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When Venti finally gets back to Mondstadt, the breeze is soft, the sun warm, and people keep looking at him with a new sort of gaze in their eyes.
His hat is askew, braids a little undone – he understands. He looks like a mess.
“Yo,” Kaeya says, happening to be idling by Katheryne’s stand. “Where have you been?”
Exasperated, Venti just sighs.
Long story short – some abyssal dangers have sprouted around the area of Stormbearer mountains, and Vind was simply too weak to handle such foes. So after a… quick trip to handle it, Venti warned her about the increasing risk of patrolling said area.
Vind, with a brave fire in her eyes, told Venti it was her duty. At the time, Venti was both annoyed by her wit and will for freedom, and proud at the same time. He told her again about the risks, and Vind told him to go home.
Then the hilichurls noticed them, spurred on by lingering effects of the Abyss, and Venti had to juggle protecting one of his children and not revealing that he is quite literally the God she was praying to while he was fighting off the monsters.
Oh Barbatos, guide me, Vind prayed.
Venti despaired, I'm trying!
Ruffled and demotivated, Venti led Vind to seek shelter in Springvale until the danger passed, and then set course for Mondstadt City with his hat on backwards. That day, the wind spirits seemed more mischief led than usual, and so his walk kept getting interrupted by having to play with the little rascals. They're so lucky he loves them so much!
Along the way, he heard a stray prayer in Wolvendom, belonging to Pallad who had wandered too far in.
The wolves are harmless, Venti grumbled to himself as he changed directions, feeling the wind whip at him in disapproval. They're most likely asking for belly rubs!
Only after saving Pallad was Venti allowed to continue on his way to Mondstadt City, chased by boars and birds every once in a while. At some point, a fox kept trying to trip him up. He just couldn't catch a break!
Which… all led to him arriving at Mondstadt's gates looking like a wreck and apparently having missed something very important?
“Oh, here and there,” Venti summarizes instead. Simple. Effective. Kaeya raises his eyebrows, but doesn't question Venti further about his journey.
“Well,” Kaeya says, “Charles has been asking around for you. Looks furious. Very ‘end of service’. Very ‘dry January’. So. You know.”
Huh? Venti tilts his head, thinking. What has he done to anger Charles? As far as Venti’s aware, he enjoys his music!
“I don't know either,” Kaeya seems to read Venti’s expression perfectly, “But, just a hunch – you should go see him. And your mom came by.”
Well, he's obviously not going to see him! Charles gets scary when he's mad! “I haven't even done anything… I don't think so, at least.” And then, the rest of the sentence registers. “My what? Who?”
“Your mom,” Kaeya blinks. “Mother. Ma'am. Last I saw her, she was–”
Venti takes hold of Kaeya’s shoulders. Which is awkward, since he's so much shorter than him, and has to get on his tiptoes to do it. “Kaeya. I need you to understand that I have no clue what you are talking about.”
“What?”
“I do not have a mother,” Venti says with the patience of a parent explaining the consequences of jumping out the window, “And whoever claims to be such is trying to scam you out of pocket Mora!”
“It wasn't that much Mora,” Kaeya sniffles in offense. “Besides, she looks exactly like you. I just offered to get her lunch as a gesture of goodwill.”
Hm. That peaks Venti’s interest. “So that means she's my mother? You don't look like your father.”
“Are you adopted?” Kaeya fires back.
Venti blinks. “No. ‘Cause I don't have a family. Where is she, anyway?”
“Last I saw her,” Kaeya continues with exasperation, “She was on her way to the cathedral.”
Venti considers not clearing the air for now if she's doing harmless things like talking to the church. And stealing Kaeya’s money. Maybe it's a lost, poor traveler who needed a credible alibi to not arouse suspicion in such a city. There's no harm in her masquerading as a family member!
Surely?
…Maybe. Well, Venti should still check. Just to make sure it really is a lost, poor traveler, and not an Abyss monster in disguise. Although, he would've felt a disturbance by now if that were the case. …Surely.
Cautious, Venti waves Kaeya off and makes his way to the cathedral, still receiving strange looks as he goes. Marjorie even offers to braid his hair. What's with everyone?
In the plaza by the Barbatos statue, Venti finds Barbara looking frazzled. The worrying part is that she's alone, with the nearest people being a prayer group led by Sister Grace.
And that she doesn't seem to really react to Venti coming by, despite her usual haste to greet him.
“Hallo!” Venti calls once he's close enough, all smiles. No trace of an impostor mother to be seen here, then. “Everything alright?”
As soon as she registers him, she puts her citizen service smile back on her face. “Bard,” she greets, “Your mother really is so generous!”
Venti’s expression fades. Ah, the agony. “Really, now? What did she say?”
“She offered to fix the lyre,” Barbara recounts, “But since the Seneschal isn't here yet to give his opinion, I had to decline…”
At that, Venti hums in thought. “Short? Black hair? Dressed in green? Like me?”
“No,” Barbara assures, “Tall, distinguished… Blonde! Like me! But longer hair, I think…” And then, Barbara seems to have trouble thinking of more details. She fidgets with her hands. “I dunno. But she looked just like you, anyway!”
Venti stares at her with a blank face. “That sounds nothing like me.”
Barbara disagrees, shaking her head.
“Last I saw her, she was going to the Knights Headquarters,” she says. “I remember… Hmm, I remember…” And then, her eyes get a little distant.
“Barbara?” Venti prompts.
Barbara springs up. “That's all! She went to the Knights!”
Sheesh. The Knights? Just what is this person planning? Maybe they're trying to get easier access to citizenship?
How silly. Mondstadt stopped worrying about that stuff centuries ago.
At the Knights Headquarters, Jean does not look very happy to see him.
“You didn't tell me you had a mother,” Jean says, despairing over the state of him. Her hands twitch at her sides, as if resisting the urge to right his hat and cape, and to bow down.
“I don't have one,” Venti sighs, and prepares himself for another conversation – she doesn't look like me, I don't know her, etcetera.
Jean cannot offer a good description. She trails off, trips over her words, eyes narrowed. One word she keeps repeating: Divine. But then again, it's Jean, and getting her to drop the worship has been a pain since the whole… Dvalin fiasco.
“Last I saw her, she was headed to Angel's Share,” Jean says. Finally, a useful piece of collected intel! That sounds like Venti, alright!
Venti disappears immediately.
At the Angel's Share, Venti spots the alleged mother, and feels his hopes for a normal evening vanish with a quick flutter of his eyelashes.
Seated at a stool being served by a Ragnvindr of all people sits Shade of Time, Tookoyo Okami, Htoratsi. Mother of a fourteen billion years, a branch of time itself.
“Oh, my god,” Venti says, rapidly advancing through the stages of denial. “Really?”
The worst part is that when Htoratsi – wow, that's growing to be quite the mouthful, he'll just call her Time instead – turns around, she shows no surprise. Not even a widening of the eyes, a flinch. No shock or happiness, either. Her eyes slide over him like always, disinterested, busy.
“Ah,” she says, voice dripping with wit and humor. “Venti.”
How dare she! Utter such a name with nonchalance!
Venti plants himself on the stool next to hers, spinning a few times for emotional support before he looks at her once more. Mother? She really looks nothing like him!
“I look identical,” Time says, amused.
“Stop messing with my head,” Venti threatens, “And my children's.”
For a moment, everyone has the same thought at once: Venti and his mother really don't look that similar! But once a second passes, they all get the delusion back into their head. They look identical. They look identical.
“We do not,” Venti denies his own thoughts. “Stop that!”
Diluc returns behind the bar, looking quite uninterested. “The usual?”
“Why is Charles mad at me?”
“I'm giving you the usual,” Diluc grumbles, turning around.
From next to him, Time swirls a spoon in her cup of ice, noise so loud that Venti grits his teeth. In due time, it will melt into water. Right now, Venti wants to explode it with his mind.
“Why are you here?” He asks instead, and feels like a petulant child. It's all the mother stuff getting to his head.
Time hums, thoughtful. “Why do you eat? Why do deer shed their antlers? Does everything need an answer?”
“We are not deer,” Venti supplies helpfully. “Do you need me to do something?”
Wordless, Time looks down at her cup, then at Venti, and then at the counter top. “Hmm,” she says.
“Not very reassuring to hear,” Venti complains.
When Time turns to him this time, it's with an open expression that Venti isn't used to seeing. In her mind, Venti reads the truth she will not speak into existence. Through her mind, Venti gets his answer.
Barbatos, Time thinks to them both, I am terribly bored.
Oh.
Oh!
“That's way better than a war!” Venti cheers, mood lifted immediately. “Do not fret, for this bard shall entertain you for the whole day!” Even if only to serve as a distraction.
Last time that… well… Time came to Mondstadt, he wasn't awake to distract her. She isn't quite as interested in the lives of humans and mortals, and so to entertain herself, she set up a fortune telling stand to get all the local gossip.
It took ages for the legend of a Fortune God to disappear from historical records. She made so much money from the stand, except she didn't know what to do with it, and crashed the Mondstadt economy for decades!
Now, Time smiles at him, in the way a mother smiles at the crib. Venti looks away from the glow of it. “I would like nothing else,” she says, genuine (???). Then, her eyes trail down to her wallet. “But I fear I don't have any Mora for this transaction.”
“Get the hell out of my bar,” Diluc says.
A week later, after Time sees all corners of Mondstadt’s new architecture and agriculture and environment and geological state and… whatever else she's interested in for whatever reasons, she finally departs, leaving behind only the sparkle of clock hands and glittery bells.
Relieved, Venti goes back to Angel's Share, falling onto the stool like a puppet with its strings cut. How exhausting!
“She's really not my mother,” he tells Diluc, swirling the wine in his cup idly. “She thinks it's sooo funny to say it.”
What Venti keeps to himself is that the relationship of gods are incomprehensible. Gold considers herself a mother, having shaped Albedo with her fingers and hands. Across the vast sea, Ei built the Shogun with her fingers and hands, but does not consider herself a mother.
Would a human look at their fallen hair and think of it as departed children? Would a human lose a limb and visit it to see how it is doing?
At the end of the day, Venti has never been held and sang to, led by the hand, or lectured about decisions. What did Time do to deserve such a title? To her, it's all probably a massive joke, anyway.
“Who?” Diluc asks, in the middle of pulling his hair up into a ponytail.
Venti blinks. “The woman who visited. Like a week ago.”
Diluc blinks back, confused. “Hm? If that happened, I'd surely have noticed.”
Ah, Venti despairs. Massive joke, indeed. How dare she erase his children's memory without his permission!
“And now I'll never find out why Charles was so mad at me…” Venti woes, petty. Ugh. But he's so curious!
“Charles isn't mad at you,” Diluc says, still confused.
Venti sighs. “Yeah. That's the problem.”
Up in Celestia, Istaroth settles into a heavenly haze, content.