[ At first, he kept himself sane each night with cruelties of inertia. He has seen the armies draw and scatter like great, pale stains, and he has seen the winged beasts rally, and he has seen the cavernous mouth of the temple break open — and in tight, limited action, in the instinct to deny the canyon its twitched, trembling dramatics, he felt superior.
Here, a passive victim of his environment, he has had but one recourse to control as his own: inaction, seldom chosen. Now, another moon swollen white and fat and royal, diffused between thunders of red rain. By fire-side, great flaps of tent perched above them as they extend the night's watch, he knows himself invulnerable.
The woman startles him too well for a night's companion. And what does Lan Wangji see, gaze lizard-like and empty, when he trails dust and stone and the alien spread of footsteps in the ghosts' wake? ]
You.
[ Four hours, unending, he has seen her, and she has held herself immutable. The first half of long watch, the second sprawling. She is languor, cloying. A scent of lichen and resin, of pretty things dried onto paper. There is a sickness in her of stability past Gusu Lan precepts of grace — a stillness of the deer before the huntsmen's bow strikes.
Days, weeks — months, since first he stumbled on this great, wide, yawning world, he has not felt himself soft. The storm of roiling resent in him quiets to broken wave and spume. Bending on one knee beside her, as if he were drawing to collect his garden rabbits, he holds one hand out. The second. ]
Come. Rest. [ A pause, weighed. ] You have done enough.
[ Whatever she has done. Whatever she yet intends to do. ]
sidles close
Here, a passive victim of his environment, he has had but one recourse to control as his own: inaction, seldom chosen. Now, another moon swollen white and fat and royal, diffused between thunders of red rain. By fire-side, great flaps of tent perched above them as they extend the night's watch, he knows himself invulnerable.
The woman startles him too well for a night's companion. And what does Lan Wangji see, gaze lizard-like and empty, when he trails dust and stone and the alien spread of footsteps in the ghosts' wake? ]
You.
[ Four hours, unending, he has seen her, and she has held herself immutable. The first half of long watch, the second sprawling. She is languor, cloying. A scent of lichen and resin, of pretty things dried onto paper. There is a sickness in her of stability past Gusu Lan precepts of grace — a stillness of the deer before the huntsmen's bow strikes.
Days, weeks — months, since first he stumbled on this great, wide, yawning world, he has not felt himself soft. The storm of roiling resent in him quiets to broken wave and spume. Bending on one knee beside her, as if he were drawing to collect his garden rabbits, he holds one hand out. The second. ]
Come. Rest. [ A pause, weighed. ] You have done enough.
[ Whatever she has done. Whatever she yet intends to do. ]