( Look... right. As if they are more than ghosts of the waters, hair weed-like and clinging, mere straw. As if they do not both know that any attempt to tame them into pleasant aesthetic elegance will fail miserably and unspeakably.

All the same, he goes: to seek out the comb first, bone, and cleanse it with a tired hand. Then a bowl filled sparsely with the water brought in with a barrel. Then, at long last, the two stabbing things, his pins, secretively hidden away like ancestral treasures in the nooks and crannies of his qiankun purse, and a small jar of oil confiscated from travels prior.

The dregs of comfort, for men of their station. Luxury and finery, for the inhabitants of a cave. These, he presents, each item assembled on hard ground like soldiers before the sect leader, Lan Wangji knelt before Xichen. )

We are not yet such strangers to ourselves. ( They still have this. )