Chapter Text
Moments after the Traveler returns from the little mission with the Dendro Archon they’d embarked on earlier that day, the Wanderer finds himself being herded off to the side of the Sanctuary of Surasthana before he has even a chance to open his mouth.
The first thing he notices about this is the amusingly protagonistic concern written all over Traveler and Paimon’s faces as they pull him aside.
The second thing he notices is that Devi Kusanali does not join them—left to linger idly in the center of the Sanctuary with an expression of vague confusion as Traveler and Paimon very pointedly drag the Wanderer out of earshot.
The Wanderer frowns at her as they do, the unusual blankness of her expression irking him in a way he couldn’t quite place.
The moment they’re far enough away, the Wanderer pauses to cross his arms, giving the Traveler and Paimon a pointed, scrutinizing look.
“What happened?”
The Traveler and Paimon exchange glances, in a way that very much confirmed this was the right sort of question to ask.
“Uh…” Paimon says hesitantly, folding her arms nervously behind her back as she bobs in the air. She furrows her brow. “Well….”
“…She’s lost her memory,” The Traveler cuts in, bluntly.
The Wanderer stares at them.
“What?” He barks, a little too sharply.
“—Temporarily!” Paimon adds in a frantic whisper, waving her hands. “Just temporarily.”
In the corner of his eye, he sees Nahida lift her head curiously at the commotion, and Traveler and Paimon both gesture frantically at him to keep his voice down.
The Wanderer frowns, ducking his head to keep his voice low. “How?”
“The ley line we were investigating suddenly melted down, so she sacrificed most of her memory to stabilize it,” The Traveler explains grimly, not sounding any happier about this than the Wanderer. “Like a splint for a broken bone, she said.”
“Ah, so she gave you a little explanation before she did it? How informative.”
“Hey, we did try to stop her, for the record,” Paimon pipes up, crossing her arms. “She just—she planned and decided on it really fast. Paimon didn’t have any time to process!”
“You know how she is,” The Traveler adds.
Yes, he does. The Wanderer lets out a long, sharp breath through his teeth. “So… she’s forgotten everything? How long until she recovers?”
“We’re exactly not sure,” Paimon says mournfully. “Nahida said it’ll be however long the ley line takes to heal. Could be a few days…or a few weeks…or…” She trails off, bobbing pensively by the Traveler’s head. “Uh…well, she didn’t say exactly, but seemed confident it wouldn’t take too long…”
Traveler nods. “As for your other question—I think she’s retained a little bit of memory. She didn’t recognize us, but she knows who she is, and seems to remember some of her early life.”
“Hm,” The Wanderer muses, glancing back at her. As he does, he catches Nahida staring curiously at him, only for her to duck her head nervously as she realizes she’s been caught.
He turns back to the Traveler and Paimon. “What do you want me to do with this information?”
“Well, we were hoping you could watch her,” Paimon tells him confidently, and Traveler nods.
The Wanderer gives her a look. “Huh?”
“We have to go make sure the ley line is fully secured, and that Cyno and our other friends know what’s happening,” She goes on. “Nahida needs to rest…and I don’t think it would be a good idea to leave her alone when she’s all confused. Plus, Nahida herself said we should come to you first if anything happened to her, so…”
“Did she, now,” The Wanderer cuts in, wryly. Of course she did. There was nothing she enjoyed more than subjecting him to unconventional trials and tasks between his more acceptable assignments. He wonders what her motivation for this one was—testing his patience, perhaps? Or maybe she feared burdening one of her humans with the responsibility of supervising their own deity. If he’s lucky, she’ll inform him in detail of her plans when this is all over. “Very well. I’ll watch her.”
“Yeah, well, Paimon thinks—“ Paimon squeaks, then pauses, blinking at him. “Wait…huh? You’re agreeing?”
“If she wanted me to help, then I will,” the Wanderer explains flatly, crossing his arms. “My presence in Sumeru would be rather pointless if I did not uphold my end of our arrangement.”
“Oh,” says Paimon, blinking. “Uh, okay. That was… easier than Paimon expected…”
After a few more minutes of discussion, the Traveler leads the Wanderer over to Nahida, where they introduce him, and explain to her where they would be going the next few hours. Nahida sits quietly throughout the entire explanation, her expression unchangeably flat and vaguely confused. The only reaction she gives to being introduced to the Wanderer had been a shy wave in his direction, her eyes flickering with quiet, uncertain curiosity.
It’s a familiar sort of hesitance. One found only when lost and uncertain of where you belonged, left to exist in the world with only a dim, secondhand awareness you have forgotten a part of yourself.
Soon, it is time for the Traveler to leave. As they prepare to, they let Paimon float on ahead of them, turning back to the Wanderer as he sees them out.
“■■■,” They say, coming to a stop in front of him. “Thank you for this.”
“Don’t think I’m doing this as a favor,” The Wanderer warns. “It’s a matter of shared interest. It would be rather inconvenient for me if the Dendro Archon remains weak and incapacitated—and I doubt she wants to remain unable to fulfill her current duties for any longer than strictly necessary. Ensuring she makes a full recovery is the most logical course of action.”
“Sure,” says the Traveler, looking almost amused. The Wanderer does not care to understand why. “Just call us if you need anything. We’ll probably be staying in Sumeru for the time being. And…one more thing?”
“Hm?”
“Be gentle with her, alright?” They say, with a kindhearted sort of concern. “She's going through a lot.”
The Wanderer thinks of her timid, lost expression and quiet uncertainty, the way she held herself as though she were not yet unfamiliar with moving in her physical form. He snorts. What a ridiculous request.
“…You know how I am,” The Wanderer replies, meeting their gaze with a frown. “No promises.”
The Traveler merely smiles at him, turning back around. “Right. Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
“Hm.”
Soon after the Sanctuary of Surasthana close behind the Traveler with a graceful crash, the Wanderer feels something tug lightly at the back of his kimono.
He turns back to find Nahida on her feet, fidgeting curiously with the curved golden ornament that hangs from the bottom of his sleeve. He raises an eyebrow at her, surprised by the sudden boldness of the gesture. He hadn’t even heard her approaching.
“What are you doing?”
Nahida startles, looking up at him with wide green eyes, then back down at the curved, golden ornament of his sleeve she’d grabbed, as if it had not occurred to her such an action would draw his attention. She lets go of his kimono and takes a clumsy step back, blinking up at him.
The Wanderer waits for her to say something, but the moment never comes—a long, awkward beat of silence stretching between them as Nahida does nothing but stare at him unblinkingly, looking both curious and guiltily frozen in place. It’s an expression entirely unlike her—a far cry from even the embarrassment she wore when she blundered in navigating typical social conventions.
A new concern suddenly dawns on him as he recalls the early years of his two lives; the countless hours he’d spent being guided by the humans of Tatarasuna through the proper pronunciations of words he understood but struggled to utter himself as the Kabukimono, and the endless time he’d spent eavesdropping on human conversations in his nameless wanderings, tasting the words on his tongue until he understood them well enough to string them together.
He gives Nahida a dubious look, tilting his head at her.
“…Do you remember how to speak?”
Nahida hesitates.
“…Um,” She begins, in a soft, small voice that makes her sound far younger than she usually does. “Yes. I remem’ber.”
“Alright,” The Wanderer says, without emotion. “Just checking.”
Nahida gives him a tiny, unsure nod, then looks back down at his sleeve like she wants to grab it again. She seems to study the Wanderer for a moment, looking him up and down with rapt curiosity.
“…You move like a wind chime instead of like grass,” Nahida informs him, with careful politeness. “It's very pecul’er.”
The Wanderer raises an eyebrow at her. “Is it, now?”
Nahida nods, making visible effort to temper the glowing curiosity practically rolling off of her in Dendro infused waves. “I’ve never seen something like you before. What…What are you? Are you also a god?”
What an amusingly insightful question.
“Not quite,” He says, looking down at her. “I’m a puppet.”
“Oh,” Nahida raises her eyebrows, her eyes gleaning with interest. “I see...that’s nice.”
She shuffles restlessly on her feet, fidgeting with her hands as she practically teems with unspoken questions. The Wanderer watches, almost amused, as she struggles between curiosity and shyness, glancing at the Wanderer like she’s trying to calculate how many she could ask before she annoyed him.
To his surprise, however, she doesn’t ask him anything at all. She merely hunches her shoulders, inching back to sit on the edge of the center platform of the Sanctuary of Surasthana again. She lets her feet swing lightly over the edge, fidgeting with her hands for a moment, then stares up at the Wanderer with a hesitant, uncertain expression.
“…How long are you going to stay?” Nahida asks him, after a moment.
“What?”
Nahida opens her mouth, then closes it, looking at the Wanderer as though she was hoping he’d already understand enough to explain it for her. “Um, the humans that come here don’t stay very long. They usually just ask me things and leave. So, are you…?”
The Wanderer presses his lips into a fine line.
“That’s different,” He explains. “Like the Traveler said; my job is to stay with you until your memories come back. I’m not just going to leave you here unsupervised.”
Nahida tilts her head at him. “But I’m always unsuper-ised.”
“Well, not anymore.”
”…Oh,” Nahida says, blinking. “Um, okay...”
She furrows her brow the way she always does when she’s deep in thought, looking vaguely troubled.
“I…feel like I’m having a very weird dream,” She admits, after a moment. “The Sages never allow anyone in the Sanctuary of Surasthana, especially not for the sake of talking to me.”
The Wanderer frowns. “…Well, the Sages aren’t here anymore.”
“Thats what the Traveler said too…” Nahida says uncertainly, clutching her head. “But it wasn’t like that yesterday…”
The Wanderer opens his mouth to reply, but Nahida continues, “I know they said I lost my memory, but it doesn’t feel that way. I-I remember most of my life just fine—I even remem’ber what I was doing yesterday. I just woke up today and everything was different.”
She wraps her arms around herself, shrinking into where she’s sitting. “I-I feel very confused.”
The Wanderer grimaces at the wobble in her voice, wholly unwilling to have the Dendro Archon crying within the first hour of being asked to watch her. He pauses for a moment, then kneels down to her eye level—ignoring the sheer informality of the gesture as he guides her to meet his eyes.
“You’re torturing yourself by trying to think about it all at once,” He drawls. “Look at it this way: right now, even if it’s unusual, you have someone to talk to for the time being—much less boring than being alone, don’t you think?”
Nahida blinks, her eyes glistening, then gives him a slow, tiny nod.
”T-That’s true,” She says softly.
She looks up at him, something painfully hopeful begins to creep across her expression, and asks, “If you’re here for me to talk to…does that make us friends? Can we be friends?”
She says it like she’s sure she’ll be denied. The Wanderer exhales silently through his nose, inclining his head as he gives her his answer. “If that’s what you’d like.”
A warm, small smile spreads across Nahida’s face, the anxiety in her expression dissipating like the sun peaking through the clouds after a heavy rain.
“Oh—wonderful!” She says, her eyes shining. “I’ve never made a friend I could talk to outside of dreams before. The Traveler said your name was Kasacchi, right? I’m Nahida.”
The Wanderer gives her a bemused snort. “I’m aware.”
“Ah, yes—sorry,” She squeaks, covering her mouth. “I’m just very excited. Can—can I ask you a few questions? There’s some things I’m really curious about…”