( Bring the dead. Set them to table. Ward the walls.
He is xiandu to the sects, a young master to the Gusu Lan, an heir cultivator to errant village people, father to an honoured scion to all those who cross Sizhui's path — and a flush-eared, obedient disciple to Wei Ying. He thinks, on principle, to disagree, to dissolve his submission and substitute it for the quiet shrieks of quicksilver rebellion, waging. His fingertips would burn with the froth of carefree absolution. He brings one to his mouth, tastes the white heat of Wei Ying's absence. He had intended the loan of qi, only to —
He calls the wards, snake hiss of spells casting their net and the walls contracting, before they sprawl back.
Before him, resentment sleeps incandescent. Better, that Wei Ying should be spared the look of the girl's flesh reconnecting, muscle like tendon-vines choking the sunflower of her womb. A scholar might investigate the inevitable implications, that the life of the singular specimen can be so intrinsically connected to the potential survival of the species. In Lan Wangji's lungs, breath wars the world, savaging. He breathes — and she is crone — breathes — and she is mother — breathes — and she is maiden.
In this house, acoustics curse him. Crawl scratches and catches of whinnied snarls in his ear, whisper the jaw-jostling grind of insects at chew. He feels distanced — ambivalent, stalled want lurked inside him, immobile against the accelerated chaos of the waiting, watching landscape. He moves like overly steeped brew, dragging the dregs of his sleeves, of his gossamer, the regalia of Hanguang-Jun and Lily's sorcered paints. Beneath his hand, he entraps Wei Ying's and trails both until a swollen, young calf fills their bound grip, young flesh bouncing back like a palm slapped, like lone clapping. Drifts their touch, ankle until halfway to her knee, before academic impropriety can take the colours of defilement. Feel her, feel what you have achieved here. )
She was beautiful. ( In the way of flowers, alive for a spring's time. Then, the apology: ) And we must ruin her.
( Upstairs, in dark corridors uncrawled, a swarm of termites crowds and colludes and walks a funerary march on oil-slick, well-polished floors, back and forth, back and forth. Dripped, but Lan Wangji hears them, hears the start of inundation from open-mouthed walls, hears the house pivoting to jail from fortress.
Hears the corpse-girl scream, shrivelled like a summer storm, tearing herself in her path, making ruin of her body. The talismans are a quick indiscretion, one for each limb, pinning like thorns, and the fourth is Wei Ying's, the fourth is lent-learned, still wet with Wei Ying's thickened blood from the writing, when Lan Wangji stole it between gasps of dying candle night, on a night when privacy and possession were parts of Wei Ying's more attainable, honeyed whole. When the hostility of intrusion was laughter between friends, and how she grins, the fox-bride, shrieking, how her teeth could eat every thrashing fish of a river bank.
Before him, the guqin comes alive, unasked. The waters of its birth, his sorcery, drench the air electric. )
Wei Ying. If you have questions, now. ( If they have recourse past suppression and inevitable elimination, also now. )
no subject
He is xiandu to the sects, a young master to the Gusu Lan, an heir cultivator to errant village people, father to an honoured scion to all those who cross Sizhui's path — and a flush-eared, obedient disciple to Wei Ying. He thinks, on principle, to disagree, to dissolve his submission and substitute it for the quiet shrieks of quicksilver rebellion, waging. His fingertips would burn with the froth of carefree absolution. He brings one to his mouth, tastes the white heat of Wei Ying's absence. He had intended the loan of qi, only to —
He calls the wards, snake hiss of spells casting their net and the walls contracting, before they sprawl back.
Before him, resentment sleeps incandescent. Better, that Wei Ying should be spared the look of the girl's flesh reconnecting, muscle like tendon-vines choking the sunflower of her womb. A scholar might investigate the inevitable implications, that the life of the singular specimen can be so intrinsically connected to the potential survival of the species. In Lan Wangji's lungs, breath wars the world, savaging. He breathes — and she is crone — breathes — and she is mother — breathes — and she is maiden.
In this house, acoustics curse him. Crawl scratches and catches of whinnied snarls in his ear, whisper the jaw-jostling grind of insects at chew. He feels distanced — ambivalent, stalled want lurked inside him, immobile against the accelerated chaos of the waiting, watching landscape. He moves like overly steeped brew, dragging the dregs of his sleeves, of his gossamer, the regalia of Hanguang-Jun and Lily's sorcered paints. Beneath his hand, he entraps Wei Ying's and trails both until a swollen, young calf fills their bound grip, young flesh bouncing back like a palm slapped, like lone clapping. Drifts their touch, ankle until halfway to her knee, before academic impropriety can take the colours of defilement. Feel her, feel what you have achieved here. )
She was beautiful. ( In the way of flowers, alive for a spring's time. Then, the apology: ) And we must ruin her.
( Upstairs, in dark corridors uncrawled, a swarm of termites crowds and colludes and walks a funerary march on oil-slick, well-polished floors, back and forth, back and forth. Dripped, but Lan Wangji hears them, hears the start of inundation from open-mouthed walls, hears the house pivoting to jail from fortress.
Hears the corpse-girl scream, shrivelled like a summer storm, tearing herself in her path, making ruin of her body. The talismans are a quick indiscretion, one for each limb, pinning like thorns, and the fourth is Wei Ying's, the fourth is lent-learned, still wet with Wei Ying's thickened blood from the writing, when Lan Wangji stole it between gasps of dying candle night, on a night when privacy and possession were parts of Wei Ying's more attainable, honeyed whole. When the hostility of intrusion was laughter between friends, and how she grins, the fox-bride, shrieking, how her teeth could eat every thrashing fish of a river bank.
Before him, the guqin comes alive, unasked. The waters of its birth, his sorcery, drench the air electric. )
Wei Ying. If you have questions, now. ( If they have recourse past suppression and inevitable elimination, also now. )