[ Who is this man, who has run himself dry like a well too-oft visited, now depleted? Whose core sings the unattainable, masterful perfection of practise, while his soul flickers listlessly like dying candle?
The body renounces itself. Each day, it signs its name to the same betrayal, writ in small feats: skin trades freshness, limbs stiffen, steps cripple. The senses lose their grip of the biological whetstone. Age makes fools of men, and Lan Wangji wears his years like his winters, broad-backed and steeled. What difference, then, now? Only to know the trickle of before has thickened into rivulet, and soon the stream will flood.
Beneath water, men can yet learn to breathe as fishes. Ambition seeds what nature denies. There is clatter between them: Wangji's certainty, stretching its legs, and the occasional startle of dropped cutlery and cups, nearby. Some waste time with feeding, paltry medicines, palliatives. They have heard the truth of their succour already, carved in their ears' bones. ]
If you lived poorly, die well. [ And if you perished like husk and parchment frail, let conviction fill you first, firm enough to stand. ] Die with salvation tight in hand, not strewn between fingertips.
[ He rises first. Lead, as in all things, however staggered — by example. It is, he has learned, in the nature of things: where Hanguang-Jun goes, his white ghosts follow. ]
no subject
The body renounces itself. Each day, it signs its name to the same betrayal, writ in small feats: skin trades freshness, limbs stiffen, steps cripple. The senses lose their grip of the biological whetstone. Age makes fools of men, and Lan Wangji wears his years like his winters, broad-backed and steeled. What difference, then, now? Only to know the trickle of before has thickened into rivulet, and soon the stream will flood.
Beneath water, men can yet learn to breathe as fishes. Ambition seeds what nature denies. There is clatter between them: Wangji's certainty, stretching its legs, and the occasional startle of dropped cutlery and cups, nearby. Some waste time with feeding, paltry medicines, palliatives. They have heard the truth of their succour already, carved in their ears' bones. ]
If you lived poorly, die well. [ And if you perished like husk and parchment frail, let conviction fill you first, firm enough to stand. ] Die with salvation tight in hand, not strewn between fingertips.
[ He rises first. Lead, as in all things, however staggered — by example. It is, he has learned, in the nature of things: where Hanguang-Jun goes, his white ghosts follow. ]