That awkward moment when one's unknown and unacknowledged husband crashes down unannouned beside you, mounted by another (dead) woman.
The banquet halls, first. The witch, her wails harrowed, and the clasp of her hands, all claw, and Lan Wangji secure in his step first, devouring heartbeats and blinks of distance — in a fury of dappled light and bright white sound and obstacles to be jumped and overcome, he seized her in a plunge, Bichen at the ready. Nearly stabbed the witch, wet flinched red line of his mark splattering across the air. Only he too pursued it, deflected and overthrown by a last-minute spell of levitation, and it was accident, first, that Eleven's spare wire still lived bound to his hand, that it caught the witch's limbs in fast fettering, so she yet followed him down, in his fast fall past the balcony's ledge.
A long plunge, scratch of ice tarnishing his hands, his cheek. Lan Wangji caged her, brought the rattling bones of her in his hands like a lover, for all she screamed and bit down his shoulder with hound's fangs, ragged him. Better if she knows their fates bound, than that she should extricate herself and wish another wind's curse upon him, throw him once more at distance.
He expects hurt, dark waters, ice careening, like swords between his ribs. They break fall sooner: the dragon, coiling, crushing the tower, repelled by the aches of returned momentum, and the witch startles then, feels the slick wet of its scales beneath and eases, its mimicry of breath turned staccato, wretched and demure — water yet soothes her damnation. Wangji's back absorbing the brunt of the fall, pain reverberates from spine to limb to the tips of them, his curling fingers, and he stirs to topple the dead woman, only to find her stronger for her yearning for relief — her claws catching both his wrists over his head. Afar, Bichen sleeps too distantly discarded between the dragon's scales to answer her master's summon, and the witch's breath is chilling miasma, dark as the flapping folds of her scorched skin, when she hisses at him with an empty show of teeth.
Salvation wears many shapes. Today, barely glimpsed from the corner of Lan Wangji's manic gaze, too few layers. Beauty and death become the Patriarch, always in strange conspiracy.
And Wangji offers, by way of reedy greeting, between the gravely grit of his teeth, "Wei Ying."
Perhaps... a... hand with this... fair maiden that straddles second master Lan with every intention to bear down the bite of her needle-prickling teeth? A foot? A seductively splayed ankle?
dragon flight
The banquet halls, first. The witch, her wails harrowed, and the clasp of her hands, all claw, and Lan Wangji secure in his step first, devouring heartbeats and blinks of distance — in a fury of dappled light and bright white sound and obstacles to be jumped and overcome, he seized her in a plunge, Bichen at the ready. Nearly stabbed the witch, wet flinched red line of his mark splattering across the air. Only he too pursued it, deflected and overthrown by a last-minute spell of levitation, and it was accident, first, that Eleven's spare wire still lived bound to his hand, that it caught the witch's limbs in fast fettering, so she yet followed him down, in his fast fall past the balcony's ledge.
A long plunge, scratch of ice tarnishing his hands, his cheek. Lan Wangji caged her, brought the rattling bones of her in his hands like a lover, for all she screamed and bit down his shoulder with hound's fangs, ragged him. Better if she knows their fates bound, than that she should extricate herself and wish another wind's curse upon him, throw him once more at distance.
He expects hurt, dark waters, ice careening, like swords between his ribs. They break fall sooner: the dragon, coiling, crushing the tower, repelled by the aches of returned momentum, and the witch startles then, feels the slick wet of its scales beneath and eases, its mimicry of breath turned staccato, wretched and demure — water yet soothes her damnation. Wangji's back absorbing the brunt of the fall, pain reverberates from spine to limb to the tips of them, his curling fingers, and he stirs to topple the dead woman, only to find her stronger for her yearning for relief — her claws catching both his wrists over his head. Afar, Bichen sleeps too distantly discarded between the dragon's scales to answer her master's summon, and the witch's breath is chilling miasma, dark as the flapping folds of her scorched skin, when she hisses at him with an empty show of teeth.
Salvation wears many shapes. Today, barely glimpsed from the corner of Lan Wangji's manic gaze, too few layers. Beauty and death become the Patriarch, always in strange conspiracy.
And Wangji offers, by way of reedy greeting, between the gravely grit of his teeth, "Wei Ying."
Perhaps... a... hand with this... fair maiden that straddles second master Lan with every intention to bear down the bite of her needle-prickling teeth? A foot? A seductively splayed ankle?