[ It is a simple thing to be alone in each room with Wei Ying — to know the world a distant, startling, scratching complication.
The intimacy of focus dilutes itself with Jin Guangyao. Bichen stays within grasp. The light of the banquet hall narrows. Clinked, glasses collide in merrymaking, past Lan Wangji's horizon. He will be heard, lupine ears of gossipmongers attentive. So be it. So be it. ]
I would not give water to your grave.
[ Not to spit it, not to defile it. Not to leave it, barren in wait of the elements. He knows what became of flesh and splintered bones, of Jin Guangyao's silhouette, shrouded in the courtesies yet afforded to Lanling: were a war not at risk, incineration would have sufficed to meet brother's humble, nostalgic requirements.
Lan Wangji would have set his body before vultures and called the deed done — would have fettered him in mountain, where travellers need not pass, and taken upon himself the blasphemy of removing his flesh-binds, so the spirit might stir and wake and wonder, endlessly, plangently entrapped. ]
I do not kill you where you stand, for the land's mercy.
[ The merchant, a gravelly, nasal, cavernous voice: the warning that all who perish in this world feed the undead that have oppressed it. Lan Wangji will not add Jin Guangyao to these burdens. ]
no subject
The intimacy of focus dilutes itself with Jin Guangyao. Bichen stays within grasp. The light of the banquet hall narrows. Clinked, glasses collide in merrymaking, past Lan Wangji's horizon. He will be heard, lupine ears of gossipmongers attentive. So be it. So be it. ]
I would not give water to your grave.
[ Not to spit it, not to defile it. Not to leave it, barren in wait of the elements. He knows what became of flesh and splintered bones, of Jin Guangyao's silhouette, shrouded in the courtesies yet afforded to Lanling: were a war not at risk, incineration would have sufficed to meet brother's humble, nostalgic requirements.
Lan Wangji would have set his body before vultures and called the deed done — would have fettered him in mountain, where travellers need not pass, and taken upon himself the blasphemy of removing his flesh-binds, so the spirit might stir and wake and wonder, endlessly, plangently entrapped. ]
I do not kill you where you stand, for the land's mercy.
[ The merchant, a gravelly, nasal, cavernous voice: the warning that all who perish in this world feed the undead that have oppressed it. Lan Wangji will not add Jin Guangyao to these burdens. ]