Echoes of the Dihua Flute:

A Start

Only a few centuries

An Immortal's slumber

Reunion

Just a note, even though Echoes of the Dihua Flute is a 'series' of sorts, each story is an independent short story (as in each title. The chapters within each title will be connected) and you will not need to read the stories before it to make sense of what is going on. There may be some light references to other tales, but they do not hinder your understanding of the plot

"Xiao"

Venti had just finished playing a song on his lyre, the melody still fresh on Xiao's mind.

"Hmm?"

He answered, blurry from the spell the song had cast on him.

"I may be leaving for a while."

Venti felt Xiao stiffen beside him, but he didn't move.

Finally, he said, "For how long?"

Venti sighed. "I don't know. Could be a few years, could be a few hundred years"

Xiao's mind was reeling, a million thoughts flooding it at once. Why? Where? What could be so important that you'd leave me? How long did you know? What am I going to do without you? Why? Why? Why? But of course, he already knew. Immortals were… immortal. Sometimes they just needed to step away from the world, leave everything they knew behind. There wasn't really a reason why, they just did.

He sat up to face the bard.

"When?"

"Tomorrow"

So soon.

"Visit me when you come back"

"Of course"

Xiao moved closer to the Archon, so that they were touching from shoulder to hip all the way down to their feet. He felt Venti wrap a wing around him, and he buried his face in the feathers.

So soft.

…

The next morning he was gone. His outline was still imprinted on the grass where they fell asleep last night, leaving a ghost to keep Xiao company.

For the next hour or so, he just sat there, his eyes closed. He imagined a bright green hat, a cecilia stock tickling him in the face, a warm hand on his leg, a wing behind his back, a small body beside him. He opened his eyes, and they were all gone.

Yes. Venti was gone

…

That night when he proceeded to slay daemons, he wondered at the quiet.

There were no teasing remarks about how slow he was.

No compliments about his fighting grace.

No annoying Sprite fluttering around his head.

Not even a giggling wind, on those ngiths when Venti was in Mondstadt.

…

That night when he went to sleep, he wondered at the cold.

There was no familiar warmth pressed up against him.

No fidgety bard moving around.

Only his own breaths disturbing the silence of night.

…

For days, there was no one with whom to bicker over a plate of almond tofu.

He hadn't seen wine in almost a month.

There was no one pestering him with stupid requests (author's note: I know this is supposed to be angst, but these 'requests' include: letting him (venti) braid his hair, ddressing him up in a maid's outfit, making him wear cat ears (and tail) etc.)

There was no one who watched the lantern rite with him. He released a lantern on his own.

No one to surprise him with "Happy Birthday!", except a letter wishing him well, in an envelope sealed with cor lapis.

…

He couldn't say that he wasn't at all angry. He was a little.

He was angry at Venti, for leaving. But also for awakening in him all those things he had forgotten, all those emotions he had shunned, because he did not know them himself. The sorrows and joys of actual living, the pleasantry of having someone to talk to, his body's yearning for hysical contact, his heart's yearning for its love.

He was also angry at himself. For letting Venti guide him through all these pestering emotions.

…

It was also only after Venti left, that he started to feel the karmic debt.

It was a natural for any Yaksha, and many of his brothers had already been carrying heavy karmic debt around with them for hundreds of years. Many, too, had already fallen from its detrimental effects. It wasn't that it was nonexistent before venti's departure, yet though he could sometimes catch a tail or feel a shadow of it, it was only after the absence of his companion that it truly started to pain him as it pained the other Yakshas.

When Rex Lapis sensed his burden one time when he was visiting, he frowned and said "I will make you some painkillers. They have aided your fellow Yaksha in shouldering their burdens, but it cannot completely erase the effects of karmic debt"

"Thank you, but I don't need them" he said.

Then two months later, when his Lord visited him again, he left some behind 'by accident', and Xiao was grateful.

…

As all adepti will tell you, time flies.

A thousand years is only the blink of an eye to an immortal.

Xiao himself agrees. Agreed.

The 400 years he labored under that excuse of a god was short.

The 800 years before he met Venti were short.

The 500 years he did know him were short.

Yet the 3 years he was absent seemed like an eternity.

…

Xiao wanted to say, to believe, that a few hundred years was nothing. He could wait.

He wanted to say, to believe, that time would fly and that he would be back together with Venti in no time.

But the dark ocean that was his karmic debt told him otherwise. It told him that it was waiting, that it was growing, that soon it would swallow him in its swirling torrents, and that it would crush him, until all he could think will be vengeance.

And then he would have no choice but to end himself, before that happened, before he could unleash his power on the people of Liyue, the people he fought so long to protect.

Hi, this is just me with some extra rambling because I almost reached a 1000 word word count, and I really need to get there otherwise this would seem like a short story. (which it is, but whatever)

Also, if you don't know what a Sprite is, it's the wisp of wind that is Barbatos's original form. I don't know if this is the official term used by Mihoyo, or just author puffles 44's term for it (which is where I read the term)