Ships. Then, a mariner. One accustomed to hardship, leathered and weathered and steadfast and true. To hear him speak, so carefully reduced by the modesty of his toil — Lan Wangji remembers the dirt-spattered faces of villagers, who've only just survived a day's toil on the field. The doctors, hands raw and skins red with the disaster they've abated — worse, that which they could not prevent. Forgers, fingertips hot and molten, tips dark with the steel's edge of their sword. All stained and tattered by their professions.
All fairer and better and preferred to the looming majesty of Jin Guangshan and the Jinlintai, a cohort of gilded beasts collared by their courtesies, shielding incest, torture and corruption behind the etiquettes. What use were their lily-snowed hands, the fine weave of their silks, the tear-touched limpid reflection of the stones that lit up their jewellery?
Better a hundred times over the company of the dregs of the worlds, the beggars, the workers. The men plain, the women whose feet would never know the callous destitution of wood strips and tight binds.
He does not inflict the calumny of his touch. False intimacy, brokered without true affection, is worse than its absence. And yet:
"You do not stand accused of dishonesty." It chokes him, dims his words. Gives the death to formality, before sincerity. "Not among us. We only ask no appetite for slaughter."
...and yet, Five still scatters echoes of bloodbath in his footsteps.
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Ships. Then, a mariner. One accustomed to hardship, leathered and weathered and steadfast and true. To hear him speak, so carefully reduced by the modesty of his toil — Lan Wangji remembers the dirt-spattered faces of villagers, who've only just survived a day's toil on the field. The doctors, hands raw and skins red with the disaster they've abated — worse, that which they could not prevent. Forgers, fingertips hot and molten, tips dark with the steel's edge of their sword. All stained and tattered by their professions.
All fairer and better and preferred to the looming majesty of Jin Guangshan and the Jinlintai, a cohort of gilded beasts collared by their courtesies, shielding incest, torture and corruption behind the etiquettes. What use were their lily-snowed hands, the fine weave of their silks, the tear-touched limpid reflection of the stones that lit up their jewellery?
Better a hundred times over the company of the dregs of the worlds, the beggars, the workers. The men plain, the women whose feet would never know the callous destitution of wood strips and tight binds.
He does not inflict the calumny of his touch. False intimacy, brokered without true affection, is worse than its absence. And yet:
"You do not stand accused of dishonesty." It chokes him, dims his words. Gives the death to formality, before sincerity. "Not among us. We only ask no appetite for slaughter."
...and yet, Five still scatters echoes of bloodbath in his footsteps.