( Organised chaos, storm contained in the blemish of uprooted bowls. This is Wei Ying, ink smear on fingertips after exquisite calligraphy, a mistake of discipline's own omission. Follow, and Lan Wangji drifts after him, step careful until his pace poisons with the gutting inevitability of failure, until his knee knocks the bird bone legs of a table, slanting. Already, he suspects a whisper, a breeze, an insinuation of weight will collapse it — but Wei Ying has made honoured choice, and the wooden tiles sneer under Lan Wangji's feet, and to leave the girl-bone-fox as she is, suspended in his keep, they might yet both fall down.
He decides he hesitated once, sixteen years before, enough by a rooftop to bide him another man's lifetime. He cannot play the same hand once more. Ring and ring and round and poised, the bells of the bride's bracelets chatter, shrill, when he descends her, cloth and sharp-pointed bone, to sit the table — flinching, when the dark of the wood threatens to spill, and the floors quake, and Lan Wangji readies, he is ever ready to capture — but needs not.
At the last moment, he relinquishes a kitchen cloth, repurposed to bridge and stitch where the fox's marital veils had broken, when a blade shrieked and groaned to find her absorbed snout. She is cleansed of mortal coil, supine in the stale air of a room paralysed by anticipation. Time waters dust into grease. He feels it thickened between his fingertips, turned ash where it dances carelessly on Wei Ying's lashes, to tease the white of his gaunt cheek. The bruises beneath his eyes, the mean set of his jaws, and he murmurs: )
You do not —
( Sleep, but the howls of a stray dog tatter the air, and the house growls back in tired quake. The foundations, Lan Wangji knows without want or need for the knowing, will not keep.
Of course, it cannot be otherwise: the curse of fear runs grave-deep. He pivots to find Wei Ying, seeping like dark water to fill the negative spaces of whatever furnitures will lair and hide him. He is frail, fragile. So much of him is Yiling, it is tempting to presume he must be as the land, hostile, hard, stalwart.
Wangji's headband unravels like snake's skin on cold stone — harrowingly inert. He spreads it taut, when he steps behind Wei Ying and introduces it, like reins to a horse, before sliding it over Wei Ying's eyes, yet to tighten. Work sight unseeing, elude your dread.
Once, Wei Ying asked the privilege of wearing it for archery. Let him bask in it now. )
The silence of our gardens screams. ( By way of nothing. ) Do not neglect your duties to stifle it, after.
( There are worse ways to invite a man to your infinitely more lavish home away from hounds' reach, he supposes. And yet, fewer protect Wei Ying's dignity. )
no subject
He decides he hesitated once, sixteen years before, enough by a rooftop to bide him another man's lifetime. He cannot play the same hand once more. Ring and ring and round and poised, the bells of the bride's bracelets chatter, shrill, when he descends her, cloth and sharp-pointed bone, to sit the table — flinching, when the dark of the wood threatens to spill, and the floors quake, and Lan Wangji readies, he is ever ready to capture — but needs not.
At the last moment, he relinquishes a kitchen cloth, repurposed to bridge and stitch where the fox's marital veils had broken, when a blade shrieked and groaned to find her absorbed snout. She is cleansed of mortal coil, supine in the stale air of a room paralysed by anticipation. Time waters dust into grease. He feels it thickened between his fingertips, turned ash where it dances carelessly on Wei Ying's lashes, to tease the white of his gaunt cheek. The bruises beneath his eyes, the mean set of his jaws, and he murmurs: )
You do not —
( Sleep, but the howls of a stray dog tatter the air, and the house growls back in tired quake. The foundations, Lan Wangji knows without want or need for the knowing, will not keep.
Of course, it cannot be otherwise: the curse of fear runs grave-deep. He pivots to find Wei Ying, seeping like dark water to fill the negative spaces of whatever furnitures will lair and hide him. He is frail, fragile. So much of him is Yiling, it is tempting to presume he must be as the land, hostile, hard, stalwart.
Wangji's headband unravels like snake's skin on cold stone — harrowingly inert. He spreads it taut, when he steps behind Wei Ying and introduces it, like reins to a horse, before sliding it over Wei Ying's eyes, yet to tighten. Work sight unseeing, elude your dread.
Once, Wei Ying asked the privilege of wearing it for archery. Let him bask in it now. )
The silence of our gardens screams. ( By way of nothing. ) Do not neglect your duties to stifle it, after.
( There are worse ways to invite a man to your infinitely more lavish home away from hounds' reach, he supposes. And yet, fewer protect Wei Ying's dignity. )