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Chapter Text

"Nara have a word, 'soul'.

"A Nara's soul is woven from the same fibres as spirit and karma. A Nara's soul carries memories, but it is not made of memories. The soul is made of everything that makes a Nara unique. If you inherited my memories, my little friends, you would know the things I know, perhaps love the things I love, but you would not be me. You would not have my soul."

Aragaru raised a hand.

"Yes, Aragaru?"

"Do Aranara have souls?"

The Nara smiled.

She was sitting cross-legged, facing Aragaru, Aranaga, and Aranakin. Tucked in her hexagonal black hat were a few fresh flowers, alongside several preserved plum blossoms. In her hands, she held a wooden Liyuean flute.

"I think so," she said. "I see in you the same vitality I see in Nara, and in lingering spirits.

"But are the things I see souls? Or something else entirely? Are souls what Nara believe them to be?"

"I don't know," said Aragaru.

"That's okay," said the Nara. "I don't know either, and that's okay, too."

"If Nara don't know what souls are, why are they important?" said Aranaga.

"Because the story of souls is important."

The three Aranara nodded. The importance of stories: this, they understood well.

"Souls," said Nara Agni—the girl who smouldered with purifying flame—"are the story we Nara tell one another when we think about death."

A week and a bit prior

"I can't believe you're leaving for vacation tomorrow!" said Xiangling, her arms wrapped firmly around Hu Tao.

"Not vacation," said the latter, "a business trip. For professional development."

Chongyun paused in what he was doing to say, drily, "You're going to Sumeru for over a month with no meetings booked. That's a vacation."

"My senior consultant Zhongli is coming with me!" protested Hu Tao. "If I was on vacation, wouldn't I bring my girlfriends instead?"

Xiangling poked her tongue out at her.

"Zhongli is basically your surrogate dad," began Xingqiu, "so— hey! No fair!"

Chongyun, having successfully snatched his popsicle back from Xingqiu's hands while the latter was distracted, gave the tiniest of smirks before biting into it.

"Mister Zhongli is not my father, he's a respected senior consultant," said Hu Tao. "Besides, if he was my father, isn't it... incestuous to employ family?"

(Chongyun choked mid-bite.)

"Nepotistic," said Xingqiu, "the word you're looking for is nepotistic."

"Oh?" teased Hu Tao. "Like appointing your second son into a do-nothing VP position to keep him out of trouble?"

Xingqiu yawned lazily. "Yeah, like that."

"Where are Xinyan and Yun Jin anyway?" said Xiangling. "Can't have a proper goodbye picnic before everyone gets here."

(Xinyan and Yun Jin were currently rescuing some stray dogs from Mitachurls, but that's neither here nor there.)

"Oh, I'm sure they just got delayed with music rehearsal," said Xingqiu, voice dripping with irony. "Vocal warm-ups, tongue-strengthening exercises..."—he ignored how Chongyun punched him hard in the shoulder—"...that sort of thing."

"Ewww," said Xiangling, "no gossip, please..."

"It's not gossip if I'm happy for them!" said Xingqiu, and that was the last thing he said before Chongyun tackled him over.

"It's not a vacation," said Zhongli, "it's a business trip."

"Ah," said Madame Ping, with a twinkle in her eye. "Like our Ganyu when Lord Guizhong, may she never be forgotten, took her on a yearlong 'scouting trip'? Or young Xiao and his 'pilgrimage' to thank that flautist friend of his?"

"Granny, I'm all for making digs at your Adeptus friends, but those examples are all romantic," said Yanfei. She scrunched up her face. "Not the best analogy for those two."

"Now, now, dear Yanfei, you know that's not the point." Madame Ping fixed Zhongli with a careful look. "Zhongli. Look me in the eye and tell me you've never thought of Hu Tao as your young ward."

Zhongli pointedly avoided her gaze. "This tea is a little oversteeped, but the vegetal notes of grass and gailan still shine through," he said. "The rainfall of Dihua Marsh has doubtless—"

"I rest my case," said Madame Ping.

"It is a business trip, though," said Zhongli. "Director Hu wants to learn more about the funerary rituals of our neighbouring countries, so that the Parlour can better serve those who pass away on Liyuean soil."

Yanfei rolled her eyes. "Just tell her I'm not helping her write her father daughter bonding time as a tax deduction," she said.

"Tell her yourself," said Zhongli. "Aren't she and Xiangling spending the night at your place?"

"Taotao doesn't listen to me when I give bad news," Yanfei replied, pouting. "It's either her poking me in the belly button or her singing loudly about Hilichurls to drown me out. She might listen to you. You're one of like three people she's ever respected as a role model."

Zhongli couldn't help but be curious. "Who are the other two?"

"Her late grandfather, and the late Rex Lapis," said Yanfei. "Ergo, you're the only one left with a chance of drumming any upstanding citizen morality into her."

Zhongli and Madame Ping exchanged a look.

Madame Ping said: "Yanfei, you must recall: Rex Lapis's parting is a sore subject for Zhongli. It's best not to bring it up so casually."

"Oh my gosh I completely forgot!" Yanfei bowed her head. "My apologies, sir."

"No apologies needed," said Zhongli. "But if I might ask a question of you, Miss Yanfei... What do you know of Sumeru's laws, and which of them are Director Hu mostly likely to run afoul of?"

"A very good question!" Yanfei pulled several scrolls out of her pocket. "Here, I made three copies for you..."

One a.m.

"Just bring me back lots of mushrooms and dried spices. Dried, not ground."

"But declare them all at the border! Don't go running afoul of Liyuean-Sumeru import/export tariffs, I refuse to let you become a smuggler!"

"It's not smuggling if it's gifts for me!"

"It literally still is. And none of this gifts nonsense, we all know you're planning on using them in the restaurant, that's basically under the table business trade..."

"The spices are! But the mushrooms are for snacking, promise!"

"Aiyah, both of you shut up, I have to be up at dawn."

The papers were all in order, Muning said, after a few minutes. "Not that I'd expect anything less if Miss Ganyu helped."

"You flatter me," said the half-qilin, bowing her head. "Director Hu, Lord Zh— Mister Zhongli, I trust you can see yourselves to the shortcut. Follow the signs."

Zhongli nodded his head in thanks. "I am grateful for your assistance, Miss Ganyu. May the departed gods of old watch over you."

Muning warned them to be on the lookout for Treasure Hoarders, but really it should have been the other way round. The handful brave enough to attack what looked like two Vision wielders were promptly set running, pants still half on fire.

The connecting tunnel to Sumeru was mostly meant for the mining trade, not for everyday use. But it was much more convenient than the trek through Lumberpick Valley, and it was hardly half an hour before they emerged to the sounds of birdsong and running water.

"Did your old work ever take you to Sumeru?" Hu Tao asked, as she confirmed where they were on her maps.

"Not as often as one might think," said Zhongli. "My duties kept me rather... occupied in Liyue, and it would have been rude to visit another country without a lot of pomp and ceremony."

"So no impulse trips across the border for a weekend?"

"Oh, the borders have always been a little ambiguous," said Zhongli. "But... I suppose that has never been my way. Others are different."

They started forward again.

"Others?" said Hu Tao.

"Do you recall Venti, from Moonchase last year?"

"Oh, him," Hu Tao said, smirking. "Yeah, hard to forget the kind of guy who uses my display coffins to hide from the Millelith."

"He's the sort of person who would rather apologise than ask permission. If whimsy took him so, I don't doubt he'd drop by another nation for the slightest of pretexts."

"Hmm," said Hu Tao.

"Is something the matter?"

"We're not going to encounter any... diplomatic issues, are we? With you being here?"

"I'm simply a humble funeral consultant," said Zhongli. "I rather doubt anyone here would make a fuss."

"Let's hope you're right," said Hu Tao. "Can't do market research while running from angry people with swords!" She paused. "Well, not good market research— What, what, what!? Oh my gosh, look!, a little yellow guy!" She tugged at her consultant's sleeve. "Mister Zhongli, look!"

Zhongli looked where Hu Tao was pointing: a hill above them, with a little plume of steam rising from it.

"Yellow guy?" he echoed.

"Nara Hu Tao, Devata Zhongli, you are both very good." Arasaka nodded fervently. "Thank you for sharing the taste of happiness with me."

"You're very welcome," said Hu Tao. She clasped her hands and bowed to the Aranara. The little yellow creature nodded his head in return.

Goodbyes were exchanged; fruit and business cards, traded.

Hu Tao and Zhongli took their leave, heading back down to the main path.

"Don't forget what I told you about using the taste of happiness!" she called as they departed. "When it comes to sugar..."

"More is more!" recited Arasaka.

"More is more!" agreed Hu Tao.

Once they were out of earshot, Zhongli let out a sigh.

"Even having seen it with my own eyes," he said, "I find it hard to believe that anyone would take cooking advice from you."

"Truly, this is a land of miracles!" said Hu Tao. She brushed loose strands of hair from her face. "And humidity. Miracles and humidity."

"The only sensible conclusion is that the Aranara are rather credulous," said Zhongli.

"Aranara, huh?" said Hu Tao. It had felt a little rude to ask "what are you?", especially when Arasaka talked like a little kid. "So you know what kind of creature our new friend was?"

Zhongli nodded. "The Aranara are the children of the forest, native to Sumeru."

There was a pause of about ten seconds before Hu Tao said, "Seriously? That's all you know, you dusty old encyclopaedia?"

"I regret my knowledge of Sumeru is not nearly so extensive as my knowledge of Liyue," said Zhongli. "I am more reliant on hearsay in these matters."

Hu Tao patted him on the arm. "Aww, Mister Zhongli... You poor thing, having to rely on secondary sources."

"Your condolences are appreciated but unnecessary," said Zhongli. "Shall I tell you what I know?"

"Please!"

"It is said that when the former Dendro Archon, Queen Aranyani, created the lush rainforests of Sumeru, she looked upon her people and found that they were alone and lost. Aranyani sang to the Ley Lines, and from the earth sprang forth a tree, and behold, that tree bore eight hundred pomegranates, and from each pomegranate sprang forth fifty five Aranara.

"The Aranara are the children of the forest, quiet protectors of flora and fauna alike. They are powerful but gentle, and they watch over the waking world and the world of dreams."

Hu Tao nodded, taking that in.

"And," she said, "the guidebooks didn't mention them at all because...?"

"I am less certain of that," said Zhongli. "There is little mention of them in texts from the last few millenia. I would have assumed they were a casualty of the Archon War, and yet..."

Hu Tao finished the thought. "...and yet here they are, casually boiling peach syrup over a campfire." The funeral director frowned. "And yet, no mention of them. I'd bet you the Adventurers Guild doesn't have any info on them either."

"I suspect you're correct..."

"Why hasn't anyone mentioned them before, then?" said Hu Tao, scratching her head.

Know this about the Aranara: they can only be seen by children, and when those children grow up, they forget the Aranara were real, just as children forget many wonderful things when they become adults.

There was nothing sinister about the Aranara's absence from the guide books and the Adventurers Guild records: it's simply that they were believed to be a fairy tale, make-believe for kids. In this day and age it was a rare adult indeed who could see the Aranara.

Know this about Hu Tao and Zhongli: they were rare adults indeed.

Zhongli was an old soul, one who had lived to see many of his friends and family pass away, one who had seen wonders in his time, and orchestrated a good few of them. And Zhongli, though he was not the person he'd been a few years ago, was someone who understood the power of promises. Aranara promise each other to visit when the trees grow tall, to play with one another in the moonlight at festivals only dreamers can see. Aranara make promises, and so of course Zhongli could see them, let alone all the other reasons.

Hu Tao was perhaps the greatest mind of her generation, though she'd never be known for it. A warrior-poet, provided one very liberally defined "warrior" to refer to "the battlefield of business" and not actual fighting (which was hardly her forte), she saw the world through eyes both young and old, and put what she saw to verse both pious and irreverent. And of course, as Director of Wangsheng Funeral Parlour, she helped the departed cross the Border. Hu Tao could see the dead, could see the sublime beauty in a puddle on a cloudy day, could see so many things most people couldn't: no wonder she could see the Aranara.

Things seemed to be going well until they reached the gates of Sumeru City. At that point, a friendly Matra appeated, with some gadgetry to give them...

...and, well...

"Eek! Frick! No!"

Hu Tao tore the device away from her head and dropped it like it had grown teeth.

"What in the name of the Abyss is this?" she said.

Such was the distress in her voice that it took all Zhongli's professionalism not to wrap his employer into a protective hug.

"It's an Akasha Terminal," said the Matra. "It connects you to..."

"A moment, if you'd please," said Zhongli politely, and once the Matra nodded, he leaned over to speak to Hu Tao more quietly. "Director Hu, are you hurt?"

"The stupid thing was messing with my sight," Hu Tao replied, sounding aghast. "It showed me data and facts and... and for a second there I couldn't see souls, Mister Zhongli, I couldn't see beyond the veil."

Whatever the the techniques of the Hu Clan were, Zhongli knew not the details, but he knew that Hu Tao took pride in seeing the spirits that lingered near the mortal plane, and in seeing the souls that still inhabited their mortal vessels. Even a temporary loss of that ability would have come as quite the shock.

"You're okay now?"

"Just shook. Shaken. Aiya, whatever the word is."

Zhongli straightened up.

The Matra met his eye. "Is your daughter okay, Sir?"

"We're not related," said Zhongli, as Hu Tao voiced a similar protest.

"Oh, I see. Is your, uh..."

"My employer is very traditional and practices old thaumaturgy arts," said Zhongli. "I believe the prospect of wearing the Terminal fills her with great distress."

"Ah, I see," said the Matra. His eyes glazed over for a second, then he nodded to hinself. "Not the first such visitor. She can apply for an exception at the Administrative Affairs Office, and so long as she's accompanied by someone with a Terminal, there won't be any problem getting there."

Zhongli looked at the Akasha Terminal still in his hand. "So I should...?"

"Please, try it on! Once you've joined yourself to the accumulated wisdom of the Akasha system, you'll see why everyone loves it so much."

Zhongli fit the device to his ear and, at the Matra's instruction, flicked the power switch on.

There was a loud, squealing sound, followed by staticky noises.

Zhongli winced. "Is it supposed to make such loud noise?" he said.

The Matra was aghast. "It... my gods, I'm so sorry, they're not supposed to explode like that! Rest assured that the Akademiya places the highest quality controls on the manufacture of... oh, but, here, have another one. I'm so sorry, sir."

"No apologies needed," said Zhongli. He felt a growing sense of foreboding, but he started to put the replacement Terminal on, regardless. "Now, which button do I press?..."

This time the Terminal didn't even touch his head before it exploded in a burst of golden light.

Hu Tao trudged back up the hill, watching her step carefully.

The merchants along the outer city path had confirmed her suspicion: there was basically no way to move freely around Sumeru City without wearing an Akasha Terminal. Which was a problem. Clearly whatever mind-interfacing the Terminals did was incompatible with Zhongli's... eccentricity. And no way in Celestia or the Abyss was she putting one of those on again.

At least they wouldn't miss lunch. Held carefully in Hu Tao's hands was a cup of lemon-boiled glabrous beans—more than you'd think for three hundred Mora. In addition, she had a couple of meat-mushroom skewers clutched tenuously between her middle and ring finger. A little short on green veggies but a meal was a meal.

"Good news and bad news, Mister Zhongli," she said, as she neared the bench where she'd left her doddering employee. "Bad news is this Akasha thing is going to be a real hassle. Good news is, I bring food!"

"Ah, excellent," said Zhongli. "Fortune may be smiling upon us, Director Hu. This passing merchant was just telling us..."

"Hello, hello, weary traveller!" said the merchant woman standing next to Zhongli. "A pleasure to meet you!"

Hu Tao nodded in greeting, then set the food down on the bench next to Zhongli, and made some space for herself.

The merchant went on: "Mister Zhongli, my good sir. You seem like a man who understands the value of things. How much would you value the ability to visit Sumeru City despite the technical glitches you've been having?"

Why, that conniving—

"A fine question," said Zhongli. "Common wisdom has it that making new memories is priceless. Therefore—"

"Hi," said Hu Tao, placing herself between Zhongli and the interloper, hand outstretched. "I'm Hu Tao, Mister Zhongli's employer."

"Ah, a fellow woman of business!" said the merchant. "Don't worry, I was just talking to your fine employee here about a personal purchase, nothing to be concerned about..."

Her handshake was firm but gentle: the handshake, Hu Tao recognised with increasing concern, of a woman who knew marketing.

"Yes," agreed Zhongli, "Miss Duoli was simply telling me about how particular the city authorities are about Akasha Terminal usage..."

"Mister Zhongli," said Hu Tao, handing him a skewer, "I seem to have forgotten to get us any cutlery to eat the lemon beans with. Would you mind...?"

"It would be my pleasure," said Zhongli. He stood gracefully, brushing dirt from his coat tails, and headed towards the nearest food stall.

The merchant woman didn't bat an eyelid as Hu Tao pulled out one of the wooden spoons she'd palmed up her sleeve and started munching on the legumes.

"Want any seasoning on that?" the woman said. "No charge."

Hu Tao shook her head. "Miss... Duoli, was it?" she said between bites. "Always a pleasure to meet a... fellow woman of business." She nodded in Zhongli's direction. "I'm sure you can sense that... aura that my Mister Zhongli has about him."

"Ah... The air of erudition and gentle kindness?" guessed the merchant.

"The smell of blood in the water," said Hu Tao.

The merchant laughed, the perfect sound of innocence and guilelessness, and for a second Hu Tao suddenly sympathised with the Millelith's beef with her.

"Two fake Akasha Terminals," the woman said. "Looks like the real thing, even to anyone looking at it through the Akasha network overlay. It's a silly novelty I happened to have in my belongings..." She sighed. "Alas, these were going to be gifts for my neighbour's darling little niece and nephew..."

"...and so," said Hu Tao, rolling her eyes, "I suppose that means you couldn't bear to part with them."

"Oh, indeed, no," said the merchant sadly. "Not for any less than four hundred and fifty thousand Mora."

"Then I'm afraid no can do," said Hu Tao. "This is a Wangsheng Funeral Parlor business trip, and our allocated petty cash fund isn't nearly enough for that kind of money."

"Wangsheng..." The woman frowned thoughtfully. "Hmm... ah, ten to twenty tons of high-grade Brightwood a year plus incenses, that Wangsheng?"

It took Hu Tao a second. "Oh! You're with, um...." With their Brightwood supplier, Golden Fortune Grass Imports, itself a subsidiary of...

"Sangemah Bay Pty Ltd, yes!" said the woman. "My goodness, I didn't realise you were an existing customer! Oh, if this is going to a valued client, then my sentimental objections are moot. Three hundred thousand Mora."

Hu Tao hummed thoughtfully. "Fifty thousand Mora. I'm not exactly carrying cartloads of gold around with me..."

"One hundred fifty thousand, and... oh!, but you're a business client! If we do this as a purchase order, I can just open a line of credit for you... I'll be taking a bit of a hit on the overhead but I think you can even claim a tax deduction...?"

Damn, thought Hu Tao, she was good at this.

"Here," said Hu Tao. "A fake Akasha terminal."

Zhongli looked up from his tea. "A fake?"

Hu Tao waved to the Terminal on her ear. "Like this one. It glows, it does its Akasha network thing, but it doesn't try to connect to your brain."

"Hmm." Zhongli tried the device on. Indeed, it didn't spark or smoke, it just sat on his ear like some fancy jewellery.

How convenient. They'd be able to enter the city without causing a ruckus.

"My profound thanks, Director Hu. Did the entrepreneurial lady sell it to you? Might I inquire as to the price of—"

"I don't want to talk about it," grumbled Hu Tao. "C'mon, this way."

They headed back towards the city gates, nodding to the Matra as they passed.

Chapter Text

"Souls are the story we Nara tell one another when we think about death. You see, Nara are often very scared of dying..."

"Return to Sarva, when Nara die," said Aranaga. "Nothing to fear."

"So I've heard," said Nara Agni, "but Nara fear it anyway. To them, it is very scary."

The Nara cloaked in Agni's flame paused, considering her next words.

"Nara fear death the way a forest fears Marana," she said eventually. "Nara fear death the way the Aranara fear a forest fire. Whether or not there is anything to be scared of, they are scared regardless."

"Do souls make Nara less scared?" said Aragaru.

"I think so," said Nara Agni. "A lot of Nara don't like the idea of disappearing when they die."

"Nobody disappears in the end," said Aranakin. "We will all meet in Sarva."

"Hmm... maybe not the right choice of words," said the Nara. "They're scared of... their memories disappearing from the world."

"Death is a one time loss of memory," said Aranaga.

"Indeed," said the Nara, "indeed. Part of the story of souls is that the memories are not lost. They don't return to the ground. They remain here in the waking world, where they can still... matter? No, not matter. Where they can still become part of bigger memories."

"But the memories cannot get bigger forever," said Aranakin. "It isn't right to hoard."

"It's true. But the temptation is powerful. Nara live such short lives, leave so little traces. Their memories cannot be passed to their loved ones when they die; all they have are stories carved in stone. Nara live with the spectre of forgetting looming over them—no, Aranaga, not like a Pyro Specter, it's a metaphor—so the desire to hoard memories is that much stronger for us."

"It does not sound nice, being scared all the time," said Aragaru.

"It isn't nice. I try to help grieving Nara understand that there is nothing to be scared of. But the belief is difficult to dispel."

What is grieving, they asked?

Nara Agni smiled enigmatically. "All in due time, my friends; all in due time. For now, just know that the fear is almost always there. It's there beneath the surface in Nara cultures."

She chuckled, her eyes elsewhere.

"And not only is hoarding memories wrong, as you have pointed out, but... Nara are not built to be vessels for limitless memories. That is not the shape of our souls. And my da— my dear friend often suggests that too many memories can become a heavy burden to carry alone."

"Memories are not heavy," said Aranaga.

"Perhaps not to your kind," said Nara Agni. "But to Nara, and others, memories can feel very, very heavy."

Five days prior

With their fake Akasha Terminals protecting them from unwanted attention, Hu Tao and Zhongli made their way into Sumeru City. Lodgings were organised, and then, of course, it was straight to work.

Q: Hi! I'm a market researcher from Liyue. What do you believe happens to you when you pass away?

A: When I die?... um... I guess... my soul rejoins Greater Lord Rukkhadevata at the Irminsul? Where all things begin and end.

Q: Yup yup, okay... what do you mean by 'rejoin'?

A: To... join again? I... I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.

Q: Hey there!

A1: Hi Miss! Are you from Fontaine? My mum says people from Fontaine wear nice hats and you have a nice hat.

A2: Phaki, you can't just tell a stranger they have a nice hat, that's rude!

Q: That's okay. I'm actually from Liyue!

A1: Wow!

A2: Coooool.

Q: My name is Hu Tao. Hu as in "Who here has had a grandparent die?", Tao as in "How did your parents let out their feelings when they died?".

A1: Oh. My bibi got very sick two summers ago and she... she went away.

Q: Oh, that sounds very sad.

A1: It's okay! But my mama was very sad. She prayed every day for a whole year.

A2: That way her bibi's soul can rejoin Greater Lord Rukkhadevata at Irminsul, where all things begin and end!

Q: ...ah. And what do you mean by "rejoin"?

A1: ...oh, I know, I know! Rejoin is a verb. It means "to join again".

Q: Hi there, good sir! I'm a student from... Liyue Legal Academy. My homework says I have to ask people here questions about life and death.

A: Oh, okay... If you don't mind me working while we talk, I can give it my best.

Q: Thank you! But first, you have to promise me: please don't just look up the answers on the Akasha.

A: Why not?

Q: Because I want to hear your opinion, not the Akasha's!

A: Oh, alright... but I may not know the answers.

Q: That's okay. Um... first, can you tell me what a soul is?

A: Like, a spirit? It's the part of a person that isn't bound to their body.

Q: Writing that... down... Okay, next question. What happens to a person's soul when they die?

A: Well, very evil people, those who the Akademiya exiles, their souls can turn into monsters and div.

Q: And other people?

A: They don't. They just... move on, I guess?

Q: Cool, and what does that mean to you, "move on"?

A: Hmm, I... wow, that's a very philosophical question. Um... Oh, hey! Farid!

???: Ahangar! Is your foster daughter over what's-his-name yet?

A: Farid, this lady here is a student from abroad, I'm helping her with her homework. What happens to people's souls—good people's souls—when they die?

???: Our souls? They... well, after death, our souls rejoin Greater Lord Rukkhadevata at the—

Q: —the Irminsul?

???: Yes, where all things begin and end... hey! Don't throw your notebook on the ground! That's littering! Surely a nice Fontaine lady like you knows better than to litter...

"Nobody here has any opinions of their own," Hu Tao bemoaned over dinner.

"Surely you exaggerate," said Zhongli. "Come, Director Hu, try some dessert."

"I'm not hungry." Hu Tao pouted. "It's so stupid. Everyone relies on the Akasha Network for answers to everything. It's like they're all reciting from the same book, and not even a very interesting one."

"That sounds frustrating indeed. But I must insist, on the subject of food. You should try a little, at least," Zhongli prodded her. "The quince jam adds a tart sweetness to complement the richness of the coconut, while also moistening the dry outer layer..."

Hu Tao took a bite, and her eyes narrowed. "Wait. I've made these before! From that recipe book! You said you didn't like them."

"Ah," said Zhongli. "Yes, I recall."

"What gives?"

"Director Hu. You did not make a coconut charcoal cake with quince jam. You made a lump of charcoal and raspberry cordial."

"That is not true!"

Zhongli patted Hu Tao's shoulder sympathetically. "I am quite certain of this," said Zhongli. "I distinctly recall Xiangling confiscating that dessert cookbook from you afterwards."

"Oh yeah, that's where it went..."

Not one to turn down a challenge, the following morning Hu Tao strode into the Grand Bazaar with Zhongli in tow, looking for more people to interview.

The students of the Akademiya are renowned for their keen insight, Zhongli noted. Perhaps they'd have something to say on the subject of death rites and customs—

"I mean... isn't a funeral a funeral? You put the body in the ground and everyone talks a lot."

"Oh. My. Gods. What a Rtawahist kind of question. Though... hmm, I wonder if human bodies are any good as fertiliser."

"Why are you asking me? I live in the city. There aren't old people in the city, we don't need to worry about death around here."

—but on the other hand, Zhongli conceded, academics could be a little unapproachable when it came to topics outside their field of interest.

"Not to worry," said Hu Tao, "maybe we should try the merchants? Or... what's all that construction over there?"

"I believe they're disassembling a stage and lighting fixtures," said Zhongli. "I recall mention of a festival a few weeks ago..."

A new voice interrupted:

"Hey, hey, hey! If it isn't Hu Tao and the esteemed Mister Zhongli! What brings two cool customers like you to this neck of the woods?"

Hu Tao and Zhongli turned around.

"Katheryne?" said Hu Tao, after a pause. "Of the Adventurers Guild?"

"Heck to the yes!" Katheryne winked and pointed both index fingers in Hu Tao's direction, thumbs outstretched like the sights on a pair of crossbows. "That's quite the memory for faces you've got."

"Uh..." said Hu Tao, "wait a minute, you're not nailed to your desk?"

"Miss Katheryne," greeted Zhongli. "I admit, I've also never seen you or your sisters leave your post..."

Hu Tao squinted. Something was off.

"Pfft, I love going places." Katheryne clapped her hands delightedly. "It's so good to run into you two! I'd heard you were headed to Sumeru but the Akasha hadn't mentioned you were in town..."

"Ah, yes," said Zhongli, "our Akasha Terminals. They... are very real, I can assure you."

Oh, that's what it was.

"Mister Zhongli..." Hu Tao tugged at her consultant's sleeve, whispering. "That's not Katheryne."

Katheryne laughed. "Hehe, it's true, I'm not the Katheryne you know from Liyue. You see, Katheryne is the receptionist of the Adventurers Guild, so no matter where the Guild—"

"No, I mean..." Hu Tao winced. "Mister Zhongli, you know how I can sense the presence of souls? Or their absence?"

(Living or dead, her line of work gave her a kind of sensitivity to this— it was exactly this she'd been worried the Akasha Terminal was messing with.)

"Yes," said Zhongli, "I recall the Pearl Galley incident."

(Why did people have to keep bringing up the time she tried to stab a Knight of Favonius? It was an honest mistake. How was she supposed to know the covert homonculus wasn't an Abyssal sleeper agent?)

"Katheryne isn't supposed to have a soul," she said.

Zhongli frowned and looked at Katheryne more carefully.

"You mean I have one?" said Katheryne. "For real!? Oh, groovy. I was so sure I didn't... That means more to me than you know, Hu Tao— uh... you might not want to draw that weapon in broad daylight. The Corps of Thirty won't take that well."

Hand still on the haft of her half-summoned staff, Hu Tao narrowed her eyes. "So who are you?" Fatui? The Marionette, perhaps? Or... no, they didn't feel quite human, perhaps a doppelganger?

"I'm..." Katheryne fidgeted with the seams of her dress. "Oh, gosh, this is awkward, I've never been called out on this disguise before. Uh... does it help if I say I'm a huge fan of your poetry?"

"Director Hu, wait," said Zhongli, before Hu Tao could react. "This is... related to my old job."

"Ah," said Hu Tao. "In the body-snatching demon sense, or the colleagues sense?"

"Colleagues, I suppose," said Zhongli. "Though I regret we've never actually met prior to my retirement."

"Oh, interesting use of metaphor," said Katheryne appreciatively. "Evasive on some of the details, but open regarding connections and networks, the most important part of the story..."

"Ohhhh," said Hu Tao suddenly. "You're the, um, 'new kid'. The one who's never in the news."

Katheryne blinked and fixed Zhongli with a quizzical gaze. "And here I thought you liked your incognito adventures. Just how much does your ward know?"

"I try not to ask," sighed Zhongli.

"Same here," said Hu Tao cheerfully. "Anyway, I'm going to go for a walk while you two catch up or whatever the right phrase is.

"And I'm not his 'ward', I'm his employer," she added.

"Oh?" Katheryne giggled. "And here I thought you were more poet than lawyer."

"...and Aranyani replied to Makoto that blood was full of nutrients."

Nahida laughed delightedly. "She said that? For real?"

"No jest." Zhongli sipped at his cup: padisarah tea, heated to exactly the right temperature. "A war campaign has a way of inducing gallows humour," he continued. "Why, one time, even the gentle Guizhong remarked to Azhdaha..."

He trailed off, lest the memory become too vivid.

"Friends lost to time?" enquired Nahida gently.

"Indeed." Zhongli sighed. "With each passing century, fewer and fewer remain who share the memories."

"Would that I could remember," said Nahida.

Zhongli nodded. "Forgive my indelicacy, but... a reincarnation?"

"I'm not sure if that's the right term. No." Nahida shrugged, looking a little despondent herself. "If death is a kind of forgetting, then... once the memories return to the leyline, all that's left is a vessel, waiting to be filled. A lifeless puppet."

"Such a disheartened way to speak of birth and new life," said Zhongli. "Is that empty vessel not the symbol of potentiality?"

Nahida sighed. "I never knew Aranyani. I can't... I've spent decades contemplating how to live up to her legacy, but I'm not sure I'll ever comprehend it."

"Legacy is such a complicated notion," Zhongli mused. "The Qixing expressed similar sentiments about my retirement, in private. But their role, not unlike yours, is not defined by any one person's legacy: it is defined by a duty to the land, to the people, to the future."

"I see..." Nahida rubbed her chin. "In that case, perhaps..."

"One moment," said Zhongli. He let his attention sweep over his mortal vessel, which was still sitting where he'd left it. Footsteps were approaching. "I may need to take my leave of this dream. It seems I have company in the real world."

"Ah," said Nahida. Her face was a mix of disappointment and guilt. "Then, well... do stay in touch?"

"I'd love to talk more," said Zhongli.

"Great!," said Nahida, visibly relieved. "Well, then... swing by the Adventurers Guild, I'll have a package left for you. Something a little less cumbersome than borneol, I hope."

"I will do so," said Zhongli, and he opened his real-world eyes.

"Say hi to—"

The room came back into focus, and Nahida's voice cut off.

Zhongli rose from the armchair. He was in the sitting room of their pre-booked lodgings, a two-bedroom bungalow overlooking Treasure Street.

On the coffee table sat a few borneol incense sticks, still smouldering. Their smoke filled the room with herbaceous tones of fresh soil and camphor.

He opened the windows first, then grabbed the incense sticks, bringing them over a pitcher of water he'd prepared earlier. He used his ring to snap off the burning ends, letting them drop into the water with a fizzing noise.

There was a knock on the door. "Mister Zhongli! I'm back! You'd better not be doing anything weird!"

Zhongli uncapped a jarred Anemograna, letting it pull fresh air into the room. Then he strode over and opened the door.

"Hello, Director Hu," said Zhongli. "I wasn't expecting you back so soon."

Hu Tao stuck her head in, sniffing. "Aiyah, it smells like a fancy funeral in here. Were you doing drugs or something? Crazy. Do I need to add a rule about that to the Employee Handbook?"

"I was catching up with my ex-colleague from earlier. She sends her regards."

"I... wait, is she here!? Sorry, I didn't realise you had company—"

"Oh, no, I'm quite alone," said Zhongli. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, yeah..." Hu Tao twiddled her fingers together. "Mister Zhongli, I'm so sorry, but is there any chance I could, uh, borrow the room for a bit?"

She blinked plaintively.

"Of course," said Zhongli, nonplussed. "I'll head out for a walk myself." He could pick up that device Nahida had mentioned, perhaps grab something to eat...

"Wonderful, wonderful..." Hu Tao stepped inside, and turned back to call, "It's okay, you can come in!"

The woman who followed Hu Tao in was dressed in the red and beige tones of the Eremites.

"Anippe here is from the western deserts!" said Hu Tao. "She's killed lots of people," she added, as though this explained anything. "Excellent interview subject."

"Well met," the Eremite woman said, bowing to Zhongli. "I dance in the Clearwater tradition."

"A pleasure to meet you," said Zhongli, returning the bow. "I'll take a walk and leave you two to it..."

"She's, uh, a sword dancer and trained singer," said Hu Tao. "A contortionist."

Sometimes, Zhongli was glad not to have a vivid imagination.

"Ah," he said. "I shall head out for a long walk, then. I shall return after sunset. Have fun with your..."

"Cultural discussion," said Hu Tao quickly.

"Your Pyro Vision discussion, yes," said Zhongli, walking away.

"What? She doesn't have a Pyro Vision— wait, wait..." She balled her fists and called after him: "Mister Zhongli, what are you implying?"

Zhongli chuckled and gave no reply.

"Do you mind if I take the blindfold off?" said Anippe. It was a sticking point sometimes; a surprising number of people assumed Clearwater dancers wore them every waking moment.

"Not at all."

The Liyuean woman, Hu Tao, pulled out her notebook.

"I'm curious," she said. "Do you perform funeral rites for your fallen enemies?"

"It depends on the nature of the battle," Anippe replied. "If a foe violated the laws of hospitality, or..." She paused, partway through untying her waist sash. "Wait, were you serious about the interview?"

"Why, what else would I have meant?" said Hu Tao, fiddling with the window slats.

"Ah," said Anippe. She sighed. "I think there may have been a misunderstanding..."

(Just her luck. First the gregarious Farrokhdokht last month who'd literally wanted to play trading card games in her tent, then the girl from Zubayr Theatre whose 'dance card' was full up... and now apparently she'd misread another situation.)

"Well, as the saying goes..." said Hu Tao, "...tada! You've been pranked!"

Anippe blinked. "I... pardon me?"

"Nobody appreciates my sense of humour," Hu Tao said.

She took off her hat and placed it gently on the table.

"Zhongli... Zhongli... Ah, yes, we have a package for you," said Katheryne. She pulled out a parcel from beneath her desk. "A Leyline Magnetic Amplifier, on loan to you. As always, be careful not to damage it."

"I will be careful," promised Zhongli.

"Hmm... This is usually reserved for Spantamad commissions, but I don't see a..." Katheryne frowned. "Which commission was this assigned to you for? I... I..."

Katheryne yawned and blinked rapidly.

"I... My apologies, what was I saying?" she said, sounding kind of bleary.

"Something about... commissions," said Zhongli.

"Ah, yes." Katheryne folded her hands together. "May your commission go well, Mister Zhongli. Ad Astra Abyssosque!"

"I need to get out of this city for a while," said Hu Tao over dinner.

Zhongli paused, his spoon halfway to his mouth.

"Are you in trouble with the law, Director?"

"No," said Hu Tao. She gave him a cross look. "Hey, why's that your first assumption? Do I really seem like a criminal to you?"

Zhongli resumed eating.

"So after being so excited to get to the city and interview the residents, why do you suddenly want to leave?" he asked.

"Not leave leave," said Hu Tao. "Just... I think I want a little more time in nature to get my head sorted. Away from all these people with those creepy things in their ears."

"The Akasha Terminals?" said Zhongli. "I can ask Miss Nahida more about them, if you'd like."

"Oh, is that fake Katheryne's name? Well, yeah, sure, do that if you get a chance. But for now I just want nothing to do with those things."

"They are certainly... unlike anything I've seen in Liyue," Zhongli conceded.

"They're soulless, is what they are. They're... I dunno. But I'm exhausted and they're not relaxing to be around."

Zhongli sympathised, but he had to admit, he was a little surprised her mood had worsened so much since their interviews this morning.

Unless...

"Director Hu," he began, "your friend from earlier..."

"We were... I was... She put her Terminal on in the middle of a, uh, personal discussion to look something up." Hu Tao shuddered. "I just asked her if she knew any good florists around here, and she put that thing on to ask the network... Mister Zhongli, I swear, her soul might still have been in her body but it was like someone else was in that room for the two seconds she spent doing that."

Zhongli nodded. "That must have been... a troubling experience," he commiserated, "especially during such a vulnerable moment."

"Vulnerable moment?" said Hu Tao, sounding confused.

Wait, had they not been...? "My apologies, perhaps I presumed too much," said Zhongli. "I assumed the two of you were... being intimate, but—"

"Oh!" Hu Tao laughed. "Mister Zhongli, intimacy and vulnerability are completely different things! I wasn't baring my soul to some random stranger, hehe." She crossed her arms. "The point is, the people in this city have this thing in their heads and it's weird and I want some proper relaxation time. I'll just camp out a night or two."

"Very well," said Zhongli, "a wise decision."

He sipped at his water, then smiled as a minor jape occurred to him.

"After all," he added, "with all the work we're doing, you deserve to relax a bit on this vacation."

"My thoughts exactly— hey, wait!" Hu Tao clutched a hand to her heart. "Not you too! It's a business trip, you oaf!"

"She gave her permission to have you check in on her, on my behalf," said Zhongli. "I think she knew it was the only way I'd let her camp out in unfamiliar land on her own."

"I'll ask the grass and trees to watch over her."

Nahida's voice came crackling through the Leyline Magnetic Amplifier. Sitting on the chair on the opposite side of the table, it was almost like Zhongli was having a physical guest over at his lodgings.

"I deeply appreciate the favour," said Zhongli. "If there's anything I can do in return..."

"Oh, it's nothing! Your company is already a huge gift." Nahida paused. "And, hmm, your totally-not-foster-daughter is... oh. That's interesting..."

Zhongli sat up a little straighter (and, it should be said, he already sat very straight most of the time). "Interesting?"

"Nothing bad," she reassured him. "Just... it seems Hu Tao will be having an escort."

Just across the river from the city was Chatrakam Hill, a nice and quiet spot to be attacked by crocodiles and petty thieves before finally making camp.

"Your weapons are possessed!" Hu Tao called after one group of fleeing Eremites. "You should really get an exorcist to look at that!"

It didn't come as much surprise to hear more footsteps approaching as she pitched her tent. On the other hand, the steps were very light and... waddly, for lack of a better word.

Hu Tao finished securing the tent before acknowledging the newcomer. "Hellooo?" she said, turning around.

It was a little green Aranara, wearing—or having grown, maybe?—two big floppy leaves with a few more sticking out above like a little propeller.

At Hu Tao's words, the Aranara bounced in place excitedly.

"Nara Agni! You are here! I am Aragaru."

"Um... hi, Aragaru. My name is Hu Tao, not Agni, but it's very nice to meet you."

"Nara Agni is called Nara Hu Tao? I will remember this."

"Why am I called that?"

"You are a child of Agni's flame, are you not? The grass and mushrooms have whispered to me about your arrival."

Child of Agni meant Pyro Vision, probably.

"I guess so...?" said Hu Tao.

"Fire is very dangerous. Forest fires, Vanagni, children of Agni, they all burn. Turn buds and blossoms to ash, the fires.

"But Nara Hu Tao is good Nara! Nara Hu Tao is like the careful embers, only burning when it is safe, only overgrowth and the newly fallen leaves. Fire is dangerous, but good fire is part of the cycle."

"So you... know I help souls cross the border, then?" Hu Tao asked.

"Aragaru doesn't know what is border. The grass, the old trees, the ashes of leaves, they say Nara Agni—"

("Hu Tao.")

"—Nara Hu Tao is the light, the light that burns hotter than the sun. Nara Hu Tao is the purifying fire of Homa..."

Purifying fire of Homa...? Okay, in fairness, that sounded like a flowery phrasing of her job description. Not to mention that 'Homa' was one of the names of her totally-not-cursed staff (you know, the ancient firewood one that glowed an angry red, sometimes spoke to her ominously in her dreams: that staff).

"Guess that's me!" she said, with a little flourish.

Aragaru looked pleased. "I have been waiting for you."

"Oh, and why is that?" said Hu Tao.

"We Aranara need your help! You know the ways of Marana, yes?"

It took some back and forth for Hu Tao to get a sense of what Marana meant. It was one of those words that seemed to stretch across a lot of different concepts, stymieing straightforward translation.

Marana meant, in part, death, a subject Hu Tao was well-acquainted with. Aragaru described it like the endless red sun, the end of everything that nourished life, the essence of slow and tragic endings. Once, before Marana, the forests had not known death—but now that memory was inescapable, and the memory was Marana.

(Not known death?, wondered Hu Tao; really? Had the boars not always fed on stray critters and the nascent roots of tubers? Had the tigers not always fed on the boars? Had the worms and trees not always fed on the tigers, in due course?)

It also seemed that Marana was what the Forest Patrol called the Withering: the strange sickness that ate away at the forest one grove at a time, whose aura could be deadly to those without Visions or the magic to withstand it. Marana, the Withering, grew and spread, sucking the life from the trees and the grass and the flowers, greedily reaching for more and more.

Additionally, Marana was somehow... the desert?... in a sense that didn't sound entirely like metaphor. Hu Tao was very unclear on how sand related to the other two. Perhaps because the desert was inhospitable to life?

"Mawtiyima cries for help." Aragaru said this so matter of factly they might have been discussing the weather. "The plants are afraid to grow. The forests are afraid to speak. Marana must be stopped."

Death is not evil, Grandpa had said; death is not bad. Nor, of course, should death be pursued as its own end, but the return to the cycle need not be feared.

Hu Tao was pretty darned sure the Aranara weren't making the usual human fallacy of thinking "all death is evil". The Withering, after all, was a cruel thing, like disease, and far be it from Hu Tao to glorify disease and decay.

But it felt like what Aragaru was telling her was an interesting, somehow-not-right, perspective on the subject of death. And that had Hu Tao intrigued. Especially after all those dead-end conversations these last few days...

Well, that decided it. Hu Tao was happy to lend a hand, she explained to the Aranara.

Aragaru bobbed up and down excitedly and began explaining something about a flower and potions.

"But first," Hu Tao said, cutting them off, "it's very late, and I would like to sleep."

"Oh. Why do Nara always rest?" said Aragaru. "No new memories, when you rest."

"Well, humans have to sleep, because we... uh..." Hmm. Hu Tao trailed off. Was the folklore explanation more appropriate, or the literal one? And how accurate was the literal one? What Hu Tao knew was fourth-hand, from the Amurta via Baizhu (ugh) via Yanfei and Zhongli. Something about... turning memories into wisdom? Making dreams?

Wait. No, Hu Tao, silly Hu Tao. She was too tired for this.

"How about you ask me in the morning?" she said. "You can wake me up at sunrise. I can't give a good answer when I'm so sleepy."

"Sleep. Very strange," said Aragaru, though they did not object.

"Strange? Maybe. But it's what we gotta do at night."

"Is this what Nara mean by, when moon rises, we bask in moonlight?"

That... that was her own verse. If Hu Tao wasn't as exhausted as she was, she would have so many questions about where the hell the Aranara had heard that line from.

As it was, she unrolled her sleeping bag.

"Good night, Aragaru," she said, crawling in, "don't let the bed bugs bite, etcetera."

She fell asleep pretty quickly.

"What bugs?" said Aragaru, looking around.

"You're familiar with Director Hu's poetry?"

"An preprint of Fiddlesticks made its way through Port Ormos last year," said Nahida. "It ended up in a deep corner of the Akasha's databases. I sped through the whole thing in an hour, then I spent the next two weeks rereading it at my own pace." She sighed fondly, a noise rendered grainy by the Leyline Magnetic Amplifier. "It's really very good. I so admire poets."

"You haven't been to Port Ormos in person, then?" said Zhongli. He suspected he knew the answer to this one, but best to approach the subject delicately.

"Not yet, no," said Nahida. "My physical form has been in the Sanctuary of Surasthana ever since my predecessor passed away. Give or take the few days it took the Sages to find me."

"And if you wanted to leave...?"

"It might be, um, an involved process." Nahida sounded a little sheepish. "But you shouldn't concern yourself with Sumeru politics. It's not your dookie to clean up. Besides, I've been quite fine here."

"But—"

"Really, I mean it. The Akasha lets me see my people, and my powers let me see the world. I don't need my physical vessel to do these things. I don't feel trapped."

"Yet you seem to feel lonely," was Zhongli's rejoinder. "At least if my company is such a boon to you."

"Oh, but you're not just anyone. I have my friends in the children of the forest, and I have the love of my worshippers, few though they are. What I don't have is my predecessor's memories. You know old things, things I no longer do." Nahida chuckled. "Is it not natural that I value that?"

"Then perhaps," said Zhongli, "you might like another story."

"Perhaps so," said Nahida. "You told me of the Cataclysm, earlier. Perhaps... do you have memories of Queen Aranyani, in better times?"

Zhongli nodded. "Of course. Where would you like me to begin?"

"Why do Nara sleep?"

"Huh?... Gah! Don't stand so close, you gave me a fright!"

Roll out of 'bed', roll up the sleeping bag while her brain was still slowly reactivating, sip some water, start preparing breakfast...

"Why do Nara sleep?"

"I dunno, maybe to mark the day's end?" Hu Tao rubbed at her eyes blearily. "At least let me get this coffee boiling."

"Be careful, Nara Agni," warned Aragaru, "there is fire under your 'coffee'."

"Well spotted." Hu Tao yawned. "I'll have to be careful, then."

She'd slept solidly, but could definitely have used a few more hours. Still, she couldn't be too mad about being woken up by the earnest little Aranara: the sunrise cast Chatrakam Hill in shades of golden green, like the heart of summer distilled in a single moment.

(Heart of summer, golden green... she scribbled a few phrases into the margins of her notebook, where perhaps they might ferment into something sweeter.)

Drink coffee, chow down breakfast (prepacked; Hu Tao knew her flaws and cooking was most of them), change out of night shirt, tear down camp.

"It is time to go!" said Aragaru.

"Yes it is!" Hu Tao cheerily agreed.

They set off, the green Aranara leading the way.

"So what kind of flower are we looking for?" said Hu Tao.

"The Barsam Flower is just a flower. The Barsam Flower is at where mushrooms grow."

"Under trees? Or... underground?"

"Nara Agni understands! We must go very far under trees."

"Gotcha."

The guide books described Chatrakam Cave as "cool" and "damp". The brochure from the local Adventurers Guild had an additional quote from the Amurta Darshan, informing readers that the cave system was "well suited" to the growth of Fungi species, "due to [its] cool and damp environment".

In an unsurprising turn of events, Chatrakam Cave was cool and damp. The ground was a little uneven, so Hu Tao was careful to watch her footing. In the meantime, Aragaru—who had used some form of Aranara magic to open up a new passageway deeper into the caves—filled the silence with interesting chatter.

"The place was Nara's home many, many moonrises and moonsets ago," Aragaru informed her.

"Down here in the dark?" said Hu Tao. She supposed that would be an effective way of dealing with the sun's heat.

As they got deeper, the path opened up into a wide cavern. Fragments of what once had been stone walls and pillars were scattered about, long since warped and broken apart under the strength of vines and tree roots.

"Doesn't seem like anybody's lived here for a long time," Hu Tao remarked.

"The Nara sleep now."

"Oya? Sleep, huh?"

Aragaru nodded. "Yes. Many moonrises and moonsets ago. The earth is where they sleep."

Hu Tao nodded in return. She was tempted to go into work mode: the Aranara reminded her of young children in how they spoke, and were she hearing this from a child she'd want to gently probe, to make sure they weren't living in an unhealthy kind of denial. But this was a different species—let alone culture—entirely, and she wasn't sure yet how they understood death, if they did at all.

"Will the Nara wake up again?" she said cautiously.

"Awake, asleep: it makes no difference. All things will return to Sarva." Aragaru tilted its head, thinking. "But... these Nara's dreams are covered in wet dirt. Now generation and generation of plants have grown here... all the memories have become soil."

Okay, there was clearly some serious metaphor getting lost in translation, but that sounded like death all right.

"Nara and Aranara lived together here," Aragaru continued. "They recorded their stories together."

"Stories, huh?" said Hu Tao.

"Stories are not the best memories," Aragaru remarked. "They are not as fresh."

"What other kinds of memories are there?"

"For Nara, memories can be stories. Nara carve the memories into stone like this. Aranara memories... can be stored in tubers, in seeds, in leaf veins..."

Was that a metaphor, or...?

Hu Tao took a moment to contemplate the idea literally.

Memories were frail things—well, human memories were, at least. Memories could fade with the passage of time, could be eroded by hazy nostlagia and old age, could be destroyed by cranial trauma. And, of course, memories were erased by death, or more accurately by a soul's return to the cycle.

What would it be like, she wondered, to be able to just put a memory down, like a little seedling in the ground, knowing that you could come back to it in decades' time and have it be just as fresh as it was today? What would it be like to leave a memory for your children's children, far richer than any written journal could convey?

"Do Aranara memories... disappear?" she asked.

"Disappear?"

"Do they go away or are they always there?"

"Aragaru understands. Aranara memories... can pass to friends, can travel the world... can be used."

"Used...?"

"Memories are not destroyed, they just return to Sarva. Like Aranara, one day memories all flow back towards Sarva."

Hu Tao had the increasing suspicion that "Sarva" translated to something like "the Irminsul, where all things begin and end". Which was fine! This was a much more interesting discussion than anything anyone in the city had had to offer.

"So, these stories," said Hu Tao, who was hardly going to say no to learning about some dead civilisations. "Can you tell me some?"

Elsewhere, though not all that far away, a very different kind of stone recounted old memories to a very different kind of sapling, one who had precious few memories of her own.

Some stories were great triumphant epics. Some were tragedies. Some were simple musings on the flavour of a shared meal, millenia ago, the contentment on someone's face.

Many moons ago, Zhongli had told a wandering traveller that he sought a better way to engrave history, to preserve the truth. A fool's errand, perhaps, but no less fascinating for it.

Stone and runes, parchment and ink: these can hold records, stories... but they erode over time, and they can never replace the immediacy of memory. What Zhongli spoke to Nahida were not memories, but memories filtered through the medium of language, necessarily impoverished by the process.

For those who are not creatures of Irminsul like the Aranara, memories are inevitably subject to entropy and decay. Still, this is never a reason not to try.

Those who share the memories will fade away in time. The richness of the truth, its myriad details, will be lost.

But the stories, imperfect as they are, can still be shared. And inadequate as this is, neither is it nothing.

"The Grandmaster of Verdure lifted the flowery vines," Aragaru translated, "and the brave Nara carrying the bud of wisdom came to the Realm of Khab."

"And that's where the... Marana?..." (The Withering? Abstract death?) "...that's where it was hiding, in the Realm of Khab?"

"I think so. That is what the story says."

Aragaru and Hu Tao stared at the runes in silence. Who knows how many centuries these symbols had been carved into these cave walls.

"Are there Aranara around who still remember this?"

"Maybe!" said Aragaru. "Some Aranara are old and wise, have many, many memories to share. Maybe they will tell you more, if you ask."

Aragaru pointed out another set of runes ahead. Together, the two of them approached it.

"The brave Nara expelled Marana together with the Barsam Flower," Aragaru read. "And... yes! This way, we can find the Realm of Khab this way."

Their path took them back out into the sunlight. Hu Tao briefly contemplated drying out her socks and shoes, then remembered with a sigh that they were headed back underground. At least she had spares at the lodgings; she'd deal with the gross wet feeling for a bit longer.

When they came to the Realm of Khab, Hu Tao found herself staring down a deep, deep hole.

"And how exactly are we getting back out?" she asked.

"Connects to the rivers, the Realm of Khab," Aragaru assured her.

"Can you promise me for sure I won't be stuck in this hole until I starve to death?"

"Lots of shroom-kin have moved into the Realm of Khab. Nara can eat fungi, yes?"

Nara with Xiangling's toxin resistance, sure.

"Okay, um..."

Best to make sure all contingencies were covered.

Hu Tao dropped to a kneeling position, ignoring the mud squelching under her knees.

Lord Rex Lapis,

I know you're dead and all, so you can't answer prayers, but please let it be known that if I, Hu Tao, die after getting trapped inside this weird underground cave, it's entirely the Aranara's fault, and you have my blessing to drop a boulder on them in my memory. Just one. Two would be excessive.

All hail your glory, remember to water the plants, et cetera.

"Okay, all set," said Hu Tao.

The best that Hu Tao could do, if asked to describe the Realm of Khab in a single word, was to say it was eerie. Mostly the "empty halls nobody walks any more" kind of eerie.

There was also, however, the minor matter of the ceiling.

"That is an ominous amount of water," she said, staring up.

Above them, light refracted through what sure looked like a river's worth of water. (And given how far underground they were, and the flowing water she'd seen above, this did not feel like an exaggeration.) No visible barrier held the water in place; it seemed to simply ignore the possibility of falling into the cavern.

"Nara Hu Tao is very silly," said Aragaru. "This water is not an omen! It comes from the rivers. The rivers come from the rain."

"Ominous doesn't mean..."—oh, wait, it did. "Well... I personally find all that water above us very worrying."

"Do not worry! The Realm of Khab is the Barsam Flower's dream. Very powerful, the Barsam Flower is. No water will disturb it when it dreams."

It would be a lie to say that this reassured Hu Tao.

This was very reassuring, Hu Tao told Aragaru.

The Barsam Flower sat within a spherical Dendro barrier. There were specific ward stones to deactivate the barrier, according to Aragaru, and they wandered through the cavernous space in search of them.

The whole place felt like one of those pre-Guili temples, with its crumbling stone walls and simple decorative masonry.

"People lived here too, huh?"

"Yes," said Aragaru. "Nara left the stones but didn't leave memories."

"That's us Nara for you," said Hu Tao, "always leaving and never leaving much behind."

The ruins of the Realm of Khab were not a tomb, exactly, though the tonnes of water hovering above them lent the place a certain suffocating feel. This felt like a place that had always been quiet, even while humans still tread these halls.

Hu Tao didn't mind this at all, of course. One did not spend one's life walking the Border without gaining an appreciation for the desolate.

They didn't talk much, save the occasional comment about which way to go next. If there were a few hostile Fungi around the area, they posed little trouble, and after a few spot cremations they quickly learned to steer clear of her.

It was almost a surprise when Hu Tao realised they were done and the barrier over the Barsam Flower had dissipated.

The Barsam Flower was a golden white colour, glowing in the darkness of the cave. Its centre was wide, disc florets stretching nearly all the way to the edge, the petals small by comparison. It looked beautiful; it looked ageless.

"So now we... take the flower?" Hu Tao guessed.

Aragaru looked shocked. "We must have the Barsam Flower's permission first! Taking without permission is rude!"

"True, true," said Hu Tao automatically.

(She tried not to think too hard about the number of mushrooms and silk flowers she'd... non-consensually plucked?... over the years.)

On further examination, Hu Tao noted with interest that the Barsam Flower had... not exactly a soul, not a thing she would ever need to walk across the Border, but a kind of vitality that felt rich in the way a human soul did but a koi or cicin fly's didn't.

The old Dendro Archon had created the Aranara, if she recalled Zhongli's words correctly.

Conclusion: Dendro power was weird.

Aragaru whispered to the Barsam Flower in hushed tones.

"Very angry, the Barsam Flower," they said. "Roused the Barsam Flower from its slumber, its nice dream, we have."

"Ah," said Hu Tao. She nodded her head. "My apologies, Barsam Flower."

Aragaru listened again. "The Barsam Flower said we are forgiven, because it is for Arahaoma."

"Arahaoma...?"

"Special potion, Arahaoma. Part of a ritual to save Mawtiyima."

"And Mawtiyima is...?"

"In trouble."

Hu Tao exhaled slowly. Okay, sure.

"Barsam Flower is born for this ritual, must sacrifice juice for Arahaoma. That is why Aragaru and Hu Tao seek it out."

Hu Tao considered it. "Sacrifice its juice... is that like its memories?"

Aragaru nodded. "Nara Hu Tao is very clever. Memory is powerful, and drives away death. Arahaoma is an elixir of memory."

Hu Tao nodded. "Then... tell the Barsam Flower I say thank you."

Carefully, the two of them removed the Barsam Flower from the soil.

"Will another grow?" said Hu Tao.

"All things takes time," said Aragaru.

Hu Tao nodded and carefully placed the Barsam Flower in her rucksack.

"Hmm..." Aragaru put their hand to their chin. "The Barsam Flower also said, be careful with our heads."

"Our heads?" said Hu Tao.

"Protect our heads and roots, or damage will be caused when water comes."

Hu Tao wasn't certain what that meant, but...

...wait.

What was that noise?

She looked up.

"Oh, fudgecrumbs—"

Hu Tao had just enough time to clap a hand over her hat before the water came crashing down over them.

Chapter Text

The notes of the dizi echoed across the cavern.

Nara Agni lowered the flute to sing a few short words:

“The art of losing isn't hard to master...”

Aragaru, Aranaga, and Aranakin all listened quietly. They were not song gatherers by lifepath, but the memories they made here could be shared with those who could better understand the ways of music, the connection of hearts and stories to the Sourcesong.

“So many things seem filled with the intent—”

Nara Agni raised the flute to her lips, played a few short trilling notes.

“—to be lost, that their loss is no disaster.”

She set the dizi down gently.

“You Aranara are wiser than humans, in some ways. You know from when you first... sprout?... that old life springs from new life, that songs and memories cycle eternally through the leylines, that nothing is ever truly lost.”

The three Aranara nodded in agreement.

“And yet...”

The three Aranara blinked in confusion.

“I do not know if we would have saved Mawtiyima from Marana if I hadn't held on to that funeral director's conception of loss as... necessary. Sad, but necessary.

“The so-called memory of death is not overcome by denying death's permanence. That is a belief I must embody if I am to help my clients' friends and loved ones heal.”

But as all things return to Sarva, all things come from Sarva, Aranaga pointed out. Nothing is truly lost.

Nara Agni nodded. “Yes, but... Hmm, how to explain...

“The first thing my grandpa taught me about the Old Ways was duality. The duality of life and death, sun and moon, learning and forgetting. Everything exists in the context of its inverse.”

What is a grandpa?, asked Aragaru, but the others shushed and shook their heads.

The Nara continued: “The second thing he taught me was monism. Everything is one. No one can separate the light from the dark. No one can separate the two sides of a coin. You cannot even separate the truth of duality from the truth that all is one.”

Aragaru repeated their question, and Nara Agni smiled and explained—cryptically, in the way of Nara—that her grandpa was her father's father.

Aranaga raised their hand.

“...aiyah, what now?”

What is a father?, asked Aranaga.

Nara Agni sighed and muttered that she should have seen that coming.

A father is a type of parent, she said, and in the most technical sense a parent is... the tree a seed falls from. But it's more than that. Someone who's no blood relation, who wasn't there when you were young, but is there for you now; someone who acts like a pillar you can lean on—and you don't need to, your balance is good, but balancing is always so much easier knowing the pillar is there in case of emergency—that can be a father, too.

“...if the Dendro Archon is listening in,” she added, “don't you dare breath a word of that to you know who.”

Aranakin raised their hand.

“Mm?” said Nara Agni.

“Nara Agni made memories together with us, you said. You have learned from us. Does that mean...?”

Nara Agni blinked. “No.” She snorted slightly. “The world is mysterious and unknowable, but... no, Aranakin, you are not my father.”

“Oh, okay,” said Aranakin.

Three days earlier

A little ways north of Chatrakam Cave, a jet of water burst forth from underground. The resulting torrent sloshed down the wetlands, depositing a little green Aranara and a medium-sized brunette Nara on the ground.

The wave of water swept past them, receding to a trickle.

For a few seconds, neither moved.

“Whee!” said Aragaru, after pulling their head out from the mud and turning themself right way up.

“That,” said Hu Tao, “was ridiculous! What the heck!?”

The Realm of Khab was the Barsam Flower's dream, Aragaru explained, so—

“That was a stupid amount of water,” Hu Tao complained, “I could have drowned!”

—so of course, Aragaru continued, the dream will disperse into the air when the Flower awakes. So the weight of the water can't be withstood—

“Yes, I get that part, I understand why it happened,” Hu Tao grumbled.

“—and water will gush out!” said Aragaru. “Whooo!”

“Whooo,” said Hu Tao equivocally.

“Splash! Cool and refreshing!”

“Uh-huh. Splash.” She sighed. “Aiyah, I need to change my clothes now...”

Hu Tao was mostly concerned for the water repellant potion coating her harmony hexagram hat: that stuff was designed for rain, not for taking a dunk in a river. But the wet socks and wet coat and wet hair were pretty bothersome, too.

“Change... clothes?” echoed Aragaru. “What does this mean?”

“I... nope, not my job to have this conversation...” Hu Tao stared down the stream. “Oh my gods. Is that a waterfall ahead? Did I nearly get thrown off a waterfall?”

“That would be bad,” Aragaru pointed out.

“I agree.”

“But do not worry! I would be able to find you afterwards! The plants will also be able to tell me where you are.”

That was... not actually Hu Tao's biggest concern regarding being thrown off a waterfall. But it was reassuring to know, she told Aragaru.

She was welcome, Aragaru told her. And now it was time for the next part of Hu Tao's quest! Next, she was to go to Gandha Hill, where another Aranara awaited her.

“Okay,” said Hu Tao. “Gandha Hill is quite big. Where exactly?”

Where the trees and mushrooms and grass grow tall!

“That could literally be anywhere,” said Hu Tao.

“...near where Nara play.”

“That'll do.”

Hu Tao stood up, wincing at the squelching of her waterlogged clothes.

“Thank you, Aragaru. It was nice to meet you.”

“Be safe, Nara Hu Tao!”

“The child born in the middle of sands cherishes green more than anyone else—”

“Well that's a crock of Sumpter dung if ever I heard one,” said the boss. “Who likes green?”

“It's figurative,” said Ziri, clutching the book to his chest. “Green refers to the forests—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know it means the forests and jungles, I'm just saying, what's there to like about that?”

“You love spending time out here,” Ziri accused her.

“No, I love the Mora's that's to be made out here. And all the great stuff going on in the city.” The boss crossed her arms. “You know what I don't like? Humidity. Marshes. Mosquitoes. Minum, do you like mosquitoes?”

“...no,” said Minum.

(Ziri glared at him. Traitor.)

The boss clapped. “There you have it!” she said, “the vote's two to one. Desert dwellers and green—figurative green—don't go together.”

“You can't just vote that a poem is 'wrong',” said Ziri. “Poems are about specific things, specific people, specific places...”

“I should never have bought you that damned poetry book,” said the boss. “It's an obsession, Ziri, it—”

Minum piped up. “Remind me how much you spent on Genius Invokation TCG before we got run out of town?”

The boss made a face. “That... That's different!”

Ziri nodded to Minum. Betrayal forgiven.

The boss spent the next few minutes sputtering about 'metagames' and 'dice advantage', and Ziri was more than a little satisfied to see her cheeks had gone red.

Lunja was a good boss. A great boss, even, if you were to ask Ziri. Lunja believed in enjoying life and making friends, and especially in making friends who'd made roots in towns and cities. Being part of her band meant spending a lot more time around crowds in a typical year than most Eremites would in their lifetime. Just these past few months, they'd bounced from Ormos to Ribat to Sumeru City, and getting to know places was great, if you, like Ziri, were still holding out hope of settling down somewhere before the ripe old age of thirty.

If only...

...eh, nope. Ziri wasn't sure he and Firuzeh were over, and moping over maybes wouldn't do any good right now. Next time he dropped in to see Ahangar, he'd apologise for that scuffle right outside his forge, and then he'd ask after the smith's foster daughter—tactfully.

(The problem with Lunja, the one frustration, was that even if she always paid off her gambling debts, it was always a week or two late. Ziri wasn't even sure how she'd managed to get in hot water over trading cards, but... well, let the past stay in the past. They had a job to do.)

Isar—who'd joined Lunja's band this past week—ambled closer to Ziri and Minum.

“How can someone even end up in debt over trading cards?” he asked. “Not even playing them, just buying them?”

“Skill,” said Ziri.

“Practice,” said Minum simultaneously.

“I can't believe this is the same woman who I saw talk a merchant into a fifty percent discount on spices,” Isaq said, shaking his head.

“Hey, now. The boss is great,” said Minum.

“But—”

Ziri concurred. “The boss knows how to put food on a table. And she's one hell of a negotiator. There's a reason the tribe sent a messenger straight to us: she gets results.”

“Okay,” said Isaq, “but then how does she lose—”

“Look,” said Ziri. “She's the savviest operator this side of the Wall, but the moment it's not about a job...”

“...all that skill is gone like a mirage,” Minum finished.

“Hey,” said the boss from up ahead, “I can hear you louts.”

Ziri shrugged. “Then you heard the flattery too.”

“Look, it's work hard, play hard, right? Can you even imagine if I was in boss mode twenty-four seven?” The boss shook her head. “I'd be so boring. I'd go crazy, probably.”

“Sure, but—”

“Hey, now.” She slung her arm over Ziri's shoulder. “You're just sour about the smith's girl.”

“So?”

(Firuzeh's voice was low and metallic like good iron; her eyes were the same sea-green as Port Ormos at the height of summer. Cherishes green more than anyone else: perhaps that line had been written for Ziri himself.)

“So you've gotta get your head out of that poetry book!” said the boss. “If the love life's shit, put it aside, think about friends and good food. Or, better yet, think about the next big score!”

“It's not that simple.”

“Sure it is. Two sides to every coin, Ziri.” The boss removed her arm. “When one side sucks, lean into the other. Take it from me! You gotta compartment out the different bits of your life.”

“Compartmentalise?”

“That's what I said. So, come on, chin up! Get your head out of the poetry and flowers. Think about the next big job. That'll take your mind off things.”

Ziri did his best.

It was a pretty big job, admittedly. The family had sent word: the Farrokhzadan were to start chasing down rumours about the... Alanara?... something like that?... about this rare kind of creature they needed to catch. And an additional commission, some kind of rare mushroom that might bait the jungle critters out.

“You think we can make it all the way east today?” Ziri said.

“Of course,” said the boss.

“We're running low on insect repellant,” Minum warned.

“Pessimists, the lot of you. Gandharva Ville is neutral territory, right? The Ribat of the Liyue border, isn't that what old Lady Siman called it?”

“...something like that.”

“We can detour through, then. Do a little shopping. It's practically on the way to Gandha Hill.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” said Zhongli.

“Lettuce!”

Zhongli opened the door and ushered Director Hu into their bungalow.

“No, no,” said the young woman, sounding quite put out, “you can't just let me in, first you're supposed to ask me, ‘Lettuce who?’, and then—”

“Director Hu,” Zhongli interrupted, “why are you wet?”

“Oh, yeah.” Hu Tao sniggered. “Pfft. Um. Lemme get a fire started... There is a fireplace, right?... aha, yup.”

The Leyline Magnetic Amplifier, still sitting on the side table where Zhongli had left it last night, crackled to life.

“Hu Tao was swept away by a flood,” Nahida said, her voice tinny but clear through the little device. “However, unlike the deluges that end many myths, your ward's treasured flame is unquashed. It burns bright still.”

“Oh, is that Kusanali?”

“Nahida,” Zhongli corrected Hu Tao. “That is the name she chose, not the name the Sages assigned to her... Wait, Nahida, a literal flood?...”

“No offence taken, of course!” said Nahida. “And yes, good to hear from you again, Hu Tao.”

With the fire lit, Hu Tao shrugged off her coat. “Likewise! Have you—Mister Zhongli, don't look, this shirt is white and my, uh... just, don't look—Have you two been having fun without me?”

“Sharing stories and memories,” said Nahida fondly. “Mister Zhongli has been most kind.”

Zhongli waited until he heard Hu Tao's door close before opening his eyes. The Director's entire outfit was draped over a clothes horse before the fireplace, soaked through with water.

“A flood?” he repeated.

“She was in safe hands,” replied Nahida.

“And if she'd drowned?”

“Um... a reasonable question. Water can be a hazard, no doubt, but in other circumstances, it can be a cleansing force.”

Zhongli rubbed his forehead. “You're evading the question.”

“On the contrary,” said Nahida, “I'm evading the tantrum you'd throw if I answered it.”

Hu Tao emerged from her room in a fresh change of clothes, looking mostly dry except for her hair.

“Ayo, you two arguing?” she said.

“Well...” began Zhongli.

“Also, Mister Zhongli, I'll forgive you this time, but you can't just ask a lady why she's wet.”

“Nahida was informing me you could have drowned, despite notionally being under the care of her familiars.”

“Implying, not informing,” said Nahida. “I don't want to give the wrong impression, though: the Aranara aren't my familiars in any sense. Like two crops on the same farmland, the only bond we share is that we both owe our existences to Queen Aranyani.”

“I don't suppose you can tell me about this Mawtiyima-Arahaoma ritual of theirs?” said Hu Tao. She made to join Zhongli at the table, reconsidered, then started rummaging about in a nearby suitcase.

“I admit I'm still a little behind on learning all their stories,” said Nahida. “My focus has largely been on Irminsul.”

“Damn. Well...” Hu Tao had pulled out a few days' worth of rations and was trying them into a bundle. “Can you at least explain why they all look like they're smiling all the time?”

“Because they're always happy?” Nahida said. “That's a guess, but that's often why people smile.” She hummed fondly. “I think it's rather cute.”

“Can't argue with that,” said Hu Tao. “Um... Zhongli, do we have any waterproofing potions with us?”

“I didn't pack any,” said Zhongli.

“Try the Grand Bazaar, there's several apothecarists there,” said Nahida.

“Will do,” said Hu Tao. She grabbed her hat from its spot next to the fireplace. “Okay, cool. I'm going back to my nature break. Gandha Hill then Mawtiyima Forest, should only be a few days.”

“You won't at least stay for a cup of tea?” said Zhongli.

“What, missing me already?” Hu Tao grinned. “There'll be plenty of time for that once I've... helped the forest get over its fear of death or something. I promised Aragaru I would help, I've gotta be a woman of my word.”

“Alright,” said Zhongli, “but Director Hu, please don't do anything too rash.” He cleared his throat. “If perhaps you wished for a chaperone—”

In the time it took him to say that last word, Hu Tao had somehow crossed the room and was halfway out the door. “Whoops sorry didn't hear you, have a good time you two, bye!”

Zhongli slowly closed his mouth with a long sigh.

“Now... where were we?” said Nahida.

“Please be aware that if Hu Tao drowns or otherwise dies from misadventure—”

“Yes, yes, don't let your daughter die, I know... Oh, right, I had a question about how you brew tea! Why are some blends steeped for one minute and others, for three?”

“She's not my daughter,” said Zhongli, “and it's very straightforward, really. As the leaves infuse into the heated water, different parts of the flavour are released over time...”

The area south of Gandha Hill was very close to the Chasm shortcut Hu Tao and Zhongli had taken to get to Sumeru to begin with, so Hu Tao knew the way well. She made a quick stop by the nearby Ville to trade for potions and a fresh meal, and to ask the head ranger if she could pet his ears (the answer was still no) and if he needed any help with the dead god sealed inside one of his disciples (also still no).

Near the area Aragaru had described, Hu Tao stumbled across some Eremites, who not only refrained from attempting to stab her, but invited her to join their campfire.

“Thank you for your hospitality. I'm Hu Tao.”

“Lunja! I'm a Farrokhzadan—well, technically, a Farrokhdokht, heh—and these here are my boys, Minum and Ziri.”

“Mm,” grunted Minum.

“Mm,” grunted Ziri.

Lunja looked embarrassed. “Don't mind them, they're not the most talkative. Want any broth? We caught more game than we need.”

“Wanna share some pita pockets?” said Hu Tao. “And I've got some coconut candy.”

Lunja clapped her on the back with a hearty laugh. “I like her. Can we keep her?”

“...no,” said Minum.

“You guys have no sense of humour.”

They sat around the fire, exchanging food. The Eremites made an excellent stew, and Hu Tao made sure to tell them as much. They, in turn, scraped all the charcoal off her Pita Pockets and declared her cooking “very edible” and “okay-tasting”.

“So what's a dapper lady like you doing all the way out in this insufferable humidity?” Lunja asked.

“Oh, I'm on a business trip!” Hu Tao said. “I run a funeral parlor in Liyue Harbour, and I and my number one senior employee are doing market research.”

Lunja whistled, impressed. “A bigshot business owner, huh? But... your employee's not with you?”

“He's preoccupied at the moment,” said Hu Tao. (Until she could assess the woman's intent, best not to mention that she was on her own, nor exactly how far away Zhongli was.) “If he catches up I'll introduce you. What about you? What brings you fine folks this far east?”

“Work.”

After a few seconds it became clear that this was all the answer the woman was going to give.

“What... kind of work?” asked Hu Tao.

“Aww, I'd rather not get into the nitty gritty while breaking bread with new friends.” Lunja grinned. “Gotta keep work and play separate. Duality, you know?”

“I... guess?” said Hu Tao.

The concept of duality Hu Tao knew didn't have anything to do with rigid compartmentalisation. Life flowed into death flowed into life. Even the “border” her family guarded was permeable, an imperfect line across which things could be gently moved, but not a wall. Nature abhorred a wall.

As she would later tell the Aranara, this was one of the first lessons Grandpa had taught her.

“Anyway, we're mercs, and sometimes our clients insist on confidentiality. Can't have us bragging about some top secret job details, right, boys?”

After a second, Minum and Ziri chorused: “Whatever you say, boss.”

“Miss Hu, we're probably in...”—Lunja fiddled with her fingers—“opposite ends of the death business, at times... but I'm sure you understand some things are best left unspoken, isn't that right?”

“Oh, but I love to brag,” said Hu Tao lightly.

(Yes, Hu Tao had her don't-ask-don't-tell contracts with Northland Bank, but honesty was overrated anyway when agent provocateur was on the table.)

“I buried a god, once, you know? Well, my consultant Mister Zhongli did most of the work, but it was my face on the flyers.”

“Hmm.” Lunja shifted, looking about.

The two burly guys took a few steps towards the fire. “We don't mean to interrupt, boss, but...” said one.

“...we should get going,” said the other.

Lunja sighed. “It seems the time's gotten away from me. The job calls.”

“Aw, already?” said Hu Tao.

“Yeah, we've got to run.” Lunja stood up, stretching. “Sorry we can't extend our hospitality any longer.”

“No problem,” said Hu Tao. “Safe travels, all of you!”

Lunja warned Hu Tao to be on her guard: once they parted, she'd be on her own, and just like in the desert, being on one's own in the savage jungle meant being easy prey for hungry beasts.

(Was that a threat? The words had been ominous but the woman's tone of voice was well-meaning.)

“Um... okay? Thank you?” said Hu Tao.

“Stay safe, friend,” said Lunja.

The Eremites gathered up their cooking equipment and supplies, and marched off. Within seconds, the dense trees had swallowed them from view.

Hu Tao took a few gulps from her waterskin. What a weird bunch. Friendly, though.

“You should be careful of those Nara Valuka,” said a voice right behind her.

Hu Tao did not yelp or jump in alarm. She was an old hand at pranking people and being pranked: whatever instinct would have caused most people to jump or yelp in alarm had been thoroughly trained away after countless run-ins with Xingqiu and Yun Jin. However, she was partway through swallowing down another gulp of water, and she choked slightly on that.

She coughed hard. “I— one second...” A few more gulps of water seemed to straighten things out. “...okay, cool, I can breathe. Hi.”

“Yay!” said the Aranara.

They made their introductions. This was Aranakin, who Aragaru had sent Hu Tao to Gandha Hill to find. Aranakin, a clay-red Aranara whose head “cap” very nearly covered their eyes, said they'd been expecting Hu Tao.

“Did the grass and trees tell you I was on my way?”

Yes! Nara Hu Tao was very clever, that was exactly it! But Nara Hu Tao had to be careful. Those sand grains were bad news.

“Sand grains...?” (Because Eremites were from the desert?)

Valuka meant sand, and a group of Nara Valuka were like sad grains, explained Aranakin. These ones were bad sad grains, up to no good.

“Oya? What're they up to?”

Aranakin didn't like sand, they explained. Sand is coarse, rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.

Not like here. Here in the forests, Aranakin explained, the ground and grass and trees were soft and smooth—

“Okay, that's a lovely metaphor, but you still haven't told me: what were those Eremites—those Nara Valuka—doing that has you so worried?” asked Hu Tao.

“They have wicked thoughts,” said Aranakin.

Hu Tao clapped her hands to her mouth. “Oh no,” she gasped, “wicked thoughts.”

Aranakin nodded gravely. “And still, Mawtiyima is feeling sick.”

“So how do we make Mawtiyima Forest feel better?” asked Hu Tao.

“Not the forest. Mawtiyima.”

“Okay, and so we need... Arahaoma?”

“Yes! Nara Hu Tao understands!” Aranakin bounced up and down enthusiastically.

“And Arahaoma is... what, exactly?”

“Zohrah mushroom! Zohrah mushroom will help us make Arahaoma.”

“Zohrah... mushroom.”

“Yes! Zohrah mushroom!”

“And Zohrah mushroom,” said Hu Tao, “is... what exactly?”

“Oh, I know! Zohrah mushroom is this way!”

“Which— hey, wait up, I still have questions!”

“Feel the taste on your tongue as if you were reliving a memory.”

Zhongli concentrated.

“...aha,” said Nahida.

Zhongli opened his eyes.

They were in a shared dreamscape once again, filled with flowers bigger than the Exuvia and skies streaked with indigo like the veins of leaves.

On the table between them, which had been empty just moments before, there was now a glass gong dao bei, filled with a gently steaming liquid the colour of finest cor lapis.

“White peony tea,” said Zhongli. He willed a pair of teacups into existence and began to pour. “Each leaf is selected with the utmost care before being cut, and dried in the sun for just a few hours. Such a delicate treatment allows the original flavour of the plant to remain at its purest.”

Nahida waited for hers to cool a little before taking a sip. She hummed appreciatively.

“Such a complex taste,” she murmured. “There's pine, but there's also... notes of honey? Pomegranate, even? Your understanding of the entire lifecycle of the tea allows you to dream it in exceptional detail. What an excellent memory.”

“Even the strongest of memories erode,” said Zhongli. “That aside, what use...”

He caught himself and trailed off.

Nahida's lips smiled, though the gesture didn't reach her eyes.

“What good are memories without those who share them? Isn't that what you were going to say?”

“Remarkably close to the exact words I was planning,” said Zhongli. He exhaled and bowed his head. “My apologies, Nahida. I spoke carelessly.”

“But not untruthfully.” Nahida watched him with large, unblinking eyes. “Is it disheartening, Zhongli? Losing those who the memories were made with?”

A dangerous question, considering who was asking, and how little regard she seemed to have for herself. Zhongli sipped at his tea as he considered his choice of words.

Best to face it head-on, he decided. The direct approach was not always the gentlest of ways, but it was his.

“Of course it is disheartening,” he said. “Losing friends is not a pain one can inure oneself to. But...” He gave Nahida a hard look. “You're not asking in generalities, are you, Lesser Lord?”

“I am not,” said Nahida.

“It pains me that you would take my pain as judgement upon you—”

“Spare me your pity, Morax.”

“Then ask me your actual question, Buer.”

“What...” Nahida exhaled, closed her eyes, opened them again. “What does it feel like, seeing the face of a friend, but—like a... a replacement for a cherished stuffed toy—finding recognition absent in those eyes you know so well?”

Zhongli exhaled slowly.

Behind a tangle of brambles and vines lay a cave entrance, and within that cave was...

“More water,” sighed Hu Tao. “Of course.”

“Nara Hu Tao doesn't like water?” Aranakin made a puzzled face. “But water helps the trees grow tall. Water helps the grass grow green.”

“Oh, water's great, don't get me wrong,” said Hu Tao. “But your friend Aragaru got me tossed into a huge jet of water the other day, and...” She sighed. It was fine; she'd triple applied water-resistant potion to everything she was wearing. “It was fine, I guess.”

Aranakin nodded.

“What am I saying,” said Hu Tao. “It was not fine! I could have lost my hat!”

“Your hat?” said Aranakin.

“It was my grandpa's hat. It... it has a lot of memories for me.”

“Memories are important,” said Aranakin.

“Yeah,” said Hu Tao.

“What is a 'hat'?” said Aranakin.

Cyno's fact corner: The humourous part here is that the Aranara do not have a concept of hats. The listener might have assumed otherwise, due to the leaf-like head coverings typical to the Aranara, but these are in fact natural growths and not removable headpieces. The incongruity, combined with the realisation of the Aranara's misunderstanding, is what makes this conversation comical.

“Long before the days of Liyue Harbour, long before the archon war, there was once a God of Loam. Legend has it he was born from the spark when stone struck stone, the embodiment of Geo and Pyro both.

“He loved humanity. He loved them for their passions, which burned brighter than any forge; he loved them for their desires, which were more fertile than any soil. With the advent of the Guili Assembly and its great fields of rice and its orchards of sunsettias, the God of Loam gave his personal blessing to each and every home, using the hearth of the fire and the comfort of food to foster connection between the people.

“In times of flood and famine, he guided the people to better shores. In times of plenty, he brought them together that they could better weather the hardships of centuries to come. And in the end, he spent all his power to save them, blessing the very soil for millennia to come.”

Zhongli paused, waiting for Nahida to ask the obvious question.

“Spent all his power?” said Nahida uncertainly. “You don't mean... He... his memories...?”

“Indeed. Consumed like fuel for a stove, alongside almost all of his Elemental power and his physical form. Today, what remains is... a simple creature. A happy one. Not even your size, Nahida.”

“Does he know who he once was?”

“He does, though I'm uncertain he appreciates the enormity of his 'past life'.

“But to your earlier question: does it hurt, seeing him, seeing no recognition in his eyes? Yes and no. It hurts exactly as much as it hurts to grow apart from a good friend: that much and no more.

“He is his own person, someone able to attain happiness in his own way, now, and I am certain he is capable of greatness still. Not only that, but in time he will be great in new and different ways to before, for he has set down a different path.

“And while I miss his past self, I will not dishonour his impact on the world by pretending it has vanished. The camaraderie the God of Loam fostered between the people lives on to this day, even when his name has been forgotten by almost all. The strength of the common folk has always been in the strength of the bonds and connections between them, and to this day, whenever someone breaks bread with a stranger, it is a prayer to him.”

Zhongli refilled both their teacups, this time with another similar variety of white peony from even older memories.

He waited until Nahida seemed done with whatever she was contemplating in response to his story.

Then he began again.

“There once was a spirit born of the turn of a pin-and-tumbler lock, who went on to become a God of Mechanisms. She gave humanity the bore and drill, that they might make homes for themselves amidst the bedrock; she gave them the plough, that they need not forage the wilderness any longer. She was a philosopher, but when the Archon War made a general of her, she proved her genius there too, with stratagems that could rotate the tide of battles, and war machines that could turn the most imposing hordes into naught but dust.

“She died, in the end, just as she lived: protecting the people, who she saw as fragile but all the cleverer for it. Every time an inventor on faraway shores invents a mechanical loom or a steam-powered engine, it is a prayer to her. When I formed the Qixing, millennia ago, and when I handed Liyue to them not even two years ago, it was a prayer to her.

“It seems some small part of her spirit remained when the rest departed. To my count she has reincarnated four times now, every one of them the kind of philosopher-general their era needed. And every time I look into the eyes of her reincarnations, I am reminded that she never finished her last words to me.”

“And her reincarnations... would not remember those last words, either?”

“No. Her mind, her memories, her being, are gone, not even dust on the wind. They have been that for a long time.

“Yet I must emphasise: when I see her current reincarnation, or when I watch an inventor demonstrate a Kamera, or a village elder unite a group of people into something stronger and more resilient than their fragile forms might suggest... I do not weep for what I have lost. Nor do I think of them as mere pieces of her legacy. No, in those moments, I see the same qualities in them that I once saw in her.” Zhongli smiled wistfully. “And just as they did millennia ago, those same qualities still humble me now.”

He drained his tea cup, but made no immediate move to refill it.

“Nahida. Buer. God of Dreams and Insight. You are already a great woman, in my estimation. There are things Rukkhadevata alone could have done, remembering all the things she remembered; yet, so too, there are countless other things she could not have, for her experiences shaped her in a certain way. The story that you shape will not be a continuation of hers, but it will not be lesser for it, Lord Kusanali. It will simply be something new and surprising.

“And you're enough like her that you are not unfond of surprises, I imagine.”

Nahida's eyes glistened.

“Let me refill that for you,” she said, wiping at her face with the back of one hand, and reaching for the gong dao bei with the other.

“So your Arala— um...”

“Ararakalari!”

“Your Ararakalari can fix these little stone monuments.”

“Correct.”

“But you don't know how the little stone monuments work, right?”

“Also correct: I don't know. Nara Varuna made them.”

“So... how do you know your magic... Ararakalari... is putting them back correctly?”

“I don't understand.”

“How do you know you're not reassembling them inside out, or something?”

“That can't happen! My Ararakalari will restore them.”

“But why?”

“Because of Dendro power, and magic.”

“But how do those work to put the monument together the right way round, if you don't know what the right way round is?”

“Nara Agni, how does your Vision work?, do you know?”

“...touche.”

The water level was held in place by a series of seals, left behind by some other Nara's thaumaturgy centuries ago. Quality work, at that. Hu Tao rarely saw seals of that quality outside of old Guili Assembly temples.

Unfortunately, after lowering the water level, they hit a slight snag.

“That looks like an ordinary mushroom,” said Hu Tao.

She and Aranakin peered at the mushroom that sat at the centre of the seals.

“Yes,” said Aranakin. “This is an ordinary mushroom.”

“So... where's the Zohrah mushroom?”

Aranakin rubbed their chin. “This must be a decoy.”

“A decoy?”

They smiled and nodded. “Zohrah Mushroom is no ordinary mushroom, thus more cunning and clever. He's probably escaped by now.”

The mushroom... escaped?

“That's a metaphor, right?” said Hu Tao.

The same smile remained on Aranakin's face.

“...it is a metaphor, right?” Hu Tao repeated.

It was not a metaphor. The mushroom was in another cavern.

“Like plants, mushrooms do not have legs,” said Aranakin. “Unlike plants, they can run. For they are mushrooms, not plants!”

“That makes no sense at all,” said Hu Tao.

Aranakin was leading the way to another cave: one with Marana in it, they said, where the Zohrah mushroom's cleansing presence was needed. After all the dank and gloom, Hu Tao was more than glad for the chirping birdsong and the fresh breeze out here.

They walked along in comfortable silence for a while, Hu Tao snacking on her rations.

Eventually, Aranakin said:

“Nara Hu Tao, I have a question.”

“Oh?”

“Why do Nara wear hats?”

Aww. Cute.

“We Nara don't have anything growing from our heads the way you do. So sometimes, when we want to look fashionable, or protect ourselves from the sun, we wear hats.”

“Can Aranara wear hats?”

“I think so.”

“Can the Rishboland Tiger?”

“Also yes? But I'm not sure why you or a tiger would want to wear a hat when you have such lovely heads...”

“I want to wear a hat,” said Aranakin.

“Oya? Well, once we're done—”

Aranakin pointed. “I want to wear this hat.”

“What? No, you can't have this hat, it's mine.”

“We can share!”

Hu Tao shook her head. “How about we go to Gandharva Ville and I can get you a hat there?”

“No. I want to try this one.”

“Well, you can't.”

Aranakin came to a stop and mirrored her crossed arms.

Hu Tao sighed.

“Maybe,” she said, resigned. “Maybe. But there are conditions.”

“Okay.”

“This was my grandpa's hat. It's got many memories attached to it, it's very special to me.” She waited until Aranakin nodded their agreement. “Okay. You can try it on, but only for a minute. Then you've gotta give it back, okay?”

“Okay.”

Gripping gently with her fingertips, Hu Tao removed her hat, brushed a little dust off of it, and passed it into Aranakin's arms.

The Aranara looked at the hat, befuddled. With a fond sigh, Hu Tao helped place it on their head.

“There you go,” she said.

“I am wearing a hat!”

“Yes, you are!”

“Am I... fashionable?”

The hat was way too big for Aranakin and looked a little lopsided. It was a stray breeze away from dropping down and covering their face.

Hu Tao pointed. “Why don't you have a look for yourself?”

Aranakin wandered over to a nearby puddle and gazed into it.

“I like this,” they said, admiring their reflection.

“Very dapper!” said Hu Tao, clapping enthusiastically.

“Nara Hu Tao's ‘hat’ is very good!”

“Mhmm!”

“Aranakin looks... so tall.”

“...yes?”

“So... tall...”

Wait. Hmm. If Hu Tao had just introduced the Aranara species to desire, from which all suffering stemmed, then... whoops.

“Okay,” said Hu Tao, crouching down, “perhaps that's enough fashion for today...”

Aranakin backed away. “Wait! Aranakin wants to keep being tall.”

“Maybe later,” said Hu Tao, reaching out for the hat, “but— hey!” She glared as Aranakin hopped back out of reach. “Aiyah, this is why I have...”—she lunged forward—“...trust issues!”

Aranakin bolted, waddling down the path as fast as their legs would take them. Hu Tao stumbled to her feet and gave chase.

Aranakin was surprisingly fast, waddling directly over all the roots and pebbles in that could easily trip up Hu Tao. That uneven ground was probably the only reason Hu Tao didn't catch the Aranara within moments, since she had to watch her step as she jogged to catch up.

As she gave chase, Hu Tao called out, “Nahida, if you're out there watching, I'm being robbed! Your Aranara are robbing me!”

“Nara Hu Tao lent the hat to me for today!” squealed Aranakin, dodging a swipe of Hu Tao's arm.

“For a whole day!? That wasn't the deal!”

“Aranakin has altered the deal!...”

Hmph. Well, in that case, Hu Tao sure hoped they didn't alter it any further.

“Oh, that could be a problem,” Nahida muttered, eyes distant.

“Is Hu Tao alright?” said Zhongli immediately.

Nahida's knowing smile made him wish he'd started with a different question.

“Confronted with an approaching army, or a house fire, humans will rush to protect the things that are most important,” the young goddess said, eyes twinkling. “For some, that's their own hides. For children it will often be a beloved pet or possession. And invariably, for parents—”

“Hu Tao is not my daughter,” said Zhongli. He rubbed his temples. “My contract with her is straightforward. Do you want to see it?”

“I'm sure I can find your employment records in Irminsul if I needed to,” said Nahida. “But not all promises are enshrined as contracts.” She winked cheekily.

“Go easy on the sweet child act, lest it become a crutch,” Zhongli grumbled. “So, I take it she's fine. What's the issue, then?”

“The Aranara travelling with Hu Tao appears to have discovered envy,” said Nahida. “They're... not known to display that particular emotion, usually.”

“Envy?” said Zhongli. “She... are you saying Director Hu taught an Aranara to covet material wealth?”

“Not wealth, per se,” said Nahida. “It's... Well, the important part is that it was quite accidental on her part. So do go easy on her.”

“Go easy?” said Zhongli. “She's my employer. Why would I be the one taking her to task?”

“Do I really need to spell it out?”

“Spell what out?”

“When a cuckoo's egg hatches, the mother bird—”

“How about I tell you another story,” said Zhongli loudly.

Without warning, Aranakin skidded to a halt, dropped the hat, and dove into the bushes.

“Uh...” Hu Tao grabbed her hat and brushed the dust off before putting it back on. “...what?”

She checked the bush Aranakin had disappeared into, and found it empty.

“Uh... okay...?” Where had they gone all of a sudden?

Hu Tao started forward. Within moments, she noticed there was a cave entrance up ahead. The cave they'd been heading towards, maybe? And...

Aha. Nara Valuka.

“Well hello there, friendly sand grains,” Hu Tao said, striding up to the pair of Eremites guarding the cave entrance. Minum and Ziri, if she remembered right.

They stared impassively at her, arms crossed.

“...you're not even gonna comment on the nickname?” said Hu Tao.

“Better than 'sand snakes',” said Minum.

“Or 'desert savages',” said Ziri.

Oh. Right. There was some kind of rainforest-versus-desert prejudice going on, wasn't there? Anippe from the other day (the cute one!, with the voice like birdsong!, and uh also the crazy flexibility) had mentioned something like that. Whoops.

“Okay, that was probably ruder and less playful than I intended,” said Hu Tao, bowing her head. “My apologies.”

“No, it's fine,” said Ziri.

“Sand grains doesn't even make sense as an insult,” said Minum.

“We're not tiny,” said Ziri.

Their triceps were about the size of Hu Tao's head, yeah.

“So, uh, I'm gonna head into this cave here,” said Hu Tao, making as if to step between them.

The two Eremite grunts shifted to block her path.

“You can't enter,” said Minum, looming over her.

“Oh?”

Ziri chimed in. “You can't enter, and that's that.”

“Aiyah, a hard and fast rule?” Hu Tao tutted and waved a finger. “Those are unreliable, you know! What if there's a party and I brought lamb rolls? What if there's a demon in there that can only be defeated by poetry readings?”

“What's this about poetry?”

The new voice was Lunja, striding out of the cave, arms crossed.

“Why hello there, ma'am,” said Hu Tao, doffing her cap.

“Pardon my boys,” said Lunja slowly. “They mean no harm. They'd never threaten a friend of mine.”

“Threat?” said Hu Tao. “We were just waxing philosophical about hypotheticals. Who's threatening who?”

Hu Tao's Vision might have afforded her an advantage in a scrap, but fighting wasn't exactly a hobby of hers. It was just a means to an end, and a dreadfully aerobic means, at that. She preferred to avoid conflict altogether. And one of her most reliable techniques to defuse a situation was strategic obliviousness: act naive and friendly enough that even your aggressors aren't quite sure whether the situation is about to come to blows. Then change the topic before they can remember what's happening. Tada, tension defused!

(Okay, it really wasn't the most reliable of techniques, but it was among the funnest.)

“Is that so?” said Lunja, brow creased. “Just a friendly chat?”

“...yes?” Minum and Ziri ventured.

Lunja relaxed at that. “Ah, excellent. So you're a poet, are you, Miss Hu?”

“Yup, yup, yup. And a very passable one at that!”

“Well, you'll have to forgive my boys, Miss Hu. They're not so good with words; all this philosophy and poetry probably went right over their heads.”

Ziri glared at his boss and grumbled under his breath.

“Anyway, whatever you might be looking for, I doubt it's in there,” said Lunja. “There's a withering zone in that cave. Nasty stuff.”

“Ah, is that so?” said Hu Tao. “I've always wanted to see one. I have a Vision, don't worry.”

“Even so, as one friend to another, I must warn you to reconsider. These places are just bad news, Vision or not...”

Lunja sighed.

“...but I can see you're going to be stubborn about this. Well, if you change your mind, my boys are brewing some pine needle tea. Aren't you, boys?”

(“Sure, boss.” “We are if you say we are, boss.”)

Hu Tao bid the Eremites goodbye and made her way into the cavern.

Once she was sure she was out of earshot, she came to a halt and crossed her arms.

“You can come out now,” she said.

“Hello, Nara Hu Tao!” said Aranakin, emerging from behind a rock.

“Hello, Aranakin.” Hu Tao shook her head. “We need to have a talk about theft.”

“I did not steal anything!”

“You clearly took my hat!”

“I was just borrowing it.”

“You ran off with it; in what world is that 'borrowing'?”

“I was going to give it back.”

“I don't believe you.”

“I am being very honest.”

“You stole my hat, Aranakin.”

“We are companions on this journey. It makes me very sad that you do not trust me.”

Ayo, if they found Hu Tao's lack of faith in them so disturbing then maybe they should have not run off with her belongings.

Hu Tao and Aranakin stared at each other for a while, neither breaking eye contact.

“Come on!” said Aranakin suddenly, turning to race ahead along the path. “The Zohrah mushroom awaits!”

“I suppose it does,” sighed Hu Tao. “But I expect an apology later.”

“You are too far away and I cannot hear you!”

This was... worse than Hu Tao was expecting.

Bringing the water level down had been uncomplicated, similar to the last time. With the water fully drained from this cavern, she could finally see Marana: what the Forest Rangers were calling “the Withering”.

The air was thick—no, heavy: effort to inhale, painful to wade through. If this was what the Withering was like with the benefit of a Vision protecting her, Hu Tao could certainly see why the Rangers didn't want anyone else anywhere near it.

Grass, sproutlings, all dead. Everything was in shades of brown or grey... except for the strange parodies of “branches” and “blossoms” that throbbed with a deep carmine glow.

It was disturbing... and that was not a phrase Hu Tao used lightly. At least once a month Hu Tao found herself cleaning bile out of a client's mouth, or trying to clean up a slash wound. That was... just bodies, dead things. Potential disease vectors, to be sure, but perfectly ordinary things, all part of the cycle. That stuff was not existentially disturbing (no matter what Yanfei said when Hu Tao raised the subject during mealtimes). The Withering was.

“What are you?” she said aloud.

Her voice echoed through the cavern.

Beside her, Aranakin made a concerned noise. “Marana is the memory of death,” they said.

“This isn't death,” said Hu Tao, climbing up a ledge to better avoid the area closest to the centre. “This... I know death. I walk the length of the border most weeks.”

“In the stories,” said Aranakin, “there came a day when dead bodies covered the forest floor. And the soil remembered the dark and poisonous blood it had devoured. And that memory is Marana.”

“I... maybe I'm misunderstanding the word. When humans die, do you think we become Marana?”

“Humans, animals, all becoming soil again. They become the worms that feed the young sprouts that become trees or feed the foxes.”

“Right,” said Hu Tao, “that's what I mean. That's death. That isn't Marana.”

“Dying is not Marana,” Aranakin confirmed. “And death is not Marana.”

“But Marana is death?”

“The memory of death.”

Hu Tao squinted into the gloom, where a particularly nasty knot of blackened wood was pulsing that rotten shade of carmine. “This stuff gives me the creeps. Like restless souls, but... worse.”

“What are souls?” Aranakin asked.

Hu Tao shook her head. “A question for later, maybe. Is... Can we exor— uh, can we cleanse it somehow? If it's like a memory, a bad dream...”

“Yes! Nara Hu Tao is very wise! Marana is a kind of bad dream, dreamed by the forest.”

“Can we... give the forest a hug to make the bad dreams go away?”

“You cannot hug a forest, Nara Hu Tao,” Aranakin chided. “Too short, your arms. To drive Marana away from here, sparks of life can help.”

And so Hu Tao spent a little while getting to grips with the proper use of Dendrograna, a little while contemplating what insane culinary use Xiangling might put them to given half an opportunity, and a little while figuring out a plan of attack.

Clearing the Withering out turned out to be quite easy, with at least one Seelie hovering around and actively shielding Hu Tao from the worst of the miasma. The only part that posed any difficulty was trying to drive off one adult-sized sentient Shroom that had had the audacity to grow wings and hover a bit out of reach, and even that was resolved with the old “pick up a pebble, infuse it with some Pyro Vision energy, and throw” trick. (Hu Tao liked that trick. Apparently Changsheng had, too. Baizhu and Qiqi hadn't.) After barely half an hour, Hu Tao was jamming the fancy end of the Staff of Homa into the central tumour of Marana energy, and the entire thing went poof.

It was a little like unsealing a vacuum. Dendro energy raced into the area, an uncountable number of sprouts and shoots poking out through ground that had been a barren brown-grey moments earlier. Hu Tao quickly put her staff away, lest anything accidentally catch fire.

“You did it!” said Aranakin. “Marana is gone from here for now. Hopefully for many years. But we must still heal Mawtiyima, so it can protect the forest.”

“Ah, right, the Zohrah mushroom,” said Hu Tao. “Is it still sealed?”

“Yes! You must break the seals.”

“You're the boss! Point me which way.”

The seals didn't take too long to deal with either, and before long they were walking back towards the centre of the cavern where they'd spied the Zohrah mushroom.

“So this Arahaoma will... heal the Marana from... Mawtiyima?”

“The Arahaoma ritual is the beginning of the healing,” said Aranakin.

“So... no? Yes?”

“We must ask the Zohrah mushroom for permission to use in the ritual.”

One of these days, Hu Tao was going to get a straight answer out of an Aranara.

“Well, I suppose you'd better ask, then,” said Hu Tao.

While Aranakin went and... talked?... to the mushroom?, Hu Tao took a seat on the ground and pondered what she'd learned about Marana.

The tendrils of the Withering had been driven back by Dendrograna—little elemental spirits attuned to the element of life. Little wonder, then, that the Aranara associated the phenomenon with death.

But not death itself. The “memory of death”. Something distinct from the sacred metamorphosis of living things into fertilizer. That was a puzzle, and Hu Tao liked puzzles. Some puzzles, at least. Riddles and stuff, not “how did your soy-ginger sauce catch fire?” puzzles.

What else? Oh, the weird flower she'd had to destroy. It had felt almost like a tumour rather than an infection.

“Why does Marana manifest as blossoms and branches?” she wondered aloud.

Aranakin said nothing, which was fine.

It was like Marana was... life gone wrong. The tumour-cancer metaphor felt appropriate, there. Despite the shrivelled flora in the surrounding area, the Withering didn't feel like the polar opposite of life: it felt like...

...a parody of life. Something fake, or false, perhaps?

“What was that you said about poisonous blood?” she asked.

Still no response.

Wait. Aranakin hadn't spoken in a while.

“...Aranakin?” said Hu Tao, one hand on her hat just in case. When no response came, she began to stand up.

“I apologise, but please stop here,” said an unfamiliar voice.

Hu Tao turned around to find two Eremites she hadn't seen before with swords drawn and levelled at her.

Ah. That explained Aranakin's absence.

She cleaned her throat. “Hi. Uh, why the... weapons?”

“I'm sorry for what's to come, my friend,” one of the Eremites said.

Well, that wasn't good.

“Full disclosure,” said Nahida, “Hu Tao seems to have been ambushed by Eremites.”

Zhongli's grip tightened around his tea cup.

“Is she alright?” he said.

“I'm getting unclear readings, there's a bit of... interference from...” Nahida's voice turned incredulous. “Wait, what!? She uses her Vision to set herself on fire!? Are you dookieing me?”

“Ah, she's alright, then,” said Zhongli. “Now, I believe you had questions regarding military strategy? I'm no Guizhong, but I'll answer as best I can.”

“...where did that ghost even come from and how can that work as a bludgeon!?”

A cascade of bangs rang out from the cave entrance. Then, after half a minutes' pause, another series of bangs, this time louder.

“Shit,” said Lunja, “we're out of time.”

The explosive traps had detonated as planned, but if the second wave had gone off then odds were the adventurer was still alive.

She looked to her boys. “Minum, Ziri, get that splint tied off, then help support Isan. Anqa, still seeing stars? Can you manage a walk with us? Lean on me if you've gotta.”

“Uh, boss...” said Minum, staring past her.

“What?”

“Yoohoo! Need any help?” interjected a new voice. “No? Well... Anyone in the market for a coffin?”

Shit.

Lunja closed her eyes, took a deep breath in and out, then turned to face Miss Hu, a.k.a. the Liyuean chick with the cute jacket.

“Hey there, friend,” she said.

“Friend? This is how you treat your friends?” said Miss Hu, hands on her hips. “You tried to kill me! You know what kind of person attempts to kill someone then calls them 'friend' a minute later?”

“Someone who keeps business and friendship separate?”

Miss Hu rubbed her chin. “Hmm. I was gonna say 'crazy redheads', but I guess your answer works too...”

Lunja went on: “Our client wanted the Zorah Mushroom, you were in the way. It's just business, friend.”

“In the way?” The woman scoffed. “The mushroom was literally in my hand when your guys jumped out of the shadows and tried to cut my head off! This is theft, plain and simple!”

“No it's not,” said Lunja.

“Yes it is,” said Hu Tao. “Now give it back!”

“Or what?” said Lunja.

“Well, considering you already escalated this to violence,” said Hu Tao, “maybe... violence?”

Lunja looked her up and down. “You've got a Vision, but you don't seem like much of a fighter... Nah. You're bluffing.”

Hu Tao glanced past her.

Lunja followed her gaze to where Minum was securing a makeshift splint to Isan's leg.

“My point stands,” said Lunja. “The Vision gives you a boost, sure, but it's three versus one. Four if—hey, no falling asleep, Anqa!—four versus one. We're seasoned fighters. We do this for a living. What're you going to do, eulogise us to death?”

“If I gotta,” said Hu Tao. “I know some boring eulogies.”

“Point being, you sure you want to try your luck?” said Lunja. “Or maybe we just go our separate ways and you don't put yourself in any more danger?”

“Ah, but I have something most people don't!” Miss Hu winked. “I know how I'm going to die.”

This was clearly the setup to some kind of ridiculous posturing, but Lunja had to hand it to Hu: it was hard not to take the bait.

“Oh?” Lunja said, doing exactly that. “And how are you going to die?”

“Without regrets,” Miss Hu replied.

Lunja considered the Liyuean woman's face very carefully. The smugness and playfulness was gone. What remained was sincere.

It was a kind of sincerity that didn't sit well with Lunja: the terrifying pragmatism in Lady Siman's orders, the wild zealotry in the eyes of that rogue Snezhnayan they'd been hired to take down last month, the caustic devotion on the tongues of Ayn Al-Ahmar. On Miss Hu's face, it manifested as something almost gentle, like the love a child, discovering an oasis for the first time, has for the world. But it made Lunja uneasy all the same.

People who weren't afraid of dying could, of course, be bargained with. But it took a lot of strategies off the table.

“Regrets or not,” Lunja tried, “surely you'd prefer not to die over a mushroom of all things?”

“Aiyah, so rude to the poor mushroom.” Miss Hu clucked her tongue judgementally. “Well... What about you? Wouldn't you prefer not to, either?”

“I told you: me, Minum and Ziri could take you in a fight, Vision or not,” Lunja said, albeit unenthusiastically. “Plus Anqa, once he gets it together.”

“Oh, I believe you,” said Miss Hu.

...yeah, shit, she could tell Lunja didn't want to risk any further injuries on her side.

“Perhaps this can be resolved without bloodshed?” said Lunja.

“Oh? And what do you propose?” said Miss Hu.

Hmm...

“Arm-wrestling contest for the mushroom?”

“Heck no, I see the biceps on your boys over there. Poetry contest?”

“And how would we adjudicate that, huh?”

“You got any better ideas?...”

“I got a bad feeling,” said Ziri.

“About what?” said Minum.

“...this,” said Ziri.

Minum nodded, taking that in.

After a minute, he asked, “why?”

Because the longer the boss talked to the adventurer with the Pyro Vision, the more she got that look in her eye: the one where she'd thought of something clever.

Because Lunja might not have a gambling problem but she sure as hell overestimated her own book smarts.

Because Ziri was still sore about Golden Mouse roughing up Ahangar's workshop, about Firuzeh, about his gods damned golden axe.

Because Lunja was the kind of wannabe city girl who'd blow all their earnings on ten booster pack boxes of—

“Hey, boys!” Lunja called. “Get the Genius Invokation TCG decks from my bag. The three in the linen cases.”

Ziri swore.

“Five-one,” said Lunja disbelievingly.

“That's best of nine!” crowed Hu Tao.

“We were playing the same decks! That's stastically impossible...”

“Maybe Liyueans are just better at cards?” said Hu Tao. “Now, come on, this was an honour duel, right?” She held her hand out. “The mushroom. Hand it over.”

“What am I supposed to tell my client?” grumbled Lunja, digging the Zohrah mushroom out of her belt pouch.

“Not my problem, but... just say someone beat you to the mushroom. Which is what originally happened, mind you.”

After a lot of swearing, repeated offers to buy the Mushroom back for pocket change, and an oddly enthusiastic offer to buy the Mushroom back in exchange for “a good time, wink wink” (with the “wink”s said aloud), Lunja gathered her men. As one, the mercenaries reluctantly trudged off.

“See ya around!” Hu Tao called after them.

As the Eremites disappeared from sight, Boo Tao the Seventh dropped down from the trees and crept back up Hu Tao's sleeve.

“See? I told you,” she said to the ghost, fake patting its incorporeal head. “Basically no harder than reading Mahjong tiles.”

Boo Tao stick its tongue out at her and made a noise.

“Well, obviously not,” replied Hu Tao, “but the rules never said no peeking. I think I was plenty honourable not setting the lot of them on fire.”

“The bad sand grains are gone?” said Aranakin, peeking out from behind a tree.

“They sure are!” said Hu Tao. “And here is your mushroom friend.”

Aranakin looked thoughtful as Hu Tao handed them the mushroom.

“Nara Hu Tao is very powerful. Drove the bad sand grains away with strange words and runes.”

“Mm, yes. So powerful. I'm just glad I could help.”

The pensive look on Aranakin's face eased a little, but did not go away entirely.

“Something wrong?” said Hu Tao.

“You are very strong, and brave,” said Aranakin, avoiding eye contact. “Aranakin wants you to hold the Zohrah mushroom.”

“Sure,” said Hu Tao.

She knelt down, hand out.

Aranakin placed the mushroom into her hand. Then, without warning, they hopped up into the air, trying to swipe at her hat.

Hu Tao had been on guard for this. She stood up, so that Aranakin's little hops barely made it up to chest height.

Aranakin continued to hop, ineffectually reaching for the object of their envy.

Hu Tao sighed.

“Nope. No more of this game,” she said, holding the hat well above her head. “It's over, Aranakin. I have the— I'm— I'm taller.”

Chapter Text

Aragaru spoke:

"Nara Agni, you say life and death are two parts of a whole, like soil and forest. So then I do not understand. Why are humans scared of death?"

As the Nara considered the question, Aranaga added: "Does it scare you, death?"

"Sometimes," she replied. "Most of the time, I'm used to the idea, but every now and again, wham!, it pops into my thoughts when I least expect it, and yeah, it rattles me."

Nara Agni told them of a memory of hers. Many many moons ago, when she was smaller and knew less, her "grandfather" (a kind of teacher) had returned to Sarva. When he left, she didn't feel ready, so she went looking for him. She went all the way to the Border, a place that many Nara pass through on the way to Sarva.

"I wanted him to be there, resisting the return to the cycle. But he wasn't there, because he wasn't afraid. I was. I was scared of losing him."

"New life, memory nourishes," Aranaga pointed out.

"Yes!" said Aranakin. "Death is just a one-time loss of memory."

"Be that as it may," said Nara Agni, "in returning to the cycle, the things that made him him dissipated. His soul, as we Nara say. His soul returned to the cycle, and what returns from the cycle will be different things altogether."

"Souls are the story Nara tell about death," Aragaru recalled.

"Indeed, indeed!" Nara Agni beamed. "You've all certainly been paying attention. Souls, identity... they are stories about the same idea. What makes me me? What makes Aragaru Aragaru?"

"Because that is my name?"

"Ooh, good answer. But for Nara, identity is different to names. If we all meet again in Sarva, wearing the same names, will we still be the same people we were? If all the likes and dislikes and dreams and worries are gone, will the meeting taste as sweet? Such are the worries of a Nara."

Aranaga hummed thoughtfully. "Fearing loss of memory, Nara?"

"Exactly," said Nara Agni, "exactly. You say death is just a one time loss of memory. But Nara say that a loss of memory is what makes death so scary.

"Just imagine. If I bumped my head very hard and forgot everything, the 'me' that exists right now would no longer be there."

"Gone to Sarva, your memories."

"Very possibly! And the 'me' that is left behind, the person with my name and my face... what dreams might she have? What struggles might she fight? She—‘she’ for the sake of argument—would be beautiful, just like all life is beautiful, but it is a little sad, to think that one day there will be nobody in this world to carry out my dreams."

"So the memory lives but the desire does not?" wondered Aragaru.

Aranakin raised their hand. "Is this not also true upside-down? The you who exists after you bump your head. Is she sad that you do not carry out her dreams in the present moment?"

"Oh, I am definitely writing that one down later," said Nara Agni approvingly. "You make a very good point, Aranakin. Yet... well. It is not the Nara way to balance one absence against another. Some Nara may mourn for the Nara Agni who is not yet born of the bumping of my head. But to forget me and bring her into being is still a loss. There are no scales on which my death and her birth might be compared."

"Then..." Aragaru hesitated. "Memory nourishes new life... but Nara fear the loss of memory anyway?"

"Yes. To us Nara, loss is loss, and grief is sure to follow."

One day earlier

"Hello, red chili Nara! Welcome to Mawtiyima forest!"

Mawtiyima forest lay in a basin to the northeast of Sumeru, in the shadow of the Nantianmen Mountains to the east and winding cliffs to the west. Here the sweltering jungle air cooled and became a gentle dampness. Hu Tao had taken the opportunity to unbuttoned her shirt collar and get some much-needed airflow beneath her sticky clothes. (Her uniform was not particularly jungle-appropriate. She definitely needed more air vents in her coat. But at least she didn't have the trousers on.)

The forest didn't so much have trees as it had giant fluorescent mushrooms. But seriously: giant. Their stalks were so thick it would take four of Hu Tao to properly hug them. The tallest ones were at the height of the surrounding valley walls, and by Hu Tao's reckoning they were big enough to fit her funeral parlour with room to spare.

Hu Tao waved and returned the greeting. "Hello, tawny pumpkin Aranara!"

The Aranara who had greeted her was a shade of ochre with a brilliant terracotta head-cap that completely covered their eyes. On said cap was what looked like imitation spectacles made of twigs: lensless, naturally.

They seemed nonplussed. "Pumpkin? No, no, silly Nara. Not my name, that."

"I figured, but neither is—"

The Aranara continued: "Called Aranaga, I am. Been waiting for you a long time, I have!"

"Well, here I am. You can call me Hu Tao." She courtseyed, albeit entirely for her own entertainment. (Sure enough, her new companion didn't seem to notice the gesture at all.)

"Nara Hu Tao..." Aranaga tilted their head. "A strange name for you, this."

"Hehe, you think? ‘Tao’ is a Liyuean name. It's a kind of fruit, a bit like plums and Zaytun peaches. Very tasty on a hot day, and good for your health."

"Know that, yes, yes... but nothing like a peach, you are! Neither sweet nor juicy, this red chili Nara."

"I... thanks?" Maybe?

"Red chili Nara is bright and tastes like a forest fire!" Then, as if correcting a faux pas, Aranaga added: "Safe, though. Will not hurt me, this flame. ‘Nara Agni’, the grass and trees call you: this is why."

"Aww, thank you," said Hu Tao. She smoothed out her shirt cuffs. "I try my best."

(Aragaru had said something similar— Agni not just as in Pyro but as in sanctifying flame. It was very much aligned with the ethos Wangsheng directors such as herself aspired to.)

Charming as this was, Hu Tao was here for a reason, in theory. She nudged the conversation back to the purpose Aragaru and Aranakin had pointed her here for: Arahaoma.

Ah, yes, Arahaoma! Aranaga had heard about Hu Tao's help and bravery in gathering the Barsam Flower and Zohrah Mushroom, and getting their permission to use them for making Arahaoma.

At this point, Aranaga paused, asking if Hu Tao knew what Arahaoma was.

"Some kind of... potion?"

"Yes! Needed to heal Mawtiyima, Arahaoma." They gestured at the towering mushrooms around them. "Mawtiyima forest, my garden, all this is. Perform here the Arahaoma, we will."

"It is a very lovely garden."

Indeed, after encountering the Withering — ‘Marana’ — the other day, Hu Tao had not been expecting this lush landscape of dew and birdsong.

"I thought Mawtiyima would look more... unwell."

"Very unwell, Mawtiyima looks to my eyes," said Aranaga. "But how can you see Mawtiyima? Hidden away, it is."

"Uh..." Hu Tao gestured at the surrounding mushroom canopy.

"Ah. Silly Nara, but not your fault. Not Mawtiyima, this! The forest of Mawtiyima, rather it is."

"Oh, so... it's the forest where Mawtiyima is?" At Aranaga's nod, Hu Tao went on, "Then what exactly is Mawtiyima?"

"Mawtiyima is what Nara Varuna left behind. Gathers the Elements and nutrients to feed the forest, flourish life, Mawtiyima."

Aranaga recounted the power of Mawtiyima. On the first moon, Mawtiyima brought fungi to life, that they might dance among the soil. On the second moon, Mawtiyima taught the branches of trees to sing, and together they serenaded the night sky. With each passing moon, the lazy flowers blossomed and the seeds of yore were sown, and each such moon received a greater and gentler serenade from the forest, not in thanks or recompense but simply because the forest wished it. 

"But not any more?" Hu Tao asked.

"Not any more," said Aranaga. "After many, many moons, Marana came out of the moons' shadows. We knew it would return, because Marana is the memory of death, and the forest always remembers even when it hurts to remember. But Marana devoured Mawtiyima, and then Mawtiyima became more and more sad."

"Because," Hu Tao guessed, "Mawtiyima had remembered death?"

"Yes," said Aranaga solemnly. "It hurts: this, Mawtiyima is telling us. It hurts to remember."

For a moment, it felt like the air in the forest shifted. Not quite mournful, this air, yet certainly sad, sympathetic. But, again, just for a moment.

Aranaga went on. "Now you are here, red chilli Nara. You see the Aranara, you carry peace and death in your heart... I think you are like Nara Varuna."

The Aranara had called Hu Tao "Nara Agni" more than once. So by analogy with the flames of Agni...

"This ‘Nara Varuna’," she said, "the one who created Mawtiyima—"

"Yes, created Mawtiyima, left Mawtiyima behind."

"—were they someone attuned to Hydro?"

"Yes, yes," said Aranaga. "Attuned to dewdrops, Nara Varuna."

Hu Tao smiled. "That doesn't sound like me, at all."

"I do not understand."

"A silly joke. My element is Pyro, and water douses fire."

(Many folk tales held that Pyro was the element of conquest and Hydro was the element of equity: two things that stood forever at odds. Hu Tao preferred the warning lesson of other tales — conquest could be in service of equity, equity could absolve conquest, and there were few things as dangerous as the two united.)

"I understand," said Aranaga. "But Nara Varuna was not just attuned to the dewdrops! Many things. Attuned to the forest, attuned to the sea breeze, and the starlight most of all..."

"I see, I see!" Hu Tao dipped her head. "I am humbled by the comparison, then, Aranaga. I am but a simple funeral director. I know a little of fire and sophistry, but there is much more in this world I am not attuned to."

"That is okay. Nara Varuna is Nara Varuna. Nara Agni is Nara Agni. Save the forest, save us... that is what makes you the same. Everything else that makes you different is also good."

What a smooth talker, this one. Yanfei could stand to learn a thing or two from them.

The Yajna grass was quite high up, so there was plenty of time for Aranaga to answer her questions along the way.

"Once we find the Yajna grass, then what?"

"Protect Yajna grass, for this there are seals. Nara Varuna made them," Aranaga said.

"I think I've seen them. Are these the same seals that protect the Zorah mushroom and Barsam flower?"

"Not the same! Not the same, even two blades of grass. But the same kind, those seals. Correct."

"So I'll help dispel the seals, and then we will get the Yajna grass's permission use it for the potion."

"Not just a potion, Arahaoma."

"No? Then what is it?"

"The essence of memory, messenger that drives away death, the elixir Arahaoma is."

Hu Tao was learning it was best to take them semi-literally. "So Arahaoma will have all the memories of the flower and grass and mushroom?" That wasn't so implausible: the mushroom had been sentient enough to give her and Aranakin the slip.

"More. All the precious memories, Arahaoma is. Carries our memories, carries our life, the elixir Arahaoma."

"Your memories — your life?" said Hu Tao. "You're putting your souls into the elixir?"

"I do not understand. A ‘soul’, what is this?"

Oh, right, that didn't translate. "Never mind. So we give the Arahaoma to Mawtiyima?"

"Not to Mawtiyima, the offering. First, to Jamikayomars, we offer Arahaoma."

Hu Tao was quite sure she hadn't heard that word before.

"The gate to Mawtiyima, kept safe by Jamikayomars," Aranaga explained.

"Is Jamikayomars a... place? A tree?"

"A memory cup. Drinks of Arahaoma, Jamikayomars, Nara Varuna's memory cup."

Ooh, a chalice ritual? Fun! Yonic.

"After Arahaoma is offered, Jamikayomars will awaken. Then our memory will flow out, flow into the forest."

"And that will heal the...." Ah, but they'd said gate to Mawtiyima. "That will open the path to Mawtiyima?"

"Yes, yes. Then it will grow big, the thing to repel Marana. Then Mawtiyima will be saved." Aranaga shuffled about impatiently. "Hurry now! Still some time, we have, but a bad idea to squander it. Be ahead of the moon, not behind!"

"I know!" Hu Tao motioned at the cliff face before them, the third of four on the way to the Yajna grass. "I just want a couple more minutes to catch my breath."

"This is what the bouncy mushrooms are for!"

"The bouncy mushrooms don't like me, Aranaga. I set one on fire by mistake."

"Have you tried apologising to them?"

"Yes." It had not worked. Either these mushrooms didn't understand her dialect, or they were just very unhappy with her.

"You must not have apologised very good, Nara Hu Tao."

Well that was just victim blaming. She'd apologised quite sincerely, thank you very much.

"You handed over Liyue to the people," said Nahida.

"To the mortals," Zhongli amended. Whether or not the Qixing represented Liyue's people as a whole was a difficult question, but in his view they represented the short-lived perspective much more closely than he could.

"You tested them, first. To make sure they would... do the right thing, without you?"

"In part. To make sure they had the will to do so, and the strength to enact that will."

"And now it's... theirs. Truly fending for themselves." Nahida's brow furrowed. "Did you not worry, Zhongli?"

"Of course I worried," said Zhongli. "I still do. A guardian cannot shield his wards from their own mistakes indefinitely, if they are to truly live."

("Guardian and ward," Nahida murmured, "mother and daughter, master and apprentice, eggshell and embryo.")

"There must come a time when the ward has choice enough to make such mistakes..." Zhongli thought of Azhdaha, then of his own inevitable erosion. "Perhaps I misspoke. Who is the guardian to deem the ward's choices mistakes? Different dreams and different wills make for different choices, and the guardian has his blind spots as much as the ward does."

Nahida nodded. "I think I understand."

She didn't add anything. Instead, she reached for her teacup for another slow sip.

Zhongli did the same. The tea remained at the perfect temperature, a convenience of the dream.

(They had moved on from white peony to a Lokapala black, so named as none of Chenyu Vale's usual tea plants would take root in Sumeru's humid jungles. Zhongli had again dreamed it into existence, drawing upon his memories of his last visit to Rukkhadevata a millennium ago. A deep malty flavour, with overtones that, while initially reminiscent of the mushrooms common to Sumeru, expanded into something sweet and nutty almost like cocoa.)

After a few minutes’ easy silence, Nahida parted her lips and drew in breath. Zhongli looked up, waiting patiently, and after a moment of indecision the younger god ventured: "Even so, even with all that trust in your people... it just... seems like a very big thing."

"What does?"

"Killing a god."

"I assume you refer to the death of Rex Lapis, not to the Archon War?"

"Yes. Different dreamers dream different choices, but... if I'm following you correctly... Rex Lapis made so many of the choices in Liyue Harbour. Not all of them. But even those decisions that he did not make were affected by his presence."

"Do you mean a safety net?"

"Hmm... what do I mean..." Nahida took another sip as she gathered her thoughts. "The Qixing made their choices in the Liyue Harbor Rex Lapis watched over. Rex Lapis left them to their affairs, knowing that this was the Liyue Harbor Rex Lapis watched over. Even though you stepped back a little further with each passing decade, even though you gave the Qixing more and more autonomy, they still acted as extensions of your will. Only in your death could you be sure the people could truly realise their own dreams without your shadow looming over them."

"I cannot say I agree with your assessment: the Qixing have always been wilful, and it has been my pleasure seeing this fact remain despite the passing of generations. But there is a truth to what you are saying, and that is a part of why I decided as I did."

"And so Rex Lapis died. Not just the crown, but the possibility of his will being enacted... um, his unimpeded will. The thirty-seven centuries of legislative continuity have ended. The Qixing may continue to shape Liyue to Rex Lapis's liking, and so too they may not. His will is no longer there." 

"An abdication of agency."

Nahida nodded vigorously. "Yes, that's the word! Agency. The death of the Exuvia is how Rex Lapis died; the end of his will and agency is what his death is."

Zhongli didn't frown into his cup, but in suppressing the urge to do so he took his next sip more slowly.

This had the appearance of the kind of philosophical conversation he'd often had with Guizhong or with Egeria. But the subject of voice and agency, broached by this particular god... caution was called for.

He spoke at last. "Are you positing that agency, or its absence, are what distinguishes life from death?"

"I think it's a rather neat angle to view the lives and undeaths of gods through, don't you think?" Nahida smiled with taut lips. "Both a prince in a coma and a god withdrawn to golden slumber may be argued to be alive or dead by all kinds of different criteria. But, if they do not act upon the world, then in a pragmatic sense they cannot prove they are alive."

"You might say the same of the sleeping: they cannot prove they are alive until they wake."

"So? Would it be so absurd to call sleep a temporary death? The phrase ‘eternal rest’ comes to mind."

"Then if I may argue more directly..."

"Who's going to stop you? Me?"

"Of course you." Receiving little more than a listless shrug, Zhongli went on: "There is more to living than making a mark on the world. So, too, is absence of agency not death."

"What else could it be?"

What else could it mean to not act upon the world?

The answer that immediately came to mind was repose. That was what it so often meant, when one stepped back from the world. When Director Hu had been younger, still finding her own strength, she would retreat for days at a time—into herself, into her room—only to reemerge as if no time had passed. Occasionally she'd emerged with poetry or art in hand, but far more often there was no creative act or “proof” she was alive: the rest and convalescence were end result enough.

And perhaps Zhongli also thought of Guizhong disappearing into her workshop for months or years, returning more sure or herself; of Alatus perched on a cliff beneath a full moon, meditating in suffering, tragically unaware of the iota of karma absolved as he did so; of Raiden Ei, attempting to vanish herself, only to return to the work as more than her sister's shadow; of himself, in a sense, the decade after Guizhong had fallen, moving through the motions without truly inhabiting his own mind. Sometimes time required spending, be it for healing or for reorienting or for shedding a burden.

Or for growing.

"Nascency," he said, "germination, childhood. The state of being the ward, not the guardian. The people of Liyue, the institutions of the Qixing: they were not dead when Rex Lapis still lived. It was merely an adolescence."

He waited as Nahida thought that over.

"I see what you mean," she said uncertainly. "But how do you tell the difference between the prologue and the epilogue, if you cannot see past the current page? Morax the guardian became Zhongli the ward. Will the cycle repeat again, do you think?"

"It is my hope that my retirement remains just that," Zhongli replied. "But the story of the Geo Archon does not define the story of any other."

The Yajna grass, in Hu Tao's opinion, was hardly grass at all. It looked more like a silk flower than it did shrubbery, with a similar pink-red hue to its curling petals. Its pistil stretched out from the centre, yearning for something and finding only air.

Aranaga, who was murmuring to the Yajna grass, paused to address Hu Tao. "Not ready yet, Yajna grass. Wants time."

"Of course," said Hu Tao. If she was going to be used as an ingredient in a world-saving ritual, she imagined she'd feel much the same. "Can I help?"

Aranaga tilted their head, listening to something Hu Tao couldn't hear. "Wants to remember other Yajna grass, this one."

Ah. Of course. A single weed or blade of grass might bloom into a shape like this; it was only in bigger numbers that grass began to look like grass.

There were many, once, weren't there?, Hu Tao thought. She didn't voice it; if she understood correctly, this was a moment of mourning. Far be it for her to interrupt something.

After a minute, Aranaga spoke.

"There were many, once. Whenever the moon rose or fell, a Yajna grass would grow. A garden of Yajna grass." Aranaga paused again — perhaps listening to the grass and relaying its memories. "But it came, Marana. In its wake, walking Shroom-Kin came, and ate and ate and ate. Leaving just this one."

"I'm sorry," said Hu Tao.

"Not your fault, the Shroom-Kin." Aranaga blinked. "...oh? I see. Yajna grass says thank you, Nara Hu Tao."

"Will there be no more Yajna grass now?"

"Renewal, always is. Return to Sarva, the Yajna grass. Later, will dream of Yajna grass again, Sarva. All things will be dreamed of again. Death is just a time when the dream is forgotten."

A familiar sentiment. "So there will be new kinds of Yajna grass one day, from the same dream."

"Yes. Oh, and the same kind of grass, too, there will be." Aranaga lowered their voice conspiratorially. "Has the important seeds, Jamikayomars. Grow again, one day, new Yajna grass... Hmm. But sad, the Yajna grass."

"Of course," said Hu Tao. "It's the last one left from its time. That can be a terrible burden, even when it ought to be no burden at all." She bowed her head. "In my humble opinion, this Yajna grass is a wonderful Yajna grass. Now that I have met it, I can imagine how wonderful all its brethren must have been, if they were anything alike."

Aranaga paused again. "Returns to Sarva, will be dreamed again, so I do not understand why it is sad," they said. "But thanks you again, Yajna grass. Thanks you three, four, five times."

The Yajna grass seemed to say something else. Aranaga listened for a long while.

"Ready now, the Yajna grass," they eventually said.

"Okay."

Hu Tao knelt before the Yajna grass, carefully tucking her coat tails beneath her thighs. She closed her eyes and listened to the wind and the rustle of leaves and the gentle patter of Aranaga's little footsteps.

Nothing fancy needed here. Funerals were for the living: Hu Tao knew that better than most. When an end was welcomed gently, final rites could be much the same.

May your return to the cycle—to Sarva—be untroubled. May your regrets return to Sarva alongside you. May we who succeed you know how to honour you.

Perhaps she should have done this for the Barsam flower and the Zohrah mushroom, but alas, the moment for that had passed. Regrets were only that: regrets.

She did not have to wait long. There was a gentle rustling of soil, followed by a heartbeat of silence. Then, Aranaga said:

"Thank you."

...and Hu Tao opened her eyes to find them placing the Yajna grass in Hu Tao's hand. An ordinary flower.

"Born to fall away, Yajna grass," said Aranaga. "In ancient language of trees and plants, Yajna means ‘the falling petals’. Happy to fall away now, become Arahaoma. Because falling is fulfillment, not death."

"Fulfillment?" Hu Tao asked. Remaining kneeling, she took a water flask out. "Achieving a dream?"

"Well... Yes and no. Well... In Nara language, fulfillment and death are the same. But fulfillment inspires life. It is... a happy death!"

"A happy death is a good death."

"When memories are born then they want to be shared — not wasted, but given and shared in a way that matters. When they are given away, when the giving is witnessed, when the giving matters, then the memories finally return to the forest, to Sarva. Then the memories are fulfilled."

Not for the first time this week, Hu Tao found herself wryly amused that the creatures she was spending so much time with were the furthest possible thing from potential clients.

She stood up, brushing dirt from her knees.

"Is that the purpose of memories?" And of the tapestry of memories that a life was? "To be returned to Sarva?"

"Things do not have one purpose. Fulfillment can take many shapes. Returning to Sarva, yes, memories are for this. For writing songs, too, memories. For making and remembering and telling and dreaming dreams, and for forgetting, all of these things, memories are. A kind of fulfillment, all of these things."

"Do you ever think about Hu Tao dying?"

The question took Zhongli a little by surprise, like many of the God of Wisdom's questions did.

"It depends what you mean," he said. "I am aware that she is mortal, certainly, just as her grandfather was before her. The same is true of the hundreds of Qixing leaders who've since passed away." Not to mention the countless sailors and miners, nor dockhands and merchants and poets and parents and more, whose stories Zhongli had passed through as a trifling side character. "Yet that is not to say that I think about Director Hu's mortality particularly often. I do not ruminate on her death..."—save, of course, when the woman herself was provocatively raising the subject, or setting yet another enclosed space on fire with herself inside—"...any more than necessary. Which is very little, in honesty."

"I see..." Nahida nodded slowly. "I suppose it's not like you or I are immune to death ourselves. The gods you spoke of before passed away, too..."

Marchosias, in a sense. Haagentus, certainly.

"Sooner than I would have liked. But I suppose the comparison is apt: regardless of someone's lifespan, it does me no good to dwell ahead of time on their disappearance from my life."

"Are you ever tempted to?"

"Of course," Zhongli admitted. "It is quite natural to grieve in advance of a loss. There is nothing wrong per se with doing so. The reason I try not to, especially with mortals, is that it is quite impractical. I have better ways to spend my time with Director Hu, for instance, than dwelling upon her mortal destiny."

"And when she dies? Hopefully not anytime soon," Nahida hastened to add. "When that happens, will you... dwell?"

"Will I grieve?" said Zhongli. "Of course. If we are to compare when a mortal passes away to when a god does, I find that in many respects my grief is the same. When Director Hu dies, I imagine I will grieve that her story has ended." To borrow an earlier phrase of Nahida's: "The end of her agency in the world, you might say. And I will feel a burden: her memories are left for the living to carry."

"An onerous task."

"Indeed. Perhaps even more so a few generations later, when those mortals who knew her also depart. At that point, the memories will be mine alone."

Nahida nodded solemnly.

Zhongli took a long sip until his teacup was drained.

"One might say that by telling you stories of those I have known, I am keeping their stories alive, and in a certain sense, them with it. Equally, one might say that by sharing the memories, I am sharing that burden."

"I'm guessing it never stops hurting," said Nahida.

"Not in my experience. When Hu Tao departs, the pain will be just as vivid as the deaths I mourned during the Archon War."

"For how long?"

"Who can say? There are deaths from millennia ago that still sometimes sting when I least expect them to. Whether or not the pain of grief is inevitable, it is prudent for me to act as if it is. The pain itself may grow numb, but I can inure myself to the worst of its consequences."

"And... before, when you spoke of sharing memories as a way of alleviating a burden... I'm not sure I understand how that works. You share your memories and knowledge freely with mortals, knowing that your burden of memory will outlast them." Nahida seemed to choose her next words carefully. "And... knowing how deeply Dendro power is intertwined with memory... you have shared so much with me, that one day I might have to expend and forget. Does it not feel like a waste?"

"Nothing lasts forever, Nahida. Even mountains will crumble in due course." And what was more... "Sharing memories with mortals is no less meaningful than making new ones. And the latter surely has meaning, does it not?

"Yes, impermanence of stories in the mortal realm saddens me. Perhaps not as much as impermanence of life, but still. Erosion, mortality: these are a part of the world. They weigh on my heart but they cannot be fought any more than the flow of time. And perhaps I misspoke: the burden of the stories is not permanently eased by their sharing. But in the moment, it feels as such, and I believe this is important.

"One day too I shall pass away, and many stories will return to the Leylines for the final time. In the face of that inevitability, it does not matter how long the stories linger, whether you forget tomorrow or millennia from now. What matters to me is living well..."

"No small task."

"Indeed not. So as to ease the task, I cultivate joy in the act of sharing in those memories. I tell mortals what I know of Liyue all the time, not because I expect them to be recorded in a way that outlasts me, but because it is in the nature of stories to seek out a teller and an audience. In being their conduit... that is something I can take satisfaction in."

"I see..." said Nahida.

Her eyes, Zhongli noticed, were fixed on the ground.

"Is something the matter?" he asked.

"I think..." Nahida frowned. "Um... I guess I'm still making up my mind yet."

"Take your time," said Zhongli.

"Good idea."

Nahida busied herself with her tea for a little while, clearly thinking over something. When she put the cup down, her lips were pressed together nervously.

"I'm not completely sure yet," she said. "But... if it's no trouble to you... There's someone I want you to meet."

Aranaga led Hu Tao to a spot not too far from Jamikayomars, and declared that it was time to wait.

"When the moon rises over the tallest tree, then the ritual to make it can begin, Arahaoma."

Hu Tao took the time to catch up on food and sleep. Later, she turned to poetry, or at least the inchoate thoughts that often became it. Meanwhile, Aranaga pottered about a nearby tree stump, making preparations for the ritual. At least, so they claimed: what Hu Tao saw looked very much like Aranaga simply running a hand over the tree stump or patting it encouragingly every so often.

The valley grew dark before the sky did. Hu Tao became aware of approaching footsteps.

She looked up and couldn't help but smile at the familiar face. "Hello, there."

"Hello, Nara Hu Tao," said Aranakin. "It is good to see you again!"

"My eyes are down here."

"I am looking at your hat!"

"Yes, I know you are. Are you here to help with the Arahaoma ritual, too?"

"Yes! Arahaoma is not just Zohrah and Barsam and Yajna. Arahaoma is also our dreams, too."

It wasn't a surprise when Aragaru arrived soon afterwards.

"Hello, Nara Hu Tao! You are not wet."

"Yes," said Hu Tao, "and I'd very much like to keep it that way."

After a little conversation, she returned to her poetic musing. (She wasn't putting pen to anything, just playing around with the shapes of words with the adventures of her past few days and the peaceful Sumeru evening as muse. If she thought of something she particularly liked, she could always scribble it down when she returned to the city—or perhaps she would forget it. Such was life. Sometimes good ideas get lost and have to be mourned in absentia.)

At last, the moon had risen high into the sky.

"It is time," said Aranaga.

Hu Tao nodded. "Where to?"

Aragaru shook their head. "Let us stay here for a little, first."

"Grateful to you, Nara Hu Tao, the three of us."

"We know of Nara customs," Aranakin piped up.

"As is customary for Nara..."

"Precious gifts, we will give you."

Hu Tao blinked. "Why, thank you...? But... we're not finished yet. Don't you want to begin the Arahaoma ritual?"

"Wait a little longer, we can," said Aranaga.

"This gift must come before Arahaoma," Aragaru added. "To be sure."

"Uh... to be sure?"

Aranaga approached, holding out something. "I give you as thanks, this."

A flower, with beautiful peach-coloured petals. Hu Tao reached out to take it—

—and gasped and shivered as her fingers closed around the stem.

"What have we here?" she murmured.

Hu Tao was hardly a mage or thaumaturge. Her ability to sense magical energy was limited. There was no reason she'd be sensitive to Aranara magic—indeed, her three companions had used their Ararakalari powers around her and it had felt no different to standing next to any other Dendro wielder. The Zohrah mushroom and Barsam flower and Yajna grass had had a sacred air to them, but she hadn't felt anything just from touching them.

This flower was different. This had power, to a degree that Hu Tao was accustomed to only noticing when she took Homa in hand, or when dealing with particularly stubborn clients. Which ought to suggest...

"I'll give you my flower, too!" said Aragaru, and despite her better judgement—oh, who was Hu Tao kidding, Yanfei called her a walking liability for a reason—she took it in hand even though she was still reeling from the first. The sense of import washed over her once again.

Now that the sensation was stronger, she was more sure now. Something about these flowers pricked at her senses, like things near the border did, like the border itself...

"And me!" said Aranakin. "Here's my flower!"

These weren't their... souls, were they? But they hadn't heard of that word before, and now that Hu Tao thought about it, she wasn't sure the Aranara recognised a concept of identity that would give meaning to the story of souls.

"Take good care of them, okay?" said Aragaru.

"Limited flowers," Aranakin warned.

"The most precious, these flowers," Aranaga agreed. "Here, Aranaga's remembrance, is this flower." They pointed. "Aranakin's remembrance, this. Aragaru's, here."

"Your... memories?" said Hu Tao.

"Remembrance," Aranakin corrected her. "Similar."

"Nara forget things easily," said Aragaru. "My remembrance is full of life. It will help you remember."

"Cannot be blown away, our remembrances," said Aranaga. "Cannot blow them away, Ad Oblivione, the wind that takes dreams."

The wind that...? "Marana?"

"Not Marana, Ad Oblivione. Man-made thing, dead, mechanism. Taking away living memory, grinding and crushing it to take its juice..."

"That sounds horrifying," said Hu Tao frankly. "We don't have to fight that too, do we?"

"Cannot see Mawtiyima, Ad Oblivione. Cannot see Aranara."

That was some relief then. "So these flowers... will I need them when we face the Marana haunting Mawtiyima?"

"It is for after," said Aragaru. "So that you remember us."

"I... know that Nara memories aren't as good as yours, but... I don't think I'm about to forget."

"That is good," said Aranakin. "Then until you forget, you can carry our remembrances for us."

"For us, protect our memories," said Aranaga.

The feeling had been creeping up on her ever since the word "remembrance" had been brought up. Now, this was definitely starting to feel like a work situation. Hu Tao didn't like that at all.

"Are you expecting to die?" she asked them, brow scrunched up.

"Hard to answer, this," said Aranaga. "In Nara language, fulfillment and death are the same."

Yes, they had already said as much. "Are you expecting fulfillment? To fall away like the Yajna grass?"

"New life, memory nourishes."

So, yes.

"This is the way of Arahaoma," said Aragaru. "Mawtiyima must be healed."

"Our sacrifice, please witness. Please keep it in your memories and dreams."

"I see," said Hu Tao. She took a long breath out. "You're... the experts on Marana, so if you say it's necessary, I believe you."

She frowned.

"...but I wish you had told me sooner."

The Aranara glanced among one another before responding.

"Makes Nara sad, thinking about death," said Aranaga. "Less sad, our friends should be."

"Do not be afraid, Nara Hu Tao," said Aragaru. "We are not."

"Death is just a one-time loss of memory," said Aranakin.

Ah. So that was what they meant. And yet...

Hu Tao laughed scornfully.

"Just?"

It was rude of her. She could have helped it, probably. But frankly, she was a little cross that she hadn't been informed. This was the kind of kiddie-gloves behaviour she'd expect from Zhongli. They mostly only knew kids, didn't they? They weren't babying her on purpose. But still, it was not unreasonable to feel upset, and, lest Hu Tao forget, she was on vacation, so if she was being a tiny bit unprofessional, what of it?

"Sleeping in the earth, dirt burying their dreams: these parts of death scare many Nara," said Aragaru. "But our sacrifice has no wet dirt, no sleeping. Just forgetting. There is nothing to fear."

"It's not just forgetting. It's... If I bumped my head very hard, and forgot everything..." No, no, no, what was she doing? She was practically bargaining; rookie error. "...That's beside the point. Listen: forgetting is not a small thing, either..."

"Do not be upset."

"Aiyo, let me be upset for a moment at least," said Hu Tao. "I'm grieving."

"Grieving?" said Aragaru.

What, indeed, is grief?

Grief exists, A-Tao. It is part of the world. It is not our place to vanquish it.

Grief is not to be fled or chased. Hold space for grief; let it come and go like the tides.

Grief is different for everyone. It takes different shapes, it hurts in different places, it departs by different avenues.

(I hope you do not come looking for me, A-Tao. But it is okay if you do. When the time comes that I cannot guide the choices you make, I promise not to regret them on your behalf.)

Grief is honoured. Let it burn through you like a forest fire. Witness it. Do not starve it of air.

Grief is ashes falling from your palm. Visible in its entirety, yet impossible to spot when it departs. You can never be sure it is gone, but one day most of it has flown away.

"Grief is... a kind of bad feeling that happens after other people die," said Hu Tao. "I'm not sure how I would explain grief, if you do not already know its touch."

"I thought Nara Hu Tao did not fear death," said Aranakin. 

"You think too highly of me." Hu Tao smiled fondly. "I have my moments of fear, believe me; I'm still a Nara! But you misunderstand me..."

There was, she explained, a very nice seafood restaurant on the northern wharves, one that Hu Tao's grandpa had taken her to on his last birthday. They did delicious steamed fish, and the handful of times Hu Tao had gone back there, that had been well worth the reservation fee. Last year, they'd announced they were closing down.

Hu Tao had been sad. She was sure that, for a certain definition of the word, she'd grieved the restaurant a little.

"...I didn't want it to close," she recounted. "But it was not fear. Fear is... reactive. Fear pushes people into action."

"Like a forest fire," suggested Aragaru.

"Scary, forest fires," Aranaga agreed.

"Just like that," said Hu Tao. "What I felt... it was just... sadness."

"We do not want you to be sad."

"But I am. And that's okay. Just like I don't want you to... sacrifice yourselves, but I cannot change your minds. Sadness happens. Grief is one kind of sadness."

Hu Tao paused for breath.

"I ask that you give me a moment to think about your sacrifice. So that when I witness it, I am not afraid."

"Someone you'd like me to meet?" asked Zhongli.

Nahida crossed and uncrossed her fingers. "You have already been very kind to me, and very good company. But if it's not overstepping... there is something else I'd like to ask of you."

Zhongli was happy to hear it. In so many aspects of his life, he enjoyed being of help, and to his mind Nahida had asked very little of him.

He said, "I would like to think us friends, and I would not scorn a friend for asking at least."

"It's..." Nahida gnawed at her lip. "Well... I'd like your... expertise and your services."

Zhongli thought of the Thrones and of mortal peace treaties. "My answer may be constrained by contracts I've already signed."

"Oh?" Nahida blinked. "Oh! Oh, um, I don't mean your services as Morax, or as a god, or anything," she went on hurriedly. "Actually, I was hoping for your help in your... day job. As a funeral parlour consultant."

Ah. In that case, that oughtn't be an issue at all.

"Something like a pro bono consultation, then?" he asked.

"If... if that's alright. I'm..."

"It's fine," said Zhongli, before Nahida's nerves got the better of her. "All that means is we shall have to ask Director Hu for forgiveness, not permission."

He smiled. Nahida smiled back.

"Is here, Arahaoma," said Aranaga.

Hu Tao carefully took into her hands the cupped leaf that contained the elixir Arahaoma. It glimmered like soap bubbles, even though the moon wasn't shining directly on it.

"Please take good care of her," said Aranakin.

"Jamikayomars is close," Aragaru promised. "This way. Careful steps, gentle, gentle!"

Hu Tao did exactly that, feeling slowly for roots or mud before each footfall. It was the same kind of unnerving as carrying a jar of ashes, albeit much higher stakes: the awareness that the thing in her hands was precious but fragile.

Jamikayomars turned out to be a mushroom of the same kind that towered over the forest. This one was much smaller, the same height as Hu Tao, and its blue fluorescent glow was subdued compared to its larger brethren.

"Please offer Arahaoma, over here," they told her.

"Pour?"

"Yes, yes."

As the first drop of Arahaoma touched Jamikayomars, the rest of it followed as if pulled along. It wasn't long until the elixir had been consumed entirely. Hu Tao withdrew the empty leaf-cup and took a step back. This turned out to be a wise move, because scarcely a moment later, the ground began to shake beneath her feet.

Jamikayomars grew, its stalk widening as it shot up and up. By the time Hu Tao had rejoined the Aranara on stable ground, the mushroom had doubled in height. Then it doubled again. Its growth only slowed as it was approaching the size of all the other mushrooms.

When it stopped, it took a few moments for the forest to settle. Birds had scattered to the sky; clumps of dirt pattered down from the neighbouring megaflora, shaken loose by the commotion. The mushroom-cap of Jamikayomars had been no wider than a big armchair half a minute ago, and now it was at the same building-spanning size as its brethren. The stalk was at an angle, stretching from one side of the valley to another.

Incredible.

Come to think of it, Hu Tao had promised Xiangling a souvenir with a story and an unusual texture. Perhaps, once everything was over, she'd ask the Aranara — or their successors, she corrected herself — if she could take a shaving of Jamikayomars home with her.

Speaking of her departing friends, Aragaru, Aranakin, and Aranaga walked towards the stalk of Jamikayomars, and climbed onto it, beckoning her over.

She hopped on. The stalk sloped upwards fairly gently, and although the lack of handrails was a teensy bit concerning, it was plenty wide. A safer traversal than the bridges in Jueyun Karst, at any rate.

As she neared the top of Jamikayomars, Hu Tao saw an opening, beginning in the space beneath the mushroom's cap and then seemingly angling down into the face of the surrounding cliffs.

A path, now that she had a better view of it. Hu Tao presumed it led to Mawtiyima itself.

"We go in?" she asked.

"Yes," said Aranaga. "Fight Marana, together let us."

"Yeah, let's defeat it together!" said Aragaru.

"No time to lose!" said Aranakin.

Well! Time to begin, then.

Zhongli knocked once.

"Come in."

He did so, closing the door gently behind him.

Daylight streamed through the windows. The room was spacious and well-kept, and at its centre was a four poster bed with finely embroidered sheets.

The bed's occupant, a young woman with chestnut-brown hair, lay with head and shoulders propped up by layers of pillows. She caught sight of Zhongli and, like many a child of Sumeru, made no effort to hide her curiosity.

"Oh, you're new," she said, tilting her head as much as the pillows would allow.

Zhongli bowed his head and drew a chair. "My name is Zhongli. I presume you are Dunyarzad Homayani?"

"I am."

"It is an honour to meet you."

"You've certainly picked a good time to visit." She smiled wryly. "I haven't felt so awake in weeks. Well... to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"A friend asked me to come by. She said you're fond of stories of distant lands." He went on: "I happen to know quite a few. If it pleases you, I'd like to tell you some."

Dunyarzad's eyes sparkled. "I would love that."

Chapter Text

“If Marana is the memory of death,” said Nara Agni, “then grief is the memory of absence.”

The Ararana nodded amongst themselves. Memories are power, so it was natural that some kinds of memory afflicted the Nara.

“Grief does not take a physical form. It is a thing—a process, even—that exists entirely within the minds and souls of Nara.”

“Hurts, Marana,” said Aranaga. “Does it hurt, grief?”

Nara Agni nodded solemnly. “It does indeed. Grief touches upon a Nara's memories of that which they have lost. Its touch can be gentle or forceful, but it hurts either way: a bit like sadness, but slower, wider...”

“Like the great tortoise,” suggested Aranakin.

“...sure. Like the great tortoise. On its own, grief causes pain, perhaps suffering... but grief is not harmful. It is the soul's response to harm. The word 'grieve', or 'grieving', means to sit with grief, to feel it, to learn to touch it without flinching away.”

“If grief hurts, why do Nara touch it?”

“Well, you see: grieving is the process of beginning to create something new, building around and upon the void in our world. What we build does not replace what was lost: as I said before, loss is loss, and there is no balancing of scales. But when we Nara grieve, the something new that we build becomes a different part of us... something from which new memories will grow.”

And that is why Nara grieve?, they asked her.

“And that is why Nara grieve,” she agreed. “To acknowledge the pain that is there, to acknowledge that the world changed when we didn't want it to... and to cleanse the salt from the wound, so that the barren memory of absence becomes a nursery, where new parts of ourselves may grow, fragile but alive.”

The Nara sighed and fidgeted with her dizi.

“We had some very nice adventures, these past few days,” she said. “I made new and unexpected memories with you three. And now there is some grief, because I don't have anyone to share the...” Her lips twitched. “...to share the memories with.”

“The forest will remember,” they reassured her.

“I know,” she said sadly. “and I will too, for now. But Nara are... very forgetful. One day, before a sprout can grow into a great tree, I will forget this, and everything else. As sure as the sun rises every day, I will forget.”

“The memories will live on in dreams,” said Aranaga.

“I hope so,” Nara Agni replied. “It's a nice thought. But it's still sad.”

They asked her how she knew so much about “grieving” and “souls”, and she explained to them that she was a “funeral” “director”: a kind of Nara who performed important rituals after other Nara returned to Sarva.

Aragaru guessed: “Are these grief rituals?”

“Yes, exactly!” She explained: “Funerals are a gathering where Nara come together and remember what they have lost. It is a ritual for the living, because grief is the burden of those who still remember.”

“Nara fear losing things,” Aranakin recalled.

“Yes. And as they lose something, and then afterwards, there is grief, and it is very unpleasant but also very important.”

“Strange, this Nara grief,” remarked Aranaga.

“It is,” the Nara agreed. “But it is sacred, and we Nara mustn't pretend the grief isn't there.”

“Why not?”

“If we're not careful, grief can hurt us—harm us. Grief left untreated can chip away at a Nara's vitality.”

Aragaru rubbed their chin. “Like an illness?”

“Hmm. Sort of?” The Nara's lips pressed together. “You might call it an illness, but to me that word conjures up something exoge— something from outside the person. Like a caterpillar gobbling up a baby plant.

“Grief is not afflicted upon Nara from without; grief isn't even necessarily harmful. Grief is like a garden. If it is tended to, or even just visited from time to time, the garden thrives, and becomes a part of the richness of our selves. It is when grief is not cared for that it grows into something that hurts us.”

“Like Marana?”

“Yes,” said Nara Agni solemnly. “Exactly like Marana.”

A few hours earlier

As they followed the passage down through the cliff face, the blue fluorescent glow of Mawtiyima forest's megafungi faded behind them. For a while their only light came from the faint glimmer of starshrooms at their feet. (Strictly speaking, there was some scarce light from Hu Tao's Vision, too, in its senescent scarlet, and the innate Dendro glow that lit the Aranara up like fresh choi in a grocer's cart... whoops, that was her cue to have a bit more trail mix, wasn't it.) After a while, the air grew heavy as it had when Hu Tao had faced Marana beneath Gandha Hill. Shortly after, Seelies began to accompany them, guiding their way and warding the feeling of encroaching Withering.

The path wound downwards with a slope so gentle that Hu Tao couldn't be certain at what point they made it properly underground from where they'd begun: only that it must have happened at some point along the way.

Hu Tao knew they were close when the path ahead took on a dusky mauve at odds with this midnight hour, shortly joined by motes of orange and gold.

The passage opened up to reveal a cavern as deep as Wuwang Hill was tall, wide enough to fit the better part of Liyue Harbour. Tree trunks wound their way around the walls, and a ways beneath a trickle of water wound through brown soil. The grass was sporadic, like the entire cavern floor was a riverbed that had dried too recently for new life to take root in the gaps. Dark motes floated through the air like unexpected charcoal in one's egg drop soup (an experience that was commonplace and merited no further elaboration).

A sun sat above it all: there was no other word for it but sun. It dwarfed the meteors Zhongli liked to summon when he thought nobody was looking. Perhaps not as big as the Jade Chamber, but it was certainly getting there.

“Mawtiyima?” Hu Tao asked.

“Mawtiyima,” chorused Aragaru, Aranakin, and Aranaga.

Mawtiyima was a sun, but it was not warm nor cold. It glowed gold at the edges but the red at its core was a bloody carmine: bloody; distinctly bloody. It bathed the whole cavern in the colours of dusk, but this was not a peaceful twilight: it burned and broiled, almost livid in its incandescence. It pulsed occasionally, consuming those wisps of charcoal and dead bark that had strayed too close.

The Seelies had made roost, and Hu Tao stepped out past their aegis, feeling out the atmosphere in the cavern: thick, unbreathable, asphyxiation in a mineshaft.

A rabid dog, insensate with pain, lashing out violently. A drowning woman, scared out of her wits, dragging her rescuers down with her.

Thoughtless hatred, clawing. Thoughtstealing pain, screaming.

She turned her gaze from Mawtiyima to the space around it. The glowing orb was suspended from a web of roots like a chandelier. Some of those roots seemed to pierce through directly from above, whereas others curved across the ceiling of the cavern to connect to giant massive trees which seemed suspended in midair, their own root networks reaching nothing at all... oh, or perhaps Hu Tao had it backwards. Mawtiyima was the giant flower crowning the tree; everything else was its roots, reaching every which way for soil to set anchor in and coming short.

The Aranara said nothing as Hu Tao stood there and beheld it all, fighting the instinct to avert her eyes. The scowling red sun. The cavern, plunged into wrothful twilight. The empty riverbed running through the cavern, its life flow sucked out with nothing given in return.

She spoke its name. “Marana.”

The memory of death, the Aranara called it. Something far less natural than death, she'd previously thought: a tumour, a parody of life, blossoms and branches rendered in angry carmine.

“Where do I start?”

Once upon a time there was a monster with fins the ocean deep and tail the mountains high, emerging from the ocean abyss to become the bane of seafarers for centuries upon centuries. This would not last, of course, and here was the story of that monster's death. There had been a starving child in a seaside village, an ordinary human who struggled to find purchase amidst humanity— but, undeterred, the child had held out her own hand even though none had been lent to her. The child forged the same enduring bonds that had been humanity's strength since before Liyue, before even the Guili Assembly. And when the child was a little older, when the storms came for her, that invisible net of favours and loyalties braced her as she drew a sword and sang a song and held firm for hours, days, nights, listening and listening until finally she heard the call of the tide.

“And she struck the monster down?” said Dunyarzad.

“She did,” said Zhongli. “A victory that belonged to all who had fought and fallen in that battle, for they could never have won it if not for the strength of their collective bonds. Yet at the same time the victory was the child's alone, for no matter how strong the bonds that comprised the net, it took exceptional valour to hold all the ends together, lest they fall apart under the weight of the ocean.”

“I like that.” She paused, seeking the right words. “Not lone heroes, but instead... heroes who are heroes because they aren't alone.”

The bedroom had a four poster bed at its centre, open-topped to better allow the light of the chandelier and various floor lamps. The curtains were drawn, revealing the gardens of the Homayani estate beneath a full moon and cloudless sky.

Dunyarzad lay in the bed, covered by sheets from the waist down, head and shoulders propped up by a bevy of unusually-shaped pillows. Her folded hands bore the lesions and scarring of advanced Eleazar; her nightgown covered the rest of her arms. Zhongli had drawn a chair and sat beside her: near the foot of the bed, so that she didn't have to turn her neck to look at him.

After a while, Dunyarzad remarked: “You know, when you first came in I assumed you were a physician.”

Zhongli shook his head sadly. “Regretfully, I am just a man. My hands know of harm but not of healing.”

“Oh, don't worry.” She smiled. “It's not a bad thing, really. It's sad, really, the people coming by to 'fix' me. My parents pay them well enough, I'm sure, but it still doesn't seem fair to them, trying their hardest to do the impossible.”

“Very few things are entirely impossible.”

“Well, that's true,” Dunyarzad agreed. “But not all plants bear fruit, and there's only so much water.”

Zhongli dipped his head. “One must, indeed, choose one's battles. I take it that your Eleazar is one battle you've declined to fight?”

“For a few weeks, now.” She wrinkled her nose. “Well. Perhaps longer, depending on where you draw the line.”

“If I may be so bold, Lady Dunyarzad, may I ask which plants you do water?”

“Oh, so formal! Hmm... the Sabzeruz Festival, of course. I put a lot of myself into that, this past year.” She sighed wistfully. “It didn't turn out perfectly, but it turned out so very, very well.”

The celebration for Lord Kusanali. Nahida had mentioned as much. “And besides that?”

“Since then...? Right after the Sabzeruz Festival, things...”—she gestured at the bed—“...I suppose you could say things deteriorated. These past few weeks, everything began to... began to...” She blinked. “Did I mention you'd come at a good time? I don't think I've felt this awake in weeks. The pain keeps waking me up. Oh, don't fret, don't fret: just... if I fade in or out, it's nothing personal, alright?”

“I understand.”

Dunyarzad regarded him thoughtfully. “You said you weren't a physician... but you're a bit like them, I think. The better ones.”

“How so?”

“You seem... careful, I suppose. And the way you tell stories... it's clear you care deeply about getting it right, whatever that means. I think that's nice.”

Zhongli thought about this. “You are right that exactitude matters to me.” (Teach with wisdom. Be bound by virtue.) “I suppose...” (Fortify the bones. Unite in ambition.) “I suppose I am a builder, in a sense. Although I have no works to my name...” (A Liyue helmed by mortal hands.) “...I have striven to complete the labours of others.” That was, he supposed, not unlike of telling stories and collecting histories.

“That's lovely. I think that makes you more of a 'healer' than a 'harmer', don't you think?”

A few days ago, now, Hu Tao had cleansed a Withering zone—a Marana-infested cavern—with Aranakin's help. This vast cavern, atop which the infected Mawtiyima sat, was a similar deal. There was a central tumour of Marana energy down in the dried riverbed, a gnarled tangle of thorns and branches wreathed in that nasty shade of red. Then there were the red blossoms scattered about the cavern's periphery: half a dozen, by Hu Tao's count, twice as many as before. And like last time...

“We must cleanse the buds of Marana first,” Aragaru confirmed.

“Got it.”

The first blossom was a minute's walk away. Hu Tao was familiar with the use of Dendrograna now, so she got right to work, pausing only to fend off an agitated Dendroshroom standing guard over her target. Soon enough, she was guiding a little green mote of Dendro energy into the blossom. There was a flash of cool green light, and with that, the first bud of Marana had been cleansed.

One down, five to go...

It happened suddenly. The ground around Hu Tao glowed and there was a pulse of angry Marana-red light around her. It knocked the breath out of her. She stumbled to her knees.

“Nara Hu Tao! Be careful!”

“I...”

The ground beneath her rippled slightly, but now she knew to get out of the way before another pulse could strike her.

“...will try,” she said. “What was that? What did it do?” She could still feel it tingling on her skin, though what feeling “it” was eluded her.

Aranaga examined her carefully. “Thorns of Marana, pricked you,” they told her.

“Marana in the mind remembers death,” Aragaru added. “Marana in the body remembers decay.”

Hu Tao pursed her lips. “But decay isn't...”

Two ripples in the ground: one in a ring centred at her feet, one just downhill of her in the easiest direction to leap. She launched herself sideways, avoiding the blast.

“Hold that thought,” she said. She swivelled in the direction of the nearest remaining Marana-blossom and began to march. “Let's keep moving.”

“Good idea,” said Aranakin. “I see a path, this way!”

After the second bud of Marana was cleansed, the expunged carmine-red energy split into dart-like missiles that flew up into the sky before swooping back down at Hu Tao. She sidestepped most of them, though one grazed her thigh despite her ghosting partway out of the mortal realm to avoid it. No surprise that Marana had influence in the Border-like spaces between spaces, but, aiyah, she'd hoped.

After the third bud was cleansed, a flock of floating Fungi, tinged with that same carmine-red shade, descended upon them out of nowhere. They were mostly Dendro Fungi, and not flame-resistant in the least, thank goodness, but they were hardier than they ought to be, and when Hu Tao kicked one that had slipped past her staff's range, she had to shake out her foot to rid it of that uncanny sense of Marana influence. Oh, and this whole time the ground was still exploding beneath her feet once or twice a minute, and that really wasn't helping things.

Amidst it all, Mawtiyima loomed over her: a red sun, screaming in insensate silence. Every time Hu Tao looked in its direction, she glowered.

“This is basically a tantrum, you know,” she grumbled.

As if Mawtiyima had heard her, more Fungi appeared from distant shadows, drifting her way.

So she kept moving.

The Aranara were with her the whole way, cheering her on and helping stabilise the occasional seal or Dendro mechanism. They encountered a few Seelies on the cavern's periphery, whose influence seemed to soothe the effects of the Marana. It was a pleasant surprise to find that the “healing” actually lasted when she stepped away from them—at least until more Marana darts managed to clip her in the face of all things.

The accumulated effects of being “struck” by Marana were unpleasant. It felt like heat in her veins, like illness ravaging her body, and yet it also felt like none of these: a whisper in her ear, ruthless and incessant but ephemeral. Hu Tao was no healer but she knew a little basic triage, and she was pretty sure her organs were all intact, but they were telling her otherwise. Could a spleen have an anxiety attack? She wouldn't be surprised.

But look on the bright side. No Abyssal corruption. No wounds: her most tangible injury being was a bruise on her shin from an earlier evasive manoeuvre.

If the sensation running through her was decay, as Aragaru had called it, it was a false decay, an imitation. The memory of decay, maybe, just like how Marana wasn't actually death.

[...]In the end, faith prevailed over kindness, and young Liuliu bled for his people, happily.

And so the mountainfolk sealed their own fates. Whereas Garuda Vajra had witnessed centuries of sacrifices with indifference, here was a death she would not suffer lightly. She descended upon the mountainfolk, delivering not blessing but total obliteration. By the next sunfall, the mountain was nought but cinders. It is said that even now, come monsoon season, Garuda Vajra's screams of fury may be heard, echoing through the peaks.

Dunyarzad listened attentively as the story came to a close. She commented a little, offering her own thoughts on retribution and justice. Yet to Zhongli's eye, she seemed a little distracted.

“Is something the matter?” he gently probed.

“No, not at all,” she replied automatically. Then, after a moment, she blurted out: “I nearly died in my sleep, you know.”

Zhongli blinked.

“By all rights I should have been a cadaver weeks ago.” She looked at him, searching for a reaction. “Had I mentioned that?”

Zhongli thought back. “I'm not certain,” he said. Nahida had filled him in on the details, but he had promised not to mention her. “I do recall you mentioning that your health deteriorated soon after the Sabzeruz festival.”

Dunyarzad nodded. “The very night after the festival. My Eleazar took a really bad turn. I woke up at Bimarstan feeling like... as bad as it gets, really: everything aching, nerves on fire... Oh, but it wasn't just me,” she added. “Everyone I know woke up the next day with a headache. Dehya thinks some kind of infection was going around...

“In any case, I nearly died in my sleep: that's what the Bimarstan doctors said... well, more or less. At the very least, they said it's a miracle I survived.” She rolled her eyes. “Everyone always bends over backwards not to say 'die', don't you think?”

Zhongli nodded. “I have noticed that many mortals— many of us mortals— find it a difficult subject to discuss directly, despite how ordinary death is.”

“Exactly!” Dunyarzad laughed, exasperated. “It's always metaphors and euphemisms. 'Pass on', 'visit Irminsul', 'go to a better place'... When I was a kid, I thought it was another one of those things adults think children aren't grown-up enough to know about, like where babies come from, or how much the maids get paid. But it turns out people just really don't want to think about death, much less talk about it. Not when it's up close and real. Not when I'm in the room.”

“I can only imagine how frustrating that must be.”

She nodded emphatically. “You have no idea. Still, it is what it is. There will always be frustrations in life...”

Her gaze went distant, past the walls of the room to something only she could see. There was something wistful to her eyes.

When she didn't continue, Zhongli prompted her: “Miss Dunyarzad?”

“Hmm? Oh.” She smiled. “It's a saying I'm fond of. There will always be frustrations in life, but the point of living is not to leave behind any regrets. Does that make sense?”

Zhongli nodded slowly. “I believe so.” It was a sentiment he had heard from Hu Tao and her predecessors many times before. “Frustrations may be unavoidable, but regrets are something within our control. It is within our power to live in a way that births no regrets— not that this is any easy task.”

“It gets a little easier with practice, I think,” said Dunyarzad, “but only a little. When I first heard that saying, it seemed impossible. How could I not resent everything? This was when I was a child. My parents still hadn't found any medications that helped by that point, and my flare-ups were daylong splitting headaches at their mildest; total paralysis, more often than not. It was terrifying.

“The... I had a friend, back then: she would come by to keep me company. Sometimes we would talk, other times she would just sit there and hold my hand. It was so... it meant everything, not being alone. Even years later, when I was having a bad flare-up or the anxiety got suffocating, I'd think back to those memories. Someone just being there for me, even if I hurt so bad I couldn't put two words together, even if there was no point to her being there. She was there anyway, holding my hand so that I wouldn't be alone.

“She explained the regrets thing to me, or... she helped me figure out for myself what it means to me, not to leave behind regrets. It's probably different for everyone, right? My friend gave me the language to ask the right questions to myself: what kind of life did I want, even if I never got better? If I only had a month left, or just one night, what could I do to be happy with that one last night?”

“A difficult question for anyone, let alone a child.”

“She said something like that, too: a question I didn't deserve to deal with. Not when children my age were out playing tag in the bazaar... or whatever it is that children do. But it was a question that, given my reality, was worth asking.”

“You have lived so long with your death on your mind.”

“Not on my mind as much as you'd think. I got started early, grieving my own death. I've long since made peace with it... well, perhaps it's more honest to say I made peace with ninety parts in one hundred. I'm still... it's selfish.”

“What is?”

“I want more time. Just a little bit more. But only ever a little bit. If I was blessed with the decades and decades others my age have... I wouldn't know how to use it.”

“I'm not certain there's anything selfish about that,” said Zhongli. “That time you wish for does not come at anyone else's expense.”

“It feels selfish. When Nilou's...” Dunyarzad shook her head. “Sometimes, I feel like I would sell Sumeru itself for a few years more. That kind of hunger... what else could it be?”

“Is that a form of selfishness, then? Hunger? From a woman starved through no fault of her own?”

“I think it can be. I have been blessed with so much. Most of the time, I feel blessed. But some days... some days I feel entirely made of regrets. And if I'm able to get through most days, then those days feel... cursed, by comparison.”

“As you said, you've been grieving your own death for a long time,” said Zhongli. “Grief— and all the other sorrows that come with desiring the unattainable— slumbers lightly. It can be reawoken very easily. When you despair, when you feel frustrated or resentful, that is not a sign that you have failed at grief. It is simply an unfortunate day.”

“It would be nice, though, wouldn't it?” said Dunyarzad. “If the hunger never reared its head?”

“It would,” Zhongli agreed.

After the fourth bud of Marana was cleansed, the entire cavern flared red for a moment.

“What now?” said Hu Tao, glancing toward the centre of the cavern.

If Mawtiyima was a sun, then the smaller orbs emerging from within it might be moons. Marana-corrupted moons, crackling like Electro but in the same dreadful carmine shade as everything else. Or maybe comets: something akin to flames trailed behind the orbs as they flew through the cavern.

“Huh,” she said, as a sphere as wide as she was tall descended upon her, “isn't that Mister Zhongli's trick?”

“Try dodging,” advised Aranakin.

(For the record, Hu Tao had already been planning to.)

After the fifth bud of Marana was cleansed, bolts began to drop from the cavern ceiling like extremely prejudiced stalactites.

“You have got to be kidding me,” said Hu Tao.

“Not joking, the three of us!” Aranaga assured her.

Zhongli recounted the story of the wandering monk, heir to a forgotten martial art, who sought not mastery, fame, nor fortune, but simply the pleasures of the world. Not, mind you, pleasures traded or bargained for: our ascetic monk sought contentment in the pleasures that happened to cross his path. A disciple of serendipity... yet his heart was troubled[...]

After the part of the tale where the monk bested the demon queen in a battle of wills, Dunyarzad mused that, even if the monk hadn't set out to avenge his lover, he effectively had. “The best revenge is a life well lived... (Do you have that proverb outside of Sumeru? Oh, good...) Winning the contest was a bit like living well, don't you think?”

“I'm not sure I agree,” Zhongli replied. “The monk wanted nothing to do with demons nor glory. It is not a contest he would have chosen given any real choice.”

“But it was living well according to his lover's principles,” Dunyarzad retorted. “So... even if it was not vengeance in the monk's mind, perhaps this was his lover's vengeance: living well from beyond the grave, through those who loved him.”

“An interesting thought...” One that Zhongli sincerely might return to next time he thought of his own departed comrades.

But for now, onwards.

Zhongli recounted the fable of the Naiads, spirits of the morning mist. Their lives were harmonious and their contemplations subtle. Yet they looked with envy upon the creatures of the daylight realm, whose lives, though fleeting and more turbulent, were so much richer. Just as people in Liyue seek out teahouse storytellers for tales of woe, to the Naiads even the suffering of the warm-blooded had its intoxicating allure. Through trials and tribulations, they found their way to their hearts’ desire: a complete rebirth, all the indescribable complexities of their former lives left behind them like a fading dream. And then they lived in ignorant bliss, experiencing the ups and downs of life in all their richness.

Dunyarzad remarked that she was reminded of cautionary tales from a Thousand Nights. “The ones where the moral is: be careful what you wish for...”

“Lest it come true?”

“...lest the having prove worse than the longing,” Dunyarzad clarified. “There's one, for instance, where a man wishes to be reincarnated as a Sumpter Beast.”

“Why would he want that?” Zhongli asked, bemused.

“Mora troubles, heart troubles... all kinds of misfortune, I don't recall the specifics. He wanted a life without burdens, where all he had to worry about was where to forage his next meal... you can probably guess where the rub lay.”

Zhongli wasn't certain, but he gave his guess anyway. “Was it the same as with the Naiads? Unable to remember how much they'd longed for the passions and tragedies of mortal life?”

“Yes! A Sumpter Beast doesn't have to worry about job security or village politics, but it can't conceive of that stress in the first place. The man's soul was no more satisfied in the next life than it was in his own.” She smiled. “I thought about that a lot, as a kid. I wished, as I still do, that I hadn't been born with Eleazar. Stories like that made me think, if I'd been luckier, would I even know it? Or would I be so absorbed in a different set of miseries that I had no idea how envious the real me would have been of my good fortune?”

“Perhaps it serves as a reminder to those less fortunate to take more joy in what they already have.”

“Oh, yes, of course. But it was also a reminder to me. What if I was a naiad in a past life, and the rich ups and downs of my life were something I'd once knowingly wished for?”

An interesting thought, though one with no clear stopping point. “Perhaps by that same reasoning, we are all reincarnations of far greater beings who wished to set down the burden of their greatness.”

“Yes. Seelies or dragons or something... I mean, who can really say?” Dunyarzad smiled delightedly.

Then, after a minute or so, her face turned thoughtful—not solemn or sad, just thoughtful. She gave Zhongli a considering look.

“You're not what I thought you'd be,” she said.

(Zhongli had been under the impression she hadn't known of him at all before today.)

“I'm not sure I understand,” he said.

“My parents sometimes talk about crossing the Chinvat Ravine, but that's more euphemism than superstition...” She scoffed. “A terrible euphemism, too; what's so bad about a trip to Liyue? And Dehya speaks of a jackal spirit, but in truth I never really thought that there were people or along the way.

“Me, I suppose I expected... a bad night. They're all bad nights, of course. Falling in and out of sleep, exhaustion and pain...” She smiled wryly. “I expected it would be just another bad night, only... fading.”

Zhongli regarded her carefully. “You're speaking of dying.”

“I wasn't expecting stories,” she went on. “Least of all stories I've never heard before.” She regarded him curiously. “Tell me, Mister Zhongli, are you real? Or is my imagination better than I thought?”

“I am real,” said Zhongli, “but I fear there has been a misunderstanding. I am not Hermanubis or any manner of herald of death. I am just Zhongli, a man fond of sharing memories.”

“I'm sick, not senile. Dehya would never have let a stranger in without checking with me first, and yet here you are, not cut in two or anything.” Dunyarzad's eyes crinkled at the corners as she laughed. “Oh, don't worry, I promise I won't go spilling your secrets. I...

“...I spoke to a god once, you know.”

Zhongli nodded. “The friend you spoke of before.”

“Yes. She's nothing like you but you still give off this feeling of not-quite— Hold on...” Dunyarzad frowned. “You said before a friend sent you... did you perhaps mean...”

She inhaled sharply. When she exhaled, the tension left her with it.

“So that's it.” Her laugh tinkled like raindrops in a pond. “No wonder nothing hurts as much as it ought to. Zhongli, if you really aren't a figment of my imagination, tell me this: am I dreaming, right now?”

He had promised not to tell her. Nor did he wish to lie.

Instead, Zhongli said nothing. It seemed Dunyarzad didn't need an answer, though.

“I see,” she said. “Even after all this time, she's still watching over me.”

She laughed again and blinked tears from her eyes.

“I should have known. It's just like she promised. She's always here with me. She's here with me.”

Hu Tao watched her footing as she approached the sixth bud of Marana, mindful of the rain of bolts from above, the ground rippling from her feet, the darts shooting at her from the walls, the orbs of crackling red lobbed at her from the cavern's centre, the handful of Fungi drifting about blocking the easy path. This was, frankly, Adventurers Guild nonsense, and she was not here for it.

“You're sure that way leads down?” she called out.

A Dendrogranum hovered over her palm. She twirled her staff with her other hand.

“Yes!” Aragaru called back. “Down the branch, one big jump, then falling from the next branch. A small fall!”

“I hope so,” said Hu Tao, and swiped her staff at the reddest, angriest part of the bud. The Dendrogranum from her hand leapt into the groove she'd scored open, and with a flash of green, the sixth bud of Marana was cleansed.

As soon as she was sure of it, she darted towards the beckoning Aranara and began following the path down to the cavern floor. Orbs and darts rained after her, and she had to whack a few Fungi out of the way as she went.

The buds of Marana had been in a loose ring around the cavern. The knot, the tumour, the thing they'd been protecting, lay directly beneath Mawtiyima in the empty lakebed, on a mound of dirt surrounded by water. The water looked knee-deep, but considering the miasma hovering over it, Hu Tao did not want to actually test this.

She landed beside the knot and poked at it experimentally with her staff. It flared before she could make contact, pushing her back with such force that her feet skidded in the dirt.

“Still fights back, the Marana!” said Aranaga. “Driven away, its influence, must happen first!”

(Hu Tao had known that, but hey, it hadn't hurt to check.)

Creatures appeared around them. Large winged Shrooms flew out from behind Mawtiyima the red sun, circling overhead. Other, bipedal, Shrooms lumbered over trailing spiked tails behind them.

“The Disciples of Decay are upon us!” cried Aranakin.

Seriously? Talk about a needlessly grand title.

Hu Tao fought.

Wangsheng Funeral Parlour rarely engaged in exorcisms. Wangsheng Funeral Parlour seldom dealt with hordes of angry beasts. Hu Tao did her best work in quiet spaces with a box of tissues and a calming cup of chrysanthemum tea at the ready, not here in the thick of melee. She was a businesswoman, not a fighter. Granted, she had a Vision, and better means to defend herself than most businesswomen her age, but she was still just a businesswoman.

Hu Tao fought anyway, swiping and stabbing at the rancorous horde. She fought, weathering bruising blows to the back and motes of Marana soaking beneath her skin. She fought, not because she'd already come this far, but because, promises to the Aranara aside, now that she was here and seeing every Mawtiyima's every insensate thrash, now that she could feel the slightest quantum of its pain, she knew this had to be done. It wasn't her fight; it wasn't anyone's; but it had to be fought, and she was the Nara her new friends had trusted enough to bring into this profaned space.

So she fought. She sent many of the creatures attacking her to an early afterlife, and when their bodies dissolved into asphyxiating clouds of Marana (unavoidable, breathing it in, but ouch) more rose up to take their place. The floating Fungi that had been pestering her for the past half hour continued to float out of the shadows, seemingly endless in quantity.

One minute of fighting became two. Two became four.

It wasn't just Fungi big and small. Although Hu Tao didn't recognise the Ruin machines emerging from the dirt, she recognised the cold intent in their movements: dangerous, obvious state of disrepair or not. The crocodiles in the surrounding water, on the other hand, were a much more familiar and obvious kind of danger: powerful teeth and spiked tails protected beneath hardy scales.

Four minutes became eight. All the running around earlier had taken its toll, and while she wasn't at her limit, she could sense that the fatigue would catch up with her sooner rather than later.

As she tried to conserve her energy, the monsters grew more aggressive, pressing in closer. They soon encircled her, only a spear's length away from her in every direction. At this point trying to dodge the rain of Marana-infused lightning orbs and jagged stalactites was a question of not if, but how much. Then, even as she struggled to maintain that scarce space to manoeuvre in, more Fungi and Ruin machines and beasts pressed into the spaces between their fellows, packed so tightly against one another that Hu Tao had no gaps to slip out between.

It was all she could do to prevent the monsters from literally crushing her. One thing was clear: This wasn't going to work, not like this.

There had to be something she could do...

Aiyo, Hu Tao, what are you, six years old? Acceptance, dummy: just jump straight to acceptance. Always much easier that way.

Hu Tao forced herself to think the thought she'd been avoiding since this fight had begun:

She couldn't do this. Not safely.

Not finishing the job for certain, let alone getting out in one piece.

She couldn't drive them all off and cleanse the Marana and be everything the Aranara wanted to be. And that was fine! She wasn't a fighter, and this wasn't her fight, and it was okay to acknowledge that.

She was pretty close to getting clobbered to death, but Mawtiyima Forest wasn't so far from Nantianmen. So perhaps... if she just...

Hu Tao's lips parted:

“Xi—”

...and then she caught herself.

Nope. Nope, nope, nope.

That wouldn't do at all. No way, no how. Asking for help from him would be tantamount to asking the old man for help. And that was a threshold that, once crossed, there was no going back.

Besides, Hu Tao was here to save Mawtiyima, not eradicate it.

No, she could do this.

Probably.

Maybe.

Either way, she would try.

Before you can help a client, you must come to know the client. She was here to heal Mawtiyima.

The Marana continued to strike at her: by the mere touch of the corrupted monsters at her sleeve, by the rain of carmine red stalactites, by the suffocating air she'd been breathing ever since she'd gotten here.

She couldn't do this. Not safely.

And so Hu Tao let herself stop worrying about safe.

She turned her focus to the task of driving the monsters back. She struck at the exposed cores of Ruin machines with precise stabs. She swung forcefully at the heads of Fungi that got too close, as if the Staff of Homa was a proper staff.

Although she did not by any means abandon self-preservation, something had to give. With her focus on the creatures, more of Mawtiyima's direct strikes—the carmine-red missiles, the orbs of furious lightning, the rippling explosions underfoot—hit her. More than once Hu Tao nearly staggered to her knees as Marana forced its “decay” through her flesh and blood.

The corruptive touch of Marana, the decay: it was poison in her veins. It was drowning in mud, like inhaling gore and feeling it spread through every part of your body. It was a spiteful whisper in her ear.

(This isn't worth it.)

The Aranara cried out. “Be careful, Nara Hu Tao!”

“I will, I promise,” she called back, adjusting her back hand's grip so that her middle finger sat atop her index.

The Marana, at least, wasn't bleeding her out. She had talons and beaks to worry about, and as she fought more aggressively and thinned the “herd”, it was mostly the larger monsters surrounding her. One headbutted her, a burst of red light as it made contact, and she coughed violently as her lungs and ribs went through five stages of grief in the space of a second.

The corruptive touch of Marana, the decay: it was a whisper in her ear, incessant and rueful. It was every bone in her body splintering all at once. It was suffocating. It was inexorable. It was so much more than she could bear.

(This isn't your fight.)

“Retreat, Hu Tao! Can protect you, the Seelies!”

The corruptive touch of Marana, the decay: it was futility. It was being pushed closer and closer to the edge of the cliff by a mass that could not be fought against.

(The end of all hope. Despair.)

It wanted to be despair. But despair was something Hu Tao had not allowed herself since the day she'd found a Vision in her rucksack. There is suffering, and there is pain, and to be Hu Tao was to choose the latter, again and again and again.

(Just leave.)

She would not leave. She'd promised the Aranara. She would see this through...

(Do you want to die?)

...or die trying. And, as Hu Tao had explained to friendly-but-backstabby Lunja, she intended to make a point of dying without regrets.

Marana's influence was a whisper in her ear, incessant, ephemeral, spiteful; she listened, and though it tried to come for her heart, she allowed it no purchase, even as throbbing pain began to cloud over her field of view, even as she got closer and closer to the brink. The brink concerned her, perhaps even scared her, but she did not despair that it was near.

(Just leave. This isn't your fight. There's still time to run.)

Hu Tao found her eyes drawn to the cavern's sole exit. And perhaps she was imagining it, but it seemed like the monsters were moving away from that direction.

“An easy way out?” she mused.

(Don't you see? Is any of this worth it?)

What did it take her for?

(Only death awaits. Don't you see?)

Oh.

Ohhhhhh.

The so-called memory of death.

Of course.

Mister Zhongli might have smiled grimly. Yanfei certainly would have. The Traveller and Paimon's eyes might have sharpened. Hu Tao was none of these people. Her face softened, then fell.

“I see you,” she said. The words left a bitter taste in her mouth. She acknowledged the bitterness, then repeated: “I see you.”

She'd been confused from the start: why would the memory of death be such a destructive, polluting force? Death is not the enemy. Death is not intrinsically evil. Struggling vainly against mortality was not the Wangsheng way, and clients who wished otherwise were most welcome to try their luck on the far end of Feiyun Slope.

And what did death have to do with Marana? Death was rot and urine-soaked bedsheets and clammy flesh. Death was the acrid smell of embalming fluid, handled with layers of gloves. Death was a bullet embedded in the frontal cortex. Death was an end. Marana was none of these things. Marana seethed, Marana raged, Marana clung to the forest like a parasite. Marana wasn't death at all, it was life, gone wrong. A tumour with no greater purpose than its continued existence.

“I know you,” she said, looking between the Fungi and the angry red sun above.

Marana was the coveting of life. Or to put it more prosaically...

“...you're the fear of death.”

Fear of death, rejection of death, flight from death: Hu Tao's archnemesis, if she was being melodramatic. The part of her job that sucked, if she was being honest.

(Know this: Hu Tao was wrong. Of course she was wrong. Marana and the Abyss are two sides of the coin, and nobody can truly comprehend the nature of the Abyss without already having being changed by it. No: Marana, blight of Irminsul, born of Forbidden Knowledge, was not something little Hu Tao was capable of comprehending in all its shades of desire.

Know this, too: Hu Tao was good at her job. Hu Tao was a professional. She was an expert in death, in the cycle, in the danger of things that last forever. When she opened her eyes and allowed herself to see the Withering, and saw avarice for life, she may have been mistaken, but in the sense that an expert is mistaken—in the subtleties. Hu Tao was wrong about the nature of Marana, but she wasn't wrong enough for it to matter.)

The Aranara were calling out to her, telling her to believe in herself, not to lose hope. She spared them a smile.

“You three, hide in the water. Then wait.”

They protested, of course. “Mustn't give up!” “We can do it together!” “You underestimate my power!”

She held the Aranara's gazes, and saw her eyes reflected back at her, a pair of pyres ablaze. Their protests fell silent.

“Stay safe!” the three Aranara told her, before hiding away.

Good. This wasn't their fight; it was, ludicrously, hers. Somehow the Aranara had found the exact right woman for the job. A professional, even.

This was going to suck.

“Hello, Mawtiyima,” she said with forced cheer. “I'm here to help.”

“It's just like she promised,” said Dunyarzad. “She's always here with me. She's here with me.”

And just like that, it was true. There was a second chair, by the bed right next to Dunyarzad, and Nahida was sitting in it. She and the chair must have been there the entire time, Zhongli's senses assured him, even as a surprised noise escaped his lips; how absent-minded of him not to have noticed. Nahida herself wore the wide-eyed expression of a deer frozen before a bear. Her hands gripped the edges of the chair so hard they went white.

“Dunyarzad?” she said, voice quivering. “You... see me?”

“Lord Kusanali,” said Dunyarzad. She appeared to be the only one unperturbed of the three of them. “You sound exactly how I remember.”

Nahida swallowed hard. “How did...” Her eyes turned to Zhongli. “You said you wouldn't—”

“I keep my promises,” said Zhongli, and it was law.

Dunyarzad inclined her head. “You're upset. I'm terribly sorry if I've given offence...”

“No,” Nahida said, with a suddenness and force that she seemed almost confused by. She stumbled over her next words. “You... Dunyarzad, oh Dunyarzad, you have nothing to apologise for, not now, not ever...” She readjusted herself, straightening her spine. “I was merely... It's— it's so good to speak with you again, Dunyarzad. Thank you for... for dreaming of me.”

“It's okay. If anything, I should be thanking you, my Lord...”

“Nahida. You can call me Nahida.” The words flowed easily from the younger Archon's lips. “If you so wish.”

“Nahida.” Dunyarzad's face glowed. “What a beautiful name. I'm so happy you're here with me, Nahida.”

“I'm... Dunyarzad, there are limits to my power. I can't do much more.”

“Was this your idea, Nahida? This visit from this lovely gentleman here?”

“It was,” said Nahida. “I wanted...” She looked to Zhongli. “I thought that... oh!, Zhongli, I relieve you of your promise of secrecy.”

Zhongli nodded. “I met Nahida a few days ago. She appears fond of the stories I have to tell. My presence tonight was her suggestion.”

“So you like stories, too, then,” Dunyarzad said to Nahida.

“We...” Nahida smiled weakly. “I'm sure we have a lot in common.”

“If it's not presumptuous of me...”

“What is it? How can I help?”

Dunyarzad averted her eyes. “Would... Would it be alright if you held my hand?”

“...of course.”

And when Nahida had shuffled forward in her seat to clasp Dunyarzad's hand with both of hers, tiny fingers long enough to wrap all the way around, Dunyarzad took some time settling back into the pillows. She looked between Nahida and Zhongli and remarked:

“It must be strange, watching us mortals come and go.”

“It's... I don't know if it's strange. But it's sad,” Nahida said frankly.

Dunyarzad nodded.

Glancing through the windows, Zhongli realised the moon was no longer there in the night sky. Yet the gardens were no less bright for it.

“Would...”

Nahida's voice cracked slightly. She closed her eyes and took a long breath in and out before trying again.

“Would you like me to tell you a story, Dunyarzad?”

“That would be wonderful,” she replied.

“Maybe... one of your favourites from when you were young?”

“It's up to you,” said Dunyarzad Homayani, whose smile was serene, whose Archon was holding her hand. “I don't mind reliving fond memories...

“...but I would be just as happy with something new.”

The first step was to speak death's name.

“We're all going to die,” Hu Tao said.

The monsters surrounding her seemed to recoil at the words.

“Well, not right now, I hope. But that day will come for every one of us. You. And me.”

Upon saying this, her rib cage burst into flame.

It was agony. The heat pressed in on her, heavy and suffocating like a crematorium furnace. The smoke that filled her lungs felt even worse than the touch of Marana that it had driven away.

She staggered in place, but did not lose her balance. This was just pain, death.

The flames struggled against the lining of her coat before bursting through that too, wrapping her in red from sternum to collarbone. Remembering to check, she found her teeth clamped together like a vice. She worked her jaw open and closed, stretching it out. Then, she turned to face Mawtiyima.

(“There came a day when dead bodies covered the forest floor. And the soil remembered the dark and poisonous blood it had devoured. And that memory is Marana.”)

She spread her arms wide.

“You lived,” said Hu Tao. “You sprouted, you blossomed, you bloomed. You were Mawtiyima, you were the forest, you were the grass and the earthworms. You saw life and death, decay and bloom.”

The flames licked higher and higher, taking first her jaw, then her tongue—her vision momentarily blurring as their tips danced before her eyes—then her entire skull, then finally her hat.

“You knew that all things would meet their end. You knew that death was just a part of the cycle. You knew. But one day, you remembered death...”

Mawtiyima screeched. There was no other word for it. The lightning crackling at its surface frothed and fulminated, and its core vibrated so hard the walls of the cavern shook. A dozen blood-tinged comets sprang forth, hurtling towards her, and the stalactites of condensed Marana began to descend like rain.

“...and the memory of death?, it hurt.”

The monsters around Hu Tao lunged. She ducked a winged Dendroshroom's talons, then struck another with her staff: it screeched and fell back, blossoming into flame a heartbeat later, singeing the smaller Fungi around it. She pranced into the newly created opening, feeling herself burn.

It hurt so terribly. Homa, the damned thing, sang in her hand: every inch of her arms was ablaze down to the smell of burning fingernails, and the Unbound Pyre helped only to hurry the flames along.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Truly, I am. Desire is suffering, and learning to desire life is a greater suffering still.”

Some of the darts of Marana missed; some struck her in the chest. They stung, but only for a moment: then they became more fuel, and the pain of burning was far richer, far more awful. It was where she worked best.

“And I apologise. But you will not find peace within the grip of fear.”

Since the days of the Archon War, Hu Tao's predecessors had worked to maintain the balance at the border. Yet they rarely engaged in exorcism: at least not as the term was commonly understood. The original directors of Wangsheng had had to deal with vengeful spirits and rampaging god-husks, and the knowledge had been passed down to the seventy-seventh, but it wasn't their speciality. For while monsters and gods might be the surest harbingers of corruption and disease, spiritual and corporeal both, there was equal peril in more mundane deaths.

A subtler kind of danger, the cumulative karma of a hundred thousand slightly restless souls. It required a different kind of vigilance to that of Chongyun and his clan: a vigilance that required laying every soul to rest right, again and again, century after century, even when things were fine, even when a little slacking off didn't seem to matter, especially when it didn't seem to matter. That was the duty Wangsheng tended to. Guarding a border that few paid any mind to, so that centuries from now it would be an afterthought still.

Wangsheng Funeral Parlour rarely engaged in exorcisms, in the normal sense of the word. But in another sense, every funeral was an exorcism: not for the deceased, but for the mourners.

“For that, you'll have to cross over.”

The blows were no longer landing. Claw or venom, lightning comet or festering dart: they all burst into flame before they could touch her, a purifying flame from which not even ashes remained. In the corner of her eye, she thought she saw more beasts emerging, towering bird-like things bigger than any Ruin Drake. It didn't matter. They would harm her, or they would not; she had a task to complete.

“I am Hu Tao, 77th Director of—” She caught herself. “Ah, but that's not important.”

(Goodness gracious, what was she doing? Names and lineages were for prospective clients and price negotiations, not for the ceremonies themselves. During a funeral, the client and their mourners don't give a Hilichurl's toenails about who you are, and nor should they! Any self-respecting funeral parlour was about the wake; never the other way round.)

“I am a friend,” she said, “if you will let me be. And I am a healer, like it or not.”

The fire had enshrouded all of her now, and it was burden and salvation both.

“Mawtiyima.”

Mawtiyima was a baleful red sun; Mawtiyima lashed out furiously; Mawtiyima sought to share its pain. Mawtiyima was scared; Mawtiyima was sick; Mawtiyima, Hu Tao was increasingly certain, would be saved.

“We will all die, but in my professional opinion, I don't think your end will be coming any time soon.” She added, half-serious: “Between you and me, I think the Aranara like you too much for that.”

There was no chorusing response from the Aranara, which Hu Tao took to mean they were still hiding away as she'd asked. Good.

“Marana,” Hu Tao continued.

Her gaze went past Mawtiyima's surface and into the red, the anger, the fear itself.

“If there's anything conscious to you, if you're more than just a nasty infection and a metaphor for fear, then you must be in so much pain. To be suffering, for suffering to be what you are: that sounds completely awful.”

And—no need to rub it in—it was probably afraid. Fear, like all suffering, like just about everything ever, does not want to stop existing... and here Hu Tao was, delivering it its eulogy.

“Come. You've been scared for so long.”

(She glowed red from head to toe now. But where the Marana at Mawtiyima's heart burned with the insensate fury of a dying sun, the woman in the little black coat burned with absolute nothingness, a thousand times more intense.)

“Now it's time to be brave.”

She raised her staff and pointed it at the centre of the sun, at the deepest depths of the Withering.

“Hold close your fear. Restrain your grief.”

The Marana raged. The Marana screeched. The Marana was darkness stained in blood and ichor, and it flared brighter, brighter, brighter.

Hu Tao did not cower, did not shrink back. Ablaze with purifying flame, her voice was almost tender.

“And loss, accept, with passage brief.”

No holding back now. She opened her heart and called upon her Vision with every fibre of her soul.

“Time to go,” she said, not unkindly.

And that was how the world ended: pain and searing heat, then endless light. Then nothing at all.

When the room fell silent, that silence was certain. Inarguable. The sheets did not rustle; the mattress did not creak.

Zhongli knew the ways of stillness, and he gave the silence the space it needed to grow and linger.

It was a few minutes before Nahida spoke. When she did, it came out as a hoarse whisper.

“I'm sorry.”

She was lowering her hand from Dunyarzad's eyes.

“You deserved so much more from me than just a few more weeks,” she went on. “You... Maybe “deserved” is the wrong word. I wanted that. I wanted to give you so much more. I wanted.”

Zhongli watched and listened. It was not time to speak yet: only to bear witness, and nothing more.

“You gave me so much. You gave and you gave even when you had nothing to give in the first place. You... I'm so grateful. My world is so dark and you filled it with light. Thank you. Thank you.

“Dunyarzad. I don't know how to repay you. Any of you. You all keep dying and you all love me and I love you back and I can't repay it, I can't, I know you never expected that of me but you deserved something. Five hundred years and every single one of you, every single one—

“And you're never angry you're never disappointed not a single one of you had anything but love for me and it's not fair, it isn't!, you could have asked for more, you should have. I'm supposed to protect you and instead you keep dying and I don't know what more I can do. Why do you pray to me? Why can't I do more for you? Why can't I do anything?”

And here she looked to Zhongli. Beneath the puffy red eyes was an invitation to occupy the silence alongside her. And so he did.

“When something means the world to us,” he said, “nothing feels like enough. The immeasurable makes a mockery of our sense of equity, and we invent irreconcilable ledgers to burden ourselves with.”

“It's not a matter of perception,” Nahida retorted. “Truly, I didn't give her anything. She gave me everything and what did I ever do for her?... I was her imaginary friend once. That's all. I couldn't heal her. I couldn't make her life better. I gave everything I had saving her for a little longer and it didn't make a difference in the end; she was too sick to enjoy, what?, a handful of extra weeks.”

“I know not the scenario you speak of. But it sounds like, even if you did not achieve everything you wanted, you moved stars and abyss to serve her well-being.” Zhongli dipped his head. “A god, acting in service of her most devout. Do you know how great a thing that is, in an age where gods are ever more distant? How could your love not mean the world to her?”

The wretched noise that came from Nahida's mouth seemed to take her by surprise: she blinked, dazed, as if uncertain it had been her she'd heard. Then another wail followed, and many more in short order.

Zhongli moved to sit beside the sobbing Archon. He laid a hand on her shoulder and she curled up against him.

“I'm so sorry,” she wept: to him, to Dunyarzad, to nobody in particular.

It was her right to say that if she wished, just as it was her right to feel apologetic even if she hadn't done a single thing wrong. Zhongli squeezed her shoulder.

“She's not the first,” Nahida said ruefully.

“She matters to you all the same.”

“And it will always hurt like this? Even when I'm six thousand?”

“I'm afraid so.” If there was a trick to it, he hadn't found it.

“That's awful.”

“It is. And yet, given the opportunity to invite the sorrow of parting anew, I always find it a small price to pay for the joy of companionship.”

Hu Tao opened her eyes to the vibrant green of Dendro energy.

The cavern was bathed in that shade, all coming from a big verdant bud of green light high above her. Mawtiyima in health, she supposed.

“Mawtiyima is ready to heal.”

Hu Tao turned her head to find the three Aranara standing right next to her face.

“Hi,” she said. She immediately regretted it: her throat ached.

She groped about sluggishly for a water flask. It was slow going; she was exhausted.

“Mawtiyima is tired, just like you,” said Aranakin. “Its dreams are grey and hollow. We must use our Kusava to help it dream well.”

“New life, memory nourishes,” Aranaga said.

“So this... is your fulfilment, then?” Hu Tao asked.

And Aranakin said, “Yes.”

And Aranaga said, “Our sacrifice, please witness.”

And Aragaru said, “It's okay. We will still be friends as long as we remember you.”

Hu Tao made to get up, but only managed to lift her head before her body gave out on her.

“Okay,” she said, more than a little sadly. “I'll remember you. I'll remember us, on your behalf.”

“Do not be sad, Nara Agni.”

Hu Tao smiled. “It's okay. We Nara are always sad, all of the time. I'm just lucky enough to get to notice it.”

“I do not understand.”

“That's okay. I don't fully understand the three of you either. But even if I don't understand, I can still bear witness.”

“Okay.”

The three Aranara trudged off, brave smiles on their faces.

“Thank you, Nara Hu Tao,” they called out.

“Mm,” she said—quietly, so that they wouldn't hear. “I rather like it when you say my name.”

wind that doesn't return

water that doesn't flow backwards

sweet dreams and bitter aftertastes.

Old leaves, swollen fruit;

drifted dreams, fallen flowers.

Season of rain returns

Plants rejoice

The pomegranate sings

The apples clap

Dunyarzad's bodyguard Dehya wasted no time as Zhongli emerged from the bedroom.

“Dunyarzad died, didn't she?” she asked. “I... felt it, somehow.”

“Yes. You... felt it? What did it feel like?”

“What did it feel like?” She thought over that. “It felt like... sadness. Happiness. They were... I'm not a poet, I dunno... they were the same feeling, I think. Sadness and happiness.”

“Then believe in what you felt,” said Zhongli. “Not fear, not rage, not loneliness: sadness and happiness.”

“Did she suffer?”

“In flesh but not in spirit.”

Her brow furrowed. “Come again?”

“Her body suffered,” Zhongli clarified, “moreso than most bodies do. But she, in soul and spirit, was at ease, unburdened by pain right to the moment she departed. She will not linger.”

“Was... do you think she was scared?”

“She passed away dreaming of faraway lands and bygone times,” Zhongli told her. “In her final moments she held neither fear nor regrets.”

At these words, something seemed to ease within the woman, and she let the exhaustion on her face show.

“She deserved more time,” she said, voice breaking a little. “She... she did so much, loved so much, cared about so much...”

“She was a great woman, then.”

“You have no idea.”

“My condolences,” said Zhongli. “May your grief be quelled in time.”

The woman seemed to properly notice Zhongli for the first time. Her lips pursed. “Huh, not to be rude but... who are you? I don't think I ever asked...”

“No,” said Zhongli, “I suppose you didn't.” He bowed to her. “I am Zhongli, funeral consultant. I... have lost many who mattered to me. Now I work with the bereaved.”

“A worthy calling. I'm glad the Homayanis found you... uh... hold up... you're Liyuean, right? Why would the Homayanis...?”

“It's okay, Dehya,” said Nahida, squeezing the woman's hand. She was sitting in a chair beside the bodyguard. She hadn't been here a second ago. She'd been here the entire time.

The woman calmed a little but still seemed confused. “I feel like I'm forgetting something... Shouldn't I be by Miss Dunyarzad's side?”

“You are,” Zhongli assured her. “You are holding her hand. You were holding her hand.”

“It's okay,” Nahida said again. “Just remember what Mister Zhongli said, how Miss Dunyarzad dreamt of faraway lands and bygone times. And so I want to make a request of you, Miss Dehya.”

“A request...?”

“In a minute or two, when you go to check on Dunyarzad, when you see that— that she's passed on... please, remember what you felt just now. Sadness and happiness. She was at peace. When you see Dunyarzad's face, let yourself see that peace there.”

“Okay?...” the Eremite said.

“That's right,” said Nahida. “Now, be strong for me, okay? Open your eyes.”

“Uh, miss, my eyes are already—”

The Eremite woman blinked, confused, then disappeared. In the same moment, the room began to fade away, stone by stone receding into a gentle colourless light.

As the dream unwove, Zhongli turned to Nahida, head bowed low.

“Do you want to talk more?”

“I don't know.”

“Then... if you find yourself in need of companionship in the days to come, don't hesitate to ask.”

“Okay. I... I might. I don't know yet.”

“...that's alright.”

“If you say so. Wake up, Morax.”

Zhongli opened his eyes.

He was lying on a bed in a bungalow in Sumeru City. It was the middle of the night.

Finding himself exhausted, he went to wash his face and drink some water.

Returning to bed, he fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.

The Nara who found them was cloaked in burning memories. Being near her was like being near a roaring fire. But Aragaru, Aranakin, and Aranaga were not afraid.

This Nara, the grass and trees whispered, was a daughter of Agni's flame. Fire is dangerous, but good fire is part of the cycle. Good fire takes away the dry leaves and the tangled overgrowth. As it passes, it sows the seeds of safety.

Aranaga warned her not to stay: “Not for Nara, this place.” She replied that she had been invited. Nara who could see Aranara rarely lied about things that mattered, so perhaps this was so... but Mawtiyima was still healing, and who knew what kinds of trouble a silly Nara might cause by mistake?

It was Aragaru who noticed that she was carrying their flowers, tucked into her hat alongside some plum blossoms. When she had gotten those?, they asked her. Caution was forgotten entirely: the Aranara, after all, were just as curious as anyone else in Sumeru.

Nara Agni took a seat, cross-legged, and told them a story of an adventure: the four of them, journeying through the forests of Sumeru, making Arahaoma, saving Mawtiyima together.

After that, they talked of many things. Nara Agni spoke very eloquently for a Nara, perhaps because she was old, and the Aranara had so many questions for her about strange Nara things. She told them about souls and loss, about remembering and forgetting, about life and death, and all of it was fascinating.

Eventually they asked her about “grief” and “mourning”, and she knew a lot about this too. She was a “funeral” “director”, she told them: somebody who performed important rituals after Nara returned to Sarva.

Nara believed that there was a garden called “grief” that grew in Nara's souls in the wake of a loss. If not properly cared for, the garden of grief might grow into something that hurt the Nara.

“Like Marana,” she said.

“The memory of death,” they said.

“Hmm...” Nara Agni rubbed at her chin. “I think I'd call Marana the rejection of death. Death is a part of the cycle, and Nara who try to fight the cycle cause themselves more pain. Just like Marana tries to live, live, live, but it suffers as much as the land it takes root in.”

“Then... plant flowers in the garden, Nara must?”

“Mhmm! We must allow ourselves to acknowledge what we've lost.”

The Aranara asked and the Nara who glowed with Homa's flame answered. They pondered and they learned, and even if they did not understand, the forest would remember.

“I have a question.” Aragaru raised their hand; she nodded for them to continue. “You know much about fulfilment and death, and you tend to the grief of many Nara. Do you also grieve, Nara Agni?”

She nodded without hesitation. “Yes. Of course I do. I told you before about when my grandfather died. In my grief I did silly, childish things, but the grief was important.”

“Do you keep the Marana away?”

“I do my best. That's all we can do.” She shrugged. “It can be very difficult to tell whether we are stifling grief or nurturing it.

“You know, when Rex Lapis passed away, I only grieved a little bit. But then, when I understood why he passed away, I grieved much, much more. I tried to be professio— um, to tend to the rituals the same as any other. But in some ways I was upset at him, and I'm sure that, once or twice, instead of letting myself feel that upset-ness, I acted upon it instead, often in ways that did not serve me or him.

“Let me tell you something, my Aranara friends. During the funerals— the rituals for sharing memory, I become a conduit for grief. I share the grief of the friends and family of my every client. I grieve alongside them even as I conduct the funerals. Even though my world was not upended, something was lost, something is absent, and... and I'm just a humble Nara. All absence is grief.

“If you told this to the people of Liyue Harbour, told them that I am always in mourning, they would not believe you. I do not seem like a Nara in constant grief. I talk different, I act different. But grief is not the end of the world. It's just a burden, one of the many burdens Nara carry around, and it weighs exactly as much as it does. I shan't make it out to be less than it is, nor more.”

Her answer given, she fell silent, letting the three of them think.

Aranakin raised their hand. “I have a question, too.”

“Go for it.”

“Aranara do not feel this grief you speak of. But our human friends do, so... I wonder. What would a funeral for Aranara be like?”

Nara Agni opened her mouth to say something, but then she closed it again. She took a long breath out.

Then, she took a deep breath in, and her mouth opened again. But instead of words, what came out was a giggle. The giggling became chortling, which soon became big teary-eyed peals of laughter. Nara Agni laughed and laughed, and that meant that everything was okay, so the three Aranara giggled and laughed along with her, and that is how the story goes.

Chapter Text

“You’re not packing that spirit borneol, are you? ’Cause you’re not getting the smell out of your clothes if you do.”

“Master Hu, you specifically instructed me not to throw it out.”

“That was half a week ago, doofus, when we thought you might still need it to talk to your girlfriend.”

Zhongli gaped. “Master Hu, Lesser Lord Kusanali is not—”

“She’s a girl and she’s your friend, don’t be a pedant.” Zhongli’s employer rolled her eyes. “You were gonna throw it out and I thought you were being... what’s the opposite of Mora-pinching?”

“Profligate?”

“Sure, that. Well, you don’t need it now. Leave it on the dresser. It can be a gift for the cleaners! Or go pour it on the flowers, see if any of them turn sentient. Just... please don’t put it in your trunk, Mister Zhongli. You won’t be able to get the smell out for centuries.”

Hu Tao’s own trunk was stuffed full: five identical shirts and three identical pairs of shorts, not counting the ones she was wearing. (Hu Tao was a woman who had no qualms about having a uniform.) Cushioned between these were various souvenirs, including several handbound books whose provenance Zhongli dared not inquire into, half a dozen hand-carved Aranara dolls, and enough coffee beans to send a Sumpter beast into cardiac arrest.

“And if I considered the spirit borneol a souvenir?” Zhongli asked her. “It serves as a reminder of memories made with the Dendro Archon.”

Hu Tao looked him up and down, searching for signs of frivolity to no avail.

“Aiyah. Your luggage, your funeral. If you have to fumigate it, that’s not a business expense, I’m warning you.”

Although the “market research” aspect of this trip hadn’t borne any new fruit since her return to Sumeru City, the Director had found success elsewhere. Over the past few days, she’d made a number of business connections along Treasure Street, including a foreign merchant’s association with a good number of Liyuean expats who had yet to hear a Wangsheng sales pitch. This, along with some pleasant afternoons sampling local delicacies together with Zhongli, had left Director Hu in good spirits, which pleased Zhongli greatly.

Their next destination, Hu Tao had declared, (spontaneously, late yesterday evening,) would be Port Ormos, where she would continue her research attempts for a little longer, before eventually chartering a boat ride back to Liyue Harbour. Zhongli had agreed to this plan, subject to a few stipulations about seafood, and so after a sunrise breakfast at Puspa Cafe they packed their things and headed off.

“Oh, oops, can we swing by the Bazaar on the way out of town?”

The Bazaar was in the opposite direction to where they’d started walking. “Certainly, Director Hu.”

“Great! I nearly forgot but Xiangling’s birthday is coming up. I wanna check for spices, or, I dunno, weird herbs and roots.”

‘Check’, it turned out, was something of an overstatement: Hu Tao seemed to know exactly what she wanted to buy. Minding the bags, Zhongli watched from afar as she darted between several different market stalls to pick out assorted victuals, never pausing to browse. The whole thing took her less than ten minutes.

She came running back towards Zhongli, passing several large bundles of shopping into his arms.

“Shall I carry these?” he asked.

“Onward!” she cried by way of answer.

At the exit to the Bazaar, Zhongli spotted a familiar face up ahead: Katheryne of the Adventurers Guild. She was playing with a dog, and chatting animatedly with a woman in blue silks, both of which suggested she might actually be Nahida.

Zhongli was just wondering whether to interrupt her to say his farewells when she seemed to notice his presence. Her eyes swivelled in his direction, then widened, and her expression flickered—

—and then it was just the actual Katheryne standing there, looking a little dazed. She turned back to the woman ‘she’ had been chatting to, bid her well, and walked off with precise clockwork steps.

That... certainly answered Zhongli’s question, then.

“Huh,” said Hu Tao, and turning to look, Zhongli saw the gears turning in her head. “I thought you said you’d done something to upset her.”

“I said it was a strong possibility,” said Zhongli. He’d been intentionally vague on details of his last interaction with the Dendro Archon: it didn’t seem like his story to share. “Do you disagree?”

“Her face when she saw you...” Hu Tao scrunched up her nose. “Pretty sure she wanted to say hi. It looked like she was unhappy about running off, but she made herself do it anyway. Like she was punishing herself over something.”

Zhongli recalled having done likewise in Nahida’s position. And besides...

“I trust your judgement, Master Hu,” he said.

“Mourning guilt, huh?” his employer and ward replied. It wasn’t really a question. “That sucks. She seems so... young. Well, not young, but... something like that. Poor thing.”

For about three seconds it seemed like that was all she had to say on the subject. Then:

“Guess we have no chance of getting that lucrative Archon business, huh?”

Zhongli did not roll his eyes, but the temptation was there. “Indeed, Master Hu.”

Nothing else of note happened on their way out of the city gates—the Mahamata officials didn’t spare a second glance at their fake Akasha terminals. But shortly after starting on the path south to Ormos, they ran into some rather unexpected— and familiar—faces.

“My poor little sheep, so very lost,” said a voice Zhongli knew well.

“It’s little lamb, not little sheep,” said another voice, much more higher-pitched.

“Oh, my bad... Okay, how about this?: The divine voice of wisdom often echoes between mine ears. Ask your question, little lamb.”

“Paimon thinks that sounds way better! Okay, do a reading for... our evil, evil Akasha plans!”

“Of course. Hummmm...” This syllable stretched out for a good ten seconds. “The gods... have spoken. The truth... will be revealed.”

“Traveller?” said Hu Tao. “Paimon?”

The two turned towards them with identical “o”s of surprise on their faces.

Paimon was the first to recover. “Oh! It’s Hu Tao, and Zhongli!” She waved. “What are you doing here?”

“We are on a business trip,” said Zhongli. To be safe, he added, “It is not a vacation.”

Hu Tao elbowed him in the hip. “Well now they’re thinking it,” she hissed. Then, turning back to the others: “Was that fortune telling I heard just now? How very occult of you!”

“It’s not real divination. Paimon’s teaching the Traveller how to act!”

“Oya? What for?”

“Top secret Traveller-and-Paimon business! Not telling!”

The Traveller was staring at Hu Tao curiously.

“Is something amiss, Traveller?” Zhongli asked.

“Your hat...” the Traveller said to Hu Tao. They pointed at it.

Hu Tao had been wearing three strangely coloured flowers in her hat since she’d returned from the forest. It seemed they had caught the Traveller’s eye.

“Oh, the flowers?” said Hu Tao. “Gifts from friends. Jealous?”

The Traveller shrugged. “I didn’t know that Nara collected flowers like these.”

“Ooh, tricky, tricky.” Hu Tao wagged a finger. “I’m not supposed to know what that is, am I? It’s like a secret handshake! I suppose you two must have been making some little friends, too.”

Paimon gasped. “Oh, Traveller! Is... is this the Nara Agni that Arapandu was telling us to look for?”

“I take it you two have also met some Aranara on your travels?” said Zhongli. “They’re quite companionable, I’ve found.”

“What!?” said Paimon. “Zhongli can see them too? But he’s such a grumpy old man!”

“He’s a you-know-what, Paimon,” said the Traveller.

They proceeded to explain a little about their own encounters with Aranara. The tale was fascinating in its own right: repairing an ancient climate control machine, finding a young lady trapped in stasis, battling Abyssal monsters beneath the mountains... and a big festival of Aranara to organise.

“Well, if you’re trying to gather them together...” Hu Tao popped her hat off her head, and began removing the exotic flowers. “I think I’d like to leave these in your care.”

“Whose flowers are these?” said Paimon.

“This is Aragaru’s,” said Hu Tao, placing the first flower into the Traveller’s palm. “This is Aranakin’s. And Aranaga’s, this last one is.”

“Thank you,” said the Traveller. They held the flowers up reverently.

Hu Tao added that the last she’d seen those particular Aranara was in Mawtiyima, at the heart of the forest of the same name. “Tell them I sent you, and that you’re safeguarding my memories for me while I go do Nara stuff in the Nara world. I think they’ll like you two.”

“Will do!” said Paimon.

“Oh, and one more!” said Hu Tao brightly, plucking the plum blossom from her hat and tossing it casually atop the other flowers.

“Is that... Hu Tao’s memory?”

“Hmm...” said Hu Tao. “Let’s call it Death’s memory. The real one, not that Marana nonsense.”

The Traveller nodded. “Thank you,” they said once again.

The space around the flowers folded in upon itself, condensing into a point of light which disappeared into their palm.

“Such a cool trick,” Hu Tao murmured.

“How have you been, Traveller?” asked Zhongli.

“We’re...” Paimon exchanged glances with the Traveller.

“We’ve been better. A friend of ours passed away last week.”

“My condolences,” said Hu Tao. She blinked. “Wait...” Sotto voce: “Are they, y’know... on the market?”

“Creepy.” Paimon shuddered.

“The funeral already happened before we got here,” said the Traveller.

“Paimon wishes she could have been there.”

“Me, too.”

“Nilou said it was beautiful.”

“She did.”

Hu Tao dipped her head. “My condolences. I don’t know how close you were, but it’s never easy. If you ever want to talk about it, you can always come by for tea.” She delivered this last line with the utmost seriousness.

“Once we return to Liyue, that is,” said Zhongli.

“Aiyah, pedant.”

Paimon whispered something into the Traveller’s ear.

“Oh, good point,” the Traveller said. They turned to Hu Tao. “Speaking of life and death...”

“Oya?” said Hu Tao, having somehow instantly gone from metres away to her nose almost touching the Traveller’s. “Tell me, tell me.”

“You do grief counselling, right?”

“That I do.”

“Have you ever given grief counselling to, for example...” The Traveller paused. “...a dog grieving its owner?”

“What?” said Paimon. “What does a dog have to do with anything? Karkata isn’t a dog...”

“I was building up to that,” said the Traveller with a sigh.

Hu Tao stretched her arms. “I have no idea what you two are talking about—”

“Nor I,” said Zhongli.

“—but I’m not one to turn down new business! You remember our usual prices for house calls, right?”

Yes, said the Traveller with another sigh, yes they did.

“Well, then!” Hu Tao clapped excitedly. “Looks like we’ll be earning some revenue on this trip after all! And you know what that means, Mister Zhongli?”

Zhongli pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tax deductions?” he guessed.

“Tax deductions!” Hu Tao said. She grinned delightedly. “Let’s see Yanfei argue this wasn’t a business trip now.”