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izaswritings · 1 year

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genshin impact fic - three evenings before the end

Title: three evenings before the end

Fandom: Genshin Impact

Synopsis: The fall of the storm, the fall of the nobles, and the fall of everything else— but before tragedy and before legends, there was only this: a tavern, a drink, and the friends who would shape history.

Or: Venti and his loved ones through the ages, and what remains despite it all.

AO3 link is here.

There is winter bite to the winds; there is a gentler spring, wavering and thin, barely a few blocks wide. Under the yawning arch of the tower’s main interlocking bridges, the bard settles in the shadow and plays a ditzy tune. His voice rises and falls in soft murmuring. He is not singing, not yet—just sounding it out, working on the words, fingers picking at the lyre only because the bard cannot stand silence.

The bard plays through the musical scales. The wind sprite whistles along, slightly off-beat.

“Try again, little friend,” says the bard, amused, and plucks a high note on the strings. “See? Try to match the pitch.”

He plays the notes again; the wind sprite trills in tune. This time there is harmony.

“Bravo!” says the bard, and the wind sprite spins around him, delighted by the cheer in his voice.

“For that, you get first pick. What song should I start with today, little friend?”

The wind sprite’s answer is instantaneous: Flowers in the wind! Flowers and spring and new breezes!

“A classic choice,” agrees the bard, and picks at the strings again.

The sky is gray and clouded above them; the unending storm bleeds into the streets, scouring worn stone clean and making every house groan like an old god. Ice bites through the spring-time warmth. The wind sprite clings to the bard’s cloak, and is aghast to find him shivering.

The bard is light and love and laughter on colder nights— the bard deserves to be happy and safe and warm, always. The little wind sprite holds on stubbornly. The icy winds trail off for another street, and the wind sprite breathes spring back into their little corner of the world.

The bard does not seem to notice. The notes of his lyre ring soft and true, and he sings quietly under his breath. In the silent streets his voice echoes all the louder. A young girl has paused on the street to listen; high above, an older man pushes open the windows he once locked shut, eyes closed, listening hard.

It doesn’t last— it never does. The winter returns and boots clink against the stone, stiff armor and frozen faces. The bard trails off his current song mid-note, bows low and swift to his listeners, and then tucks himself out of sight behind the foot of the bridge arch. The wind sprite trills softly in his ear, exasperated. Just when they were getting to the good part!

The storm god’s followers march on by. Frost lines the edges of their armor. One cold face is wavering; his hands, beneath the armor plating, are frostbitten and rotting. The wind sprite watches him pass, and feels its annoyance falter. After a moment of thought, it nudges the spring breeze to follow him. He is a soldier of the storm— he looks as young as the bard. The wind sprite is new to pain, but it thinks that is what it sees lurking behind the soldier boy’s stiff face.

The followers talk to a few on the street. “Music?” says the woman by the stall. Time and wind have withered her. Her lips curl in a sneer. “Haven’t heard it. Maybe you lot have spent too long close to the storm. There’s no musicians here. Especially not since the recent arrests.”

“Watch your tongue. It was the word of our Archon.”

“As you say.”

The soldier boy flexes his fingers unconsciously, in the very back of the formation. Some of the pain has eased from his face.

They leave, eventually. Their footsteps disappear into the howling of the storm. The bard pokes his head out only when the last echo of their marching has faded, wind sprite perched up on his hat. He meets the woman’s eyes and nods. She shakes her head at him. He smiles.

A new voice calls out the bard’s name. The bard looks up; the wind sprite twists and turns in the air, delighted. It is the archer. Her white hair braided back, her bow and arrows hidden from sight. She raises a hand to cup the wind sprite in greeting, and then says to the bard, “There you two are. I’ve been looking. Did you cause trouble again?”

“I’ve never caused trouble in my life,” says the bard.

“They’re banning music,” says the archer, unimpressed. “Mainly because you keep singing about treason.”

“That’s not trouble.”

“No? Then, stupidity.” But there is no anger in her voice—just fondness. The wind sprite rubs against her cheek. Hello, hello, hello.

The archer sighs. “Yes, yes,” she replies. “I’m happy to see you too.”

The wind sprite does another little spin, radiating delight.

The archer rolls her eyes, but she is smiling. “Have you been here all day?”

“Only for an hour or so,” the bard admits, and offers out a hand. The wind sprite zips back to him, twirling loop de loops around his fingers. The bard grins. “It’s been a quiet day. Everyone’s… getting ready.”

Flowers changing hands and secret songs carried by stray breezes. The wind sprite giggles, and flies back up to perch in the bard’s hair.

“Hm,” says the archer. “Have you seen—?”

“No.”

“If that man is drunk at the bar again, I’m throwing him out into the winds.”

The bard laughs. The archer shakes her head. They head for the tavern together, and the wind sprite sings the high note again, over and over, the beginnings of a song.

Evening casts dim shadows, but the lamps hold strong against the rising winds. The tavern, even so, is almost empty. The warrior, as the archer suspected, is deep into his cups. The knight, settled beside him, has a flush to her face that suggests she, too, has been cajoled into a drink.

“You are incorrigible,” says the archer, exasperated. The knight looks up at her voice and flushes an even deeper red at the sight of her. The archer doesn’t notice; the wind sprite does, and giggles at the sight. “That’s it. Stand up, you godless heathen. I’m throwing you out.”

The warrior grins up at her. The stars shine in his red eyes. “Flattery? This early in the night? Buy me a drink first, at least.”

“Shut up and die.”

“Attempting to toss me out of my own tavern, and now threats on my person? You know, for someone who apparently wooed a god, you aren’t very…woo-ing.”

“That is not how you use that word,” the bard says, looking torn between laughter and offense.

“Charming,” amends the warrior, grinning.

The archer reaches for a wine bottle with the air of one prepared to break it over someone’s head. The warrior snatches it from her reach, and then visibly over-balances on the stool and falls over. The archer attempts to kick him.

“Hello,” the knight says to the bard, both of them ignoring the scuffle. Her voice is as soft and as even-keeled as ever, but there’s a wobbliness to the words that has both bard and wind sprite eyeing her.

To the wind sprite, however, the knight inclines her head. It is almost a bow— how embarrassing, thinks the wind sprite, torn between puffed-up pride and bashfulness.

The wind sprite hides beneath the bard’s cape. The knight giggles.

She is new to the cage and still somewhat uncertain within their group, and she shows it, still, in her usual formal wording and stiff demeanor. The wind sprite has not heard her laugh since it first met her out there in the snow; it is a nice sound. Maybe she should drink more often.

“Hello, Venti,” says the knight. A sharp name, singsong to say— the bard’s little nickname for his little friend.

The wind sprite, because it is polite, trills a greeting in turn. Hello, fair knight.

“Gunnhildr.”

Bless you, says the wind sprite, very pleased with itself. Humans say such strange things, after all, when they sneeze.

The bard just laughs at her. The knight sighs heavily, but she is smiling now.

“One day, little wind,” she says, “I’ll have you learn my name.”

The wind sprite looks forward to her trying.

“You would be the first,” agrees the bard, grinning now. He settles beside her at the bar, legs kicking out over empty air. Behind them, the archer and warrior have fallen to squabbling: the archer, trying to steal back her chosen wine bottle weapon; the warrior, still on the floor, clutching the wine bottle to his chest like it’s his dearest treasure. The bard ignores them both with the ease of long practice. “My dear friend doesn’t even know my name, I think.”

The wind sprite does not. It announces this fact with great pride.

“See?” says the bard.

The knight just shakes her head. Her cheeks are flushed pink; her usual neatly plaited hair is flyaway and fluffy. She is wearing silver armor and the straight-backed pride of a leader— but in this bar, the edges are softened, her smile small and glowing and true. The wind sprite approves of this. It reminds it of their first meeting— the knight huddled with her family, and the brightness of her eyes at that first touch of springtime wind.

That brightness is there now in her face as she smiles back at the bard. “Did you have a good morning?” she is asking, now. “How long can you stay? I know you were hoping to meet with some of the others later…”

The bard pats her kindly on the shoulder. “My dear friend,” he says, brightly. “It is night.”

The archer snorts loudly in the background, and then immediately looks away at the wall when the bard and wind sprite turn to her. The warrior, ever the opportunist, takes this moment of distraction to wrestle back the wine bottle. He finally makes his way back onto his bar stool; the archer shoves him off it again.

The knight notices none of this. She is looking out the windows, now, and seems to realize for the first time that the red glow staining the distant storm is a sunset.

“…Ah,” says the knight.

The bard looks a little like he wants to laugh again. The wind sprite, ever shameless, is already giggling. “What were you two drinking?” the bard asks, visibly bemused, and when the knight shrugs, he turns to the warrior instead.

The warrior, lying on his back with the smug air of one who absolutely meant to fall on the floor, this was all pre-ordained, what do mean the archer pushed him, how preposterous—paws his hand by his belt and then raises a small silver flask that the wind sprite has never once seen leave his side.

“Behold!” says the warrior. “The drink of my people!”

The bard’s expression shifts, laughter fading into something quieter. The knight looks confused; the archer has gone still.

The warrior only smiles, crooked and fond. He offers up the flask as if to catch it in the light, and the bard reaches out carefully to take it. He holds it in both hands, cupped between his palms like something precious. The wind sprite alights on his fingers and sniffs at the flask; even sealed shut, it smells of something sharp and spicy, sweet with age and memory.

“You’ve been saving this,” says the bard, softly. “Are you sure?”

“If not this night, then when?” returns the warrior, sitting up at last. He leans against the back of the bar, and the stars in his eyes shine red as the sunset sky. “Tomorrow, we face the storm itself. There is no better time for it. Besides,” he adds, and grins. “My family, may they dream peacefully in the earth, would definitely approve.”

The bard watches him with knowing eyes. The wind sprite brushes past the warrior’s cheek; the warrior’s smile softens, and he lifts a hand to cup the sprite with fondness. “Please, my friends,” he says. “I am certain. Drink with me?”

“It’s quite good,” adds the knight, belatedly.

The archer breaks first; her sigh is heavy, and she settles into a bar stool with a stiff back. “If we must.”

She is sitting next to the knight. The knight flushes a deep pink and seems briefly distracted by the shine of the archer’s hair in the lamplight. The warrior and bard notice this too—the warrior winks at the knight behind the archer’s back, and smiles all the wider at the face she makes in return.

The bard watches them all with that same small smile on his face. Then he kneels down to help the warrior up to his feet, and presses the silver flask back into his hands with the same careful care he had when taking it. His eyes are shining. “You know how I feel about alcohol, my friend,” he tells the warrior. “But for you… a sip, I may partake.”

The wind sprite graciously offers to finish the bard’s glass, should he find himself unable.

“Absolutely not,” says the warrior, already heading to the back of the bar for extra glasses. “You’d clean out my whole flask. You’ll get what I give you, little troublemaker.”

The wind sprite turns to the bard. The bard is laughing. Betrayal! How could they deny a wind sprite—a dear friend— a second drink?

“You can have my glass, little wind,” says the archer, and the warrior says, “What? What? Didn’t we all just agree a drunk wind sprite is too much for any of us? Amos, please—”

The knight is laughing again, her smile hidden behind her hand. The bard kicks his feet over the stool with bright eyes. There is a Windblume tucked in the bard’s tunic pocket and Cecilias woven into his hat. The sky outside the window has gone dark, and the winds blow cold and sharp.

Tomorrow, a new dawn. Tomorrow, a tower falls. Tomorrow, the wind sprite knows, the flowers passed between shaking hands will finally bloom towards open sky.

But for now it is the night, and the light is warm, and their laughter is warmer. The warrior pours a drink, and the clink of their glasses rings like a bell. The bard plays a tune on the lyre. The archer hums along. The knight closes her eyes and listens.

The drink tastes of ginger root and thyme and honey. The sweetness lingers long after the wind sprite has finished its share. Sweet, it thinks. Sweet like sunset through the windows and springtime breezes. Sweet like this moment, fragile and thin— one last drink before the end.

The storm rattles at the windows. The bard tilts back his head and sings.

Summer evenings burn hot long after the sun has set— this Venti knows quite well. Beneath his feet the pavement still warms him; the sky has gone almost dark, and yet, he is not cold at all. What a summer, he thinks— what a year, what a time.

Still, the sun is setting, and so Venti winds up the show. Quiet songs, softer songs, fitting for the bloody cast to the evening. Once, twilights in Mondstadt were a time for song and drink—now, it is a time for wary glances. Even Venti’s usual singing spot has lost some of its charm. There used to be flowers at this square, nurtured by shade and community care, but ever since they tore the Archon statue down the plants have withered. Even in the darkness he can see them— golden brown and dead to the roots, scorched by unfamiliar sunlight.

Venti picks at his lyre and sings of growing things, of honey-sweet drink and beginnings. The crowd has thinned, but some still linger— a child, who listens with eyes wide open; a man, white-haired and sharp-eyed, his arms crossed.

Venti finishes his song and sketches a bow. The lyre vanishes somewhere between his flourish and his cape. The girl claps, and then runs off home; Venti waves goodbye at her back.

Kreuzlied waits until she is out of sight, and then approaches at last. His hands have migrated to his hips, the perfect scolding posture. Venti leans back and winks at him. “Well?” he says. “What do you think? Was my performance worth a drink?”

From Ragnvindr the comment would earn him a roll of the eyes; from Kreuzlied, all he gets is an amused look, and no answer to his question at all. “Have you been here all day?”

“Give or take a few…”

He hums. “You’re going to get sunburned.”

“I have a hat!” It’s a fair concern though; even though it was centuries ago, Venti still shudders to remember that first time. Poor innocent wind sprites—in ill-advised borrowed human forms or not—don’t deserve to be scorched so! It’s unnatural.

Kreuzlied just shakes his head. “Never mind. I did not mean to interrupt… I just wished to know if you’ve seen Vennessa.”

Venti—looking down at his hands, at the moment, if only to make sure he really hasn’t burned—grins up at him. “Ehe. Have you been looking long?”

Kreuzlied’s brow furrows. “What do you…” Venti swishes back his cape. “…Ah.”

Vennessa— dead asleep at Venti’s back, expertly hidden by the shadow of the remaining podium and the end of Venti’s cape (and, okay, a little bit of his illusion magic)—just sniffles, annoyed by the light, and turns her face away into the dirt.

“…I’ve been looking for her for hours,” says Kreuzlied, mild.

“Ehehe,” Venti replies, and then rockets himself over the empty podium and Vennessa to make his escape.

He doesn’t get far. A sleepy hand wraps in his cape and tugs him flat; Vennessa sits up, blinking slowly in the light, hiding a yawn behind her hand. Venti looks up at her, now laid flat upon the ground. Vennessa blinks back down at him.

“…Oh,” she says. “Morning.”

“It’s night,” Kreuzlied says, one octave away from a complaint.

“Mm. Apparently.”

Venti tries sneakily to tug his cape away from Vennessa’s grip. Her fingers only tighten in the fabric; she raises an eyebrow at him, and then yawns again.

“Going somewhere?”

“Apparently not,” Venti sighs, giving up. Vennessa almost smiles at the mimicry. “Betrayal! Heresy! I let you take a nap and this is the thanks I get.”

“The nap was nice,” Vennessa admits, letting go of him at last. She rolls back her shoulders and starts neatening her hair. Venti sighs again, and slings his legs back over the podium to sit beside her—too late to run, and anyway, Kreuzlied has lost the immediate-murder look, so it’s perhaps moot point.

There’s a stray twig stuck in Vennessa’s hair, out of her line of sight. Venti scoots behind her and tugs it free. Vennessa leans back her head. He laughs at her, but acquiesces—combing the leaves and dirt out with his fingers, untangling the strands with care. Her hair is always surprisingly soft, for a woman with no interest in maintaining it. He has never figured out her secret.

“Ragnvindr is waiting for us,” Kreuzlied says, watching them. Despite having been led on a wild goose chase all day, his expression has warmed to something reluctantly fond. “He says, and I am quoting— ‘if you guys are late, I’m hiding the good alcohol.’”

Vennessa’s hair is as neat as Venti can make it. He pats her shoulder. “All done.”

“Thank you,” Vennessa says, and then turns around and reaches up to straighten Venti’s hat, settled lopsided on his head.

“Hehe. Thank you!”

“We’re already late, by the way,” Kreuzlied adds, a little louder. “By several hours. If you haven’t gathered that.”

Vennessa rises to her feet. Venti hops up beside her, and then beelines for Kreuzlied’s side— his button cuff on his right sleeve is undone and the other is misaligned, as if he’d dressed in a hurry. How funny. He really had been worried, hadn’t he?

“You fret,” Venti tells him, delighted by the find, and rebuttons the sleeve cuff fighting laughter.

The tips of Kreuzlied’s ears have gone red. His face is impassive as ever. “Says you,” he says stiffly. Venti grins up at him. Kreuzlied sniffs like the noble he isn’t and looks away.

Vennessa has already reached the stairs. “Come on,” she says. “If we hurry, Venti may yet convince Ragnvindr to serve us more than water.”

“At this hour he’s more likely to serve us grape juice and call it wine,” Kreuzlied murmurs under his breath. “Such a spiteful man.”

The wind is warm and the evening is golden. The distant hills sway with gentle breezes; the windmills turn ever on and on, and the houses creak and groan like only an old city can, like a house well-lived and well-loved. There is blood in the cobblestone and hope in the air.

Venti grins at their backs and follows.

There hasn’t been icy winds in Mondstadt since Decarabian— even winter, now, has eased to a softer chill. What the nobles have brought is not winter, but perhaps something close. Though it is only evening, and the sky has only just begun to bleed with the red of sunset, every shop on this street is closed; every tavern door is locked shut.

Silence is not quite winter, but it lingers the same. Stifled, still—fingers curled white knuckled, and faces turned worn from bitter storms.

Ragnvindr’s tavern is no different: the doors shut, the windows latched. They go to the back entrance, and Vennessa raps her knuckles soft on the door. There are knights about—the metal of their boots scraping at the cobble, their eyes scanning the streets—but the winds are a gossip, and Kreuzlied as paranoid as they come, and so they have made their way here unhindered.

Ragnvindr opens the door already frowning. “Late,” he announces, sharp and annoyed. “I hope you like water.”

“Fire-water?” Venti says, grinning. “Don’t mind if I—woah! Hey! Watch the cape!”

“Touch that bottle and die, useless archon,” Ragnvindr says at once. “Do you have any idea how much that cost me?” Vennessa’s smile is faint but true; Kreuzlied is laughing with his eyes. Ragnvindr only bristles further. “It’s vintage!”

“I get it, I get it!” Venti says, and swings for his wrist. “Unhand the bard already! Is this how you treat your god?”

Ragnvindr shakes him by the collar for good measure. Venti loses his patience and blasts anemo in his face.

They settle, eventually. The sky darkens and the back door is bolted securely shut; they light the lanterns in the corners, and cover every un-shuttered window with heavy curtain to hide the light. Vennessa migrates to her favorite tavern table. Venti sits himself up on the bar.

Ragnvindr serves them wine. It is sweet and smells faintly of valberries, and Venti drinks his share making sure to hide his grin behind his glass. All bark, and no bite at all.

Vennessa is practicing her writing. Kreuzlied has seated himself to face her—elbows hooked over the back of the chair, sitting backwards. It is familiar and comforting, to hear them whisper in the back. “This word?” Vennessa asks, and Kreuzlied replies, “The verb, there—see how the ends of the letters curl? It means…”

At some point they get sidetracked, as they always do. Tonight’s topic is education. Vennessa mentions offhand that her clan passes on most knowledge through stories, from elders to youth; Ragnvindr, who is drying wine glasses behind the bar counter, mentions the bards and poets of old Mond. Kreuzlied, who has perhaps taken his wine a bit too quickly, waves an empty glass and says, “No, no, you misunderstand me—I agree with you. Word of mouth is as valid a way of instruction as anything else. But when you bring power into the mix—when the laws are written down, but most of the people they pertain to can’t read them…”

“A bad contract,” Venti remarks, only half-listening. He’s thinking of a certain blockhead as he says it. Somewhat fondly. Somewhat wistful. Ah, ‘wrath of the rock!’ As funny as your name is, how useful you would be here now…

But that’s a political shitshow in the making, probably, another archon beating up a different country’s nobility. Venti sighs and downs his glass. Checks Ragnvindr is occupied. Sneaks his hand across the bar…

“It’s a goddamn scam, is what it is,” says Ragnvindr, and then pivots on his heel to smack Venti’s hand right out of the air.

“Ow!” says Venti.

“Boo-hoo,” says Ragnvindr, unsympathetic.

“In my clan, laws were more a matter of discussion,” Vennessa remarks, absently. “Not so much this… upholding of ink and paper. But I suppose that has its own pitfalls as well.”

“What we need is a balance,” Kreuzlied declares. “Ink and paper and word of mouth. Literature and song and stories. And understanding of them both. And teachers. And…and…”

“And more wine,” says Vennessa, looking down at her empty cup.

“And more wine!” Kreuzlied cries, toasting the air.

Ragnvindr rolls his eyes at them both and gets down another bottle.

But as the sky darkens, and the lamps dim, these conversations too turn to darker waters. Their voices lower and whisper as if someone is listening. Kreuzlied leans in closer, Vennessa’s voice drops to a quieter tenor. Even Ragnvindr blunts his edge. Silence, Venti thinks. Even here, even now, it is beating at the windows and howling at the door like the long-dead echo of an unyielding storm.

“The knights have almost turned on them,” Kreuzlied is saying now. “Pretty much all of my sources agree. Recent years have built up the discontent. I mean, not every knight, but—”

“Enough?”

“Enough to frighten the Lawrences, at least.”

They’ve shifted to the bar by this point of the night; Venti gives up his seat for Vennessa and sits up on the counter instead, kicking his heels beside her. Kreuzlied has been nursing the same cup of wine for the last thirty minutes, his once cheerful buzz fallen to a revolutionary’s bitterness— Ragnvindr casts him sharp looks every once in awhile like he isn’t sure whether to give Kreuzlied more wine or sneak his glass away.

“Though helpful it would be to have them fighting for our sake,” Venti remarks, leaning back on his palms on the countertop, “‘almost’ does not a rebellion make.”

It is an old conversation, a worn topic. Ragnvindr’s face pinches. “Do we even want them?” he says, voice dark with old bitterness, old guilt. “Cowards— after all this time, if they’re still fighting for those leeches, then it’s because they agree with them.”

“Oh, they’ll get their due,” Kreuzlied says. There is no anger in his voice; there is no mistaking the ice in his eyes. “But if we can use them to shift the scales…”

“If we can use them,” Vennessa remarks, softly. Venti’s restlessness must distract her, because she puts a quelling hand on his knee—Venti stops kicking and smiles apologetically back. “Venti and Ragnvindr are right. Almost… doesn’t really mean anything for us.”

“If we could just—give them a push, maybe—”

“How?”

Silence. Ragnvindr grumps at his countertops. His sword, ever close by his side, glints silver where it lies against the wall. It is ever in Ragnvindr’s line of sight; Kreuzlied is ever trying to avoid catching a glimpse of it. Venti drinks deep from his glass and thinks— of taverns, and evenings, and all the ways this could end.

The wine sits sweet on his tongue; for a moment it tastes like something sweeter. Venti spins around to sit fully on the countertop and grins. “What if—”

“Oh, archons,” says Ragnvindr, at once.

“Shush— but what if— we gave them a reason to turn?”

“Like they don’t have reason enough already?”

“A reason that matters to them,” Venti corrects. He crosses his legs and cradles his chin in his hand; his smile never falters. “Swords and shields and slavers… for such proud and noble fools, what else to change their minds than the proof that they are only tools?”

Another pause, much more considering this time. Ragnvindr’s eyes have lit up—a fellow poet, always quick on the uptake. Kreuzlied looks reluctantly intrigued.

Vennessa is already smiling. “What do you have in mind?”

Sweet drink on his tongue and silence in the air— there is no singing, these nights. They cannot risk being heard; they cannot risk being found, and there are no storm winds to drown out a skillful bard’s singsong tunes. But it feels the same, even so. The quiet warmth, nestled deep in his chest— the light, shining in their eyes.

He cannot remember them: the names of his friends. Only Gunnhildr had given it to him; only Amos, remembered by her bow. The bard had died, and the warrior refused—and Venti had not asked, besides. Names had meant little then. Names had been too much.

They are still so much—the weight to them, the promise. Barbatos, the god; Venti, the revolutionary. Names are a heavy burden, but recently Venti has become rather fond of them. Venti, the bard. Venti, the friend.

Venti, still an archon—who has, because of that, an intimate knowledge of the God of Contracts’ sharp signature.

Venti finishes the last of his wine, puts down the glass, and smiles. Vennessa, Ragnvindr, Kreuzlied— he takes in their expressions, and holds their names close, and tucks this night next to all the others. Warm as a springtime wind.

The silence weighs down their shoulders. Hope still burns in their eyes. “Ever hear of Rex Lapis?” Venti asks, and watches them usher in the end.

In the later months of autumn, when the trees turn sunset red and the rolling hills stain gold, there are at least two weeks every year when all the trees of Mondstadt’s main city seem to dump their leaves at once. They cluster in piles on the streets; they crackle and snap beneath a hundred footfalls. It is Venti’s favorite time of the season— free background music!

Master Diluc does not seem nearly as appreciative.

It is a lovely evening—the sun just starting to set, midday warmth fading into the brisk chill that make midnight fires so comforting. Venti sits outside on one of the tavern chairs and tunes his lyre; Diluc, today’s barkeep, sweeps up the leaves outside his tavern with an expression of deep irritation. If he glares any harder, Venti thinks, he’s liable to set them all on fire. What a hazard that would be!

One lyre string twangs a tad too high; Venti tightens the string and picks at it again. Across the path, the wind picks up—Diluc’s piles of leaves scatter back into the walkway, and Diluc slams down his broom to give Venti a dirty look.

“Aah, so scary!” Venti says. “Don’t blame this poor bard, please— I don’t command the breeze!”

Diluc scoffs.

“This breeze,” Venti amends. It’s a brisk wind for sure; winter is soon to come knocking. How unfortunate. It has never been Venti’s favorite season. “Besides, it adds charm!”

“So I’m wasting my time, then, is what you’re actually saying,” Diluc replies shortly.

“You said it, not me.”

He gets a click of the tongue for that comment, but a moment later Diluc sighs and rubs at his forehead, and Venti knows he agrees. This is the funniest thing about Diluc—short on words and pleasantries, but all in all he really is a mild sort.

“Whatever.” He leans the broom against the door, straightens up the chairs and tables for anyone foolish enough for a chilly drink experience, and then eyes Venti’s feet on the table pointedly. Venti sheepishly slides his heels back down to the ground.

“Hm,” says Diluc, which could mean anything. “Are you performing tonight?”

“For enough wine to keep me sated, I could be persuaded!”

“Absolutely not,” Diluc replies, at once. “I still need stock for tomorrow.”

“Boo.”

“…Three bottles. That’s as high as I’ll go.”

“Ya-hoo! I’ll take it! A pleasure doing business with you, Master Diluc.”

It’s funny, the way things change— the way things stay the same. The Angel’s Share has seen centuries, has seen rebellions and calamities and dragons corrupted: and yet Venti’s signature is still etched beneath one corner of the bar, and Ragnvindr’s habit of keeping the Flute nearby at all times has worn a permanent groove in the wall behind the counter. Ancient stone, and long-ago memories, but the laughter he hears now is present-day and filled with life.

Diluc heads inside; Venti hefts up his lyre and follows him. He likes to think he has something of an accord with Diluc: Venti sings, Diluc pays him in drink, and no mention is made of Venti’s incidental status as god and archon and ancient wind sprite. It’s not quite what Venti once had with his ancestors—but, Venti thinks, it is friendship all the same.

The bar is already halfway to full: tables filled with chattering voices, laughter all around. Venti throws himself into his usual barstool and spins to face the crowd. The usual regulars—a few unfamiliar faces. Captain Kaeya and Miss Rosaria will likely be making an appearance, then; Venti tables a few of their favorite songs in the back of his mind for when they show, and then lifts his lyre with a wave of his hand.

There is one other, in the very back of the room, who gives Venti pause. Their eyes meet. Venti blinks at him, genuinely startled, and the other doesn’t move. Just watches. Just waits.

Venti watches him back. Then he smiles, and turns away to steal a stray glass of wine from Diluc’s hand. Diluc sighs.

“Friends!” Venti announces, and throws fist and glass both into the air. Wine sloshes dangerously, but doesn’t spill. “Drink, laugh, and listen well, because I have quite the tale for you to tell…!”

It’s a rowdy night— everyone clustered inside to escape the chill, the fireplace burning warm and the drinks exchanging hands faster than even Venti can track. Venti sings and sometimes the bar sings with him, of homecomings and harvests and hearth. Someone claps him on the shoulder when the first song finishes; someone else pays for a round for all.

Venti drinks down his free ale with one swig—not his favorite drink, honestly, but who is he to say no to generosity?—and then starts on his second song. He does not look back at the other, but he keeps his eyes on that corner of the bar, all the same. This song he sings for the Angel’s Share itself— Ragnvindr’s bar, rebellion’s home, legacy and life and laughter. He sings of carving names into old wood and making drink with old friends, and even Diluc—ever removed from the mob mentality of festivity—stops to listen, something distant behind his eyes.

He pushes the first bottle of Venti’s payment across the bar when he finishes. Venti winks at him, and then pushes it back.

“No?” Diluc says, startled.

“Not in the mood for a dandelion wine, at the moment!” Venti replies, cheerful. “Though… you wouldn’t happen to have something a little sweeter, would you?”

Diluc raises his eyebrows at the name; it’s not the most popular drink, these days. But he goes and fetches the bottle all the same. Venti takes it in his hands carefully. It is precious, after all—it is something to be treated with respect.

By now the sun has left them; the sky is dark, the stars distant and shining. More wood has been added to the fire. Most of the regulars are already slurring their words. The air smells of wine and smoke.

The other is still watching. Venti turns and looks at him again. In this moment of merriment Venti is forgotten in the chaos, and so he stares at the other openly—content to be ignored, knowing no one is watching. Diluc is distracted with his patrons, and anyone else who might wonder has yet to appear.

Venti sings his third song for the stranger alone. Rebellion and bravery, freedom fought and bled for. The tower that fell, and the god that fell with it, killed by the arrows and the songs of his own people.

He sings of blue skies. He sings of that first blue sky. How blinding. How beautiful. How terrible. The ending of everything they had ever known.

The other lowers his glass to the table, and rises to his feet. Venti finishes the song with a final flourish, and hops up from the barstool. “A moment to breathe, if you please,” he tells Diluc. “Just need some fresh air…”

Diluc frowns at him, eyes scanning the bar—but the other is already gone, vanished upstairs and out of sight. Venti just smiles.

“…Don’t cause any trouble,” Diluc settles on, at last, and Venti laughs at him before scooping up his bottle and flitting off to the stairs. He makes no promises.

The upstairs is empty, but Venti had expected this, and he does little more than wave to the other patrons before heading over to the balcony. He fights to uncork the bottle as he walks—a trying task, as the cork is stuck fast, and no amount of tugging with human strength or anemo can get it loose.

He is still fighting with the bottle when he exits onto the balcony, the door nudged open with his foot. Face red and hat askew, and still, the bottle is sealed stubbornly shut.

Venti gives up. “I don’t suppose you have a bottle opener with you, do you?” he asks his companion, hopefully. “Or maybe a blade, a knife could work too…”

“Barbatos,” Dainsleif says, cooly. “I see you are the same as ever.”

“So cold!” Venti says, but then— he had expected this also, and he laughs before floating up to settle on the balcony edge. How nostalgic. He used to come here many times, with Vennessa…. But then, that was centuries ago. “I see you haven’t changed either.”

This is a loaded statement. Dainsleif’s expression shutters, and Venti glances over at him with a quiet smile, waving the bottle his way a second time.

“Anything?” he asks, hopefully. “I’ll even give you a glass. It’s not dandelion wine, but it’s quite the classic— I think you might like it!”

Dainsleif is quiet. He really hasn’t changed at all—even the length of his hair is the same. How terrible. There is immortality, and then there is to be frozen in time… Venti, at least, has chosen his fate.

The ice in his eyes… this is unchanged, too. There are times when Venti misses those days from centuries back, when Dainsleif was just a friend’s dear companion and easily amused by a bard’s foolish ways. He doesn’t miss it for long, though. He doesn’t even miss it often. After all—even now, even after everything, Dainsleif still reaches out and takes the bottle, just as Venti knew he would.

He really is too sentimental for his own good. Venti grins at him.

Dainsleif’s hand glows blue, and the cork tears free. It’s an altogether violent action—how very Dainsleif, to make his favor into a threat. Venti just smiles all the wider, and reaches out to take the bottle back. “Your glass?”

Dainsleif glares at him. But he still holds a cup out.

Venti pours him a generous helping—fond of drink he may be, but he keeps his word—and then takes a graceful drink straight from the bottle. Next to him, Dainsleif sniffs the drink suspiciously and then tastes it. Pauses. Sips at it again, a little more thoughtfully this time.

Venti takes another swill from the bottle to hide his smile, letting the drink settle over his tongue. Ginger snap and honey sweet, with barely a hint of thyme.

“…Khaenri’ahn mead, in Mondstadt?”

Hehe. He’d been wondering if Dainsleif would notice. “Technically it’s a bit before Khaenri’ah’s time,” Venti says, cheerfully. “So Dahri’ahn honey-wine, actually! What do you think?”

“Hm,” Dainsleif says. “…The ginger is too muted. The thyme, too.”

“Time changes all things—even recipes,” Venti agrees.

Dainsleif doesn’t bother responding to this. He just stares at his cup, and drinks from it again. Cautiously, carefully, as if he has forgotten how to taste it properly.

Ah, Venti thinks. For a human coming up on his fifth century…. He really does look too young for this, sometimes.

“Is it soon?” Venti asks him.

Dainsleif looks down at the streets. He has angled himself away from the distant Archon statue and spires of the church—instead he looks at everything else. The market street, the windows lit from within, the distant cliffs and the glow from Springvale, far across the lake.

“Winter,” he says, at last.

Venti sighs heavily. “So rude,” he laments, though he isn’t really surprised. Decarabian and his icy storms, and Barbatos, who made himself a spring, who tried to thaw the ice. And then that whole mess with the Tsaritsa… Of course they would pick winter. It is salt to an old wound. “During snowball fight season?”

Dainsleif doesn’t deign to give him an answer. Venti glumly takes another drink from his bottle. He feels tired, suddenly, and a little like he has been here before: standing at the edge of a moment, of so many moments just like this one. Warm drink and winds and a whisper of violence in the air. Calamity, victory, freedom. The nights before the end.

The bottle is empty. Venti sighs, and sets it down with a hollow thud. “Time to earn my keep for the next one, I suppose,” he muses. “Maybe dandelion, this time...”

Dainsleif has only half-finished his own drink; he swallows the last of it down without savoring it. The warrior would have been aghast at the sight. “I should go.”

“Did you pay your tab?” Venti wonders.

“I’ll leave that in your hands, I think,” Dainsleif replies, and stars shimmer into an expanse, stretching out across the end of the balcony. “Consider it my payment.”

“What? What? I gave you a whole glass of mead, isn’t that payment enough?” Dainsleif is already stepping into the portal. Venti squawks. “Hey—!”

His hand reaches into empty air; the stars fizzle out, burning sharp and prickling against his skin. Venti draws back his hand with a pout.

Wine on his tongue and winter in the air. Five hundred years ago, Venti had met a traveler and their companion then, as well… before calamity shook the world. How funny. How strange. All this time, and yet—

“You haven’t changed at all, stupid Dain!” Venti shouts, tears in his eyes. His poor hand! “Come back here and pay your tab already!!”

Dainsleif does not return. Venti stomps back downstairs with an empty bottle and a terrific scowl, and throws himself back into his usual barstool with all the bristled offense of a bard who just had their main playing hand lightly seared against the stars.

“My, my, what an expression,” says Kaeya, who must have arrived in the time Venti was away. “Someone steal your wine?”

Venti rolls his head over to give Kaeya a soulful look. The tricky Knight isn’t alone; Rosaria is seated beside him, as ever. She is removed from Venti’s despair, her attention entirely focused on the glass of red she nurses with the same care and consideration she gives to stabbing people in delicate places. (With precision.)

“Look at my hand!” Venti declares, still teary-eyed, and raises the limb for consideration. “My poor hand!”

Kaeya obediently looks at it. “I see,” he says. “Sunburns. How terrible.”

Rosaria snorts into her wine glass and them immediately pretends she did not.

“It is!” Venti says, and smacks the bar counter. “How can a bard play in such—”

“Don’t hit the counter,” says Diluc, with evil eyes.

“Sorry,” says Venti, meekly, hyper-aware of the fact Diluc still has his two other bottles of wine.

Kaeya laughs and swirls his drink. His smile is small and crafty and at ease, and he tips his cup towards Venti as if toasting the air. “How unfortunate. Luckily for you, we have a healer with us tonight.”

Barbara? How unusual; so rare to see the Deaconess here at this time of night. Kaeya is looking towards a table off to the side, and Venti cranes his neck over to look. Big hat brim—oooh, Lisa—and there, across from her—

“Jean!” Venti says, so surprised he forgets to be in pain. He whips back around and stares at Kaeya with wide eyes, genuinely impressed.

“Don’t look at me,” Kaeya says, but his smile has gone distinctly smug. “I simply… suggested there was a problem only someone of her caliber could handle. That it happened to be at the Angel’s Share is only coincidence.”

And Lisa backed him up with similar vague details, and by the time Jean walked through the door and realized she was played she was too reluctant to leave—after all, think of how rude it would be, to leave without even a drink! “I see, I see,” says Venti, grinning now. “I assume the problem in question was a bottle of wine?”

“Who can say,” says Kaeya, mysteriously.

“Pretty much,” says Rosaria, matter-of-factly.

“Your hand seems to have gotten better suspiciously quick, don’t you think,” says Diluc, who isn’t subtle at all.

Bothering Jean about his injury is only going to set her mind on work again, isn’t it? Urgh. How cruel.

“Everyone is so mean to me,” Venti says, lamenting, and leans his cheek against the bar. Diluc rolls his eyes.

“As sorry as I am for your…. injury,” Kaeya says, like that wasn’t just a super obvious pause or anything, “the atmosphere isn’t the same without a song. What do you say? Fancy giving us a performance?”

Venti stares at him through half-lidded eyes—hah! Weak to compliments he may be, but he’s not blind to sir Kaeya’s hypocrisy!—but anyway, even if Kaeya likes to use Venti’s bardic talents to have very mildly illegal conversations under everyone’s nose, it’s still for a good cause. Or something. And his hand really doesn’t hurt that bad…

“I quite like the one about Amos,” Rosaria remarks, equally manipulative.

“Ahh, the archer,” Venti says, perking up, and spins on his stool again, summoning his lyre to his hand. “Hehe, you’re a lady of good taste! Hm, let’s see… I have just the one.” He picks at the strings. Something quick, he thinks, something sharp and true— just like her. He smiles.

“In old Mondstadt there lived a lady fair, with ice-sharp eyes and snow-white hair…”

He sings of a god’s forgotten lover; he sings of the making of a revolutionary. Kaeya slips away to meet with a skittish lady hiding in the corner; Jean catches him going and gives him a knowing look, and Kaeya winks back at her. Lisa lifts a hand to her mouth and laughs. Rosaria sips her drink and watches the patrons of the bar with eagle eyes. Diluc polishes wine glasses.

He thinks the archer would roll her eyes, to hear this song— he thinks she would laugh. So fanciful, she might have said— little wind, you would think me the Cryo Archon with that sort of description. And the bard would have sung a grander ballad just for her amusement, and the warrior would have teased her, and the knight would have laughed—

The taste of the warrior’s wine sits sweet on his tongue. Venti finishes his song with a high note and flourish; he bows to clapping hands. Then he whirls on Diluc. “Two bottles of dandelion wine, if you please!” he says, cheerfully. “I think I’ve earned my due.”

Diluc sighs and hands one over. Venti pops the cork with a twist of the wind and tips the bottle back. Ahhh— so refreshing! “You’re missing one,” he informs Diluc, helpfully.

Diluc lifts the last bottle— and then pulls it out of range when Venti reaches for it. “Who was that you were talking with?” he says, when Venti scowls at him.

“He was at your tavern, don’t you know?”

Diluc’s eyes narrow. “That isn’t an answer. Who is he to you?”

An old friend— an old regret? But neither answer will satisfy Diluc. How funny, Venti thinks—for all he looks Ragnvindr and the warrior’s spitting image, he reminds Venti more of Kreuzlied than of either of them.

“He reminded me of an old friend,” Venti settles on, at last. It’s not even a lie, really— he’s known Dainsleif for a long time, technically… and more to the point, the man does bring to mind Vennessa. Something about duty, something about grief…. Though Vennessa has a better sense of humor!

“…So you followed him up to the balcony?”

“So paranoid, Master Diluc,” Venti says, sing-song, and when the furrow between Diluc’s brows only deepens, Venti leans against his elbow and offers him a quieter smile. “Have a little faith. Even if there’s a storm on the horizon… Mondstadt is more than ready for it.”

Diluc blinks, as close to surprised as he ever gets; Venti takes advantage of the moment to lurch forward and snatch back his last bottle of wine. “After all,” he adds, brightly. He leans back against the bar counter and waves his bottle at the tavern—Kaeya, now seated at Lisa and Jean’s table; Rosaria, and the Knights, and Amber and Noelle eating dinner on the Good Hunter patio, and Bennett and Fischl and Mona getting into their own special kinds of trouble, and Diona mixing her drinks and Eula and Mika combing the woods and Albedo and Sucrose in their labs and little Klee running around with Razor scaring all the Mondstadt fish senseless.

“Mondstadt has all of you!”

The bard and the warrior and the archer and the knight—singing, singing, forever steadfast in the winter cold. Vennessa and Ragnvindr and Kreuzlied, plotting rebellion at these drink-stained tables, creating home with their own two hands. So much time, and so many centuries—

But in this, perhaps, the people have stayed the same.

Diluc looks at him silently, his expression unreadable. Then he reaches over the bar, and picks up a wine glass, and pours Venti’s dandelion wine into the cup. “Drink properly,” he says, and that is that.

Venti grins at him.

It is not over, of course— in truth, it hasn’t even begun. There is the whisper of calamity in the winter winds; there is a careful balance, about to crack. But Venti is not afraid. The end of one thing, after all, is the beginning of another.

Venti tunes his lyre; the bar roars with life around him. He thinks of distant friends and long-ago laughter; he thinks of Dainsleif, and Vennessa, and the bard, and so many others. He feels warm. He feels as if this moment could last forever.

The wind rattles playful at the windows. Venti tilts back his head and sings.

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