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Outrider Amber carries cloth wings on her back. Aether feels his shoulders flex jealously, bristling his own phantom wings. He wants them.
Aether manages to point and ask in broken Teyvat. He does not know the name for wings, so he improvises, to Paimon’s amusement. “Bird arms?”
“Bird ar- Oh! These are gliders! Here, I have an extra one. We can put you through the training course if you want.”
Paimon watches this exchange with a sparkle in her eyes, then vanishes in a little pop. Aether appreciates the gesture- he wants to fly alone, to become one with the wind and the endless sky, and that will not happen with a floating companion.
Aether waits just long enough that Amber straps the crude contraption to him, and then he tears away, sprinting up the Mondstadt wall in leaps and bounds he will surely feel later. He reaches the top, the air whispering to him, inviting him with open arms.
He falls into them.
Air whistles in his ears as he spreads his arms, falling spread-eagle, and then the fabric snaps open and he glides.
Once again Aether is in the air with some semblance of movement, and the utter joy bursting in his chest truly cannot be denied. He lets out a ululating cry, and from the beautiful expanse of blue it echoes back. For the first time since he awoke on those sands, he has returned to the familiarities of the open skies. And it is beautiful.
But gliding is not enough. His entire being aches for it- he wants to fly .
Aether pins his arms to his side. For a moment he’s suspended in midair. And then he tips forward and he falls.
He screams his delight into the violent winds that tear his breath away, forcing his lungs tight. Between one moment to the next he expands out of his pathetic mortal body and becomes eternal all-knowing and so very beautiful. As if this is all so right, where he was meant to be. As if he is a shooting star once more, a comet plunging to earth with all the power of the universe upon it.
Aether urges the winds faster faster! and they respond in higher volume and their screams intermingle as they hurtle together, plummeting headfirst to the green expanse below. The wind becomes an extension of him. They breathe life into each other, their voices becoming symphony as the ground reaches up to claim him.
Distanty he hears Amber scream but her terror is swept away, drowned out. Once more he has wings. They are not his own, six-bladed and sharp and humming, but crude cloth and wood, but still they are wings. They are his and the sky is his, a notion so familiar and pleasing to him that the emotion bursting in his chest- the exhilaration, the reckless abandon, the urge for more- they cannot be suppressed. He shrieks them in his home language, a challenge for all of Teyvat to hear.
Because Aether has been given wings, and he will fly.
The earth opens up before him, expands to reveal grass and wildflowers and shallow ponds and a massive tree reaching lazily towards the sky, and he lets himself get closer and closer and closer until the branches whizz past him and the leaves blur in his vision, and just before the ground swallows his entire being, he opens his wings.With one flap he’s soaring back into the air, six-winged and space- high once again, settling amongst the stars where he belongs.
But he is not six-winged. His glider is cloth and wood and it does nothing to stop his fall, and he realises this a heart-wrenching, devastated second before the ground swallows him whole.
The pain is startlingly hot . He doesn’t know what’s snapped, what might have stabbed through his flesh, what sort of reaction his human body is going through that feels worse than death. All he knows is that he's on the damp, icy ground, which is no relief to the fiery agony stabbing his insides, and he can do nothing but curl himself into a ball and sob.
Aether is utterly blind but for the sudden pulses of red that flash cross his vision. He is on fire, and his bones are the catalysts. Aether wheezes out a hysterical sound, squeezing himself tighter. His shoulder screams, his head so heavy it might burst, like he’s been at the very bottom of the ocean, chained over a fissure and left to die, like he was being boiled alive, pressure-cooked, god he can’t form coherent thought why must injury to this body be so agonising to live in? Shattered bones and cut-off nerves were never this bad before-
Once again, he is retaught the meaning of bloodbath. He staggers, ankle-deep, wielding little more than dull metal and growling at something beyond his vision. It’s still there, fanged and four-legged, prowling the edges of the arena. The shooting star has slain nearly all of its comrades and hundreds more animals this day, and the ground stinks of their copper insides. He has been bitten and thrown and mauled- one arm hangs limp, broken and cut and hanging by threads- but still he stands, panting, dragging himself through the pain, seeking the next target like the immortal slave he is-
The whine in his ears lessens slightly. Beyond it, Aether manages to catch the thump of a person landing. He feels the vibrations, pressed against the earth, from her heavy bootsteps.
“Aether!”
Hands, gloved and strong and mercifully icy- Archons, does that feel good on his skin- gently settle on him.
“Can you hear me?”
Those cold hands are heating up. They no longer provide any relief, but burns, searing a hole in his flesh. He bites back a shriek, and almost in response, Amber unceremoniously rolls him face-up. The sun bursts across his weak vision, fiery and cruel and unforgiving. He cringes away and instinctively throws his hands up out of reflex and oh god if the sun is blinding then this pain in his shoulder is scooping out his eyeballs with a dulled fork.
“Aether? You in there?”
He lets out a groan. The initial pain of landing is receding, but it only sharpens in his arm and head. He’s beginning to feel sick. “Outrider,” Aether says slowly, concentrating on every syllable.
“Oh, good, you can-”
“S-still. Be- be still.”
“What?”
Aether rolls over to his stomach. The world tilts horribly, all red and white and black flashes strobing in and out, and a wave of nausea sweeps through him. He gags. “-ngh- wait-” He holds his breath, waits for it to recede, and blindly gropes for Amber’s leg.
“What’re you doing? ” Amber demands. .
“No- aAGH- no worry- nng- Outrider.”
Using her as a crutch he drags himself to his knees, letting his wounded side brace itself against her. He stays there for a moment, panting, fighting to remember what is he doing why does his head feel like a popped watermelon and what is pinching his nerves so badly ?
Then he grits his teeth and rams his popped-out shoulder into Amber.
Her yelp and the cartilage’s crunch intermingle into one explosion of sound as everything shatters into nauseatingly bright color and violent feeling and throat-searing acid. The breath is wrenched from his lungs and he pitches forward.
He heaves dryly into the grass, his uninjured hand braced at his side. “ Fuck, ” Aether gasps in his own language. Another wave of nausea rolls through him as his head pulses, and he vomits again, spilling water and bile. He wipes his mouth, rests his head on the earth with a groan. “Fuck,” he mutters again, feeling hollow and dizzy. “Just kill me…”
Unlike Lumine, Aether always resurrects slowly. She liked to tease him as he woke. “Death likes you a little more,” she laughs, nudging him as best she can, chained down as they are. “She finds you adorable.”
“And you?” Aether once asked. He tested every muscle, twisting this way and that, rolling his neck, shrugging his shoulders, opening and closing his hands until he was sure his resurrection was complete. “What does she think about you?”
“I frighten her, dear brother,” Lumine had said with a smile that sent chills down his spine. “Why do you think she sends me home first?”
Enough of this pitiful display.
Aether braces himself and pulls himself to his feet. The world sways horribly, but he has been through worse, hasn’t he? The shifting world never settles, but he staggers his way over to Amber, who’s dusting herself off. He can manage. He always has.
“What was that for?” she demands.
He points to his shoulder. “Came out.”
“You fell from the sky! How did it pop out? ”
He shrugs. His head still feels heavy, and he’s a bit sleepy, but if he learned anything from the first world, it's that one does not sleep with a concussion.
“Hey, hey, you with me?”
Aether nods. “Am good.” Lifts his dirty arms and the dirtier glider. “Again?”
“ No! ” she all but shrieks. “We’re going back!” She loops an arm around his waist, letting him lean on her. Aether finds this insulting. He can certainly walk on his own, but he is still sluggish and tired and the sun is very, very painful, so he plays along.
As they walk away, Aether feels two eyes burning into his back. He twists himself halfway, ignoring the pop of pain, and finds a green-eyed wind spirit nestled in the branches of the Windrise tree, gazing at him in silent contemplation.