Winter Moon | Xiao x Fem Reader

Frozen past

"He will be able to help you more than I could in my current state," Zhongli had said before he left, telling you to simply meet him in 3 days time near Mountain Hulao.

You had filled both him and Xiao in on your reason for coming to Liyue. The Yaksha had paid close attention to what you were saying but in the end none of you had any idea where to even begin. And here you were, 3 days later. No one had shown up yet so you wandered around the river area. You hadn't seen Liyue in such a long time. For the past 2000 years you had been wandering around Teyvat, no particular goal in mind except finding her.

It's been 3000 years since you last saw her. You weren't even sure if she was alive until her constellation had shown in the sky, as bright as ever. You had felt such relief you cried the whole night.

Despite that, millennia passed and you still hadn't found her. With your weak powers all you could do is wait for the centuries to pass before her constellation was supposed to make another round and show up in the night sky. Last time that happened was 14 days ago and the stars had pointed you here in Liyue. You promised yourself this time you'd find her.

---

You rounded the corner of a tight passage between two stone walls under mountain Hulao and was met with a giant tree, one branch of it had seemed to have turned into ice, bright glowing flowers grew near its roots. It was beautiful in its own tragic way. You saw how the ice weighed down one side of it and no leaves grew on it. An itch spread across your chest the more you looked at it.

As if in a trance you walked closer to it, the closer you were the more that itch became an ache. You didn't blink, didn't breathe, just walked closer and closer. You felt past echoes of screams that sounded too familiar to your own, an ancient power you hadn't felt in millennia came in waves through the tree.

All of a sudden an agonising pain overtook your whole body. You clutched your chest in pain, your breathing laboured and your eyes wanted to squeeze shut from the pain but you simply couldn't tear them off the tree. Your body was used to pain, having endured millennia of it. But this pain was so different than any sword or arrow could cause.

It started from the deepest depths of your heart, travelled along every nerve of your body and made your eyes burn with hot tears. The screams were louder, there was blood on the trunk of the tree, there were arrows blasing by your head, blood on your hands. What was happening? Why did it hurt so much? Someone make the screams stop, someon-

A hand landed on your shoulder to keep you steady. You hadn't noticed you were on your knees, trembling hands clutching your heart.

"Are you okay? What happened?" You realised the person who had showed up was Xiao.

You opened your mouth to answer but your throat was constricted. It seemed as if Xiao didn't even need an answer, seeing you stare so intently at the half-frozen tree.

Wordlessly he slid an arm around your waist and hoisted you up, helping you walk back through the narrow path between the mountains and setting you down under the shadow of a nearby tree. You breathed deeply, now that tree was out of sight the ache in your chest seemed to wither. You realised Xiao was sitting across from you, hands in the air as if he wasn't sure on what to do next, his amber eyes glowed with an emotion you didn't recognise. Was it concern? You tried to lighten the mood a bit as you took another deep breath and released it as a soft laugh.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what happened back there. I apologise if I startled you." You brushed your tears away with the sleeve of your shirt.

Your words seemed to calm him down as the peculiar emotion left his face and he put his hands back down. You didn't know what to say. How do you explain yourself when you weren't sure what happened in the first place.