"Certainly a little more two way than what I can do," he says, small paper men running around and performing mischiefs from a time long before and a time not even a handful of months in the past now. A thought he considers with a frown, thinking of salt encrusted walls and the cut of them against his palm, supplies strewn and torn, decay hinted at but not followed through on.

Tomorrow, yes. For now, he watches Lan Zhan twitch and clutch his fingers around the stone, and hums acknowledgment before the words follow.

"Thank you." It was not a necessary check, perhaps, but it is its own kindness, offered in a way that doesn't have him as inclined to stare at the still healing injury at Lan Zhan's temple. Look to yourself, only something he reflects on as strikingly unfair for either one of them to think the other man incapable of, but strikingly fair to presume both compromise their own selves for the sake of each other. A lifelong problem of his own, and his fingers twitch in turn to capture the stone so deemed as safe within his palm, tucked away.

"They have attached names, have you discovered yours?" A beat, as Wei Wuxian keeps his hand closed, not looking to the curious spelling of a stone utterly new to his experience. "This one," he says, leaning in a touch for the idleness of dramatics, tone turning wry at the admission that follows, "Is 'old dog turning new tricks.'"

The grimace following is unfeigned and unexaggerated. An absurdity and a jest of its own, extended between them, as something so silly as to not be worth noting, that the greatly feared Yiling Patriarch's fear of dogs might hound him across realms.