Sands | A Day Carved from Rising Winds

“Steel cannot cut it, prison walls cannot confine it.”

“The wind fears not the coming future, and flows endlessly toward tomorrow.”

“O sorrowful tyrant, no matter how blood stains your hands,”

“As long as the wind still blows, you cannot take away the freedom to sing.”

When the raging gale swept before the collapsing divine throne, the frail youth strummed the strings of his instrument one last time.

What had once been a song played in the shadowed alleys, giving the oppressed a hint of courage,

Was tempered through long struggle, honed into a roar that even the fiercest winds could not tear apart.

Since mortal flesh cannot surpass the divine throne, since the song of “this moment” cannot halt calamity,

Let countless “moments” of heartfelt wishes, linked through countless eras and countless yearnings for freedom,

Dilute the piercing hatred of an instant, like drifting petals scattered across time.

The youth, himself the instrument, struck the strings once belonging only to the Master of Time.

Even the mother of a thousand winds was astonished, casting a fleeting glance toward the desolate northern lands,

And the fierce, instantaneous gale transformed into a millennium-spanning gentle poem of wind,

Becoming the breeze that caresses clear springs and fruit wine,

The distant rustle of pines and pastoral songs across green fields,

A sword piercing the nobility and the poisonous dragon,

Ancient oaths and lovers’ sighs.

The dawn of daybreak marks the first note of this grand millennium-long symphony,

Its name is Mondstadt, and all hearts that cherish freedom are its players.

Yet the flesh of the one who first strummed the strings could not bear the song of a nation.

The grand composition, calling upon the fleeting power of time, poured that momentary fury into millennia,

And the poet’s body vanished with the falling tower, his name meant to be remembered washed away by the winds of time,

Like fine snow dissolving in the soft spring breeze, unknown and uncallable again.

Only the small wind spirit, on the day when the mother of Time and Wind relinquished her power,

Silently took a strand of past time and the name that even reversing time could not save.

“My dear friend, please accept this thousand-year breeze, the hope for happiness, and the dream of freedom.”

“Do not grieve for me; as long as the wind still blows, people can, like me, sing of tomorrow’s hope.”