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He had given Tighnari a glass of water when the man was clearly heat exhausted.
And he wondered briefly what was wrong with him.
Perhaps Lesser Lord Kusanali's teachings were more effective than he first thought.
----
The ugly mark on the nape of his neck; a branding that forever connected him to her.
Despite everything, he was still his mother's child.
He felt that fact sometimes burrow deep under his artificial skin, like a worm, travelling along the path of his nerves and up his spine to the center of his brain. A parasite he could try to get rid of as much as he liked, but utterly futile all the same.
He scratched irritably at his neck and Nahida chided him, just the same way she scolded him when he woke up hating the color of his hair or the way his puppet-joints creaked in the mornings.
"I know it feels awful," she had told him in the beginning, "but acceptance is a slippery slope. It's nice to be wanted by other people, but it doesn't define you. You're not the same as the person who created you."
And yet, on the worst of days, he felt as if he could see reflections of her in him.
Reflections of what he hated the most; what he wanted to get rid of the most.
The heart he wanted to bury ached. And he only detested it more.
The electro symbol seemed to burn into him.
Maybe what he wanted in the past was for her to see him; to acknowledge his worth. Instead of being cast away like unwanted trash, he wondered sometimes where his life would be had he not cried that day. He wondered what it would have been like if Beezlebub - his mother - had listened to her fox familiar and killed him.
His anemo vision was like a life jacket when he was drowning in the ocean.
Proof that he could be someone else; proof that he could live on; proof that he could be free.
The traveler, too, was a surprising reassurance.
"Your name," they said thoughtfully, although some hint of hatred still laced their voice, he could somehow tell that they wouldn't take this matter lightly. "How about this-"
Though only he, Nahida, and the traveller knew his new name, he could feel it in his heart, as if repairing the cracks and breathing fresh life into him.
"It means beloved first son," the traveler said, smiling. "Or, alternatively, it could be interpreted to mean 'freedom.'"
He decided the traveler was surprisingly good at names.
Sumeru was different from Inazuma. His life here was different as well. Just as his new name gave him life, he could feel the breeze of dendro and anemo lilt into his body and sway him, coaxing him further from the life he had left.
The Akademiya was annoying, however, but he found life there peaceful.
Students were often there to pester him, asking him to join in on their activities, to teach them some new topic, or even just to spend the day idling with him around the library.
Just as he had grown used to his old life of cold hardship, begging to be seen or to be heard, he also got used to people and their confusing, yet somehow innate, nature that lures him closer and closer, until even the sharpest shards of loneliness seemed to melt away.
He breathed easily for the first time in a century.
-------
One day, Nahida had asked him to climb to the top of the Akademiya with her.
Nahida reached up and grasped his hand firmly. He reluctantly held it back.
"How are you enjoying it here?" she asked.
He looked out across the sea, and again the wind shifted inside him, stirring, lifting, peacefully. Nahida's green eyes looked up at him and he was struck with a sudden realization that he might be lost, living out life until an unknown number, immortally, perhaps even until the last of Teyvat would crumble under the heavenly principles, but if the air could blow like this for even one day out of year, if the scenery could manage to be this beautiful for even a tenth of a second every decade, if he could feel like this every so often, or at least with a guarantee that it would return,
"I wouldn't mind staying for awhile."