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a man's just trying to get a-head
WHO: Xie Yun, Lan Wangji
WHEN: 9 December
WHERE: the inn grounds, a sadly defiled hot spring
WHAT: Xie Yun and Lan Wangji stare, Xie Yun and Lan Wangji glare, Xie Yun and Lan Wangji beware — and this poor ghost and its head still just want the soap
WARNINGS: the comedy of a ghost's pristine manners
( The inn’s house was too warm, too clean, too tidy. Too welcoming of their drifting steps and battle-burned wits and their chilled fingertips and their ruin. No questions asked, fewer answers demanded. The patrician turn of the mistress’ nose, speaking of indiscretion as an ancient imprecation. Thou shalt not gossip, the principles exalt.
And yet wherever their coalition has gone, eyes have turned, men have wondered. Lies have been spoken diligently, liberally, to learned and stupefying degrees. Here, they were asked nothing: only, each morning, to fill of buckets, to mind the broths brewing, to undertake the farce of cleansing the inn’s garden steps, just before fresh snow would dust them thickly by midday.
It was too simple. Enmeshing a panic that blossoms in Lan Wangji's heart, a white feverish frenzy. They will be found. Claustrophobically, he tries each shuttered window at night, sets himself against each door’s salted lines to ascertain that he could, he can leave, can take his child and Wei Ying and the woman of Qishan Wen, and they can flee when misfortune strikes.
It will, with inevitability. Drip and drip, from thawing icicles down frosted eaves, drip of cold sweat down his back, licking his spine, drip and drip, the condensation that breathes out from the springs’ mouth, when Xie Yun and Wangji are assigned the sweeping of snow from curled stone edges.
He had anticipated the great, wanton tragedy of domesticity, corrupted. Hidden monsters with bright fangs. The porcelain of glistened scales, a flurry of claws.
...instead, cajoling the crooked, stiff gate with a drawling creak, in saunters a man ferrying his unrooted head peacefully in hand, politely taking care not to step and drag in motes of winter where Xie Yun and Lan Wangji have just passed their broom. The man bares himself — flushed, Wangi shields his eyes — and dips into the springs' pool to swim a few carefully curated, obliging laps that barely spume the bubbling waters. He even commits, at all times, to the safety of all parties involved, sitting the broken head on the upmost ridges of his spine with rope bound around his neck. It dutifully sees and reports back steering guidance.
Then, awkwardly the deadened thing asks to be passed the soap from a distant caddy, past his hand’s reach.
Lan Wangji blinks. Neary falters as he holds his broom. Stares, deeply, meaningfully, with the disciplined aridity of a soul only his Uncle may have nourished young, towards Xie Yun, as if to ask, Do you see this?
Snow starts to fall. The ghostly man suggest, perhaps, if they don’t mind, the soap, please, so he might make haste with cleansing and retire before the wind stokes? )
no subject
Come morning? He cooked for the inn. By the time all was said and done, however, he was undertaking the cleaning of steps with the help of Lan Wangji. Someone who he is sure did not like this anymore than he, himself, did. Why would either of them like this? Something was inevitably off.
Like the other he had expected some sort of attack. This? He blames on dealing with Disha for so long. He also blames it on every place they've ever been to. Something had always happened to them. Volcanos, ravens... pirate ships. Something had always came straight for them. Things that required sword and skill to fend off.
What he doesn't expect is someone coming through those stiff gates. Someone who had... well, a broken head. Dismembered head? How was the other walking with a head like that. What sorcery was being used? Or was it something normal and natural to this place?
Xie Yun blinks in turn and looks toward the other, eyes conveying the answer to what the other is asking. Yes, I see this. How could he not see something like that? Especially when it was an interesting and weird thing to see.
Perhaps one of them should get the soap for this... weird man. Just which one of them was the question. However, why would one cleanse out in the open like this for the whole world to see? Did that not bother him? It. Him. Whatever this ghost, man, thing was. ]
what is this thread, i'm already dying
( ...whoever blinks first must fetch the soap.
This, then, is the agreement, struck unilaterally by Lan Wangji, who tips his head feline-like without breaking the beam of their cojoined gaze, and murmurs mutely, Has he bared himself?
This... truly. Goes against every principle of modesty, logic and sense that Cloud Recesses espouses. Even Wei Ying, beacon of light, luck and laughter might... question the moment, as a swirling, snow-littered gasp of wind interrupts the peace of the beheaded man's carefully folded effects, casting his clothes into the horizon.
One layer of outer silks wraps nooses Lan Wangji's neck, tightens — he thinks it an attack, before, batting it away with a hastened hand, he confirms it for an undershirt.
Ah. The dead man carrying his head has bared himself. Wonderful.
Truly, they are blessed on this day. )
LMFAO I couldn't tell you! I'm dying here too.
His Zhou Fei would, wonderful woman that she is, have none of this. She'd probably even admonish the ghost as it tried to bathe. After all, this was out in the open. Who bathed out in the open like this? Save for those who had no care in the world or possibly those with very loose morals, not caring who they scar in the process.
When clothing attacks he aims to attack in return, without looking away from Lan Wangji, but it is merely clothing and no beast that tries to attack them. It does, however, tell them that the dead man is very... bare.
Neither have gone for the soap either. The distancing of cloth might also make the dead man... a bit annoyed, perhaps? After all, it's their hesitancy that has made him lose his clothing and yet still have no soap in hand. ]
no subject
( Zhou Fei's temper would spark like fire off ashen wood. He shudders, imperceptibly, on the instinct of every man who has faced a whip or lashing of discipline. She would end the folly of their game, then that of the — ...creature that still seems, to all intents and purposes, to be battling the hem and sleeves of his garment, sightless but for the coordination of the beheaded head.
...which is now peppering its instruction with plangent calls for the soap, it's melting, just pass the soap.
In truth, the hot springs have somehow gained in temperature, the bubbling of the water turning violent, strong, like the heavy-handed imprecations muttered by a fishmonger who's spent a day bereft of honest trade. Lan Wangji would worry, if he were not studiously pretending not to notice.
Finally, when the sliver of soap enters his distant visual periphery, he deigns to unsheathe Bichen and sit the tip of her in the waters, stirring up a wave to send the cleanser in the general direction of where he still hears the cut head holler.
Will the soap reach home????
Lan Wangji is still not looking upon that vulgarity. )
no subject
Out of the corner of his eye he takes note of the bubbling water. Of how violent the water was becoming. However, he was not taking his eyes off of Lan Wangji. This game of theirs was not bound to stop while the beheaded ghost was in that violent spring.
Did the soap actually reach the man? Or did he have to drag out his own sword and attempt to find where the soap had gone. He really didn't want to look back either. Maybe one of them could close their eyes and then guide the other to where the soap was. ]
no subject
( ...the creature's severed gapes. It heaves. It curses out. It seems, remarkably, prone to bursting into a splendour of assumptions about Xie Yun and Lan Wangji's character, nature and paternity.
Much is said about Lan Wangji's (failing?) aim. More about Xie Yun's wan efforts to contribute a direction. If the headless creature thanks them their service, at any time, it's lost in a roiling spawning pool of sheer, unwavering indignation.
The soap enters Lan Wangji's sphere of vision again. With the sort of sigh that immortalises juvenile delinquents as the one true pest of their generation, Wangji bats it with Bichen's tip —
...only for the currents to bring it closer to Xie Yun's end of the stream. Your move, young man. )
no subject
Those currents are wild and seemed a bit more violent. Of course, the soap ends up closer to him in the end. He was not, however, going to kneel down to get it. Nor was he going to take his eyes off of the man in front of him.
His own sword, bright and beautiful, is pulled from its confines and he reaches the tip of his sword out, batting the soap in the direction of the headless man. Whether it got to the man or not was a whole other story. Maybe he could distract the headless creature in another way, with music or a story. ]
no subject
( Ah, what wicked gentleme —
...no, no, the soap is floating briskly towards the headless swimmer now, he loves them, he loves them well, sir, and you, other sir, how righteous you are, how formidable, has he said? But he has thought it, simply wonderful, true visions. He cannot help but think it so — the head, while the body yet wanders, drifting and dragging in the currents, and starting to.
Oh.
Oh, but the Heavens must bless the twitch of Lan Wangji's jaw, his mouth, the headless man is drowning — more so, the body, while the head shrieks, the head convulses, the head seems to be taking water.
Oh, no.
Now, and Lan Wangji despairs to be fettering Bichen, rolled eyes praying to Guanyin above, they must rescue the dead thing from bubbling froth.
See you in the water, Xie Yun. In he goes.
A-gloo-gloo. )
no subject
Shouldn't they be?
Growing up with Taoist monks of a mythical island he can't just do nothing. That would not appease anyone. Nor could he just do nothing as the young Emeperor he was. What message would that send to his godbrother, Zichen? Even if the man wasn't there with them.
Heaven help them both. Down into the water he goes with Lan Wangji. Hopefully they can get to the headless body in time... ]
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( A hard pace, bolstered when the body — absent direction — fails to set itself afloat. Distantly, over groaning waves and bubbling spumes and a storm of rivers, he hears the head's mound wail out cries for assistance. He gives it, balancing the beast of the corpse's bones against his shoulder, his back, and rousing it
with strained and imbalanced sighs to break water.
...the headless corpse kicks, instinctively, still trying to paddle, only to target Lan Wangji's calves and lower back instead. No good deed without its righteous punishment.
Preparing to ferry the creature ashore, he spots the tumbling, grousing sphere beyond, tearing his air's fill from the next breath to shout out to Xie Yun, rasping — )
Fetch the head.
( ...that floats merrily ahead, cursing its luck for dear life as it threatens to collide with the springs' thorny, moss-caressed edge.
Well, then. )