Cloying stillness, mutinous. In artificial dark, his fingers tighten in their fist, hard like wet rope binding. Candles sob, cough and flicker, fresh-born: to his left, a boy bear a broad-bellied brazier like a midnight sun. Murmurs of the crowd die like wisps of incense. Earlier: how the earth's shivers stoke and quiet when the citadel halves swap place. How their daily eruptions soothe idle minds. How the long claws of the Sanctuary's bustling lines of 'electricity' must have been felled short.
He does not pretend false understanding. Barely stirs, mouth a dry gasp and hand iron cast on Bichen's stony hilt, where she sleeps a quiet babe in her noosing fetters. At the gates, between their apologies, We cannot give passage if the weapon is not secured. And so, the little silvered voice of her cries and chokes sheathed.
Before Lan Wangji, the spectacle is half accident and half hazard — the whole, a treacle of transitions. A man's mouth unhinges serpentine, as if to swallow the ceiling, teeth a pale, warm gleam. Strain erodes his madness thin, fat swells of tears tripping from eye corners. Farther out, between shifting waves of smudged silhouettes, another guest convulses in petty startles of movement. Like a fly, nursing the habit of spreading its tattered wings. Farther still, a woman's throat loosens like a string of beads, tension sculpting out taut ridges. She sings to a sky that looms empty, past gilded sills. No stars tonight. No patterns.
One heartbeat, the strangeness envelops him. The second, it suffocates.
Wangji reaches to inflict the warm stain of his hand's print on the nearest companion — and lights breathe again, bloom into the hall room like spells of summers rain. Around him, delegates wrench free of their stupour, arms swinging loose to summon drink, or the syllables of a friend's companionship. Earlier, Lan Wangji pulsed, a being adrift and alive. Now, he is — sedate, self-contained. The negative space that captures clamour.
He does not seek Wei Ying. Finds him, naturally, in the way comets discover the orbit of the superior planet's pull. Blinks of errant red, a hand all knuckles and gristle rounding a lazy cup. Wei Ying's eyes, dark and knowing, like a snagged, thin hunter's blade.
When Lan Wangji eases beside him, it's to tip and pour his watered wine in Wei Ying's cup, sound of his own voice too deep and rich in a room reduced to sketches. "You saw."
trade summit
Cloying stillness, mutinous. In artificial dark, his fingers tighten in their fist, hard like wet rope binding. Candles sob, cough and flicker, fresh-born: to his left, a boy bear a broad-bellied brazier like a midnight sun. Murmurs of the crowd die like wisps of incense. Earlier: how the earth's shivers stoke and quiet when the citadel halves swap place. How their daily eruptions soothe idle minds. How the long claws of the Sanctuary's bustling lines of 'electricity' must have been felled short.
He does not pretend false understanding. Barely stirs, mouth a dry gasp and hand iron cast on Bichen's stony hilt, where she sleeps a quiet babe in her noosing fetters. At the gates, between their apologies, We cannot give passage if the weapon is not secured. And so, the little silvered voice of her cries and chokes sheathed.
Before Lan Wangji, the spectacle is half accident and half hazard — the whole, a treacle of transitions. A man's mouth unhinges serpentine, as if to swallow the ceiling, teeth a pale, warm gleam. Strain erodes his madness thin, fat swells of tears tripping from eye corners. Farther out, between shifting waves of smudged silhouettes, another guest convulses in petty startles of movement. Like a fly, nursing the habit of spreading its tattered wings. Farther still, a woman's throat loosens like a string of beads, tension sculpting out taut ridges. She sings to a sky that looms empty, past gilded sills. No stars tonight. No patterns.
One heartbeat, the strangeness envelops him. The second, it suffocates.
Wangji reaches to inflict the warm stain of his hand's print on the nearest companion — and lights breathe again, bloom into the hall room like spells of summers rain. Around him, delegates wrench free of their stupour, arms swinging loose to summon drink, or the syllables of a friend's companionship. Earlier, Lan Wangji pulsed, a being adrift and alive. Now, he is — sedate, self-contained. The negative space that captures clamour.
He does not seek Wei Ying. Finds him, naturally, in the way comets discover the orbit of the superior planet's pull. Blinks of errant red, a hand all knuckles and gristle rounding a lazy cup. Wei Ying's eyes, dark and knowing, like a snagged, thin hunter's blade.
When Lan Wangji eases beside him, it's to tip and pour his watered wine in Wei Ying's cup, sound of his own voice too deep and rich in a room reduced to sketches. "You saw."
It cannot be Wangji alone.