“You wait, little bird, in a gilded cage, as the gentle breezes sigh on. I know, little bird, that your broken wing is not where your true shame lies.”

The vivid butterfly dawn pales into day as Venti finishes his farewell song, a few lonesome feathers in one hand and a glass of dandelion wine in the other. There comes a soft wind, longingly rustling his hair and asking if it could carry his burdens away.

Venti takes a long sip of wine, rolling its various subtle flavors over his tongue as he waits for the breeze to settle itself, then blows his last few feathers over the ocean on a puff of his own breath.

No sign of Xiao on the horizon, he notes. A pity, perhaps, but not at all unusual. Xiao comes and goes from his dream as he pleases these days, often arriving at dawn and leaving at dusk, with gaps of weeks or more between visits.

At least he’s not entirely alone! Sunrise thoroughly appreciated, Venti shifts in his window ledge seat to face the falcon perched inside.

“It’s been a while since you were allowed to stay so long, Vennessa,” he muses, fingers itching for something more than a mere half-empty wine glass to fiddle. “Are you sure your wings are not aching to fly?”

The expression the falcon— Vennessa— wears in her eyes when she meets his gaze reads as stern, perhaps even chiding, concern. She shifts on her perch, ruffling her feathers for a brief moment before fluttering to his side.

Venti smiles, allowing his heart to warm with fondness as she starts to preen. “Well, since we have the time to catch up, how about I show you a little snippet of my latest project? Now, bear in mind that it’s still in its rough stages, and I can’t quite seem to find a pretty tune to set it to yet either, but—” here, he downs the rest of his wine glass all in one go “—you never were the type to judge a bud before it blooms.”

He pulls out his lyre from the thin air and gives the strings a few absent strums. Vennessa settles at the sound, staring at him with bright, attentive eyes, and makes a noise somewhere between a hiss and a croak— a falcon’s form of agreement.

The sound of it curdles guilt inside Venti’s gut. He misses the sound of her song, but when visiting places outside the heavenly domain, ascendants to Celestia must give up something in exchange. Snatches of voice are nothing unusual— in fact, parts of Venti’s own throat have been stolen for so long, he cannot even dream of the priceless words he might have spoken with them anymore— but most can at least still sing.

(He wonders what Celestia must be planning, what help they must have subjected this dear child of his to give, to warrant snatching her whole voice away.)

Still, there’s a reason he’s a bard: who else will sing for the silenced ashes the stories of their pasts? Some might say that ‘silence is golden’, but ‘speaking is priceless’ is one of the first things he was ever taught, so he hums a little warm-up and gets comfortable in his seat upon the lighthouse’s windowsill.

“Pretty flocks of feathers fly
“On the wind into the sky,
“Lost by birds who might not miss them
“Falling from their lofty lives.

“Flightless things all on their own,
“Left on the ground, I feel a throe.
“Do these fellows know my woe?
“Or in my feelings, am I alone?”

Before he starts reciting the next stanza, Venti feels the fabric of his dream folding at the edges, and in walks a familiar presence.

“…Xiao?” he says aloud, surprise fluttering his lashes as if suddenly woken up. Vennessa makes a sound— evidently noticing that his poem is incomplete— to which Venti can only offer a sheepish smile in apology.

“He’s not around very often, so I must have forgotten to mention him to you,” he explains with an awkward half-laugh. He grabs the window frame to steady himself as he leans halfway out into the open air.

“Xiao!” he calls. The salty sea breeze nips the apples of his cheeks with their chill; his mouth curls upward at its sharp familiarity as he scans the castle grounds for the visiting yaksha.

Immediately, Xiao materializes on the beach below in a flush of green-black mist, turning his head this way and that in search of the voice who called him; the sudden whoosh of wind accompanying his appearance has Venti holding onto his hat to keep it from flying away.

“That’s him,” Venti says to Vennessa, letting go of the window frame to point out the masked man in question. “He always shows up right when I least expect, wearing that mask for monstrous affect.”

A bloom of endearment settles over his heart like a feather-down blanket warmed in the afternoon light. He continues to watch Xiao search in vain for a moment, amused by the way it never seems to occur to him to look up, before he finally has mercy on him.

“Xiao~” he calls again, holding the notes of his name like he would a lovely melody, and this time, Vennessa glides down from the lighthouse tower to help catch Xiao’s eye.

Xiao startles at Vennessa’s appearance, taking a little step back to accommodate her presence, but still manages to follow when she guides his gaze towards the sky.

High above them, Venti waves his hat in giddy greeting, swinging his legs back and forth. “Yoo-hoo~!”

Xiao teleports to the base of the lighthouse and starts climbing up the wall in leaps and bounds while Vennessa circles the tower overhead.

“Hello,” Venti greets as Xiao approaches.

Xiao simply grunts as he jumps to catch the window ledge. Scrambling back into the lantern room, Venti rights his hat with a laugh while Xiao hauls himself in through the window, as he often does when he comes to visit.

“Lovely weather we’re having today,” Venti says teasingly to the visiting adeptus settling into the window sill seat. “I hope the fresh air and the coming spring’s breeze makes that climb worth your stay.”

Of course, despite settling into this routine of visits and chats with Venti, it seems that poor Xiao has still not quite gotten the hang of small talk, always ignoring Venti’s friendly comments about the wind and weather in favor of cutting straight to his point.

“What were you doing earlier?” he asks this time. Both tone and volume are level, and combined with the natural intensity of his mask’s attentive gaze, it would be easy for him to come off as accusatory.

However, Venti senses that this is but a well-crafted veneer meant to disguise plain, childlike curiosity, and, well— Venti has always had a soft spot for that type of sweet earnestness.

“I was sending fallen feathers away on the breeze!” he brightly explains, clapping his hands together in delight. “Feathers grant the birds their affinity for flight and freedom; it’s just so sad to watch them waste away inside the castle grounds. At least by releasing them on the wind, I can dignify them with a send-off where they are free to fly once more.”

His explanation finishes a shade more quietly, more soberly, than it began. It sits between them like a ghost at a dinner party hosted on the tenth anniversary of its own funeral as he stares out the window, past Xiao, with eyes more faraway than the blue of the sky.

( Where is Vennessa? he wonders, searching for any trace of her in the heavens. I could have sworn I saw her flying back up here… Unless…)

As if on cue, the Falcon of the West swoops in through the window, much to Venti’s relief.

“The bird,” Xiao says when it happens, having ducked right in the nick of time.

The sound of his voice reminds Venti of his presence, and the bard blinks owlishly for a moment, his arms outstretched for Vennessa to land in them. “Oh!” he says as the falcon herself settles into his hands, and he hugs her close to his chest.

“This is Vennessa,” he hastily explains, gently stroking her feathers. “She’s a dear friend of mine, a hero of Mond whose deeds have made even Celestia fond.”

Xiao merely stares at the bird. His eyes, the only thing really visible beneath his mask at the moment, are unreadable but not without feeling. Eventually, he gives her a curt nod and allows his sights to shift, taking in the rest of the room.

Ah, right, he’s never been here before, Venti thinks, wishing suddenly that he kept a bit more in here. However, before he can offer Xiao any sort of accommodations (by which he means wine, to not just pass the time, but also distract from the fact that there’s not even anywhere to sit aside from the window ledge), the yaksha’s stare settles on Venti with a sort of heavy atmospheric pressure.

“Do you need anything done?” Xiao offers, voice low and calm as always. (He sounds almost as if he’s about to fall asleep today, how cute.)

Vennessa starts wriggling in his arms. Venti heaves an over-dramatic sigh as he lets her off to her roost near the lantern. Wandering over to the window seat, he plops himself down right across from Xiao, their legs so close, their knees nearly graze.

“Nothing but company, I’m afraid,” he declares with an air of false forlorn. He watches the little gears turn behind Xiao’s golden eyes for a moment as he processes the reply, then changes the subject.

“You seem tired,” Venti comments, pulling out his lyre to allow whimsy to start plucking at its strings. “I’ll be quite all right as long as you’re near, so why don’t I compose a lullaby? The good adeptus, of nightmare’d career, surely is worthy of sweet dreams denied?”

The atmosphere around Xiao darkens as sharply as a bolt of lightning. “No,” he replies, like the word itself is wound tight on a wire. “I cannot. I’m not allowed to take those.”

Venti tilts his head at Xiao curiously. “But you wouldn’t be stealing anything,” he points out. “A dream belongs to the one who bore it. Even if you dream within my dream, what you make will be all your own.”

The realness of Xiao’s mask, which tends to always flutter around its edges, starts to solidify. “That’s not important,” he brusquely clips. A second of pause, during which Venti watches the line of tension visible in Xiao’s jaw begin to unfurl. “It is none of your concern. My orders are for nightmares and nothing more. It is simply how I am to pay recompense.”

“Recompense?” Venti blurts out, furrowing his brow. Is this about those karmic debts of his again? “Recompense for what?” He can’t have sinned against Celestia, or else he’d be a mon—

Xiao’s mask starts shifting and mixing into his face, eyes clouding over in teal as painted lines on wood soften into makeup upon skin.

Venti feels his heart drop out of his chest; the normally negligible thrum of his gnosis turns painful as it now vibrates against his ribs.

Oh no.

(He isn’t sure if he keeps the words thought in his head or shares them out loud, for all he can hear are the celestial threats buzzing in his ears.)

He’s transforming, Venti realizes, a shiver of a memory settling beneath the skin of his arms as he watches those dark horns sharpen and fangs turn from wood to bone. He finds his own head pressurized with thoughts of what could have gone wrong in the waking world, each fearful thread a howling gale until—

“I killed a child,” Xiao says softly. There’s a faint raspy quality taking hold of his words, and Venti swears he sees the mask’s jaw move in time with his words.

Oh, Venti thinks, his fears quieting down, it was a tragedy, not a sin.

“We all knew it was long before her time, but my own karmic debts must have driven her mad when we tried to save her,” he continues. His voice remains even in both strength and tone, as if he is simply stating a fact detached from himself.

Indeed, the amount of self-control Xiao displays over his own frame is nothing short of remarkable, hiding every possible sign of emotion through a rigid stillness the undisciplined Venti could never even dream of achieving. “For my sins, I should have paid with my life. Instead, I was told to sleep for all of a human lifetime.”

Seemingly unaware of the fact that his mask is now a part of him, Xiao resettles his jaw like a yawning lion, allowing Venti to catch sight of the rest of his burgeoning canines. Yet, despite the frightful, dangerous appearance, the words that come from the adeptus’s mouth continue to be nothing more than quiet, wistful repentances, more delicate and gentle than petals on the spring breeze. “Quelling people’s nightmares is all I can do to atone.”

Venti sits quietly with Xiao’s confession for a bit, eyes fixed upon all the fresh details of Xiao’s mask-turned-face.

“That still doesn’t make it a sin,” he wants to say to the wreath of horns adorning Xiao’s head, trailing down his neck like thorns on a rose. “To dream,” he’d like to add to the mane of pin-feathers poking through rough skin, filling out downy layers between scales like frost upon leaves. “To have the beautiful mirror of your own ugly prison.”

But who is he to declare what sins are there in Liyue? He is not Xiao’s Archon; he cannot grant the adeptus the forgiveness Venti thinks he deserves. And even if he could, would it even free the sinner from himself?

So he keeps those thoughts to himself. “I’ve… done terrible things too,” he admits instead.

Xiao looks up, sharp-horned and sharp-toothed, but eyes tamed with regret.

(Venti looks down, for monsters are unable to meet a human’s face.)

“I’ve said this before, but I’m not exactly as I may seem. I’m also an immortal of sorts, and I… partook in the Archon War, so to speak. And, when Mondstadt was set free from the Lord of the Tower, I was the one upon whom the duty of protection befell. I wish I could say I did the job well, but…” (He laughs nervously, unable to meet Vennessa’s gaze.) “I’m not strong enough to act all on my own.”

(Venti doesn’t know what happened to his lyre.)

Surprisingly, it is Xiao who breaks their silence.

“You were enough for me,” he says, voice low.

Venti finally looks back at Xiao and finds the adeptus shedding feathers to the wind as all his demonic traits start to fall away, leaving behind just the young man and his wooden mask, staring out to sea.

“Perhaps it was me,” Venti says, carefully, like he’s sidestepping a boom blossom, “but despite my position, I’m still just a bard. I’ve failed more people than there are songs in the library. I’m sure you’ve heard of the disastrous governance and fall to corruption that’s happened to Mondstadt in the past.”

Xiao catches his eye, and he flinches.

“I know that in Liyue, the saying goes that ‘a life belongs to the one who saved it,’ but I don’t believe you owe me anything,” Venti hastily explains. “I’m not saying your life means nothing to me! Just that your life is your own; don’t tie yourself down to me because of it.”

His eyes flick down to the Anemo Vision embedded in Xiao’s glove, and his stomach turns at the thought of Xiao treating him with more reverence than he deserves.

I’d rather you not return at all if debt is all that obliges you back.

He lifts his face to meet Xiao’s steady, amber gaze again only to find the yaksha eyeing Venti’s own (false) Vision. The pale gold half-wing on its casing catches waning light.

“You are no master of mine,” Xiao declares. “I am here because I choose to be.”

In a way, that’s what worries Venti the most. That Xiao is here out of blind devotion to a god who has done nothing worth his earnest love.

Venti chews his lip. “Why?”

The yaksha’s mask, at last so solid and real again, begins to flitter at the edges again. For all of a moment, Venti can’t help but dread Xiao’s reasons.

But what happens next is new.

“I want to keep going,” Xiao says, while the mask around his left eye disintegrates. Flecks of teal light fall from the blackened wood like fine sand off a windswept cliff to reveal, for the first time, a perfectly clear view of his left eye, still bright as gold with slitted pupils, and its sharp, red eyeliner identical to Morax’s. “I lead a life of endless slaughter for the sake of others. I know my ultimate fate will be to suffer, but like my elder siblings before me, I must refuse to surrender to futility.

“And you…” Here, Xiao hesitates. His eyes flicker with internal conflict; Venti catches a glimpse of a furrowed brow before the mask obscures it once more. “Your music. I…”

A lump forms in Venti’s throat.

It is so hard to be needed by anyone. (Ask his people— they don’t. Not really, anyway.) How in Teyvat is he supposed to handle a situation like this with any modicum of grace?! He’s a wind sprite, not a king; his powers have never extended so far as to be needed.

His gaze creeps over to Vennessa, preening on her perch.

(Well, almost never.)

Xiao exhales audibly, evidently frustrated.

Though Xiao is but an arm’s length away, Venti feels as if there is a yawning gulf between them. Still, the desire to reach out and cradle Xiao’s face in his hands runs its head against the cage of his ribs.

“Don’t force yourself,” he says.

The breeze cards its gentle fingers through their hair.

“It saved me,” Xiao quietly confesses.

And just like that, Venti’s breath is softly stolen away.

Oh, he thinks, in a fashion that by all means should be miserable but is somehow dredged with glittering flecks of hope instead.

This is not a disaster already in motion. There are no bodies piled up at the door, no lists of casualties to be made. This is a life he can save, maybe. This is a life who wants to be saved, not for the sake of grace, but for freedom from its unfair fate.

(There is an unruly wind in Xiao yet, dying to keep alive, and for once, Venti thinks he can help with that.)

“I’m just a bard,” he repeats, careful, and his lyre returns. “Nothing more, nothing less. Perhaps it was my music which saved you; perhaps it simply encouraged your own strength to carry you through the darkness. Either way, I’m glad you’re still here.”

Xiao is quiet after that. But it is a good quiet, draped softly around his person like a feather-down blanket on a cold winter’s morning. Venti fiddles with his lyre strings, a tiny smile loosening his face, while Vennessa sings along the best she can.

The day passes by like a wistful late summer daydream: airy as a cloud and full of sweet light while time slips by like clear stream water through open fingers. But, just autumn looms over the calendar marking the carefree summer days, so too does the sunset threaten to fall far too soon.

Venti glances out the window to check the time against the sky and tries not to sigh. “You probably need to leave soon, don’t you?” Venti asks as daylight begins to burn. He hops off the window ledge to tend to the lighthouse lantern for the night.

Xiao merely stares at him, his catlike eyes half-dilated with what Venti can only tentatively pin down as curiosity before taking sudden interest in the floor.

“…It’s almost time for Lantern Rite,” he says, matter-of-factly.

“Oh?” Venti tilts his head, beckoning Xiao to continue even though he’s not looking.

“If this were the waking world, I would be busy for the next few weeks, as it is the most active time of year for monsters in Liyue. However, I have noticed that the opposite is true in dreams, and that nightmares around Lantern Rite are nearly nonexistent.”

Venti pauses his maintenance to peer at Xiao, who continues to avoid eye contact. Is he…?

Whether Xiao is or isn’t trying to intentionally imply an invitation doesn’t seem to matter, since it doesn’t look like he plans on making it clear any time soon. Venti decides to pick up the hint and toss it out like a line out to sea.

“Ah, that’s exciting! I’ve never been in Liyue during Lantern Rite,” he says. He pretends to search for the gas valve to turn the beacon on. “It sounds like such a beautiful sight, to see the city’s love in lights.”

Xiao makes a ruffled sort of hmph! sound. “Most often, it’s a time for humans to fill the harbor with their glowing junk,” he declares. He delivers the line in a very practiced manner, like he’s done this song and dance a thousand times before somehow and this is merely his muscle memory speaking for him.

And he must catch something false in his instinct to deny, because he loses that dismissive air a second later. He’s still a bit prickly, but Venti gets the sense that something vulnerable lies hidden underneath.

“It’s childish,” Xiao says, “to expend so much time and effort to celebrate something so fleeting. But… since I do not wish to disturb the people’s sweet dreams, I will likely take my refuge here.”

Venti grins as he lights the beacon. “I look forward to your return, O Vigilant Yaksha.”

Xiao nods, his expression unreadable behind his fully realized mask, then vanishes into threads of black smoke.

The sunset fades for the sake of constellations to bloom above starlit ocean. Venti turns to gush his giddy excitement to Vennessa, only to realize her roost is an empty nest.