"I let you," cascades out between spills of narrow exhalation, slim and starved, skinned like prize quarry. Flickers and sparks of heat, and the trick, the true gift is surrender to Wei Ying's touch, clandestine, to the whispers of his qi's intrusion. The body knows its old truths, that this is energy uncleansed, tarnished for all years and death have filtered out the root of death dark and deadened things charcoal, and the smear of their mark indelible from Wei Ying's own soul. What was Lan Wangji before revulsion? Only soft, watery eyes and porcelain cheeks and knees bent at his mother's doors, unyielding, and perfect calligraphy spelling out gratitude and regrets.
He forces himself tame, rise and fall and the snake's undulation of his chest, in-out-in-out-clear, accepting Wei Ying's talismans, his heat. The start of his healing, should it come, when it comes, because when has brilliance excused itself of Wei Ying? The Patriarch is for the stretching silences, the nursing of corpses, the mothering of mute and deaf and shapeless children, for miracles like sand spilled between fingertips, like the white river-run pebbles that toss and flinch and ricochet down the garden path, that hit the root of the tower's clutching inner walls, ivory reshaped in a kaleidoscope of refracted colour.
Briefly, he keeps himself sane with the cruelty of voyeurism: with watching the dragon's body braid another loop, a circle imperfect. They have crowned the creature with ash and smoke and cinder. Above their heads, wisps clutter and curl.
"It is beautiful," he says, and sobs, once, but it comes like wet scratch, chaffing. He is tired, bone tired, gristle and cartilage and the white elasticity that weaves long legs between limbs. He is part and particle and tissue. His hand spoils the shallow lines of Wei Ying's knot, as if disbelieving that the deed, in its stillness, is done. His fingers come red, dripping. And he remembers, distantly, the blood that divides his palm is his own, thin on his wrist, glistened when he wipes it tacky on Wei Ying's mouth now, in passing. They will not kill the dragon on this day. So pledged.
( They say: feed a hunting hound raw meat and blood freshly spilled. It will grow a taste for it. )
He rises with the moat waters that pummel back down in an arc depraved by violence. Wei Ying, who has no core, but intends to heal him, who had the qi to spare for talisman — Wei Ying needs no help up.
"A count of a hundred, before I give chase?" A trifle to tease Wei Ying with a head start up the stairs. Only polite.
no subject
He forces himself tame, rise and fall and the snake's undulation of his chest, in-out-in-out-clear, accepting Wei Ying's talismans, his heat. The start of his healing, should it come, when it comes, because when has brilliance excused itself of Wei Ying? The Patriarch is for the stretching silences, the nursing of corpses, the mothering of mute and deaf and shapeless children, for miracles like sand spilled between fingertips, like the white river-run pebbles that toss and flinch and ricochet down the garden path, that hit the root of the tower's clutching inner walls, ivory reshaped in a kaleidoscope of refracted colour.
Briefly, he keeps himself sane with the cruelty of voyeurism: with watching the dragon's body braid another loop, a circle imperfect. They have crowned the creature with ash and smoke and cinder. Above their heads, wisps clutter and curl.
"It is beautiful," he says, and sobs, once, but it comes like wet scratch, chaffing. He is tired, bone tired, gristle and cartilage and the white elasticity that weaves long legs between limbs. He is part and particle and tissue. His hand spoils the shallow lines of Wei Ying's knot, as if disbelieving that the deed, in its stillness, is done. His fingers come red, dripping. And he remembers, distantly, the blood that divides his palm is his own, thin on his wrist, glistened when he wipes it tacky on Wei Ying's mouth now, in passing. They will not kill the dragon on this day. So pledged.
( They say: feed a hunting hound raw meat and blood freshly spilled. It will grow a taste for it. )
He rises with the moat waters that pummel back down in an arc depraved by violence. Wei Ying, who has no core, but intends to heal him, who had the qi to spare for talisman — Wei Ying needs no help up.
"A count of a hundred, before I give chase?" A trifle to tease Wei Ying with a head start up the stairs. Only polite.