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“Hey Venti, what’s with that thing that follows you around everywhere?”
The traveller had asked as such just a day prior. At the time of being asked, Venti didn’t have an answer. He’d brushed it off, describing it as a wind spirit from days of old – drawn to him only because of his position as the anemo Archon. However, he knew that his words were lies. The traveller seemed placated with knowing the spirit was essentially a quiet Paimon, they didn’t appear too curious about it, so Venti was content in his vague answer.
Unfortunately, things changed a little after handing the traveller the imaginary friend seeing device.
In the beginning he got lucky, the spirit had a favourite place by his statue in Mondstadt – resting in his hands is where he initially met the spirit; though now he wondered whether he met it at all, or rather it was waiting for him. Anyway, the spirit had flown off to visit his statue when the traveller pointed the device at him, seeing nothing as was expected. It was Paimon’s curiosity which became his downfall.
His little wind spirit had just returned to his shoulder when Paimon gasped with stars in her eyes.
“Traveller! What about the bard’s spirit friend? D’you think spirits have imaginary friends?” Paimon urged the traveller on despite Venti’s attempts to ward them away from the topic.
“I doubt a spirit will have the cognizance to conjure up an imaginary friend, don’cha think? We could be investigating someone with a higher possibility! Like Huffman!” He really did try, however the Traveller’s eyes were seeing through the device already, and their lips slowly did fold into a frown.
“Um,” they paused and took the device away to look the bard in the eyes, Venti could feel the list of questions being tightened around his neck. “Venti, your spirit…”
“How about we go somewhere a little quieter, traveller.” He was resigned, while there were some things he could slither around with his silver tongue, this was not one of them. It also wasn’t a world ending secret, merely one he wished to keep to himself for a little while.
The trio padded along the dirt roads to Windrise where the traveller decided to take a seat on the steps before Venti’s own statue, though they had the correct idea – his story was by no means a short one.
“Am I right in thinking instead of the form you see now, this little spirit took on another visage?” Venti started, holding his palm out for the spirit to sit upon. The traveller nodded, waving a hand at Paimon to keep hush and listen. “What you saw, it was a woman in a long dress with billowing hair, am I right?”
“Yes… her hands were hidden in her sleeves and all I could see was her face, but she looked happy.”
Venti let out a short laugh, he shut his eyes and in a momentary display of weakness, he brought his palm up and rested his forehead against the spirit.
“I’m glad,” he said, planning to say more but not a word came to mind – it was all he could say.
“You seem close, has she always been by your side?”
Venti breathed in the dandelion air of the Windrise breeze and looked up towards the canopy of Vennessa’s tree.
“Yeah, she’s been beside me for as long as my first memory; always there. Sometimes I feel like I’m betraying my own ideals by keeping her here though.”
“Freedom?” The traveller confirmed by Venti’s nod, “isn’t she the one choosing to return to your side every time? I think to have the freedom to do anything in the world, and yet still choosing to remain beside you, doesn’t it just show how much she cares about you? Her freedom might just be by your side, don’t you think?”
“Paimon agrees! Paimon is by the traveller’s side because we’re friends and I’m helping them find their sibling. I don’t think there’s anyone else Paimon wants to travel with but the traveller.”
The two looked at the floating girl in mixtures of amusement, Paimon’s interjection made well to lighten the mood from turning sombre.
“You might be right, my friends.” Venti smiled, his eyes never removing themselves from the form of his precious little wind spirit.
“So, what actually is she?” The question Venti knew was bound to be asked, yet he wished the words never took shape as he once again didn’t have the answer.
“She is precious like no other,” he answered to a square looking traveller – unsatisfied; Venti chuckled spryly before continuing, “you remember the friend I mentioned, the hero of whom’s face I don now-” the traveller nodded for Venti to continue. “-she was much the same. A fleeting wind of a time no more, we were one and the same once; two leaves off the same tree, will of the wisps born from the great flow. I ascended and she remained here, waiting for me – who might’ve never returned. Though, as you can see I came back; however I no longer have to power to maintain her human shape for long, and so she stays like this,” he said, turning downtrodden eyes onto the small anemo spirit nestling into his hair. “Because I am weak.”
The traveller allowed a silence to hear the wails of the wind before speaking.
“I don’t think she minds what form she has so long as she’s with you, at least that was the impression I got when I saw her. I know that if I could be with my sibling, I wouldn’t mind if it was as a breath of wind or a flower petal being carried by one; so long as we are together, shape and form is secondary.”
While Venti knew inherently that such words were truth, even though at one point, millennia ago, he didn’t mind the evanescent form she had, he couldn’t help but miss the sound of her voice, and the music of her laughter being carried by the winds to his ear. He missed the warmth of her hand plaiting his hair, making sure to stroke his cheek at every opportune chance. He grit his teeth as he considered that she couldn’t even pluck a cecilia in her current form – if not for the lack of limbs, but for his fear that the tempest winds of Starsnatch cliff would carry her like a dandelion seed to a land he couldn’t reach.
He missed seeing her smile. Venti grew jealous of the traveller who could see that which he couldn’t. The only reason he had taken an interest and offered to test that device was for the chance at seeing her in the human form he’d once given her, alas, he saw nothing in her place but a tiny sprite and the scent of shame. He had fallen from the precarious place he doubted he ever truly had. No longer could he sustain her, a failed Archon and yet she remained.
“I’m sure she doesn’t blame you Venti.” He heard the traveller say so, however the words fell on deafened ears and a melancholy smile.
“She must not, however I blame myself. I can’t even give her five minutes any more.”
“Isn’t a minute enough,” they spoke confidently, their lips turned up in mirth, showing a knowing look that Venti couldn’t quite understand until a pair of arms circled around his neck.
“Just a few words is enough,” the seraphic whistle of a voice wound by the wind, an all too familiar song that had Venti stiffen in his place. “I may not be a God, but I’ve been collecting a little power by myself; you don’t have to push yourself for my sake, Barbatos. So long as I’m able to be beside you I don’t mind what I look like, all I need are eyes to see you and ears to listen to you when you sing.” She allowed him to turn around in her arms, resting her forehead upon his; though she slowly began to grow translucent as the rays of the sun bore through her. The traveller could see her body was incomplete, she had no legs, just a misty cloud to her fully formed torso and face. All she required was her arms to hold him and remind herself of what he felt like to touch.
“I would say you’re the one pushing yourself dear,” Venti laughed like a young boy, refreshed by the sudden return of someone he longed for – within his reach but still so far away. Still, he couldn’t forget her face even if he tried, she was branded within him for as long as the world breathed – for as long as the winds blew. Within a glimmer of light, the traveller noticed the woman glide down to the floor – where her bare feet touched grass and the sun created a halo of light around her. Her clothes and skin had colour, her hair, a tepid green, and her blue eyes that didn’t spare the traveller a glance. “Let me help out just this once.”
Paimon, who had long since zipped her mouth after realising the severity of the conversation, was excitedly tapping on the traveller’s shoulder while muttering about the bard’s secret love life. However, they, after spying for perhaps what was too long, decided to shuffle back and leave the two to their privacy.
“You’re forever helping out, I doubt this will be the last as you insinuate.”
“And you couldn’t be more right. To see you like this again, there isn’t a thing I wouldn’t do.”
He merely dreaded the moment of his power running out, the vision of her form slipping away from him for another millennia. Venti held her tightly, afraid she would fade at any minute.
“I’ll be with you until the end,” she said, and it was a confession; neither of them needed to acknowledge it as such, however. For they knew without words, the wind delivered each love letter. Every unspoken ‘I love you’ was written in the chords of Venti’s lyre and drawn between the lines of her thumb under his eye; ready to catch the tears when they fell.