Ice will claw at them, the wind will whip their faces, the cold will bombard their limbs, and gravity will reward them with dull convulsions of black and blue aches, when they hit ground like a battering ram. Plunging from a height, it aches to break the maiden-thin skins of spumed, cold water. Already, Lan Wangji's wound weeps, a widow knowing the truth of a sullen envoy's missive before his mouth's come unstitched to speak the words, when her husband's gone too long at war.
So be it. He nods, part statue, part an agglomeration of competent flesh deprived of purpose. Wei Ying will endure: this much, he doubts but understands. The most generous calculation of the tryst and its aftermath still positions Wei Ying squarely in the maws of discomfort, after. Yet, what are their choices?
Light seeps down, greyed, ill reflected by the beast's scales, like a silvered mirror poorly polished, its eye dulled. Head slipped aside, Lan Wangji fleetingly spies the sun, the ghost of his next breath exorcised with a long, careless hiss. Pain poisons him. Pain lives, where only Wei Ying's hand grasping his is not death-born.
His eyes shutter close. He calls Bichen free of her purchase, back to hand, even as the dragon begins a fresh set of turbulent shifts and turns, as it writhes and soars, great, white span of its majesty drawn in the breathtaking shapes of its serpent's head.
And Lan Wangji calls, "Now," and pulls in what a revisionist history might mercifully name a leap, but he knows, privately, to be a roll and awkward tumble, Wei Ying dragged close, and the waters a cunning, expected cruelty after white, mute anticipation —
The smell of fervour and sterility and clean, and cold assaulting his limbs like shrapnel. He hits surface before his spine acknowledges the sequence, in the intimate clicks of bones swallowing impact. Hard, and no wetness to thwart his body, only the teasing dangers of its of protrusions, of chilly slime and debris from the dust of a fallen balcony ledge. Spite and laughter, the heavens surely stretch above, amused by their folly.
They land on a lower coil of the dragon's body, more recently submerged and still carrying the frilly lace of fresh ice on its back. The creature's span is thicker here, courteously allowing them the fit of another man on each side of them. Stuttered madness writes itself in the wan filigree of algae that's saddled the dragon's back here, fainting over Wangji's wrist. He looks at it, glistened under sun's light, and tugs Wei Ying's hand, more to remember him close than to urgently draw his attention.
Lan Wangji aches. He aches. He prevails, metronome of quiet hurts confirming his existence.
"Apologies." A cough, deep and mean. "There is an art to the fall Wei Ying has better mastered."
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So be it. He nods, part statue, part an agglomeration of competent flesh deprived of purpose. Wei Ying will endure: this much, he doubts but understands. The most generous calculation of the tryst and its aftermath still positions Wei Ying squarely in the maws of discomfort, after. Yet, what are their choices?
Light seeps down, greyed, ill reflected by the beast's scales, like a silvered mirror poorly polished, its eye dulled. Head slipped aside, Lan Wangji fleetingly spies the sun, the ghost of his next breath exorcised with a long, careless hiss. Pain poisons him. Pain lives, where only Wei Ying's hand grasping his is not death-born.
His eyes shutter close. He calls Bichen free of her purchase, back to hand, even as the dragon begins a fresh set of turbulent shifts and turns, as it writhes and soars, great, white span of its majesty drawn in the breathtaking shapes of its serpent's head.
And Lan Wangji calls, "Now," and pulls in what a revisionist history might mercifully name a leap, but he knows, privately, to be a roll and awkward tumble, Wei Ying dragged close, and the waters a cunning, expected cruelty after white, mute anticipation —
The smell of fervour and sterility and clean, and cold assaulting his limbs like shrapnel. He hits surface before his spine acknowledges the sequence, in the intimate clicks of bones swallowing impact. Hard, and no wetness to thwart his body, only the teasing dangers of its of protrusions, of chilly slime and debris from the dust of a fallen balcony ledge. Spite and laughter, the heavens surely stretch above, amused by their folly.
They land on a lower coil of the dragon's body, more recently submerged and still carrying the frilly lace of fresh ice on its back. The creature's span is thicker here, courteously allowing them the fit of another man on each side of them. Stuttered madness writes itself in the wan filigree of algae that's saddled the dragon's back here, fainting over Wangji's wrist. He looks at it, glistened under sun's light, and tugs Wei Ying's hand, more to remember him close than to urgently draw his attention.
Lan Wangji aches. He aches. He prevails, metronome of quiet hurts confirming his existence.
"Apologies." A cough, deep and mean. "There is an art to the fall Wei Ying has better mastered."
Clearly, Lan Wangji has failed them.