, we’re missing a contributor.” She smirks at him. The meaning settles a half-beat later.
Zhongli gently eases the spine open to release the binding and leaf through the pages. What he finds is not merely a collection of facts, not a history book account of a life. Inside he finds stories, memories long-cherished and now committed to paper.
Guizhong’s face smiles up at him from the next page, and the ache has become a choke in his throat. The likeness is uncanny, exquisite, as if her features were lifted from the clearest of his memories. She looks into the middle distance, and he can practically feel the grass blowing against his ankles, can all but smell the Glaze Lilies in full bloom.
Once, he lamented the heavy lot of a lifespan such as his, when even Celestia’s blessings could not diminish the ache of remembering. But when he considered Guizhong’s warm arms and her fondness for wrapping them around him, he decided no amount of pain could be worth losing her phantom.
“Not a deficiency,” he says, finally. “But painful, yes.”
“I intend to publish a series.” Miko’s tone is light. “If you agree to provide the rest of what we need to finish this volume, there is another subject I have my eye on.”
“...Who?”
Miko smiles into her teacup. “The God of Salt.”
Havria. “Why?” The word leaves him heavily, hanging between them like a tangled accusation, but he does not object to her intentions—he simply does not understand them. These were people so very loved and so very long gone.
“It’s one of the saddest truths of our world that the memories of the long-lived leave with them. We carry our guilt longer than the mortals, and I’ve spent too much time watching it hollow out a dear friend with each passing year.”
“I would have expected you to organise one for Baal, first.”
Miko sniffs and trades her teacup for his hand, reaching across the table and pressing her fingertips into his palm. “That’s my plan, yes—but after. Perhaps for the third volume. As I always have, I will do my part. It would be a kindness for Ei to have a collection of the past as she moves into the future.”
“Not all details of their lives would be appropriate to include,” Zhongli considers aloud, already filling the book’s gaps in his mind. “We have all had to make decisions that modern, mortal readers would not understand.”
Miko laughs, and he distinctly feels as if it is directed at him. “Dear Morax, have you never heard of burying the lede?”
When he looks at her again, without the afterimage of the past overlaying her smirking features, Zhongli finally understands what about her has so struck him. She has grieved, yes, but she has since moved on. She has chosen to memorialise the past without being stuck in it.
He glances down and feels himself mirroring Guizhong’s smile. “I would be delighted.”