westwhere | the harp(y) was a big winged lyre

Entry tags:

the harp(y) was a big winged lyre | event + test drive meme

Hello, hello! Fresh out of the box is the action spanning 14-31 July, also serving as our second test drive meme (TDM). The event is broken in three parts: one exclusive to TDM participants, one that's for the existing crew, and a communal section, as... sparks literally fly, when characters cross paths.

OOC planning & questions are HERE. Existing players can use this log to party, or you can alternatively make your own logs & network posts. Our TDMers are stuck in this playground only, but — to replicate the game experience more faithfully, they can ask questions and briefly interact with NPCS HERE.

Tiny reminder: eastbound is an invite-only game for size control, but if you found yourself here, love the setting or the playerbase but don't know anyone — PM @ groundrules, we'll figure something out. You're welcome to make a note in your top-level comment title, if you're a TDMing newb, shiny and chrome!

TDM TOURISTS | OLD TIMERS | COMMON TIMELINE | NOTES

TDM TOURISTS

A great day to be alive, chipping manicures and clawing out of a salt mine just in time for a befuddled undead cavalry to whisk their visitors away, one by one as they're recovered.

TDM characters receive quartz stones that function as translation and (network) communication devices, before they are presented to Haltham.

Cursing his luck, Haltham informs newcomers they are in the frozen citadel of Sa-Hareth, controlled by undead warlord Anurr. Characters were wrenched free from the mines of deposed death king Unhalad and... two weeks behind the eastbound caravan that is the Merchant's troupe — their one ticket home.

IS THERE AN ACCOMPLICE IN THE HOUSE?

As Haltham brokers their getaway, newcomers are foisted on Caspar and the Lucky Hands, a gang of thieves set to hijack a port delivery of silvered powder. The Hands handle the theft on D-day, but pairs of newcomers are each saddled with a stolen pouch to transport furtively across Sa-Hareth.

They must escape frequent sentinel searches and other petty thieves to rendez-vous within a day at the dark, dusty and overpriced Hog & Mead tavern in the Merchants' Arena.

Anyone caught by local enforcement can spend a few hours imprisoned in a converted fishermen's warehouse, guarded by three underpaid officers, before breaking or talking themselves out. Thank your predecessors, who ruined the only decent jailhouse.

ALL ABOARD

The travel hell punishment fits the larceny crime: after rendez-vous, Caspar, Haltham, two undead and the TDM tourists join some noble passengers, who seek refuge in Taravast after vocally supporting Unhalad.

They board a seven-wagon streetcar pulled by twelve mechanical horses, heading out of Sa-Hareth down the haunted Stairs of Sighs passageway.

To keep the peace, newcomers must pretend to also be disgruntled Unhalad supporters — and to know nothing about the many bags of exotic opiates that Caspar has dragged aboard.

As they advance down the Stairs canyon, characters may observe each night brings a full moon and blood rains that disappear without trace, come morning. They can also hear the melancholic, indecipherable song of a woman — and find themselves dreaming nightly of burning alive, or being buried under hot tar. They will wake alert and increasingly distrustful of their companions.

At one point, the express ~~train~~ horsecar will pass by a galloping arctic bear, which will stop to salute. Do not feed it.

Characters receive a red helleborus brand on their left wrist to identify each other. It disappears within a week's time.

Test drive questions HERE.

» THE NEXT STOP

EXISTING PARTY

THE WAR IN WORDS

The recent emergence of the dark tar-like creatures gradually unsettles Lord Arha and his ghostly armies into violent outbursts. Throughout the day, the legions become progressively corporeal, no longer flickering out of existence and retaining their memories. They remain dead.

The following morning, the harpies throw down their usual homages of splintered aged bone, now alongside withered parchment. The strips feature excerpts from the letters of Arha and the Lady Hatisse — which Mazyar and his people can translate.

After reading one such parchment, a soured Arha takes unasked command of Mazyar's caravan, imposing benevolent but firmly enforced curfews. Grim-faced ghost soldiers start to keep watch of characters at all times. Some will accuse caravan travellers of being witches or spies of Taravast's Attaryl school.

Those crafty enough to pick up Arha's discarded letter can see his hands have smeared it bloodied. Translated, the missive encourages Arha to turn back with his armies from Taravast.

DON'T HARP ON ABOUT IT

All hell breaks loose as Allison, Lily, Wei Wuxian and Five follow tar harpies inside their makeshift "nest" — going down a steep pit into one of the canyon mountains, and reaching the cavernous and shifting corridors of a stone temple. The passageways lead to small chambers that host stone tombs, many opened and still holding the remains of bones and drips of tar.

Angered by the intrusion, the laired harpies turn aggressive and exit into the canyon, starting an attack spree. They throw rocks, claw or fly down and pick up stray animals and humans. Arha and his army can help you defend against the creatures.

With their main entryway compromised, some harpies will leave the lair through the fissured canyon wall, creating a crude and claustrophobic opening. The sorcery contained within the temple will seep out, with magically sensitive characters finding they can no longer quite tell the difference between the living and the dead. (All) characters can now sometimes briefly see the flickered figures of people they deeply miss around them.

Existing character questions HERE.

» AND THEN YOU GET VISITORS.

OLD TIMERS & TDM TROOPS

FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BU—

Gone rogue, some harpies will target a rapidly incoming seven-wagon streetcar, destroying or flying away with eight of its 12 mechanical horses, and the sad coachmen. The remaining steeds are completely unmanned.

The existing crew can wave their handkerchiefs as the ~~train~~ horsecar speeds by the caravan, set to crash into a canyon wall — or lend a hand to evacuate our TDMers, more Sa-Hareth refugees, and... our good friend Haltham and two of his creatures. Also, opium.

TDMers can meanwhile (haphazardly) board off or try to take control of the mechanical horses.

Write your starters as you will, or plan out the fate of the ~~train~~ horsecar HERE.

FRIENDS & FAMILY PROGRAMME

Following their unlikely survival, newcomers can join the existing party as part of ~~smuggler~~ merchant Mazyar's prosperous caravan. They will receive food, decent clothes and a donkey, horse or elk mount — a rare upside from the ongoing blood rain weather forecast, and the tar-drenched harpies that throw down aged bone.

They will also notice that Mazyar's caravan has been escorted by a ghost army led by the Lord Arha. He travels to free his lover, the oracle Hatisse from her alleged imprisonment by the witches of Taravast. All characters will experience a blood-curdling dread whenever they think to tell Arha or his men that they are dead — but speaking the words is now possible. Report HERE, if you'd like to break the bad news.

As the caravan stops for a few days, the existing party and newcomers can make merry, recover or raid the open haunted temple — where they may find several untouched stone tombs, including one engraved with a sculpture of Lord Arha. It will prove highly difficult to remove that lid without a group effort... but for that, or any other tomb questions, GO HERE.

NOTES

FRESH MEAT ~~GONNA EAT~~

TDM events count as game canon, if you app in.

You can do network-style posts & log starters. Invent a username for communicators — but you're stuck with it after!

You can use the two allied NPC undead during the ~~train~~ horsecar disaster portion. Deploy them as you see fit to keep your character alive. The undead come with higher strength, speed, hunting instincts and a... disturbingly cold presence.

Haltham can make last-stand miracles happen for you, but at a heavy price. Inquire here.

OLD TIMERS, THINE WRINKLES SWEET

Existing characters won't be able to tell whether the newcomers or each other are living, dead, memories or ghosts, as a result of the (temporary) temple magic.

...yes, any leftover opiates are up for grabs. Hooligans.

You're welcome to respond to network posts from TDMers — but please keep your network posts in

eastbound, think of Ye Olde AC.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i. FRIENDLY CURFEW | OLD SQUAD

[ 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. ]

Edited 2021-07-16 00:09 (UTC)

[ Seeking to get the lay of the land now that the dust had settled, Zuko found his way to the temple, curious to know more about where he found himself, still hopeful that he might catch sight of something familiar though he knew the chances were slim. He held his breath as he entered, walking almost soundlessly across the ancient stone floors, his head turning this way and that, taking it all in while his feet took him further.

It was solitary and quiet enough in here that he thought it was safe to bend, opening one hand to allow a small flame to bud up in his palm, illuminating the carved walls and tombs around him. Zuko stood motionless, taking a long moment to look and listen - the far-off sound of movement dictating his path.

There's no reason to put a hand on the hilt of his swords in anticipation, the fire in his hand was ready to grow in a split second if he needed it to. He wasn't worried about defending himself, but he was concerned over what he might regardless.

The figure in white, sword drawn and ready for him made Zuko come to an abrupt halt, watching but making no move to advance. The stranger was right, he had made himself as quiet as possible on his way inside, and he knew he would have reacted similarly, or worse, being snuck up on. ]

You're right.

[ The flame he held dismissed Zuko dropped both arms to his sides, bending slightly at the waist in a small bow. ]

Do you know these people?

[ His head tilted sideways, motioning at the tombs around them. ]

[ No shivers of anticipation to ruin the boy's composure, no compulsion to seek out his weapon, no stirring to suggest an appetite for violence. He was an accident of discretion, no more. Still, the signs of caution erode the lines of Lan Wangji's greeting, chip down and tatter the edges of his nod, until he is as granite and calcar, crude, blunt-shaped. Lasting, without merit or cause.

He drifts Bichen down, the sword leaving behind bare whispers of its pale, luminescent presence. She will always be the better companion of the two, the civilised, superior blade, wife to a husband undeserving. Before the sheathing, he satisfies her, drag of his thumb feeding the cutting edge red, rewarding her with blood for the draw. Qi hastens the fresh itch of mending in his skin, a heartbeat after. A simple gift — hers, readily. ]

No. [ The hall rooms feel their years, weighted and oppressive, scowling down. He breathes, and it is as stealing the stale ration of a myriad of listless walls. ] We assume, our... companions.

[ But then, the boy-creature reeks of indecision, of that stubborn, sickly flux between the living and deadened things that has haunted the convoy since the temple entrance revealed itself — and perhaps there are crumbs of his body, droplets of his blood, strands of his hair spread in array in the gut of one tomb, or the next. ]

They in Lord Arha's service. You number with them?

No. [ Zuko didn't take his eyes off the stranger in white, regarding him carefully, intrigued by the lone warrior among the tombs. ] I came with those metal horses, from Sa-Hareth. I'm going east.

[ There's a resolute tone to his quiet voice, if that's the direction he had to head to get back to the work he had left undone then that is where he would go, no matter what it took to get there. He had left too much unfinished, and the war's end was too close at hand to be missing in action like this. ]

Zuko. [ He offered his name and another nod, watching the other man's face to see if the name sparks recognition. Hoping it would not. Traveling anonymously in a strange place was easy, traveling rough as the prince of the Fire Nation would make things more cumbersome. He wanted to keep it simple, and get to where he had to go. ]

Wangji, sect Lan.

[ By now, the habit of breezy introduction, his name scattered like stale grains before a flock of hungering pigeons. Priceless before, a jewel of the clan. Hanguang-Jun's presence forfeit and shared among the chaos-ridden, the aching, the needy. Refused to his equals with impunity, and doled out without measure to watchful strangers.

It fits them, to meet the boy Zuko, metal of his manner scratching the shield of Lan Wangji's indifference. It Suits, and he retaliates with a nod in kind, mimicry of aborted courtesy. ]

Your cart nearly met hard end. [ But you yet live, and no man spared by the heavens should wallow in terror his feet were craft dexterous enough to outpace. ] You've wandered.

[ In part, accusing. Children should know their place, minded, should not drift past the beaten path. The temple asked no visitors, mosaic pieces of crystallised filth and cobbled stone and the print of wet, now glimpsed in erosion. ]

Here, you keep with ghosts. [ A beat. ] They, with you. [ Be gone, then. ] Withdraw.

( Had he heard clearly, he might have been more amused; as it is, watching the twists and turns of the dead man's clutches around their party tighten down like so many itching, twitchy fingers has his smiles less and less sweet, his sincerity bled out like the night before his eyes remember: obsessions do no credit to anyone, and to the dead, they can be everything.

A shake of his head, and a high step as he finds his way to the oddity of Lan Zhan's strapping form, burnt wood on back, buckets of water yoked to a dead soldier's disapproval. )

We hardly have time for these things during the daily march, ah? Come, come, the longer he's here, the more the rain makes flattened cattails of us all. Unless, ah! You're volunteering! Here, I'll take this bucket, and you can fetch us another—

( A back and forth of infuriating misunderstanding and needling and the soldier grips the hilt of a sword that cuts with gritted teeth, before a spit curse and wasted breath and spittle itself flies groundward, one more splatter in the red, and they are: not free, not without a different battle faced, but worn down into walking freely forward into that tent and all its pretense of home.

He steps light, to avoid the splattering blood that fades with morning, and he mourns little of it as he carries the bucket he purloined inside, just barely into the tent. )

What in the world, ( he asks, setting the bucket against his hip ) is this going to look like when Lord Arha snaps, ah? Lan Zhan, obsessions do blind.

( Simplification. More true: where is this taking us, and what is it we find raining down beyond the blood and ruin so heavily implied? )

Have you seen any of these bits of paper floating around with the harpy offerings?

( Is he going to comment on the bath? Not yet. Only: )

Lan Zhan, what's that strapped to your back? Did you need something as kindling?

Is it Lan Wangji's part, then, to play, always and forever, in the pages of his and Wei Ying's shared histories, of the damsel porcelain-faced and waiting rescue from the embarrassments of her lesser crowd? He recalls, a life time ago: men, gathered around him to trumpet the fault of a child's wails, and Wei Ying interceding. Stationed above them, the gentlemen of Carp Tower, demanding for Lan Wangji's to violate his composure with hard drink, and Wei Ying's hand steady, ready, clawed like a vulture's — seizing the catch of Lan Wangji's cup.

Now: the guards in rushed conclave like swarmed flies about him, barring his path, and Wei Ying negotiating their escape into immodest seclusion, the strain of taut tent cloth pulled each way, lending shelter. Emptied, the palm of one hand itches until blunt nails drag down red indentation, bless the absence of the pail once carried. Wei Ying's, now. Lan Wangji could not even succeed in this, the work of an innkeeper's boy.

He drifts with his one lingered bucket to the thick barrel brokered for bath's purpose, pouring its waters in, until thick wafts of warmth prickle his skin, graze him to shiver. After, he pries the second bucket from Wei Ying's grasp, coaxes its contents into the makeshift tub, until the rim of the barrel threatens wet. No matter. He leaves the pails like sister orphans by the barrel's side, unfastening his back's burden — shedding the burned trough's skin simply on hard ground, as if it were a kissed trail of leaves, to serve as Wei Ying's perch.

"You may ease your step as you emerge." A suitable purpose, to avoid slippage and ease drying, for all the kindle was sooner lured in by nostalgia. Wei Ying gave the gift, Wei Ying ill remembers it. And what of this negligence is new in him?

"The letters of romance." The tips of his ears ripen enough to suggest he has exposed himself unduly to either the ghosts' correspondence or the heat of the tent. "Master Moran collects them." Without reticence or ado. But then the cut of Lan Wangji gaze lands on Wei Ying's hard-slanted cheek, his nose — the physiological betrayals of his nature, a bird of prey. "You believe the ghosts' tempers will exacerbate."

No ridicule in this, only common speculation.

Lan Zhan is a bulwark, even in times and places not of his choosing. To Wei Wuxian's eyes, he's a steadying force, and the intercession of light feet and silvered tongue is a gift Wei Wuxian can share, exchanging nonsense for forward movement, and ah, the loose hold of his shoulders sheds tension under the feeble pretense of the tent's cover.

He offers no resistance to the reclamation of his liberated bucket, blinking as the water pours in, as Lan Zhan finally sheds the burden of his burnt wood to place it upon the ground. A shingle, on an impossible eaves, for what kind of crow to perch on? Himself, he supposes, fits enough of the profile, even if his voice is sweeter. Should be sweeter than the strained, dry caws that come to mind.

"A cloth is easier to carry," he says, but his voice softens for multitudinous sake, drifting closer to the improbable whites of Lan Zhan's attire. The warmth here is a kindness and an oppression, painting its way across Lan Zhan's face in extremities, and he smiles so as not to sigh. "Thank you." Gratitude first.

He's moved close, enough to crowd without bridging that further. Moran has more, ah? Then asking he shall go, though if to Moran first or Moran in target after, he'll see. "I do. All of them." Tattered, tarred remnants, solid, marching death, and Arha, not the only mitigating factor, but the one at hand closest. "They're more solidly here than before. The balance will tip, and better hopes are that it tips toward quietude."

He reaches out, fingers grazing the barrel's rim, dancing across splashed water droplets being greedily swallowed by wood and wear.

"Obsession does not make for pretty dreams and sweet tempers."

What would you know of it? But unkindness stings his bright bird eyes, and his palms itch, broad and gravelly where they grasp the barrel's rim too close, sentinel over the bathing water.

And what is obsession but love uncertain or unrequited, love past bearing? Pity the man Arha, where he drips and pours from one end of the encampment to the next, armour leathers and shadow and a legacy of scaly, serpentine want. It gives him chase like a silent hunter, pursues him. It seizes what fragments death's left unclaimed of his soul.

"Perhaps she was worthwhile." Is this not the argument, now and forever? He remembers it: sect-wide condemnation not of the dark-rot sickness like burned tea grounds that stained Lan Wangji's soul as grief in the wake of Wei Ying's passing, grief and mourning — but uncle's vocal, scratchy concern that loyalty was unearned and misplaced. That the subject betrayed the union. One man's illness of the mind is not another's design. One cannot live for another, or the pair perish, breathless and gasping.

He knows so now, flicks short, slow burst of warmed barrel water in Wei Ying's direction, between two fingertips.

"We may yet soothe them." No, never a group so great, not among two — five cultivators, for all Lan Sizhui is fresh of training, Wen Qing death-touched and Jiang Wanyin... persecuted by whatever maladies make Jiang Wanyin of him. "Wei Ying. Take Wen Qing, Sizhui. The boy Eleven. If blood must pour, let it not touch their hands."

"To him, she is." Factual, and quiet. Wei Wuxian doesn't fight against that, or judge if the man has a point, or a vision, or she had her own worth beyond all things, or what broke down in their communication and love to lead to the tragedy of its ending. She lived; she buried them. They did not stay quiet, and the songs of the burning follow each night. What, then, does it mean? What layered story is here?

He jolts out of his own thoughts as the water flicks toward him, starting visibly, looking to Lan Zhan with widened eyes. His surprise melts into a smile, laughter part disbelief, eyes bright with the now and not the thoughts that tie back to a world he missed by choice, by defeat, and heartbreak he hadn't thought he could live beyond.

He'd been wrong, back then. Eventually he would have found reason to live, insatiable in caring, ready for the next fall of the lash until he was a collection of splintered bones and flesh. It would have been a life, but to what cause, to what ending; if he'd have lost more than his grasp on his grief, the world he felt was ending, and himself the cause. Splinters that burrowed within, seeking his heart, leaving blood dribbling from parted lips, eyes weeping, seeing only endings.

Soothing souls. He slides his fingers into the water, and he lifts two in turn, flicking back at the man who'd not listened in the end to Wei Wuxian's own, turn back. Do not make of yourself an enemy of the world, and ah, even then he had not. Had been called a victim to the Yiling Patriarch's seduction, and laugh until there is no more room for breaking before the anvil of everyone else's justice.

"Lan Zhan, if it comes to that, I will." He can, a man practised in certain manners of fleeing, taking those he's fled with before to safer haven. History in motion, made present. "Mah, did you plan to bathe first? I can go after." Or is he still finding means to sneak into streams even now?

Take caution, Patriarch. He flinches, nose wrinkling in tired objection at the wet stain of Wei Ying's vendetta, droplets needle-prickling the swell of Lan Wangji's wrist bone. He started this war, and so he will finish it.

"I did not."

But he applies himself, patiently, to the task of slipping each sleeve to his elbows, of raising the rims and rounding them at the joint, to knot and keep aside. Silk shielded, he lifts of the bathing waters in cupped hands, indulgence and consistency of the wafting warmth a betrayal of the heating talisman, carved stark on bleached parchment like cuttings on flayed flesh, flung idle and strained on the barrel's side.

Brother would know his instincts, name him a child. ( Brother absents. ) Throughout this, Lan Wangji keeps the line of Wei Ying's eye, carries the weight of water up, then over, to drip down seamlessly and dilute the ink spill of Wei Ying's hair, the top of his head.

As if it is the most natural conclusion of their evening, the tension of Arha's oozing presence reduced to empty thread. Beyond, little voices of hummed fireflies quarrel in unfriendly distance. Here, Lan Wangji weaves his fingers together and collects more water, salt-spumed, preparing to replicate his ministrations.

"Bow your head." Submit willingly and retain a few rice grains of dignity. How to cleanse the hair of a cat. "Spirits are often bound to people or places." But Arha and his legions have walked the canyons for days. "These are to a moment."

Wei Wuxian watches this whole production with a curious air, drawn yet further out of his own thoughts watching Lan Zhan bear his arms again, skin pale and glistening where damp clings like another layer, silks coaxed to elbows, a landscape of veins thrumming beneath the surface of flesh, warm and warmed; the last time echoed like the burn of wood underfoot, kneeling behind a man, dressed in damper, fewer whites, fresh from the ice cold of preference. Wei Wuxian should have woken to the purpose sooner, but from this audience, play does not come as his primary expectation.

Lan Zhan raises hands cupping water, wrists dampened, fingers slick with heat, raises and extends for an inevitable release, the plateau a head and the cascade of it warmth that splashes and drips and trickles over his hair, down his face. Salty, not for the water, but for the sweat that drips with the deluge, and his eyes widen, mouth dropping open, water intruding as water does, invading with little regard for the sanctity of form.

An open mouth is an invitation for filling, after all.

"Lan Zhan!" An exclamation he follows with a breathy laugh, smiling in spite of himself, or perhaps entirely because of himself. His hair is pulled back, bound by ribbon, and Lan Zhan tells him to bow it for further rites? Water dribbled over, and he could fight this, could argue, but why?

His expression is a touch helpless, but his hands come up and work at ribbon, at hair knot. "Are you planning to wash my hair or just shove me in the barrel?" He suspects the shoving. Lan Zhan could make sure he fit in, and leave him to launder as he cleans.

lan wangji | the untamed | so old, there are scales on him

iii

baby

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old guard turning new tricks

I remember your prose ways!!!!

you are a kindness to my ancient eyes

sparkles

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curfew

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iii.

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