westwhere | the unwinding

the unwinding

Heya! Let loose for Serthica’s Unwinding — our event spanning 24 September-15 October that doubles as a test drive.

This round’s test drive participants do not require an invite to apply. Applications open over 8-14 October. Enjoy!

THE UNWINDING

TEST DRIVE TOURISTS | OLD TIMERS | DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
SPILL THE TEA | DRIP BY DRIP | ALL A DREA —

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✘ NEWCOMERS | BARRELING IN

Soaring seagulls and splintered silence. You awaken on the shoreline of steampunk citadel Clockwork Serthica, recovered by the irritable witch Karsa.

She shares translation and communication devices, scarce healing and a rapid briefing: you have reached a world where undead forces seek to weaponise you in their battle for dominion. Karsa’s employer, the Merchant leads travel to beacons meant to return you home.

Other otherworlders have already infiltrated Serthica. Karsa steers newcomers into the impoverished underworld of the Mouse House, to board a rickety coal train serving the citadel.

■ Silver tongues can win you passage.

■ ...alternatively, hide in the obscenely large whiskey barrels the train also smuggles in.

■ Mid-voyage, the train quakes, slamming you into walls and windows. Around you, the stench of bleach, the warm crackle of embers and static magic that builds thick, nearly electric.

You feel faint and fainter, when you overhear Karsa’s murmured, “It’s too early” — “find” — “find” — “it’s like a drea” — “don’t unwind” — “all child’s play.”

And then you’re U n w i n d i n g.

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✘ OLD TIMERS | INHALE-EXHALE

Eidris, Minaras, the Neutral Zone: all abuzz with residential whispers of imminent Unwinding — an annual fixture natives dread without fully remembering.

■ In the two days leading to the Unwinding, characters struggle to tell apart or remember the physical features of natives.

■ Some locals steal you into dark alleys, where they become suddenly stiff, emitting a rusty, guttural Ke-ke-ke sound. They do not recall this after.

The Unwinding kicks off at 6am, when both Eidris and Minaras are overground. Jim Kirk’s fixed music box begins to play, its chipper rural tune overtaking your thoughts: “Up the mountain, in the grove, hand in hand to Ke-ke-ke — Ke-Waihu, fresh harvest’s a treasure trove, each fall we feast anew.”

Earth shatters seismically underfoot, magic depletes, the citadel’s clock tower strikes 6:00 — and an urgent communication from the Merchant is interrupted by static, “You can we-we-we-…-stand it, the white man come — remembrrrrrrrrrrrr live, you are alive, do not be convinsssss —ssss — ssssd otherwisssssss —”

But you’re already U n w i n d i n g.

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✘ DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Down and down, you tumble, Alice — through a cavernous tunnel that widens and chokes arbitrarily. Sometimes you float and fly, sometimes you’re thrust sideways. Mostly, you keep falling.

■ Beware objects falling into you: from grand pianos to mystical balls of fire, stray beds, love letters and sharp-pointed weapons. Even a blood-spattered umbrella that shields against anything.

■ You’re dropped unceremoniously into an underground lair, as items keep falling down. Unclaimed, they disappear within minutes. Three jackalopes smoking opiate pipes point you indifferently towards a locked door. On its handle sit a bone dice and a note instructing, ROLL FOUR TO OPEN.

■ The dice can only be thrown every 10 minutes and feels too monstrously heavy to lift otherwise. Each roll makes the effect of the previous throw disappear. If you get:

one: gravity fades, the dice floats out of reach. ( The jackalopes enjoy the breeze. )

two: the floor, barring a few narrow steps at great jumping distance, is lava. ( The jackalopes check ‘hell’ off their vacation list.)

three: an irked dragon coils beside you. (The jackalopes prepare to tan.)

five: the thrower grows and grows and grows, until they must contort creatively to fit inside. ( The jackalopes charge rent. )

six: the room fills with water that nearly reaches the ceiling. (The jackalopes are competitive swimmers.)

seven: everything about your companion irritates you. They even breathe wrong. ( The jackalopes find this awkward. )

eight: The floor slowly expands into quicksand. ( The jackalopes hoverboard. )

■ Roll four and the door creaks merrily open. A second note slips loose, I’m sorry. Head in, your newfound possessions abandoned — and keep U n w i n d i n g.

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✘ SPILL THE TEA

You wake, dressed to the steampunk nines, at a tea party, alongside a companion and a slew of eerie guests: cog droids, faceless people and animated human-sized burlap mannequins. You only hear static and white noise when they speak.

When you leave the table, a fox butler passes you the empty kettle, asking you to, ”Make tea and finish here”.

■ You’re inevitably stuck in a decrepit dollhouse. Heavily boarded doors and windows ultimately open to show plague sickness in the streets. The fox butler closes them, reminding, ”He’ll make it go away.”

■ Travel a corridor of repeating rooms to reach the kitchens, and don’t dally. Every time the clock strikes a new hour, the partygoers grab their sharpest knife and stalk down the house to pursue you. The frenzy lasts 10 minutes before they return to their seats — barricade in deserted rooms, hide behind curtains or climb up the chimney…

■ For tea, the mannequin cook directs you to retrieve juniper and rosemary leaves from the greenhouse, where plant tendrils try to trap you, leaving marks of mould; rescue the milk container from a cat that’s running on the crumbling staircase, and sugar from a dish in the lavish nursery room, where ghostly hands might seek to drag you into walls and send you back down the rabbit hole.

■ Supplied, the huffing burlap cook prepares tea. Just as you’re about to taste the black brew at the party table, a man in white takes and spills your tea out in a plant pot. You only hear, ”You don’t need this yet” — before you’re U n w i n d i ng.

■ On exiting the Unwinding, your pockets burst with plants or leaves of juniper and rosemary. They can alleviate McCoy’s sickness.

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✘ DRIP BY DRIP

You wake up in bloodied clothes in a filled bathtub. You are hounded by urgency, as if you’re hunted. The unease never wanes, as you gather your bearings and join the bustling city streets, armed with a blood-spattered white umbrella. In your pocket, two paper notes: CHILDREN LIE and WHAT IS HIS NAME?(

Your memories are confused: half of you is certain you are a content citizen of Serthica. The other riots that you don’t belong. An excruciating migraine strikes when you try to remember how you arrived here.

Gravity’s a loose concept: you walk, or you float. The city is either perfectly still, or inundated with the screeching of hearses and criers. Locals — all faceless, or man-sized burlap mannequins — mill busily, despite the forlorn rain.

■ Hold on to your umbrella: linger uncovered in the rain, and your facial features slowly fade, while you desperately try to convince your teammate that you should stay here forever. You recover once dry.

■ The inhuman locals grow increasingly more hostile with time: carriages want to run you over, friendly burlap shopkeepers push you into a ditch. They chase if you ask their name.

■ Happily, this world is vulnerable to your desires: wish gravity undone, and you can walk on walls. Think a river into being, and it bursts ahead. Imagine buildings, and they pop up. Playing God comes at a price of bad luck: the staircase you envisage thins and breaks just as you cross it, your knife rusts after the first swing.

■ Your pursuers abandon you, when you reach a deserted marketplace and encounter a drenched, battered boy wearing a fox mask. He is playing with paper boats in the middle of a large black puddle. You feel deep and building hatred for him.

■ Seeing you, the child mentions one of you previously tried to kill him. He offers his name, in exchange for your umbrella:

a. Refuse or dally, and dark hands rise out of the puddle to pull you and your partner in, scratching you bloody. The last thing you see, before you wake up in the bathtub again (or out of the Unwinding), is a man in white who collects your umbrella. He holds it over the child, scolding, ”Did you forget again? This one never hurt you.”

b. To surrender the umbrella, step on the paper boats as you cross the puddle to the boy. Walking straight on water feels like stepping on knives. The child accepts your umbrella, whispering his name is ”Hyang-Won”, before you start to fade out of the Unwinding.

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✘ IT WAS ALL A DREA —

New or old, as the Unwinding ends, you wake up in Ma’am Mariol’s modest orphanage in the Mouse House. Mariol, the orphans and Serthica at large recall nothing about the Unwinding. Karsa, who dragged you in, is pale and exhausted, her memory patchy. She urges everyone to recuperate before heading back overground.

■ Your body shows only a fraction of any damage sustained in the Unwinding.

■ Ma’am Mariol’s labyrinthine home offers limited accommodations: share beds, floors, and household chores, while the orphans led by curious Gavroche, peer in.

NOTES

■ You can make network posts outside of the Unwinding.

■ Feel free to mark if you're a test drive tourist or an old timer in your top level!

■ The Unwinding is a shifting of realities not a dreamscape.

■ You can opt out of the Unwinding by keeping characters in the Mouse House. Here, nothing seems amiss.

■ QUESTIONS!

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( He had anticipated a rescue. Rabbits possessed of antlers sprawl and kick down, one foot saddling his eyes. He flinches — wishes to stir it off — but only prevails to invite the jackalope's attention further, blessed with another hit. Hissing, he reaches out beneath the great musical instrument that screeches at each of his turns in imbalance, to signal where he is entrapped —

And then, he hears him. Sees him in flickers, in dappled peels of colour and hue. In lines, partly jagged, and a familiar whole. Breath rips out of him, torn as if by claws. He strains to raise his head, to gaze, for all the fall and the anchor that crushes him down deny him better vantage. No. And yet — )

...Lee Chang. ( No. Ghost and silhouette, surely. A sliver of himself. When did they last cross paths? He suspects, if ever this land broke and churned itself to forge him the semblance of a friend, then —

Harsh hoarseness to his voice, the rusted edge. Guttural, wet. Blame it on disuse, the abuses of the fall. Gravity has tortured his physicality. Surely, this is why.

And he cannot see in true depth, cannot grasp detail. )

Come close. ( Is this, then, what road-side thieves whispers to lure forward their pray? Would Lan Wangji begrudge Lee Chang the choice to withhold himself and defend his distance? ) Show face.

[ Even having left the palace, relinquished his title, it is still strange and jarring to hear his name spoken so casually. His brows furrow with a reprimand just under his tongue, but he stifles it. He remembers, he thinks. This is a man who's earned the familiarity.

If only he could fully remember.

The demand - for it is a demand, not a request - makes him frown, unused to being told to do anything by anyone once more. But he recognizes the tone, recognizes the subtle hint of vexation upon Lan Wangji's face, and something in his chest cracks.

He will answer the demand.

He steps closer, kneeling down, ignoring the trailing wisps of black hair that fall past his cheeks. ]

Are you injured?

[ He recognizes it is not a direct response to what must be a request to confirm his identity. But how can he confirm anything as confused and disoriented as he is now? Double thinking the situation will do him no good. The only way out is through. ]

Edited 2022-09-26 19:46 (UTC)

( ...and is he? Injured.

Qi flows free and strong in him, river shaping its banks. He feels alive, resilient, in health. Flesh is a fine mechanism, disposed towards efficiency. It fends for itself even without Lan Wangji to give it leave.

His arm will survive this. Whatever wound he has gained is but of skins and flesh.

And before him standards Lee Chang, or a porcelain imitation, brush strokes calculated and true. Lan Wangji sees him — sees him — and only reaches out a hand, fingers spidered, drifted, lost. Ever short of touch.

Unmoored, his arm floats down. )

Unharmed. ( And the forlorn correction, for Uncle did not raise a liar. ) Inconvenienced.

[ The barest flicker of a smile crosses his lips at the word inconvenienced - as if one could claim the same being trapped under a massive contraption of wood and wire - and a burst of fondness follows it.

Yes. Regardless if this is a fever dream or the edge of death itself, Lee Chang recognizes that this man is a friend, where he has so few.

He doesn't reach for the drifting hand, doesn't move to do so. It doesn't occur to him. Instead, he leans over to get a better look at where Wangji's arm is pinned.]

One is far better than the other.

[ He shifts, bracing himself with a foot and slipping hands under the piano, letting out a breath as he readies. ]

On your mark.

( His... mark. Yes. For a moment, caught between a cascade of blinks and winces and the disciplined fettering of his prone body against hard ground, Lan Wangji convinces himself there is much to be said of his assistance.

Of.

Lying.

There.

Squarely and concretely flattened. Entirely at the mercy of the world. Perhaps, to make a token effort, pushing the piano's great heft to the side with the bridge of his palm, for all they both know it must be nudged forward to release him.

Indeed, Lan Wangji is the true unsung hero of this action. A great and valiant force of resistance. All hail his arid: )

I am prepared to contribute.

( Pointedly, he takes a particularly deep breath. )

[ With no idea of how heavy the contraption was (as it must have been so, to trap Master Lan), Lee Chang braces himself to be able to hold it for no more than a few seconds. But as long as Wangji's arm is able to move, they will have completed the maneuver.

He makes a tight nod. ]

Now.

[ With all his strength - however meagre that be when he is no more than human - he pushes the piano hard, using his foot to push up as well as out, a grunt torn from his lips as he realises the full weight.

He wonders what is even in the thing, though the strange tonk and twang of grinding notes and disabused chords gives him some idea as to its use. ]

( This... is not proceeding as intended. And Lan Wangji, laid entirely bare before his... voyeur cannot find fault with Lee Chang for how he intercedes, applying the full and impossibly fragile heft of his human body against the instrument.

And Wangji remembers this: how comparatively soft Lee Chang's hands showed themselves, for all he delivered the proper sword forms. How mannered was his conversation. A man of splendour more than toil.

One who may be forgiven for not letting his thoughts travel as Lan Wangji's do, to brutality. )

Secure parchment. ( No, this is no library or scribe's desk, to request utensils. They must all, in a life of perpetual wretchedness, make do. ) Or cloth. Pass the sword in my sheath over my fingertips.

( He twirls his freed hand openly in the air, as if to illustrate that, look here. A fine specimen it is. Perfectly suited to being repurposed as a makeshift brush.

The next exhalation may yet tear his lungs. It is — a testy proposition, eyes shuttering as he resigns himself to the foregone conclusion of its success. Failure cannot be fathomed. )

We shall splinter it through talismans. ( After, the explanation: ) Sorcery.

( What foreigners name as magic, but practitioners style as meagre qi. And if they chance bringing ruin to Lan Wangji's limb trapped beneath the grand beast that chains him down — so be it. )

[ As Lee Chang stands, he tries not to make his hard breathing obvious. For all the toil and rigour he has put himself through these last few - months? Years? Time is fractioning in his memory. For all that, he is still far weaker than those that make their livings from their strength. He does not like to look weak, but in this case, there is nothing to be done.

He blinks at the word sorcery, splintered mind flailing at memory and understanding. He recalls - or thinks he recalls - talismans. Sorcery. Magic. But it feels as fanciful now as it did his first day upon these shores. ]

Parchment.

[ He repeats the request as a child might, bewildered but resolute at the same time. He puts Wangji’s sword over the man’s fingers as he was bade, and then goes in search of a writing surface. It isn’t difficult - there are many things fallen where they had, and after a moment he comes back with a map - forms and figures he does not recognize and does not care too. He tears it into strips. ]

Here. [ He kneels down and puts the parchment under Wangji’s free hand. ]

Will this suffice?

( It will not.

A trick of hazard, a trinket of touch. An accident. A blink, a heartbeat. Any margin of error, however succinct, and they pave path to disaster. And yet he nods, ambivalent, no more a saint than when Sizhui asked with the reedy, young-plant voice of a child seeking his roots, if Hanguang-Jun's next travel will be his last. If he intends to return and linger thereafter. )

We make do.

( Where there is surface, there is wait, there is openness, there is an untainted empire awaiting command. This is spell work: the corruption of an unsuspecting surface beneath magic.

Ungainly, she shifts and squirms, upsetting and unsaddling rubble, sending to flinch and scatter at Lee Chang's feet. He prevails, between request and momentum, the sword thrusting up from its hilt to meet him halfway, slicing deep in the swell of his thumb. Blood pours slow, quickly coagulated, until he whispers his qi tame and less reactive, until he begs it to linger loose. The pointing finger, cut after.

Between two, at makeshift angle, with his non-dominant hand, he slowly writes characters set to eradicate wood, if not feed it to flame. Paltry calligraphy, Uncle would riot. Laughter threatens to darken his mouth. He swallows down — and fuels the slim sheet with power, with ability, with qi. )

Set it atop the instrument. Retire after.

( He will keep this magic taut, make it wait. )

[ Lee Chang says nothing as he watches the gruesome penmanship, watching familiar shapes take for munger Wangji’s reddened fingers. No chivalry would have helped, here - an offer of his own blood would have only made the task more arduous.

A bitter, quiet thought: does his royal blood still hold power? Or was that washed away in the lake as well?

Once the talisman is complete he leans down to take it - careful not to let his fingers stray and smudge the written magic. His delicate touch is filled with the solemnity due to sorcery - a respect edging on fear. He places it down on top of the instrument - for that must be what it is - and backs up until he his well out of the way, careful not to trip over any of the debris in the meantime. A pack of jackalopes scatter, tittering, as he nearly walks into their audience. A peanut gallery waiting for the tragedy to strike. He sneers at them as they steal away into darker corners. ]

Ready.

[ His turn, now, to feel useless. ]

( Perhaps, he thinks —

&mash; and it is the touch of Wei Ying that now lives in silent permanence within him, the flame-kissed, culling edge of laughter &mash;

— if the talisman rallies its strength past measure or containment, then the jackalopes too might be entrapped in wildfire, and serve at least as Lee Chang's dinner for days to come. (And he does not wish them harmed, not the trembled slight bodies of them, not their faint whiskers, not their beady eyes, not their sweet paws. But they are naughty. )

Lee Chang positions the talisman. The spark of Wangji's qi brightens and livens within it, calls like plant root to water. He concentrates on it, distant, and finally feeds the seed, until the spell latches, and it builds, it swells, it grows incandescent —

And explodes, unravelling the better part of the piano, propelling the uppermost half of the wood into the nearest wall, cindering another quarter. (One of the jackalaopes sneezes.) Beneath the last few layers, Wangji breathes the slow, carefully calculated breath of a man who knew he would survive unharmed — if not with utmost certainty.

He flinches when shrapnel and debris scrape his cheek and graze his throat and flay his skin, before qi intercedes to rouse new layers, fresh and untarnished. Healing drains too much of him to permit him to slip free from the wood that still traps him. Smaller, weaker parts, frail enough for a man to carry. )

If you may. The remainder.

[ His arm goes up, as if to shield himself with his sleeve - a mannerism engrained in him far before he gave up his luxurious silks for the darker, rougher make he wears now, bound around his wrists and forearms for fighting. It offers little protection, flecks of wood zipping by him - darted splinters that only just miss their mark.

No, one of them hits, but it only lodges a few millimeters past his clothing. He pulls it out and lowers his arm, stepping over to Wangji.

Finally, he can help. ]

Of course. [ He tries to ignore the fact that he just saw the impossible, half because it doesn't matter and half because those edging memories tell him it is possible, it always has been, here. Here... where is here?

With another soft grunt but much greater success he pushes the last pieces off of the cultivator, and then lets out a breath before leaning down to offer an arm. ]

( He is released.

Later, he will remember this: the burn of his face and the burn of his joints and the burn of his arm where the wood's weight has fractured bone. To the merit of his lineage and his ancestors, inside Lan Wangji weeps and churns a core the heavens have sharpened and willed warm and strong. It mills again, and delegates the fruit of its prowess to his open wounds, his arm, to the catches and recesses of his back, where small aches have settled.

To his glory, Lee Chang avails himself of the remaining debris without complaint or delay. Were Lan Wangji capable of a bow — of more than the vermin-like, squelching roll of his liberated body on his side, where each inhalation is like fast stab work — perhaps he might convey his gratitude. Instead, the last of his strength goes to his blooded hand, to catching the hem of Lee Chang's trousers in a quick tug, when the man's feet dance within reach. )

You took your time.

( To rescue him. To return. Vagaries suit and please him, as does the wintered, soft coat of the jackalope who finally nears him, seeking relief under his slow-scratching hand. There, there. Perhaps, to both of them. )

I am not sure time means the same thing to the two of us, Master Lan.

[ He crouches down, watching the jackalope wearily, but it seems even these creatures calm under the man's gentle touch.

But his flickering memories remind him just how capable Lan Wangi is with the sword he wields. The gentleness is not an enduring trait, but a fleeting one. ]

I forgot even your name until I saw your face. I swear a day ago - no more - I was home once more. [ Or as close to home as the wilds of the north counted. ]

At least my arrival was well timed. Where are we?

( He... lingers, splayed like a child, an elder, a cripple. Should raise himself. Bereft of manners, he may only gaze at Lee Chang, then the barren ground beside him, and anticipate the man's crouch will soon dissolve in a more righteously forgiving sprawl. )

Unknown. ( No, the correction, after: ) I suspected... a dreaming.

( Yet he raises his crushed arm, where blood yet gathers, the wound restitches. Where his own mind would not presume to wish his flesh undone. )

You were long fled.

( 'Gone,' he refuses. 'Relinquished.' 'Lost.' A man does not rue friendships, does not mourn friends. Only despairs silently each day when he crosses a land in hopes of spotting their steps, of rekindling their kinship.

He did not anticipate the quiet, calm ache of this, like a bruise, like breathing. Grief is a learned thing, an intoxication. Perhaps sixteen years of it inured him. And yet he allows himself now to feel. )

[ He grimaces, but when Wangji makes no move to raise himself from the floor, eventually he sits - one knee propped before him and the other folding beneath him, looking around warily. ]

I do not remember fleeing. [ Not from this, at least. Not from them. ]

Nor my return. It is all as if a distant memory I long forgot, slowly being dragged to the surface. So I do not think this is a dream. Dreams lack memories, they do not build them.

[ A pause, a glance at the shattered piano, and then the shadow of a smirk. ]

And in my dreams I am not disturbed or set back by any weight or difficulty, if I do not wish it.

( A fine thing, to be graciously humoured. He does not bend or break himself to offer thanks, does not lift himself past the modest increments his wounds allow him.

Qi circulates like hard storming, like warmth under fingertips, like spring in bloom. He feels it active, stokes it, stings when healing accelerates past its natural progress. He is not ready. The energy of his own flesh is inflicted upon him.

So be it, named done. )

Lee Chang is blessed beneath the heavens. ( Easy, pretty, long feathers of the same bird in lethargic flight: their humour is matched, kind of a kind. Paltry. )
Even his dreams heed his command.

( Truly, Wangji has made the acquaintance of a foremost son of heavens. Only, the smile teases to poison the corner of his mouth, how blessed can Lee Chang be, if he has arrived here, beside Wangji once more? )

You appear in health. ( And is he? )

[ Lee Chan let out a huff of a laugh, closing his eyes. Blessed beneath the heavens, indeed. A son of the heavens, self sacrificed to save the earth. He pushed the idea away.]

The heavens chose to make the nightmares real rather than keep them to dreams.

But I am whole, as you see me.

[ He paused for a long moment, glancing up the impossibly long tunnel they had tumbled down. ]

… How long has it been, since we last shared a moment?

( And did they share moments, trickled between fingertips? He intends to laugh, to call out the presumption — to assume closeness when each man keeps his own counsel, when Wangji was likely better known by the instrument that branded his arm.

They are guarded, from each other, from their own thoughts. Worries have littered Lee Chang's face deeper than wrinkles, for the better part of every day when he has been known to Lan Wangji. Worries, then brother's calm, a learned ease of glossed sophistication. Artifice. Game. )

Months. Perhaps the better swell of a year.

( Confused, chaotic. His hand trails dirt for a rapid succession of heartbeats, before his fingers clasp, before he finds purchase and lifts himself on his elbows. )

Apologies. Time does not walk a friend here.

[ Somehow, he isn’t surprised by that answer. He places it against his own thoughts - his own memories - and attempts to use it as a measurement as if he could trace out how the missing pieces fit together. But of course they don’t. They couldn’t. He was no physicist - had never listened when the others has rambled about parallel dimensions or time space continuum - had never thought it mattered. And indeed, it didn’t matter now. He could not make his recollection of time line up with his memories, or even with the current moment.

He was not hung up on the impossible. A theoretical impossibility had no place in the assessment when faced with the brutal facts of reality: Either this was real, or it was not. Everything told him - despite himself - that it was real. He was living it, as if it was real.

So it was. ]

… It seems time is no friend of mine, either.

It feels both a moment and a lifetime since I have last seen you.

… But you have my deepest apologies. I would not abandon you or our fellows so easily or for so long by choice.

[ He finally pulls his eyes away from the tunnel and back to Wangji, now half sitting up. Good. ]

Which means I cannot promise my continued presence, until I know what caused my absence.

What I can promise is to do everything in my power to help you until we part - intentionally or otherwise.

( Pretty words. And then the truth, as Lee Chang himself affords it: they cannot vow to never splinter paths, like lovers of old, like stars from constellations. Only the Heavens decide their course, and when have they spared Lan Wangji of tragedy?

He drifts up, swaying like a willow tree. Finding his footing, before gently setting the unharmed hand on the nearest wall. Balance. Each step at its time. )

I am no maiden, requiring rescue or pledge of matrimony.

( But he does not refute, does not refuse. Merely nods, head soft and cascading where it drips from his pins, and he accepts the gift of easy companionship. )

Who are you, since last we crossed paths?

( A man changed. Perhaps for the better. Little doubt, for the worse. Time seldom improves men, only children. And they have long abandoned the innocence of their timid years, juvenile. )

[ His lips twitch with a hint of amusement at the idea of Lan Wangji as a maiden - even if his etheral beauty could lend to that assumption. ]

A wanderer, I suppose. A man in search of truth.

[ No longer a prince, no longer even a living man. A ghost, following the trails of a deadly plague. ]

And yet I am brought here once more, where my search misleads and meanders in impossible directions. At least now I know the task will wait.

[ He stands as Wangji does, watching him closely but not offering any more help. He would not want to offend. ]

And you? Has time and tide swayed your purpose, or do you still seek the means home?

( Lee Chang's search misled. His task, waiting. Not for the first time, Lan Wangji — yet slow in his step, measured for how it perpetually stirs and unsettles his wounding — understands his privilege: he came from a time, a place when the waters of his personal and clan grievances had largely calmed.

Recovery awaits him at home, sooner than crisis. And the aching, dull certainty that the man who wears his brother's weight of command and his guan could yet benefit from support. )

I do not stray.

( Steadfast, loyal, hard as river stone. Unyielding. And he knows the poisoned truth of it: that which does not bend must irrevocably break. Lan Wangji is forge steel, soon molten. )

I remain a father to one. ( Truth, as they had left it. ) Husband to another. ( A development, of sorts. ) Honoured protector of the dead and the living, when they cross paths in battle.

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the unwinding

MY LOVE

DARLING

\o/

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