[ They ache in sultry, sweltered swells of heat white and bones flesh-stripped, of toxins that wither in their blood streams like the great golden disc of summer sun waned in sea waters. What is it that healers do, when they are no longer healers, but great, gasped and fragile sacrifices, beholden to the ugly ferocity of wounds and puss and pustules they cannot render clean?
For a moment, Wangji's gaze slants, reductive: he sees Jiang Wanyin, sees Jiang Cheng, sees the tumult of his borrowed whites as a disciple arrived for the conferences of Cloud Recesses, sees the lines of his broad back like a husked yoke, sees the blasphemy of his receding pulse. Each beat is a death uttered against a gentleman's fine skin, and, arm drawn to Jiang Cheng's cheek, the sleeve mourns gravity, drifted down.
Slack-mouthed, lips dry, Lan Wangji itches to correct its course. Cannot, for eyes that watch, tentative, from a distance — what men of medicine the lord Macaluso has drawn have no appetite for the eccentricities of two errant patients. Too often, the condemned lend themselves to violence. They mean to have peace among them, with incense of sandalwood mellowing the cloying air, the warmth of the room dispersing the bleached notes of strain from slowly, ambitiously fatigued bodies.
Peace, and they? The dogs of war. If there is duel called after, Lan Wangji will not deny this: knelt like a courtesan, he reaches first — draws Jiang Cheng's hand from its perch between the bookends of his loose, lulled fingers, with the same reverence once reserved to presenting the discipline instrument to the grandmaster.
Look, and learn, as a sect whole learned, the way of humility: when the second son of the main house strips of himself rank and decorum. When he sequesters, here, now, the stretch of Jiang Cheng's hand and lowers his head to the electric hum of Zidian, the pallor of the jewellery against the white of Wangji's headband, knuckles too near his lips for comfort. A supplicant of the lowest order.
Sunder him, then, if he is possessed. Make ruin of him. ]
I have a son.
[ Forgive him, brother, for he cannot argue but intends to sin, and you must prove complicit. Forgive him, for he has cause in the dark eyes of a boy war-tried, who need not taste the second, extended death of a father. ]
no subject
For a moment, Wangji's gaze slants, reductive: he sees Jiang Wanyin, sees Jiang Cheng, sees the tumult of his borrowed whites as a disciple arrived for the conferences of Cloud Recesses, sees the lines of his broad back like a husked yoke, sees the blasphemy of his receding pulse. Each beat is a death uttered against a gentleman's fine skin, and, arm drawn to Jiang Cheng's cheek, the sleeve mourns gravity, drifted down.
Slack-mouthed, lips dry, Lan Wangji itches to correct its course. Cannot, for eyes that watch, tentative, from a distance — what men of medicine the lord Macaluso has drawn have no appetite for the eccentricities of two errant patients. Too often, the condemned lend themselves to violence. They mean to have peace among them, with incense of sandalwood mellowing the cloying air, the warmth of the room dispersing the bleached notes of strain from slowly, ambitiously fatigued bodies.
Peace, and they? The dogs of war. If there is duel called after, Lan Wangji will not deny this: knelt like a courtesan, he reaches first — draws Jiang Cheng's hand from its perch between the bookends of his loose, lulled fingers, with the same reverence once reserved to presenting the discipline instrument to the grandmaster.
Look, and learn, as a sect whole learned, the way of humility: when the second son of the main house strips of himself rank and decorum. When he sequesters, here, now, the stretch of Jiang Cheng's hand and lowers his head to the electric hum of Zidian, the pallor of the jewellery against the white of Wangji's headband, knuckles too near his lips for comfort. A supplicant of the lowest order.
Sunder him, then, if he is possessed. Make ruin of him. ]
I have a son.
[ Forgive him, brother, for he cannot argue but intends to sin, and you must prove complicit. Forgive him, for he has cause in the dark eyes of a boy war-tried, who need not taste the second, extended death of a father. ]