( Hounds howling and the moon’s long blind eye cataracted, and sun-tepid gravel twisting beneath his feet. He thinks, they are bodies of water and bodies of wells, in a mute symbiosis of form and function. Thinks, these wells have lessened like bird-boned elders with hollowed backs, and he looks at the remains of them, crawling in funerary procession. Three stumps, the fourth hardly a step — but for how a kitchen girl, snarling, trips her foot into its dirt-drowned mouth and pulls it silt-bronzed after.
Poverty sleeps here like nails gathered tight in the temples of martyrs. For his crown, village maidens crowd Lan Wangji; children chase butterflies around his sky silks. He trades alms for their stories. Listens —
And so, finds himself watchful and serpentine tonight, coiled in wait of the creature they claim as a head and body of braids. Drunks name her fair. But midnight hours silver every base metal into a mirror.
Hunt is wait is lethargy. The night yawns indifferent and moist like summer fists that clutch rain, withholding. Nothing drips past the hiccupped staccato of nightingales and the churned goading of two watch guards, walking, and the slow, pained cacophony of this young fool, coaxing his melancholy like beads loose from a shattered string.
Later, Lan Wangji will remember he hesitated. Now, with the silence spell crackling between them, Wangji watches less the man than the hunched back of the well behind him. Anticipates the candle-flickered breeze of the man’s stitched breath, but neglects it — )
( Of the distant stirring of nearby movement. He releases the silence spell — releases himself of tension — and nods at the well and the thing that peers back from it. Boo. )
well, well, weeeeeeeeeell | 295!!!!
Poverty sleeps here like nails gathered tight in the temples of martyrs. For his crown, village maidens crowd Lan Wangji; children chase butterflies around his sky silks. He trades alms for their stories. Listens —
And so, finds himself watchful and serpentine tonight, coiled in wait of the creature they claim as a head and body of braids. Drunks name her fair. But midnight hours silver every base metal into a mirror.
Hunt is wait is lethargy. The night yawns indifferent and moist like summer fists that clutch rain, withholding. Nothing drips past the hiccupped staccato of nightingales and the churned goading of two watch guards, walking, and the slow, pained cacophony of this young fool, coaxing his melancholy like beads loose from a shattered string.
Later, Lan Wangji will remember he hesitated. Now, with the silence spell crackling between them, Wangji watches less the man than the hunched back of the well behind him. Anticipates the candle-flickered breeze of the man’s stitched breath, but neglects it — )
Consider. ( You, stranger. Scratched wax, bending over bones. ) Vigilance.
( Of the distant stirring of nearby movement. He releases the silence spell — releases himself of tension — and nods at the well and the thing that peers back from it. Boo. )