westwhere | (no subject)

[She doesn't mind her companion or the ghosts chatting her up--flirting or not. She's delighted--as much as she can be--to talk to them. It's almost...nostalgic. Plus, they really are so dear, and it turns out charming dead men isn't much harder than charming alive ones.

Except perhaps her grumpy companion, whom she's actually a little surprised speaks up to her as she waves goodbye to the latest spirit.]

Hm? Oh, quite a bit! There was one that had a daughter and assures me she's grown up very well. Another had a lover he had to leave behind and unfortunately she didn't wait for him at all, poor thing.

[She pouts a little, looking sympathetic, and then smiles brightly at him] They really are quite sweet. And a bit lonely, I think. They're all quite eager to tell their stories. I'm thinking perhaps I should start writing them all down if I get the chance... That seems like the right thing to do, doesn't it?

[Let their stories get told, or something. It sounds like it should be right.] But I'm happy to talk to them. They make me think of home, a little.

[ The phantoms... sweet. Loneliness becomes them, frays yet enhances their natures. Eagerness also, in the way of violence that fuels ghosts into being. But the sharing of their fates, ignorant of the possibility of a curse, spreading like dire, critical infection —

Pursed lips, head bowed, patience kindling once more like fire wisps from embers. She is as Lan Wangji first knew her, a flighty, precious thing, butterfly invading what should not yet be her natural environment but still bends and breaks to receive her. It should not awe or aggrieve him, Bichen spreading flat and fair where he's crossed her over his folded knees.

They are holding court over the dead, and he guards a queen. Drip and drip and red rain falls, and he thinks, there are worse duties to perform than this, and his silks sit-sprawl dry. ]

Record nothing until you know no curse. [ Caution, above all things. Above the curious mischief of a girl who has secured herself fresh playthings. ] They trust you in confidence.

[ Somehow, for whatever the reason, Lan Wangji the absent and neglected steward, tolerated for the privilege of each ghost — and there, another three crowd, seeming to stare through them, until their gaze catches on Winnifred — sharing his burden. ]

Their lord has not approached.

[ Shine brighter. Do better. ]

[She looks a bit surprised and then nods in understanding] Ahh, that makes sense! I wouldn't want to share things they didn't want widely known. Just because they're dead doesn't mean we should forgo good manners.

[She nods to herself, as if this was a thing they've come to agreement on and she smiles at him lightly.] I'm glad they trust me. I can't say I really know why, but it's... nice. I hope this helps them in some way. It must get a little lonely.

[Winnie's attention turns, eyeing the ghosts.] Did you want him to? I suppose he'd be loneliest of all... Or is there something specific you'd like to learn for him? [A flash of pearly teeth, half-playful, half-knowing.] I'll get what information you want, if you'd like.

...so easily?

[ He knows her, suddenly: there's an air to her of misplaced longing, of stale, polite court manners that linger like pale dust even once the kingdom's felled. Gossip is wisdom, wisdom currency. The work of women and Lanling Jin is the artless evisceration of men through words' fortune. Winnifred only turns her weapon, shows it sharp.

Who is Lan Wangji, obstinately coarse and splintered in diplomacy, to reproach her? ]

They seek to rescue a woman.

[ A lover, yet beloved. And still, the possibility litters Lan Wangji's mouth like fine ashes. Is this, then, the way of it, when a house and a clan support a love's bid? Doubtful.

Blood pours down the thin skin of the stretched tent mantle, translucent where it hangs tight. Distracted, he catches himself, hand on their covering, pinching the wet through textile. Ah. A child's play.

He stalls before quieting down. ]

An army for one woman. Some would name it excess.

Why not? [She tilts her head, eyebrows raised in something like surprise.] We've all been living together for quite sometime now, doesn't that make us friends? Doing favors for friends is no hard task.

[She says it so casually, so breezily. It didn't matter that they all stayed close out of necessity for survival or by force. Closeness bred familiarity, after all.

She falls quiet then, watching the red with a curious eye, not as disgusted as she maybe should’ve been at the blood-like rain. He didn’t seem bothered, so why should she pretend to be?

When he speaks again she makes a soft ‘oh‘ of wonder and something like understanding, smiling again.]

That sounds romantic. Wars have been fought over less. Do you know the story of Helen of Troy?

[She glances to him, but doesn’t suspect he will, so she continues.] There was a goddess who liked to cause trouble. She placed a golden apple out during a wedding banquet with a note that said it was for the most beautiful goddess, which sparked a bit of a fight.

Three of the goddesses decided to get a mortal man, a prince of a certain country, to decide for them. Each one promised him something grand if he chose her, but it was Aphrodite, the goddess of love, whose boon he wanted more beyond riches or battle victories. She promised him marriage to the most beautiful mortal woman in the world, so he chose Aphrodite.

The problem was that the most beautiful mortal woman in the world was already married to the king of another country. But the man kidnapped her from her kingdom and it sparked a huge war between the man’s country and that one.

[Winnie grins, leaning in conspiratorially] Perhaps they’re searching for their own Helen of Troy!

[ Silence reigns and spreads and propagates with the end of Winnifred's story. He listens, and downfall of red rain hastens, and the patter of it on their cloth defences threatens siege. He listens, and the girl's empty candour would melt silver on a mirror.

He listens, and he shivers for the ache of her tale, but he denies the instinct to recoil. A man persuaded to his beastly instincts by the game of three, at the provocation of a fourth. The stink of blood and flesh torn raw and the fat of human meat, gravel and gristle, for the win of a woman's hand, at the urging of an... apple. ]

The man stole a wife from her home.

[ Who might have been a mother, she, who might have held a true, soft babe. Might have cradled him to chest and shoulder and given him blessings and a name, the hundredth day after, if only she were not wrested and stolen, if she were not — ]

Imprisoned, dishonoured, perhaps defiled her. [ White of his eyes an animal, sharpened thing. 'Romantic.' ] This is your romance?

[She gives him an indulgent look and speaks in a tone that suggests she's being very patient with him] The romance is that her husband went to war to get her back. That sort of devotion is noteworthy-- he is a king, after all. He could've let her go and gotten anyone else, whether they wanted it or not.

Hmm... [She trails off, looking suddenly thoughtful] Well. I suppose you could also look at it as him being angry that his property was stolen. It might nt have been about love at all, but pride.

[She shrugs and smiles sadly.] Where I'm from, most women don't get any choice or say. The very act of being able to read can label them a threat if it's the wrong kind of reading. They might start to get ideas. A dreadful thing.

[She looks away, expression distant and thoughtful, a little sad.] I think it'd be nice if they were going to battle to save a kidnapped woman. It's nice to think someone would care about someone else so much as to tear the world asunder for them. Is that not romance?

[ A woman, property stolen. Most women of Winnifred's kin and kind at risk of retribution for literacy exercised without diplomacy, strategy, care.

At his deepest-aggrieved, Uncle would say thusly: punish he who persists in blasphemy against heavens, who closes eyes hard and willing against the serpentine turns of the righteous path, who corrupts peers and thrives in cowardice and deceit and obscenity —

Past the second slight. The third. All children learn, all men stray the once. Flesh is not flayed, nor bones come crippled for the first whisper of insurrection against the tired, blank and fissured granite of the discipline wall. These women, 'threats' only for the act of literacy.

And what of her, then? She carries herself in the manner of an empress, or a courtesan, both scholars of their craft. And yet, rose petal to bruise lips and skin, jade to stretch it — women hide their hurts, their weaknesses. He reaches out, nearly to touch the ends of her lace and call her to attention, but withdraws before the touch can land. ]

Mistress. [ And a slow, careful, considered swallow. ] Can you read?

[A normal person might've been startled by the question or give to laughter at the absurdity of it or from how it had seemed to come out of nowhere.

Winnie, of course, is not a normal person. So while she widens her eyes a little, she just as quickly averts them, looking down at her lap where the picks at stray threads on her skirts]

I... a little. I was taught to speak a few languages, but... Charming and smart enough to learn languages, but can't seem too smart. [She trails off, shrugging as if to say 'what can you do?'] Society just wanted me to get married, but now according to them, I'm too old for it. I was too... Too bright. Too cheerful, too outgoing. I smile too much and I talk too much. Men don't really like a girl who's like that. So much time wasted for nothing...

[Winnie smiles sadly before she chews on her bottom lip, turning towards Wangji anxiously hopeful.] But I could read here, couldn't I? No one's going to stop me from doing more. You seem well-read, would you help me? Even if it's just a book or two?

[ Bright, cheerful, outgoing. A blur of stale paint and stiff, rushed lines, the paintings on each side of a celebratory lamp. She is as they are, parchment and thin, yielding.

A little, and a spattering of the languages, the studies permitted of a woman — a hostess, the learned recipient of elevated attention. Teeth pearled, smile learned. She must not disgrace herself with scant answers.

Past that, she claims ignorance. And could she read? Here? Absent her fetters? Under the battered pace of rusting rain, he feels himself alien, stripped of the ceremonial, scholarly duties of Hanguang-Jun, shrivelled to impatience. On tip of his tongue, the rejection.

And instead: ]

I know no language of the land. [ Sighed, on its footsteps: ] But my own.

[She chews on her bottom lip for a moment, brow furrowed as she tries not to look disappointed. But then, like she's suddenly thought of something, she leans in a little hopefully.]

Could you teach me a little of yourss' then? Or maybe just tell me some stories from your world? Poems, or tales...? I can share some of mine in exchange.

[ It startles him to know her burning for so simple a thing, a child's whim: stories to invite sleep, stories for lessoning, stories for keepsakes, stories for nostalgia. Words in the wind, gossip romanticised as fiction.

They all yearn for a better world, where heroes rise, bones unyielding, where villains wear the likeness of scales and claws and monsters — where ambiguity and corruption are alien and plainly recognised, spat in the face. ]

Tales for children.

[ He concedes slowly, in the way every father's learned, Just one more and these eyes will close. Sons are bred to lie, shamelessly.

And this girl — ]

You read enough to know poems.

[ ...this girl is not so far removed from the habit. ]

[Winnie laughs and smiles at him as if he's being particularly funny without even knowing it]

I'm not illiterate. I can read a little. Just... not very well. And what I was allowed to read was monitored closely... Simple poems and the like were considered acceptable for a noblewoman like myself to learn, and I had a governess-- a teacher--who would read all sorts of things to me.

I have a very good memory. It's one of the few useful traits I have!

[ A woman... taught her verses by heart, spoken to her. Whispered, perhaps, by the kindness, of teachers, absent her —

He does not flinch. To credit a life's learning in weapons and posture, back straight as Bichen's unyielding hilt, while blood gallops down on the parapet. It strikes him, not for the first time, that war has won him immunity to the visceral scent of flesh and its waters — that he watches the ground drink red, and feels no compulsion to cleanse it. ]

Where lies your mother?

[ Extracted, perhaps, from the conversation of the girl's rearing, if a teacher presided over her schooling instead. If not perished to indifference, or a sickness of the body. ]

[She sighs a little and looks away then, staring out at their surroundings and the blood rain.]

She died, unfortunately, during the birth. My father was beside himself for quite some time... He was more overprotective than most, maybe, but a good man, truly. I was quite sickly until my teen years; I almost never left our estate.

That might be why I enjoyed poems and stories so much. I could leave my home through them.

Edited 2021-07-21 23:24 (UTC)

[ Orphaned, then, in the care of a parent whose finest attempts may yet have fallen short of the mark. Like Wei Ying. Lan Sizhui. Brother, and therefore —

A father, deserting his daughter to the prejudices of a time, a place, a community. Bereft of foresight, perhaps. Of the inclination to unearth it.

Between the trailing pitter-patter of rains, he feels entranced, captive and traveller of another's journey. Cause, effect. He sees the course of Winnifred's life, and supposes it known, like stars dictating sea flows through passive influence. ]

You are of age to liberate yourself. [ A woman grown, even absent the care of a husband, the burden of a child at her breast. ] Need not choose to return.

[ They journey home, and yet, she need not take this step. ]

[Winnie sits back a little, looking skyward with a wistful expression.]

...That's true enough. I could stay here, do what I want, with no one to hold me back... [She shakes her head]

But I can't. I have to goo back and... I know I can't change things all by myself, but after everything I've been able to see and experience here... How can I not try? I have to try and change things, I have to fight for it.

[She says it with a certain conviction, a determination set in the way her fingers curl into her palm, fists tight against her skirts and she stares fiercely at the sky.] So as much as I can enjoy this place, I simply have to learn as much as I can to take it back with me.

[ He thinks, ages past: the countless accomplished female cultivators of the sect who gained no recognition, where only one rose to the highest rank. His exiled mother, reduced to the silver slivers of his father's attention and the tatters of her reputation. Mianmian, armed yet defenseless in the gaping maw of a gentlemen's conclave.

Who can yet fault a woman for seeking to improve her station? Blood will win what kindness did not, loosen the stronghold of convictions. She may hardly yet read, begs his pittance. A tragedy, to be born of beauty, crafted in the regard of the heavens. ]

To champion the liberation of women?

[ There are worse feats on this world, more wretched. She asks little. ]

[The best part about this all is that...it's not even truly a lie. Replace 'women' with 'soulless' and it's the same thing.]

Is it naïve? [She laughs under her breath and smiles at him, a little sad, a little soft.] But it doesn't matter. I may not win at all, and likely I won't see change in my lifetime, but even if I don't... Even if I fail, even if I end up dying for it... Maybe I can still inspire others in the future.

If I can inspire future movements, future improvements, then I won't consider it a failure at all.

Naivete is the beauty of children.

[ He corrects, and this time, the gentle exhilaration of rain waters cascading down around and beside them, as they breathe untouched, infuses him with a dangerous, syrupy arrogance. He feels himself protected, alive. In this moment, invulnerable, a judge of truths he hardly mastered —

And yet, he doles them out, hands bare where they spread silent on his knees, palms facing upward — in telltale, daring invitation for the skies to pour down their assessment of him in turn. To punish and find him wanting. ]

Visionaries perish easily. [ Ash in his mouth, known, remembered; he swallows, and sees Wei Ying fall. ] You die, others pay price of your legacy.

I wonder how I'm meant to take that... [She trails off, laughing a little. Does it make her a child? Childish? Sure, fine. She's realistic enough to acknowledge that it won't be easy or simple. There will be blood spilled--a lot of it, and mostly, probably, innocent blood at that. But don't the ends justify the means?

She watches him, quiet, with an air of that childlike curiosity.] So I just have to try very hard not to die. [She grins at him and then reaches out to pat consolingly at his arm]

Worry not, dear friend! I won't fall any time soon! That's not the way this story is going to end, I'll see to that. But if I don't do it, who will? Any other rebellions are so small, they can be brushed off so easily... But I have a very loud voice and the power to use it. I don't see why I shouldn't just because the outcome might be unfavorable.

[ Dear friend, and he stings, skin pebbled and the livened pulse that bruises his temple quickening — when he turns to see her, not for the first time, a beauty. Porcelain. And beneath her, doll skinned. And beneath that also —

Frail.

Frail, not in the way of women painted weak for the cut of their robes or the spread of their backs. Frail for her vagaries, her weakened voice, the glimpses of her translucent conviction. For being an age by which Lan Wangji had born the trials of war, but only now discovering her convictions.

It must tire, to be so fresh a friend to her own revelations. ]

...sleep. Spare strength for your battles. [ Countless, as they come, hastened. Some for the winning, many sketched out to cripple a man. ] I shall hold the watch.