[ Wei Ying, like tide breaking in frothing effervescence, exhausting himself between quiet trades of words like maiden's knives, short and quick and their stab bloodied. Lotus-like, he withers with the peals and petals of his chatter pale beside him, testament to forlorn beauty.
The inn room does not suit them: sterile, it reeks of the throwaway practicalities of service, past pleasure. Lan Wangji requires no privileges his hands cannot deliver — this, the jingshi taught. Bathing water can be brought in tub and barrels, food procured alongside the gentle meanderings of a passing scholar, visiting the library domes, or an attendant, lent purpose. Wangji's possessions are extensions of his person, defined by the day's work: blood stains of friendly cinnabar jagged on strips of culled cotton, to spare blanched parchment. Lop-sided, the sophisticated stretches of costly silver worked in mirror glass, or coarser binds of polished brass, to practise his curse work. His books, his weapons, his finery — the packaging of Hanguang-Jun, rank preceding the person.
He did not know until he travelled alongside Wei Ying, who wears the scent of burned chestnut and home as he passes, how deeply Lan Wangji has grown summarily infected with wanderlust for the familiar.
Qingshan echoes him, cries plangent and crystalline, when the inn's maid delivers his bathing water and Wangji remembers to reward him with the flesh-pinkening rites of his ablution. Each limb stretched, each bone stroked, back and front and then the dip of him, like an ocean pearl, to bask in the brisk and happy dance of flailing arms and kicking feet, and half of his basin's water tumbled around him. If Lan Wangji should wear the better part of his son's rose and hyacinth salts, complimentary, as if Qingshan were but a visiting madam of a lesser clan — well, Lan Wangji has shrouded himself in half of the burrow's gravelly dark, already.
After, he retrieves the child, dresses him in only the necessities of his lower half, to enjoy the licking heat that diffuses in their quarters, sputtered in thin-smoke wisps by braziers. In his arms, Qingshan settles — further, when Lan Wangji resorts to the night's second weapon, the cup of milk carefully cradled against the child's mouth. He eats a peasant's fill, a starved man's. More than your three bowls of rice, Wangji does not not warn, because the particulars of precepts do not apply to those yet unable to whisper them alive.
He means to pass to child to the waiting bed, but stills in his step, hovered by Wei Ying, and remembers, the instinct to hide Sizhui beneath rabbits — and another, now to bury Wei Ying, curled and sweet, under children. Look at him, Qingshan's spider-lashed and wary blinks, and find an accomplice. Wangji nods to seal their pact, and carefully descends him by his father — watches Qingshan's majestic crawl over his rabbit friend, to land perilously flattened atop Wei Ying's hip. Ah. ]
Does he.
[ The lie betrays itself, his quirked brow notes, just as Lan Wangji dips down to occupy the edge of Wei Ying's seating, like a maiden attendant waiting to serve the master's cup or his wine, wasting trinkets of touch and lazy flows of qi when he passes a hand over the rabbit. Animal-like once more, returned to his nature. Long-eared, leathery nose, jittery paws. It shivers, when Wangji's touch first lands, when their energy streams bide their time to coordinate. Then, the lessening of its breath into quiet, soft sleep, nestled against Wei Ying. Heal, then. Heal, both of them, together. ]
You speak as we do when you tire.
[ With the stilted, rough-edged formality of the Gusu Lan dialect, chirped but unable to prosper the hope of further conversation. An empty observation, but Wei Ying's manhandled himself into too much exhaustion for strategy. ]
no subject
The inn room does not suit them: sterile, it reeks of the throwaway practicalities of service, past pleasure. Lan Wangji requires no privileges his hands cannot deliver — this, the jingshi taught. Bathing water can be brought in tub and barrels, food procured alongside the gentle meanderings of a passing scholar, visiting the library domes, or an attendant, lent purpose. Wangji's possessions are extensions of his person, defined by the day's work: blood stains of friendly cinnabar jagged on strips of culled cotton, to spare blanched parchment. Lop-sided, the sophisticated stretches of costly silver worked in mirror glass, or coarser binds of polished brass, to practise his curse work. His books, his weapons, his finery — the packaging of Hanguang-Jun, rank preceding the person.
He did not know until he travelled alongside Wei Ying, who wears the scent of burned chestnut and home as he passes, how deeply Lan Wangji has grown summarily infected with wanderlust for the familiar.
Qingshan echoes him, cries plangent and crystalline, when the inn's maid delivers his bathing water and Wangji remembers to reward him with the flesh-pinkening rites of his ablution. Each limb stretched, each bone stroked, back and front and then the dip of him, like an ocean pearl, to bask in the brisk and happy dance of flailing arms and kicking feet, and half of his basin's water tumbled around him. If Lan Wangji should wear the better part of his son's rose and hyacinth salts, complimentary, as if Qingshan were but a visiting madam of a lesser clan — well, Lan Wangji has shrouded himself in half of the burrow's gravelly dark, already.
After, he retrieves the child, dresses him in only the necessities of his lower half, to enjoy the licking heat that diffuses in their quarters, sputtered in thin-smoke wisps by braziers. In his arms, Qingshan settles — further, when Lan Wangji resorts to the night's second weapon, the cup of milk carefully cradled against the child's mouth. He eats a peasant's fill, a starved man's. More than your three bowls of rice, Wangji does not not warn, because the particulars of precepts do not apply to those yet unable to whisper them alive.
He means to pass to child to the waiting bed, but stills in his step, hovered by Wei Ying, and remembers, the instinct to hide Sizhui beneath rabbits — and another, now to bury Wei Ying, curled and sweet, under children. Look at him, Qingshan's spider-lashed and wary blinks, and find an accomplice. Wangji nods to seal their pact, and carefully descends him by his father — watches Qingshan's majestic crawl over his rabbit friend, to land perilously flattened atop Wei Ying's hip. Ah. ]
Does he.
[ The lie betrays itself, his quirked brow notes, just as Lan Wangji dips down to occupy the edge of Wei Ying's seating, like a maiden attendant waiting to serve the master's cup or his wine, wasting trinkets of touch and lazy flows of qi when he passes a hand over the rabbit. Animal-like once more, returned to his nature. Long-eared, leathery nose, jittery paws. It shivers, when Wangji's touch first lands, when their energy streams bide their time to coordinate. Then, the lessening of its breath into quiet, soft sleep, nestled against Wei Ying. Heal, then. Heal, both of them, together. ]
You speak as we do when you tire.
[ With the stilted, rough-edged formality of the Gusu Lan dialect, chirped but unable to prosper the hope of further conversation. An empty observation, but Wei Ying's manhandled himself into too much exhaustion for strategy. ]
Ill-suiting.