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Sumeru’s grand desert was vast and hot, two things that Aether… did not like. He tended to roast under the raw fury of the sun, and being the feral-ish traveler that he was, he tended to get lit up as a result of that, always running into the dunes without much cover. This was only worsened by the fact that the desert winds tended to get into his face, weakening his vision and irritating him all over.

Aether hated sand. It was coarse, rough, and it got everywhere.

Fortunately, Nilou granted him something to protect himself with. A fine wool cloak that kept him cool, a keffiyeh to protect his face and head, and even goggles with narrow slits that protected his eyes. With this, Aether thrived in the desert. It allowed him to keep moving about, taking his hunts to this once impregnable section of Teyvat.

The desert of course was one void of water. Countless people across history have died of thirst, which formed a culture that centered around the construction of caravanserai, with the use of wells, springs, and who knows what else to keep cool. Water was precious, and none were as precious as the wild oases of the world. One would think that mapping an oasis was easy, but it was like they were living mirages. One moment they were there, appearing as if to grant mercy to travelers and nomads alike, and the next they were gone, as if they existed solely for that mere moment.

Aether would manage to find one of these oases, and there he’d find a familiar face, all alone by the bank of the oasis’ coveted pool of rejuvenating water.

Nilou.

She was dancing, as she always was. Though he never took her as the type to dance in a place like this. Out in the desert, where the sandy winds could irritate her soothing skin, and the ceaseless heat would make her sweat a whole oasis of her own. He would approach her and she would hear him, turning to face him, blushing. He was obscured by everything he wore, but she knew it was him. 

“Aether, you’re here again. Good to see you’re wearing the wool.”

Aether merely growled in response. It was a calm kind of growl. He tended to just growl in general rather than speak, it was his language. Nilou watched as Aether sat by a stone near the water, he looked at her and then back out at the oasis. Paimon didn’t seem to be with him this time, likely on account of her not having a little wool cloak of her own. Well, that and the desert winds would likely blow her away. So it was just him now.

“Rawr,” Aether growled out from under the scarf that covered his mouth. Nilou had to deduce what he meant, though considering the circumstances of their encounter, it was pretty easy as to what he was saying. He was asking her a question.

That question of course being “why are you out here?”

“I’m practicing a dance,” Nilou answered him. She reached into the bag she took with her. It was a completely ordinary knapsack filled with a canteen, some desert faring gear, and finally, some scrolls. She would pull one out and approach him, unraveling it to showcase its contents.

Aether gazed upon the scroll, revealing a series of intricate movements amidst what he could only describe as a sandstorm.

“It’s called The Dance of the Scorching Sands,” said Nilou. “It’s something I’ve taken interest in, part of a lost culture of Natlan’s greater history. It used to be done by the people that called the desert home, said to command the very sands themselves. It was said they worshiped a demon that ruled the sands before the great war, though I don’t know if that part is true.”

“Why this dance?” grunted Aether, forming actual words.

“I guess I just wanted to know. It’s so odd, not like the other moves,” Nilou said as her fingers grazed over the illustrations. It depicted the dancer, though they had two silhouettes amidst the sandstorm, moving quickly like its hostile winds. “It wants me to be fast, but I don’t know if I can do all that while remaining graceful. I could only wonder what these ancient people did to achieve it. The energy. The passion. I want to embody it too, make them live on through me.”

“They follow a demon.”

“That’s what the people say, it’s been a long while, and in the end they’re still from Natlan too. No more and no less. They’re gone, this is all that’s left of them.”

Aether nodded. He could understand that. Nilou would resume dancing as Aether assessed the scroll. This dance of the scorching sands was an interesting one. He wondered if these ancient people had two pairs of limbs, it was the only way they could make sense of these movements. One was a lighter ochre and the other in a brownish black, both colors mixed together at the core of each silhouette, indicating transition from one to the other in a rapid yet fluid motion.

It was a madman’s dance. Only a spider could possibly dance this dance.

He gazed at the writings on the scroll.

The Worm Crawls

The Dunes Quake

The Sky Trembled

To What The Dance Makes

That Which Is Scarce

Buhangin Demands

One In The Storm

The Winds And Sands

Aside from that, there were depictions of what seemed to be a worm along the length of the scroll, perhaps it was the demon that the people worshiped. Something definitely didn’t sit right with Aether. No people would willingly serve a demon, no? There had to have been something else involved. Spurned by divinity, perhaps? Manipulation of whole bloodlines? Simple demonization? The demon of the scorching sands, whom he assumes is called Buhangin as the poem stated, didn’t exactly have the kindest appearance.

Aether looked up from the scroll to watch Nilou dance. He observed her movements, focusing on the effort painted on her face as she spun her forearms over each other while having one leg raised all the way up before quickly moving to a different position. She looked silly, and it made him smile. He would lose  track of time as he just watched her, only ever breaking eye contact whenever she looked back at him, which of course triggered a bit of blushing as now she had Aether as an audience member for her admittedly failed attempts at replicating an ancient dance.

The sun still roared up above, and its heat was felt all throughout the desert. The oasis’ soothing feel had begun to evaporate, as if it itself was going to disappear like another mirage, buried under the sands without a trace. The desert is alive , Aether thought as his hand grazed along the hot sand. He could feel it moving, swelling, pulsating. It too was dancing. Dancing along with Nilou. Though he couldn't help but feel as if it was also…

Upset.

The entire desert shook, the sand turned into a sea, the oasis itself sunk in, the sand burying the pristine waters and even swallowing the trees, killing any semblance of shade for the two. The dunes grew high until one of them exploded, and from it arose an enormous worm. A tan serpentine beast of incredible bulk with a wide beak-like mouth sporting several sets of sharp teeth. 

Aether pulled the scroll from out of the sand before it too could be swallowed by the desert. Shaking the sand off the parchment, his eyes focused once more on the scroll’s illustration of the worm. It was a perfect match with the one that was before them now. This was Buhangin . The demon of the scorching sands.

Buhangin let out another roar, forcing the desert to shake. The dunes undulated like waves as a sandstorm blew both Aether and Nilou away. Aether hissed as he felt the sand touch his skin, it stung with heat, and it was trying as much as it could to get all over him. He covered the slits in his goggles to prevent them from getting through and burning his retinas.

“Aether!” Nilou yelled out as she unleashed a torrent of water around herself, washing the sands away from her and forming a barrier that protected her from the scorching sandstorm that blew outside. Her eyes widened as she saw the hulking silhouette of the worm demon amidst the winds and sand. Nilou moved through the shifting desert surface towards where she assumed Aether was, and there she found him trying to move through the sandstorm, sword drawn. His keffiyeh and goggles had been blown away and his wool cloak had begun to burn away in certain places, leaving it in tatters already as the sandstorm burned through it with each passing second.

Aether, ever stubborn and ever feral, snarled at the sandstorm as he tried to power through with his incredible strength and speed. But Buhangin was far greater than any foe he’d faced before, and like a sandstorm would an emaciated calf, he was completely devoured.

Nilou would be there to save her feral dog of a friend as she surrounded them with a spiraling vortex of water that continued to shield them from the scorching sandstorm that had truly engulfed them. Aether hissed as he looked at his arms, shaking the sand off of them. The two of them looked up and saw Buhangin slithered around them, burrowing underground and then resurfacing, encircling them in a frequent diving and resurfacing motion, the sands around them shaking.

Buhangin could so easily pop this protective vortex right now. A single slam and that was it, they were paste to be buried in the desert. Two more hapless victims in its countless others across history, only theirs will be distinct for it was granted by an ancient demon from its deepest recesses and held command over its surface. Yet they didn’t, as if they were waiting for something.

Nilou was the one to realize it.

“The dance,” she said with widened eyes, “this is their ritual dance, they… I… I must have been doing it wrong too much! They don’t know I’m practicing!”

Aether held the scroll which he had in his hands, though the scorching sands had since reduced it to ashes. He stood there helpless with Nilou as Buhangin raged just outside of Nilou’s vortex, which couldn’t hold forever, especially against a being of this caliber. A wordless yet present declaration of a divine yet cruel mercy. 

Nilou breathed in, and without a word Aether gave her space. She could feel sweat go down her face, the heat and the pressure weighed on her as if she had a continent on her shoulders. She felt rigid, as if she could no longer do her smooth-flowing movements, her brain able to recall and improvise all sorts of choreography scrambled and every dance move she had ever known or could make evaporated. Suddenly she was no longer a dancer, no longer a vision bearer, no longer herself. She was now but a mortal in the face of a demon. 

Buhangin roared, an obvious command. Without further delay, Nilou performed The Dance of the Scorching Sands. Her arms rolled over each other in a spinning motion as her footwork became lightning quick. Aether watched as she turned into some kind of hypnotic mirage, the swaying of her body arresting his mind like it always did. 

Aether would be broken from his trance as Buhangin roared at Nilou, knocking her down, their sandstorm popping open her vortex, causing both of them to be swallowed whole once more. Aether growled, quickly moving on all fours to cover Nilou as the sandstorm hit them both, though his shielding of her meant he was soaking up most of the damage.

He’d breathe in, but cough as he inhaled some sand. He would fire up a protective geo shield around both himself and Nilou. They were weaker than some of her friends who specialized in geo shields, such as Noelle, but it sufficed for now.

“Grrr… dance…”

“It’s… I can’t… Aether, I can’t… the dance is too hard…” Nilou whimpered. “It’s too fast, it wants me to do too much. I can’t make the winds and sands one.”

Aether gazed at the sandstorm all around them. 

The winds and sands .

Aether pulled Nilou up.

“You are winds,” he put his hand on her chest, causing her face to heat up a bit. Then he put his hand on his chest, “I am sands.”

Aether’s words clicked with Nilou. She’s the wind, he’s the sand, and together they form a sandstorm. She tried to remember the scroll’s intricate drawings, nothing indicated on it that it was to be done by two people, but instead motions, a common practice among written dance instruction. If the dance was made for two people, it would’ve been pointed out immediately.

Then again, the scroll is literally from a dead culture, and it’s plausible their isolation from most others caused them to draw two people as if they were one. Or the fact that the two becoming one seemed to be the instrumental point of the dance.

Two people. She was so foolish. She couldn’t do it alone.

But then this also meant… this also meant dancing with Aether.

Suddenly she was even more nervous, but Aether took her hands. They couldn’t stall forever, and they danced. Nilou tried to figure out what moves he was doing. His first move was rolling his forearms over each other in a fast and spinning motion. Nilou recalled this. On the scroll were two movements. One ocher and one black. She originally interpreted the darker to be done first before moving onto the ocher, color switching was a common practice among ancient Sumeruan dance scrolls. Aether was currently performing the black motions, so naturally, she had to do the sands. 

With an open heart she performed solely the ocher motions. It was hard, since her constant practice had begun to dig a habit into her, she had to actively resist moving into the black motions, leaving it all to Aether. She embraced him from behind as she kicked her leg high up, then the two of them moved. Aether was never a graceful dancer. Well, when he was solely dancing anyways. Aether did know how to dance, but solely as a primer for his style of sword fighting. He didn’t really block, he mostly parried and stepped out of the way. He was always moving, focusing on the right movements. He was no true blue dancer like she was, and that was okay. He was the extra pair of limbs she needed, she can be his extra grace. 

They fill in for each other, covering their weaknesses and amplifying their strengths. The two of them danced in the sandstorm. Aether was so focused on remembering all of the moves he watched Nilou do and the depictions of the scroll and Nilou was so focused on not failing and not doing any of the black movements that they both failed to notice that their geo shields had since deactivated. 

Or the fact that the sandstorm wasn’t hitting through them anymore, instead surrounding them until it turned into one enormous sand tornado, an earthy pillar that connected the desert below with the clouds above. Buhangin gave a pleased roar as they then burrowed deep within the earth, and would not resurface. Upon Buhangin’s burrowing, much of the sandstorm came to a complete stop, leaving behind the portion of sandstorm that Aether and Nilou took for themselves in their dance.

They would only stop once the entire dance concluded. They looked around to see if the sandstorm would cease or if they had to keep dancing. The former happened, the sand just falling all around but never on them, rejoining the desert. Aether and Nilou stood under the shade of the clouds, the oasis was gone, buried under an endless sea of dunes.

Aether and Nilou simply stood there, their breathing in sync as they held each other in each other’s arms. Then the two just looked at each other, their lips mere centimeters apart. Nilou’s face reddened as she remained still. Aether’s golden eyes assessed her. He wasn’t undressing her, but there was still something in his gaze that made her head blank.

No. Secure. He made her feel secure. Always wild yet always here for her.

So they just stood there, embracing each other after having become on in the sandstorm.

Then Aether licks her cheek.

“Kya!” Nilou then blushed so hard she fainted.