Experimental Genshin Oneshots

Recovery Part 3 (Aelou)

Side: Nilou

Writing multi part stories sure is hard work. How do people do it?

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There are a lot of bad things to wake up to. Mainly nightmares and headaches, but an endless darkness could be one of them.

Consciousness returned to Nilou like a distant echo, pulling her out from the depths of a suffocating void. For a moment, all she could perceive was darkness, an overwhelming emptiness that seemed to stretch infinitely. She slowly got up on her feet, her movements tentative as she tried to make sense of her surroundings.

Where was she? How had she ended up in this abyss of nothingness? It only took a moment for it to come back to her. However, almost as if it was waiting for her to remember, the stabbing pain she was all too familiar with came back to her.

The pain was not physical, though her headache persisted, it was a deep ache in her chest, a heaviness that threatened to drag her down. She remembered the dreams, the visions that had been thrust upon her. The weight of countless lives, their hopes and fears, their dreams and nightmares—it was as if she had been submerged in their stories, forced to experience their every emotion.

And then, a glimmer of light. A single point of radiance that shattered the darkness. Nilou's eyes widened as the light expanded, enveloping her in its warm embrace.

"Nilou...!"

It was all too familiar as to who the source of that voice was. 

"Aether?" She took a step forward as she called out to the light, as it grew stronger and brighter the closer she got. Suddenly, she was blinded by it, and when she opened her eyes, she was met with a change in scenery.

It was the all too familiar Sumeru City. Only, it wasn't the one she always knew. This one was empty, devoid of any activity. Not a single person in sight. The streets were instead populated by projections. All of which were showing all of her memories.

Everywhere she looked, scenes from her life played before her. Childhood memories, her first performance, the many people she interacted with in Sumeru. 

However, the farther she explored, the more her memories began to undergo a theme.

In which all of her happiest moments was with him. Aether.

She hadn't known him for long, yet every second that she spent with him were some of her most treasured memories. He was fun to talk to, he always puts others before himself, and he always listened to her talking, whether it was small talk, or if she needed to get something out of her chest.

Somehow, Aether had become an irreplaceable part in her life.

As she wandered through the city, the memories continued to unfold around her. Laughter and smiles, shared moments of understanding and camaraderie—they all seemed to center around Aether. She watched herself talking animatedly with him, their conversations flowing effortlessly as if they had known each other for a lifetime. 

However, watching all of these memories caused a new emotion to creep into her mind. A sense of longing, a desire to want more. She couldn't put a finger on what it was, but the longer she left it, it only seemed to intensify itself.

Suddenly, that emotion had turned into pain. A pain she was all too familiar with. At the same time, the projections had become distorted, and they took shape into something unimaginable. An amalgamation of all of the memories and visions that she had to host in her body.