Cold is to Anurr as hunger is to Unhalad, or whatever becomes of such, in the aftermath of the battle waged as siege against the farmhouse now left in its cadaverous ruin. He hears the wind, the creaking, the susurration of their companions in words and movements and the exhaustion gone bone-deep, burrowing into his marrow. Death lingers at his fingertips, paints shadows under his eyes, slow in its final purged contact; he sits and circulates and steadies his mind, Lan techniques, Lan visions. Or no, that is what the firm press is underneath his chin, lifted to stare up into a face more familiar to him than his own. This, a Lan vision, and the words that come with it as drained and unanchored as he'd felt in the moment of darkness that had wanted to sweep him away, staring out across a battlefield at the shimmer of white of his soulmate and his son, steel white in their hands, guqin singing.
He blinks, slow and stupid, pulls himself out of thoughts that swirl thick and heavy and splits his parched lips, shadows stretching for him. No, not form him, simply the strangeness of this night and moon stretching down to drag silvered fingers across torn landscapes given such new form in the bitterness of cold.
"You were in here. You, and our son." Ours. Ours, and no blink, no hesitation, just as he does not move from Bichen beneath his chin.
"They had so much they were willing to give. So much pain, anger, resentment." The chorus of the shouts and pleads and demands, the ones he'd brushed past to understand in the months here. Given purpose, avenue, direction. A conduit, through song and application, and he to have touched it all without encapsulating it within the emptiness of his core. Touched by death, but not incubating it, not hatching it out of the hollow of his chest, even if it would be easy, so easy, in this world, to let it fill and spill over into something he's never wanted to be.
Letting go of the resentment as it had flowed and flowed and feeling the parts of it that left, truly left, having vented all that kept them trapped here. Practice of what he once asked, contrarian and too curious and too self assured in his youth: what if.
"Gone, now." Even Chenqing, forged of such things, only carrying the residue now, not the succor of lingering energies. A vessel filled and empty, left with the dregs of what passed, and processing those, slowly, so that he might be left bereft of that memory, too.
Was there no other recourse? Not effective enough, not acceptable enough in margins of error, not then. Perhaps now, the understanding of skills applied en mass to the solution finding, perhaps now he could trust to a solution relying less on what he gave, more on what the group could cobble together, desperate and united and fractured all at once. Perhaps now. Not then.
no subject
He blinks, slow and stupid, pulls himself out of thoughts that swirl thick and heavy and splits his parched lips, shadows stretching for him. No, not form him, simply the strangeness of this night and moon stretching down to drag silvered fingers across torn landscapes given such new form in the bitterness of cold.
"You were in here. You, and our son." Ours. Ours, and no blink, no hesitation, just as he does not move from Bichen beneath his chin.
"They had so much they were willing to give. So much pain, anger, resentment." The chorus of the shouts and pleads and demands, the ones he'd brushed past to understand in the months here. Given purpose, avenue, direction. A conduit, through song and application, and he to have touched it all without encapsulating it within the emptiness of his core. Touched by death, but not incubating it, not hatching it out of the hollow of his chest, even if it would be easy, so easy, in this world, to let it fill and spill over into something he's never wanted to be.
Letting go of the resentment as it had flowed and flowed and feeling the parts of it that left, truly left, having vented all that kept them trapped here. Practice of what he once asked, contrarian and too curious and too self assured in his youth: what if.
"Gone, now." Even Chenqing, forged of such things, only carrying the residue now, not the succor of lingering energies. A vessel filled and empty, left with the dregs of what passed, and processing those, slowly, so that he might be left bereft of that memory, too.
Was there no other recourse? Not effective enough, not acceptable enough in margins of error, not then. Perhaps now, the understanding of skills applied en mass to the solution finding, perhaps now he could trust to a solution relying less on what he gave, more on what the group could cobble together, desperate and united and fractured all at once. Perhaps now. Not then.