They are hunted, like flat-bellied foxes hidding beneath spumes of bracken, as if they're filth-drenched things, or sullen scavengers. Wangji's foot slides deep in the wet of squelching dirt, and the innards of the sloped gully open for him, the woman's shadow warm and deep on his back, in his wake. He stumbles, but balance settles; at the last moment, he does not fall.
He knows the way gasped breath arcs and tapers like a nail's scratch against the artifice of sorcered silence. The woods wait. They tighten and broaden around them, like the syncopation of an aged heart's pulse. He thinks, if a pin were to drop now, the crackle beneath his foot would echo like hits at the root and marrow of every tree across the river shorelines.
"Normalcy eludes us," this, rushed behind him. And whom did he take under his stewardship? He knows this little: the strange coppers of her hair, the dried reds of battering on her limbs. A woman, for there were no cripples or children within reach. Grip on his sword hilt steely, Bichen's silvered edge sleeps in fetters; Lan Wangji did not bleed the woman's captor to win her safety. But they are friends of fate under empty, sleet skies, and so they burden each other with company.
What is her name? Irrelevant. Instead, reedy:
"What ails you?" Her limbs, perhaps, her back, her bones — worse, he knows, the possibility that the damp of lone captive nights might have spread into pores and lichens of malady, eating of her lungs. Sickness is the way of Wen Qing; he has no cures to offer, only the span of his back, bowed, as her sedan, should the need strike. Better, if she suffers only of bruises or joints, breaking.
02
He knows the way gasped breath arcs and tapers like a nail's scratch against the artifice of sorcered silence. The woods wait. They tighten and broaden around them, like the syncopation of an aged heart's pulse. He thinks, if a pin were to drop now, the crackle beneath his foot would echo like hits at the root and marrow of every tree across the river shorelines.
"Normalcy eludes us," this, rushed behind him. And whom did he take under his stewardship? He knows this little: the strange coppers of her hair, the dried reds of battering on her limbs. A woman, for there were no cripples or children within reach. Grip on his sword hilt steely, Bichen's silvered edge sleeps in fetters; Lan Wangji did not bleed the woman's captor to win her safety. But they are friends of fate under empty, sleet skies, and so they burden each other with company.
What is her name? Irrelevant. Instead, reedy:
"What ails you?" Her limbs, perhaps, her back, her bones — worse, he knows, the possibility that the damp of lone captive nights might have spread into pores and lichens of malady, eating of her lungs. Sickness is the way of Wen Qing; he has no cures to offer, only the span of his back, bowed, as her sedan, should the need strike. Better, if she suffers only of bruises or joints, breaking.