[ Trapped. Greedy. Cleansing won't work. And where did it last fail them, but the embers that brokered Wei Ying's resurgence, the cracked, shade-moistened ground of the burial mounds. Where else would death compound and deepen itself, core to flesh and skin made new, a body hollowed?
Beneath his feet, gravel betrays itself, slips and sinks like sea water, churning. He cuts his path, knowing his place throughout Wei Ying's communion — a steadfast, but silent companion, the hand that reaches for Wei Ying's talisman to cordially replicate it, weave of faint and foreign sorcery coalesced in the borrowed cinnabars of qi, spelling calligraphy on a second parchment. No crude blood's spill, no waste of the body's waters. Only Wangji's half of the bound talismans, husband to the waiting wife on the vacant, sterile stone. A dutiful pair.
He'd laugh, but a pair of striations end Wei Ying's song, and he's stranded, briefly — wrenching himself awake from Chenqing's thrall, discovering new depths to the song's flavour. Bitter, now, with a hint of melancholy. Ephemeral, where before it was once moist and fertile ground, cardamom.
To know a man is to know his magic, his music, his core's flow. To marry one is to marry all. The spectre of his guqin looms, translucid beside him. He dispels it, before it can gain flash. ]
I take responsibility.
[ For the spirits they wake, the torment they invite, the tightness of his lungs, wrung and sickly when he enters the corridor once more first, thrust in damp heat and slick, suffocating madness, in the impossibility of a breath taken easily. If he suffers one heartbeat, Wei Ying endures its stop. He knows the difference between them, knows better than to complain. On his nape, sweat glides down like beads on string.
Lethargy is not an option, not with hours giving chase outside for each long moment within. He makes good time to a destination that withholds itself, vacuous and imperceptible, the liminal space between sleep and dripping awake. Too warm, and the burn moulding with his core, the deeper down the burrow he buries himself, barely recalling to turn back, now and then, to listen — flinching to the scent of burned flesh, the unambiguity of murder —
And stops when he nears it hole like a heart and a core, a waiting cavern with a bounty of tunnelled exits. At the heart of it, slate of stone spread endless like a hopeful maiden, painted in thin, rusted rivulets of blood dried and mud passed. Time, gone with it. And remains, beside and beneath and around it: dust and stone, shadow and fat, burning — and bodies, like paper marionettes, husks of dried skin guarding the walls, sleeping.
Dead, before he need inquire. Dead, perhaps, before Wangji was even a man grown. He dips down, whites scattered about him, drenching in ash, and raises soil in cupped hands, blows it tenderly in the crisped, empty face of one of the waiting cadavers. Sees not a flinching, not breath caught or moving the dirt particles that settle down, not a final gasp. After, the second investigation: hand to the mummified corpse's, tickling the wrist, extending himself subtly to catch a sense of energy that never reveals itself.
Ah, but he is ready to confirm the verdict, head turned to gaze after Wei Wuxian and — ]
They are harmle —
[ — less, until the arm he'd held turns, clawed, livened husk's hand catching Wangji's wrist now. Dead, but different from Wei Ying's creations — possessed. ]
no subject
Beneath his feet, gravel betrays itself, slips and sinks like sea water, churning. He cuts his path, knowing his place throughout Wei Ying's communion — a steadfast, but silent companion, the hand that reaches for Wei Ying's talisman to cordially replicate it, weave of faint and foreign sorcery coalesced in the borrowed cinnabars of qi, spelling calligraphy on a second parchment. No crude blood's spill, no waste of the body's waters. Only Wangji's half of the bound talismans, husband to the waiting wife on the vacant, sterile stone. A dutiful pair.
He'd laugh, but a pair of striations end Wei Ying's song, and he's stranded, briefly — wrenching himself awake from Chenqing's thrall, discovering new depths to the song's flavour. Bitter, now, with a hint of melancholy. Ephemeral, where before it was once moist and fertile ground, cardamom.
To know a man is to know his magic, his music, his core's flow. To marry one is to marry all. The spectre of his guqin looms, translucid beside him. He dispels it, before it can gain flash. ]
I take responsibility.
[ For the spirits they wake, the torment they invite, the tightness of his lungs, wrung and sickly when he enters the corridor once more first, thrust in damp heat and slick, suffocating madness, in the impossibility of a breath taken easily. If he suffers one heartbeat, Wei Ying endures its stop. He knows the difference between them, knows better than to complain. On his nape, sweat glides down like beads on string.
Lethargy is not an option, not with hours giving chase outside for each long moment within. He makes good time to a destination that withholds itself, vacuous and imperceptible, the liminal space between sleep and dripping awake. Too warm, and the burn moulding with his core, the deeper down the burrow he buries himself, barely recalling to turn back, now and then, to listen — flinching to the scent of burned flesh, the unambiguity of murder —
And stops when he nears it hole like a heart and a core, a waiting cavern with a bounty of tunnelled exits. At the heart of it, slate of stone spread endless like a hopeful maiden, painted in thin, rusted rivulets of blood dried and mud passed. Time, gone with it. And remains, beside and beneath and around it: dust and stone, shadow and fat, burning — and bodies, like paper marionettes, husks of dried skin guarding the walls, sleeping.
Dead, before he need inquire. Dead, perhaps, before Wangji was even a man grown.
He dips down, whites scattered about him, drenching in ash, and raises soil in cupped hands, blows it tenderly in the crisped, empty face of one of the waiting cadavers. Sees not a flinching, not breath caught or moving the dirt particles that settle down, not a final gasp. After, the second investigation: hand to the mummified corpse's, tickling the wrist, extending himself subtly to catch a sense of energy that never reveals itself.
Ah, but he is ready to confirm the verdict, head turned to gaze after Wei Wuxian and — ]
They are harmle —
[ — less, until the arm he'd held turns, clawed, livened husk's hand catching Wangji's wrist now. Dead, but different from Wei Ying's creations — possessed. ]
Turn the child back.