( Association brings its benefits and its pitfalls, their elliptical orbit around each other paired with its own gravitational pull, it's own celestial means of altering the patterns of their movements, the inclinations of their bodies. He tilts, blinded by a ribbon with no more substance than society, tied in a manner that weighs, the tread of a feather on a bird's breast, insulating and beautiful and fragile all at once.
Beneath his hands, ah, here is the chaos he crawled through darkly, and his brow furrows, this concept of coaxing one vengeful spirit to its second birthing from the girl who had not been a mother, but is pregnant now in death with the possibility of vengeance serving an old pain, scarred tissue on the palms of hands rendering them incapable of deft motion.
Twined and twinned, they are beneath his hands, but he plays with those hands, as Lan Zhan does behind him, and he hums, both answer and beginning. Hums where music is a means of speaking, a means of tying emotion to place, of leading, cajoling, coaxing, commanding. He feels the warmth of sunlight, the ache of living, the violence of death, and to the spirit he cannot think of as a fox, he hums, then whistles.
You, you, creature of vengeance, creature who has died, spirit of curse, you. This cycle, this spinning, this sunset that rises once a year to bloody skies hung as banners overhead, painting the swollen bellies of clouds never fit to soothe your throat with their heavenly rains, to know no joys of binding bliss, to ache for them, to swallow another in that ache, to be bereft the forests and the petrichor of that land, when the rains come, when the fog hangs thick by the stream, you. For the wilds things, and the aching dens, and the cold on the bottom of one's feet, one's paws, no, he cannot think of this as a fox, cannot think to where this is, but still knows a predator. Still whistles to a memory of clean chase, a belly only half tingling with the terror of hunger, flesh filled with water-plenty, and the cacophony of bird and insect and bush and tree and wind and warmth that accompanies the pleasure of blood, fresh, in mouth, of the certainty of an earned meal, of something that is not, need not be human, and need not apologise for it.
He coaxes with his lips, tongue pressed to the back of teeth as she shivers, shudders, as the healthy beauty of the woman who once pales, as from her mouth, her eyes, ears, nose, from her perfect, precious pores, from the ducts that have known no tears when they should have been free to their finding, the fox rises, piece by piece, shadow by shadow, a mirror image to her, bound still at the same points.
To Lan Zhan, all seen. To Wei Wuxian, the ignorance that allows him his present trade, his calm: that the maw of a beast lurks within the lunging line of his face, his neck, the fear of attack that is held by their mutual bindings, but that he does not know.
He does not know, for he cannot, in this house creaking with decay, giving credence to the cyclic nature of creation, destruction, and the unknown, flitting stretch between. )
no subject
( Association brings its benefits and its pitfalls, their elliptical orbit around each other paired with its own gravitational pull, it's own celestial means of altering the patterns of their movements, the inclinations of their bodies. He tilts, blinded by a ribbon with no more substance than society, tied in a manner that weighs, the tread of a feather on a bird's breast, insulating and beautiful and fragile all at once.
Beneath his hands, ah, here is the chaos he crawled through darkly, and his brow furrows, this concept of coaxing one vengeful spirit to its second birthing from the girl who had not been a mother, but is pregnant now in death with the possibility of vengeance serving an old pain, scarred tissue on the palms of hands rendering them incapable of deft motion.
Twined and twinned, they are beneath his hands, but he plays with those hands, as Lan Zhan does behind him, and he hums, both answer and beginning. Hums where music is a means of speaking, a means of tying emotion to place, of leading, cajoling, coaxing, commanding. He feels the warmth of sunlight, the ache of living, the violence of death, and to the spirit he cannot think of as a fox, he hums, then whistles.
You, you, creature of vengeance, creature who has died, spirit of curse, you. This cycle, this spinning, this sunset that rises once a year to bloody skies hung as banners overhead, painting the swollen bellies of clouds never fit to soothe your throat with their heavenly rains, to know no joys of binding bliss, to ache for them, to swallow another in that ache, to be bereft the forests and the petrichor of that land, when the rains come, when the fog hangs thick by the stream, you. For the wilds things, and the aching dens, and the cold on the bottom of one's feet, one's paws, no, he cannot think of this as a fox, cannot think to where this is, but still knows a predator. Still whistles to a memory of clean chase, a belly only half tingling with the terror of hunger, flesh filled with water-plenty, and the cacophony of bird and insect and bush and tree and wind and warmth that accompanies the pleasure of blood, fresh, in mouth, of the certainty of an earned meal, of something that is not, need not be human, and need not apologise for it.
He coaxes with his lips, tongue pressed to the back of teeth as she shivers, shudders, as the healthy beauty of the woman who once pales, as from her mouth, her eyes, ears, nose, from her perfect, precious pores, from the ducts that have known no tears when they should have been free to their finding, the fox rises, piece by piece, shadow by shadow, a mirror image to her, bound still at the same points.
To Lan Zhan, all seen. To Wei Wuxian, the ignorance that allows him his present trade, his calm: that the maw of a beast lurks within the lunging line of his face, his neck, the fear of attack that is held by their mutual bindings, but that he does not know.
He does not know, for he cannot, in this house creaking with decay, giving credence to the cyclic nature of creation, destruction, and the unknown, flitting stretch between. )