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The wind was strong and cool that day, as if the Anemo Archon was passing along his blessing.
Durin was first to arrive at Starsnatch Cliff that morning. He liked being early. It gave him time to rehearse all the right things to say, to admire the flowers with no one passing him a confused side-eye. And today, it gave him the chance to sit on the cliff's edge and think on what Albedo had said earlier that morning.
Durin had passed him briefly, in the living space shared between their two rooms in the Knights of Favonius barracks. Albedo had been making tea at the kitchenette. He was sleep-eyed and bed-headed, wearing yesterday's rumpled clothing. Durin knew that meant Albedo had been up working late and he shouldn't ask why -- one of the many unspoken social rules of the human world.
"You look like a man on a mission," Albedo had said.
Durin hesitated mid-stride to the door. He had learned that human conversation was like exchanging letters. There was the writing on the envelope and the hidden message inside. Usually, the exchange happened too quickly for him to pick each apart.
But Albedo was patient and kind, and Durin had no embarrassment saying, "What kind of mission? From Jean?"
Albedo's mouth pulled in an almost-smile. "No, I mean you look like you're going somewhere." When Durin just stared at him, Albedo added, "The look on your face and the way you're walking. It tells me you have plans today and you're focused on them."
"Oh." Durin flicked his tail as he thought on that. "The way I look at you and know you worked too late last night?"
That made Albedo really smile. "Yes. Are you going to tell me where you're going?"
"Was I supposed to?"
Durin asked it with the wide-eyed sincerity of a boy afraid to break the rules. Yet there were so many rules to learn and so many new ways to break them.
"No," Albedo said. "You're allowed to have secrets."
"Oh! It's not a secret. I'm going to meet Amber. She's going to teach me to use a glider."
"You have wings."
Durin twisted his mouth. He had not yet learned to hide his feelings. Every emotion played openly on his face, even those he hadn't learned the names for. This one he knew: discomfort.
"Well... yes," Durin said. "But I don't want to scare people."
Albedo fixed him with a strange look, mouth twisted, brows dipping, eyes wet. It was thoughtful but guarded.
"What's that expression?" Durin asked.
Albedo's blue eyes traced Durn's face for a few seconds before he said, "Pity."
That answer followed Durin like an unwelcome wind, all the way from the Mondstat city gates, across the dew-damp fields, and up the slope of Starsnatch Cliff. It swirled around him now as he frowned at the ground under his boots, his gloved hands. He always wore gloves, so no one would be uneasy, seeing his claws.
In the quiet place of his heart, he planned another line in a letter for his mother: Did you pity me, too? Is that the only reason I'm here?
Amber's chipper voice jolted him back to the present. He startled, the base of his wings tightening inward, like a full-body flinch.
"Hey! Sorry I'm late. I spotted a few hilichurls giving a merchant some trouble, and then Klee was begging to come when I told her I was going to see you."
Durin stood up, smiling shyly and rubbing the back of his neck. Amber was roughly his height and carrying two gliders: both brown with a teal gem, but Amber's was well-worn, the woodstain on the handgrips rubbed smooth from her touch. The other looked new and had the scent of freshly treated wood.
"I would rather wait than leave people in trouble," Durin said.
"I knew you would. Here." She tilted the second glider toward him. "This one is yours."
Durin accepted it with a dip of his head and a thank you. He marveled at how strong yet lightweight the wood was, as if it was a hollow tube, like the quill of a feather.
Amber showed him how to use the switch near the handgrip to expand or collapse the wings. She spoke excitedly, her hair bobbing with every movement, as she showed him how to spread his arms and legs against the shape of the glider.
At the end of her explanation, she laughed and added, "Usually I tell people the most important rule is not to let go. But I guess you can just fly for real if that happens."
A hot bubble of embarrassment and preemptive shame burst in Durin's belly. He had rewritten his own story, but he still dreaded the way people had looked at him back then. Like a stranger, like a monster.
"If I am a human," he said, "I want to be like the rest of you. And humans don't fly."
Amber flicked her eyes from Durin's eyes to his horns. "You do a lot of things most humans don't do. So do I. And that's good. Can you imagine how boring it would be if we were all the same?"
A gust passed over both of them, tugging on the glider in Durin's hands. Dandelion seeds were suspended in the wind like payers, flung as far as Barbatos could carry them.
"That's our cue!" Amber said. She readied herself at the cliff's edge, her glider flat on her back. She passed Durin a bright-eyed grin before lowering her goggles over her eyes. "Trust the wind, and it'll catch you."
Durin wanted to ask if her friendship was real affection or simply pity. But he held the question close to his heart, his life's first true secret: he was afraid of the answer.
Instead, he stood beside her. He gripped the smooth wood of the glider and resisted his full-body instinct to spread his own wings.
Like a human, like a wish, he jumped and trusted the wind to catch him.