( He's a chatty bird who chirps along the way, going silent as it's necessary, but silence for a child is more misleading and oppressive than an adult. Is it different at Qingshan's age? Wei Wuxian can't recall. His childhood is empty spaces only later filled by teeth and then his shijie and shidi, Jiang Fengmian and Madam Yu, the disciples of their sect. His own dark hours and kneeling and the cut of Zidian across his flesh.
It is what it is. It's forgotten, long ago.
Here is all immediacy of moment, life and death as entangled and inseperable as always. He hears: Lan Zhan, Qingshan, his own steps, the whistling of wind in a moment where it surges unseen. And then, Lan Zhan moving forward, a white-laced tide sweeping into sullen, dusty places, but not untouched.
Lan Zhan says left, and Wei Wuxian nods, moving in behind him when he pauses at the words spanning generations. A flick of his finger keeps the dancing light overhead just back, highlighting the area with its soft glow, and he follows along as Lan Zhan reads and speaks. )
Instructions, or a warning?
( The only line left unmarked, left unfinished, below: 'Fourth turn' and the character is sloppier than the rest, as if it had found its own death in the moment before its carver could find means to complete. Crass, if not related, but his eyes take on a serious cast as another shifting of pebbles down the way catches his ear.
The wind whines and whispers, and he stills, feeling more than thinking for an extended moment. The compass in hand whirls again, then steadies and shivers, still pointing its way. )
I feel a headache coming on.
( Seemingly offhand, but when was the last time he'd said that, at the Nie's tomb of sabers? Where his newphew had been lured into walls for a living burial, at the avaracious nature of blades longing for purpose long after their weilders were gone. Too alive, and not dead enough, even down decades of disuse.
There was something here, heavy and oppressive, an energy that swallowed and contained. The men? Caused by the men? The explanation for the missing, or explained by the missing?
The pebbles again in the dark, and he steps forward, waiting for Lan Zhan in that unspoken way that remains aware of him and where he moves, proceeding step in step, holding Qingshan tight. A flash of something in that darkness, was it white? Here then gone again, and he pauses, brow furrowed: )
There's something else.
( To the pressure, and to the brief flare of colour in his summoned light: a yao, something not human first, and also not of the dead. )
no subject
It is what it is. It's forgotten, long ago.
Here is all immediacy of moment, life and death as entangled and inseperable as always. He hears: Lan Zhan, Qingshan, his own steps, the whistling of wind in a moment where it surges unseen. And then, Lan Zhan moving forward, a white-laced tide sweeping into sullen, dusty places, but not untouched.
Lan Zhan says left, and Wei Wuxian nods, moving in behind him when he pauses at the words spanning generations. A flick of his finger keeps the dancing light overhead just back, highlighting the area with its soft glow, and he follows along as Lan Zhan reads and speaks. )
Instructions, or a warning?
( The only line left unmarked, left unfinished, below: 'Fourth turn' and the character is sloppier than the rest, as if it had found its own death in the moment before its carver could find means to complete. Crass, if not related, but his eyes take on a serious cast as another shifting of pebbles down the way catches his ear.
The wind whines and whispers, and he stills, feeling more than thinking for an extended moment. The compass in hand whirls again, then steadies and shivers, still pointing its way. )
I feel a headache coming on.
( Seemingly offhand, but when was the last time he'd said that, at the Nie's tomb of sabers? Where his newphew had been lured into walls for a living burial, at the avaracious nature of blades longing for purpose long after their weilders were gone. Too alive, and not dead enough, even down decades of disuse.
There was something here, heavy and oppressive, an energy that swallowed and contained. The men? Caused by the men? The explanation for the missing, or explained by the missing?
The pebbles again in the dark, and he steps forward, waiting for Lan Zhan in that unspoken way that remains aware of him and where he moves, proceeding step in step, holding Qingshan tight. A flash of something in that darkness, was it white? Here then gone again, and he pauses, brow furrowed: )
There's something else.
( To the pressure, and to the brief flare of colour in his summoned light: a yao, something not human first, and also not of the dead. )