Genshin fic - No Mere Stone, Part 1
Aug. 2nd, 2022 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormyseasonsFirst posted in its entirety on AO3.
The world – Teyvat – is strange. Different. Damaged. Full of little lives, kind little lives, despite... despite the devastation they lived among, despite the damage of his arrival. Despite the wrack and ruin all around them.
He burns the first one who tries to help him. It is unintentional – his form is too bright, his power too strong for the little lives to touch, whether animal or... or human. Oh, he heals them of course, but the damage has already been done. The animal-beings flee, swift on foot or wing. The human-being huddles shivering in fear, whole and healed only in body. Cringing from him. He backs away. He doesn’t want to hurt them. Another little life – human shaped – comes after a while, saying something he doesn’t quite understand to the first one. He thinks they maybe are trying to... reassure them? They gesture at the wreck of his vessel, at himself, and he gets to his feet, starting to walk away.
He shouldn’t be around the little-lives. His power is ... too much for them. He tries to contain it as he walks, tries to hold it inside himself, to mute the glow of it from his limbs and eyes and insides and – it spills from him regardless, marking this physical form in cracks and patterns of light. Troubling. He can’t fix it. He has to find a sturdier shape or manage it better, or else he’ll.... He’ll accidentally do damage to the little ones again.
He walks.
There are mountains in the distance. He starts walking towards them. Mountains... he knows, somehow. Little lives like humans do not... do not do well in high mountains. He... it would be safer for them if he were there.
He walks.
The earth sings to him as he walks. This place... part of it was water, once. The ocean laps hungrily at the shore that now is, by his other side. The mountains... he feels as if there should be more of them. No. He remembers. There should be more.... More land. There should be more life. Someone has visited great devastation – he turns his mind from the thought. He knows who has visited great devastation on this world.
A noise behind him – stones and dust scraping – he turns. The little ones – the human ones – are following him. One of them, seeing him turn, puts down their burden, and bends their head. A bow. Then pushes the thing they were carrying towards him. Fruit. Why are they... giving him fruit? One of them picks up the fruit, mimes bringing it to their mouth and eating. Ah. An offering for him to eat? He picks up the fruit when they put it down. Eats it. Sweet. Delicious. He should... he should ensure there is more fruit, later. He collects the seeds, feeling them out with his power – then places them in the ground at the necessary distances from each other. Gently – He must be so very gentle! – asks the leylines to share a little more energy than usual. The seeds begin to sprout, to grow – he urges them on ever so gently – becoming little leafy saplings. There. That should be sturdy enough to have a good chance at surviving. He nods his head at the humans in thanks for the gift of fruit, and leaves.
He walks onward.
The light is hot. The... the sun-thing that provides light is hot, is bright. Soft sounds behind him – he turns. Oh. The two humans are still following. A third one has joined them. Their steps are slow, are weary. They are not as he is, they need... he should.... The shore is there, the ocean is there. He walks down to the ocean water, scoops a handful and tastes it. It’s fine, if salty – He glances at the three, tilting his hand in question – is this good?
One of them meets his gaze, and shakes their head. Ah. Not good, then. They need... they need something else. Maybe something not salty. He has to find a different water for them. He looks around. To one side, the ocean and nothing else nearby. To another side, mountains – and the mountains hardly veiled in green, at that. There is no fresh water... He walks into the mountain slopes. Wearily, the humans follow him.
There. The rock sings not of salt, there, but water. He strikes the rock, breaking the impediment that had prevented the underground water from flowing, scooping up a mouthful to drink as the water gushes forth. It’s not salty. He stands aside, gesturing for the humans to drink. They rush forward gratefully, babbling... babbling something that is probably thanks of some kind. He shrugs. Thanks are unnecessary.
More humans join him in the days that come after that. Knowing-animals and not-human beings as well, warily flocking to the source of clean water that he has opened, to the green renewal of the land that results. They... do not fight – well, some had tried to fight for the water, but he had stopped them. That would not be fair. The water is needed by everyone, and must be shared. But even sharing between each kin and kind, between the varying needs for personal use and resource use and – it isn’t enough. The spring he uncovered isn’t enough. The land isn’t enough. He has to...
He walks to the sea. He can... he can add more land. He asks the land, and it shifts for him. Rises slowly from the sea, shedding reluctant trails of saltwater as the land climbs, climbs, climbs to his will. He reaches deeper. The sea has its place, has its purpose – to displace it with land, something must be given in exchange. The lives that depend on the sea need it too – even as he reclaims the land the sea had taken, he opens ways into the underground for the sea to flow if it wishes. The sea flows, making way – he raises mountains.
Loud cries rise up behind him. He turns.
“Lord!” The many peoples who have come to him shout in their diverse tongues, “You have raised the mountains from the sea!”
He looks at them, then at the new mountains and fertile valleys he’d brought out and shaped. Ah. Yes, so he had. One of them – the first one, the one he’d accidentally broken and fixed – approaches him slowly. He looks away, reflexively checking his own form, the reach of his own power. He doesn’t want to accidentally...
“Lord,” That one says, “What is your name, that we might properly praise your deed?”
Name? His.... name? “I... left that place and the name that was given. That was the time of leaving –.” *
They frown in confusion. “...left? Time to leave... Lord? Pardon this one for their confusion.... Did you mean to say ‘Zhongli’? Or has this one confused the sounds again... should that be –” *
Zhongli? Fine. It’s as good a use-name as any, a good reminder. Even funny, in a way. He nods.
“Zhongli-daren,” the little human continues, “Thank you for raising the land from the sea for us.”
He shrugs.
As if... as if knowing his name is the last thing that they had needed, the little lives that flock to him like... like the little round birds to seeds... begin to speak to him.
“Zhongli-daren, try this food that I made!”
“Zhongli-daren, that knowing-bird that constantly seeks new knowledge found this unusual ore yesterday, do you know what its properties are?”
“Zhongli-daren – “ “Zhongli-daren –”
He thought he would miss the peace, the quiet, the aloneness. He doesn’t. He doesn’t even mind the use-name he’s chosen – he’s grown really fond of it, fond of being Zhongli – it is... nice, to choose a name. To choose how to be defined and described. (Instead of being named for what he IS , with no choice whatsoever in the naming and the duty...)
They clamour to learn from him, too – all sorts of things, from the mundane to the spiritual and extraordinary. One of the knowing-birds – one of the cranes – stalks him for days upon days, intently observing him and how he shifts his form as he pleases – he asks her outright one day, “Do you wish to learn how to change form?”
She startles, feathers flaring up in alarm. Then nods her head sharply in agreement. He says to her, “I have never taught anyone how to change form before – I have always been able to do it to some extent. I will try, but I cannot promise I will teach successfully.”
She pecks him fiercely, as if to say – fool! Trying is enough!
The knowing-crane is a good student, diligent and creative and eager to learn, and Zhongli is not surprised when she eventually learns the skill – nor when she chooses human form first, flexing the long and graceful hands that were her wings.
“Are you satisfied?” He asks. She shrugs, clearing her throat sharply. “It will do. There are things that are easier with hands.”
“Why did you want to learn to change form, anyway?” Zhongli asks her, curious. She looks up at him. “You helped us – all of us –without asking for reward or recompense. We give you offerings and thanks in return but that is... you have much more than we have given. I would help you, if there are things that you need help with. Or be your student, if you wish to pass on what you know. That is easier if I can choose to have hands, and a human-like voice and form.”
Human-like? He looks at her form again. Ah. Like him with his tracery of power, she bears marks of her origin even on her human form – subtle ones, but there. Had he... “I apologise for teaching you an inadequate method of shapechanging -”
She hushes him with an impatient flap of a hand. “No apologies are needed. This is sufficient.”
The knowing-crane is not the first one. After her are others, learning this and that from him, human and knowing-animal alike. Some learn to change their form, or to enhance it, and thereby gain a certain agelessness to go with the power they develop – the humans call the ones who learn from him ‘-xian (仙/immortal)’ now, and Zhongli is not used to it. The respect, the reverence... he is something not-human, and the little lives revere him for his terrible strength, just because it is not bent against them. He isn’t used to it.
The community around him grows – fledgling immortals, knowing-animals, inhuman beings, humans – learning. Growing. Learning, becoming. He is not alone. Zhongli is not alone, and his students even understand him a little, and it is good.
And then the day the emissaries of the sky-island discover them comes. They are .... cruel. Zhongli chases them off, but his students mourn in their wake, some of their clans taking up arms in fury – swearing themselves to the defence of the helpless, to prevention of such tragedy and avenging of such loss. They mourn.
In the wake of the mourning rites, the Skybracer comes to him, the firelight of the funeral pyres gleaming off the horns Zhongli had shaped for him.
“You are troubled.” They say.
“Yes.” Zhongli agrees. The Skybracer paws the ground. “You are troubled over the words the attackers shouted as they fled. The.... the name they shouted.”
Zhongli tilts his head up to look into the night sky – to stare as if he could see past the veil to the true firmament. “Their presence here troubles me. That they attacked troubles me. That they thought they had the right to use a title... a name that isn’t right any more...”
His friend and student tosses his head, interrupting Zhongli’s thoughts. “We are safe enough, for now, and you are very unsettled. Will you walk in the wilderness, and let the land ease your sorrows?”
“I – but all of you in the Karst –”
“We are safe enough for now, thanks to your protections, the yaksha clans’ efforts, and the additional wards laid by all the rest of us. The rest of the young ones should be safe. Go, while the peace lasts, and return to us with a settled heart.” The Skybracer tells him. Well. It did make some sense... Zhongli nods, and rises to his feet.
“Where will you first wander?” The Skybracer calls out to him, even as the Cloud Retainer flutters like a white and blue shadow out of the darkness to his side. Zhongli tilts his head to regard the moon, then calls back to his students and friends, “Where the earth and wind take me. But first to the area where once I... arrived. There are rumours of tremors underground – voices calling. I would investigate what they are.”