( Time mourns itself, drip by drip of tearing. He hears the wet of the bride's waters, her spittle, her blood, her pleura danced on his blade like quicksilver, singeing. Hears Bichen's damp kiss, like a mother's night greeting to a fevered child.
Sees her slip before him, parts remembering the whole through the negative space that surrounds them. Reading its print like fortunes in tea leaves.
He does not ask himself when the killing is mercy or butchery or murder, when words wrench from his mouth like powders from a field cannon. When he is cruel, or he is godly, or he licks with her red the cloying oil sheen from his sword.
Behind him, the body saturates the floor, first with her flooding, then with her claws, when she rises again, then her fangs, when he learns to cut her hands at each occasion, her her head — and she still wakes for all of it, seeks herself out amid her particles, and he kills, how he kills, he was made for this, white and sky-blued and a scholar.
When he crawls, candid and pale-eyed and a little lost in the way of dazed children after their first taste of watered wine, he does not ask the stranger if he wears the better part of the bride's blood, or if it is his sweat that curls his silk hems, white like the tinnitus that rings in his ear.
He has done much here. The door rings shut behind him. He has achieved nothing at all. )
It is done. You may... ( Whatever she was, this man's bride, his intended. Lan Wangji's exhaustion wears him like a parchment skin. ) It is done.
no subject
Sees her slip before him, parts remembering the whole through the negative space that surrounds them. Reading its print like fortunes in tea leaves.
He does not ask himself when the killing is mercy or butchery or murder, when words wrench from his mouth like powders from a field cannon. When he is cruel, or he is godly, or he licks with her red the cloying oil sheen from his sword.
Behind him, the body saturates the floor, first with her flooding, then with her claws, when she rises again, then her fangs, when he learns to cut her hands at each occasion, her her head — and she still wakes for all of it, seeks herself out amid her particles, and he kills, how he kills, he was made for this, white and sky-blued and a scholar.
When he crawls, candid and pale-eyed and a little lost in the way of dazed children after their first taste of watered wine, he does not ask the stranger if he wears the better part of the bride's blood, or if it is his sweat that curls his silk hems, white like the tinnitus that rings in his ear.
He has done much here. The door rings shut behind him. He has achieved nothing at all. )
It is done. You may... ( Whatever she was, this man's bride, his intended. Lan Wangji's exhaustion wears him like a parchment skin. ) It is done.