#( 🔸 ) // MAYSA

[lychniis]

— MEMORY ( AS YOU SLIP AWAY ) ✧ prologue

↷ zhongli x reader ( minific )

zero. — ( conception. )❝ a story goes unspoken. ❞

WARNING(S) : this chapter contains hints of death, actual death and basic reader suffering along with some slight mentions of ptsd. there is not much mention of zhongli here as this is the prologue BUT things will pick up soon. really short chapter ( around 2000 words, the rest will be MUCH longer ). please read with caution.

index ‎ ·‎  next » ‎ ‎ ‎ | # masterlist

i. YE SAY WE SLEEP ; BUT NAY WE WAKE 

YOU DIE IN THE end of this story.

You died forgotten and alone, wrought in pain and misery as the fragments, the pieces of you crumble to ash. You died with grief on your lips, with heartbreak in your chest. You died and left behind a legacy that went unheard, buried deep, deep beneath Teyvat’s history. It was a tragic death. A quiet death. It went unnoticed and the world kept living on despite it.

You die at the end of this story.

However, I think I should flip the pages to the beginning, to the start, where your story slowly takes root, to pass on the tale of one being who was two sides of a wavering spectrum ( remarkable yet unremarkable ) before it slips away through the cracks completely.

( The forest always remembers… )

When you were born, it was from the remains of another. 

( Like a phoenix, you’d ruefully laugh in recollection, but the joke sat bitter and heavy on your tongue as you said it. Reincarnation was naught in your fate; the heavens assured of it the moment your spark was rekindled. )

A human unfortunate enough to fall into Celestia’s line of sight, a human who perished within a battle between divinity, whose essence stubbornly persisted under the soil and the flora. The heavens had looked upon what was once you and their hand crafted a new form, a new body with nothing but a thought and a will to do so. 

They took the human’s essence, they took the wishes of the people around them. They wove in aspirations and the pains of humanity — the ones who still dragged their feet in the aftermath of a war by gods and the ones who looked upon the horizon, upon the future that slowly shows itself and they hope and pray — and created a deity from the culmination of it. 

There was no light or a dramatic proclamation through the lands of a new messiah or a great coming that would alter the very threads of fate in Teyvat’s history. For a moment, you were not and then you were and that was all there was to it. Life went on, the storm still raged, the wind still blew and the trees still murmured its stories to those who’d deign to listen.

( You wouldn’t have been surprised. The purpose for your rebirth was no blessing or act of divine grace. There was no mercy in the eyes of the higher power that created you, the machinations of mortal residue, of the irminsul’s roots and memories long past. 

You were something of everything and nothing at the same time; fragile, with foundations that shook and a vessel far from perfect.

There is little recognition in your eyes when you look at yourself now. There is still humanity in them; that stayed, stuck itself to you like a leech, even during days when you wished it wouldn’t. There was fatigue on your shoulders, in the way they slumped and bore down like they held the weight of everything and nothing. 

And there was an otherness you could never rid yourself of. You hated that the most. )

But there were tiny miracles, the little things easily overlooked. 

( Were they by you? You were never certain, nor — truthfully speaking — were you aware. )

The frost  that slowly melted off of the crops of a struggling farmer when the cold struck too early, and he bustled his wife and children under the last of the blankets they had. There was dreaded hopelessness in his eyes as he had watched the snow fall, fall, fall down and then, the despair was gone. 

A woman despairing over her missing child finds the rainwashed dirt at her feet slowly creep back into what it once was; dry sand imprinted with uneven footprints. They were as clear as fine Cor Lapis and she let out a sob as she chased after them into a small patch of trees, uncaring of the stones in her path, of the dirt that caked her bare feet.

An old lady who held her dying husband’s hands in her own and finally, he looked upon her with a tired smile on his face and spoke for the first time in years — who asked her to sing her favorite song to him one last time ( the one she sang when they met, beneath the tree at the town square as the sunlight danced in her eyes and spread that halo in her hair ).

( She did, and he cried as the warmth faded out of his body and she cried after, when she buried him under the earth. The woman found her child trapped within a pit, his eyes shut but his pulse stubbornly beating. The farmer harvested what he had sown and his family finally had a warm meal after days of starvation. )

( And finally, a lonely god who felt the briefest tugs at his wrist and he stirs from his slumber for a moment to gaze down at his lands below with a frown. A lonely god who feels the faintest spark of warmth in his chest before it dies down and he urgently looks for it, only to blink and question what he was searching for in the first place. A lonely god who rests again, bewildered but thinking of it no more. )

Tiny, inconsequential things that did little to the world to stop its spin. But they happened no less when your eyes opened for the first time since your death and you pushed the dirt aside with bleeding nails and you took a deep breath in, out, outside, unburned and unburied. They happened because of you, as your lungs fill with air and the stars greet you through bleary eyes. 

A minor god was born in Teyvat that day and Celestia looked down at your wide eyed stare, at your shivering frame, at how you shakily rose to your feet and stumbled about the expanse of white. They watched you stagger then let out a grieved cry as you felt a wave of tumult and voices, as wish after wish and anguish after anguish and longing after longing weighed down on your reluctant shoulders. The burden of a god, the burden of an immortal. 

Then they watched you snap and and wail, shaking the earth itself.

ii. LIFE WAS THAT STRANGE AND CHEQUERED DREAM ; ONLY FOR WAKING’S SAKE 

Rukkhadevata, the lady of the forests, heard the cry across her domain.

It was the blood-curdling sort, the one that basked in the vestiges of heartache, the type she heard through countless battles in the divine war. It was a scream that knew no tranquility and longed for the hand of violence to dig down deep, deep deep into its crevices and rip out the beating life of the land.

( It was Deshret’s pain, as the cursed knowledge took his body and mind and soul. It was the raging roar of Bhasmasura and his demonic power and the ash that trailed within his hands. It was everything she wished not to hear again, in an era of supposed peace, as the heavenly principles made their move and the seven seats were finally erected. )

When her feet graze over the blood soaked land with Mahosadha at her tail, she knows well that malevolence burrowed itself deep into the roots of the forest. She knows better than to be horrified; death was a natural cycle of life, an inevitability, a factor that could not be combated. 

But the glacial chill settles anyway and she is sent staggering back to the start of that domino effect beginning with Anahita’s blood scattered across the Padisarah’s and ending with Al Ahmar’s body disintegrating into the desert. And Rukkhadevata takes a step forward, her toes staining scarlet.

It was silent against the beat of her heart. Silent like a deer caught within the path of an arrowhead, danger that lay in wait, prowling at the edge of her mind with it’s teeth borne and glinting. The malevolence grows deeper and it claws and clogs into her very pores and Rukkhadevata shuts her eyes. She sees their faces and she hears the screaming and she wants them gone.

“Vanarani.” Mahosadha snaps her out of her daze, his gaze just as haunted, just as torn apart as hers was. He sees it too and it shows in the red speckling his bottom lip. His brown hand pushes aside a patch of earth. Rukkhadevata sees the pallid face of a woman. “This one is still fresh. We need to stay on guard.”

It is a desperate plea in his voice. It is him at his most vulnerable.

So Rukkhadevata travels across the dead land, as an archon should. To the common eye, one would have seen a child standing in the midst of devastation and pitied her soul. She felt like a child, if only for a moment with her false strength and her uneasy courage, walking over fallen bodies and destroyed homes while Mahosadha warded away evil with a whispered spell. And as the lands give way to a crevice, she sees something else.

A figure. A beast. The wolf.

It lays across the emptiness of the field, it’s eyes trained on her; wild, unforgiving, angry. It was chaos within a vessel, human from its worn down body worn and watered by weather and wear and tired gaze; but not human in the bloodlust in its eyes and the hungry curl of its fingers. A demon, something in her whispers. An asura.

Two of its three heads snap up at her, dead stare focused with the widened, crazed glare of a feral animal. It bares its teeth and growls something deep and guttural, like the forest itself took on its wildness and its depravity and merged them through a single being.

A demon, an asura.

Yet there was something so terribly tragic in the way it looked at her, beneath the layers of hatred and anger. She knew dreams well and the ways of the mind and how it weaves into a tapestry of discord ( and it was the beautiful kind ). She knows how the heart beats and stutters, betraying its deepest desires. It was as simple as that, and Rukkhadevata hears that cry inside it, clear as day, clear as a new puddle after the heavy monsoons, clear as the mountain mist in winter.

I killed them, it seemed to say and there is no happiness in its voice as it lunges. I killed them, it repeats and it’s filled with detest and loathing, loathing and fear for what it was. I killed them and she felt its beating heart ( a quiet, meek little thing, one that screamed so loud its voice gave way ), its wish to be torn down, to fall apart, to be silenced.

I killed them. Its heart grieves and it cries as it closes in, ready to kill, ready to claw her apart and Rukkhadevata holds out her hand as her divine strength rains down.

iii. BETHINK THEE, THERE SHALL ONLY BE ; THYSELF FOR COMPANY

The nightmare still persists, that vision of blood and death and the suffering you caused. There was nausea that swirls in the pit of your stomach and there was disgust that pounds in your chest as you try to wash away the stink of blood off of your hands. A monster was what you were in the end. A monster that took and took and took till its greedy heart yearns for worse and it takes that as well.

You duck your head down and sit in this empty field, this expanse of oblivion with your loneliness and your regret and it weighs heavy, heavier than anything else and you want to scream.

So you scream, you scream till your throat runs dry and you cough out blood, till your cheeks are drenched and your nose is clogged. You scream till your fingertips are bruised and your nails have cracked and your chest gives out.

You scream.

Then you stop, and the world seems to spin as you wipe away at your face and look beyond your little circle, your small prison you trapped yourself in with the key thrown far away. You look beyond and you see a man who sits down, his face veiled behind thin cloth. He looks back at you, quietly, curiously, surrounded by his nimbus of gold.

You wonder why he’s here. You feel like you’re impeding upon his own peace, upon something sacred. So you look away and turn your back to him. The gold field shimmers like mist and it vanishes and you hurtle down down down into the darkness, swallowed whole and sent to an eternal slumber you wish you never wake from.

You pray for your suffering. For suffering is all that you deserve ( you were you, a god, a monster, a murderer ).

And you awaken and the dream and the man and the field were a distant thought.

A girl presses a damp cloth to your forehead, her smile cherubic, like the manifestation of kindness itself. When she looks at you, something aches in your chest, an old memory, a voice you hold close that you cling onto like a safety blanket. It was all you had now, that and your memories of a life you lost. 

“Do you have a name?” she asks softly and you want to say yes, you did.

But you shake you head. You feel like a traitor.

❪⠀🎬⠀❫   AINE SPEAKS ;; 

reference notes

welcome to the pain train, my sweet sweet readers. while 'hand of gold' my other and much fluffier zhongli fic is still in the works, i ended up writing this little things first; for the sake of having something to muse over at the side. it was initially supposed to be a longer one-shot but then it just...spun out of control and hey now we have this-

a quick word of warning; this fic is not a happy one. there will be humor but i doubt the ending i have in mind won't sit well with some of the readers ( specifically the ones who, you know, like happy endings ). it's legit stated in the first line itself so okay spoiler alert XD.

number two, there might be sexual content in a later chapter. i have an sfw version posted on my quotev; so if you guys are underage or are simply uncomfortable with nsfw, can head up over there to read it!

the poetry used is an excerpt of the first paragraph of walter del la mare's poem, two epitaphs.

also no cap, this chapter took legit six moths to write because bitch is a perfectionist LKJhgfdxcvbnjmk. so i cannot promise you frequent updates, with each chapter being pretty long according to my notes for this story, the word count prbably ranging between seven thousand to fifteen thousand.

till then, thank you very much for choosing to read maysa! let me know if you'd like to be added to the taglist!!!

taglist —@x-zho, @dustofthedailylife, @silentmoths, @ofoceansandtombsanew, @meimeimeirin, @the-travelling-witch, @blinkofink, @nebulaera, @thesparklingwriter, @bohbahead

AINE © 2023. do no plagiarize, repost or rework this piece.

[hasstattooer]

Cavalo brilhante. Tattoo para a Maysa, muito obrigado! ****************************************** ATENDENDO SEMPRE EM SÃO PAULO NO @coviltattoo ——————————————————— PRÓXIMAS VIAGENS: 🔸Janeiro •São Paulo(15-25). •Bauru(26-29). 🔸Fevereiro São Paulo (à partir do dia 01) •Belo Horizonte (14-18). ——————————————————— Contato: 📩 hasstattooer@gmail.com Ou me envie uma DM pra dúvidas. ——————————————————— #bright_and_bold #besttradtattoos #topclassictattooing #tattooworkes #tradworkes #traditional #oldschool #vintagetraditional #saopaulotattoo #baurutattoo #flashtattoos #oldworkers . (em COVIL Tattoo) https://www.instagram.com/hasstattooer/p/CYzDCMNOQQ4/?utm_medium=tumblr

[lychniis]

— MEMORY ( AS YOU SLIP AWAY )

↷ zhongli x reader ( minific ) . . . coming soon

❝ just remember, the storm doesn't last forever. it can scare you; it can shake you to your core. but it never lasts. the rain subsides, the thunder dies, and the winds calm to a soft whisper. and that moment after the storm clouds pass, when all is silent and still, you find peace. quiet, gentle peace. ❞

S. L JENNINGS , THE FEAR OF FALLING

DISCLAIMERS + NOTES

i. THIS WORK CONTAINS MENTIONS and some depictions of violence and gore, death and mass murdering *looks at the reader*, angst just lots of angst with a bittersweet ending, sad vibes all around, some humor, reader just trying to vibe and survive but also being a hot emotional mess.

ii. THE READER IS A GOD INSPIRED by the gods from noragami and uses feminine terms as a descriptor. the use of y/n is minimal at best and they are usually referred to by their godly name 'foras'. this work also contains smut, said chapter will be tagged appropriately.

iii. I DO NOT OWN THE characters mentioned save for any mentioned original characters. the above image was taken from picsart and the manga / anime ‘noragami’ belongs to adachitoka. however, i will not tolerate plagiarism of any kind of this work. please do not steal / repost / copy my work onto this or other websites and if you find it anywhere else ( save tumblr or ao3 ) then kindly let me know. thanks for choosing to read this book!

SUMMARY

EVEN THE DIVINE WERE NOT exempt from the misfortunes of fate. those who rule teyvat bear their burdens of loss and blood, of the times of peace they once lived sullied by the ugly scars of war. even the gods look upon their lands and wish for their respite away from their bleak reality and loneliness.

YOU WERE A YOUNG GOD, born in an age of a peace that stood upon foundations yet to be reinforced and solidified. the whispers of the dead long past meet your ears and mortal longing beats within your heart. but fate, as it is, dispassionate against the divine and the mortal lets your ascension be marred by three cruel curses.

PERHAPS YOU WERE DOOMED to be forgotten from the start, to be glanced over by the heavens till you fade away from history and it's writings. but you still keep walking, keep wandering, despite your fears and heartache, bearing the scars of a war upon your back and your final penance. a promise that you hope to keep for a friend and lover till the very memory of you slips away.

INDEX

masterlist || playlist || quotev ( sfw version. ) || author rambles

✧ CH. 00 — conception ; a story goes unspoken.

✧ CH. 01 — vasantha ; with the blooming flowers, comes you.

✧ CH. 02 — grishma ; the letters between friends remain uninked.

✧ CH. 03 — varsha ; trust not the words of an apsara.

✧ CH. 04 — sharada ; the flower fades but your breath stays warm.

✧ CH. 05 — hemanta ; in this dream, the scent of jasmine persists.

✧ CH. 06 — shishira ; your memory, as you slip away.

PLAYLIST

little talks ( of monsters and men ) — a soulmate who wasn't meant to be ( jess benko ) — je te laisserai des mots ( patrick watson ) — dream a little dream of me ( ella fitzgerald and louis armstrong ) — the night we met ( lord huron ) — wasteland, baby ( hozier ) — evermore ( dan stevens ) — merry go round of life ( joe hisaishi ) — lovers' oath ( yu-peng cheng ) — mountain sound ( of monsters and men ) — in this shirt ( the irrepressibles ) — hearing ( sleeping at last ) — saturn ( sleeping at last ) — my heart is buried in venice ( rick montgomery ) — happiness is a butterfly ( lana del ray ) — love like ghosts ( lord huron ) — sayonaragokko ( amazarashi ) — yamiyo ( eve ) — yumemiteta no atashi ( daoko )

AINE © 2023. do no plagiarize, repost or rework this piece.

[lychniis]

MEMORY — REFERENCE NOTES + CONCEPTS

index

( some gods were but forgotten memories ; even for him. ) there was once a god in sumeru, cursed to be forgotten. foras, who danced beneath the moonlight. foras, who walked amongst mortals and granted her wishes, who stood upon destitution and death in the face of madness. foras, who dared to love morax with her heart and soul.

AO3 SUMMARY

REFERENCES ;

🦋 — INTRODUCTION

first off, thank you to @silentmoths and @ofoceansandtombsanew for actually sitting through my mad ramblings for this fic and the story. a lot of my current notes and plot threads were actually developed while i was speaking to them and to bear that level of patience witnessing my keyboard smashing? you have my respect ( also please check out the latter's god reader fic for genshin ; her reader, amur literally has my heart ).

one of the main reasons why i’m excited about this fic is mostly due to sumeru’s lore as a whole. the reader is from sumeru, and with me being south asian, i can nerd out and add as many references as i want, both in and out of lore and straight out of historical and mythical text. this post is actually a compilation of the references i added to my story so far. i'll keep updating it with every chapter, so if you're interested in any way, feel free to drop by!

in regards to the reader; yes you could say she is an oc of sorts, but simultaneously, she is not. i think the only set thing about them other than their backstory and personality is the godly title 'foras'. the interpretation of her appearance is wholly up to you, though i may end up drawing artwork of my own of my interpretation of her.

memory as a whole, is supposed to be a tragedy, as well as a bit of a study on zhongli's character and other stuff related to the reader that i will delve into later. but loneliness and helplessness as a whole is certainly going to be a recurring factor here. also i'm a total sucker for the 'god who loves humanity but is too weak to help them' trope. think of the song zange mairii...it's sort of like that.

speaking of which, yes foras is a god similar to the ones in noragami, one of my favorite animes, who are either reincarnated humans or were born from a wish or a story. due to this, human belief and memory is what essentially keeps them alive. i think you know where i might be going from here >:).

🦋 — PROLOGUE

i. the poetry used is an excerpt of the first and a part of the second paragraph of walter del la mare’s poem, two epitaphs. there is no clear explanation on what the poem itself is about but i take it to be a reminder of human mortality in a way. the poet is basically telling you that all in all, in the end, you're going to be pretty lonely after death and that kind of struck me as morbid and funny. it does tie into the reader's story in a way, since she literally dies before being pulled out as a fresh new god centuries later.

you know, like a potato.

ii. bhasmasura is actually a demon from hindu texts, a demon who asked lord shiva for a boon after he meditated for a really, really long time. unfortunately, hindu gods weren't all that great at noticing red flags and shiva certainly did not when bhasmasura flat out asked him for the ability to spontaneously combust anyone who he touches.

shiva did realize his oopsie when said demon turned on him and flat out started chasing him through the heavens trying to boop his nose. in the end, vishnu, the guy who manages the divine balance and all ended up taking the form of one of his incarnations, mohini, who is dubbed to be the most beautiful woman in the world and effectively seduces bhasmasura.

now, being a simp, bhasmasura skips the dating stage and asks her to marry him. mohini refused and states that the only way she will accept his hand in marriage is if he replicates her dance moves to the 't'. now at the stage of near obessive simping because mohini hot, bhasmasura agrees and mohini starts showing him the dance steps he was meant to copy. he does do surprisingly well.

until mohini touches her head.

and this dumbass does too.

so he ends up reverse midas touching himself and spontaneously combusts due to his own powers. mohini then returns to the heavens as vishnu again, ignoring all the horrified stares he received. the moral of the story : don't skip to marriage without a few dates.

iii. one of the main reasons why i chose bhasmasura is mainly because of the relation between the boddhisattva and vishnu. due to years of adaptation and appropriation, hindu and buddhist gods are pretty easy to mix up or corelate to each other. in some parts of india, people might just tell you that the boddhisattva ( who is buddha's og form ) and vishnu as basically the same. it's really confusing and explaining it in depth would take a while. all in all, it's kind of similar to the roman-greek thing where they have similar gods going by different names.

the boddhisatva's incarnations are actually detailed as different stories in the jatakas. so yeah, in the archon war, rukkhadevata basically mc-killed teyvats bhasmasura XD.

iv. mahosadha is a prominent characters in the jatakas and is actually the one incarnation i'm the most familar with ( a la the amar chitra katha comics ). in the original stories, he was a really smart baby who was later adopted by a king and made his advisor at the age of seven. so yeah, smart baby. most of his stories revolve around him completely decimating evil plots and schemes.

here he is is more or less one of rukkha's avatars ( like nahida...hmmmm foreshadowing??? ), a leaf taken from the irminsul. you could say he's sort of her son, but since he is a completely separate being from her, he has more of a diciple who traverses around teyvat to collect knowledge while she manages her nation. the reader is actually his junior in this craft.

he can also talk to birds and has a pet parrot, which i think is cute.

v. 'anahita' is my stand in name for the goddess of flowers. she's the persian goddess of nature and fun fact, nahida's name is actually derived from 'anahita' which is pretty fascinating! anahita's symbol is the lotus flower ( similar to nilou's own lotus motifs ). while the recent quest did give lots of insight on the goddess as a person, we still got no name. i mean, come on hoyo, don't be shy-

vi. 'vanrani' means 'forest queen' or 'queen of the forest'. sort of a nod to the aranara's 'arayani'. he usually calls her that as a term of endearment or informality rather than using it as a formal title. it's on the same vein as say, the names 'venti', 'zhongli' and 'ei'.

vii. ah yes the monsoons. it's basically the only drastic change in weather we get in the coasts. i remember many a day kicking buckets under leaky parts of my roof and sitting in the dark in the middle of power cuts. good ol days.

viii. the reader's goetia name is 'foras'. according to the ars goetia and our overlord, wikipedia :

'foras is a powerful president of hell, being obeyed by twenty-nine legions of demons. he teaches logic and ethics in all their branches, the virtues of all herbs and precious stones, can make a man witty, eloquent, invisible (invincible according to some authors), and live long, and can discover treasures and recover lost things.' [ source wikipedia ].

my other alternative name was 'bifrons' for the reader, but foras' 'wish granting' schtick seemed to sit better.

🦋 — CHAPTER ONE

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🦋 — CHAPTER TWO

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🦋 — CHAPTER THREE

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🦋 — CHAPTER FOUR

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🦋 — INTERLUDE

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🦋 — EPILOGUE

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CHARACTER CONCEPTS + SKETCHES ;

🦋 — FORAS

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AINE © 2023. do no plagiarize, repost or rework this piece.