Long adventures were a funny thing, Octavia had once mused in her youth. The distance between the starting point and the destination was a fixed point in length... but it was the perception of the adventures that defined how long it felt. Whether it was due to her perception of space beyond the false sky — she was, of course, often three-light-years away from Teyvat — she only knew a few answers. Often, it was the company and the atmosphere that affected the awareness of the passage of time.

The three mile walk to a moderately sized clearing northwest of Mondstadt felt like the longest adventure in Octavia’s life, an odd notion, considering the perpetual movement upgrade she had obtained upon visiting a planet beyond the false sky.

That wasn’t to say being in your company was bad, per se, more that the silence that had hung over and between you and her had the effect of slowing down time itself. It was an awkward, tense quiet, filled with unsaid words and the crunch of twigs and stones under some shoes. You had made it crystal clear you did not want to revisit the topic about her appearances and disappearances in the last few years, even going as far as to walk several feet ahead of her. As far as she was concerned, in those last few years when you were taken in by the other Hexenzirkel members, you were told why Octavia had begun her ceaseless wandering.

It led Octavia to a state of numbness, walking at the cusp of nihilism, and it was the same exact reason as to why she began her endless wandering. Her choices were between staying in one place where destruction would surely follow, where in its wake the people she loves would end up dying, and the end result was always going to be the potential end of her friendship with you. Sure, you and her could work through it and be on cordial terms, but it would never be as it was like before. So, what was the fucking point?

Archons, Teyvat itself is dying in its empty star domain, the only planet left behind by the abyss. It was pointless and idealistic to try and fix it, a product of a world before it was no longer needed in the Imaginary Tree. A remnant of a bygone age, of dragons and their sovereigns, love and rulers. Values that ceased to mean a thing when forbidden knowledge seeped into the world. Teyvat has undoubtedly changed; there is no saving it, and hankering for the bygone days is futile sentiment.

As ‘O’, Octavia has no time for sentiment.

But was she doing the right thing? Sure, the Hexenzirkel were the most powerful witches of all witches, and long journeys were integral to being a witch.

Alice, with her mastery over engineering and alchemy; Nicole Reeyn, soaring overhead with her angelic wings saving lives with her hushed guidance; Barbeloth, able to foresee a person’s future using a constellation reading with no effort; Rhinedottir, with her Art of Khemia, able to produce several beings made out of synthetic life — including her Abyssal feats — and being a Shade of Life when she merged with Naberius; And you, not a Hexenzirkel coverer, yet her closest companion and her home. Her heart still aches at your name when she leaves, your scent, your voice, even all those years on.

Questions raged across her mind like the inevitable destruction of wherever she called home. Were you right in being annoyed at her, and were it in her decision, where she chose to leave and return once in an Iridescent Moon? Did she finally realise that there was no point in fleeing, and she wanted to stay with you?

Could she have saved the people she lost, if she had just the courage to do so and fight instead of flee?

And would you help her wander through that territory, throwing yours and hers’ once-solid friendship into the wind to something more?

Her heart was hurting despite her repeated attempts to compartmentalise the pain, and the wind hurt with her. So you chose this place in Mondstadt to walk with her to make things up…or to vent. Of course, the last time involved a tea set, several occupied seats and witches. She nor you had none of those things right now.