#samwrites
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samat5am.bsky.social
I wrote this #zhongli piece back in December 2024, thinking I would edit it and turn into something bigger later, but I still haven't, so here's what it is, cause I felt like sharing
#samwrites
Zhongli has a picture in his home – an old thing, painted by someone long gone, kept together only thanks to the enchantments that were put on it. It's a bird view on a landscape familiar, yet different – sharp peaks point to the sky on the right, creeping towards the vast sea in the top part, and on the left a grassy valley filled with small dots of white flowers, a small stream flowing through the middle. It is Liyue how it used to be. Before he cut down the sharp peaks of the mountains in his pact with humans, before the wild glaze lilies died with Guizhong, before Retuo lost his senses from pain – before it was even known as Liyue. When he looks at it long enough, he can almost see the changing of the stream's flow, how it grows into the river, overflows into the marsh, how mountains lose their edge, how new paths are carved into their slopes, how a road cuts through the middle. A harbour is hidden behind the cliffs, but the scar in the sea stands out in the form of the stone spears that pierced the bottom. He blinks and it is gone, the painting still and peaceful as it used to be and always was. He keeps it to remember. A memento of what his land has gone through, of everything that was but isn't and what wasn't but is. There's nostalgia in the gone, pride in the new and comfort in the unchanged. In the end, this is what he carries within himself.
March 23, 2026 at 12:25 AM
samat5am.bsky.social
#mdzs #samwrites

Sometimes Chifeng-Zun thinks about his little brother and wonders "How have I raised him?". Watching as Nie Huaisang holds his brush, decorating another fan with soft strokes, he looks at his own callused hands and can't help but marvel how he managed not to break this tenderness.
January 10, 2026 at 10:46 PM
samat5am.bsky.social
#samwrites #zhongkae implied #boyfies
samat5am.bsky.social SAMurai @samat5am.bsky.social · Oct 4
short zhongkae thought I've had for a while now (with implied 4P zhongli/diluc/kaeya/childe)

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It's sometime in the middle of the night when Kaeya sits on the porch of the Winery, looking up at the starry sky.
February 27, 2025 at 1:30 PM
samat5am.bsky.social
I just wanted to have #Kaeya and #Venti talk about grief a little

I planned to beta it before posting but turns out I'm too lazy for that for the time so it is what it is
#samwrites
The night was cold as Kaeya sat on the ground with a bottle of wine, staring into the dark forest ahead of him. Suddenly someone approached him and, with no consideration at all, sat down on the grass next to him. Suppose he was too close to the Statue of the Seven to be undisturbed. “Such a pleasant night to be wallowing in memories, isn’t it?” Venti’s cheerful tone clashed with the meaning of his words. “And why would you think that's what I’m doing?” he confronted with a smirk. “I never suggested it was about you,” came all too clever answer. Kaeya drank to that and shared some of his wine with the nuisance. They sat in silence for a while before Venti spoke up again: “Why would you pretend it isn’t so? There is no shame in letting yourself mourn from time to time.” “Oh? Who would I be mourning out here in the woods?” Kaeya drawled, trying to ignore the disturbing feeling of being so emotionally exposed. “The one who has found you here quite a few years ago, I imagine.” This made Kaeya’s thoughts halt. Venti had said it with the same ease of certainty as if he had been pointing out his companion’s empty glass – like a simple fact one just saw plainly – that there was no point in pretending he wasn’t right. Formally, there was also no explanation how could the bard be aware of such specific circumstances of that night – but Venti wore that you know and I know that you know but we both agree that there’s nothing to know about smile, so Kaeya dropped it. They both had identities they preferred left unacknowledged. “Master Crepus had done a lot for me,” Kaeya relented. “I owe him a lot… owed. I suppose it’s not that unjustified that I regret his passing,” he admitted, but Venti only waved his finger at him: “Na-ah! Why do you keep downplaying how much it affected you? Even now you speak in a way that disregards your pain.” “I’m hardly the most affected,” Kaeya just shrugged, then took another drink and passed the bottle to the man, preventing him from speaking more. Venti accepted the deal not to continue this train of thought easily. He always did. Not that he couldn’t find a more roundabout way to share his mind either way. But this Kaeya could pretend had nothing to do with him. “There’s a Liyuean folk song,” he picked up eventually, “Merchant’s Widow.” “Sounds cheerful.” “Fitting the mood, perhaps,” Venti nodded, undeterred, already tuning his lyre. “It always moves me, you know?” “Venti,” Kaeya rolled his eyes in a friendly manner, “I know you. You never sing something that doesn’t move you.” Venti giggled. “My, my, you see right through me! It’s an honor to be so well-known by our lovely Cavalry Captain…” Despite indulging in the teasing, he soon turned pensive again, strumming the strings and looking out into the night. “There’s a part where a woman wakes in her bed in the morning and everything seems so normal that she almost expects she should go to the wharf that day to greet her husband returning from his travels. Then she remembers that such situations will be no more: she is never again to feel her husband’s strong hug or hear his hearty laugh and it makes her miss him all the more. Feels familiar, doesn’t it?” Kaeya gave a hum in a reluctant agreement. He had come here today in the first place, because earlier in the afternoon something had made him remember how master Crepus used to ruffle his hair after a job well-done and the realization that the man would never do so again had managed to sour his mood to the point where he had left the city to be on his own. “Not that I ever had a husband,” Venti went on, some of the playfulness coming back to his tone, “but I do know a thing or two about grief… It doesn’t rank itself. No matter if one lost a spouse, a parent, a friend… or a legal guardian,” he pointed that out with a raise of his brow, “the feeling of loss is the same.” Kaeya refused to be goaded there and rebuffed: “That, or the person you recollect was more of your husband than you admit.” At this Venti erupted in a fit of laughter so loud it rang in the otherwise quiet forest. “Perhaps you are right!” he said, still giggling, going as far as wiping off a tear from the corner of his eye. “Though considering that you agreed to understanding the feeling as well, I’d question how you felt towards the late master Ragnvindr!” “Ew!” Kaeya exclaimed, scowling harder than if he had found grape juice in his wine bottle. Yet, he let out a little laugh as well, because fine, he’d walked into that one himself. “Just sing the song already, bard.” The night was growing colder by the minute, but with the wine and the company of a friend, Kaeya felt warmer than when he came here.
January 15, 2025 at 10:47 PM