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Xiao knows that Venti is not often a quiet sleeper.
It's not a terrible thing, most of the time. Xiao is not fond of sleeping himself, so the restless tossing and turning won't rouse him regardless, and the sniffles and sighs that come with sleep talking don't frighten him.
He knows Venti is not an easy dreamer, either.
He sits by the bed or the window— on the sill— whenever Venti visits, watching the bard's sleep like a vigilant cat, a loyal familiar unbound by contract and devoted through love. Should nightmares arrive, Xiao relies on the part of his contract where he only swore to never again steal sweet dreams from people, to absolve him of his guilt as he softly whisks the tears away with a kiss.
It's the least Xiao can do, to simply take away his pain. That's what Venti does for him, after all. He simply wishes, sometimes, that his hands could do more than merely destroy.
When the Traveler returns from Sumeru, they bring a new companion with them to Wangshu Inn: a child with eyes as bright and curious as a baby bird. Xiao pays her no mind when he first sees her, his primary concern at the time being the way Venti had come barreling into his arms like it had been centuries since they had last seen each other and not a mere few weeks, only remembering her addition to the Traveler's party later that night, when the door to his room creaks open right as he finishes relieving Venti of a new nightmare.
"…Oh, I'm sorry," says the little girl in her even littler voice. "Am I interrupting something?"
Yes, Xiao thinks, absolutely mortified.
"No," he lies instead, just to keep face, voice kept low so as not to wake Venti from his now-peaceful slumber.
The little girl puts a hand over her heart and breathes a sigh of relief. "I thought I sensed a nightmare up here, but…" she begins to explain, only to stop when she looks up. Evidently a sharp child, she must piece it all together when she sees his face in the dim light, the last remnants of the aforementioned nightmare still fresh upon Xiao's lips. "Oh, you must be the boyfriend."
Xiao makes a face like Wei the cat when Ms. Goldet scolds him with the spray bottle.
…What.
"He talks about you a lot," the little girl explains, craning her neck to check over her shoulder. "May I come in? It's colder than I had imagined up North."
Xiao covers his mouth with a hand as if to consider the question, though really he just needs the moment to recover his dignity and poise.
"Sure," he replies, because clearly there is more to this child than meets the eye. And if she's spent enough time with Venti to recognize him from description alone, then Xiao thinks there must be something worth trusting in her.
"Thank you." She pads inside and shuts the door behind her with a quiet click. "I'm Nahida, by the way. Or, well, maybe you'll recognize me better by 'Buer'. I heard that the Seven used to gather here in Liyue for tea parties many centuries ago, but I lost all my memories in the Cataclysm so…" She trails off briefly, then shakes out her head. "Anyway, you freed him from his nightmare just now, didn't you? You really are as kind as he says."
Xiao looks away, out the window at the tiny sliver of a new moon, as Nahida settles herself onto the edge of the bed. "He has a habit of embellishing things," he says.
The tiny Dendro Archon hums. "Perhaps, but would a person really embellish something if they didn't love it?"
"I have heard far too many humans embellish their own pathetic claims. It comes from nothing but shame," Xiao scoffs.
"But where, then, does shame come from?" Nahida asks, thoughtful. With her Dendro, she creates a little model of a human heart and floats it in her palm, its pale green light pulsing off the walls as it beats like the real thing.
While normally, Xiao would not care to engage in what seems to be pointless sophistry, he is not so vain as to think himself a more clever or knowledgeable being than the Goddess of Wisdom herself. So he looks inside himself, at all the shame he refuses to admit he carries, and finds he has no answer.
"Failure," he says, for that is all he has ever grown the rot of shame from.
"Perhaps," Nahida hums, slowly rotating her beating Dendro heart in the air. "However, failure only exists because we have a standard for success. To wish for success so ardently that one is ashamed of failure requires something else."
Xiao understands what she means now; he's seen it burning within the Traveler as they journey through Teyvat. "Hope."
Nahida's eyes light up. "Exactly!" she exclaims, and she allows her little model heart to fade. "After everything that happened in Sumeru recently, I've been glad to spend a bit more time getting to know the Anemo Archon again. One of the first ballads he taught me after the Traveler introduced us was about how it is hope that drives rage, hope for something better or more beautiful that impassions us to action… It's a lovely story, even if it is one I am only just starting to understand.
"It is nice that he has someone like you to relieve him of his nightmares," she continues, fidgeting, as if nervous beneath his gaze. "While I may enter dreams as I please, I can't do anything if they sour of their own accord. And since he also often talks a lot without saying very much at all, even though we get along very well, I can't help but to feel as if I still don't know him at all."
(Xiao thinks he knows which of Venti's ballads she speaks of— it's one of his favorites to perform, about the wisp, the bard, and the rebellion. Nahida's interpretation of it… he understands when she words it as she did, but Xiao wonders how she missed how obviously lonely Venti is because of it.)
"He can be… difficult… at times," Xiao agrees, glancing down at the sleeping Archon. His face is placid now, thank goodness, but Xiao still cannot shake the ache of grief, knowing there is little he can do to heal the pain beneath. "But… he is always trying."
Xiao reaches out and brushes Venti's bangs out of his face with a touch more delicate than the love of a wisp. He loses himself in the motion, so simple and sweet and terribly mundane— far too much so for a creature like him to be allowed— that it takes him shamefully long to realize that Nahida is studying him through her fingers. Abashed, he bares a fang on instinct.
"Oh!" Nahida says, lowering her hands in surprise. "I'm sorry; I wasn't sure if it would work on you, since you're not from Sumeru."
(Xiao has no idea what she's talking about, but he decides not to know.)
"…What does he usually dream about?" he asks quietly, almost a little afraid of being heard.
Nahida doesn't respond at first, merely furrowing her brow in thought. At first, Xiao thinks she must be lost in thought about other things, but then, she responds.
"Loss," she says, hesitant. "Sometimes of people. Sometimes of his heart. Sometimes I have to wonder if he used to sleep for so long because he feared losing that particular dream."
A pause.
"But," she continues, "are you not also capable of visiting others' dreams yourself? I seem to recall something of the sort written in one of the Akademiya's books, the Yakshas' power of Dream Trawling."
Xiao shakes his head. "I can only summon their consciousness to the waking world to converse."
"I see."
A moment passes in silence, save for Venti's gentle breathing. The Dendro Archon says nary a word, and Xiao dares not offer even a single thought of his own.
"In that case, since his prior nightmare has been expelled, why don't we compose a new dream for him?" Nahida eventually suggests. Her eyes and the tips of her hair glow a faint yellow-green, and she reaches into the thin air to pull a fine, gossamer thread of Dendro energy from the aether.
She wraps it gingerly around her hands for safekeeping as she expertly coaxes it into existence, and it shimmers like fresh spider-silk in the clear moonlight as she carefully ties its ends together. Then, with a looping flick of her wrists and twirl of her fingertips, she creates a string figure in the form of a cradle and offers it to Xiao.
"Think of something you'd want for him to dream," she instructs.
Xiao stares at her careful tangle of thread, baffled.
Nahida brings her hands back to her chest and tilts her head at him when he makes no move to take the string figure from her. "Have you seen this game before?" she asks. "I've found that these types of string-figure games make it the easiest to weave one's thoughts into a dream, but if you're not familiar with it, then I suppose we could try something else…"
Ah. It's a game. How fitting for a child-god like her.
"No need," Xiao cuts in before Nahida can unravel the thread in her hands. "I am familiar."
(He has seen many a restless child borrow a length of yarn from the innkeeper to play these trite, little games through the years.)
((Even then— It might have been thousands of years ago by now, but he still had a shred of a childhood of his own, once upon a time.))
"Think of something you'd like for him to dream about," she reminds him as he reaches out.
Xiao hesitates, then blurts out the first thing he thinks of: "Apples."
"Good!" Nahida says as he somewhat clumsily transfigures the string into his own hands. Then, expertly manipulating the string herself, she adds: "I think they should be big enough to live in."
Back and forth, the once-abandoned god and the now-disceded soldier thread thoughts and hopes into the dream they together weave, until at last, Nahida folds the loop of thread into a ball in her hands. She brings the dream close to her chest and shuts her eyes over it for a prolonged moment, then opens them again and reaches out to place the small, softly-gleaming puff of a dream into Xiao's hands.
"You have to kiss it now," she informs him with the solemn grace and gravity of the morning dew.
Xiao stiffens.
(The dream they have created smells so sweet, sitting in his hands.)
"I do not think that is a good idea," he manages to grit out, but Nahida stares at him with wide, much-too-knowing eyes.
"But you have to put your love into it," she earnestly explains. "How else are you supposed to put your love into it?"
A quiet ache from the darkest pit within the depths of Xiao's debts begins to hiss and flicker. Sharpened teeth softly gnaw at him from within, shredding at his liver.
(He does not say anything, but his fingertips traitorously twitch.)
Nahida seems to notice his struggle. She says, "It's all right; I imparted safety on it just now, to keep it from changing for the worse. It just needs love from someone who knows him well."
Xiao sighs and turns away. Holding his breath, he closes his eyes and brings the delicate, fleeting dream up to his lips to press a kiss to its soft, warm surface as sweetly as he can manage.
His chest flutters with embarrassment as he pulls away, and his cheeks flush as he turns around to hand the lovely dream back to Nahida. But she makes no move to take it.
In fact, she hops off from her place at Venti's bedside and starts heading towards the door.
"It's past my bedtime," she explains with a yawn. "Sing him a lullaby— that's how he'll best receive it."
Xiao sighs, deep down relieved that his audience is leaving.
("Sweet dreams," he murmurs to the Dendro Archon as the door closes once more with a quiet click.)
Now finally once more alone with just his love and a dream, Xiao softly sings an old, old tune taught to him by the Lady of Dust herself all those years ago. Note by note, the dream in his hand melts and fades away, and Venti's placid expression slips into a faint, but easy, smile.
Xiao slips off his perch on the windowsill to kneel for a while at the Anemo Archon's bedside.
(He lays a kiss on Venti's temple, then falls asleep.)