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tinylethologica · 2 years

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a heart of stone, split by dust

Part I | Part II | Part III notes: starting a series of guili drabble for zhongli’s birthday and guili week. all aboard the pain train. words: 1300

After the goddess of dust was taken by the wind,

the last Glaze Lily in Guili Plains

withered away

to dust.

𒆙

Their memories begin in the bloom of glaze lilies. Acres and acres of them, swaying to an unknown melody, and her, in the centre of their universe. (And later, he would come to learn, the centre of his.)

My name, she greets, is Gusion. I am the Lord of Dust.

At that time, while he was still young, he did not know much of the arts. But there is one he did. One that he keeps sacred: the art of reciprocation. Give and take.

So he offers her his in return. Morax, he rumbles. The syllables are gravel scraping earth. Lord of Rock.

Ah. From the corner of her lips, a smile unfurls, the slow bloom of a glaze lily. So the Warrior God does know how to speak.

Her quip is a surprise, but Morax remains expressionless. Stone does not move easily. For what purpose do you come, Lord of Dust?

I have, she says, eyes gleaming with mischief, a proposal for you.

It is this exchange that begins it all. This exchange builds the foundation for their oath. And from this foundation, their history roots and sprouts, spanning two millennia.

Two millennia, as their relationship follow the rise and fall of the glaze lilies.

(It is also an exchange that destroys it.

This is the mark of our pledge, and it is also my challenge to you.

All my wisdom is hidden within this stone dumbbell.

If you can unlock it—

Their history ends with Morax holding nothing.

It ends with the earth pulled from under him.

It ends as everything around him, in him, crumbles, crumbles, crumbles—

To dust.

It ends in dust.)

𒆙

In time, their people begin melding into one. Fertile soil and families are settled, connected by pathways that stretch for miles and miles. It is then that she puts on the mantle of Guizhong.

Why? he asks. We are gods.

I wish to walk amongst the mortals. I wish to become closer to our people, she answers. Will you accompany me, dear Morax?

Morax is a silent god; he is a god that watches. The gods fight for their people, but they do not touch them. Morax provides safety and sets down laws. Rex Lapis accepts their worship and their title. But he does not walk amongst them. With a stony face, he opens his mouth to refuse—

Only to see her smile. Then, without rhyme or reason, he freezes. Morax becomes a soldier in battle, struck down with her sword. A sword, forged from her smile. The words do not come. His mouth refuses his refusal.

It is only right, his mind reasons. If she walks as rex incognito, then he must too. So Morax, Lord of Rock, capitulates to the Lord of Dust. Allows her to bestow upon him a mortal name, known only to her.

Zhongli, she whispers. I will be Guizhong, and you will be Zhongli. Our people will be known as the Guili Assembly. Our home the Guili plains.

Guili? He tests the words on his tongue and finds it pleasing. Return and departure.

My people had left their home and came to this place. She spreads open her arms, sleeves billowing from the breeze. For a second, in the blinding sun, she resembles the glaze lilies she so dearly loves, and Morax finds that he cannot look away. Here, they are happy in their abodes and content in their work, thus it is as if they have returned home. Hence, what better name to call this place than 'the Plains of the Returning and Departing?’

She has always been far cleverer than he. Sweeping across the plains with half-lidded eyes, Zhongli murmurs his agreement with a slow nod. Guili plains, indeed.

And that is how it is done. How it is sealed.

𒆙

There is no set agreement between them. In their partnership, contrary to his nature, there are no stipulations. No regulations. No punishment. There is no formal contract at all.

But in their Assembly, he keeps one just the same; Zhongli swears a silent oath and holds it close to his heart. It is in his nature.

She is what he is not. However, in the prayers of mortals, they are invoked as one.

Guili is Guizhong to Zhongli. Zhongli to Guizhong. He is the silence after her song. The stone before her dust.

In the Guili Assembly, he is both prelude and coda to her name. Without her, Guili rings hollow.

(After Guizhong, Zhongli disappears. There is only Morax. Morax, who brings down the fury of crumbling mountains, the spite of a thousand stone spears, and still it is not enough. He will not be appeased. Not until their people—now his and just his—are safe once more.)

𒆙

I do not see the fascination. The mortals’ emotions are too turbulent, he says. He bears a mortal name, but inside, he is still Morax. How are you so familiar with them?

It is the nature of dust. She leans her head on his shoulder. He allows it. We flow with the wind, with the current, with time itself. That is why I resonate with their joy and sorrow, their blessing and plight. You, my dear Lord of Geo, are just too stubborn to understand. Like the stones you control, you are too unfeeling. But worry not—I will teach you.

It seems a useless endeavour to me, he replies. But still, because it is Guizhong, he listens.

He learns.

𒆙

After the flood, Morax sees wilted Glaze Lilies and wishes he could remain ignorant. Wishes he could unlearn her teachings. Wishes he could still not understand.

But Guizhong, who has scattered to the wind, leaves only cruelty behind. In her final smile, she has left his heart one last lesson: this is what it means to love.

It is terribly cruel, this understanding.

Morax wears her cruelty as armour. He wraps himself in it, billowing sleeves of vengeance, and marches to battle. When the heavens move, everything follows. Blood trails his path in his fury, and the glaze lilies no longer bloom; in the end, Morax walks the earth, lonely and alone.

Morax is what Gusion is not. Silence to song. Stone to dust.

In all the vastness of this universe, where he is alive, she is not.

𒆙

It seems that our journey together has come to an end. As for that stone dumbbell, forget about it, would you?

It is only millennia later that Morax becomes Zhongli once more. Millennia later that he could even bear to don the name. Geo does not forget easily, least of so pain. Remembering is both blessing and curse.

People say that the wisdom of dust can soften a heart of stone, even if it takes a thousand years. There is some truth to it, he ponders.

But a thousand years, two thousand years, and Zhongli’s heart did not only soften, but has also cracked. In her death, as he watched her dissolve, it was split wide open by her dust.

In this way, Guizhong has unlocked Zhongli’s heart. But Zhongli has never been able to unlock Guizhong’s. Four thousand years, and he has not even softened it. She has always been far cleverer than he.

He looks down at the stone dumbbell. Its yellow glow pulses in his palm, as if in reminiscence of a heart that no longer beats. Memory of Dust. He did not obey her words; he did not forget.

“All these memories…” he whispers. “But where are those who share them?”

To dust, his heart of stone sings. To dust, to dust.

Part II comments are very appreciated; my askbox is gathering dust. hehe...get it? *begins sobbing*

#guili #zhongli #guizhong #genshin impact #guiligardenweek #guili pain #all i know is suffering #all i know is pain #not on ao3 #lethe writes

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tinylethologica · 2 years

Text

a whisper of dust, lost in the breeze

Part I | Part II | Part III

prompt: first (touch) notes: here comes guili p(l)ains, part II. not sure if I should put this on ao3, so we’ll see. words: ~2.2k

...At that time, Rex Lapis would listen to the Lord of Dust speak with a childlike happiness and slowly begin to understand the frustrations and delights of the mortal world. Gradually he became aware of a limitless power hidden within humor and tolerance that was lighter than dust.

— Customs of Liyue, Vol. 4

𒆙

“I do not understand why you favour this form so,” Morax—now Zhongli—grumbles. He flexes his talons, and joints grind as stone-turned flesh learns movement. No scale, no fur, no feather. Its skin lacks any protection from the elements. “It is too vulnerable. How could you stand it? That you take on this form during battle is even more puzzling.”

Softness is not that Zhongli is familiar with. When he had agreed to Guizhong’s request to walk amongst the mortals, he knew he would need to wear the form of one. However, saying and doing were two entirely different matters.

For one, there are no claws. Zhongli’s brows furrow as he stares at flesh-coloured nails. He feels oddly naked, even with the robes that he has been provided. Humans are indeed too weak, he decides. Perhaps he could persuade Guizhong to don another form rather than this delicate flesh. It would be safer that way.

“You look a fish out of water, my dear Lord of Geo,” Guizhong comments, a fond smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

He huffs at the mention of the aquatic creatures. Morax finds the ocean currents an annoyance upon his rocks, with its waters always eroding at his edges. But Guizhong never means to displease, so he begrudgingly allows it. As he allows her endearment. (He will not admit this aloud, but he does not dislike her affection.)

“Which part of me must I change then?” he questions, glancing down at his newest body. There do not seem to be anything out of place, but Guizhong’s eyes are sharper than his for these mundane details. “I must look human, as you do; I have no wish to appear as a fish.”

“There’s nothing wrong with how you look.” She suppresses a laugh at his irritated words. “Have no fear—a fish, you are not.”

“Then why speak such foolish words?” he demands, and pealing laughter shakes free from her mouth, the chimes of bells. It could shatter granite. It has.

“It’s an idiom about the expression of a person in an unfamiliar situation. A fish splashing on land. A bird rooted in soil. Even,” she says, eyes brimming with sly humour, “a dragon in human flesh. The mortals are quite fond of these little phrases.”

“Then the mortals are strange,” he says absentmindedly, still inspecting himself to confirm there are no scales visible. Especially not fish scales. Guizhong has always enjoyed making mischief, and he finds her assurances only slightly comforting. “Why use such a comparison? Its logic does not follow. The only time it is suitable is for a fish out of water, for only fish resemble fish.”

“Perhaps you should try it before passing judgment.”

“Perhaps,” he says, skeptical.

She pauses at his words, eyes half-lidded and deep in thought.

Silence reigns between them, but Zhongli is nothing if not patient. He waits, amber eyes never leaving her face.

When her mind has caught up to her body, her pupils begin glowing in excitement. Guizhong steeples her hands together and says, “I have a challenge for you.”

“Oh. Another one?” He quirks an eyebrow—and finds himself surprised at the action. Human bodies are quite expressive, it seems. “I have not even completed the first.” The Kongming lock she has gifted him still lies in his abode in the mountains, waiting to be twisted apart. A children’s toy, but it has eluded him completely and thoroughly.

“I warrant it will be a long time before you succeed.” Something flashes over her face, the flit of a butterfly wing as her lashes lower, petal on skin—

But.

Zhongli blinks and it is gone. As fleeting as a dream. He does not know whether he should ask…only that he dislikes it.

“I will solve it before long,” he says, and she is silent. As still as stone. He tries again, “But I will accept this one as well. Tell me what it entails.”

(She leaves him an impossible challenge, he will come to realize.

Zhongli does not know this yet, but he will. And when he does, the dust will have been already long scattered.

Four thousand years, and still he has not unlocked it. Still there is no answer.

Memory. Engraved in stone, there is only memory.)

She finally smiles again, that face sculpted from granite gone. Something deep inside him crumbles with relief.

“To Rex Lapis, Lord of Geo,” she lists, and he shakes his head, knowing where this leads, “the Warrior God and the Prime of the Adepti, God of Commerce and Wealth and Contracts, Groundbreaker, Earthshaker, Oathkeeper—”

“All of them? Truly?” He releases a long-suffering sigh. Even Geo has its limit, and his titles are more than plentiful—even more so, at the rate she’s coming up with them. “I applaud your creativity, Gusion, Guizhong, Lord of Dust, Ruler of the Realm of Clouds. Some of them are unknown even to me.”

She chuckles, clearly finding amusement in his suffering. But she finishes with a riddle: “To Morax and Zhongli both, I offer you this: If not a fish out of water, then what shall it be?”

He pauses, frowning. Pores over as if it were an ore vein, analyzing the best trajectory to land a strike. “I do not understand.”

“I would have the dragon give me a human answer,” she says simply.

Ah. He places a hand on his chin and closes his eyes. Guizhong has always been an enthusiast for equivocation, the God of Contract’s chagrin. Not so much at her unravelling his careful contracts, but dismay that he does not even mind. Finds it fascinating, even.

(Contracts are words at play, she tells him; in this way, as they spar using sentences instead of weapons, wielding syllables and characters, she instills a love of words in him. The love of storytelling, the opera, the arts. All of it, she teaches him.

When she dies, it is her last words that stay. Dear Zhongli. Beloved Morax. It seems that our journey together has come to an end.

Guizhong dissipates, and before she does, she tears him asunder. Carves a bloody crack along his heart of stone. Leads him right back to where he started: alone.

In his memories, she laughs; in his memories, she smiles before dying.)

The answer comes to him in snippets. Geo sees and Geo remembers, but how does one remember something that has never come? The Lord of Geo lets his mind spirit his body away into nonexistent memories.

“It is the misty sea breeze on soaring mountaintops,” he says, slowly opening his eyes.

“A fish splashing on land,” she agrees.

“It is celestial heaven come to mortal earth.”

“A bird rooted in soil.” Her eyes curve as she nods with a smile. She is pleased.

Emboldened, Zhongli continues, “It is stone-engulfed waters. It is dust-blown winds—”

“Ah,” she says. Another fleeting grimace, but before he has time to process it, she’s reaching up to muss his fur—hair, the humans call it. He jerks at her sudden touch, finding her touch foreign on his new form. Mortal bodies are sensitive too. “How beautiful your words are, my clever Zhongli. We shall make a poet of you yet.”

“But you did not let me finish,” he says. If he were still a dragon, he would make his displeasure known with a gentle flick of his tail on her head. Now, he makes do by bumping his forehead against hers. There had been something important he left unsaid—but the image is lost to him now. Scattered like dust to the wind. “And you are cleverer than me by far, Guizhong.”

She hums noncommittally. Neither agrees nor disagrees. “Do you understand a human’s perchance for such sayings now?”

He ponders the question, slow and careful—as he is with everything she gives him. And then he shakes his head. It seems a waste of time to him. Why use more words than needed? Why say anything but ‘yes’ or ‘no’, if only one syllable will do?

“You will come to understand its charms, dear Zhongli,” she says. “The same way you will come to see the mortals as endearing. One day, you will look upon them and your heart of Geo will resonate.”

“I do not think it possible,” he refutes. Zhongli trusts Guizhong’s predictions—she has never been wrong so far—but such a proposal is unfathomable to him. Feelings do not come easily; a heart of stone is so rarely moved. “I cannot even begin to understand their bodies, let alone their minds.”

Always so chaotic, the mortals were, living their frantic lives of blurred, messy emotions. For all his years as their protector, he still knows nothing. As if she read his mind, Guizhong smiles in response. Another gleam shines in her eyes. He is well-acquainted with that look. “What is it?” he asks, voice wary.

“If you are looking to understand them, let us begin with the most basic concept,” she says. “Hold out one of your hands.”

“Why?”

“Do you trust me?” she asks.

Yes. Zhongli does as she bids, palm facing the sky in surrender. Guizhong smiles, pleased with him, and he feels the same. If it is to her, he finds, he does not mind surrender. She never seeks to harm—merely teach.

“The mortals tell me that when humans are born, their most sensitive sense is this,” she murmurs. “The most important. I wonder if it is the same for you.”

Something on his neck prickles. Fear? Anticipation?

When she places her hand in his, delicate nails tracing palm lines, dipping into flesh—

He almost jerks his hand back, shaken.

But her fingers latch onto his and refuse to let go. Zhongli—Morax—stares at her, wide-eyed. It is closer, without the layers and layers of dragon scales that usually separates her touch from him, and he feels, he feels—

No words. No sound. Just contact. She is… Soft. Warm. Fragile. A fragment of dust in the universe, spinning, twirling, drifting until it lands into his palm. Into his keeping.

The thud of her heartbeat in the network of arteries beneath her flesh. The gentle press of her nails curved against the skin of his wrist. The heel of her hand nestled in his palm, as his fingers too circle around her thin wrist. Through this, Zhongli becomes aware of how small she is. Like dust.

“Do you see why this sense is so important?” she asks. The silence dissipates from her quiet words. She stares up at him, pupils glowing, and does not let go.

All of him concentrates and condenses into the centre of where they make contact, skin to skin. It tingles. In this naked body, devoid of armour, he thinks she has struck a mineral deposit, hidden inside him. Stone and dust intermingled. Wisdom in the palm of his hand. Strength in hers.

Finally, Morax, Lord of Geo, thinks he understands. Knows why she chooses this mortal form. Why she walks amongst them. He silently nods, throat muted by a foreign lump lodged deep within.

It is heavy.

It is stone.

It may be his heart.

Guizhong lets go of him, and his universe goes with her. Without her touch, Zhongli feels bereft—as though he were mourning a loss. Through this, Morax learns why humans wear clothes. It is cold, the absence of touch. It is unbearable.

“You will learn this too,” she says softly, and her hand presses to his chest. Under her fingertips, something stops beating. And Morax thinks it’s lucky that he is a god, because it restarts only with her voice. “Joy. Sorrow. Rage. Remorse. Hate. Love. Human emotions are not so hard.”

Morax listens. Morax always listens. Each speck of syllable scatters. He waits, patient as bedrock, as it settles over rock. Even through cloth, he feels her power—he falls like dust to the earth.

“I wonder,” he says. His voice is rough, the harsh surfaces of noctilucous jade scraped against each other before being polished. It is not the rumble of his dragon form. But his whole being vibrates, all the same.

“You will find it easier with time,” she promises. “Time is a solution for all.”

(This is the only time Guizhong lies to Zhongli. The only lesson he has yet to fully learn.

Four thousand years, and still the Kongming lock remains just that—locked.

Distant memories transform into endless new configurations. Sometimes, he sees her dancing in the glaze lily fields. Other times, he sees dust clouds choking the heavens. But mostly, he sees nothing at all. For all the wisdom Guizhong possesses, she lacked the foresight to see this: without her wisdom, he cannot unlock it.

The puzzle lies in his hand, seeming as small as dust. As fragile.

And there it lingers, unsolved.)

#guili #zhongli #guizhong #genshin impact #guiligardenweek #guili pain #all i know is suffering #all i know is pain #not on ao3 #lethe writes

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