...wonderfully canine. The small-toothed smile of fate, cautiously upturned. Old, but Wei Ying wears his years like jade pieces, with the stolen dignity of a hawk or hunting bird, a crone. Half a lived life, half borrowed. The whole, patchwork of craft and strain. What new tricks can a creature learn whose entire existence is perverse, blaspheming novelty?
"A hummingbird." Heart-fluttering. A quiet, shy and softened thing. He does not know himself in the name. Sharpens it, dulled first, but finding edge and tip and blade's side, steel, into the trade instrument Wei Ying requires.
"Apologies. If we trade," and he does not offer it, not with this traitor's mouth, not with the shivered line of his pressured shoulders, "Wei Ying will fear me."
Better to suffer the ridicule of a savage reminder than recoil in base fear from the written sight of the one lingering ally. Wei Ying need not witness his name as often as others will, surely.
no subject
"A hummingbird." Heart-fluttering. A quiet, shy and softened thing. He does not know himself in the name. Sharpens it, dulled first, but finding edge and tip and blade's side, steel, into the trade instrument Wei Ying requires.
"Apologies. If we trade," and he does not offer it, not with this traitor's mouth, not with the shivered line of his pressured shoulders, "Wei Ying will fear me."
Better to suffer the ridicule of a savage reminder than recoil in base fear from the written sight of the one lingering ally. Wei Ying need not witness his name as often as others will, surely.