Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Surprise! Surprise human!”

“Ah, it’s a human!”

“Hit it with your club! Get it! Get it!”

A small group of hilichurls versus one fire bunny human, who will win? The answer may surprise you...but most likely not. 

I linger behind my companions, lacking even a basic stick to whack away with. What do I do? I could try to run, but what would be the point? The human is too fast for a simple hilichurl such as myself. In fact, she’s already taken out half of us. 

Oh man, she’s leveling her bow in my direction-! Bad!

“No no no! I don’t want to fight you-!”

Throw my hands up in surrender. Uselessly, as it were. 

I get an arrow to my face for my trouble. Right through my mask to my eye and then my brain. 

Fall over as my body goes kapoot. 

Dies. 

Just another day in the life of a hilichurl. 

~

You might be a little confused right now. Asking questions like, “Why is this dude so chill about dying?” or “How are you one of those goblin mobs from Genshin Impact?”

How I’m a hilichurl...don’t really have an answer for that. I might, one day, but I’m not really holding my breath over it. 

Or care, for that matter. 

As for the dying part, I’ve done it a lot. All of the hilichurls have. 

Because here’s the interesting part: hilichurls don’t really die. Not in the way human people are familiar with, where your heart stops beating and you shuffle off this mortal coil and no one living really knows what’s happened to you. 

Nah, it’s more like the elves from Lord of the Rings. Sticking around forever. But also not? Because elves get to go to the West, move on...

Okay. Wrong analogy. Let me try this again. 

It’s more like video game spawning. Makes sense, right, since Genshin Impact’s a game originally. 

Every single hilichurl you’ve fought, as a player, comes back. Again and again. Once a body dies, the hilichurl soul plops out and goes looking for another nice, less damaged body to use. Then that hilichurl keeps going as they are until they die again. Usually pretty violently, but who’s counting? Especially if you’re a common mob of a RPG fantasy world.  

It’s not really something that is known, outside hilichurls. For obvious reasons. Because no humans try to talk to hilichurls and why would any hilichurls try to communicate how their lives work to outsiders?

It’s just how life works, right. Water is wet, apples grow from apple trees, electro slimes electrocute you if you poke them too much, and hilichurls live (and die) in cycles. 

I’m still on the fence on whether any of the Abyss Order knows about it. Their leader probably definitely doesn’t (why would they care?), but I’m less sure about the mages that interact with the hilichurl tribes on a more daily basis. 

Whatever. Less of an issue. 

Right now, I should be focusing on crawling out of the earth surrounding me. Popping out of the mud like the Uruk-Hai from the Two Towers movie, that’s how hilichurls work. 

Squirm, baby, squirm. Dig my way out. 

Eventually I pop out on the top, surrounded by my fellow potatoes. Hilichurls. One of the last free, my fellows are already in the process of wandering into the celebration being held for our revival. 

Dancing, food, drums...I love hilichurl celebrations. Nothing like them. 

We feast until we could burst and then feast some more. We dance and the beat is the same as our hearts. 

Same foods, same songs, nothing changes among the hilichurl. 

Because here’s the big thing about living over and over again: it doesn’t really encourage you to try anything new. 

If you’re going to come back anyway, why spend your valuable time figuring out how to do what you’re already doing in a new way? When your old way works just fine? 

The most change I’ve really seen in my fellows from life to life is making sure not to eat possibly poisoned food or avoid areas that they died in last time they lived. 

Among hilichurls, as you can probably tell by now, there’s not exactly a lot of personal ambition. Outside of eating more food and maybe getting to lead the tribe yourself at some point in time. 

Because there’s a good thing about hilichurls that most people wouldn’t really think about. Namely, that we don’t really fight each other? Not seriously, anyway. 

There’s fights to lead tribes, every once in a while, but that’s just to prove you’re right for the job. Mostly it’s play fighting and some arguments over food. Food that we all end up sharing in the community pot. 

Nothing like the big wars humanity has with each other. 

Backstabbing’s a completely foreign concept to a hilichurl, did you know? Because why would you kill someone that’s going to remember you killing them the next life and make you pay for it? It’s probably how Abyss mages keep taking advantage of us. 

To us hilichurls, we’re all hilichurls and that’s what really matters. The world of Teyvat is an aggressive place and we’ve got to do our best to live our fullest lives on it. 

I squint at the sky. Uselessly, with my typical hilichurl nearsight. But it doesn’t seem grey? I try sniffing the air. My nose is much better at telling than my eyes, and it informs me that nothing smells like it’s going to rain. 

None of this informs me where in Mondstadt I’m in, but that’s generally something I’ve accepted with each of my revivals. Still a pain and one I’m resigned to. Mostly. 

“Any humans close?” I ask one of my buddies.

Said buddy thinks about it, scratching at his bushy head.

“Nope,” he eventually answers. “Long gone.”

Ah. “Good.” 

“Yes. More food with them gone,” Buddy agrees. Because that’s the most concerning thing among hilichurls, food availability. 

Not that I can blame them. Us? Food is pretty good. Especially meat which is good. 

Meat is the best. Much better than nasty greens.

We’ve got a specific word, actually, to describe just how bad greens are. Shows you what we value, by that. Language is interesting like that. 

A language that I can’t use to talk to humans, by the way. 

In living hilichurl memory (which goes back very far), there’s never been a true conversation between a human and hilichurl. Not enough to be allies. 

Nah, humanity and churlkind is content to remain as they are, killing each other when we run into each other. 

Which is...kind of sad? And boring, I’m tired of this dying to humans thing. But hilichurls can’t really use human vocalizations and humans aren’t interested in trying beyond the odd hermit. Cuts down on the communication attempts big time. 

That’s why I’m going to learn how to read and write. 

~

Hey, this reading thing is something I’ve tried before. I’ve picked up books off the ruins of human caravans, only to find I couldn’t understand any of the script inside when I flipped through them. 

Hilichurls don’t...write? Why would we, all memory is living memory for us. Humans write for the dead and the humans they will never meet. Hilichurls don’t have either of those issues, really. Nothing for me to compare, possibly, to the human written word. 

That leads to my second problem: I can’t understand what humans are saying. At all. I’ve hid in the bushes, eavesdropping on a few before they inevitably find me and kill me. It’s all the same, all noise and blabber that doesn’t make any sense. 

Like any foreign language, I guess. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? I understand my fellow hilichurls just fine, and they don’t understand humans either. There’s an actual language gap here that was brought up in the game once, if my vague memories are right about that. 

A language gap that pretty much no one is interested in attempting to cross. 

But how can I get a human to explain to me what their writing says if I can’t understand what they’re saying either?

It’s complicated, that’s what I’m getting at here.

Look, I need a human as a first step. But I have to pick the right human, to even stand a chance of figuring out the smallest things. A human without one of those...elemental things, what are they called again, I don’t know...for me to even stand a chance catching them. Definitely not a kid, kids are bad at explaining anything on the best of days. 

They’re going to be scared. Naturally. I am a hilichurl, after all. But can’t have them so scared that they won’t see any of my attempts to communicate for what they are. 

Also, going to need to feed them. Get them water. Probably keep them away from the rest of the tribe, because what would we need a human for?

Then figure out what to do with the human after I’m done. Because I don’t really want to kill them? I don’t do this killing humans thing, unless they’re attacking me first. 

(I cared enough, once upon a time, to never kill humans. That didn’t work out too well for me, in the end.)

Yeah. 

Complicated. 

~

You might be asking now, well, hilichurls can use elemental magic, right? They can in the game. How does that work with the respawning? 

Can I use magic, is what you really want to know. When you get down to it. 

The answer is...complicated. Like everything else in my life as an otherwise simply hilichurl.  

Hilichurls don’t need those...Focuses, Visions, whatever those are called. But you already know that. 

Or you should, if you’re reading this with speck of knowledge about what world this tale apparently takes place in. Only humans need that gift from the heavens to use elemental magic. Everything else living on Tayvel...well, we can access the leylines themselves. 

If we have the ability to. 

For the complex answer you’re looking for...the mechanics if you will...

Elemental magic in a hilichurl depends on how much of a certain element is around when they wake. Spawn, revive, whatever term you want to use for the entire messy situation of life on repeat for a hilichurl. 

Clusters of pyro slimes spawning nearby on the leyline? More pyro hilichurls! A nearby temple/ruin/abandoned thingy full to the brim of static-y electro? Electro hilichurls! A lake full of cold water and ice? You guessed it, cryo and hydro, not too hard. 

But that’s mostly for, well, resistances. 

To use magic, to be a samachurl, you gotta live a single life for a certain amount of time. Get enough of that leyline energy into your blood, your bones, to be able to expel magic and not just resist it. And that’s pretty much the base requirement for spell-casting among hilichurls for you!

As for me, currently...

This life...well I haven’t lived it long enough to tell. I’ll have to test out my elemental resistances with the rest of my fellow returnees and time will tell the rest for actual spell casting. 

If I live long enough, being the key point here. Never a guarantee for a hilichurl. 

So far I haven’t reached samachurl status. I’m hoping to, someday! But so far, no luck. 

Probably because I’m doing dumb stuff like trying to learn how to read. 

Stuff no wise samachurl would ever dream of doing. 

Looking around, everyone’s entered the chill part of the day. Our collective hilichurl siesta, where we sit around after the traditional midday meal, stomachs filled to the brim, and sleep. Nap in the shade, in the sun, wherever seems safe enough in the hazardous landscape of Tayvel.

I scratch at my belly, feeling the stew slosh around inside. Nice and full with lots of meat today. Delicious.  

Most of the tribe has lumped themselves near the cooking pot, under the shade of the nearest tree grove. 

My feet take me to the edges of our camp, where there’s a lawachurl sitting on a boulder. Messing with a branch and a rock for some unknown reason. Not anything weirder than what I do. 

The markings on that lawachurl’s mask, that scent...I know her!

Now, when you cycle through enough lives as one big mass, you kind of get to know most of your fellows that cycle alongside you. Not always, because it’s a big world and sometimes you don’t get to see your fellow cyclers a whole ton due to being brought back elsewhere.

I’ve even heard rumors that if a hilichurl gets particularly tired of the life we lead, there is a way to die, well, permanently. But I don’t know much about that!

Despite all my fellow churls that I may or may not know, there are a few that I have specifically found a friendship with. 

Wedge is one of those few. And that mask is Wedge’s mask, uniquely patterned so we can all easily tell each other apart if everything’s too wet or icky for scent to work. 

“Hey Wedge.”

Wedge looks up from her work. Big yellow eyes blink at me. “Hubble. You’re here now.”

I nod to the stick in her hands. “What’s that for?”

She looks down at the stick like she’s surprised it’s there, then back at me. 

“For a spear,” Wedge explains. Or Big Wedge, for her lawachurl body. “You doing something stupid again?”

Man, it’s like she knows me or something. 

I carefully tug at my mask, making sure it covers everything properly. “...do you want to come with me?”

Big Wedge tilts her head back, in the direction of the heavens. Staring up at the lazy sun overhead. 

“Not this time. Maybe the next.”

I trail a finger along a horn. “Okay. Have fun with your spear.”

“Don’t die right away,” she warns, already returning to working on the mentioned spear.

That’s how I know Big Wedge cares, because every other hilichurl has pretty much resigned themselves to “Hubble dies from his own stupid actions.” 

Only Big Wedge still warns me about keeping caution in mind, rare as it is among our kind.   

I wander off. She continues her spear carving. 

Berry bushes, bird nests, clusters of dendro slimes, boar tracks...the locality is filled to the brim of different foods to scavenge and hunt. 

Of course, that is why my tribe resides here. Due to the easy access of food, mostly meat food. 

Under a patch of entangling roots, I find something interesting. The ruins of a human wagon, scraps of covering cloth rotting away over a wooden frame. 

If humans died here, there are no bodies to tell. If they did die here, the tribe probably picked up the fresh meat for a meal that day. 

I’m no fool, I know what hilichurls do to humans. The same thing that humans do to us. 

Picking my way into the wagon’s contents nets me no snacks. Of course. This wagon has been long picked over in the raid that stopped it in its track, burn marks from some pyro attack on the frame’s right side. 

But there are other things in it that no other hilichurl would think of picking up. 

Like, say, a few worn out books. Perfect to replace the writings I lost from my last death. 

Flipping one open, the scribblings are just as oblique as ever. 

Under my arm it goes, as I search for more. 

Shiny trinkets, the iron scraps of what may have been a knife...nothing more that I want.

Right now. 

I’ll come back later. For the moment, these small books will do. 

I yawn. Having a full belly tempts me to sleep. But not yet. I need to find somewhere to stash my books, where they will not be damaged by water or used as kindling for the always burning campfire. 

Safe? Safe is relative. Safe forever is impossible. Safe for this current life of mine will work. 

If I can manage it. I’ll do my best, to start. 

My arms wrap around the books. Keeping them clutched up to my chest, as I wander away from the caravan ruins. 

Aiming for the darker side of the woods. 

Here, the trees are ancient. Twisted and gnarled from surviving so long under Mondstadt’s eternal winds. 

They aren’t good wood for much of anything outside of firewood, part of the reason this forest’s still here. Or some humans would have chopped it down long ago. 

Or maybe my current tribe would have. But hey, we’ve got enough branches and grass for our fires, and no need for a fort currently. The entanglement of branches and thorns are also pretty good for warding off humans in the first place.

So the forest stays. 

I duck under branches, step over the roots.

Already, this is promising to be a good place to hide my loot. Maybe even a perfect place to look over said loot. 

Without my fellow ‘churls asking to use them as fuel or cleaning papers every few seconds. Or actually using them as such while I’m napping. Or eating. Or shitting in the woods. 

Can you tell I’ve been through this process a lot? 

So yeah. Perfect. 

Near the center of the woods lies a particular...cluster. A mix of rock and thorns, appearing like one of those old Monstandt ruins. Yet somehow less put together than one of those ruins. 

The entire heap hums with anemo energy. I can barely tell there’s anything else going on, it buzzes so loud with it. 

Hm. 

“ Even better! I’ll hide out here!”

I duck inside, careful not to let the loose breezes tug my pages away. 

But there’s a downside to this much gathered elemental energy. 

I turn to see something that shouldn’t be here. That I should have smelled! If not for the overwhelming wisps of wind blowing all the scent out!

A human. A human sleeping inside. On a bed of what looks like very soft moss. 

Huh. 

I can’t resist the temptation, the risk: I move closer. Until I am about to touch the sleeping human, hand hovering over a sleeve. 

About to touch, but do not touch. 

It breathes, releasing gentle snores. A whispering of a breeze passes through, ruffling my fur and the human’s hair. 

I settle down, resting my books in my lap. On this moss that really is as soft as it appeared to be. Keeping my eyes on the sleeper.

There is a familiarity to this human, interestingly enough. Because how would I be familiar with a human? Much like how hilichurls all look the same to humans, humans all look the same to hilichurls beyond variations in their hair colors. 

And clothing, sometimes. Though to my kind, hair and clothing is just pretty much fur. All the same. 

Black hair, green and white clothes.

Familiar colors. 

I must have seen them before, from the same place my knowledge of Teyval and leylines and itchy recognition of my last murderer comes from. 

A main character, one might say, in that history. 

A main character whose role in the ongoing story of this world I could end on my personal whim. 

In fact, I could kill this human right now! In his sleep, end an entire life with a crunch of rock to the skull. 

What a thought. 

What a terrible terrible thought. 

My legs come up to my chest, squishing the books between them and it. I hug my legs tightly, feeling the pages crunch from the newfound pressure. 

Do I... want to kill this human?

It’s guaranteed that if it wakes up, it’ll definitely try to kill me. For being a hilichurl, for being a possible threat. 

If I kill it, I can bring the body back for meat. The tribe will thank me and might even celebrate once more over a newfound bounty. 

I have everything to gain by killing this human, nothing to lose. 

I have everything to lose, if I don’t. If I let it live, wake up while I am still here. 

Wait. Wake up while I am still here . 

My clawed fingers trace along my legs and squished up books. Thinking. 

That’s right! I don’t have to wait for the human to wake! I can just stash my books and come back later. A nap wouldn’t take that long to wake up from. The human will surely be gone by my return. Good, good, I nod to myself.

Problem solved. 

I rise to my feet, careful to regather the books in my armpit. Shoved against my body in a different way than a few seconds ago.  

Leave now, maybe come back later. Or try my best to find another place to stash everything. 

Yeah. I can wait. 

Not like this human’s gonna wake up right now. 

“Ahhhh...how long was I asleep this time?”

Movement. The shifting of cloth, the tearing of leaves. 

The human is up. Sitting up on the moss, dragging their body free of the undergrowth. Staring at me. 

I freeze in place. Though the smarter move would have been to run...too late. 

Uh oh. 

~

Barbatos, or Venti as he personally prefers, has never been woken up by a hilichurl . Before this. 

He knows where hilichurls come from. They didn’t exist before the cataclysm. Before the overflow of monsters from Khaenri'ah overtook the land . But there is nothing he can do about it, personally. 

Even Archons have their limits. Especially Archons. 

(What happened to Dvalin has never made him more aware of those limits.)

But the hilichurl is not attacking him. 

Instead it seems frozen in place, staring at him with pupiless yellow eyes. 

Is it armed?

Venti frowns, taking a little effort to refocus his eyes. 

Nope, no weapons. Unless the package-looking thingies clutched to its chest are something to attack with?

Well. The smart thing to do would be to just kill the hilichurl. Even with as much of his power disappeared as it has, he can still manage enough to summon a bow and take care of this issue without a chance for the hilichurl to strike back. Or use his lyre, that will do just as well. 

Most people have never called Venti smart. Especially people that know him well. 

“Ah, hello there.” He tries for a wave. Smiling, but keeps the teeth hidden. Because exposed teeth could mean threat to a hilichurl like it does to a dragon? Maybe. Doesn’t hurt to try!

The hilichurl squeaks. Clenching around its packages tighter. Not attacking him, still. 

Hm, there’s a rhyme in that somewhere...?

“O creature of the hill, who hasn’t fought me still~” Venti clicks his tongue. 

Alright. But nothing that can really be written into a song. Not yet. 

The hilichurl wiggles a little closer to him. It flinches back if he as much breathes too hard, so Venti attempts to level his breathing the best he can. 

Slow, in and out. Don’t move. 

He feels it more than sees it, the gentle impact of the cautious monster settling on the ground next to him. Not within arm’s reach, but not moving away. Not running. 

Ha! Take that, Morax! He too can sit still when the situation calls for it!

Venti turns his head. Almost too quick, the hilichurl squeaks again and scoots back. 

Now that the monster’s closer, Venti can properly see what it holds. 

And it’s...books. 

Old, tattered books that appear worn down by weather and time alike. 

(Like himself, huh.)

What would a hilichurl be doing with books? Human books, unless something’s changed in the time Venti’s been sleeping. 

He squints. 

On seeing where his eyes focus, the hilichurl inexplicably relaxes. Its shoulders slump, it puts the books on the earth. Pushes one on the pile’s top towards him. 

It points. At the title. 

“Kua si?” 

A question?

“A book?” Venti hazards, not exactly sure what’s going on here. Other than the not attacking part. Which is good! He wants the not attacking to continue!

What he can see of the hilichurl’s ears in its bush of a mane flick back and forth. It shakes its head and taps the book again. 

“Kua si...booo-o- kah! ”

Did it just...try to say ‘book’?

Is that this hilichurl is here for? Holding these books, all by itself in this tumble of thorns created specifically to hide a sleeping god away...

Hiding. 

Again, the smart thing would be to kill it. Because gods know sharing the same language has never prevented people (and other gods) from killing each other, attacking each other. 

But...

Venti worries at his lip. 

His friend...his oldest friend only wanted to see the sky. What if this hilichurl has such a wish? A wish that cannot be expressed to him, a hope that it’s willing to share. May be already sharing, since it hasn’t attacked him.

Peace. 

He smiles. 

Well. Cannot be expressed to him yet. He does know one word in Hilichurlian, doesn’t he?

“Olah!”

~

The human’s not killing me. Instead, they’re following me. 

With a smile. Not running.

Telling me this is a book. In human tongue. Or I think so? And saying hello in my language!

And...I sniff the air. No smell of one of those elemental-powers, the vision-orbs on the guy. Less dangerous, that’s pretty good! Just what I was looking for in the first place, wasn’t I? A human without elemental powers. 

Any anemo here is definitely a result from where this human chose to sleep out, since it’s clearly some kind of ruin. 

Hey. 

This language learning plan just might work out, after all. 

Chapter Text

I...don’t know what to do next. 

I mean, theoretically I do know what I want. I want the human to be able to teach me human writings through peaceful interaction, in hopes of fostering future peaceful human interaction. 

For me specifically, because I really don’t think my fellow ‘churls will be very interested in my research or what comes out of it. 

Not unless it means more food. Which it could! But that’s a very long term kind of thing, and why plan that far ahead if the odds of you dying tomorrow are pretty high anyway?

That’s how the logic goes around here. One that I can’t fault. 

If I hadn’t found this human when I did...I glance back at them. 

Well. I was pretty close to giving up, wasn’t I? Didn’t even know how close until I finally reached this unexpected windfall. 

I hum to myself, beckoning the human forward. 

They seem kind of...clumsy, tripping over the rocks and sticks in the woods. Can humans see in the dark, at night? I forgot if they can or not. 

Live long enough as a weird goblin, you forget all kinds of things about how humans work. Like night vision. 

Leaning towards ‘not’ due to the tripping. 

Hm. How can I fix that?

No elemental magic on hand...wait! I hold my hand out to the human. 

“Wait!” I try. 

The human stumbles forward some more.

I try again, hopping a little into the human’s way. “Wait!”

This time, it works. The human pauses. Tilts their head, saying things in their language that I have no hopes of understanding right now. 

“You don’t want me to follow you? Not here? Where are we going?”

“Right,” I agree to whatever it is going on, in hopes the human will listen. Stay. 

I squat down, pat at the ground. “Stay?” 

Please work, please work.

“Okay? I’ll sit here, if you want. Man, this is really confusing!”

More burbling. But the human sits down. 

“Yes!” I throw a fist up in celebration. “We can do this!”

Now, to follow up on the idea I had earlier, to get light for the human. The tribe has a bunch of fire slimes near the hilltop and it’ll be no problem to pick one up. 

Be a little hard to keep the slime from setting fire to the entire hillside in the process...but I can do it!

I can do it. 

“I can do this.” Breath in deep, steady those shoulders, gotta invite in that confidence. 

Fear is the mind killer, confidence is the opposite of that. 

But not too much confidence, that can kill in a different way. 

Don’t want to lose my human from thinking no one will ever find them. 

Wait. I should probably let Big Wedge know that the rest of the tribe shouldn’t wander off in the direction of my current project. Don’t want to do all that work to avoid the dinner pot just for the human to end up there through other means. 

Right, right. 

I wander over. Super casually. Not casually enough, because Big Wedge’s head snaps up, eyes narrowing in my direction. 

“What are you up to, Hubble?”

Uh.

“Nothing big. Could you...keep everyone else away? Just in case?” 

Big Wedge’s eyes widen before narrowing again. The fires on her body snarl and hiss with her words. “Will it go boom?” 

Huh. Good question. With a human, who can tell? They’re unpredictable like that, with or without their elemental magics. 

“It might go boom?” I try. 

Big Wedge looks entirely unimpressed. “I’ll let the tribe know you’re messing around again.”

She shakes her head. 

“You’re going to get yourself killed again. Just do it on your own time, understand?”

Okay, rude, but also valid. Considering the amount of times we’ve had this same conversation. Mostly before I do end up dying terribly.

Last time was when I accidentally tripped into the territory of an Anemo Hypostasis. Now that was a bad time.  

Who knew Mondstadt had so many trees to be thrown into?

“Understood.”

I flick a two fingered salute at her, she shakes her head at my strangeness and waves me on. 

Late enough that other hilichurls are starting to find partners to cuddle up next to, or piling themselves on top of each other. Some hands, from different directions, wave at me. I ignore their clear message to make a beeline for the fire pit off to the side. 

A large pyro slime rests on a bed of coals. Shimmering all the colors of flame, eyes half-closed as it enjoys its fuel and flames crackling about it. 

Smaller lumps hop around it, ready for any hilichurl to pick up and throw ‘em. At the enemy, of course, we don’t go tossing pyro slimes at each other. 

I grab for the closest one, wincing lightly at the burning heat it gives off at touch. Doesn’t burn me, even without a clear element in my body (yet), a hilichurl is far more resistant to magical elements than any human is. 

Leyline connections and all that being the cause, of course. 

We’re the most resistant to Geo, due to our creation from the mud itself. But pyro’s also a pretty common one.

Not weird for anyone to grab a pyro slime for a quick heat-up. That’s one reason why no one in the tribe cares as I carry my target away.

The real reason?

They don’t trust old Hubble to not be blowing everything in the vicinity up with an acquired pyro slime. 

Oh well. Such is life as me, as Hubble. 

I waddle back into the woods, both hands tight around my slime. 

The human brightens upon seeing me, but fear instantly taints their scent when they pick up on the slime. Why...?

Oh right. 

“No hurt,” I insist, shaking my head. That means no to humans too, right? 

I pull the slime in closer to my chest, ignoring the singed smell of fur I get for my trouble. “No hurt.”

The human doesn’t quite relax, but the fear is less. Good enough. 

Clear the surroundings of leaves and twigs, get a nice blank dirt patch...

Digging a hole is a little hard while holding wiggly pyro slime. Good thing I picked a pretty small slime.

Once the hole is deep enough, I plop the little guy in. It wiggles and creeps, but can’t quite crawl out due to the angle of the hole’s sides. Its fiery heat fills up the hole and rises, providing some good warmth without the risk of burning my fur off. Just as planned.

My claw crooks at the watching human, to beckon them closer. When they don’t move, just watching me with brilliant green eyes, I run my tongue against my teeth in thought. 

How to convince them to come over...

Right. A different kind of gesture. 

I start warming my hands over the heat the pyro slime provides. Waiting. Patient. 

Doesn’t take as long as I’d thought it would, for the human to crawl on over to start heating their own hands up. 

Huh. Human’s pretty daring. But it makes sense, normal humans wouldn’t just wander off with a hilichurl. They have to be a weird one, for this plan of mine to work in the first place. 

And speaking of said plan, for the next step, for the next words I wanna try teaching about the fire...

There’s a problem. 

The problem is simple. Any word I use for the makeshift heat source could be interpreted as a different word entirely, to cause trouble down the line. Like I could use “fire” and the human might think I was saying “slime” because well, it is a slime in a hole. 

But because it is a simple problem, I can work around it without too much trouble.

The bare dirt surrounding my fire-hole is soft enough that a claw can gently drag across it to create a line. I swipe it clean, to start again.  

Make a blob of a circle, give it some eyes, there! A nice doodle of a slime. 

“Slime,” I say simply, indicating the picture. 

The human nods, intent on the movement of my hands. “Hm, I didn’t know hilichurls could draw...but I guess that’s stupid to assume they wouldn’t. That’s the pyro slime, maybe it’s saying that’s what they call it? A slime? ”

Good. They said the word. I nod back, satisfied. 

Have to test later to see if they really understood, of course. Need more words before I can do that test, though. 

My fingers scratch out a crude image of the visible fire surrounding the slime. Not the slime itself. Just the fire. 

“Fire,” I gesture. 

Next step.

“Fire slime,” I put the words together as simply as I can make them.

The response?

“Fire slime~!” they singsong back to me. 

I reach up to tug at my ears. Bit more high-pitched than I like, but whatever gets them remembering the words, it’s fine. 

Baby steps. 

Slime’s struggling, red glow dying down. 

I toss in some twigs to brighten it up, give it some fuel to feed off of. The little guy won’t survive the night, sucks for it, but I don’t really want to go to the effort of returning said slime when the human’s gonna need the heat for as long as it’s available. 

Might be...I run my tongue across the flat teeth towards the back end of my jaw. Hm. Problem. What if the human dies in the night, from cold, same as the slime will? They have no fur like I do...

It may be summer, but humans are so squishy and weak. This one could totally die out here, they were under a shelter before, weren’t they? All those thorns and bushes clustered together. 

“Humans must build houses to protect from the cold,” I think out loud. “And from predators.”

Because Teyvat is like that. 

My tribe living up the hill will take care of the predator part. Animals and monsters alike don’t go for large groups of churls. Only humans do that. 

Can’t keep the slime alive all night, not if I want to sleep. But I can try preventing too much heat loss through the ground. 

Hey.

“I found you some on moss, didn’t I?”

That’s an idea. 

The human tilts their head. “ What are you talking about now?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back!” Again. 

I don’t go out of sight, just grabbing moss from the nearest trees. And once they see what I’m doing, the human follows my lead. 

The moss is moist. Best to dry it out, without setting it on fire. 

I settle my gathered up clusters by the slime pit. Allowing the heat to rest in my bones and the moss. More twigs for the slime, more heat rising up. 

Hilichurls curl up with each other, to sleep. That’s why everyone was trying to beckon me over, earlier, didn’t you know? Because we’re tribe, no matter how nuts I am individually. Tribe sticks together. 

I’ve slept alone before, though. When I’ve got my own plans and books to look through. Never comfortable, never as good as sleeping in a churl pile, but hey. Sacrifices have to be made sometimes. 

I eye the human carefully arranging the moss underneath them. I could theoretically try sleeping next to them. But that’s...probably a bad idea. 

I’m still a hilichurl, despite the peace between us so far. Still a threat to the human race as a whole, just by existing. 

Why else would humans just slaughter entire tribes, when said tribes haven’t ever attacked anyone? 

Because we could be a threat, that’s why. 

I curl up, the best I can, next to the heat from the tiny fire. Close my eyes, shove my masked face into my middle. 

I sleep. 

It’s not too bad, for sleeping on my own. 

For once. 

~

What a strange situation to wake up to, Venti thinks, pillowing his hands under his head. On the moss bed his host has so thoughtfully gathered up for him. 

Even stranger to think that this hilichurl has treated him better than many humans he’s run into before, over the centuries. 

Almost like a valued guest, with its limited resources, instead of a pest. 

He might go as far as to say a pet, if not for how clearly the hilichurl wants to communicate with him. 

Even telling him what they call ‘pyro slimes’ in their language. 

Venti takes out his lyre. Checking its tune. 

The sound causes his hilichurl guide’s ears to flick back and forth. He pauses, not wanting to wake them. 

But they seem to only settle down into deeper sleep.

“Seems unsafe to do that, alone like this,” Venti muses. He shrugs. “But I can’t really judge when I do the same thing, heh.”

His fingers play with the strings. More sound, more music. And again, the hilichurl does not wake up. 

It’s perfect. 

For Venti, at least, the bard that he is. 

“Inspiration abounds after a sleep so long~! A good time to write a song!” 

He hopes the annual bard competition still happens in Mondstadt. It’d be a real shame and disgrace it isn’t. 

His fingers tap along the lyre’s body. Maybe...

“I’ll write a song in that hilichurl language!” he decides cheerfully. “Once I learn some more words...it’ll be perfect .”

It won’t be any kind of redemption, for how hilichurls became hilichurls in the first place. Oh, how Venti knows, that’s not how redemption works. Not how he can fix any of what went so horribly wrong centuries ago. 

But. 

A song to remember those people, in the words of their descendents?

That much he can do. 

(The least he can do.)

“All I need is more words, for a tune.” He glances over at his guide, snoring away. And his new friend here? 

Seems more than happy enough to help him with that. 

“ Fire slime~” Venti sings out once more, about pyro slimes. “Fire slime~!”

Chapter Text

Waking up is a very different experience than usual. By that I mean I’m not packed in by my fellow hilichurls, sharing the same morning hungry gurgles. 

The fire’s gone out, taking the slime out with it. Sucks, but that’s the natural order of things. No fires last forever, no pyro slimes last forever. Prodding the ashes, pretty cold to touch. Fire’s been out for a while, then. 

Sniffing at the air, yep, there’s my human, and breakfast being cooked in a pot. Due to human keeping reasons, I’ll have to scavenge my own food instead of joining up at the pot with the rest of the tribe. 

Oh well. Sacrifices have to be made for the pursuit of knowledge. Language. All that fun stuff, and the fun part isn’t me being sarcastic, got it?

Because it really is fun, trying to figure out how humans speak and how I can talk back to this particular one. 

I’m gonna learn so much. I nod to myself and turn towards the direction of my sleeping human. 

“Fire slime~!”

Who isn’t sleeping!

Aaah-! I nearly punch the singing human in the face, what the heck!

“You’re awake now? What woke you up?” Don’t humans sleep super deep, longer than hilichurls do? Crazy! Crazy crazy human. 

Before I can do anything else-

The human growls. 

I jerk back, before forcing my nerves to settle down. Did I do something wrong? Did I upset the human by getting too close, too fast? What do I do now? 

It is only when the growling comes again, but not from the human’s now warming face, that I understand that it’s from the stomach area of the human. A gargle, not a growl. 

The same kind of gargling that my stomach alerted me to earlier. 

Hungry. 

Right. 

I need to feed my human. That must be why they’re up earlier than expected, hunger. 

Hn, I tap along the edges of my mask, carefully scenting the air. 

Humans eat many of the same things ‘churls do. It’s one of the reasons we raid their traveling wagons so often, because said wagons are often full of tasty meat and not so tasty vegetables. 

But it’s the same problem I’ve had with my books in the past. If I leave my human unoccupied to get food, odds are too high that another tribe member will run across them. And eat them. Forever ruining my chances to finally learn the human language!

...and killing the human for good, I guess. I keep forgetting humans don’t come back like hilichurls do, been too long since I was one. 

I wrack my brain for a possible solution. Only one comes to mind. 

I sigh. 

It seems I will have to tell someone else about my human. If only to cut down on the chances of losing my human. 

“Hoo-ph,” I let out a breath, settling my chin on a clawed hand. 

If that’s the case...well, the ‘churl that I’m going to tell is obvious, isn’t it?

~

Wedge watches the tribe. 

The tribe watches her back, eager to please their local lawachurl. She protects from the foes that come, from the wildness that is their world. In exchange?

She hums, elemental fire glowing in her flesh as she leans against the boulder at her back. 

In exchange, she asks only for peace and quiet. To be left alone as to calm the elements surging inside her flesh. 

To-

“Big Wedge!” 

She huffs at the sudden interruption, scenting the air to check who bothers her. But there’s only one hilichurl that it would be, really. 

Hubble, again. He’s only really been a hilichurl over the cycles they’ve known each other, been friendly to each other. Never experienced the strength or duty that comes with being a mitachurl or lawachurl. 

She should assert the boundary. As she does with the others. 

Her ears flick back and forth, as she allows him to draw closer instead. 

“Hubble.”

Hubble is remarkable in how daring he is, ignorantly wandering up to her without a thought of why he should not. Or careless. 

There’s always been a few of his breed, ‘unusual’ as they’re called, sprinkled among the tribes. Those who seek greens (and carry them) above all else, those who travel and dance beyond normal bonds of energy, interest tied to a single unknowable goal. The intense interest is often useful for long term survival, so the unusual persist and help their current tribe live longer as a result. 

Though Hubble may not know it, the tribe watches him for signs of humans drawing too near. For a hilichurl so intent on finding humans, he’s also on edge when it comes to the creatures. An early warning system that knows when they will come attack after watching them for so long. Or what may drive them to attack, he’s warned them off of some human devices before too. 

“Don’t panic, I have something to show you.”

Wedge steadies her trepidation. Considering the path of her thoughts, that’s not the greatest of signs.

“Go on.”

Hubble turns to beckon towards the trees. Something wobbles out of those trees on two legs. Not hilichurl. 

Wedge scents...that’s new. Not something she smells in times of peace, rare as those appear. 

That’s...a human. 

Hubble waves at it. 

The human wags one of its hands back. Almost in a wave itself. 

“Hubble, you stole a human?!”

“Shhh, shhh!” Hubble throws his arms about frantically. “You’ll scare them!”

Wedge snorts, clawing a hand through her mane. Her, scare a human? The accursed things were more likely to wipe out an entire tribe than run away in fear. Because they were just nuts like that. 

Hubble level nuts, actually, thinking about it. 

...in hindsight, maybe she should have expected this from Hubble, sooner or later. The human stealing bit, that is. It fits his particular nature of unusual. 

She can only hope that he scavenged said human, to lessen the danger of other humans collecting into their attacking hordes over this particular human. 

...if they would. Humans are unpredictable like that. 

Out of nowhere, Hubble begins to yank out chunks of grass between her and the human. 

“What the-?”

“Ssh, I’m showing you why the human.”

Once the grass is removed, he smooths out the dirt underneath. More like a slate of stone or metal than the chunky roots and dirt of before. 

Before her eyes, in the exposed dirt, Hubble carefully squiggles out...a hilichurl. Next to it, he claws out an even larger hilichurl, one lined with cracks and an impression of fire, like from a pyro slime. A lawachurl, it must be. 

Realization hits her, a stray electro bolt striking true. He’s drawing himself and her in the dirt, for the human, for whatever reasoning that has struck him in turn. 

Hubble pats his chest, then pokes at the picture of the hilichurl. “Hilichurl.”

He does the same for Wedge (by pointing at her) and her own picture. “Lawachurl.”

The human hums to themself, before repeating the words on their tongue. 

“See, see, humans can learn!” Hubble stinks of pride, fur on his neck ruffled outwards.

“Are you sure it’s not just echoing?” she questions. “Like the anemo elementals do, in the deeper caves.”

“I’ll show you further,” he decides. He traces a slime, a pyro slime, next to the other pictures in the dirt. Taps it. 

The human examines the picture. Nods. 

“Fire slime.”

She guesses...she huffs out a breath. 

“Okay, it’s not only echoing.”

“See?” Hubble fluffs up his mane, nods firmly. “I’ve done pretty good so far, I think.”

“Sure.” Wedge isn’t exactly sure what good enough is supposed to be in this case. 

“Keep an eye out...please?” Hubble wraps his hands together, scent pleading. 

“Fine. But if your human attacks me, it’s dead.” Her claws tap at her club in emphasis. 

“That’s fair! I’ll be back with food soon!” Hubble hops off his rock, trotting off into the woods. In the opposite direction of all of the foraging parties, she might add. 

Leaving her with...she sniffs the stinky human scent in. Gives the probably green colored human a side glance. Because for some reason it’s colored the same as the hills. Maybe camouflage? She didn’t know humans did that very good. They never remember to hide their scents when trying to ambush hilichurls...

More importantly. 

What does she do with the human now? 

~

Venti has never been this close to a lawachurl before. 

He’s always been a more distance kind of fighter, when he has to fight. But this...

Huh. The air around this lawachurl...heated. Like sitting next to a fireplace in an inn. 

“You’re pretty warm. Hot, in the temperature sense,” he remarks. “But I have no doubt you’re quite ‘hot’ to your fellow hilichurls too!”

Ah, the puns are the best. He laughs to himself over his cleverness, a cleverness that no one else would appreciate. 

What he can see of the lawachurl’s ears flick back and forth, but it doesn’t move to face him otherwise. 

Incredibly different from his hilichurl companion’s habit of turning towards him if he even just hums. A difference in personalities along with interest, if the apparent conversation between lawachurl and hilichurl is any proof. 

But that shouldn’t be a surprise, should he? Since he does know when hilichurls came about and their origins from there...

He sighs, bringing out his lyre to check its strings and body. To tune it. 

Spending so long asleep is never any good for an instrument! Even an instrument made from his own essence. 

While he does so, he considers what he’s learned so far, language-wise, from the hilichurl. 

Every time he gets a word right or apparently listens to the hilichurl, it uses a particular word. 

Dada. That’s it. That must be the word his bard-trained ears keep catching. 

‘Dada’ appears to be a word for good or very good, he’s not certain to the degree yet. Something to discover with time. Everything with language requires time and usually a lot of it. 

Took almost centuries for a single wisp of an aero elemental to learn enough to speak to a lonely bard, after all. 

Venti can spare the time for this, can’t he? That’s the best part of being free, the chance to go through new experiences like this. Also...

“You’re lucky I’m the Archon that hilichurl ran into. Anyone else...” Venti shakes his head, an exaggerated frown on his face. “No way they’d stick around!”

Most of them obliterating the entire camp in the process. Slaughtering countless hilichurls who would have only the bad luck of being in the vicinity of a waking Archon. 

...that they would have cared.

Venti lets the frown on his face become more real, for once. 

He wouldn’t have cared, before. 

But maybe that was because he’s always been far too good at lying to himself, along with everyone else. 

...okay, enough of those thoughts! Shoo! Shoo! Too bad he doesn’t have any dandelion wine to drown them out, music will have to do in its stead. 

His fingers play back and forth over his lyre’s strings, carefully checking if it's in the right key. Tuned to his preference. Ready to play. 

Start with something simply. Catchy! A tune to lift anyone’s heart, human or not. 

“Dada, la la, la~”

The lawachurl’s ears wiggle in his direction. Much less smoothly than anything the hilichurl’s ears have done, to show their own attention. Like their owner doesn’t want to listen but can’t help it. 

Venti smiles. 

He needs more words in Hilichurlian to write a proper song. Of course, his teacher’s gone doing something. And this lawachurl...Venti gives it once-over.

Ignoring him again, now that he’s not playing. Hm, he’s not certain it’ll help him out beyond the bare minimum. 

How can he communicate-? Venti glances down at the doodles of hilichurls and slimes. Ah, that will do nicely. 

He swipes his makeshift dirt board clean. Begins to sketch out the picture of the word he wants for his tangled up song. 

A round fat body, lines for beak and feet, triangle wings...

Venti’s never been much of a visual artist but this should do for what he wants. 

The lawachurl’s fiery light flickers along its fur, masked face tilting to the side, as it examines his (very) crooked bird picture.  

“Nini-si,” it eventually provides. 

Alright, just what he needs. 

“Nini-si chirp chirp chirps!”

Ah, it’s been a while since he last did his songbird impression, but he’s still got it.

The lawachurl leans forward at that, claws kneading the ground. Listening. 

“ Fire slime crackle crackle crackles!” With one hand, Venti mimics the rising of a fire, fingers wiggling. 

He’ll never turn down an audience. Nevermind its size or shape. 

~

When I clamber through the woods, carrying my scatterings of food for the human, I find said human chattering to Big Wedge. 

Playing with some music on the instrument they hold. Something with strings, arched wood, huh. Don’t know what it is. 

Drums are much easier for hilichurls, due to our more clumsy clawed hands. Humans have a lot more benefits than they know, having hands can manipulate and change the world around them so easily in comparison.

So many reasons to be jealous...no wonder my people keep giving into the temptation to fight humans. 

But enough of that. What’s happening right now? The music, voice sounds...

Singing, but what? The human doesn’t really know enough words to make a proper song. I listen some more, trying to figure it out. 

My ears prick up, putting the pieces together. 

They’re making a song about...sounds. 

Oh, that makes sense! There’s not a lot of grammar that the human knows so far of our language, just nouns. Nouns and sounds that others can put together, even if the said sound words don’t match the cultural association at hand. 

Ah!

Fascinating!

Humans can be so very creative at times. A creativity I can use here to learn more of their language for myself. 

But don’t get lost, I’m here for a reason. With that reason all in my arms. 

Apples, roots, flowers, all simple foods but ones that should be edible for a human too. No meat, sad, but I don’t think humans eat raw meat? So I didn’t catch any, to be careful.

“Hello! I brought food for you and the human, Big Wedge.”

“Good timing.” A warm hand heaves itself over, open for said food. But most of the attention is still on the human. In a good way, ears attentive but not too forced forward in a false attention. 

I place one of the windwheel plants in that open hand. 

A sigh. 

“Greens? ”

“I’ll get better snacks later,” I promise. Shouldn’t be a problem, I saw some frogs in that pond nearby...

She snorts, but sticks the flower into her mouth, accepting my promise. 

I offer an apple to the human, because humans love apples, right? They love them enough to grow them on trees next to their caves. 

“An apple, my favorite! You are truly a lily on the hill, hilichurl friend of mine!”

The human appears to happily accept my apple, crunching into it right away. Chasing away those stomach rumbles, good, good. 

The rest of the bounty I dump on the clean dirt. Next to a picture of a bird? Huh. I tilt my head closer to make sure I’m actually seeing something there. 

“A bird?”

“Yeah, he wanted to know what we call flying things.” Big Wedge’s fur rustles as she sits down on her rock. “For singing.”

“Ooo. That’s good.” I nod. “I’ll be able to learn more from him, if he wants to learn from us.”

“Learn?” Big Wedge stinks of confusion. “Explain.”

“Learn like I show them words and they use those words to talk,” I say. Learn isn’t a word that’s used very often among ‘churls, not a surprise that Big Wedge’s forgotten its meaning. 

We chow down on the rest of the food no problem, the three of us. 

What now? Well, I need to teach the human. See where they are in understanding. Not a lot, because I'm the only one doing this. 

...would be so much easier with the whole tribe helping. Shame. 

I take a breath. Point to the bird picture. Lopsided and crooked, but understandable. 

“What’s that?”

“Oh, you want to see what your big friend told me? Okay, that’s sky-thing.”

Nini-si. Literally “a thing that is in the sky.”

Not wrong, but not completely right? 

Big Wedge wasn’t wrong to tell them that’s what the bird is. But it’s like calling a bee a bug. Inexact, because nini-si can also apply to various fluttering anemo elementals and even human gliders we catch glimpses every once in a while. Anything that flies out of reach. 

I tug at my mask. I’ll leave it be...for now. Exact details can be introduced later. 

“Good. Sky-thing, that’s good.”

“Sky-thing chirp, chirp, chirps!”

Whoa, that’s an impressive impression of a singing bird. The human shows its teeth and takes a dramatic bending bow. Probably a good gesture, a sign of “look how great I did.”

So the baring teeth is not bad for humans. Remember that. 

“Sing, sing!” I clap my hands together. Repeat back the tune. “Sky-thing chirp chirp chirps~!”

More music, that’s what we need! Music is very good at getting languages to stick, something from my last life informs me, good at remembering in general.

The human takes to my cue and begins to play its instrument once more.  

I dance to the beat they create, with string and voice. Sing my own words, words they do not yet know, but what I wish to share. 

In the background, Big Wedge sways. A constant hum beneath. 

Far far over the hill, I’m certain I hear my people sing their own songs to their own drums. But if they come over here...they’ll hurt my human. 

But I won’t let them. 

Don’t worry, human. 

I may be only a hilichurl, but I’ll protect you. 

~

Even surrounded by a hilichurl and a lawachurl, Venti hasn’t felt this much peace in forever. On the green hills, the forever wind brushing through the grass and his ear...a simply perfect feeling. 

A poem for this? Not yet, but maybe a rhyme. 

“To my new friends, an ear I will lend!”

Hm. Not quite right. But close. 

Close enough, right now.

Chapter Text

It has been a good day. 

Music, food, and a chance to learn more language from a human, very good day for me. I’ve even got one of my better preserved books out to get the written stuff translated teh best I can. 

The only problem so far is...

“Why do they have to use a logogram?” I put my hands over my mask. “Alphabets are much quicker to learn!”

I’m also not sure if I can memorize the literal hundreds of symbols it will take for me to be fluent in the human written language. Or if my human can even teach me that many in the first place.

The most I can seemingly hope for is enough to convince humans that I’m a person. Even that might not be enough, because I’ve seen other humans hunt and kill their own before. 

If they can do that to their kind, what hope does an odd hilichurl have? 

“The only hope any of us have, I guess.”

With a heavy sigh, I bent over the book once more. Tracing a symbol as carefully as I can to avoid tearing the paper. Then retracing that symbol into my hand, an invisible marking in my flesh. Remembering. 

The human makes a sound. From past experience, I know they mean the word the symbol is supposed to be. 

I repeat said sound, best I can, as I trace along my palms. “Al-kkuh.”

“Sky-thing,” the human then says, doodling a little bird in the dirt between us. 

So this sound is their word for bird? How interesting! This symbol is repeated a few more times in the book, as I carefully turn the pages. A book on birds, possibly? Hard to tell, since the pictures in the book are of strange stone temples and little else...

“Where the birds nest,” I decide. That must be it! I’ve found many birds and their eggs among ruins. 

What an interesting topic to write a book on. I wonder what it was doing on the wagon. Maybe one of those humans was a bird watcher- I tap at the page before closing it. A little roughly, enough to create a poof of dust that whips out the bird doodle. The human stares at me, betrayal clear in its green eyes. 

Great, now I kind of feel bad. I try not to, because it’s always us or them, when it comes to humans. But I can’t help it, having been human once. Who knows how long ago. 

Another thing I try not to think about. Ever. 

Tap tap tap. Raindrops on my fur, but a feeling more solid. An actual touch. 

Hm?

The human is the one tapping at me. Trying to get my attention. Talking to me. 

“ Oops, I should have asked earlier, but I guess I forgot, hehe.” The human uses a free hand to scratch at the back of its head. “It’s not really important to me but it usually turns out to be, to other people. Are you a girl or guy?”

The hand that was tapping at me scratches at dirt. Doodling fresh pictures. Two stick figures that are meant to be humans, triangles traced on top of them. Big triangle over legs for one and smaller triangle on head for the other. 

“A man and a woman. Which one are you?”

I scratch at my mask. Thinking. The triangles must be some kind of covering for the humans. Like clothing? Bigger triangle on one than the other. 

Human with more clothes and human with less clothes...I know this. 

“Oh! I get it!”

“What is it?” Big Wedge’s head tilts off to the side, wondering out loud. The most attention she’s paid to our interactions today. So far. 

“The human wants to know if we’re guys or girls!”

Big Wedge hums her understanding. “Humans are stupid about that, aren’t they?”

To be perfectly honest, I expected the human to ask earlier. Being a guy or girl seems to matter a lot to them, like when attacking humans, the male ones get all super aggravated if you go after the females first. Powerful guy humans wear more clothes than the powerful girl humans. Little things like that. 

Usually it’s not too difficult to tell by scent if a human is male or female, they’re like cows or horses in that way. But my human is more...fiddly? Hard to scent beyond ‘yep that’s a human.’ 

I guess the wind stuff of the human’s sleeping hideaway works pretty well to hide its smell. Not perfectly, there’s a reason we’ve been chilling pretty far from the tribe. But not too badly. 

The human apparently still cares about whether we’re guys or girls despite the lack of distinctive scent on its end. Enough to ask. Maybe I’ll get an answer for what it is, in return. Make it more friendly in sharing, more information on its language to use on future humans that will want me to know if they’re boys or girls. 

Humans are finicky about this stuff after all. 

As for hilichurls...

Gender is more of a memory than an actual reality for ‘churls. 

Comes with us all being born from the earth itself literally, rather than in more a symbolic way like it is for humans. 

Makes it weird that our language is gendered, huh? Even counting the neutral stuff, still a gender with feminine and masculine mixed in! I guess it only makes sense for each Hilichurl to pick which side of that divide they favor. Or if they like neither at all. 

I like he and Big Wedge likes she. Notches on the edge of a mask, for those that can read them. There’s nothing more to it. 

No other reason, nothing else influencing those choices. 

It doesn’t matter. 

Really. 

Matters more what kind of ‘churl you are, in the end. How big one gets, the elemental energies one can use. More than if one’s a girl or boy or something else entirely. 

But the human is asking, and I want to answer. Give them an answer they’ll understand and in return understand more about this human.

I shake my head and point at both stick figures. “I don’t know which is which.”

The human nods, face wrinkling up. They add to the doodles, making the human with the bigger triangle have a strange roundness to the chest area. Big circles. 

Hey, could that be-

Like a bolt of Electro, my realization jitters through my bones straight to my brain!

Oh, mammary glands! Boobs, the bigger ones belong to female humans in most cases! More straightforward than trying to figure out through clothing, since that changes with every different human culture. Pretty sure. 

I tug at my mask with one hand, point at the less round figure with the other. “Me!”

The round figure, I gesture towards Big Wedge. Easy enough to explain now. 

The human lays a hand under the thinner figure. “ Me.”

Male. 

I nod firmly. “Got it.”

If I can’t convince humans that I’m a person, then maybe this will do instead. 

Nothing like asking a human their gender to stop them in their tracks. Perfect. 

I shoot my human two thumbs up. 

~

Okay, Venti still doesn’t know what that gesture means exactly. Only that the hilichurl does it when he’s pleased about something. So Venti does it back? Thumbs up, pointer fingers directed towards the hilichurl. 

The hilichurl claps his hands, seemingly pleased. 

Venti claps back and for a moment, the two of them are distracted. At doing what might be some kind of rhythm game? They keep trying to tap each other’s hands and missing, he can’t help but laugh at this ridiculous situation. 

“Huuubl!” the lawachurl calls out, getting their attention. 

She holds out...

A potato, steaming from the lawachurl’s hot touch. One that the hilichurl accepts carefully.

The hilichurl then shoves the entire potato into his mouth. 

Venti can’t help it: he stares. 

The result of the action is way more predictable than the action itself. The hilichurl yelps, sound muffled by the potato, before spitting the boiling hot vegetable out into his hands. 

Another yelp, as the potato bounces from hand to hand, just those two hands. 

“Hot potato!” Venti has to say, ha!

Rumblings from the lawachurl, wide shoulders shaking. Her form of a laugh, he realizes, an easy enough conclusion to come to at this silly sight. 

“Aii, celi!” the hilichurl cries out. Heat, hot, hot, that's easy enough to get!

“ You always do this to yourself, stupid, haaa!” is the lawachurl’s incomprehensive response. Only that it’s part of her laughing, her making fun of the hilichurl. 

Venti laughs too. The entire situation is just so ridiculous, three different kinds of monsters all up on a hill together, having trouble with a simple cooked up potato. 

The hilichurl spits out the potato, to pat at his own tongue frantically. 

The lawachurl leans over, reaches out to grab the potato for herself. Before Venti’s eyes, her fiery glow flares around that hand. A hand that opens to reveal a very...charred potato. Soon tossed to the earth between them. One that the hilichurl does not shove into his mouth this time, only bending over the vegetable left on the soil. 

The blackened skin parts easily under the single claw slicing through it. Once that’s done, the hilichurl eagerly breaks out chunks of the still steaming vegetable to devour. Even offering a few of those chunks to Venti. 

Which he accepts, of course!

“Don’t mind if I do!” 

Hot, hot, hot to touch, but the potato tastes delicious despite nearly burning his tongue. Despite the lack of butter or salt or pepper or anything else on the potato. The potato is just a plain potato. But it’s the best thing he’s tasted in centuries, hot in his mouth. 

Less about those expensive extras or expectations. 

More about the company, he thinks.

Speaking of, this company, how can he spend so much friendly time with them and still not know their names? For surely they must have them, being people of their own cursed nature. 

(Celestia wanted them dead. Wants them dead.)

He’ll hurt himself, trying to know them. 

But that’s something Venti’s always been pretty good at, hurting himself. 

He taps at his chest. “Venti.”

That’s the name that matters to him, the name he likes the most. 

(The name that the most important stuff happens to, under.)

Thankfully, not much further explanation appears to be needed, because the hilichurl lays his hand on his chest and relays a new word in return. 

“Huuubl.”

As one, Huuubl and Venti turn to stare at the lawachurl. Who says nothing. Doesn’t even tap at her chest like they both did. 

A sigh. A heavy sigh. 

“Wche,” the lawachurl at last supplies, her toes on her exposed feet curling in. 

But Huuubl says something else. “Lawawche!”

Wche or Lawawche? A nickname and a full name, probably. Which one?

“Lawawche?” Venti tries. 

The lawachurl throws up her glowing hands. 

“ Wche,” she corrects, as Huuubl’s body shakes in laughter behind her. The direct reverse of the Potato Situation of earlier. 

Right, Wche. He’s not too bad at language, these names should be no problem!

Huuubl and Wche. 

Hubble and Wedge, he’s pretty sure that’s how someone would transcribe those names, by sound alone. Like himself, the excellent bard that he is!

To the next step, now that Venti finally knows their names. Another doodle, to get his message (his question) across the best he can. 

Himself, in a crude doodle, holding hands with a hilichurl and lawachurl. Friends. 

“Friends?” he hopes. 

Both Hubble and Wedge examine the drawings and both seem to turn away satisfied. Hubble even pats him on the arm, chirping, “Dada, dada.”

Then he taps at the picture. 

“Odomu. Mi yuyu odomu.”

Friendly. Venti smiles. 

Hubble stands up fully. Begins to move away. After all that?

“Huh?”

Hubble points up the hill towards where Venti can spy the smoke of a fire, dim it may be against the darkening sky. Where the rest of the hilichurls are. Explains. 

“Mimi capto Wche mita.”

Venti nods after putting the words together in his head. 

Food for Wedge, got it! Since a few potatoes isn’t enough to sustain a lawachurl, though it might be enough for a smaller hilichurl. 

Satisfied by his response, Hubble heads off. Leaving the two of them alone once more. Again and again. 

But Venti doesn’t mind so much this time. Because he’s friends with Wedge like he is with Hubble, friendship merely taking a different form because they’re different people. 

Like the differences in his past friendships, Vennessa and Dvalin and his...

(The face that he wears.)

He tilts his head back, moving a hand up to trace the stars. His stars. Their stars. 

“There’s Carmen Dei. It’s supposed to be a winged harp, isn’t that lovely?”

Wedge lifts her own clawed fingers, to trace out another constellation. One much less complicated, three brilliant stars in the void.  

A reply, though neither have perfect understanding of the other. 

“These three stars, right here, they called ‘em the Celestial Wedge. Supposed to show everyone how to get home...”

He’s not alone. 

~

Flosrin, local Dendro samachurl, watches over the tribe as they cheer and dance about their evergrowing bounty that is centered in the dinner pot. 

It is a good night tonight, much meat from local birds and small animals brought to the fire. Outnumbering the gross greens for once.  

His head bobs along to the tune some kindred are beating out, preparing for a proper dance. And-

Ah, there’s a scent he hasn’t caught for a while! And a mask he hasn’t seen either, bobbing along the edges of the crowd. He makes his way over. 

“What have you been up to, Hubble?” Flosrin flattens out his ears in cheer. “Been quite some time since you’ve been among the tribe.”

“Getting stew for Big Wedge,” Hubble says cheerfully, ears raised high. Avoiding the implied question. “Since she likes to be alone and all.”

“I see.” Good to honor their lawachurl. “Enjoy, it’s good meat tonight!”

“I will, thank you a ton, Flosrin!”

The hilichurl wanders off into the night. With two bowls of stew. No, three. How curious. 

Flosrin strokes along his muddy chest fur. 

The hilichurl is most likely up to something. He usually is, the fellow. 

He’d make a decent samachurl, if he didn’t keep getting himself killed before that point of development. Oh well, needs must. 

Perhaps the next time the Abyssal Order drops by, and he’s in the same tribe as Hubble, he’ll point out said ‘churl. They might find a use for that cleverness. 

Silly it may be to focus said cleverness on humans, Flosrin thinks. But that’s Hubble’s thoughts and as long as he doesn’t try to get others killed in the process, Hubble being interested in humans is just fine. 

Also...

The noise, the amount of food they’ve been scavenging...

The tribe will have to split up soon, Flosrin muses. Humans are already showing signs of noticing their presence, of wanting to deal with that presence. Like plucking out so many weeds, that’s what hilichurls mean to humans! Always and forever. 

He taps his staff against the earth, enjoying the swelling of Dendro energy that awaits his call. A promise, between hilichurl and the world. One that humans could never hope to match without their petty gods. They barely have enough time with their gods. 

As for his people, well. 

They have all the time in the world.

Chapter Text

They come at noon. 

That’s the best time, really, to attack Hilichurls. When we’re full and sleepy, napping after a nice big lunch, that best meal of the day. 

I know we’re under attack, no matter how far I am from the main camp. How? 

“AAAAH!!!” “AAAGHHHH!”

The screaming of both humans and Hilichurls alike is a good hint. Less smoke than expected, humans must have put the fire out somehow instead of accidentally scattering the coals like they normally do. 

Signs of Cryo and Hydro usage. Magic humans. Strong humans. 

“I have to get up there.” Big Wedge, of course. Who else would say there now?

Big Wedge already rushes up the hill, fiery shield at ready. Defending, attacking, whatever is needed by the tribe. 

Leaving me with a human who is looking at me. Using big big eyes, too big, humans are seriously weird. But he’s confused. 

(Confusion is how you die.)

I’ll hide him. Human or not, I’ll hide him the best I can. 

He won’t die in the crossfire, by my word. By my actions.

“Go, go, move, move!” I push my human along, quickly and chattering as much as I can to distract him. From the noise up the hill, from doing something about it. 

“What are you-?”

I toss handfuls of leaves and mud over him, once I get him under a nice tree. Hide the scent, hide whatever dangerous humans use to find their enemies. 

Bury, bury, until I see only a hat peeping above the leaf litter. Safe. Hidden. 

I wait, but the pile only shifts a little. He doesn’t dig himself out. Staying hidden. 

Okay. 

I steady my shoulders. 

Time for me to step in for my tribe now. 

Big Wedge is already far ahead, but I can do my best to run after. 

Don’t have any good weapons, so I settle for my nut-cracking stick. Because skulls are like nuts, right? Getting up the hill isn’t too bad, but the mess waiting for me on the other side is. Big Wedge roars, knocking her shield about. Still standing, though so many of our people aren’t. Even the samachurls are all gone, these humans are clever, to take them out early. 

I follow in her fierce, human-knocking over wake. Occasionally whacking at the legs of those same humans that try to get up. 

So many humans. So many humans using magic, they came super prepared!

There’s a particular one in blue, using cryo on a sword against Big Wedge. One eye, maybe? The other seems covered up for some reason. Dodging back and forth, slashing out with ice spiraling from swift stabs. Too many of these and not enough hits from my friend herself...

Big Wedge stops moving. The Cryo frosts over her lawachurl heat. 

She’s still. So very still. Not even quivering after that last hit. 

Does she-?

I hold my breath. 

Big Wedge collapses. Or more accurately, a pile of shards collapse from a once solid Big Wedge into a slushy pile. 

So much time growing to that size, becoming a lawachurl, and for what? A waste. 

We will meet again, we always do, there’s something about our souls that cycle around each other in the eternal circle of rebirth all hilichurls experience forever and ever. There’s still a pang to my heart at the loss, in this round of life. For there’s no guarantee she’d be back in time to talk to my human some more. 

(Our human.)

I turn my attention to more important things. Namely, the human that’s attacking me right now. 

A simple guard human. One bearing a single sword, not a speck of elemental magic about it. Easy enough to stop for a simple hilichurl like myself. 

My stick raises, ready to crack an unarmored skull. 

Wait. 

What will my human think, if I come to him covered in red human blood? 

I hesitate. 

The human doesn’t. 

Despite being born of the earth, I still bleed. Still feel pain. Like the sudden shock of it to my midsection. Slicing through my flesh. Drawing out my dark dusty blood. 

I look down. Sword in my gut. 

Oh man. Guess I lost all of my new books. After I just learned to read some of them too!

My guts spill out as the sword draws back. It hurts. My killer already turns away from me, rightfully assuming my helplessness. 

My body lays there among my fallen brothers. More fall. Soon the entire tribe, large it was, will be obliterated. Cut down like so many weeds. 

I hope the human’s okay.

(I hope he forgives me for leaving so soon.)

Choking on my own blood...

I die. 

~

Venti sits in the boughs of Windrise’s oak tree, lyre in his lap. A tree that remains strong and green despite all the time that has passed since he last saw it. Giant now too. 

He’s still covered in the mud and leaves from what Hubble shoveled over him, in a desperate attempt to hide him. Protect him. 

From...he lets out a sigh longer than what human lungs could reasonably expel. 

From humans that wouldn’t hurt Venti. From the Knights of Favonius. 

The irony is so thick he could choke on it. 

Venti unburied himself too late to do anything, rushing up towards that hill too late. 

But could he really do anything, if he had gone up earlier?

His fingers hesitate above the lyre strings. 

Anything but meet the Knights present there, cleaning up what remained. Not that much remained in the first place. Hilichurl bodies dissolve quickly, and their masks are just as quickly gathered up as alchemy materials. 

(Nothing to bury.)

“Ho there! Are you alright, sir?” One of the nearby knights had asked, from where he tended to his bloodied sword. 

Venti swiftly pulled his eyes away from said sword, hand going up to steady his hat. “Yes! I had no idea hilichurls were so close to my napping spot!”

Technically, a truth. He had no idea, before a hilichurl wandered in to wake him from a centuries long sleep. 

“You’re fairly fortunate that they didn’t find you,” a young dark skinned man dressed in blue said, sauntering in his direction. After a quick bow, he introduced himself, “Kaeya, Knight of Favonius.”

The shape in his eye...of a star. Venti’s ears popped, his head strangely quiet.

Irony lay even heavier upon the scene. 

A lone remaining human survivor of Khaenri'ah, wiping out the monster survivors. 

To this moment, Venti still doesn’t quite understand how he made it out of the mess without blurting out everything that had happened to him. About Hubble and Wedge and everything else. 

Only that he does, because the Knights don’t lock him up for insanity. In fact, Sir Kaeya even laid out an invitation to an inn called Angel’s Share, one that Venti declined. For this night, at least. 

He needs to, he needs to-

(What has he done?)

Here and now, in the Hero’s Tree...

Venti is lucky he doesn’t have to breathe because he doesn’t want to. Not with everything that has happened. 

He’s part of the reason the hilichurls are cursed like they are, after all. The fall of Khaenri'ah, and everything that came with it. Like the transformation of common people who had only the misfortune to be born within that nation into monsters.

Monsters that humans only see to wipe out. 

But monsters that reached out to him. Wanted to speak to him. Understand him. 

“All these years...and I still mess up when it matters most.”

The wind plays with his hat, nearly threatening to steal it away. 

At least he learned their names, before they died. 

Venti never did manage to do that for his first friend, that nameless bard. Didn’t know how important names were, as a silly little wind spirit. Not until it was too late. 

Until he has only the face of his friend, but not the name. Nothing to carve into the gravestone, when the other humans asked him. 

For the hilichurls, he knows a little of their tongue too. Enough to write a song or two, perhaps, in their memory. In their favor. 

(Like he did for his long lost nameless friend.)

Venti shifts his gaze towards the city that has been the capital of this free nation since the beginning. It’s a beautiful city, Monstadt, just as beautiful as when he last fell asleep. 

Very little of the architecture he can see from this far has changed. The church remains, as does the headquarters for the knights. Maybe little details have shifted, but not by much, he’s certain. 

His fingers linger against the strings of his lyre. About to pluck out a tune. 

Everything has changed and nothing has changed. 

That’s the nature of being an Archon, isn’t it? A ruling god. A ruling failure. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, to his ghosts. To Wedge and Hubble both. 

As Venti begins to play, one last lament in memory, his head tilts back towards the clear night sky above. 

The stars have never been brighter. 

~

When I wake up, crawl out of the ground...I come to a place full of ancient ruins. A windblown city, broken into many many pieces. I tilt my masked head upwards, to that far off night sky above me. 

The false stars have never been brighter.

Chapter Text

What a complicated place a world can be. 

As simplified as certain forces try to make it, even Teyvat is considered among those complicated places. Much more going on underneath the surface. 

Much more going on in the Abyss, even. 

Abyss, as most vernacular names it, is the Realm of the Void. A shadowy place, right next to the spheres more physical and spiritual that make up Teyvat. A place where days can be made months and rabid children flourish in the depths of madness. 

A strange, corrupting realm, as many may call it. 

Yet. One side (side being relative to such a confusing place, of course) is more stable than the rest. Stable enough to have what might be called a building. 

A building full of many many Lectors and a few dashing Mages here and there, all busy to fulfill the desire of their Grand Leader. 

One particular Abyss Lector sighs, pushing back from his work table. A table full of notes and books and scrolls, scattered about without rhythm or reason. Fire speckles off him as he absently brushes at his robes, seeking some order in the chaos. Order that has yet to be found. Or ordained, in this particular case. 

Work has been picking up lately, though it will still be quite some years in the world above (and below) before humanity sees the fruits of the Abyss spring forth. 

Allowing him to take a breather in the meantime. About time for his allotted break, isn’t it?

He floats off to the nearest balcony, overlooking the everchurning Dark Seas. Considering both the sea and his project. 

The latest work is some translation of an ancient tongue. Spoken, not written, different from usual. 

“That reminds of...”

Enjou, as this flaming Lector’s name is, takes a breath. 

Remembers. 

He had a friend, once, when he was younger. He has had many friends, friendly as he is, but this one in particular he remembers now. Remembers for not partaking of these particular studies like the rest, for turning away from the cliff edge long before anyone knew it was one. 

Before Khaenri’ah fell, before they all became monsters. 

Everyone around here does, but no one likes to think about it. Remember what they lost. Only that traitor, that lost knight, mires in his loss. Everyone else is just trying to make it. Make it all worth it, in the end. 

Enjou flicks his fingers against his maw. Releasing sparks to drift about. 

“My, I’ve become mauldin in my old age, haven’t I?”

Should go back to work, translate that latest volume, newly arrived from Sumeru.  

He releases a trail of smoke into the tepid air from his fire mouth and it’s almost like smoking a pipe from so long ago. 

And by almost like, Enjou means nothing at all. 

So much is nothing like it was before. Like the common people of Khaenri’ah. Now hilichurls. Nothing more than monsters to the rest of a clueless humanity. 

Sometimes hilichurls keep pieces of themselves. It’s been observed, recorded, and promptly shoved aside as unimportant to the Cause. But he thinks about it now. 

Those pieces. 

Would the hilichurl that was his friend still like candied squash? Be scared of mice, hopping up on a tree stump instead of a nearby chair?

He has been studying linguistics, his old friend, even as it was a much frowned upon field in the more star science-minded culture of the time. 

Being in some soft sciences had saved him, in the end. From...Enjou looks down at his hands. Skeletal, too thin, covered in flaming flash. 

From this. 

But cursed him to another, didn’t it? A hilichurl and nothing more. For how can a hilichurl be anything more, when they lose everything... names, friends, history.

Gone forever. 

But would there be a piece of his old friend still left in whatever hilichurl wandered Teyvat now? Still interested in linguistics, as useless as that would be under the Curse?

Enjou fights back a half-laugh at the thought. Wouldn’t that be something, a hilichurl trying to use human languages? 

Said humans only would kill that hilchurl for the audacity. Over and over, like how Celetsia does the same to those who reject their Holy Law. It’s so funny, that streaks of fiery liquid trail down from his eyes at the thought. 

(Fire can’t cry. Fire can’t weep.)

“What’s the point? There’s no fixing that part of the Curse.”

He returns inside, to his work and to this carefully shaped hall that slopes to a night sky far above the head of any who enters. 

A false ceiling, a reminder of a lost world, full of long gone constellations. 

Most never look up. The memories are simply too much, well-met this construction may be. But now, Enjou looks up. 

The stars don’t belong to their lost people. Not these ones, not the ones currently above Teyvat. 

But anyhow, Enjou finds himself looking up. Searching for that one non-existent star. That last lucky star of theirs. 

Because they could use a little luck, couldn’t they?

All of them, old friends or not. 

~

Wedge digs her way out of something more sandy than the moist that she’s used to. 

Not in Mondstadt, then. 

About time she cycled out. It happens, every once in a while, unpredictably, where a hilichurl is remade in a different part of the world than before. Not Mondstadt, but...

She eyes the nearby standing stones alongside her newest ditch-mates. Near a Depth Shrine that burns of Geo energy. 

Liyue. Geo lands.  

“Want some roots?” A tribe member offers to her and the rest of the newcomers. 

She accepts to chew on them carefully, enjoying the dry crack to her bites. As she eats, Wedge takes stock of her body. 

Back to being a normal hilichurl, of course, lawachurl don’t crawl out of the earth. They have to be grown. Possible that she’ll one again, or a mitachurl. Wedge is prone to growth. 

Like how Hubble is prone to dying early, and staying a hilichurl as a result. 

By the others’ masks and scents...he’s not here. 

For once, they’ve separated. It’s happened before, they’ve always returned to each other, but this time...Wedge scratches her claws along her teeth. 

It was such a huge slaughter. An entire tribe, gone, like that. Bad omens. 

Bad omens that are becoming more and more common lately. Humans have been- her ears twitch, thinking. 

How did Hubble put it?

‘Humans think we’re pests,’ that’s what he said. Seems wrong, because churls were there before humans. But Hubble knows humans’ tricks so maybe he knows that’s what they think about ‘churls: that they’re much like pesky worms which eat too old meat. 

Worms that ‘churls eat when hungry, but mostly throw out when not. 

Bad. 

“Doing good?” Kilit, another hilichurl, asks her. 

She nods, content that the gesture and her scent will get the message across. By the soft scent that floats back to her, Kilit turning away, the message is received. Good. 

But wait. An idea. A crazy Hubble idea, but still an idea. 

“Wait. Are there humans around here much?”

Kiri tilts her head. “Hm. They pass through, in their carts. But there’s a small one that comes on its own. A warm one, that talks to spirits!”

A small human, hmm. Small like Hubble’s human, maybe. Smaller might be better. Smaller will be easier to catch. 

To learn the tongue of humans from, like from Hubble’s own. 

Wedge taps at her mask, mind settled. She may not have Hubble’s welcoming cheer, but she’ll try her best to talk to a human herself. 

What’s the worst that could happen? Getting killed again?

She tilts her head back, ready to make her oath in the tribal fashion. Accepted by moon and stars. 

Wedge can’t really see the stars well, no ‘churl can with their vision. But she knows enough about the night sky to say this much: 

The stars here are different. Oriented towards the humans of Liyue rather than Mondstadt. 

But they share the same sky, her and Hubble. 

She’ll see Hubble again. They’re twinned souls, and those always gravitate towards each other. 

She’ll meet with him. 

Under some other stars.

~

Fate is ever flowing, everchanging. A river running both backwards and forwards. 

The God of Justice knows this all too well, as she seeks to reroute that same grand river to save her people. A river that rarely ever shifts about on its own, in her long experience. 

When she is not watching over her other half, she often glances outwards to check on the status of the other Archons. None should interfere, each keeping to their own lands, yet it never hurts to ‘keep an eye out,’ as the humans say.

If the Heavenly Principles catch onto what she plans, it will be through the other Archons it will act. 

She peeks. Just a tad. Just enough to see the other Archon’s constellation, using the reflections of her waters in a rare-known ability of true Hydromancy. Searching the stars for any dimming of power, shifting of ideals-

There!

Something entirely new, unseen and therefore unforeseeable.

“Ah!” Her hand rests over her sternum. 

The first pure emotion she has felt since her Grand Separation surprises even her, only fitting for a bit of shock. 

A new star! Not a new constellation, as what comes about with new appointed Visions, but a new star added to a constellation that is very old indeed. Older than even Focalors. 

That of Carmen Dei, constellation of the Anemo Archon. Right on the edge, nearly unnoticeable, a single blue star. 

“What an interesting twist.”

Not one that can interfere with her grand plan, of course. 

But to shift the destiny of an Archon takes something great indeed, along the lines of Dragons and Gods. 

Who could have done it? Little else has shifted across the night sky in recent seasons. 

Something to keep an eye on, whatever moves the stars. 

Focalors waits for her inevitable fate, clasping gloved hands together. 

But in the meantime...

The stars are so bright above. Bright and changing.

Chapter Text

I know where I am now. 

It’s really not too hard to figure out, with how empty everything is around here and always fierce winds. Plus the local tribe telling every newcomer not to wander up towards the big tower cuz a sleeping dragon’s there. One that won’t hesitate to crush unlucky hilichurls in said sleep. 

Yep, Stormterror’s Lair! Or Old Mondstadt, if one wants to be truly accurate and historical. Not a field generally allotted to hilichurls. 

I’m mostly worried about finding good food to scavenge around here, made troublesome by how the winds make it impossible for the plants to grow to decent heights. 

The tribe around is smaller than the usual tribe numbers for a reason. We’re not like humans, constantly making more of us when the land can’t even support the current number. 

In fact, I’m the only new hilichurl around at the moment. Replacing poor Iticha, who toppled himself off some cliff. 

Wedge isn’t around, for once. 

Weird, since we usually respawn together. But there’s been times too when we don’t, other than now. Prompted the lack of more than one body like now, is my theory on why. 

Gives us some time away from each other, until one of us dies to meet the other. Or both of us die and go somewhere entirely new. 

Such is the fate of the twinned souls. 

Most hilichurls have at least one, a lucky few have multiple. It’s just...there’s always another hilichurl that you crawl into life again by or just again in the area. 

No one knows why or how it happens. Only that it does. The only light in the forever cycling life-death curse of churlkind, that at least one person will always be by your side. 

Well, mostly always. 

See: the various times twinned souls don’t die at the same time. It happens. More often to me than to Wedge. Really unfair for her, honestly. 

I nibble at my knuckle. All of my knuckles, down my left clawed hand, one at a time. 

Think about Wedge. Think about...everything. Over and over again. 

Twinned souls don’t hate each other. It would be a waste of time to hate someone you’re always going to be around. 

But you can be annoyed by your twinned soul. And I died a lot. Enough to leave Wedge alone a lot, when she’s really good at living long enough to become Big Wedge. 

I even forced a human on her! Right before humans went and killed us all horribly, like they always do in the end. And I valued hiding said human away before going to back her up. Coming too late to save her from an icy death. 

“Sorry,” I whisper. 

Doesn’t mean anything, when I know in my clay heart I would do it all over again. Wedge would be right not to forgive me, but she always will. Because we’re twinned and have no choice but to put up with each other. 

“I’m sorry,” I whisper even quieter. Allowing the wind to sweep the useless words away. 

Sorry I can’t even free her from my nonsense. 

My claws scratch at my head. Some fur falls out, in a nice white chunk. 

Huh. That’s new. Never had fur fall out before. 

It’s not sickness. Hilichurls don’t get sick, being made of magical dirt. Cursed? There’s not any worse than the one already put on us.

The only time that fur falls out for hilichurls is when...my tongue licks out against the back of my mask. 

No, that’s impossible for me. But what if...?

I look down to examine my palms. My palms that are darker than before, darkening into black. The chucks of white hair falling out, must be being replaced by black too. 

Sama. I’m becoming a samachurl, much faster than it usually takes. 

Glance at my upper arms, that’s where the transformation starts more visibly to whoever’s going through it currently. Know this from being with Wedge, becoming a samachurl isn’t too different from becoming a larger mitachurl. Mostly. Kind of. 

(Not at all. Except where it’s the exact same. Like the color changing.)

Streaks of dark teal trailing down from my shoulders...that means I’ll be using Anemo. 

To bleed over like this, so quickly, my body sucking in the present Anemo energy like it’s starving for it...

“Must have run into something really Anemo-y in my last life,” I think out loud. “But what?”

The only truly notable thing I did was learn human written language from a human! And teach that human a little too! 

I readjust my mask. “Maybe the place I found the human? That seemed like Anemo stuff, a bit.”

Not noticeably, but I can’t think of what else (or where else) would have provided any Anemo energy at all in the first place for me to start picking up. 

Speaking of the place I found the human...

“Oh man, my last books are there. With no humans around here, how am I going to replace them?!”

~

There is an itch at the back of Venti’s mind. 

Not even an unpleasant itch, itch might not be the right word for it, honestly. Funny for a bard that is so skilled with words, to not have a word for this. 

His fingers trail along his sleeves as he thinks the feeling through, like a tongue touching the hole of a missing tooth. A tingle, a tickling from a stranger running fingers up his toes. Or mayhaps like when one’s nose is stuck about to sneeze but doesn’t?

“There are simply far too many things in the world that go undescribed!”

He tilts back his glass of Dandelion Wine, ready to down it in one gulp. As he normally does. 

“Do you plan on describing all of those indescribable things, bard?” The very owner of the bar he currently haunts, the Angel’s Share, says dryly. Cleaning the counter, keeping an eye on him. 

Diluc, that’s the name of this Ragnvinder. Took far too long for Venti to remember correctly, he looks so much like Ragnvider, named such before it became a lineage name and not a given name. 

The blood runs strong. It always has and always will. 

That’s what Rostam used to talk about, sometimes, the richness of certain Monstadt bloodlines, with-

(Don’t think about them. She’s gone now.)

(Sworn to a different Archon.)

“ All of them?” he answers with a stretched out smile on his face. “That sounds like a challenge to me!”

“Oh please, not now-”

“What makes something unnameable~” Venti sings, swinging his lute over shoulder to strum along, “Unknowable, unloveable!~ Who knows what we do now, unstoppable~”

Not even a proper rhyme yet, but he’s getting somewhere. The way all new songs start out, crooked and broken and not yet properly tuned together. 

“Barbatos save me...” Diluc mutters. 

Ha, that’s a funny thought, Barbatos saving anyone!

(He can’t even save himself.)

Venti ends up outside on the street, after a few more rounds of Dandelion Wine. Just two or three, not too much more. The Lord Ragnvider dislikes enabling anyone to go over their possible limit, no matter how much money that loss of control would get him. 

A good man, that Lord, that Diluc. 

Venti could use less good men around, as he ponders where to get his next drinks. Angel’s Share is simply the best, but Cat’s Tail isn’t too bad either...

Yet it’s late. Late enough that every other bar is only serving already present customers, not allowing any new ones to knock at their door. 

The itch in the back of his head returns, stronger than ever. 

He scratches at the physical back of his head. Running his fingers uselessly through his hair. Achieves nothing, of course. 

The itch isn’t real. 

“Nye meechi- no, that’s not right!”

Wait, Venti knows the sound of those unfamiliar words. He pivots to face their source. Clearly not a hilichurl like some foolish part of him stupidly hopes, but...

There’s a girl standing on the street in front of him, straightening out her apron over her pink dress. The source of muttering. 

“Nye mita, yes, that’s how you say it...”

“Is that...the language of Hilichurls?” He asks as he steps in front of her, the false heart in his chest hopping. 

The girl looks surprised. Very surprised. “It is! How do you know?”

“Could you teach me more?”

The girl’s blue eyes widen. “You want to learn? You’ve learned some Hilichurian?”

“I am Venti the Bard! Of course I know some, I know a little bit of every language!” A good cover, should anyone really want to know the reason for his understanding of a language most people don’t even see as one. 

He sweeps his hat in a dramatic bow before coming up again. 

“What’s your name again, sorry?” Not that he actually got that name in the first place, oopsy-daisy.

The girl straightens up, puffing her chest out in a proud fashion. “I am Ella Musk. It is a pleasure to meet a fellow seeker of knowledge!” 

Venti awkwardly laughs, scratching at his hat. “Well, I wouldn’t go as far as to call me that...”

“Nonsense! If you don’t know and you want to know, you are indeed a seeker of knowledge.”

That’s the type of thinking that would do in Sumeru, really. But Ella Musk’s here. In the city of winds. Honestly, Venti has to be grateful that she hasn’t left for the Akademiya, giving him this chance. Probably because she seems so young, though he’s not really one for judging ages himself.

“Great, when do we start?” He claps his hands together. Quietly, as not to draw too much attention at this time of night. 

“Well, I am heading home right now from the library. We can meet in the morning at the Good Hunter!”

“Not a bad idea, but how about I walk you home first? It is pretty late, after all,” he proposes. Scratching at his wrist, great, the itch is there now. 

She is fairly young, would be a disservice to her if anything foolish happened on these streets between now and her home. 

“Very well. Let’s head off.”

And there she goes. Not running, but certainly not slow either. Eager. 

Briefly, Venti allows his eyes to dance upwards. Towards the night sky. Towards his stars. The Carmen Dei. 

Once he lays eyes on them...

At last, the invisible itch goes away. 

Finally. 

Guess he just needed to look at the sky. Fill the urge of the air spirit he’s always been at his core and always will be. 

Humming to himself, he follows in Ella’s wake. Ready to take a step towards something new. In honor of Hubble and Wedge.

~

I finish my latest masterpiece, staring at it with my hands on my hips. Nod. 

“That’s good.”

Took awhile to scavenge enough Windwheel Asters to mush up for paint. Wanted to use fruit at first but the tribe doesn’t have a lot of that. Don’t want to waste those kinds of resources for a personal project, that’s all. 

Making a makeshift paintbrush almost took just as long, hard to get the right stiffness of hairs to use for said brush so I could actually write with it. If I had wanted to paint, that would have been easier. But this is for writing. 

Remembering. 

I glance about, taking in all the lines and dashes mixed together on the cave walls. Symbols. Words. All in a rusty kind of orange paste. 

Every symbol I remember learning from my human, painted up on these cave walls. Next to images of what the symbols are supposed to mean in the best translations I can put together. 

“Maybe I should put some of the ol’ alphabet up here,” I muse. “Words and such.”

An alphabet that belongs to the Abyss Order, technically. They’re the only ones I’ve seen use it, even if all hilichurls understand said alphabet mysteriously. A magic alphabet, probably. 

Would it be bad to use that magic alphabet as part of the translations here?

More importantly, can I even write it correctly ?

“I’ll do my best,” I decide. 

Someone else speaks, calling into the cave I currently stand in the center of. I don’t whirl around to see who it is, heart leaping up in my chest-!

“Hello?”

Take in the scent. New. Not familiar. Different, like the mask markings. 

Not Wedge. Of course it isn’t, but I still expect her anyway. Habit, you know.

A different hilichurl, one I’ve not really run into before on my personal cycles. Watching me, standing behind me at the cave entrance. Waiting for something. 

“Chandra,” the other hilichurl introduces himself, patting at his chest. 

“Hubble,” I say back. I return to examining the walls, expecting Chandra to tell me what he wants and leave soon enough. 

But he doesn’t. Doesn’t ask me for anything as a samachurl, and doesn’t leave. Neither one of those. 

“Bhante Hubble.”

Huh, yeah, that’s used for samachurls. Funny to hear for me.

“I’ve seen markings like those before.” Chandra points with a long clawed finger towards the closest symbol, the one that’s supposed to mean ‘bird.’ “On some human stuff in the ruins.”

“Really?” I can’t believe it. Am I that lucky? “There’s human stuff like that still around here? And not used for fires or food?”

“Not yet.” Chandra shrugs. 

Fair enough. 

“Can I...look at it?” I try next. 

Another shrug. “Don’t see why not.”

The good thing about us ‘churls, we’re all pretty easy going. But I would’ve thought that Chandra'd said something, anything, about crawling into dangerous parts of a fallen human city for human scraps. 

Guess Chandra is one hilichurl that’s not too familiar with ‘Hubble’s Nonsense.’ Huh. 

I’ll take my chance, then. I loosen my shoulders, grab at my sticky-stick staff, ready to head off-

“Take me with you.”

Huh?

I lean against my staff. “What do you want that for?”

Is this just because I’m a samachurl? Sure, samachurls are honored and listened to in the tribe, but I’m still the odd Hubble beyond the shift in coloring.

I’ve never been anything other than a common hilichurl. An uncomfortable feeling shifts in my gut. Is this what happens to Wedge, every time she becomes Big Wedge, a dramatic shift in treatment that annoys her? 

That would explain the short temper that often follows her. 

...I might need to apologize. 

“You don’t need to, I can protect myself just fine with Aero.” My stick wiggles, a swirl of Ameno energy flicking off of it. 

“You used ‘Aero,’” Chandra states. Like my word choice means something. 

I tilt my head. “Huh?”

“Instead of Ameno.”

Oh. I did do that, didn’t I? Guess past memories of every other game that used Aero for the air element instead slipped past. Oops. 

“You use words about new ideas that no one else does. Not even other samachurls.”

Chandra takes a step closer to me in the cave, claws hovering close to the wall. To one of my painted symbols. 

“I want to know more new things.”

Huh. 

That’s new, excuse the kinda pun there. Not a lot of my people are into learning about new things. There’s a reason I’m considered odd. 

“More new things, huh? I can do that, sure.”

I beckon, this time. 

“I’ll teach you, you only need to show me the way.”

“Teach?” Chandra murmurs the word with a sense of curiosity, tasting it. But he nods and turns away, for me to follow him. 

Towards the ruins of the long gone human city. 

~

Bhante Hubble makes for a strange samachurl, Chandra reflects as they wander through broken up hallways and buildings. 

But all samachurls are strange. Something about the elemental build up makes them so, stranger than they are as a hilichurls. 

None nearly so odd as Bhante Hubble, though. 

Because samachurls protect the tribe with their elements, and talk about the past. The past tribes they’ve been in and the past of what they know from the Abyss Order. 

Nothing new. 

Not like Brante Hubble, who knows what the human symbols mean. No other hilichurl ever has, as far as Chandra knows. 

And Chandra is going to join that impossible list. 

“Um, help?”

He looks over. Bhante Hubble stands on the tips of his feet, trying to climb up over a window lip into another ruined hallway. Not an usual for one of hilichurl height, but samachurls become much shorter. 

Chandra boosts him over the edge. 

It’s the least he can do for a samachurl. 

Not much further beyond that point, only down the hall to...

“Here. This is the room.”

A room full of flat slabs of pale stone. Different from the rock that makes up the ruins of this city. Marked up.  

“There.” He nods to the markings, like the cave marks, on the big heavy flat stones. Flat stones leaning up against the somehow still whole wall of this area. 

“Tablets, that’s what these are,” Bhante Hubble decides as he looks around the room. 

Tablets. All right. Chandra will call these rocks that now. 

Bhante Hubble mutters something about, “Now I get why no one’s burned these or used them up. Too heavy to.”

Hm, he’s not wrong about that. 

Chandra takes a look for himself. The tablets are a thick stone, a heavy stone, and also not the kind of stone that would be useful for any kind of Geo Energy. 

The reason they’re still here is that it would be too of a pain for them not to be. 

Bhante Hubble traces his fingers along the symbols. Reading them. 

The tribes are full of magic. From the minute they crawl from the earth, hilichurls are packed together from elemental energy, an energy that continues to change as they spend more time above ground. 

Chandra has seen magic. Lived it. Uses it, every few lifetimes or so. 

There’s a different kind of magic to the samachurl squatting by the tablets and simply knowing what the strange squiggles on them mean in plain Hilichurlian. Translating them out loud for Chandra to hear. 

Or maybe not, maybe he’d say them out loud without Chandra being there. But he’s here, now, hearing them. 

“Ah, a lot of Aero mentioned on this one, but nothing about any fliers, hm, must be about the energy itself.”

Another tablet gets, “Oooh, talking about making human buildings? That’s interesting!”

Eventually, sooner than Chandra expected, the samachurl steps away from the tablets. 

“I really don’t know enough human language,” Bhante Hubble sighs. “Can’t get as much as I want from these stones.”

Another heavy sigh. 

“I miss my human.”

The statement takes a moment for Chandra to register. To understand. 

“Wait, your human?”

Bhante Hubble jumps. Slightly. It’s more a hop, hands clutching tighter around his staff. 

“Oops, didn’t mean to say that out loud. Could you pretend to have not heard that?”

Chandra releases a strongly worded stink into the air between them. “Only if you explain what you mean by that.”

Bhante Hubble seems more than happy to explain by his softening scent, despite the seriousness of the topic. On a human. Enemies of every tribe that is and will be. 

“I learned the human words on these rocks from a human. And then I taught some Hilichurlian to it.” The free hand, the hand not on the staff, moving about. Gesturing and emphasizing, as samachurl are prone to doing. 

“Are you sure?” Chandra can’t help but ask. “Can you teach Hilichurlian to something as dumb as a human?”

Bhanta Hubble huffs out a laugh. “Wedge doubted too. But I did it, and learned human back.”

Then the samachurl droops. “But the human is gone now, and I can’t learn more to read the tablets here.”

“But humans kill hilichurls. All of them do.” Everyone knows that. 

“It didn’t attack me or Wedge,” Bhanta Hubble asserts, “Even if it wanted to, we outnumbered it. No human elemental stuff.”

Ah, that’s better, precautions were taken. Chandra nods. He taps his claws together, considering Bhanta Hubble’s plight. A problem for the samachurl definitely, by how his stress on the matter taints the air. 

Humans are the enemy, but this human apparently didn’t get the chance to kill any churls. Could something be done to make humans less harmful, to...

What was the word Bhanta Hubble used? Learn? Learn from them?

The human symbols will be good at keeping churls busy out here in the middle of nowhere, if Chandra can manage to convince this bhanta to share them. 

(He might be a little interested himself. Just a little.)

In that case...

“What if you catch another human? And learn more from that one?”

Surprise spreads through the air, a lighter scent compared to the rest. “What? But there are no humans here!”

Yes. That is true. No humans here. But...

Chandra listens a lot. More than many of the tribe know. Or the Abyss Order, in this case. He’s good at hiding too, as part of the good listening. 

And what the members he saw, in these ruins, were saying...

“They’ll be leading the Monstadt tribes to attack the biggest human city. There will be humans there to take, many many humans. 

“Whoa, that’s...big.” 

Biggest attack in a while, yeah, that’s true. 

“They only have to plan first.”

Because that’s how this works. The Order plans, hilichurls obey. 

“Do you know how long, maybe?” Bhante Hubble asks. 

Chandra thinks. Considers. “Something about several winters long?”

And a dragon, but they can’t mean the dragon that lives around here. That would be suicidal, even for those who return to life as they do. 

“Hmmm.” Black palms are tight about their staff. “We’ll be ready. Steal another human on the side and be careful not getting caught. Yeah, we can do this.”

We, like Chandra is included in this. 

He finds himself liking that idea. 

“Yes. We will.”

Chapter Text

A peaceful season (or a few) pass. Hard to tell when every season is the same frigid windy nothingness around here. 

Humans don’t really come around here, the Abyss Order’s up doing whatever, and I’m hanging out with Chandra. Sometimes. 

Sometimes Chandra goes off and does his own thing. Sometimes the tribe needs my apparent samachurl wisdom.

We do what we can, all of us. 

Eating food, finding places safe from the neverending storm winds to sleep...life goes on. Same day after same day. A day in the life of a Hilichurl, that’s how it goes. 

When it ends? Nobody knows! But that’s life for you.

“Humans!” One of the scouts reports, on an especially windy day. A windy day where that crazy dragon’s come back from doing whatever, doing whatever the Abyss Order’s been driving it to do. 

“Humans? A lot or not many?” I ask, tapping my stick against the ground. 

“Small. About...four? Three?”

Huh. A small group of humans? Wandering here? 

That’s unexpected. The mountains around here are far enough from human habitation and any resources that humans might want that I’ve never seen a human around before. 

Just hilichurls and elementals and Abyss. Oh, and the dragon that’s sleeping in the middle of the ruins. 

You don’t touch the dragon. No one touches the dragon. One gets real dead that way and it’s dumb to die from something so completely...avoidable. 

Guess that just makes humans more crazy from the outside, that they don’t have a built-in rebirth system like hilichurls (as far as I know) and still do that dumb life-risking stuff anyway. 

Heroes are a human unique thing as far as I know. 

No need to go rescuing other churls when everyone came back in the end. 

Four of them. Looking up at the ruins. Mostly staring up at the highest point of the ruin. Where Stormterror’s sleeping, when he’s not flying around blowing down human houses. 

If the dragon’s up there and the way they look...I squint, drawing on faded memory and every detail I can squeeze out of it. 

Hey, they must be here for the dragon. 

...I vaguely remember this, actually. Now that I’m thinking about it. Dragon’s sick with something from the Abyss, dragon’s been attacking the human town, traveler’s here to take care of it. 

Heroic stuff that doesn’t matter to one hilichurl who keeps dying over and over. Like every other hilichurl that has and will ever exist. 

But I’m a samachurl now, aren’t I? A nice anemo one at that. Making those twisty twisters and wind gushes. 

...does it matter more to a samachurl than a common hilichurl, that heroic stuff? Not really. But as a samachurl, I do have a bit more influence over the rest of my current tribe. 

Enough to maybe convince them not to attack this motley group of adventurers. But can I convince the motley group of adventurers not to attack us in turn?

Hm, questions, questions. 

I tilt my head back in thought, ears twitching back and forth. 

Well, can’t hurt to try, can it? They’ll probably come over and kill us anyway, these adventurers, just to make sure we don’t make a mess for humans later. 

Doesn’t end up any differently if we die trying than not trying at all, with that in mind. 

Okay, I’m gonna do it!

I prod one of my hilichurl buddies with my pointer stick. My magic staff. My tool of choice for the magic boom-booms. Also super handy for pointing at stuff for Chandra to look at better. 

Poking not the scout, by the way. Someone else. 

“What?” they hiss at me, swatting the stick. “What do you want, Bhante?”

“Gather a few quiet ones,” I order, “There’s something I want to show you lot. No fighting.”

“No fighting?” They tilt their head at me in confusion, because what else would a samachurl would be collecting everyone for at this time of day?

The meal’s done, everyone’s snoozing instead of dancing...so fighting’s the only activity left to herd my fellow ‘churls into. But I don’t want that? Crazy.

I nod firmly. “Yes, no fighting. Only the quiet come, we’re only watching.”

“Watching...hmmm. That’s new, Bhante.”

Yeah, it is. Shame Chandra’s off scavenging, he’d agree much faster and convince everyone else in the process. But we do what we can. 

Me and the sneaky ones, we draw close through tall grasses and rocks and shadows. Not too close, but I draw closer than the rest. To better see color and shape, more than just scent alone. 

I carefully eye up the group of humans. More difficult than it sounds, when churl sight just isn’t very great. Looking means getting closer than I’d like, but at least humans have crappy senses to help my sneaking. Especially crappy noses, hah. 

Humans and a floaty thing that makes my stomach roll looking at it. Yeah, don’t look at it. Look at the humans, figure out the humans. 

One smells of Pyro, and the other three of Ameno. Plus a floaty thing, that makes my head spin to look at. I focus on the humans once again. Covered in black, white, and green... I sniff at the air again. Searching for more details. Like have they killed lots of hilichurls? Trick question, they definitely have, humans with weapons and elements. But have they done so recently? Like around here? 

Wait. That smell. That look. I know that human, off to the side, smaller than the others! That human... my hands tighten about my staff. 

I woke up that human. The human, he sang and made up songs and we learned from each other. Then me and Wedge died. 

What was his name again? Right, Venti. But he’s my human first, really. Before the name. 

Will the human listen to me? Remember that other life we shared briefly?

Only one way to find out. 

“If the humans kill me, you can fight back or hide, just don’t do anything until the humans do,” I instruct the clan.

I get a bunch of ear flicks and general twitching in response, but no one tells me not to. Great! Being a samachurl really is handy! 

Of course, if I die doing this, then I’ll be simply infamous for being the dumbest and craziest samachurl of all time. And probably never get the chance to make it to being a samachurl again, at the way my luck usually goes.  

This is my one and only chance. 

I nod, clutching my staff even tighter. Enough to make it crunch a bit. Right. I can do this. Take a deep breath. Do the impossible. 

Convince humans not to kill hilichurls.

...

Man, I might be better off trying to figure out those tablets I couldn’t crack earlier while blindfolded. Here I go anyway. 

~

Venti is about to use his bow, when he hears it on the everblowing wind. 

“Nini-si chirp chirp chirp. ”

Someone singing. A samachurl singing, coming over the hill. 

Venti’s breath catches in his chest. The breath he does need, but the one he breathes anyway, a reminder of whose body he wears. 

That song. 

“Gusha-biat brssh brssh brssh.”

It can’t be...

Not when he made it up and sang it to two particular individuals. Two individuals who are definitely dead. But. 

There were times, in the past, in the time before Monstadt, when wind sprites were much more plentiful than they are now. That is, existent outside of himself. Wind sprites could be scattered across the winds, yet over time reform themselves. Well, almost. There were certainly memories shared between new and old. Songs and stories could be passed along to others in that fashion. 

A possibility exists from that. But could it be? 

“Wait!” he calls out, stopping everyone else in their tracks. 

The Traveler looks at him, curious. Hand still on their sword hilt. “What is it?”

“That song, if that samachurl is singing it, they might not want to fight us.”

“How do you know this, Venti?” Jean questions, eying the still singing samachurl carefully.

He takes a deep breath. Lets it out. Smiles the biggest he can. 

“Well, it is one of my songs they’re singing. One I made especially for friends to know!”

“Is tone-deaf bard saying what Paimon thinks he’s saying?” Paimon hovers back and forth, one hand on her chin. 

“If you’re hearing he made friends with hilichurls, I’m hearing it too,” the Traveler confirms. 

“That’s impossible. Hilichurls aren’t intelligent enough for that,” Diluc argues. “They can’t even manage to steal from the Dawn Winery correctly.”

“Does that make me as smart as a hilichurl, then?” Venti asks, fascinated by this insight into the Ragnvidar’s criteria for intelligence. “Since you always manage to stop me from getting to the good wine!”

“No, that’s not-” Diluc huffs. “If you think this means the hilichurls won’t attack us, I don’t think so.” 

“But this samachurl singing my song means they’re interested in a connection beyond fighting,” Venti argues. “Can’t we try it?”

(He doesn’t want to be the death of another friend. Possible friend.)

They look to the Acting Grandmaster for the lead here, even with Diluc saying he’s no longer a knight. 

Jean gives a nod. “If it means we can save our energy for dealing with Stormterror, try it.”

Alright, here he goes!

Venti sings out, all of his heart in his words. 

“Hilichurl domu, domu, domu!”

Hilichurls dance, dance, dance. The phrase he decided to use to end the song. That Hubble and Wedge danced along to. 

The samachurl sings back. And then dances in place. The exact same pattern and tapping that Hubble and Wedge always did. 

“What is going on.” Diluc states rather flatly, not really a question at all but still one nonetheless. 

“That means they’re friendly,” Venti says quickly, before the stress behind that statement boils over. “I’ll try one more thing, just to be sure for you...”

He clears his throat. Searches for words he’s been learning alongside Ella before everything with Dvalin happened. 

“Olah! Mi valo ye.”

The samachurl tilts its head, but chirps in a non-hostile manner. Doesn’t raise up an Ameno storm on sight like it should. 

Venti claps his hands, smiling. “As I always say, reaching out to become friends!~ Means we don’t reach awful ends!~”

With a wave of the samachurl’s staff, more hilichurls creep out of the surrounding bush and rocks. Not enough to be a problem, in a fight. But enough to slow them down and grab the attention of even more. Or the Abyss Order themselves, if they’re too loud while fighting. 

“They’re surrounding us,” Diluc mutters, heat rising from his Vision. Not quite to Pyro level yet but getting there. Definitely getting there. 

The Traveler elbows him, which is great because it means Venti doesn’t have to. 

“C’mon, you don’t think you can’t handle a pack of hilichurls?” they chide him. “I bet you could take them all out with one hand tied behind your back, and that’s without the rest of us here.”

“The Traveler isn’t completely wrong about that,” Jean agrees, though Venti can also spy her hands white-knuckled about her own weapon. Nervous still. 

“Hold on, I think I can ask them where we can find Dvalin.”

Venti squats down to doodle in the dirt. Sketch out Dvalin the best he can. 

Head, tail, wings... he thinks he does a pretty good job, actually, for a bard that specializes in the audial arts, not the visual ones. 

The Traveler squints. Cocks their head to the side. “Is that a horse?”

“No, Paimon thinks it’s a pig!”

Okay. Maybe not.

He pouts at them. “No, it’s Dvalin! If the hilichurls live around here where he’s been sleeping for so long, they might know more we can use!”

Hm, he’s gotten a little further with Ella’s help learning Hilichurlian, but he definitely doesn’t know the word for dragon. Because why would that ever come up? So this picture is the best chance Venti’s got of communicating here. 

He beckons the samachurl over. He points at the Dvalin sketch. 

“Uh, nini?” Venti tries. The word for Ameno, that might help. 

(A word he learned from Wedge.)

The samachurl examines the picture, reaching down to trace along the edges without erasing it from the dirt. They make a clicking noise, before waving another hilichurl over to exchange some words. 

There’s one word in particular, draco, that Venti thinks means dragon. Or something similar, by how the pair attach it to nini and use it while gesturing to the picture. Or it’s a word that means whatever the samachurl thinks the picture is. Which would also be...messy. In another way. 

Venti can only hope the message gets across. That they can save Dvalin before it’s too late. 

~

Sheesh, my human’s lucky I already know what their group’s here for, or I don’t think I could have figured out the dirt drawing to be of the dragon. 

I squint at the dirt drawing again. Yeah, it's a little...abstract for that. Wiggly. Pictures are hard when they don’t have color or scent attached. Human symbols are much easier to learn in comparison. 

“What’s that?” The nearest churl points. Her name’s Hilt, if I’m remembering correctly. 

“That’s the dragon.”

“The dragon? The Ameno Dragon?” 

“Yep.”

“Since they’re not fighting us for anything...” Hilt scratches her head, around her mask. “What do they want? What about the dragon?”

That I can answer. 

“I think they’re here to fight the dragon.”

“That’s...” Hilt stops, unable to find the right words. Except for the obvious one we’re both thinking right now.

“Yeah, they’re crazy, aren’t they?” I agree happily. 

“How do they get anything done? It’d be better to wait. After having a good meal.” Ah, yes, the hilichurl staple: eat and wait. 

“I don’t think they can wait, the dragon is destroying their places, remember?” I point out. “And humans are worse at moving around than the tribes are.”

“Humans do love staying in one place,” Hilt says in a sort of agreement. “And they are stupid about fighting.”

I chuff. “Can you say that, when the tribes fight a lot too?”

“Against humans.”

At that, I can only really awkwardly shrug. Because fair enough. Humans killed me my last life and the life before that. There’s not an argument against that reality. 

Hilt’s ears flit back and forth. “You’re strange for a samachurl, Bhante.”

“Well, no other samachurl’s asked you to make nice with humans, right?”

“More than that,” she says. But doesn’t explain. 

I tilt my head to the side. “Huh?”

Still doesn’t explain. Okay then. 

I’ll figure out what Hilt’s talking about later. For now, I turn my attention to the humans who are staring back at us. Looking ready for a fight, but not fighting yet and that’s the important part. 

I huff, reaching up to scratch a hand through my head fur. 

Hm. Hard to tell which of humans are considered male or female, even with my human having told me of the differences. Because frankly, there isn’t much difference overall for humans. Not like it is for birds and sheep and stuff. Even with the mammary glands to add into the calculations. 

I look them over, thinking. I’m gonna try figuring this out, though, because apparently it’s pretty important to humans from all the books I’ve picked up full of different pictures on those main two genders. 

The red haired one has more skin covered though, so I think it’s a male? Probably? More skin exposure on both of the blondes, maybe female. And I have no idea what the heck the little fluttery thing is. 

“Venti,” my human chirps at me, pointing at himself. Interrupting my thinking. 

Oh, we’re doing this again? After we shared names that first time?

I pat at my chest. “Huuubl.”

Venti stares at me. “No. Nye.”

Huh? What’d you mean no? That’s my name.

“Huuubl.” I repeat. Then point at him. “Venti.”

Maybe he’s looking for Big Wedge? Who most probably isn’t ‘big’ anymore, but who knows. Wedge is really good at getting big fast. Super fast.

I shake my head. “Wche nye.” Wave my hand about in the air. “Wche...kua nye zido.”

New words but hopefully my gestures get the message across? That Wedge went somewhere different than I did. That I don’t know where Wedge is right now. 

New concept to communicate, that not knowing, because we Hilichurls don’t really care about that. Not when we all run into each other eventually. 

Already I’m getting some other tribemates staring at me, trying to piece together the idea I’m putting across to Venti. That the human wants to know where a not present hilichurl is. 

“Hubble tomo?” Venti asks, almost hesitant, fingers curled around each other. 

That’s not a word I taught him, so he must be learning on his own. My heart rises at the thought, along with the word choice itself. 

Ally? Yeah, allies, that’s better than fighting!

I nod eagerly, allowing friendly scents to flow. “Tomo! Venti tomo.”

My hand reaches out in offering. 

To Venti, who’s now shaking?

Water coming from the eyes, that’s bad. I remember that being bad vaguely. 

“Is the human...scared?” Hilt asks, eying Venti like he’s an Electro slime ready to burst. 

The other humans behave similarly, also cautious about their green group member. Muttering and talking their strange human talk. 

“Bard, are you okay?”

“What’s wrong?”

I carefully pat him on the shoulder. Pat pat.

“You’re good. You’re doing good.”

Maybe resting the hand on the shoulder will help? I leave my hand in place. 

My nostrils flare. My touch must be making the red human nervous, from the fear stink. 

Too bad. My human, my Venti, he’s my friend. I’m going to help him the best I can!

The wetness decreases. Venti even leans into my touch. Warm. I think warm thoughts. Yes I am warm. Hubble is warm. Safe. 

(I will protect you, my human.)

Reassured by my touching of Venti and having had nothing happen to me, the rest of the tribe falls in closer to the other humans. Thankfully, said humans do not go nuts on them though the nervous stink increases. Which all of us churls can smell, of course, but if they’re not acting on it? Might as well take our chance to check these humans out. 

And speaking of checking out...I glance upwards. Towards the dragon. The dragon that Venti and these others want to see. Do hero stuff with. 

Since I can’t exactly just wander off to tell humans where to go in my current state of samachurl, I need to get someone else to do the job. And I know exactly who would go for it. 

“Someone grab Chandra. He’ll make for a good guide.”