thegirlwiththebambooblade

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

Imagine Learning to Love Xiao

Part 1. This can also be read as a standalone.  ---

Imagine learning to love Xiao, and loving him is like learning a different language.

The first word you learn is adeptus, and it sits on your tongue like a strange new spice.

You first hear it from Xiao, when you are so high up that Liyue feels like a memory. All around you, the shadows of mountain peaks rise from the earth like tombstones. Ginkgo trees dot the landscape, their golden leaves falling down on you like rain.

Across the two of you, a cliff face looks like it has been carved from cor lapis, rather than stone.

When you raise a hand, your fingers leave imprints on the clouds like contrails. 

Imagine this: at the highest point in Liyue, where it is said that one can come close enough to the sky to pluck the stars, you learn what Xiao is.

Adeptus.

You have heard of the word before: on Liyue Harbor, sailors who come to Liyue Harbor, smelling of salt and sea, will present weapons to merchants claiming that they had once been wielded by adepti.

You have heard it too, from historians whose feet have walked on nameless old ruins, they point you to the stone statues that guard the long-broken gates. The features have been worn away by time, the swords they once held to their chests lie crumbled at their feet. Adepti, a historian once told you, are creatures once living and turned to stone under Rex Lapis’ fingers. Set to guard ancient buildings that civilizations have long forgotten.

Xiao dismisses them all as sily mortal tales, though he doesn’t elaborate when you ask. For all the stories you have heard in Liyue, you still do not know exactly what an adeptus is.

And yet you know this: though Xiao always speaks softly, he says the word with a fierce sort of pride.

His face transforms: it glows, and you think he looks beautiful. More than the mora exchanged by merchants and sailors, or ancient books written by long-dead gods, when you think of adepti, you can only think of how Xiao looks under the stars.

And how, for him, being one of the adepti is the highest form of honor.

----

The second word you learn is karma, and it is a word you feel long before you understand it. It is there, the first time you saw him, in the way that it beats against your skin with the heaviness of his presence.

Karma, you learn, is the essence of dead gods, clinging to Xiao’s skin like a leech. It clings to yours, too, and you feel the sickness long after he is gone.

It is pain, it is a soul twisting apart, it is a fever that won’t break for days.

Karma is a word you learn intimately, alone, in a hut on the edge of nowhere. Until one day, you would wake to find a herb left on your doorstep. It is nameless and unfamiliar, no one in Qingce Village seems to know what it is.

No one that is, except for a village elder. She is blind in one eye, and so old that her skin flows over her bones like rivers over stones. She holds the plant with the sort of reverence you see with priests and their altars.

The elder helps you burn it in a censer of hammered bronze, and makes you sit in the white smoke that flows from it like water. For in Liyue’s history, you learn, karma is a plague. It is the elder’s one blind eye and the scars on her face. It is the way she looks at you with both wonder and fear, as each breath becomes easier, the longer you sit in the purified air.

And yet for all that you know of karma, imagine that all that you care to know is as simple as this:

Once, on a journey across Liyue, the two of you were caught in a storm. Rain is a common enough companion in a traveler’s life, but the thunder that day is loud enough to make the ground shake.

Lightning streaks from the sky to split the earth open, leaving flames in its wake.

It is enough to make anyone believe in the rage of gods: the way the grass burned even as water poured from the heavens.

The only shelter the two of you can find is a small structure in a barren field. A merchant’s makeshift warehouse, made out of mortar and crumbling stone. It is half-strangled by climbing vines, and Xiao has to hack away at them to get to the door.

Inside, there are earthen pots filled with merchant wares, the lids sealed by wax. Someone has carved Rex Lapis’ symbol into one of the walls: one of Liyue’s most common pleas for protection.

Xiao looks at the place with distaste, his eyes lingering on the symbol for a second longer.

“You should be safe here,” he says.

You think of the way he says it: you. The rain was never a threat to him.

“Thank you for finding this for me, Xiao.”

He glances at you, surprised, and you see it: a hesitation, a shyness. He is not someone who is used to being thanked.

“You're welcome.”

He looks away quickly, as if your gratitude is embarrassing to him, and you busy yourself with lighting a fire. He never did like being observed in moments like this. Moments where he is something other than adeptus.

The two of you sit shoulder to shoulder as the fire is lit, as the flames blaze and chase away shadows and the chill of the rain. It transforms the small space into something warmer, cozier. Even the rain does not sound so loud, as the fire crackles merrily.

When you think of karma, you remember this: that sharp intake of breath that breaks through the silence.

It is Xiao and the way he tensed, as if bracing for a blow.

It is the way the air grows heavier, denser around you, as if you are breathing other than air.

"I should leave."

He speaks through clenched teeth, as if to open his mouth would let loose a scream.

"Don’t."

He doesn’t hear you, and his eyes are glazed over. You remember thinking this: you have never experienced a pain so great that it blots out the senses, the way rain clouds would blot out the stars. But for Xiao, it is part and parcel of his life.

When he stands, fear climbs in your throat at the thought that he will simply disappear. He is adepti, and has no need to walk when he can will himself someplace else. He has only ever traveled on foot for your sake.

“Xiao. Please stay.”

When he looks at you, you can see the fear in his eyes. And you know that he is not thinking of himself, of the way the muscles in his arms tensed with each new wave of agony. No, he is thinking of sickness, and long days spent alone, and a fever that won’t break.

If Xiao is afraid, it is for your sake. If he leaves to suffer the pain alone, in some unknown place, it is because he didn’t wish that you suffer it, too. With the life he has lived, you would have thought that the kindness would have long ago been driven out of him.

But just like Xiao, it endures.

And you must do whatever you can to make sure that he does not endure alone.

When you reach up to take his hand in yours, his palm feels cold, his fingers frozen. It is almost instinct, the way he holds on to you, and the way he slides his fingers through yours. And you think that perhaps even adepti learn to seek comfort in times like this.

There is a burning in your eyes at the way they tremble against your bare knuckles. You barely need to pull him down before Xiao collapses onto you, as if he can’t hold himself upright any longer.

His hands are cold, his skin burns hot.

He breathes, face pressed against your shoulder. Water drips down from his damp hair to slide down his cheeks like tears.

“We’re out of medicine.” Guilt wells up in your throat. “I still--I haven’t collected all of the ingredients yet.”

Xiao doesn’t answer. Even this small contact with him hurts, your skin feels alive, twisting apart the way two currents would crash to tear apart the sea.

But you don’t want to let him go.

“Is there, is there anything else I can do to help you?” you ask. “Please. Tell me how to make it better.”

“Nothing.”

Xiao says with the calmness of someone who has gone through this a thousand, thousand times, and will go through it a thousand times more.

“Nothing,” he says again.

You jolt when you feel his hand, flat against the expanse of your back.

And he holds you so close that you can feel each ragged breath he takes, stuttering in his chest as if his lungs refuse to take in air.

“Just this.”

You have to speak through the swell of emotions around your throat, as you hold him back. “Okay. Just this.”

Imagine that, for all that you have learned of karma, this all you care to know: karma is the weight of the sky forced to balance on the curve of one’s shoulders and to carry it for eternity.

It is Xiao, forced to bear that weight alone.

It is the way you can still feel his hand across your back, and the way he falls asleep against you, limp with exhaustion, and the way his fingers won’t stop trembling even in his sleep.

It is the way how, even without words, he asks you to stay.

----

Imagine Wangshu Inn in summertime, when the trees are alive with golden fire. Silvergrass as tall as a grown man dot the riverbank, and their plumes are so thick that you can barely see the water running underneath.

Even the wares of merchants have changed: crowns of woven silk flowers that you can wear in your hair, qingxin flowers plucked from the mountain peaks and bolts of cloth made from the cocoons of pale white worms.

Imagine crystalflies, their wings so fragile that they live for mere seconds after they have kissed the Archon statue. They hover against your fingertips before disappearing like morning dew.

Imagine that for all its ripe beauty, you spend that summer inside, on the top floor of Wangshu Inn, where Xiao resides.

At sunset, when the artists come out with their easels to paint the vivid sky, you study the way the light makes Xiao’s skin look like fire. It reminds you of sunsettias and how, in summertime, the trees in Mondstadt are so full of them that their branches would bow.

But Xiao tastes sweeter than any fruit you have ever known, and you drink in his sighs like rainwater.

You remember his fingers, hard and calloused, and the way he removes the silk flowers that a merchant has braided in your hair, one by one until the petals lay scattered on the floor like stars.

At nighttime, the inn has no shortage of festivities. Children gather around storytellers to hear their tales of ancient gods that have shaped the landscape of Liyue. Men and women drink sour rice wine and gamble their mora away at the tables.

Merchants sell sticky rice buns made from the plumes of horsetails, and full moon eggs cooked in bamboo steamers.

And yet, all that you know of these activities are from the sounds that float up to the top floor. The clack of gambling tiles and the roar of drunkards and the laughter of children can be heard, carried by the wind as it drifts in through the window to cool your heated skin.

Xiao grunts in annoyance at the sounds, but stills when you kiss him, slow and languid, to taste the osthmanthus syrup that still lingers on his tongue.

“It’s noisy,” he mumbles, though the heat in his voice is gone.

“I can close the window,” you say, moving to get up.

“No.”

His hand is heavy on your hip and prevents you from moving.

He hesitates before adding, “It’s fine. Stay here.”

And you settle again against him, cherishing the steady rise and fall of his chest, as the two of you watch the moon rise.

Imagine learning to love Xiao, and loving him is like trying to learn a new language. You would learn words that sit on your tongue like a strange new spice.

You have learned adeptus, and you have learned karma, and imagine that, during that one golden summer, you learn that sometimes words do not need to be said at all.

#xiao x reader #genshin impact x reader #xiao #genshin impact #reader insert #experimental writing

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

Vigilant Yaksha

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

Thoma’s entrance 

#Genshin impact #Thoma #More like genshin SIMPACT

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

Imagine falling in love with Kaeya

Imagine falling in love with Kaeya, and it happens so slowly that you don’t even know it is happening at all.

Imagine falling in love with Kaeya, except the falling has happened long ago.

It is not like fire nor like a lightning strike that’s sung about by soft-voiced bards that can be found around Mondstadt’s fountains, exchanging mora for songs.

Instead, it is home.

It is the warmth of his shoulder against yours at night, as the two of you walk the empty streets of Mondstadt, and the only light left are the street lamps and the glittering of the stars.

It is the way his words make you laugh, rather than flustered, when he leans in so close that his lips touch your ear.

It is the comfort of a smile, teased out of you when no one else can.

Imagine falling in love with Kaeya, and it is this: the well-worn path of a decade-long friendship, and the sickening terror of asking for more.

#kaeya x reader #kaeya alberich x reader #kaeya #kaeya alberich #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact #i will just write #for all of the bois

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

finished the flushed faces! went with kazuha, xiao, scaramouche, and diluc since i don’t draw them very often 😳✨

#genshin impact #kazuha #xiao #scaramouche #diluc #blushy bois #so cute #nailed their expressions and characterizations so well

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

Aw, thank you for the rec, @dip-writes!

fanfic recs (dc, batfam)

documenting some of my fav fics on ao3 as of rn. all of these are series as i tend to love the experience of longer fics. feel free to add on your recs! would love some wholesum steph content if anyone has any

the changeling sequence by @silverspidertm2 (finished) - au where jason, post resurrection and in the al ghuls compound, runs away with damian back to gotham

deluge in wasteland by @silverspidertm2 (finished) (talia/bruce) - au where talia and bruce grow close again during her pregnancy with damien 

anything in the broken chords can sing a little series (finished) by @spidergwenn which includes:

• what the water gave me (dick/reader) - where dick watches as reader/oc, a reporter called koshka, is killed at the docks. yet somehow she lives, though not quite fully human anymore 

•  mad dog (tim/reader) - where tim meets areum, who is stephanies roommate and secretely from a family of werewolves 

•  red sun (jason/reader) - where jason is being hunted down by demons, angry that he escaped death, and enlists a prophet to help him 

the pizza delivery girl’s survival guide to gotham city by @thegirlwiththebambooblade  (unfinished) (jason/reader) - arkham canon where reader, a pizza delivery girl, gets roped into trouble 

gunshot wounds and bulletshells by @cuthwyn (unfinished) - jason todd goes to arkham for real 

red who? by @psychovigilantewrites (unfinished) (jason/reader) (tw: smut and dubcon) reader is the new robin, becoming a target when red hood appears in gotham with jason also targetting her as a civilian 

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

I know it’s old but I just slammed back that Genos fic and uMGOD it’s the cultural details for me!! The tender romance and soft touches for me!! THE PROTECTIVENESS for me! And that fucking twist? Incredibles level bro, I was YELLING. Emiko?? Slapped. The MC? Slapped. Your characterization of Sitama was so on point I - whew.

Ah, I love it when people read my older stories, anon! I'm so so happy that you enjoyed so much of Ain't No Place for a Hero, thank you!

#morveren speaks #the ask #and the answer #anon #oh god i legit didn't even realize the similarity to the incredible until someone pointed it out to me once XD #this ask made me smile

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

Hello :) I recently got back to reading comics after 2 years or so, and while getting back i found pizza girl's fanfic and it helped me a lot into reconnecting to jason, and i may or may not have read all of it at once lol. I'm a big fan of the slow burn and mostly the attention you put into writing about Jason's mental health. For real, it feels like I'm actually living all that, not just reading and pretending I'm there, hope that made sense. Anyway, I really love your writing mwah :*

Hello, anon! I'm so glad that my fic is helping you reconnect with Jason! Thank you for enjoying the slow burn and the focus on Jason's mental health, those two were definitely one of the main goals I had when I started the fic! Thank you so much for this ask!

#morveren speaks #the ask #and the answer #anon #i just have a particular distaste for #magical relationship cures all mental health problems #so at least in that regard i knew from the start that I wanted it to be a slow burn #and a recovery that doesn't stem from a love interest alone

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

You are one of my favourite dc writers, your characterizations are always so spot on.... then I saw you posted stuff for Genshin and I thought I was having a fever dream. I didn't know I needed this thank you so much <3

A...a fever dream? 😂 That description made me laugh. Thank you, anon, I'm so glad that you enjoyed both my DC work and my stuff for Genshin Impact!

#morveren speaks #the ask #and the answer #anon

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

Do you have any forms of social media other than tumblr?

I'm afraid not, anon!

#morveren speaks #the ask #and the answer #anon #now i'm sort of wondering why you're asking? lol

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

Been LIVING with the recent content queen THANK U. anyways have an amazing July💕💕💕

Oh, goodness, thank you anon! I'm so glad you're so supportive since this is my first time writing for Genshin Impact, and I am highly enjoying myself. I hope you enjoy your July, as well!

#morveren speaks #the ask #and the answer #anon #unless you count that one hilichurl crackfic i wrote

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

From this post

#Yanfei #Childe #Genshim impact #Ace attorney #I would die for yanfei

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

天動萬象 - I will have order

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

new girlie just dropped ! i have a brainrot your honor 🥲

#Yanfei #Genshin impact #I love her she's so cute

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

Eyyyy fellow Hollow Knight fan!!

Hi there! Always so good to meet a fellow fan of such an amazing game!

#morveren speaks #the ascent #and the answer #uhohitsemmy #reminds me that i need to replay it

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

Last one.

#genshin impact #xiao #excuse me while bawl my eyes out #what a stunning impactful piece

[thegirlwiththebambooblade]

#Genshin Impact #Childe #So pretty! #the detail!