( He remembers: Cloud Recesses, spartan and pale and bare, and the crackling coil of a whip coming round-down, and Uncle's recitations of the legend of Bai Suzhen, and how a home nearby, barren and cold, housed an unhappier ending —
He remembers: Nightless City, Wei Ying a hovered ghost, the shrill snap and thunderous turning of swords, and how metal, meeting metal, is less shrill than soothing —
He remembers: warmth and sandalwood and Caiyi's silks soft and soothing like river waters —
And he teeters, he folds, he comes down on Xichen, forehead to his brother's shoulder, little more than a child seeking a door to kneel by. )
You speak it. ( The pause drags like an ink stain, spreading. ) Then, it must be so.
no subject
He remembers: Nightless City, Wei Ying a hovered ghost, the shrill snap and thunderous turning of swords, and how metal, meeting metal, is less shrill than soothing —
He remembers: warmth and sandalwood and Caiyi's silks soft and soothing like river waters —
And he teeters, he folds, he comes down on Xichen, forehead to his brother's shoulder, little more than a child seeking a door to kneel by. )
You speak it. ( The pause drags like an ink stain, spreading. ) Then, it must be so.