Work Text:
Dead silence.
Everything was suspended and frozen in the air: words, songs, melodies, everything.
Venti stopped playing on the lyre when the words of mourning people of earth reached his ears through the warm winds from Liyue. The winds seemed to disbelieve the news, too, they hugged him with hundreds of little hands, trying to embrace him with all the sympathy they had.
"Morax is dead!.. the trial of Celestia!.. Liyue is mourning their god, they’re alive, safe and sound, nobody’s gone, but geo archon is gone, earth is silent, but still beating. Quieter, yet beating," the winds cried.
He didn’t believe at first, but then he realized: the winds, of course, were admirers of jokes and pranks, but they could never ever crack a joke like this. Not so cruel, not like this about his dear one.
The Geo Archon was dead. And Liyue remained, grieving and weeping, but alive.
The only one reason it still stood there was that Morax had left all his powers to the Ley-lines of Liyue right before his death. Venti wondered what the trial was that the winds mentioned, but he couldn't think about it right now. Morax's death left nothing but grief and emptiness, nothing that could lead to destruction of his dear nation, but everything that could destroy his close ones. Venti couldn't even imagine what adepti felt about it all. They knew Morax far longer than he ever could.
Venti heard the whispers of the crowd who had been listening to his music. Venti chuckled, quietly apologized for leaving in the middle of the song and ran away from Mondstadt.
He almost disappeared in the winds, but he couldn't do it. He needed to leave the city right now, but on his feet. Winds followed him, hugging him tightly.
Now, Venti was the last one of the original archons. Once, they laughed he was the youngest immortal, yet first who got the throne. And now… he was one of the oldest creatures in all Teyvat. And Venti didn’t know how to deal with this.
How could he bury someone he knew for eons? Someone who was here every time Venti woke up from his centuries-long slumbers? How could he bear this hollow feeling which may never be filled? How is it possible to handle all this weight of unspoken words suddenly became like mountains on his shoulders?
How could he stand here when Morax was dead?
Venti gasped from horrible realization: they had ran out of time. They were immortals, they could go years without seeing each other, but...
Centuries. It had been centuries since they saw each other last time. During the Cataclysm. But it was a war, which left terrible scars in all Teyvat, too many deaths, too many horrifying events, that will never be forgotten. And there was no time and no place for happy little moments, there was no time at all.
And now… it would never be.
They would never ever return to their silly fights. No more telling stories of people of earth and children of wind, no more sharing everything they could imagine with each other. Venti could still hear laughter and clicks of cups, while they drank – osmanthus wine and dandelion wine – and held the hundreds of conversations about everything and nothing at once. Venti thought they would meet again. He didn't know where and when, but they will be there, just like countless times before. He thought he would have these all again after he woke.
But it would never happen, because Morax would never be here again.
Never again.
Never.