[ The incorrigible error: the lakes men's gait. Easy, languid, long stride. Drawled, like the run of their mouths, soft and breezy. High contrast to the chirps and trills of Gusu Lan in their silent, secret dialect.
Fettered to Yunmeng, where men cosset the act of doing — not the results of Qinghe, the appearance of Lanling, the legacy of Cloud Recesses. Where they walk to caper, speak to yowl, breathe to live, with reckless, self-satisfied abandon. In the chaos of the Imperious, that manner is enough. Among wisps and smoke and shadow, twined, and the loud viscera of arson paints — the pain and panic and rustle, of wood, knelt down.
Up, Hanguang-Jun, in the night, go up: to the captain's rooms, where personal effects went looted. Recover them, for the captives given their liberty. An easy enough task; he struggles. Wrist deep in blood-letting, the oils of tumbled braziers, the syrupy, ashen brew of salt water and fish drippings. Hand, easy and gliding on the rail — grip staggered, when he rises on deck, moon cataracted and shapes smeared in bated dark, but for the striking, gelid difference of silvered scales, glistened eyes.
Sirens descend on the ship, as much as they swim. One crawls, over the deck.
What good are eyes, then? Burn them. He sees: a man of Wei Ying's posture, his pace, the breadth of his narrow back, open to the sudden swipe of siren claws. Instinct, then Bichen, then the swing. By the time Lan Wangji recovers balance, raises his sword from where she's struck, returns weight to his back leg, he knows the scent wrong. Canine — never speak the word — even in fire, in drench of salt. The siren falls fairly: bisected, diagonally, from the obscene mound of her bare breast down below where her pelvis should have ended. A clean strike. Were this the training grounds, Lan Wangji would watch the clear, mechanical tumble of her body, halved, rolled at his feet, and absorb the thrum of well-earned satisfaction that two parts so surgically divided could, with the proper stitch work, marry again in a post-mortem whole.
Blessings unto Gusu Lan: Lan Wangji slaughters well.
You wreck senseless carnage even better, don't you? He breathes, but the dead only speak the qin's clever tongue, and impatience courses him, river-wide, electric. Beady, the siren's stare comes empty from the floor. He takes the knee, eel-slick, and eases the iced translucence of her lids shut, tongue clicks of splashing water licking at the swaying vessel, while somewhere, around and below, and by the piers, each man is urged to faster movement.
And he sees again: firm cut of the jaw, stab of the cheek. Gaze, owlish and long, like a benison sword. So many nuances of difference could never paint Wei Ying. Wangji need not look again to know him — draws up, whites beside him, Bichen pointed to the remains of the mermaid assailant. ]
A bride for Jiang Wanyin. [ And has Lan Wangji, chief cultivator, not done well? Found a woman, the one alone, who'll have this wretch of a man and splayed her at his feet? Dead, but they have this debt between them. Honoured, honoured well. ] May your union last a hundred years.
[ He finds he is, unexpectedly, shivered. Ache of it all, of strain and poorly tamed frustration — to know decades come, and gone, and this confusion still lingers, this likeness between the man who deserved the world and the one who was gifted it, that Lan Wangji's intimate knowledge of both cannot erode.
You move alike. One breath, and he curses both. Wei Ying will learn. Better to walk as a beggar than as his brother. Better he cripple himself. Better Jiang Wanyin lose the leg first. ]
wild... cardin' along...
Fettered to Yunmeng, where men cosset the act of doing — not the results of Qinghe, the appearance of Lanling, the legacy of Cloud Recesses. Where they walk to caper, speak to yowl, breathe to live, with reckless, self-satisfied abandon. In the chaos of the Imperious, that manner is enough. Among wisps and smoke and shadow, twined, and the loud viscera of arson paints — the pain and panic and rustle, of wood, knelt down.
Up, Hanguang-Jun, in the night, go up: to the captain's rooms, where personal effects went looted. Recover them, for the captives given their liberty. An easy enough task; he struggles. Wrist deep in blood-letting, the oils of tumbled braziers, the syrupy, ashen brew of salt water and fish drippings. Hand, easy and gliding on the rail — grip staggered, when he rises on deck, moon cataracted and shapes smeared in bated dark, but for the striking, gelid difference of silvered scales, glistened eyes.
Sirens descend on the ship, as much as they swim. One crawls, over the deck.
What good are eyes, then? Burn them. He sees: a man of Wei Ying's posture, his pace, the breadth of his narrow back, open to the sudden swipe of siren claws. Instinct, then Bichen, then the swing. By the time Lan Wangji recovers balance, raises his sword from where she's struck, returns weight to his back leg, he knows the scent wrong. Canine — never speak the word — even in fire, in drench of salt. The siren falls fairly: bisected, diagonally, from the obscene mound of her bare breast down below where her pelvis should have ended. A clean strike. Were this the training grounds, Lan Wangji would watch the clear, mechanical tumble of her body, halved, rolled at his feet, and absorb the thrum of well-earned satisfaction that two parts so surgically divided could, with the proper stitch work, marry again in a post-mortem whole.
Blessings unto Gusu Lan: Lan Wangji slaughters well.
You wreck senseless carnage even better, don't you? He breathes, but the dead only speak the qin's clever tongue, and impatience courses him, river-wide, electric. Beady, the siren's stare comes empty from the floor. He takes the knee, eel-slick, and eases the iced translucence of her lids shut, tongue clicks of splashing water licking at the swaying vessel, while somewhere, around and below, and by the piers, each man is urged to faster movement.
And he sees again: firm cut of the jaw, stab of the cheek. Gaze, owlish and long, like a benison sword. So many nuances of difference could never paint Wei Ying. Wangji need not look again to know him — draws up, whites beside him, Bichen pointed to the remains of the mermaid assailant. ]
A bride for Jiang Wanyin. [ And has Lan Wangji, chief cultivator, not done well? Found a woman, the one alone, who'll have this wretch of a man and splayed her at his feet? Dead, but they have this debt between them. Honoured, honoured well. ] May your union last a hundred years.
[ He finds he is, unexpectedly, shivered. Ache of it all, of strain and poorly tamed frustration — to know decades come, and gone, and this confusion still lingers, this likeness between the man who deserved the world and the one who was gifted it, that Lan Wangji's intimate knowledge of both cannot erode.
You move alike. One breath, and he curses both. Wei Ying will learn. Better to walk as a beggar than as his brother. Better he cripple himself. Better Jiang Wanyin lose the leg first. ]