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Once upon a time, in a faraway land of freedom and song, a dragon lived among humans. He had been gifted a body by an alchemist, a safe cage for his draconic heart. The dragon treasured his human-shaped cage as much as he did his muzzled heart. Thanks to them, his claws were not sharp, nor were his fangs dangerous; the dragon was not feared and so, he was called a friend and a brother. Another child of the Anemo Archon.
One day, as ordinary as any other day in the year, the dragon was walking back home when the sky clouded and the air filled with the smell of rain. An innocent drizzle, at first. The dragon continued on his path, enjoying the droplets hitting the top of his horns. He liked the rain and was already thinking about all the puddles he would get to jump in.
Hence, the dragon continued his happy stroll under the downpour and, as the rain fell harder, so did his clothes feel heavier. His precious princely attire, given by his mother, was weighing down on his body and slowing his pace. Quickly, even giving a single step forward felt as challenging as climbing the highest mountain. Under the oppressing weight of the fabric the dragon stumbled and slipped, the outfit like a suit of armour.
Assaulted by concern, the dragon looked at his feet, finding only vague shapes instead. How worrying! The sensation on them was numbed, the colour huskier and smudged, a sketch in watercolour. Poor little dragon, he got scared; he tried to run away from disaster, but the storm was roaring over his head. Raindrops like needles against his flesh. There was no way to evade the weeping from the heavens, no refuge that would take him.
The poor little dragon’s skin split open, torn apart like wet paper. Ink oozed from the openings, pitch-black stuff from nightmares. The body that the alchemist had so graciously drawn for him broke down like cardboard. Colour bleeding from the oil-painted clothes, sliding down his legs in diluted rivulets of reds and purples.
By the time he reached the stone bridge, his figure was barely a draft of lines under the pouring rain. A silhouette of a dragon with papier-mâché wings and a wire-thin tail, hollow wax horns sliding down his origami skull.
Poor little sketch of a person, he couldn’t take one more step. His form collapsed to the ground, a ball of drenched paper among the pebbles, wrinkled and unfinished. A concept deemed not good enough to continue.
With what little strength he had, the poor little outline of a creature called for his friends with his scribbled voice. He screamed and screamed, wailing for help amidst the tempest. He cried for his family’s embrace, he pleaded for the Archon’s mercy, he begged for the world to remember him.
On the next ascension of the sun, the people of the city of freedom discovered a muddy puddle at the end of their stone bridge. “How curious,” they all thought, “to see such a big colourful puddle in the middle of the path.” Such occurrences hardly deserve more than a mention, so there the citizens went, continuing through their day. Enjoying their songs and greeting their friends, blessed as they were by the Anemo God. Caring father of all who joined his choir.
And so, under his watchful gaze, they all lived happily ever after. The end.
Eh? What happened to the little dragon, you ask? Oh, dear, why do you care? He was never meant to be here. At the end of the day, he was nothing more than his mother’s wishful vision of a son.
Durin awakens with a startle, heart beating in his ears. His fingers press over his face, his horns, his chest. He squeezes his arms and kicks his legs, yet the sensation of flesh melting off his bones persists. His limbs are wax under candlelight, the heat increasing with each frantic exhale. The oxygen around him only fuels the flame. It will consume him whole. Pitiful, little dreamer, reduced to a puddle. This world never had a place for him. How foolish of him to think he could stay. How haughty of him to believe he belonged, that he was wanted beyond being a pretty drawing. As if he had not been nothing but abandoned his whole existence.
Outside his head, the rain perseveres in its onslaught, hitting the ground in mockery. One continuous long guffaw taunting him about his paper-thin skin and his heart of glass. Humans aren’t built like that. They don’t melt, they don’t dissolve, they don’t have pitch-black ink for blood. What was Durin thinking when he tried to pass off as one? He is a character from a storybook. His eyes are coloured with crayons and his hair is frayed yarn. This was never meant to last.
“Durin?”
The world around him shifts, moving like a wave, and the realisation of where he is—where he hasn’t stopped being—washes over him like Dragonspine’s blizzards. Stunning turquoise scales and a coiled tail are forming a cocoon under stained glass feathers, their colours a brighter masterpiece than the cathedral’s rose window. A far cry from the grey clouds of doom ragging inside his skull.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
The voice is calm, a gentle breeze against his side that clears his mind. Durin mouths the word “Nightmare” until it feels real enough on his tongue. That’s what it was. He repeats it to himself again and again. A nightmare. Just a nightmare. Nothing more than a nightmare. It doesn’t matter how waxen his arms feel under the sleeves or the panicked origami bird he has for a heart, desperately flapping its wings. Durin is made of flesh, bone and scales and, when he brushes his damp bangs away from his face, he comforts himself with the texture of hair, even if he is sweating buckets under it. He didn’t know he could do that. It’s gross.
Very human, too.
“Yes, a really strange one.”
Dvalin, whose head is tucked under his own wing to talk to Durin, gives him a sympathetic look. Amidst the chaos reigning in his reality, those starlight eyes are a lighthouse for scared souls. “I had my share of those too.” He says, tone soft between them. “You do not have to explain, but know that if you need to, I am here to listen.”
The grass is warm under him; even through his gloves, Durin notices the wisps twisting within his grip. Looking down, he sees lines in the dirt where his hands scratched and his heels kicked at nothing. Just like a dog dreaming about chasing a squirrel. A sense of shame climbs up his throat; the flame from the candle. It doesn’t take much thinking to realise that Dvalin suffered from night terrors while she was poisoned. Five hundred years of nightmares. Compared to that, Durin’s little dream is just a bad thought, something he should be able to shrug off as easily as his coat. Hat Guy would be so disappointed in him making a mountain out of a molehill. And then, he would be worried, which would be worse. Durin doesn’t want to bother anyone.
But the rain is still there in the background. Its essence fills the space: wet soil and thriving nature. Creating life the same way it took Durin’s away. Is this what Kaeya called dramatic irony? It feels like a cruel joke of his own making when his bones shake to the storm’s tune. The unnerving sensation of flesh being peeled off is still present in his legs. Rubbing his palms over them doesn’t help, nor does his tail coiled around his ankles. Even his own wings, shielding him, feel made of crêpe paper.
“It’s raining.”
Dvalin tilts his head before lifting his wing slightly, just enough for Durin to glimpse at the world beyond their den. A quick wisp of cold air sneaks in immediately, raising his scales. The Anemo and Hydro intertwined in it cause his Pyro to stir. It’s nothing sort of a miracle that he hasn’t burnt the place down; he would never forgive himself if he charred Dvalin’s scales. Durin has caused him enough pain for a lifetime, yet here he is, shielding him from the rain while comforting him after a nightmare. Mondstadt denizens sure are forgiving.
The old capital, though, is a shadow of how he remembers it to be. A gloomy landscape of grey stone and drowning grass, its colours muted, wilted in comparison to the vibrance of Dvalin’s feathers. Through the curtain of rain the windwheel asters normally dotting the ruins in playful reds are faraway visages of warmth. Little flames lost amidst the dark. “It started an hour ago.”
It wasn’t only in his head, then. As Dahlia says: Thanks Barbatos for small mercies. Albedo worked really hard to give him a functioning brain and the last thing Durin wants is to tell him that he managed to mess it up beyond repair barely a year into getting it.
“It was raining in my dream too.” Durin wraps his wings tighter around himself, his hands clutching the point of his tail. The scales there are smooth and hard—nothing like the faux enamel cracking under the rain—and unlike his skin, there aren’t beads of sweat making them damp and blotchy. The black and crimson give him peace; he didn’t have this tail in Simulanka. He is no longer in Simulanka. He isn’t what he was in Simulanka. “The water was hurting me. Like… Like I was being erased, like a drawing.”
Dvalin rests his head on the grass next to him, the listening ear he promised to be. “Like you were drawn on paper left outside?”
“No, I wasn’t inside a sketchbook or anything. It was my body.” Like he was sugar dissolving in tea. Limbs jumbled and brain confused about how much of him was still there. Questions about if he had been there at all in the first place. “My whole body was made of paper and ink, like I was a character from a storybook… again.” A shiver runs down his spine. Human biology is so bizarre, how can he sweat and be cold at the same time? “And I was being punished for leaving my home.”
“Mondstadt is your home.” Durin turns to face him; Dvalin’s eyes are the same incandescent blue he recognises them as in flashes of another life. He really is a beacon in the dark. “These are the valleys you roam and the sky you fly across. Here is where you are called a friend and a brother. The wind knows your name and you know its song.” He can see the corners of his beak perking up; Durin feels the start of a smile on his lips too. “Say the word and I will vanish the clouds for you, if that is what you need for my lair to feel your own.”
Laughter bubbles in his stomach akin to a potion in a witch’s cauldron, and Durin lets out a chuckle against his knees. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that any of that is true. He spent decades in the mines, down where no voice could reach him, whether friendly or malicious. He had no friends, no mother and no hope of ever changing his destiny. If the little one back then had known of all the joys he would experience, maybe he would have been capable of digging his way out of his own misery.
Judging by his reaction, Durin hasn’t completely let go of the shackles that kept him underground, as self-imposed as they might have been. Because sometimes the mirror returns the image of an imposter and Durin doesn’t know how to confront him. But the people he loves don’t see that, do they? They look at him and see Durin the friend, Durin the brother. Someone real and beloved.
Hopefully he will be able to too, someday.
The humid air doesn’t seem half as bad once Durin allows himself to breathe. It’s fresh and herbal; it brings forward the rejuvenation of nature.
“Rain is good for Mondstadt.” Durin lets himself fall against Dvalin as his wings and tail spread in a very needed stretch. He has been coiled tight for too long, it’s like he hasn’t got a blink of sleep in days, despite napping the afternoon away. Thankfully, his friend is comfortable and the nook under his forewing is the perfect spot for enjoying lazy days. “I don’t want the flowers to shrivel up and die just because I had a bad dream.” The drunkards in the taverns would for sure have a few words of choice to yell at him if something happened to the harvest of their esteemed grapes. Although Diona might thank him for it—He likes Diona, she is always preventing the cats from turning him to shreds.
His limbs still feel weak, his body weary in the way it only gets after an intense sparring. But he no longer fears his flesh slipping off him, nor his whole form dissolving into a smudge. For his part, Dvalin says nothing as Durin crawls to fit himself against the crook of his neck; he already knows it’s his favourite place. Cramped and secure, out of everyone’s sight, no predator can catch him by surprise if he is hidden between pale fluffy feathers and jewelled aquamarine scales.
Comfortable and settled, with his wings as cover, Durin whispers quietly to him. “What were your nightmares about?”
Dvalin shifts minutely, closing his wings snugly around the both of them. His silence lasts a short eternity, broken only by the pitterpatter of the rain, now turned into a lullaby. “I dreamed that I was no longer a friend nor a son and that the wind had forgotten my name despite me knowing its song.” Durin untucks his head from his feather pillow to see Dvalin with his eyes shut, but full of grief. “I dreamed that Mondstadt was no longer my home.”
“I don’t think that could ever happen,” he tells him with his hand stroking the side of his head, where long blue feathers sprout and curl like flower petals. It’s the most confident he has sounded since panic jolted him awake. “Lord Barbatos says you are his little baby dragon, he wouldn’t forget you.”
A half-groan, half-sigh emerges from Dvalin’s throat, one part exasperation and two parts fondness. “He will be hearing from me later.”
In spite of his tone, Durin knows it’s all in jest. At worst, Lord Barbatos will get swung around by the ankles a few times and then dropped into Cider Lake. Nothing out of the ordinary for the Anemo God. Watching those two getting on each other’s nerves has been one of the many new pleasures of his human life.
The hilarity of the scenario, though, makes him smile and as he covers himself with his wing again in the safest place he could ever be, he thinks that maybe having nightmares isn't that bad if he can be comforted like this afterwards. That, too, is part of being real, of being alive.
“Dvalin, thank you.”
His friend nudges him with his beak one last time and Durin is half sure that must be the draconic version of tucking someone in because the gesture carries the same warmth as wishing for sweet dreams. Since the sleep that follows is filled with the uninterrupted tale of a dragon and his family sailing on an adventure to uncover every single mystery in a mystical land, Durin guesses the blessing runs its curse properly.
When he asks Dvalin what he dreamed about after the both of them wake up, he mumbles something about the ethical debate of eating singing apples and how it’s, somehow, Barbatos’ fault that he got weirded out by his own mind’s reveries.
“I wouldn’t eat a singing apple.” Decides Durin.
“Not even if it sings horribly?”
That makes him pause, his brows furrowed. “I guess if it sings really badly and it’s the only way to make it stop… But wouldn’t those be the ones with the worst flavour?”
“It is not about the flavour.” Declares Dvalin, the statement carries a strange solemnity.
“I think I would take a bite of each of them, just to test if there is correlation between the singing quality and the taste.”
That, for some reason, causes Dvalin to shake his head in something that would resemble disapproval, if not for the endeared look on his face.
“Those humans have corrupted you with their mad practices.”
To be honest, Durin was already planning on crafting a graphic to register his annotations regarding the apples, so he guesses Albedo has been rubbing off on him more than he thought. He wonders if Hat Guy would be impressed by his new vocabulary.
Perhaps he should visit him soon to see what his opinion on eating singing apples is.