a little dream of her | part i

[groundrules]

A LITTLE DREAM OF HER

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This is the first of two logs covering the Dream county travel Arc — it stretches until 23 April OOCly and covers roughly one IC week. There is an entirely optional wedding mystery plot, which will depend heavily on information gathering, sharing and deduction, rather than on supernatural powers.

Boarding scenarios for existing and new characters are covered under the Old Timers and New Arrivals header, respectively. Click on the tabs for details!

OLD TIMERS

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Absorbing Wrath, Licyn and Yelena’s feedback, King Deimar of Alem decides against joining his brother Haiva in ‘noble sacrifice’ to hell. Good news for the party, who depends on royal savvy to reach Alem’s otherworld transport beacon, buried in the labyrinthine tunnels beneath crumbling Alem.

■ Deimar and his paladins guide small groups back to the beacon — but the keypoint’s war-drained energies only let a handful of party members out. Characters who have dropped or been swept by AC during Arc VI go home. You can also canon update your character now.

The party must heads onwards east, boarding a dreamy train at a station near Hassir. Here, find exotic stalls with wares once intended for Alem — from the latest travel fashions, to unlucky artefacts, heavy alcohol and narcotics. You can even purchase a domestic ghost.

Whether the Merchant supplies a ticket or false staff uniforms for you to proactively sneak aboard, don’t dally — this train runs like clockwork.

NEW ARRIVALS

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You wake up to claustrophobia, ash and gravel in your mouth — and a sense of urgency: run. Midway through a slovenly, rattling underground corridor, you meet an irritable woman, who leads you out, at the foot of a serene, smoke-topped mountain.

The woman passes you a pendant that allows you to understand her and to communicate with others like you. You are one of many otherworlders brought into Akhuras by undead lords who seek to weaponise you, as they battle humans and each other for dominion. Don’t believe her? Look up. The holy citadel Alem yet burns before the dead armies of Rahakku.

The woman is Karsa, an associate of the elusive Merchant, who collects and leads otherworlders east, where ancient beacons can transport them home.

Regrettably, you’re late — you arrived with the unexpected last gasps of Alem’s dying beacon and must now catch up with the others, who’ve departed on the Sandman train express.

WHY THE LONG FACE?

Karsa barters for a carriage led by two nightmare horses, along with several such steeds for confident riders. These are mercurial mounts and dizzyingly fast — your only shot to reach a train travelling through Dream county.

■ Karsa warns you must not fall asleep during travel. The horses will invade your nightmares, consuming your vital energy while you suffer asleep.

■ Talk at all times or sound the shrill silver bells Karsa provides to wake up any sleepers.

You reach the seaside village of Kyari, where you must board the incoming Sandman express. Regrettably, the horses have left Karsa with just enough coin for one ticket for the wounded Dean Winchester. Everyone else: make do.

You must also help Karsa sneak in fist-sized, forbidden dream boxes. Try to avoid the Sandman’s guards and their canine sentries, who scent newly boarding passengers for such contraband. Return the boxes to Karsa once on the train.

You’ve got 45 minutes to board, once the Sandman reaches its rustic station. Some options?

■ Play stowaway and break the rustier locks of the economy class cars.

■ Sweet talk the depressed Conductor. You bought, but just… forgot your ticket.

■ Distract the guards while your group boards, so they can sneak you on after.

■ Plant dream contraband on another would-be passenger, when the dogs draw close.

■ Ride one of those god-forsaken horses and jump on top of the train once it starts moving, then make your way in through ceiling hatches. God help.

A fully veiled young woman might lend you a hand.

THE SANDMAN

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All aboard… the Sandman, a majestic 100-car train that gallops on an emaciated railway across Dream county. Ghosts and dream residents wave as it passes by.

The Sandman stops once after leaving Alem, at seaside village Kyari, before crossing the abyss of the Cradle — the turbulent, storm-prone birthplace of dreams, where it is constantly night-time.

Some say the Cradle is only a cauldron for those who steal dreams or make them into living things. Others say the Cradle has its own mind.

To avoid igniting dream storms, passengers are strictly prohibited from carrying dream tokens and performing dream magic. Characters find their powers are significantly reduced while travelling on the Sandman.

New arrivals join the Sandman at Kyari with group caretaker Karsa, who introduces them to the old party.

■ The Sandman offers exquisite single-person compartments with en-suite bathrooms for First Class passengers, while Second Class travellers share generous cabins in pairs, and up to four voyagers can bunk up in… cozy Third Class cabins. Shared bathrooms and a small sauna cabin are also available.

■ You can hide in the staff, luggage or coal stock rooms.

■ You can decide your character’s First/Second/Third Class, staff or stowaway status. (Pick a job for staff!)

■ The LOST & FOUND booth contains an assortment of clothes and items forgotten by passengers, which you can raid (within reason). Latest findings: cigarettes, medical-grade opiate powders, a a beautiful green dress and pink striped men’s suit, all brought in after the Sandman leaves Kyari.

■ Amenities range from dining & bar carts to game, exercise and cinema halls where the (PG-13!) pleasant dreams you’ve gambled away can be viewed freely, or passengers can hold recitals or seminars.

■ You can gamble in regular currency or pleasant dreams (not memories).

■ Travellers are polite and social. You learn early on that you share a voyage with renown heroine and First Class passenger Firo, who, alongside her friends and sister party, picks up her bride Prassenze from Kyari.

■ Within two hours of leaving Kyari, the sky begins to darken, becoming pitch black and occasionally loudly stormed. It stays a starless night time throughout your journey over the Cradle.

■ For communal safety, windows and doors are locked and magically enforced shut after the train departs Kyari. The nightmare storms within the Cradle region crackle with highly chaotic energy that can (re)shape reality, endangering passengers. Deputy conductor Michel Bauc holds the window and door keys. An irritating, tinny, train-wide alarm sounds if anyone tries to force a window open.

■ You might sometimes find fellow passengers trying to exit the train or open the windows to join the storms, while they nap. Do wake up them up.

■ Whether you’re an insomniac or don’t typically need sleep, you find you fall instantly asleep at midnight and awaken refreshed by 8 a.m.

■ A skeletal crew serves the Sandman at night. The most authoritative figure is gloomy Conductor Rossakoff, who slinks silently across the train.

THE MENU

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Trot down to the dining carts for an unforgettable meal included with your ticket. Formal evening attire is expected during dinner. Some courses are lightly sparkled with stimulants that deepen certain aspects of diner’s emotions during the meal — this is not disclosed ICly, but visible to you OOCly in the menu. (ex: the Ham and Laughter Eggs triggers roaring laughter and a good disposition ).

   BREAKFAST

   SUPPER & DINNER

   SNACKS & BEVERAGES

DREAM SMUGGLERS

The new arrivals helped Karsa bring contraband aboard, but they’ve steps to go to their final destination. The sorceress doles out fist-sized boxes containing precious dream fragments of happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, anger, guilt or disgust — explicitly prohibited cargo that regains its magical properties once aboard the Sandman.

Each box comes with instructions for drop off under a dining hall table at midday, under a roulette table by 6 p.m. or in the coal room by 8 p.m. Karsa says the deliveries are an explicit favour from the Merchant to an old (dream thief) friend aboard the Sandman.

■ Pair up for your run! Those who hold dream boxes feel their emotions to a player-chosen degree of intensity, throughout their adventure.

■ Beware the vigilant guards of the Sandman, who run frequent searches for illicit dream artefacts. Some bring dream-catching dogs who catch the scent of the dreamed things.

■ You may feel unusually sleepy while holding dream boxes. Doze, and you wake up to find your dreams have summoned a wo/man, child or animal whose temperament embodies the box’s emotion. They can’t help drawing attention, but slowly disappear within 30-60 minutes — wait, are those the guards?

■ Caught smugglers are locked into ‘jail’ cabins, while their contraband is placed in the office of Conductor Rossakoff. First-time captives can be bailed out at ludicrous expense or in exchange for maid service, but repeat offenders are jailed
for the rest of the voyage. Liberate your dream box back from the Conductor’s strangely barren, otherwise untouched compartment.

■ Successfully delivered boxes feed into the mystery of the missing bride. You mysteriously fall asleep to a sweet dream if you wait to meet the collector — and wake up to a feeling of wrongness, as if reality is mute and diffuse around you, before your hearing and vision resettle.

THE GROUNDHOG WEDDING: A MYSTERY

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Firo’s bride Prassenze boards the Sandman from Kyari. She comes alone, veiled head to toe, and only brings a modest case. She is short, thin, pale and shy, prone to silence and retiring to her cabin at the earliest opportunity — a far cry from boisterous Firo.

…so much so that Firo’s sister Lita and friends Dulcinea, Maiza and Attru tell anyone who’ll listen that Firo is marrying this girl after courting her for six months through correspondence. Even bashful Hugo admits the pair is… perhaps a little mismatched. This is their first in-person encounter.

■ The wedding party members plead or offer coin for you to coerce the loving pair to delay their marriage — or to sabotage the wedding, due to take place in two days.

■ An enthusiastic Firo meanwhile asks if you can help with celebratory clothing or wedding ornaments.

■ Shortly after, Lita appears lost in her thoughts and altogether not there, clutching a letter in hand, the day after the Sandman departs Kyari.

HERE COMES THE BRIDE... AGAIN

1.0

No one forgets their wedding night — least of all brave Firo, who, vows performed, makes merry with her group and timid bride over a magnificent feast in the dining halls. Everyone is invited.

The blushing bride is visibly infatuated with Firo, but overwhelmed by the loud, relentless social activity. She hardly speaks to anyone, other than Firo, whose friends complain increasingly loudly that Prassenze is aloof, a cold fish, and thinks herself above them.

Prassenze excuses herself to freshen up in her cabin. Nearly an hour’s absence later, a worried Firo checks up on her — finding the bride’s compartment locked from the inside. Once the door is forced open, the partygoers — and you? — discover the inside stormed, bridal veils discarded on the floors, and windows widely open as the Cradle’s nightmare tempests rage.

The bride has vanished.

Terrified, Firo questions everyone in earnest, accepting your assistance to find Prassenze.

2.0.

You wake up next morning to find everyone reliving the same wedding day, which only fellow otherworlders recall. Squinting outside, you see new landscape — suggesting the Sandman has covered a day’s journey.

The bride Prassenze is present again, but sharply different in appearance and manner. Now, she is closer to Firo in size, her build athletic. Her manner is brusque, assertive, commanding. Some in Firo’s group are put off, others frightened. Firo appears a little taken aback by her bride’s domineering nature.

During the second wedding, a drunk Maiza and Dulcinea quarrel with Prassenze, who doesn’t back down. A frustrated Firo tries to break the fight, verbally lashing out at her friends for drinking and at Prassenze for stooping to their intoxicated level.

Prassenze storms to her cabin. She is once more found missing, when searched. As before, her compartment was locked from the inside, the window is wide open, and her veils have been abandoned.

3.0.

You wake up to a third wedding day, with only party otherworlders recalling the past two days. Prassenze looks and acts differently from the first and second wedding day — now she is of average build and height, with an especially jovial, overly friendly manner, prone to laughter and pranks. This time, she drinks with Firo’s friends, plays (and wins!) at many of their card and dice games, humours their stories and even flirts — but is so devoted to Firo’s group that she accidentally neglects Firo herself throughout the day. Firo repeatedly tries to coax her to spend time together, but fails, and abandons her during the wedding feast — perhaps meeting you for a drink instead?

Realising she has driven Fire away, a distressed Prassenze once more withdraws into her compartment at the end of the (third) wedding night — and disappears, leaving the same clues behind as on the first and second wedding day.

There are no further repetitions and time passes regularly after the third wedding day. The morning after, apothecary passenger Rigolante mentions asks Conductor Rossakoff to conduct a search, as some of his herbs and measuring tools have gone missing.

■ Player characters can change events and investigate during the second and third groundhog wedding days. Regrettably, Prassenze still disappears.

■ Non-PC characters and the Sandman’s crew only recall the third wedding day.

■ Conductor Rossakoff says the number of dreamers whose dreams help propel the Sandman during the obligatory midnight-8 a.m. nap — what do you know, you were helping all along! — has stayed the same since leaving Kyari, meaning the bride is alive on board. No one seems able to find her… help a distraught Firo find her missing wife!

CAST & CREW

	FIRO Good-humoured, sincere and just heroine, renown for her many feats of bravery — from rescuing villages to outwitting sphinxes and challenging immortals. Loud and prone to laughter. Quick to tell everyone about her beloved Prassenze.
	CONTESSA LITA Doting older sister of Firo, married to a Count who prefers a quiet life at his countryside estate. Preposterously wealthy and fashionable. Life of every party.
	MAIZA Once a gifted mathematician, Maiza quickly realized there is more money for the modern man to make from his brawns than his brains. After retraining as a barbarian, he served as muscle (and accountant) during many of Firo’s adventures..
	ATTRU The prince of a distant land, some say descended from wolves. Walks among men to learn their ways. Looks young, but will mention at least three wives and five children in the first five minutes of conversation. Smooth.
	DULCINEA Redeemed mercenary, who once used to sell her sword to anyone with the coin to spare — some say, even the dead! Turned an honest leaf after meeting Firo, of whom she is very protective. At times still sinister at her edges.
	HUGO A pilot turned priest, or a priest turned pilot. Met Firo during his many travels. Soft-spoken, mild-mannered, but jittery, with the kind of thin nerves that suggest he has survived numerous fraught circumstances.
	RIGOLANTE An apothecary of exotic drugs and herbs. He had hoped to make his fortune in Alem, but arrived just as the fortress crumbled, before he could sell enough of his wares. Prays he will find better fortune east.
	CONDUCTOR ROSSAKOFF The gloom and doom of the Sandman, eerily tall, slinking and silent. Passengers prefer to deal with deputy conductor Michael Bauc because of Rossakoff’s intimidating and discouraging presence. Takes a hard stand on smuggling or passenger misbehaviour and all but worships the Sandman.
	PRASSENZE The all-veiled bride of Firo, boarding at Kyari. Not once, not twice, but thrice disappeared.

IC TIMELINE

Day 01: Boarding at Hassir/Alem (morning)

Day 03: Boarding at Kyari (midday); within two hours of departing, the Sandman starts journeying on the railway above the abyssal Cradle — the sky is pitch black at all hours, nightmare storms rattle the train.

Day 04: Lita begins to behave airily, as if she’s not quite present.

Day 05: First wedding (16:00) and wedding feast (19:00)

Day 06: Second wedding (16:00) and wedding feast (19:00)

Day 07: Third wedding (16:00) and wedding feast (19:00).

Day 08: Rigolante asks Conductor Rossakoff to enforce a search for his missing herbs and recipients.

QUESTIONS

NPC THREADS

Comments

[weifinder]

People had a way of changing, but what changed, what in them found new ground, what blossomed, what decayed, he finds that landscape more unpredictable than the arrogance of his youth presumed. To find himself here, to find him holding anyone else like something precious and healing through the breaks of life, would he have understood this, years ago? A lifetime past, where he had to be strong, and strong, and he let his tears flow as they came but didn't know how to reach out and hold onto anyone without also feeling like maybe he should not.

Imagine Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji, Hanguang-jun, accused of so little emotional heft, so much structure and coldness, to come apart, not just in anger, not just fear. In loss, and in moments of their long delayed springtime bearing gifts of warmth and inexperienced ardour, in the way his eyes warmed looking upon the rabbits, upon Sizhui, upon the juniors who held him in esteem.

"Long drinks like long rain have not harmed," he says, thinking of the irreconcilable breakings, landslides that change their landscapes forever, violently. The rebuilding, the work, that follows. "Let us meet with sweet and fragrant golden cups to drink where the lotuses bloom, with no need to invite the bright moon."

[downswing]

Shameless thing, brazen. Whispering sweet nothings as if he trades pleasantries with fishwives at the market, and he's cruel, this Wei Ying, despairingly bright, young and attractive — a prospect of Lotus Pier, where laughter is currency and life is like their waters, gently swaying.

"You learned poetry to woo," he murmurs, but doesn't chastise, mouth dry and head leaden on the perch of Wei Ying's shoulder, before he learns to slip and spill and fill out the negative spaces beside, sooner than on his soulmate. Distance, not to reject or introduce the formalities of conversation, but to barter comfort: the slow stretch of his limbs, his legs unwinding on a bench too narrow to contain two grown men. He eases.

"What was it you thought would become of you?" No, he knows some parts of it. Can decipher. "A woman." But he speaks it freely, without accusation. The classical formula of success.

"Perhaps traded to accept the bid of a secondary sect." The martial instrument that is a first disciple would not be wasted on marriage out. No, a daughter would be brought to him — one of the main house, if Jiang Fengmian had had the bloodline branches to spare. A union to bind Wei Ying fully to the lineage that invested time, coin to raise him.

[weifinder]

He chuckles, shifting himself to allow more room on the narrow bench for Lan Zhan to arrange himself, nestled side to side. Curling into and around each other, much as they can in the limited space. Much as they do, softening edges to allow each other in.

"Did it work?" he asks, still amused, having learned poetry because he learned everything that was expected of him, of any cultivator in the big clans, with distressing ease. Not to him: it hadn't been a distress, it had all very simply made sense, stuck after one exposure, had been easy in a way he didn't know was genuinely hard for others until later, when he was older. Understands now, with a sense of how to approach it, a delicacy his first lifetime hadn't yet taught to the depths his bones register in his second. Teaching the juniors had been a start.

Losing all faith in the world, desperate to spare the last of those he loved who lived, had taught him something else when he woke up in Mo Manor, almost two decades later.

The meandering flow of conversation, to curve around, flow over, flow under, and he hums, letting his lashes flutter half closed, thinking. What had he imagined? When he was young, when he believed he and Jiang Cheng were brothers without compromise, when they were the twin heroes of Yunmeng. Before the prelude to the war, the slaughter of the Jiang Clan and all their disciples. to every step down the path that followed after. What had he thought he would become then?

"I didn't think that hard on the future," he says, and he leans his head toward Lan Zhan, eyes half lidded. "I assumed at some point, after Jiang Cheng was married, after Jiang Yanli, maybe I would. Maybe I wouldn't? They didn't need me politically, Madam Yu would have... mmm. She had my respect." He is filial, in spite of any reasons not to be. "Not my affection."

Marrying anyone in would have been that balancing act, too. How to say, if he had, he'd have to leave as his father did, repeat that trauma had he been one to feel for Wen Qing the way that Jiang Cheng did, how that imperfect mirror was already hard enough. They loved each other deeply.

Love is not enough. Not on its own.

"I didn't feel that way before..." A pause, and then another sigh, softer. Exhaling laughter, a touch bittersweet. "You. You were so confusing." Not because he didn't have light affections, that he didn't flirt with, find women attractive. He did, and does, and still. If it was every reason he never let himself think of getting close, heart to heart, intimacy of spirits before of the body. Was it the ease of knowing what he wanted? Or the fact he shied away from it all, from that kind of commitment, that tie, on top of the rest he already had?

From the idea of being wanted, from wanting? When he was younger, it'd all seemed so frightening. Could he have imagined marrying without love? Did he need to? He'd seen the way that'd worn on his sister, unrequited until decades changed that truth. Until war shook up Jin Zixuan's world enough to pull his head out of his... the sand. He'd seen what inequity of love did to Jiang Fengmian, to Madam Yu. He remembers nothing of his parents but the feeling of laughter, and a road, and that light, little as it is, feels infinitely more precious.

He'd given enough. He'd given enough, and it wasn't enough, and it never would be. And that, too, is alright.

[downswing]

A scoff, clawed from his chest, ribbons of laughter in its wake. It worked, but Wei Ying has suffered one death of arrogance already. He need not have now new evidence of his fresh successes.

He hears, in the interim, what isn't spoken, like dust settling: a future unconsidered, a fealty apolitical, a family constructed on foundations of respect. Madam Yu, leader in deed, feared, sooner than loved, kept at a silent and abyssal berth. Jiang Fengmian, a spectre of dignified incompetence, no better a protector than Wei Ying's fangless ghosts. Jiang Cheng, still a seed of himself, unburied. Jiang Yanli, shaping herself into a silhouette of proxy power, as instrument of power and the soon-to-be mistress of Carp Tower — leveraging tears and pleas for dregs of her mother's patience.

They did not accept a ward for the just rewards of rearing him beneath the light of Heavens. Did not consider Wei Ying's growth, his satisfaction, honour unto his parents. And how many people have sought to make their own purpose, their weapon of Wei Ying? This sect, foremost. Then, the world.

Gusu Lan among the ranks of pale-faced, glassy eyed, greedy strangers. Zewu-Jun raised a cup to the dead, at Nightless City. And Lan Wangji drank its bile.

Before it, only the blind, carefree dance of their youth, steps immature — not yet blossomed into courtship. Now, attentive and aware of the possibility, Wangji leans in, head dipping coyly on Wei Ying's shoulder, in the nook that slips into his neck.

"You were straightforward." Like lightning, like bloodletting, like war. At once sinisterly sly and imperious, strident and subtle. There, unashamed. Beautiful. "Arrived. Saw. Conquered."

Which of them did so remains under question. "I knew what you were."

[weifinder]

He twitches, chin lifting a nudge, the touch of Lan Zhan's head to the side of his neck almost ticklish. Wei Wuxian hadn't known that about himself, and he smiles, where Lan Zhan may not see, to find amusement in the discovery. Who'd have known? He nuzzles his chin against his husband's hair, quiet warmth absorbed through his skin, fondness a slow unfurling lotus caught within the cage of his chest. He can feel it, petals brushing against the bone and gristle, skin and muscle, and he breathes in, sound of contentment humming in his throat.

"You did, did you?" Soothed and soothing, now his in different turns. "Isn't that nice for you."

The hum of amusement turned huffed laughter, his face angling the extra degree to nuzzle his nose down into Lan Zhan's hair, playful, still shy of the exuberance he'd deliver if they were truly the young men they appear. The words unspoken about lives woven from the consequence of its threads crossing, the shuttling loom crafting a tapestry stretching beyond this moment, into each successive one.

"Here I saw a man too handsome for the world, and I thought, ah, who can fail to admire him? See his beauty? His intelligence? How can one man be so bothersomely and upright and uptight and enchanting?" A cluck of his tongue, speaking warm words against Lan Zhan's uncrowned head. "Only to wonder later, who can miss his kindness? Or when he's shy. Or his irritations, when he's not angry, they're pretty fun too. I was a menace," he says, declaration of the obvious, no real regret, no real repentance. He won't apologise for being himself. "Delighting in every reaction you gave me. I'd like to think I'm matured past that now."

Here, another hum, another nuzzle, the dropped voice as he asks, "Am I, Lan Zhan?"

In the tease that it is, in the reality of how he does not push for the sake of pushing, but for the sake of bonds they test and strengthen, fracture and mend. Now, when he wants truths spoken, not avoidant silences. Now when he teaches himself to comfort, and seeks comfort in turn. Now when his husband is no less handsome, no less intelligent, but more adequately understood for his flaws, for the steps he takes to make of himself a man of improvement, for his heart in shadows and brilliant lights alike.

[downswing]

And is he? Beast of a boy, delightfully childlike. A shard torn from brittle glass. Wei Ying, name-anointed.

"No," he rasps, and scratches his mouth on the plain, timid stubble on his husband's jaw, his cheek, nosing at lines and curves in their fullness.

No, there is a beauty, flaring and immature, that sparks and flourishes in Wei Ying. A brightness that not even the worst of oppression and negligence could stifle. The sects could not conspire to constrict, serpentine, his laughter. The worst of Jiang Cheng's glower could not extinguish the glistened spark of his wit. Grief and mourning could not contain him.

And now he is here, fretful, charming, reborn. A flame of a man, singeing where their arms brush, their elbows stab. Unbidden, smile like fangs drawn at the corner of his mouth, Lan Wangji answers, fire meeting fire — a talisman called flimsily in hand between them, injected with the right amount of energy, of intent. Burn.

It does: in sparks, in hungry blaze that comes cool, in rivulets and spasms. Showmanship. A waste of blanched parchment, of cinnabar, of qi. A trick that even lesser cultivators often summon to amuse —

...children.

"Are you?" There. Pretend not to be enchanted.

[weifinder]

Another shiver, ticklish frisson of lightning struck sparks dancing across his skin where Lan Zhan mouths are him, an increasing awareness of how little he's paid attention to details like shaving, details like the distraction of his husband nuzzling in. No, Lan Zhan murmurs, and the word barely registers, where Wei Wuxian wants to say huh? as if in invitation for repetition, spoiled in small measures by affection danced across his features.

Spoiled further still, with the bright blossoming of flame from the gentle jostlings and summons from his husband's hand, caught and cradled between them: sparking beautifully, cool kisses between them both. He laughs, breathless inhalation first, then the purity of a delight he withholds nothing from, laughs at this show and its scant necessity, it's sheer beautiful frivolity, as the fire burns out and he leans in, curls toward Lan Zhan, a light he wants to hold for everything they discover within each other.

"No," he agrees, eyes bright and free hand tracing, caressing, divining lines of years lost and moments found against pale flesh, the smallest implications of lines at eyes, the beauty that isn't their youth but what's come after. "I'm really not."

He shifts into a kiss with the ease of the laughter still spilling off his tongue, limbs and mind falling in sync as his lips seek to capture Lan Zhan's, pressing into him, against him, with the gentle insistency that matched the laughter only now swallowed down, easy. Fingers starting to press into hair, lips parting, heat and warmth and the silliness of sudden pleasures pouring forth —

The door thuds, loud, voices belligerent outside, and then spill inward, Wei Wuxian groaning with the inevitability of interruption their love life courts in their inopportune moments of joining. Before he slides himself up in the awkward entanglement that sends him spilling off the bench, a hand down, a foot, and then standing tall again, he murmurs, "Our cabin has the benefit of locking doors."

Then he's soft footed and rumpled and ruffled and far more sensual than he intends when he smiles, flutters his lashes, stretches, smiles.

"Really," he says, at the hulking passenger and her listing friend, "Does no one knock?"

The two women, too loud in the hall, happy and frowning in turns, stare at him with glazed eyes and a low rumbling snicker coming from the larger one. "'Snot supposed to lock." Her friend lifts her head, lets it flop against her shoulder. Reaches out to prod first in her chest, piping up with, "Shhh, shhh, they're celebratin'."

A pause, and a mournful, "Where's th'bed?" as both women recognise the lack of actual cabin, and the woman with her ticket clutched in fist looks morose. Stumbling fully into the hall again, they head on down, leaving the now slightly broken door behind.

"Women," Wei Wuxian says, leaning out into the hall to watch their progress after an appreciative blink at the door, "Should never be underestimated. Did you see that? Right through the door!"

Ducking back into the room to look toward his husband, rueful and amused.

"We need locks."

Or for a certain bride to go stampeding past to forgive them of their preoccupation with each other.

[downswing]

Here, on this train.

He will kill a woman, a man.

He knows this with quiet, blood-thrumming certainty, with callous and undiscriminating ease. The next perfect and well-meaning stranger to rupture him from his husband, in the rare moments when they've finally negotiated intimacy — will suffer. Greatly. At exponential and graphic length. Tidal waves of blood and hardship. Agony without compare.

Lan Wangji does not so much behold the two women, crawling (fumbling) out as if their feet drag along gravel, as he gently wishes them exorcised from his presence. Basks in the brilliance of knowing the creaking shut of the war-torn debris of the door is the most strategic privacy he will be afforded in this stretch of liminal space between propriety and absolute, consummate madness.

His fingers round, white-knuckled, into steely fists. He stares out patiently as shadows retreat, as Wei Ying — fox, belly to the ground — gives them chase with meticulous, endless curiosity.

Then, finally, Lan Wangji tugs at their bound arms, to call his husband back to attention. Say. You.

"The sects conspired to your death. The world, to your purity." The bitterest, saltiest of pronouncements. "Blessed is Wei Ying beneath the Heavens."

[weifinder]

Arm lifted, tugged, binding, bonding, only they don't need qi to mark it in the moment. Or nothing beyond what's infused naturally over decades of Lan Zhan's ribbon, sign of clan and precepts and restraint before it willfully crumbles. Like salt pillars in Lan Zhan's mouth, to your purity, and the bitterness a balm to Wei Wuxian's jumping pulse.

Whatever else aches with awareness, too.

He tugs back on the same binding, brows lifted, lips briefly pursed into the moue of complaint, a wry note to his voice when he speaks. "Lan Zhan, who keeps refusing my invitations to shared private spaces?"

Tugging back even as he steps forward, lips quirking again, brow furrowed, the contrast of an appearance almost piqued and one more knowingly amused.

"Blessed I am, but by purity? Seems mostly from you." Another step forward, another small tug, a slyer smile. "Which is funny, really, it is, because the only exchange I want on that," he ignores death, he embraces life, his bound hand finds Lan Zhan's, looking to entangle fingers with fingers, "Is with you. In. Our. Room."

A squeeze of hand and fingers for each word, and the dry reminder, When we start things in places like these, can we be surprised at the interruptions?

[downswing]

Pause. Hold everything. Wei Ying's tireless verbiage, the women retreating, Lan Wangji's own tendency to pull on principle, because Wei Ying has answered him with a brother-tug, and every flame's spark of competition must be kindled, feral between them.

He turns his arm, listless and thoughtless, to capture the end of the ribbon as if it were reins and nudge Wei Ying's hand near, then claim it, palm to palm, and bring Wei Ying's knuckles to the barren stretch of his forehead. Their own pretty greeting, either perverted or somehow improved by the absence of Lan Wangji's headband to kiss his forehead. He allows their hands to both wilt down, after.

"...we yet share quarters?"

They never did on the train, for no fault of Wei Ying's hospitality. But it ignites a soft fondness in him, to think the offer so crudely ignored and deflected has not been rescinded; his heart, timid but growing, warms at the flame of Wei Ying's vibrant largesse.

He is allowed entry in his husband's compartment, once more. They have not shared quarters, at length, since Serthica, — the stolen moments of desert travel, then Alem's paltry heartbeats of sleep hardly compared. It has been missed, as both intimacy and practicality, their own syrupy rite.

"For all your sleep does not require me." Not with midnight crowned by the indefatigable instinct to collapse. No, not even Wei Ying's nightmare-littered insomnia can survive this.

[weifinder]

"Technically," Wei Wuxian says, ducking his head down to press a kiss where his knuckles had been pressed moments before, "We're sharing them with Wen Qing. Because I did ask," he says, and he comes down slowly, not kneeling, but crouching, there before his husband with the pins of his husband's guan scattered across the floor nearby.

"We may need to be scandalous men of the mornings. Or days, at the least." Or like sensible people, he reflects, let her know early if they require time alone. Ask her to watch the rabbits and Sizhui for a while.

From where he crouches, fond and fondly exasperated, he quirks brows and blinks prettily up at Lan Zhan.

"I don't like the forced rest, but the lack of nightmares is a kindness. Besides, Lan Zhan, is there any other time I'll wake to find you still there?"

[downswing]

"When you ask." It can be, after all, so pretty, so plain, so simple. Their marriage has matured to the point where brazen requests might meet satisfaction. All hail the ill sung merits of communication.

They will barter their room's brief use from Wen Qing's teasing clutches. More scandalously, they could steal a quarter of a ke in Lan Wangji's own compartment, soon-to-be abandoned while two grown men and their maidenly chaperone make nuisances of themselves under one roof, instead of politely redistributing their efforts more strategically.

Let it never be said that Lan Wangji does not acknowledge their crass stupidity, even while joyfully subjecting himself to their whims. But they are men past passions, tasked with assignment. Men whose eyes must sharp and trained, on the woman who should cross their horizon within heartbeats.

"The bride. What do you make of this?"

[weifinder]

"Every day?" he chimes in, near immediately, eyes bright and shining from where he crouches. He expects no affirmative. He exults in the ability to ask, to be heard. Greedy indulgence that he allows to shift when Lan Zhan does what they'd both been intending, bringing about their errant boat to point it back toward the dock tied to why they were at that wedding feast to begin with.

"Mm, Miss Prass—"

It is not the first, nor the second, but the third time their not-quite haven bears the intrusion of sound and force that is another body's passing energy, this time less the drunken slog, less the bumbling intrusion, more the stomping, sweeping, swift passage of trailing, fluttering scarves. Anger and frustration a taste on the breeze that passes with her heavy paced flight, there goes the bride, dressed and fleeting. Fleeing in another sense, thud thud thud down the passage.

"... Just went by. Lan Zhan," he says, rising as he does, hand held in hand and palm to palm and everything of intertwinned fingers and affections, a guiding force, steady and then pulling. "Do we want to try slipping paper into her room?"

A glance to his husband, the question plain and pointed. His talismans work in very short distances. The sweet spark of fire and its flow that his husband shared not so long before, and his own crafting, his own necessities, body gone to limp and resting while his soul rode cutting, thin.

"Or do we wait for Firo to find her?" There or gone, which pattern do they observe tonight?

[downswing]

"Every da —"

A distorted concession, forgotten as soon as Prassenze storms by, and they fumble upright, bound hands ridiculing their attempts at brokered balance. He nudges Wei Ying close, apologetic when he releases his husband's wrist of the ribbon, then perfunctorily it slaps it on his forehead, smear of white stretched long on fresh-kissed skin.

Trust in Firo, or attempt espionage. The option is civil, plain. Firo could yet proceed to persuade her bride and restore whatever equilibrium was broken in the previous matrimony. All could be as should be, come tomorrow.

But there is a pulse of instinct in him, an animal certainty, all encompassing. He watches Wei Ying, the dust motes dancing in wake of Prassenze and the swaying door.

"Slip paper." Trust no one. Assume failure. Think nothing of Lan Wangji already displacing the waters of his sleeve silks to produce fresh parchment and pass it for his husband to make weapon. The better talisman maker, of the two. It does not shame him to admit it.

[weifinder]

Whatever precipice of extraordinary domesticity looms underfoot, the admission to mutually contrived sleeping habits, of waking to familiar faces and embraces (that may be a future conversation, but a man dreams, smaller then bigger, when a man has the inclination) to the nudging informalities of necessary movement. He keeps his balance, briefly leans in closer, leans back again as Lan Zhan frees his ribbon, ties himself down to the moment they part.

He takes the paper with a half smile and a nod, expression turning toward serious. The brush he pulls from his waistband at the side is, miraculously for the evening and the contortions they've made carving spaces for each other on the bench. Lathing his tongue across the webbing between his thumb and the rest of his fingers, he pauses to tap two fingers, injected with minimal qi. The vague humanoid shape stays clutched between his fingers while the rest sloughs away, drifting to the floor. He's already shifting the brush around, dragging through his saliva, rehydrating the purposefully dried ink there just enough to make the looping script take to the paper.

He's already moving down the hall after Prassenze, trusting Lan Zhan is as in step with him, tucking brush away, red streak on his hand one more mark of the evening's trials.

"I feel a swoon coming on," he says, flashing a sly sort of smile, where this can be a jest between them, an avenue of information chased with the safety of his person in Lan Zhan's arms. The safety of his spirit, of everything else, would rely on him.

"Catch me?"

[downswing]

This is ill done. But Wei Ying never heeds him, silhouette ghostly and ghastly and trickling, hunting down Prassenze's steps at a careful hound's distance. They wait, and she enters, storming, the great heft of her door thundering as it slams.

Then, Wei Ying does — swoon, Lan Wangji careful to collect him like a flower, wilting, an arm under his back and another near his head, then both dragging him on the nearest bench. Roles reversed, Wei Ying's head a sturdy weight on his thighs, downing his lap. He cards fingers through the ink smears of his hair and whispers, unbidden, all the fine and precious answers unspoken during Wei Ying's attempts to engage him throughout his isolation.

Never mind their recipient once more cannot heart, that every passer-by assumes Lan Wangji is a distraught lover anguishing over his drunken soulmate who has enjoyed himself perhaps a trifle too much at the wedding proceedings.

They know themselves. When the time rounds right, Wangji too knows to help Wei Ying through his jittery stirrings, awake and sound.

"You are held." Safe, he need not say, but lets it linger between them. Do not shift abruptly, do not topple over. "She lives?"

The bride.

[weifinder]

The fascinating oddity of sending something so fragile and so enduring as the spirit into something as frail and as strong as paper, guarded by chance and luck and qi to be the vehicle of his consciousness chasing after answers. These ones, with all the gratitude in his heart, not dire, degrading, dark in intention and meaning. Instead one woman, changed, her face a poor match to her physique, frustration and impatience leading to a torn up room, a search, a finding, of what another's left. More than once, he suspects, but he does not know.

The paper slips free, returning to Lan Zhan, curling around his ankle and higher before it flutters into quiescence and Wei Wuxian's lashes flutter into returning awareness.

The exhaustion hits, and he licks his lips as his eyes open halfway, a hand twitching and lifting to find whatever hold it can on his husband. Reassurance in the warmth beneath his head, in the words, the nudge to hold still and not rock himself over into action. The answer, past lips parting for another kind of succor: "She lives."

His eyes open wider, titling his chin up, seeking Lan Zhan's face. There's repetition in their marriage in a way that speaks to them, to insecurities, to certainties, to acceptance and adjustments and the journeys they take together. Part of him wonders when this bride will realise she too must confess.

That there's no perfect union, only imperfect silences masquerading as illuminating truths.

"She's frustrated. Tearing up everything in her room looking for where a slim box was hidden 'this time.' It looked... I'm not sure." His brow furrowed, but the niggling sensation, the reminder of erstwhile concerns.

"Lan Zhan, did you see what Karsa had people smuggle on board? I didn't, I only heard about it. If they're small, they might be the same thing."

His eyes have been closing as he speaks, and he wrinkles his nose as they finally make their peace in joining lashes with lashes, dark butterflies perched and breathless, kissing his eyelids goodnight. "Might need help standing, this was more tiring than it should be, ah?"

He does not try, not yet. For the sanctuary of honesty he wishes to hold closer to, he allows himself his boneless moment, allows himself his deadweight in his husband's lap. Clutching fingers remember themselves only now, and he lets go, little by little, breathing in with expectation of the smiling sigh that follows.

"She's not doing this alone. Yet the person she should be turning to, she runs away from."

A story sounding familiar, as he finally makes to push himself up, to half slip, half rise from the bench towards his feet. That he tips too far is unintentional, careening towards the wall when the bench betrays his knees.