Faster than Lan Wangji might have anticipated of her, a girl like a trinket, muscles lean, all thin sinew. Slower than Lan Wangji himself might have propelled himself in, if he were heeding the worst of his impulsive compulsions.
He cannot find in himself the appetite to judge her and find her wanting — only draws the wealth of his whites close, settles his sword in its sheath, and unabashedly, unbidden —
Follows.
Cold, explicably and expectedly. Putrid. The quiet, weighted feel of organic, unctuous matter, of decomposing parts that graze his swimming limbs. Caitlyn heads on first, and Lan Wangji is fast in pursuit of her, negligent of the task at hand: she swims to recover the shards, dark and glistened like bundles of sea weeds. He, vision hazed and eyes whipped by currents, aims to bat away any hands that search for her.
One such arm dives out, to catch her leg, another her flank. A third teases, but never quite latches on Lan Wangji's own shoulder. In his hands, the benediction of cutting wire, the assassination cord stands unspooled and ready, and he calls it close like a noose, twisting around the dead thing's arm, slashing through.
As he twists, gathering the cord to himself, they nearly collide. He mouths, mutely, Quickly.
They have only so little time, before they must break water and come up for air. )
no subject
( — and she plunges.
Faster than Lan Wangji might have anticipated of her, a girl like a trinket, muscles lean, all thin sinew. Slower than Lan Wangji himself might have propelled himself in, if he were heeding the worst of his impulsive compulsions.
He cannot find in himself the appetite to judge her and find her wanting — only draws the wealth of his whites close, settles his sword in its sheath, and unabashedly, unbidden —
Follows.
Cold, explicably and expectedly. Putrid. The quiet, weighted feel of organic, unctuous matter, of decomposing parts that graze his swimming limbs. Caitlyn heads on first, and Lan Wangji is fast in pursuit of her, negligent of the task at hand: she swims to recover the shards, dark and glistened like bundles of sea weeds. He, vision hazed and eyes whipped by currents, aims to bat away any hands that search for her.
One such arm dives out, to catch her leg, another her flank. A third teases, but never quite latches on Lan Wangji's own shoulder. In his hands, the benediction of cutting wire, the assassination cord stands unspooled and ready, and he calls it close like a noose, twisting around the dead thing's arm, slashing through.
As he twists, gathering the cord to himself, they nearly collide. He mouths, mutely, Quickly.
They have only so little time, before they must break water and come up for air. )