his first real teacher

No, Sleep was fully overrated.

By early morning Xilonen had managed barely seven hours and decided that was enough. The door to the forge workshop slammed open hard enough to rattle tools on the walls. She strode in with zero hesitation, still in the same short, tight outfit from the night before, eyes sharp and completely awake.

Aether was buried to the hilt in a sleepy Ganyu at the time — slow, lazy morning strokes while the half-qilin dozed face-down in the bedroll, soft and warm around him. He looked up mid-thrust as Xilonen planted herself directly in front of them.

“You. Adeptus. Same as yesterday. Now.”

Her voice carried none of the previous day’s flat refusal. The ember that had kept her awake all night had caught proper flame. What burned in her expression was pure creative ambition — the look of a master craftsman who had found a promising piece of raw material and could no longer walk away from it. Sex itself still held no personal heat for her, but the idea of refining his technique until it reached the standard she demanded had lit something fierce and focused behind her eyes.

She pointed at Cloud Retainer, who was only half-awake and blinking at the sudden noise.

“I watched you handle her. It was competent. It was not refined. You’re going to do it again, and this time you’re going to listen while I correct you. Every angle. Every change in pace. Every time you waste motion or miss a tell. I have free time and I intend to use it making that cock of yours actually worth the reputation it drags around.”

Ganyu made a small, confused sound as Aether slowly pulled out of her. Xilonen didn’t even glance at the wet sound or the half-qilin’s nude body. Her entire attention was locked on the problem she had decided to solve.

Xilonen was not merely a good teacher.

She was extraordinary.

Every correction landed with perfect clarity — never too harsh, never vague. When he adjusted correctly she gave short, precise praise that somehow carried more weight than any moan. When he missed a tell or wasted a fraction of motion she simply restated the point with a different example until it clicked. She saw everything: the micro-shift of a woman’s breathing, the exact second a clench meant “deeper” instead of “harder,” the difference between a peak that would leave someone satisfied and one that would leave them ruined for the rest of the day.

Aether followed every instruction to the letter.

For the first time since arriving in Teyvat someone was actually teaching him. Everything he had done before had been pure instinct refined by repetition and the occasional overwhelming example — Yae Miko had shown him the outer edges of what was possible when they broke Ei together, but she had never bothered with fundamentals or deliberate refinement. Xilonen started from the ground up and worked outward with infinite patience, fully in her element.

They moved seamlessly from Cloud Retainer to the others.

Rosaria. Lisa. Yelan. Ganyu. Shenhe. Each woman became a living lesson in preference and response. Xilonen directed him through their bodies like a master smith guiding a promising apprentice through increasingly complex pieces. The rest of the pride stayed silent, watching with open curiosity, not daring to interrupt the flow of instruction.

Aether was exactly the kind of student she preferred: quick to adjust, zero ego, no unnecessary questions, and immediate clarification requests when something didn’t land the first time.

By the time they reached Dehya the lessons had grown finer and more specific. Xilonen described a particular difference between Tumbling and Rolling— something confuseing enough that Aether’s brows furrowed. He tried twice. The result was good, but not the exact effect she was aiming for.

Xilonen clicked her tongue once.

Then, with the same casual motion she might use to set down a finished tool, she hooked her thumbs into her shorts, pushed them down her legs, and kicked them aside. She sat back on the edge of a low workbench, spread her thighs without a trace of seduction or self-consciousness, and nodded at the space between them.

“Come here. I’ll show you what difference it makes.”

There was still no personal lust in her eyes — only the focused fire of a craftsman who had decided the clearest way to demonstrate a technique was to put the material in the student’s hands directly.