#i didn't go into any of the 4.2 leaks. because i want things to be in line w canon

[mtkanna]

there's a line in the archon quest where childe mentions that he's been in an uncharacteristically bad mood. after that, he goes on to tell us about his past in the abyss--how skirk took him in as an apprentice because he awakened "it," how he'd been searching for her ever since he left... but it made me think of something else.

i don't think childe fell into the abyss, per se. i think that he fell into enkanomiya.

there are only two regional specialties to be found in enkanomiya; sea ganoderma, which are said to be linked to the dead (of which enkanomiya has many), and sango pearls, like the description of song of stillness. the kingdom in song of stillness is a maritime one, like enkanomiya would have been, and was part of the abyss--just like enkanomiya now is.

when you first open the gates, enkanomiya is in whitenight mode: as bright as the dawn, even though there is no natural light. if this is "the last story worth telling," then surely it refers to this ajax, and makes the story of the ajax one made up of every man that once bore his name.

around enkanomiya, you can find old, abandoned weapons, like swords and polearms, which bear a striking resemblance to childe's elemental constructs. there's another abyssal link in the presence of heralds.

skirk said that childe was "ever in the eye of the storm," or to put it another way: conflict would always come to him. and perhaps so too would he always be drawn to places the sun couldn't reach, and the whale of the past, something he was never meant to return to, yet defined him nonetheless...

and then! callbacks to enkanomiya can be seen everywhere. gateways within sumeru, venti mirroring the depictions of orpheus, the statues in the chasm, then the library itself mirrored in the book of revealing... i think enkanomiya has to have some deeper connections to what else is happening to teyvat, and i think childe is the perfect avenue for them.

(also, tsuyuko's line about the pull of enkanomiya mirrors a saying of mengzi's about the human spirit: “humans tend towards the good just as water runs down the hill,” which probably doesn't mean anything but i wanted to bring up anyway.)