[ Nor the last, but this is no time for acrid, sullen poison. Enough of their wounds fester. Lan Wangji's bruises will not soon sweeten gold, will not fade under the pressure of his dignity and its sombre immutability.
Snow hides dirt, snow does not erase it. Steadfastly, ice kills. They did not build empires in the mountains of Gusu Lan so faint-spirited, uneducated descendants of Lan Wangji's kin and kind might dread avalanche.
Under the pale eye of a half-woken sun, they may as well be stains and dappled smears, chaotically diffused. Where does Lan Wangji begin, and the quiet shape of Five's shoes begin? The liminal space between them tethers two distinct disasters: Wangji's guilt-laced uncertainty, Five's distrustful cruelty. He knows so, abstractly, in the way he dissects and disseminates the anatomy of crimes that exorcists must cautiously cauterise and purify thereafter. He can conclude the cause of their frequent clashes, for all he steadily ignores it.
The bow is incomplete when he raises his eyes, and he is briefly the tangle of his night-draggled hair and the cluster of wrinkles that crinkle his collar and the spatters of red like plum blossom that line his silks. An absurd thing, sum of his foibles, shameless. He holds Five's glance, wet and dark, and he is young once more, barely bare of the skins of his boyhood, spitting dark ripostes back at the grandmaster. ]
I am not your ghosts, to haunt you. [ Hissed, but crisp. ] I do not drink of their bloodthirst.
[ Give him the lone benefit of doubt that he has come, here and now, to make true amends. ]
no subject
Snow hides dirt, snow does not erase it. Steadfastly, ice kills. They did not build empires in the mountains of Gusu Lan so faint-spirited, uneducated descendants of Lan Wangji's kin and kind might dread avalanche.
Under the pale eye of a half-woken sun, they may as well be stains and dappled smears, chaotically diffused. Where does Lan Wangji begin, and the quiet shape of Five's shoes begin? The liminal space between them tethers two distinct disasters: Wangji's guilt-laced uncertainty, Five's distrustful cruelty. He knows so, abstractly, in the way he dissects and disseminates the anatomy of crimes that exorcists must cautiously cauterise and purify thereafter. He can conclude the cause of their frequent clashes, for all he steadily ignores it.
The bow is incomplete when he raises his eyes, and he is briefly the tangle of his night-draggled hair and the cluster of wrinkles that crinkle his collar and the spatters of red like plum blossom that line his silks. An absurd thing, sum of his foibles, shameless. He holds Five's glance, wet and dark, and he is young once more, barely bare of the skins of his boyhood, spitting dark ripostes back at the grandmaster. ]
I am not your ghosts, to haunt you. [ Hissed, but crisp. ] I do not drink of their bloodthirst.
[ Give him the lone benefit of doubt that he has come, here and now, to make true amends. ]