( This is the way of it, the game, its pleasantries: that Lan Wangji should both precede the pour with delicacy and crown it with the slight of his bony hand, losing the hold of his sleeve just so — until, falling, it shields, when his wrist turns, the cessation. He stalls, pretending still to deposit drink in the man's raised cup, before he pulls the flask away and begs the bride's leave to attend her. She gives it, snout a confusion of false and nascent geometries, fur wispy then flattened, undecided.
She cannot be faulted for knowing little of who and what she is, when Lan Wangji, veteran of ghosts, too struggles to name her. A relic, perhaps, sorcered debris. He watches her hesitate, misremembering if these bones are her bones, if these veils pertain to her body or merely lend it purpose. She is beautiful, the man says. She accepts it, eyes bleary, air confounded.
Her cup, he fills to quiet brim. Perhaps there is unkindness in this, the sitting of odds like bricks on fortress walls, against her. This work too needs done, white smile on ghost of Jin Guangyao grinning broad before his muddied thoughts.
Lan Wangji, perennial wingman
She cannot be faulted for knowing little of who and what she is, when Lan Wangji, veteran of ghosts, too struggles to name her. A relic, perhaps, sorcered debris. He watches her hesitate, misremembering if these bones are her bones, if these veils pertain to her body or merely lend it purpose. She is beautiful, the man says. She accepts it, eyes bleary, air confounded.
Her cup, he fills to quiet brim. Perhaps there is unkindness in this, the sitting of odds like bricks on fortress walls, against her. This work too needs done, white smile on ghost of Jin Guangyao grinning broad before his muddied thoughts.
Then, whispered when he leans into the man: )
Do not trifle with the dead. Show sobriety.