He stills like fresh snow, like glacier. Stills, and the waters of his fear thaw the insides of him, a coreless cave. Stills and begs his gaze sharp, and — ...laughs.

"Elder," and what is this, but humour, the bitterest ginseng twitching his mouth's corners down. Elder, ancient, confined in the glasswork of a diminutive body, house to frustrations. "You would trust not trust this to your sisters."

Why, then, ask if Lan Wangji — negotiating the displacements of mass and air and his flesh surrendering a stand — would trouble his one son's heart in kind? If these are his last days, let them be lived like the splendour of sunset. Let him breathe.

His nature betrays itself — walks first, the sea of people splintering itself to win his passage. Let it be so, arrogantly brokered.

"Come. Sickness calls to sickness." Stale air, the perpetuity of desperate wet eyes, and distantly, a fevered groan. To persist here is to succumb to the despair Five would spit upon, creature of cruelties. "You intend to search the kitchens."

For trace, perhaps, if not of the poison, then of the affiliations of the man named criminal. Wangji thinks, however wavered his balance, he grasps the spider silk that weaves these inquiries, whole.