( From where he kneels, Qingshan's feet on the ground, Lan Zhan anchored to their son, Wei Wuxian hums. In the stark emptiness of sound following that endless, breathless cry, it's Qingshan who freezes in basic terror; he gasps, eyes watering, small hands clutching tight, and then he turns, turns hard, tries to adhere himself to Lan Zhan, a pillar, a bright sight in the dust and dirt and gloom, living up to his name.
Wei Wuxian stays as he is, hand outstretched, arm a blockade against what exists down that tunnel, the flash of mirrored white and whine. )
Then we don't take risks.
( He says, as if it's that simple, but his eyes are on Lan Zhan's face, and his other hand has already pulled on Chenqing, sweeping it out and into place with a pause and on sounds played on the length of her. )
It's not the men who burn.
( Some other animal, some conglomerate that cries now, keens, and the lengthened pause that finally breaks between two things:
a distant human cry, and;
tears, a keening, like a child's but not of Qingshan.
His brow furrows as he regains his feet, slotting himself before Qingshan, but not to blockade Lan Zhan from movement forward. There was no human's gasp in the first unwavering, unending cry, but there's something human-like in that keen. The cry of a man, yes, that too, but humanity seeks its own vainglorious ends, and that keening, the clatter of small stones and scrape of nails against firm packed ground: )
Lan Zhan.
( There's something stirred and bound and called to by this sacrifice, and the sulfuric taint of it, the grief of the first call, the terror in the second, and the anger, the horror, in the human outcry that came between the two. )
You or I. Bind him to us.
( Qingshan, to them. Even if they turn their backs, even if they walk away, men going about business of their own and no business of disappeared monks, of inhuman griefs, of keening, young cries and the echo of distant human voices, they would yet be blamed.
But he asks, because the shadows that pool and ebb and flow and quiver are angry and sad, and they don't reach out for the light, but rub, cat like, around his ankles even without his song. )
There's an easing we can offer.
( A look, and this is a question, meant for Lan Zhan alone. Will we? You and I?
It's not as if he has much of an answer before that same keening call sounds off again, ending in a half sob and another skittering of claws. The white slips through shadows, bounds over them, and the shadows do what they can to disguise, to hide, but even the weak light of his still maintained orb, the shine of Lan Zhan's Bichen, is enough to highlight wide eyes and the malformed strangeness of what's heading their way: childsized, great drooping ears, a too flat nose, close-cropped fur in whites, and a ragged, dirty tunic draped over a body whose proportions are in every way the perfect gangliness of a child in their perpetual growing motions.
A rabbit headed child who stumbles, hits the ground, and skids forward, the sharp scent of blood in the air, a pathetic nub of a tail poking through the back of the tunic as they hit the ground, terrified keen turned into a breathless whimper. )
no subject
Wei Wuxian stays as he is, hand outstretched, arm a blockade against what exists down that tunnel, the flash of mirrored white and whine. )
Then we don't take risks.
( He says, as if it's that simple, but his eyes are on Lan Zhan's face, and his other hand has already pulled on Chenqing, sweeping it out and into place with a pause and on sounds played on the length of her. )
It's not the men who burn.
( Some other animal, some conglomerate that cries now, keens, and the lengthened pause that finally breaks between two things:
a distant human cry, and;
tears, a keening, like a child's but not of Qingshan.
His brow furrows as he regains his feet, slotting himself before Qingshan, but not to blockade Lan Zhan from movement forward. There was no human's gasp in the first unwavering, unending cry, but there's something human-like in that keen. The cry of a man, yes, that too, but humanity seeks its own vainglorious ends, and that keening, the clatter of small stones and scrape of nails against firm packed ground: )
Lan Zhan.
( There's something stirred and bound and called to by this sacrifice, and the sulfuric taint of it, the grief of the first call, the terror in the second, and the anger, the horror, in the human outcry that came between the two. )
You or I. Bind him to us.
( Qingshan, to them. Even if they turn their backs, even if they walk away, men going about business of their own and no business of disappeared monks, of inhuman griefs, of keening, young cries and the echo of distant human voices, they would yet be blamed.
But he asks, because the shadows that pool and ebb and flow and quiver are angry and sad, and they don't reach out for the light, but rub, cat like, around his ankles even without his song. )
There's an easing we can offer.
( A look, and this is a question, meant for Lan Zhan alone. Will we? You and I?
It's not as if he has much of an answer before that same keening call sounds off again, ending in a half sob and another skittering of claws. The white slips through shadows, bounds over them, and the shadows do what they can to disguise, to hide, but even the weak light of his still maintained orb, the shine of Lan Zhan's Bichen, is enough to highlight wide eyes and the malformed strangeness of what's heading their way: childsized, great drooping ears, a too flat nose, close-cropped fur in whites, and a ragged, dirty tunic draped over a body whose proportions are in every way the perfect gangliness of a child in their perpetual growing motions.
A rabbit headed child who stumbles, hits the ground, and skids forward, the sharp scent of blood in the air, a pathetic nub of a tail poking through the back of the tunic as they hit the ground, terrified keen turned into a breathless whimper. )