"Done." A hollow promise around a missing core, but warmed with conviction, which had never been missing. Only the lack of awareness, the lack of mind to question, are there loquats in Taravast? No answer to that, only the now, and Lan Zhan here, heat and chill to Wei Wuxian's heart in turns.
Lan Zhan, armed by sword and chord, and the pointed words, the way his eyes lift to scan the forest where he'd seen the movement, and he reaches out, cutting off his song on a note that lingers between them, the three of them in tableau: the twice living dead, the living claimed dead, and the living reaching for death.
Those hands, he's determined, he'll cord around his own shoulders and into the bones of them, through the muscle, through to his marrow, before he lets them find death reaching back, entwining fingers like some sonorous promise.
"Don't fall behind."
Don't fall. Is that not an echo of a wish and a cry that scars Lan Zhan in ways deeper than the knotted, healed mass of lacerations across his back. A reminder, in turn, of more gifts, of healing salves, of eased aches in a land now more temperate than it had been, and here he is, mask lowered, and lowered, so the physical and the mental bare in unequal turns his concern and trust.
"I trust you."
Then he moves, swift and sure, his speed the familiar thing it had once been. Qi, conserved and used to best effect; he'd had time to perfect it, in the ways which required minimums, but not the swallowing greed of spiritual blades, forever parted. A universe away, and he still feels Suibian's sorrow like it is his own, and he's had enough of sorrows, burrowed into his marrow. He moves, and the dead woman jerks her head around, jerks her arms, and crumples at a knee that doesn't move as it should, her joints aligned but loose, not coordinated the way they would have been when pain warned against such unwise contortions.
A flutter of silent wings, perching on a tree. Wei Wuxian locks eyes on the dark shadow of one bird, or two, or the illusion of them, and braces as he moves from ground to tree, trunk to trunk a matter of symphonic movement, ignoring all but the tagged truth: cure.
Those feathers, sweet and soft and silence, a cure for a poison that could only be birthed here, to carry its cure in familiar and forbidden magics. To carry a cure in ancient things, and in the threadbare, chased to the ends of a world and left as one nesting pair, for whom he feels both overwhelming sadness and affection at once.
The bird, or birds, or the trick of light that becomes them, turn luminous eyes his way, and the woman in death is left to trade awareness for them, the one who fled with that taste so familiar the tongue could almost recollect it, and the one who burned like hazy, muggy sunlight, trapped in layers of muted daze.
you are a kindness of ravens to my heart
Lan Zhan, armed by sword and chord, and the pointed words, the way his eyes lift to scan the forest where he'd seen the movement, and he reaches out, cutting off his song on a note that lingers between them, the three of them in tableau: the twice living dead, the living claimed dead, and the living reaching for death.
Those hands, he's determined, he'll cord around his own shoulders and into the bones of them, through the muscle, through to his marrow, before he lets them find death reaching back, entwining fingers like some sonorous promise.
"Don't fall behind."
Don't fall. Is that not an echo of a wish and a cry that scars Lan Zhan in ways deeper than the knotted, healed mass of lacerations across his back. A reminder, in turn, of more gifts, of healing salves, of eased aches in a land now more temperate than it had been, and here he is, mask lowered, and lowered, so the physical and the mental bare in unequal turns his concern and trust.
"I trust you."
Then he moves, swift and sure, his speed the familiar thing it had once been. Qi, conserved and used to best effect; he'd had time to perfect it, in the ways which required minimums, but not the swallowing greed of spiritual blades, forever parted. A universe away, and he still feels Suibian's sorrow like it is his own, and he's had enough of sorrows, burrowed into his marrow. He moves, and the dead woman jerks her head around, jerks her arms, and crumples at a knee that doesn't move as it should, her joints aligned but loose, not coordinated the way they would have been when pain warned against such unwise contortions.
A flutter of silent wings, perching on a tree. Wei Wuxian locks eyes on the dark shadow of one bird, or two, or the illusion of them, and braces as he moves from ground to tree, trunk to trunk a matter of symphonic movement, ignoring all but the tagged truth: cure.
Those feathers, sweet and soft and silence, a cure for a poison that could only be birthed here, to carry its cure in familiar and forbidden magics. To carry a cure in ancient things, and in the threadbare, chased to the ends of a world and left as one nesting pair, for whom he feels both overwhelming sadness and affection at once.
The bird, or birds, or the trick of light that becomes them, turn luminous eyes his way, and the woman in death is left to trade awareness for them, the one who fled with that taste so familiar the tongue could almost recollect it, and the one who burned like hazy, muggy sunlight, trapped in layers of muted daze.