Help eludes them, a cascade of vagaries and indignity. Antidotes. Potions. Superstition, reshaped as a last stand of animal brutality against extinction: clawing, teething, bloodying all that would propel him to an early tomb.
Arha. Hatisse. They were soulmates once. What death parts, romance and legends cannot rekindle. Learn this, if nothing else.
Beneath the mellow light of wan candle, he feels a child, feverish — overcome with the frantic exhilaration of ripping the world with his bare hands, leaving no beggarly shreds, if it is not his own to have. Healers dally, inundating the senses with astringent platters of fresh-lit incense, as if to humble the sense of smell that would wane first.
...may it be smell. He suffers from the inevitable weakness of each swordsman, dependent on sight and hearing, sister-resources only second to qi. May it be smell that dissipates —
No. Let it be nothing.
"I have a son." And the wisped translation, for ears foreign to sixteen years of grief and duty, coalesced in one human shape. A boy, now man. In all things, Wei Ying's and Wangji's better. "I shall hunt time."
Carve it, dissect it. Steal it from starved hands.
no subject
Arha. Hatisse. They were soulmates once. What death parts, romance and legends cannot rekindle. Learn this, if nothing else.
Beneath the mellow light of wan candle, he feels a child, feverish — overcome with the frantic exhilaration of ripping the world with his bare hands, leaving no beggarly shreds, if it is not his own to have. Healers dally, inundating the senses with astringent platters of fresh-lit incense, as if to humble the sense of smell that would wane first.
...may it be smell. He suffers from the inevitable weakness of each swordsman, dependent on sight and hearing, sister-resources only second to qi. May it be smell that dissipates —
No. Let it be nothing.
"I have a son." And the wisped translation, for ears foreign to sixteen years of grief and duty, coalesced in one human shape. A boy, now man. In all things, Wei Ying's and Wangji's better. "I shall hunt time."
Carve it, dissect it. Steal it from starved hands.