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The frail silhouette of a boy crouches over a clear pond, staring wistfully into his reflection as rivulets of crimson stained the water. He clenches his jaw, resisting tears, yet failing as they stream down his bruised cheeks traitorously and against his will.
There are rumours about this place—a magical pond under the cover of Windrise Oak where everyone’s wishes come true. Xiao has seen Mondstadt in the form of fleeting glimpses while he’s high up in the air, or its silhouettes when he’s watching from the peaks of Mount Aozhang. He heard around, all through lost words in the air, that there are creatures like spring fairies, nymphs in some form. He’s told they grant the wishes of those who speak to them, someone who fulfils their loneliness. They are elemental beings, born from the energy in water, the wind, the flowers and all else that may have life.
Xiao cries and cries, each through an unsteady pant of his breath as he struggles to choke out tears from his red, swollen eyes. He collapses to his knees weakly, head dipped and his palms pressed against his lap. He thinks, after some time, even the fairies don’t want to speak to him. Xiao purses his lips in defeat once his lungs have been wrenched of every last strand of emotion and his heart is all but a few strings, pulled till they’re a series of fraying threads.
And then, he hears the curious fluttering of wings—light, airy but distinct. He raises his gaze and when he does, the fairy is leaning up to his face, studying his expressions carefully.
Xiao hasn’t ever been this close with anybody, not even the Adepti he’d been raised with. They say he’s cold—heartless, miserable, and self-centred more than anything. They’d never once guessed that he may only be scared, that a creature like himself can fear the vastness of the world, the wretchedness of his being. Startled by this stranger’s touch, Xiao pulls away, eyes widened with increasing panic. The fairy only comes closer, unalarmed. “Can you make my wish come true?” he asks, eyes narrowing with a whine in his voice.
“Who’s this coming from?” the fairy asks in return, seemingly notorious. With it being so close up to Xiao’s face, resting on the very tip of his nose, he can only make out the silhouette of a cloak and gently fluttering wings. An aura of teal and azure surrounds it, as though in a mystical light. It’s faceless, born from the essence of nature.
“Adeptus Xiao,” he responds curtly, formally, with an abrupt switch in his tone. And seconds later, he feels a crushing weight on his chest and shoulders, forcing him to lower his head as he bites hard on his lip in a feeble attempt to regain his strength. He clenches his hand around the grass and wisps of grey and red peel from his body, taking with it his energy. Xiao presses his forehead against the ground, blood spilling from his open wounds onto the grass. The fairy looks at him with pity, and extends his formless fingers outwards, cold as the midnight dew and soft as fortune forgone, gently caressing the Adeptus’ cheeks with care.
Xiao feels a subtle, unfamiliar weight, pressed against his forehead and it’s so wordlessly reassuring that he tenses up, not knowing what to say. In a matter of seconds, he gets used to the gentle pressure and succumbs to it, staring at the ground with a blurred vision and heavy-lidded eyes. “I want to be free. Will I ever be?” the question wrenches itself out of his throat, strained and barely audible from the meekness of his tone.
“In all truth, I’m not so sure fairies can grant wishes,” the fairy responds and the faint touch that Xiao had felt vanishes, leaving him with a fading warmth and an unsure memory of their encounter. He lowers his head regretfully, chest aching as he coughs upon the ground. He should have gone straight back to Aozhang, where he’d have the Adepti to care for him like this, to have hands that could touch him and nurse him back to health or words that aren’t told to him by the wind.
Xiao should’ve known that it’s too good to be true—a fairy that can grant wishes?
Impossible. Xiao makes a bitter expression and in response to this, the fairy goes silent.
“I’ll set you free, Adeptus Xiao. Only if you promise to see me when you’re free,” he vows. Xiao looks up at him with doubt, shaking his head slowly to show his reluctance. He’s not sure he’ll make it alive out of this night, much less be well enough to start a friendship. Relationships are hard—they’re painful, and once they end, they take too much love and too much hope out of a person who’s only mistake was to trust. He can’t do that to himself, not with a fairy who doesn’t have a body nor a real form. “Alas,” the fairy laments.
In a matter of seconds, Xiao is wrapped in a gentle teal light, hugging him closely. He can barely feel it, and it’s only through the movement of the hair on his skin. He lifts his head, hand clenched tightly on the tearing fabric of his shirt. His eyes widen briefly as he raises his hands to his eyes and sees his old wounds vanish, replaced by new skin as though his scars had never been there. Deep reminders of his trauma—the scars binding him to his karmic debt—they vanish completely. And then, he feels lighter. He’s not the same as he was a few seconds before.
When the light surrounding him fades, he turns his head instinctively to search for the fairy, one whose name he had been too selfish to ask for. He realises his mistake only when the latter is gone, leaving nothing of its presence except the subtle scent of cecilias in the air.
Satisfied, Xiao leaves, unbeknownst to the fact that the fairy is just as lonely as himself—having loved and lost, with a dwindling presence as his energy slowly dwindles with time. A fairy dies when nobody keeps its memory, and he might have—this spirit by the name of Barbatos.
Only when the spring breeze strokes his cloak with a cascade of yellowed leaves and when she gazes upon a fractured image of the moon in the rippling water, does he slowly regain the ability to think, and to mimic fragments of speech. At some point after this, he remembers who he is—where he’d come from and why he’s here.
Barbatos is a curious spirit, gravely so. He has always been, but there would be no one for him to be curious of when Mondstadt’s boundaries are all too familiar to him. He hides behind the cover of the Windrise Oak, as though he is not small enough already and he watches the boy whose name he can no longer remember, disappear in a cloud of teal. Happy as ever with unexplainable happiness in his minuscule heart, he calls out a cheer to the squirrels and dances side-by-side with the foxes stealing apples from his tree.
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Xiao comes only after three months and seven days, and it had taken so long for his arrival that Barbatos thought that he wouldn’t show up at all. While he’s hovering over a loose branch on the oak, gaze turned outward to the full moon, he feels a strong, familiar presence in the vicinity—the aura he remembers distinctly unique to Xiao.
He turns his head, and Xiao is once again on his knees, bent over the cold pool of water with his hair falling over the fractured image of the moon in the pond. He isn’t bleeding this time but his body is fragile, trembling under the pressure of an invisible weight. In the past few moments, he hasn’t yet sensed Barbatos’ presence in the area. “I will never be able to redeem myself from my sins, and I will be bound, for life, to this mistake and my home,” he whimpers, burying his head in his hands. And then his agitation shows, all through the punching of fists against the ground and tearing of grass straight from the dirt—and Barbatos wishes he could help.
Had he been an Archon, or a creature any larger than a fairy, he would’ve been able to grant the wish of this boy he has grown attached to. Hours later, Barbatos finds that he’s been hovering over his same spot in the tree, listening to Xiao release his troubles to the pond, yelling curses and prayers at once, only for his cries to provide futile results.
Dimly, Barbatos could understand that there was a city beyond Mondstadt, one with tall mountain peaks and a large city that looks regal in the sunset—a place where the summits are so high that they’re one amongst the clouds and the grass is stained amber. The fairy wishes he could venture to such a place, where the wind is still and dandelions don’t wail wishful ideas to the wind that cannot listen. Having been bound by his responsibility to stay, Barbatos has never been able to tarry, to see a world beyond moonlight and fruits or darkness and mere fruits.
Even when the sun rises, Xiao doesn’t leave the fields. When his knees start to ache and bruise, he falls over onto his back, leaning back against the bark of the massive oak tree. He shuts his eyes, exhaling a final breath of exasperation. Barbatos is compelled by an incredible urge to speak to him, which he does while bringing a swift breeze and moving flowers.
“Why did you stay?” he asks, a little more confidently and with a hint of tease in his voice.
And when Xiao opens his eyes, there are tears. He wasn’t trying to sleep. Barbatos is fascinated by this emotion, this continuous feeling that’s so evident on the Adeptus’ face—coming in the form of pursed lips, furrowed eyebrows and sometimes tears. He moves in closer, wiping the tears of the boy with a swift motion of wind and a gentle stroke of his invisible hand. “I felt weak. I wanted to be stronger. I want you to fulfil my wish,” he laments.
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Then, it would become a regular thing. Whenever Xiao grew frustrated at his powerlessness, he would return to Windrise, seeking the help of a fairy as weak as him. Slowly, through each other, they would learn a lot more about the world—and sometimes, if they were brave enough to learn, parts about themselves as well.
Barbatos would let him cry, slowly hovering over his shoulder with as much comfort as he can offer with his lack of form. He would watch as Xiao’s tears slowly flowed into the nearby pond, and he would purify them with a hum of his voice and a little bit of magic—turning them into sweet nectar to lull the Adeptus’ everlasting nightmares.
Soon, their time would expand from hours into days, and Xiao would slowly distance himself from his homeland to seek solace in a place he has not seen beyond its endless fields. With Barbatos, he could find pieces of himself that were too painful to look back at on his own—snoring lightly with his chest rising and falling to a melody as Barbatos would accompany him, even during his most eccentric dreams. Every time this happens, the fairy would smile, fulfilled vicariously through the happiness of this boy, no more special than an average person.
In those dreams, the fairy would tell Xiao tales of the nearby city of Mondstadt that can be seen over yonder. Barbatos speaks of the city trapped under a monotonous spell, how he wishes he could see the birds fly once more. He sings of homesickness and his desire to be free, and he sighs for separation and belonging. In these dreams, Xiao becomes the one who silently listens, who aches for his troubles, and who learns through his happiness.
Over time, Barbatos gains a form from Xiao’s memories and dreams.
And at some point, they become the same person altogether, all with only one difference.
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On a windless night, when a ripple shatters the image of the full moon hanging on the surface of the nearby pond, Xiao sees Barbatos in his real form for the first time. Fairies are tender, sensitive beings but none like the fairy he has grown to know. He has always thought that, if he had a form, he would be large and with a form unlike the nimble bodies of fairies. Yet, when Xiao sees him for the first time, he is deeply taken by his stature. Barbatos transforms while he’s midway in the air, floating around to look over the Adeptus’ shoulder. In a matter of seconds, he has a body, thin and frail and four limbs with odd archaic patterns littering them.
Pearly white wings emerge from slits in his back and he’s clothed only in a thin, pale fabric. Xiao stands back, startled by the sudden transformation but extends his hands out of instinct, holding the enigmatic fairy by the hip. Barbatos pushes up against him with his hands pressed on his shoulders and he remarks casually, “Sorry! I haven’t returned to my original form in aeons.”
Yet, with the emotion he sees washing over the boy’s eyes, Barbatos is met with an unwelcome epiphany. He shakes his head, clenching his shoulders tighter with force and he fears the yearning in Xiao’s eyes, and the tremble of his lips that suggest the oncoming of a word with too much weight. The boy doesn’t understand his hesitation at first—but he does not know, there is too much in this world that would vow to keep them apart.
Barbatos fears this change. There are not many things worth fearing in this world, nor are there that many things worth fighting for in the same way. When that person comes into one’s life, one whom you fear for and fight for, it brings with it the terror of a thousand and an epiphany so deep-rooted to one’s core that one may never come to terms with it. He is terrified—with how different they are, one an Adeptus and the other but an elemental fairy belonging to the world—that they would someday see an end to their relationship.
Barbatos fears this parting. He cannot let Xiao go; so with a kiss, he silences the Adeptus from saying those cursed words, selfishly hiding his fear for their separation. Xiao, in his innocence and the grandiosity of it all, mistakes the rejection for a promise.
And he thinks, perchance, fairies can grant wishes.