In a secluded, shady corner of Liyue Harbor, Zhongli relaxed on a bench and studied the inscrutable artifact floating between his outstretched hands. The Memory of Dust, a gift from a dear, departed friend, and one he'd had in his possession for thousands of years. It was an enigma, a puzzle she had challenged him to solve. At the moment of her death, before she collapsed into the very dust over which she had once held dominion, she retracted that challenge – but even so, Zhongli could not help returning to it from time to time, especially when gripped by nostalgia for days past.
Not that he was having any kind of luck with it. The contraption was infuriatingly complicated. So focused was he on the device that he failed to notice the figure descend from the sky above him until she was nearly on top of him.
He lifted his eyes to see the elegantly dressed form of the Traveler, her glider's wings vanishing as she touched down. She did not acknowledge him or show any sign of having noticed him as she stretched and yawned before him. Her presence here was a coincidence, he deduced.
The floating figure beside her was the first to spy the former Archon. "Oh, hey, it's Zhongli!" Paimon chirped. "How's it going, old man?" Lumine turned at that, spied Zhongli, and smiled warmly, lifting a hand in greeting.
"Paimon. Traveler," Zhongli acknowledged with a nod.
"Oh, wow, what's that thingy?" Paimon asked, eyes wide. Lumine looked curious, as well.
They had noticed the Memory of Dust. No harm in it; while not an object one would expect to be in the possession of Zhongli, humble consultant employed by Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, these two were among the few who knew his true identity as Rex Lapis, former Archon. No, he chided himself. That was no longer his "true identity". He truly was Zhongli, humble consultant, now, and would remain so for the rest of his days.
He decided to answer their query. "This is a gift I received from a friend long ago," he explained. "It's a puzzle box, of sorts. I was trying to open it when you arrived."
"Neat," Lumine said. "Mind if I give it a try?" Wordlessly, he handed it over. She took a seat beside him and started turning the contraption over and over in her hands while Paimon watched with interest.
Zhongli relaxed in companionable silence, enjoying the sea-scented breeze that managed to find its way even into this sheltered back alley, and studying the striking blue sky above. His employer required he take breaks every day, and while he'd originally protested that he did not require them, she'd insisted that they were necessary for employee morale. On pleasant days like this one, he had to admit that the policy had some merit.
Click. "There, done," Lumine said, with clear satisfaction in her voice.
Eh?
Zhongli turned to look at his companion, and saw the Memory of Dust in her lap, the stone tiles carefully separated and the puzzle open. He blinked twice, disbelieving his eyes. Nope, still open.
Paimon was applauding, clearly impressed. "That was fun," the Traveler said. "I really like the bit where you had to apply a bit of Geo power to the four secondary tiles to flip them around. Very creative!"
She'd solved it? It can't have been more than twenty minutes, and she'd solved an enigma he'd studied for two thousand years? "That's our Lumine," Paimon crowed, "There's no puzzle she can't solve! Oh, hey, that's pretty! Is it supposed to glow like that?"
That was enough to jolt Zhongli out of his surprise. The Memory of Dust was an artifact built by Guizhong herself. He'd never thought the Traveler actually capable of opening it, but now that she had... "Lumine, give it back to me, now," he commanded urgently.
Lumine turned a surprised glance at him, but before she could make any further movement, the artifact erupted with a pale, yellow light which suffused Lumine's entire body. The young woman tensed visibly, every muscle of her body freezing in place.
Not waiting any longer, Zhongli grabbed the Memory of Dust from her hands and pulled it away, Lumine's light grip providing no resistance. It was clearly too late, however; the glow remained around Lumine, and nothing remained within the hollow shell of the puzzle.
A moment later, the glow faded, and the tenseness disappeared from Lumine's body. "Are you all right?" Paimon asked in concern.
Lumine glanced around a moment before her eyes came to rest on Zhongli – at which point she stared at him with an intensity that caused Zhongli to pause in surprise. That surprise was a pale shadow of the surprise that followed.
"EH?" Paimon squeaked, uncharacteristically lost for words.
As for Zhongli, he was trying to process what had just happened. Lumine's lips were pressed against his and her tongue was probing his own tightly drawn mouth. He knew what this was, he was sure, though his frazzled brain was having difficulty making the connection. What was it, again? Something the mortals did. A kiss. That was what it was. Lumine was kissing him. Which made absolutely no sense from what little he knew about kissing.
Now her arms were around his neck, and her soft body was pressed against his. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation by any means, and she had an agreeable, flowery scent. It was coming from the flowers in her hair, he realized. Strange, that. They were oddly familiar, though he could not place where he'd seen similar blooms, and he'd assumed them to be imitation by their stiff appearance. The smell indicated otherwise, too authentic to be a perfume, and somehow still fresh in spite of the many months he'd seen the flowers adorning their owner's hair. Most peculiar.
Zhongli barely noticed the Memory of Dust tumbling from his limp hands to clatter to the cobblestone ground. He wasn't really sure what he was supposed to be doing with his arms, right now. Reality had turned sideways and he was at a loss for what to do about anything, really.
Then, Lumine froze and her lips stopped massaging Zhongli's. She slowly climbed off of the man, stood up, and backed away, fixing him with a wide-eyed stare. Zhongli stared at her in return. Paimon stared at both of them.
Someone had to break the silence, and naturally that someone turned out to be Paimon. "Will someone please tell Paimon what THAT was all about?" she demanded.
"Zhongli," Lumine asked, touching her lips with her fingers, "what was in that box?"
"Wisdom," Zhongli responded, an uncharacteristic tenseness in his voice, "That was what she told me."
"'She'," Lumine replied, as though tasting the word carefully. "Zhongli, there was a lot more than wisdom in that box. Whoever it was, she had some… intense feelings for you. Very intense."
Zhongli tried to identify the expression the Traveler was directing his way. She was a bit spooked, certainly. But if he had to describe it, he'd call it… hungry? It nearly distracted him from the words she'd spoken. "Intense?" Zhongli thought back to his precious friend, the one who'd been his other half – his better half – throughout much of the Archon War. He had many words to describe her. Brilliant. Vibrant. Soothing. Placid. But intense? "Guizhong was not one whom I'd describe as intense."
"Maybe she's the sort of person who keeps her emotions bottled up?" Paimon supplied helpfully. Then, "Wait! Guizhong? The goddess from Guili Plains? The one who made that ballista thingy?"
"That is correct," Zhongli nodded.
"Waaaaitaminute… Guizhong? Zhongli? Guili! Were you two… an item?" Paimon asked slyly.
"I'm… not sure what you mean?" Zhongli faltered. "She was a valued companion. The two of us were trusted partners."
"'Trusted partners.' Oof. That poor, poor woman," Paimon commiserated while Lumine shook her head sadly. Zhongli wasn't entirely sure what they were implying, but had the definite impression that some kind of fun was being made at his expense.
"At any rate," Lumine said, eventually, "all this was clearly meant for you, not me. She wanted you to be the one to receive her feelings. And all this other stuff, too."
"Other stuff?" Paimon asked, curiously. Zhongli was interested, as well.
"It's… difficult to describe, exactly," Lumine said slowly. "There weren't any actual words or thoughts in that box. Just feelings, urges, emotions. I'm… seeing the world in new ways. Like… I can reach out and grab it. Change it. Make it better. I'm noticing little details all the time."
"That does sound more like the Guizhong I knew," Zhongli nodded. "She was always curious, never satisfied with the things I took for granted. She always wanted to know why things were the way that they were."
"I think I can undo this," Lumine said. "Give me the box, please."
Zhongli nodded, and then scanned the ground for the artifact. What he saw caused him to freeze. "Uh, oh," Paimon said. "I think we have a problem."
Where the Memory of Dust had been was now a pile of… well, dust. The device hadn't broken; Zhongli was certain of it. It was typical of Guizhong's engineering: sturdy enough to last for another two thousand years, at the very least. If it was dust now, it was dust by design. It had served its purpose, and then destroyed itself.
"But not an insurmountable one," Lumine said firmly.
"It's… not?" Paimon asked, clearly a bit incredulous. "It's nothing but a pile of dust, now! That looks awfully insurmountable to Paimon!"
"Zhongli, please gather it up," Lumine commanded. "Try not to lose any of it, if you can."
Her tone… Her posture. It brought back memories of Guizhong and the seemingly pointless and inane tasks she occasionally asked of him, long ago. Protect these flowers. Move this boulder over here. Raise this pillar. It was rare that he was able to see whatever it was Guizhong was seeing – at least until after the fact, when her projects came to fruition and all became clear enough even for him to understand. In time, he'd learned it was better simply to humor her requests – and now, he obediently did so for Lumine, as well. At Zhongli's urging, the cobblestones underneath the dust curved and warped, reshaping and wrapping around the remains of the artifact until they formed a sturdy, if rather heavy container.
Lumine collected the stone vessel, checked its contents, and nodded with satisfaction. Zhongli took note of the divot left behind in the cobblestone walkway, and made a mental note to repair the damage later.
"What do you plan to do?" Zhongli asked, curious.
"I don't know enough about the original to make a copy," Lumine responded somewhat distractedly, as though deep in thought. "And the original is completely destroyed. I'll need to adjust its location in timespace to restore it to its original condition, prior to its disintegration but after it deployed its payload. Normally, that would be very difficult, but with Paimon's help I think I can manage."
"Huh? Paimon's help?" Paimon asked, confused.
"After that," Lumine powered on, "I'll need to halt whatever mechanism resulted in its disintegration in the first place. I think that the physical state of the puzzle was disrupted by a low-frequency Geo resonance precisely keyed to intersect with the crystal lattice composing each component. Either that resonance will need to be disabled, or a matching counter-resonance will need to be introduced to interfere. That will be difficult; I'll need to isolate the artifact's chronological frame to prevent its disintegration, but doing so will make it impossible to interact with directly. Even so, I think that solution has more promise than continuous reconstitution."
Zhongli's eyes began to glaze over. Yes, there it was. The reason why he eventually just stopped asking Guizhong for explanations.
"That'll be tricky. But the trickiest bit will be separating the parts that are Guizhong from the parts that are… well, me. And putting them back where they belong."
"Why even bother?" Paimon asked. "It sounds like you're some kind of amazing super-genius, now! Isn't that a good thing?"
Lumine shook her head. "No, no it's not. It's very… distracting. Everywhere I look, now, I want to… tinker with it. Like…" Lumine pointed at a rooftop, "…that weathervane. I know that I could improve its efficiency by at least twenty-seven percent, and I'm itching to draw up a few diagrams. That storm drain over there, it'd work so much better if it was six feet to the left, and I'd be happy to explain why. I'm even thinking about that journal Klee's mom wrote. She had a lot of brilliant, terrible ideas, and I'd love to sit down and think about how to remove the terrible. But I don't have time for any of that!"
"On top of that I feel… an overpowering sense of regret. This… it wasn't meant for me. Zhongli should have had it. He's the one it was meant for. And…" Lumine snuck a peek at Zhongli, blushed bright red, and then hurriedly looked away. Zhongli realized, then, that Lumine hadn't looked directly at him since she'd asked him to collect the dust. "…there's other distractions, as well."
"Is there any way I can be of assistance?" Zhongli offered.
Lumine shook her head, rapidly. "No, no, I think it's for the best that you just keep your distance, for now. I'll be in touch."
"If you are certain," he replied. He felt… disappointed, he realized with sudden surprise. It had been so long, so very long since he'd cooperated with one of Guizhong's projects, and he suddenly realized that he ached for that feeling again.
"See you later, old man!" Paimon chirped. She and Lumine began to walk away, but not before the Traveler gave him one last, lingering glance – causing her to stumble and nearly fall flat on her face when she tripped over the divot in the walkway Zhongli had made. He was definitely going to have to fix that.
For his part… well, his break was over. More than over, really; he was likely going to get scolded by the Director once he returned to the funeral parlor. From behind him, voice fading away, he could hear Lumine chatting animatedly with Paimon, something about the little fairy speeding up time, or slowing down Lumine, or something along those lines.
Author's Notes:
This is a story that I've actually had in development for more than a year, but it languished for quite a while due to writer's block. The story is now completed (bar, perhaps, some last-minute editing), and I plan to release it a chapter at a time.
A couple of conceits readers should be aware of: While the game makes it pretty clear that the Traveler and the Traveler's Sibling are exceptional, possibly godlike beings, the Traveler doesn't really advertise that fact to the people of Teyvat. The most those encountered know is that the Traveler is otherworldly, and few even know that. So, in my story, basically everyone, including Zhongli, believes that Lumine is essentially human, albeit an exceptionally gifted one.
As for Zhongli himself, the game is unclear as to just who knows how much about his current retirement. For the purposes of this story, I've decided that while the Adepti and the Qixing know that Rex Lapis isn't actually dead, none of them know that Zhongli is the form that he's taken, now.
Fun fact: I'd originally intended to, along the way, explain the origins of the flowers in Lumine's hair. Then, Patch 2.6 went and did it for me! It didn't take a lot of tweaking to adjust to the new canon. I'm also a bit puzzled in regards to the in-game explanation. I mean, for Aether-as-Traveler, it makes sense: Lumine could have acquired the flowers at any time, and keeps them as a memorial to what was lost. For Lumine-as-Traveler though, Aether apparently put them in her hair before the two of them confronted the Unknown God. Celestia was coming down on Khaenri'ah like a ton of bricks, and he's willing to take the extra time to do that?