Flickered violence is the beast in motion. At night, only the white of its teeth glisten-blinds, and the sullen silence of Bichen's pallor, the blade drawn and searching the red-rained horizon. Lan Wangji moves unmoored, unbidden, before he can stray into uncertainty, half slipping in the blood-slick that coats the cliff's mouth. The woman sits too close. The animal descends upon her. And he knows well, too well, that if the winged creature grasps its prey from behind, it will either surge with it into the skies, unfettered, or plunge the woman into the abyss.
These things have never assaulted victims of such stature before, and she, nameless but coaxed out of balance, a woman grown. Distantly, Lan Wangji remembers to loathe the sketch of bodies before they fall, lines breaking, geometries cored of their purpose. Now, the creature draws on her back — she will collapse, she will fracture, she will be mourned —
...only, the woman is relinquished, the fluid, viscous nest of the beast's claws and wings and beak withdrawing once she is set straight on trustworthy ground. After (a heartbeat, whole), Lan Wangji swings down on the creature, and Bichen barely grazes the tips of its retracting claws. Thrown after the animal, the sword hardly pretends to give chase; only seconds before momentum yields, gravity conquers, and the blade swoons back down in his hand with the dull, aching resonance of failure. A shudder booms and bursts within him, cripples his posture: blood, streaming; no, anger. He wipes the sword on the flat of his palm, thin red line giving Bichen her honourary feeding, payment for unsheathing the blade without giving her compensation.
Above, the fleeing creature is a long-winged spatter of shifting, tremulous flesh. Beyond, the thrumming, empty chatter of the deadened army, a landscape of dark against the blood-rained white of Lan Wangji's silks. Nearby, the woman, spared against the odds of the encounter.
He thinks, this moment was only water, and she must be as spume, drifting and shallow and at the mercy of powers beyond her, and Lan Wangji should reach for her now, reach and reassure her, and offer what little is theirs yet to give, the blankets, the wine, the congee —
And instead, he turns his sword on her, a polite hand's distance from her chest. "Our enemy was your benefactor."
ghostly interlude
These things have never assaulted victims of such stature before, and she, nameless but coaxed out of balance, a woman grown. Distantly, Lan Wangji remembers to loathe the sketch of bodies before they fall, lines breaking, geometries cored of their purpose. Now, the creature draws on her back — she will collapse, she will fracture, she will be mourned —
...only, the woman is relinquished, the fluid, viscous nest of the beast's claws and wings and beak withdrawing once she is set straight on trustworthy ground. After (a heartbeat, whole), Lan Wangji swings down on the creature, and Bichen barely grazes the tips of its retracting claws. Thrown after the animal, the sword hardly pretends to give chase; only seconds before momentum yields, gravity conquers, and the blade swoons back down in his hand with the dull, aching resonance of failure. A shudder booms and bursts within him, cripples his posture: blood, streaming; no, anger. He wipes the sword on the flat of his palm, thin red line giving Bichen her honourary feeding, payment for unsheathing the blade without giving her compensation.
Above, the fleeing creature is a long-winged spatter of shifting, tremulous flesh. Beyond, the thrumming, empty chatter of the deadened army, a landscape of dark against the blood-rained white of Lan Wangji's silks. Nearby, the woman, spared against the odds of the encounter.
He thinks, this moment was only water, and she must be as spume, drifting and shallow and at the mercy of powers beyond her, and Lan Wangji should reach for her now, reach and reassure her, and offer what little is theirs yet to give, the blankets, the wine, the congee —
And instead, he turns his sword on her, a polite hand's distance from her chest. "Our enemy was your benefactor."
She must know the implications. Must understand.