[ Dread settles over him like wax on water, dripped into shapes of accident and artistry. He knows the tyranny of the ghosts before it manifests itself, sees them contort and coalesce wispily and take flesh and change, like a poison brew that graduates from the sum of its helpless, garden parts into its destructive whole.
It starts with whispered entreaties, rushed instruction. With eyes that watch him dead and long gone and sling indignities like base filth on his honour, stain it torn and dark. With curfews, rigidly enforced, as if they are visiting disciples learning the precepts of Cloud Recesses. With questions, when Lan Wangji walks past without greeting, detainment when he delays to prepare Sizhui and Wei Ying’s breakfast fare, after the first watch.
Patience thins when he is cornered with queries, come dark, as he balances two buckets of warmed water that spoils itself under harsh wealth of blood rain — what is his purpose, what does he intend with his instruments, what of the…... sharp growth of half-sundered, half burned wood bound to his back — curiously, the leftover skins of a trough — and what of the suspicious violence in his hands, that greasy aggression, a common soap paste?
To his merit (rare, unearned), he makes attempt to nod to the large, half-filled barrel beneath the watchful eye of a tent flap. Fails, miserably, to persuade the dead. ]
The creature must bathe.
[ Help him. Please help him. Lose this one chance to coax Wei Ying into bathing rites, and he will never be free to burn his companion’s nest of litter and scraps again. Rid him of ghostly persecution. ]
ii. (DERAILED) TRAIN TROUBLE | NEWCOMERS
[ Stunted, staggered, pace of Lan Wangji’s chase compromised by the uncivility of rattling wagons. No strategy in keeping the step of furious, volcanically angered mechanical horses. No skill, but he applies himself, mouth cut in a blunt snarl when the winged beasts from above rain down their splintered bone. A cadaver's knuckle grazes his cheek, yellowed and dulled and blunt, when roundness scratches his chin raw-red.
He knows, intimately familiar, the points of his upcoming strategic failure: one man cannot hunt a chain of carts dragged by horses, not on legs of flesh and bone. He will yield. His strength will surrender — gives in gut-wrenching degrees already, when the tight space of the a canyon road and the sharp teeth of cliff wall and the derailed, serpentine whirling of the wagons compel him to keep his distance.
No use to him, if he is trampled first. Less, all the same, if he dallies further. At the first opportunity of the swaying carts, he jumps on the side of one, hands wilting over the window sill, negotiating purchase. Ache to push himself up once more, but then he perches on the top of the cart, crouched for (short) change of balance. He walks the line until, turning to the side, he glimpses a window once more — and leans, tap-tap-tapping it with the hilt of his fettered sword, waiting for a passenger to show face.
An awkward thing, to sit a (wo)man’s ceiling, and speak down without introduction. A proper guest might have brought tea. Uncle would wither into stupor. ]
You must jump.
[ Well, that’s one way to make fast friends. ]
iii. TEMPLE TOURISM | OLD & NEW
[ Dignity would have defaced this trial into mockery. Knelt or crawling like a broken-backed beast, whispered in the corseted tightness of the corridor. Lungs awash with the damp convulsion of air, stale-stiff, the markings of extended closure.
From outside, where light still burns his shoulders, to ridicule the quiet pulse of his brazier, the passageway had seemed — if not generous, then serviceable. Past the gasped mouth of the entrance, into snaked corridors, the illusion dispels itself: he comes into the first great stone hall, all but rippled white rags of himself — first step stumbled. The second, footing negotiated, soft. The third, even.
Tombs each way, raised in stone, and the walls stone, and the ceilings stone also. Hardness and weeds and detritus, and the tatters of linen wards, the stench of old things and decay. Braid of lichen binding a noose to choke out shifting statues. One reins in a spear; the second, a scream. Farther out, a legion, barely sketched out in motley spreads of golden granite, washes in fire. Tributes to the dead.
Lan Wangji trails his fingers over locked tomb lids, writes out the characters of peace and stability without qi reinforcement. Foolish, to bleed himself of strength, when the yin and yang and parameters of the quarters elude him.
Rule yourself before the room —
...and turn the cold pale glare of Wangji’s sword on the first silhouette of shadow that rips form the wall behind him. ]
You gave no greeting.
[ Compared with Lan Wangji, the picture of manners, faced with a perfectly hapless companion among the dead. ]
lan wangji | the untamed | so old, there are scales on him
[ Dread settles over him like wax on water, dripped into shapes of accident and artistry. He knows the tyranny of the ghosts before it manifests itself, sees them contort and coalesce wispily and take flesh and change, like a poison brew that graduates from the sum of its helpless, garden parts into its destructive whole.
It starts with whispered entreaties, rushed instruction. With eyes that watch him dead and long gone and sling indignities like base filth on his honour, stain it torn and dark. With curfews, rigidly enforced, as if they are visiting disciples learning the precepts of Cloud Recesses. With questions, when Lan Wangji walks past without greeting, detainment when he delays to prepare Sizhui and Wei Ying’s breakfast fare, after the first watch.
Patience thins when he is cornered with queries, come dark, as he balances two buckets of warmed water that spoils itself under harsh wealth of blood rain — what is his purpose, what does he intend with his instruments, what of the…... sharp growth of half-sundered, half burned wood bound to his back — curiously, the leftover skins of a trough — and what of the suspicious violence in his hands, that greasy aggression, a common soap paste?
To his merit (rare, unearned), he makes attempt to nod to the large, half-filled barrel beneath the watchful eye of a tent flap. Fails, miserably, to persuade the dead. ]
The creature must bathe.
[ Help him. Please help him. Lose this one chance to coax Wei Ying into bathing rites, and he will never be free to burn his companion’s nest of litter and scraps again. Rid him of ghostly persecution. ]
ii. (DERAILED) TRAIN TROUBLE | NEWCOMERS
[ Stunted, staggered, pace of Lan Wangji’s chase compromised by the uncivility of rattling wagons. No strategy in keeping the step of furious, volcanically angered mechanical horses. No skill, but he applies himself, mouth cut in a blunt snarl when the winged beasts from above rain down their splintered bone. A cadaver's knuckle grazes his cheek, yellowed and dulled and blunt, when roundness scratches his chin raw-red.
He knows, intimately familiar, the points of his upcoming strategic failure: one man cannot hunt a chain of carts dragged by horses, not on legs of flesh and bone. He will yield. His strength will surrender — gives in gut-wrenching degrees already, when the tight space of the a canyon road and the sharp teeth of cliff wall and the derailed, serpentine whirling of the wagons compel him to keep his distance.
No use to him, if he is trampled first. Less, all the same, if he dallies further. At the first opportunity of the swaying carts, he jumps on the side of one, hands wilting over the window sill, negotiating purchase. Ache to push himself up once more, but then he perches on the top of the cart, crouched for (short) change of balance. He walks the line until, turning to the side, he glimpses a window once more — and leans, tap-tap-tapping it with the hilt of his fettered sword, waiting for a passenger to show face.
An awkward thing, to sit a (wo)man’s ceiling, and speak down without introduction. A proper guest might have brought tea. Uncle would wither into stupor. ]
You must jump.
[ Well, that’s one way to make fast friends. ]
iii. TEMPLE TOURISM | OLD & NEW
[ Dignity would have defaced this trial into mockery. Knelt or crawling like a broken-backed beast, whispered in the corseted tightness of the corridor. Lungs awash with the damp convulsion of air, stale-stiff, the markings of extended closure.
From outside, where light still burns his shoulders, to ridicule the quiet pulse of his brazier, the passageway had seemed — if not generous, then serviceable. Past the gasped mouth of the entrance, into snaked corridors, the illusion dispels itself: he comes into the first great stone hall, all but rippled white rags of himself — first step stumbled. The second, footing negotiated, soft. The third, even.
Tombs each way, raised in stone, and the walls stone, and the ceilings stone also. Hardness and weeds and detritus, and the tatters of linen wards, the stench of old things and decay. Braid of lichen binding a noose to choke out shifting statues. One reins in a spear; the second, a scream. Farther out, a legion, barely sketched out in motley spreads of golden granite, washes in fire. Tributes to the dead.
Lan Wangji trails his fingers over locked tomb lids, writes out the characters of peace and stability without qi reinforcement. Foolish, to bleed himself of strength, when the yin and yang and parameters of the quarters elude him.
Rule yourself before the room —
...and turn the cold pale glare of Wangji’s sword on the first silhouette of shadow that rips form the wall behind him. ]
You gave no greeting.
[ Compared with Lan Wangji, the picture of manners, faced with a perfectly hapless companion among the dead. ]