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The wind plays through Venti’s hair as he sits in the open hands of the statue of... Barbatos.
Barbatos. (There was a different statue before, an older one. It looked different before it was torn down and rebuilt. More like him. Now, it's a monument to the inevitable fading of human memory).
From this height, he can see the entirety of the city. It's a view he has seen hundreds of times, thousands of times. It never effects him any less.
(Yet he would trade his ten thousand sunsets alone to have shared just one).
He's lost track of time since the Traveller left. They did sit with him for longer than expected, but eventually they seemed to realize that the only thing he needed right now was some time to get lost in his own thoughts.
His thoughts which are a mess, and he isn’t sure he has the energy to try and sort through them. Certainly not with an audience. Venti, the bard. Venti, the Anemo Archon. Venti, Venti…
He's at war with himself.
He lifts green eyes to the sky, letting his mind drift. He tries to summon that familiar sense of peace that open sky usually brings, but he cannot grasp it today. It's one of those days. A day when his emotions lay heavy on his shoulders and feel harder to shake off.
Looking inwards feels like climbing the steps into a forgotten attic, creaking with misuse, and dusting off the spiderwebs that cling to everything.
Who am I?
This was the question that he has been repeating for the past few hours. The question he usually manages to brush off with a laugh, with a bottle of dandelion wine, with the view of his city, with a strum of his lyre.
Venti the bard. Venti the Anemo Archon.
Those are both answers.
(So why aren’t they satisfying?)
Centuries ago now, (millenia), Venti had taken the form of a friend. A young bard - a mortal whose life had been snuffed out far too soon. But he had been mortal all along. He was always going to leave.
That bard had been more than friend. He had been Venti's first friend. More than a parent, a brother, a lover, or a teacher. He had been love itself.
The very thing that taught Venti to love humanity, to believe in the inherent goodness and kindness of people, to put his faith in them to fight, fight, fight until they repair this broken world.
In those days, Venti was little more than a breeze, a whisper among the reeds, a formless spirit. He'd had no thoughts or opinions of his own. He was formless and malleable, only interested in fun.
The bard had shaped him into something tangible, something more than an elemental wisp. The bard gave him convictions.
But now, all that remains are his fragmented memories, echoes of a life that was never truly his. The bard is gone and Venti is left behind; a shadow cast by a flame long extinguished. He is a faded reflection. An antique mirror, capturing the likeness of someone who no longer exists.
He tries to remember the bard's face, the sound of his voice, the songs they had sung together. But the memories are hazy, and it is like trying to grasp mist.
He can't recall the bard's mannerisms, his thoughts, his dreams. Every time he wakes up, he remembers less.
The essence of the bard has been stretched too thin, leaving only the faintest traces behind.
Venti's identity is a patchwork of those traces, stitched together haphazardly. He has built his entire sense of self on a script he has lost. He plays the role of the bard whose lines were forgotten centuries ago.
What would the bard think if he could see him now? Would he be proud of him? Would he be happy for him? Would he be offended at Venti's misuse of his image, a misrepresentation of him? Twisting his original ideals into something unrecognisable?
Would he hate Venti for the things he had done while wearing his face?
He imagines the bard standing before him, looking at him with those earnest eyes, filled with a fire that Venti can never hope to match. The bard had been passionate, a force for change, fighting every day of his life. Venti... Venti is complacent and fearful.
Would the bard find it pathetic, how Venti never gained true freedom, and yet stopped fighting for it?
If he stood before him now, what would he say?
Would he see Venti as a coward, hiding behind a mask, unable to step out of the shadows?
He doesn't know. He can never know. The only person who could have given him that answer has been dead for millennia. And that uncertainty crawls under his skin, skin that doesn’t even belong to him, a constant reminder of his incomplete existence.
What would the bard do?
Venti knows the answer deep down - the bard would act. He would stand up and fight, fight until he had won or died trying. The bard would risk everything.
Venti has too much that he can not risk.
So what is he? A poor imitation, play-acting a role he is ill-suited for. Yet it is the only thing he knows, and he is afraid to give it up. Without the bard's guise, without his memories, what would remain? Just the wind, aimless and formless as it had been before it met him.
The sun begins to set, slowly at first, casting a golden glow over the city. Venti watches as the shadows lengthen, feeling kinship with them. He is also a shadow, a fleeting shape cast in the wake of a much brighter light.
As the stars begin to dot the sky, he feels a kinship to them too. A light still shining while all those who admired it remain oblivious that it has been dead, dimmed, consumed and put out for years. An illusion. A false pretence. Nothing about them is real, not any more than Venti himself.
He takes out his lyre and strums a soft, nostalgic song. Does his music even belong to him (or is that, too, stolen)? Perhaps he had once learned it from his friend, but it was one thing at least he has made his own. One thing which he loves for the sake of it. The notes float on the wind, one half of a duet, a call without an answer.
For just a moment, he allows himself to grieve. He lets the tears fall, hidden by the night, and sings for an audience of false stars and those who are long dead. He imagines that his words will reach them after enough years have passed to carry the tune.
As he lets himself observe his own thoughts, as he dusts off the boxes in the attic of his mind and decompartmentalizes himself for the sake of finding an answer, this was what he discovers;
He wants to live.
He loves living. He loves humans, he loves Mondstadt, and he loves being alive. The joy he finds in the simple pleasures of life, the laughter of children, the camaraderie of friends, the beauty of a sunset - these are things he cherishes. These are things which are real.
These are things which belong to him.
They are not borrowed or stolen or worn as a costume.
He doesn't know how to live as his own person. He doesn't know how to step out from under the bard's shadow. The idea scares him. It is daunting to think of forging a new identity after nearly 3000 years.
But does he really need to?
His contentment is not, on the whole, false.
Perhaps the bard would be ashamed of what he has become, but Venti wants to live. And if this is the only way he can do it, then this is how he will do it. He would rather live as a faded reflection than not at all.
If clinging to the bard's image is the only way he can continue to experience the world he loves, then that is the path he will take.
For the love of life, for the love of Mondstadt, and for the love of the fleeting, precious moments that make existence worthwhile, he will continue his masquerade.
In the end, even shadows have a place in the world.