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Kaveh had been sleeping rather badly, lately.
Ever since he had started having dreams again, along with the rest of Sumeru’s population, his dreams had all been similar to one another. He could never quite remember much of them, which he had been told was a common experience. But what little he did remember, did not add up with what he’d been hearing about the dreams of others.
Supposedly, dreams served the purpose of giving the brain the possibility to process the events of the day. As a member of the Kshahrewar, this made sense to Kaveh. He might have chosen architecture as his field, but any Kshahrewar student had to complete at least a few modules on technology.
And Kaveh had been excellent at them. This was not him bragging. He had not earned the nickname 'Light of the Kshahrewar' for his beauty, no matter what some people might insinuate. If there was one thing he and Al Haitham could agree upon, it was that 'people' as a collective tended to be rather idiotic. Kaveh, much like his roommate, excelled at everything he put his mind to. It was the reason that they actually worked very well together on the rare occasion in which they had a common goal or opinion.
So, Kaveh had been as brilliant in all the courses on different technology and machinery that he had taken as he was at designing. He understood the need for a device to process the data acquired. This technical explanation of dreams they had been provided had resonated with Kaveh.
Dreams were nothing to worry about, just some fragments of daily life. No matter how strange and distorted they became, they were always rooted in reality. They would take place in an unfamiliar part of a familiar town, or feature friends and family getting up to the strangest adventures. This connection to normality, to one’s own life and experiences, was always there. Like flashes of a parallel universe, a puzzle that had been assembled incorrectly. Like building the palace turned on its head. Surrealism still demanded an underlying understanding of reality.
Kaveh, for some strange reason, failed to recognise any connection between those half remembered flashes and his reality. In his dreams, he was a woman with long, green hair, flowers woven into the many braids. There was a man keeping him company - a king, his mind supplied.
He could never make out the man’s face.
The King was always examining some piece of technology, but Kaveh could never focus on it long enough to figure out its purpose. Sometimes, another woman joined them. Her hair was white with some streaks of green. She was often reading. He couldn’t…there was something else important about her. Something that he knew in his dreams but could never grasp awake.
Kaveh sighed and walked to the edge of the balcony. Underneath him, the rest of Sumeru City slept on peacefully. Since the Terminals had been turned off, Kaveh had taken to wandering about at night.
Perhaps it was silly of him to attempt to avoid those dreams. They were just constructs of his restless subconscious. And yet, something about them made him uncomfortable.
He dared not talk to Al Haitham about them for this particular reason. The scribe already accused him of being driven by emotion instead of clear cut logic often enough. Kaveh did not think that there was anything wrong with actually having feelings and not just existing to collect knowledge like the robot that Al Haitham probably was. But he was tired of having to defend his way of thinking again and again.
Sometimes, admittedly, it was fun.
There were days on which Kaveh would return home and recount some tale or another from his day just to start an argument with Al Haitham over turning down a commission because it was not worth his time. Or to hear Al Haitham criticise his decision to hand some money to some orphan he’d encountered on the way home.
But those days were becoming rarer and rarer.
Something between them seemed broken. It had started shortly after Kaveh had returned home from his commission in the desert, around the same time that he had started having those peculiar dreams. Al Haitham appeared nowhere to be found whenever Kaveh searched for him, and he was home rarely even in the evenings. Kaveh would have attributed this to his increased workload as Acting Grand Sage, were it not for the fact that no one else appeared to have this problem. The traveller, Paimon, Nilou, even Cyno, all spoke of regular interactions with Al Haitham. Yet whenever they pointed him towards the place they had last seen him, Al Haitham was already gone.
Nowadays, whenever they saw each other, they only ever ended up fighting. There was this way in which Al Haitham had been looking at Kaveh recently, like he had done something terrible to the other man. It put a firm stop to all enjoyment Kaveh had found in their discussions in the past.
He was so tired of fighting Al Haitham.
Of course it was his fault as much as it was Haitham’s, Kaveh was not deluding himself about that. He tended to explode easily and always gave into Al Haitham’s deliberate teasing. But to have the man he had feelings for look at him like this went far beyond their usual teasing. It hurt, so much that Kaveh almost physically wounded. So, he’d rather not specifically seek out a topic likely to attract Haitham’s condescension. That meant turning to solitude instead.
Before all this, Kaveh had often stayed awake long, as well, but it had always been for the purpose of finishing a project. He’d always stayed inside, sketching, or hammering away at a model.
Kaveh had not seen Sumeru this late at night since he was a student. He’d forgotten the strange properties of the nation of wisdom and dreams during nighttime. When it turned dark and the streets became void of all human presence, a sense of endlessness enveloped the city. The streets appeared to stretch on forever.
Sometimes it seemed as if Kaveh would never encounter a human person again.
This night, there was a disruption in the usual solitude.
Kaveh could hear the sound of cards being shuffled further down the street. Curiosity roused from its apathy, he followed the sound. There was a little girl sitting in a swing constructed from dendro energy, right in the middle of the street. She was looking at the cards in her hands intently, seemingly not having noticed his presence yet. Had it been any other child, Kaveh would have worried about parental neglect, because what parents would allow such a small girl to be out and about at such an hour, not to mention completely alone? But this was no child. Kaveh had not met her personally yet, but he had heard from his friends what their Archon looked like.
“Lord Kusanali?”, Kaveh broke the silence of night. It came out hesitant, almost like a question. He did not wish to intrude on a god’s way of spending her free time. Or whatever it was that she was doing. If she did not want him here, Kaveh would ,leave without hesitation. Not only was this a god, she also had been locked up for centuries and, quite frankly, deserved to spend her newfound freedom however she wished to, no matter what some of the more entitled citizens thought. Kaveh had been getting into a lot of fights about that recently, much to Al Haitham’s displeasure. The little god looked up from the cards.
“Kaveh”, she greeted him solemnly.
“You know who I am?”
“I know you as I know every flower ever planted. I may not have met them personally, but I have witnessed their first roots ever grown, even if I have long since forgotten those memories.”
Kaveh decided to take a few moments and process this answer.
“The Akademiya does not think much of flowers”, he eventually said, carefully.
“They do not think much of me, either. How fitting, then, that our roots share the same ground.”
Kaveh did not know how to respond to that. It almost seemed, as though…but no. Surely not. God motioned for him to sit down in front of her. Kaveh did, right on the ground in the middle of the street. Archons, when had this become his life? Ever since the whole mess with the Sages, the whole world seemed to be more messed up than usual.
Lord Kusanali stared at him for a moment. Or at least Kaveh assumed it was a moment. He struggled to remember how time worked as these big green eyes pinned him into place. They seemed surreal, too, just like dreams.
It all slid into place, all at once.
This was the missing link between his reality and his dreams. It was her. She was the bridge between his first world and his second, the one that they all had been denied for so long.
He stared back at her for a moment, blinking rapidly as he sifted through all the information he had forgotten. Then he waved his hands, green dendro energy already gathering in between them. A beautiful purple flower appeared, which he offered to the small god in front of him.
“It has been a long time, my friend.”
“Far too long”, she took the flower from him and looked at it longingly.
“Do you think that it was truly contained? The taint within Irminsul?”
The uncertainty in her voice was overwhelming. Kaveh could not let this stand.
“It does not matter”, he said firmly. “The forbidden knowledge might not ever be completely eradicated, but the Marana is gone. Its spread was not just causing Eleazar.”
Buer looked horrified.
“You, too?”
“I chose this form for a reason. I was supposed to be resting in eternal peace, but I was tainted beyond death.”
Kaveh found it difficult to admit. It felt as though they all had failed, back then.
“But are the humans doomed, then? Is Teyvat?”, Buer sounded so young.
It was hard to remember the self assured goddess that she once had been, and consider them the same person. Then again, how could he be expecting her to be the same person, if her memories were all gone? If all that was left was a cage? It made Kaveh furious just imagining it.
“I believe that there is more strength to the world than we yet know. Not even Celestia would wish to rule over a world of people driven to insanity by knowledge beyond the boundaries of reality.”
Kaveh did not dare look up into the false sky above them. The usurper gods were always watching.
“You remember it then. The knowledge. The sky and the fate of Teyvat.”
“I don’t think I ever could truly forget. Though I did not quite remember it properly as a human, even then I knew there was something off about this world. How is it that you remember?”
“I made a deal. With the Fatui Harbinger they sent for the Gnosis.”
Kaveh groaned.
“And of course he was not content with the Electro Gnosis alone, I presume?”
“Death for the Gnosis belonging to twins, one dead and one alive. Knowledge for the Gnosis of the Keeper of Irminsul. It seemed a fair deal to me.”
“I understand. I once was curious, too. In the end, was curiosity not already our doom back then? I warned him not to search for the forbidden knowledge. The fact that we all know now and that this knowledge will never truly be erased, endangers us all still. But in the end, I helped him find that same knowledge I warned him about. I just couldn’t resist. Perhaps it will always be the weakness of this world. It could be argued that this is the very result of Celestia’s schemes, coming back to haunt them. We will discover this knowledge over and over. And so will they all, as they did in Enkanomiya and in Khaenri'ah. If no solution can be found, we will truly be trapped in an endless samsara.”
“But can it be found?”
“You know the traveller. You have worked together with them longer than I. Do you not think that they might be the solution?”
“We do not know which descenders predate the beginning and which do not.”
“I am certain this one does not. If this is the case, then the loop might already be unraveling.”
Buer shifted the cards to one hand and reached out with the other, gripping Kaveh's hands tightly.
“What if it does not work? What if this information destroys everything again?”
“Then we cover their eyes again, as we have done before. We start anew. And who we are right now, will fade into the clouded annals of history.”
Kaveh, for the first time during their conversation, looked at the cards. He raised an eyebrow.
“TCG?”
“Cyno likes it. I want to be able to play with him. I've been trying to figure out a strategy against his favourite deck.”
Kaveh laughed.
“I’m sure you will figure it out. And if not you can always ask Barbatos. You do not remember, of course, but he was always excellent at card games. No doubt he plays this one, as well.”
Buer nodded.
“Thank you. Though I have not yet contacted any of them. They all seem so competent and experienced. I’m not sure none of them would have been locked up by their own people even if they lost their memories. They still would have been good enough.”
“So are you”, Kaveh’s grip on her hand tightened. “The Sages were in the wrong, not you. The others will understand that. But start with Lord Barbatos. The two of you were always closest among the Archons. He will wish to celebrate your freedom.”
“I still feel foolish in comparison to one such as him…but it would be unwise of me to turn down the advice of an old friend who remembers all that I have lost.”
Buer smiled and released his hands. The sun would soon rise and bring with it reality. Some discussions were better left behind under the cover of night. Kaveh got up.
“I thought, for a little while, that it might be Nilou, you know”, Buer said abruptly as he was about to leave.
“A reasonable assumption, given the dancing”, Kaveh responded. “I do not dance all that often anymore, these days. But none of us are who we used to be. That being said, I am sorry I missed your birthday, Buer.”
Her smile turned a bit sad.
“You’re the one who wished to celebrate it so grandly in the first place, Nabu. How could I possibly be upset that you didn’t attend this one time?”
Then, a bit more hesitantly: “I hope you do not mind that she has taken on your role.”
There was no need for Kaveh to ask what she was referring to.
“I always knew that someday someone else would dance for you on your birthday. And Nilou is an amazing dancer - if anything, I should be honoured.”
He grinned at her.
“You need not wait for me to come visit you. I believe the traveller has mentioned where I live. You’re welcome to drop by anytime. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you, too.”
“Does he remember?”, Nahida asked, a worried look on her face. “Him, at least, I recognised instantly. But he has not said anything about it so far.”
“I don’t think he remembered immediately. But I’m pretty sure he does by now. I believe he has been waiting for me to remember, as well. Perhaps he was unsure if you wished to have any personal contact after all that has happened.”
Nahida nodded.
“That makes sense. He has not gotten any better at emotional intelligence since we all last were together, has he?”
“Indeed.”
They shared an exasperated glance, as they had done a thousand times before.
“If it makes you feel better, I’ll talk to him first and then I’ll let you know. But I think he’d be lot happier to see you than he would ever admit.”
With that, he turned and walked away. He still would have plenty of opportunities to properly rebuild his friendship with Buer. It was time to face the King.