( Water and wet and salt-crept stench of sea water that sputters futilely, dragged at their feet, like the rheum of a hazed moon, cataracted. He feels every colour limpid and coerced to a vexed, seeping confusion: the pale, ghostly greys of his silks, and the greys of cold, rattling water, and the sleepy, sullen greys of a sky long-loomed, unblinking.
He assumes the position Emilia spares him, ever steps behind and at her right, in strategic tessellation that leave his sword hand exposed — and defends their geometry again, when she proposes the brazier, head soft in shake, incorruptible. One tap of his fingers, drum-danced, where Bichen nests in her fetters, biding time to her bite. If they are to walk the decks and murmur vigil on a night half-stormed by air that feels at once prickly and stung, electric and spasmodic — cloying and mineral-heavy in his lungs — then he cannot burden himself with distraction. )
One suffices. ( She leads. He culls. An easy arrangement. ) Perhaps, offer to our companion.
( At distance, the rags of a smoky silhouette, half dream and half man, betrayed more by the jitters of his movements — he seems to Lan Wangji out of turn, too dried on a night that weeps down, trickled.
Confused, perhaps by drink that coaxes their sailor collaborators so often to vacuity, to slack-jawed mouths and rapid hands and dice that tumble, crashing to splinter wet-broken wood and rouse Lan Wangji from his watch, past the sunset hour. There's wanderlust that haunts them, when swill warms their innards tame. A sense of gentle, melodious drift —
That crumbles into jitters now, the man paralysed when they cross glances. Thunder crows, rain tumbles down, spiking. He breathes wet. Cannot explain his need, only, like an animal — waits. )
so here for this
He assumes the position Emilia spares him, ever steps behind and at her right, in strategic tessellation that leave his sword hand exposed — and defends their geometry again, when she proposes the brazier, head soft in shake, incorruptible. One tap of his fingers, drum-danced, where Bichen nests in her fetters, biding time to her bite. If they are to walk the decks and murmur vigil on a night half-stormed by air that feels at once prickly and stung, electric and spasmodic — cloying and mineral-heavy in his lungs — then he cannot burden himself with distraction. )
One suffices. ( She leads. He culls. An easy arrangement. ) Perhaps, offer to our companion.
( At distance, the rags of a smoky silhouette, half dream and half man, betrayed more by the jitters of his movements — he seems to Lan Wangji out of turn, too dried on a night that weeps down, trickled.
Confused, perhaps by drink that coaxes their sailor collaborators so often to vacuity, to slack-jawed mouths and rapid hands and dice that tumble, crashing to splinter wet-broken wood and rouse Lan Wangji from his watch, past the sunset hour. There's wanderlust that haunts them, when swill warms their innards tame. A sense of gentle, melodious drift —
That crumbles into jitters now, the man paralysed when they cross glances. Thunder crows, rain tumbles down, spiking. He breathes wet. Cannot explain his need, only, like an animal — waits. )