[ They retreat like scavenging hounds with broken scraps to fill concave bellies, the fractions of Qingshan's affection a thickened, stoked deluge after long hours of bone-blanching hunger. The nursemaid surrenders him easily, a beautiful boy for one day's love but fractious after, in the way of children spoiled by the radiance of undying devotion. At Cloud Recesses, in Caiyi, in travel, Qingshan is master and commander of every room he waddles, and he will not be denied. Today, he wishes his voice heard once more.
It's Wei Ying who answers him, while fresh accommodations go brokered. Wei Ying, who steps first, Wei Ying who flirts with toil unending, while Lan Wangji's shadow casts long and deep, a respectable distance behind him. Then, amid the fulmination of cloying, clawing incense, in a room far too expectant of a sophisticated traveller's tastes for a seating of the provinces —
...ah. May Lan Wangji suffer the presence of one of his children in the bathtub Arms steeled, he clings to their nameless rabbit son, then only raises his brow and calmly swoops in to wrest Qingshan free of Wei Ying, also. ]
Wei Ying. [ For how often he speaks the name, poison and honey, known and dissolving. Diluting. But granular, patient, seeding and present — humoured, perhaps, to serve reminders of the plain and the established. ] I raised a child.
[ Long years of dread and mourning and sickness and knee scrapes and bruising, when the first brushes with the sword turned an eruption of adolescent discoveries that heroes might win the wars of poetry, but they do not walk from combat of the living world entirely unscathed. That warriors are not born, but scrupulously crafted, and Sizhui, the hold on the hilt is weak, the turn of the calf too tense, the lines of defence too tender, and — there, the first blow bleeds into a wounding, and the boy (turned man) learns.
Perhaps there were nursemaids too, and a loving uncle, a fostering grandmaster. Perhaps a sect volunteered itself to pay the weak, strangled imprecation of a missing master's fatherhood, while he sought chaos in the wake of his soulmate's disaster.
No matter. He lays claim to Lan Sizhui's rearing, one moment and all. He will raise these two sons also, however dubious Wei Ying stands of his care. He pauses only the one moment: ]
Name your third son.
[ Let Wei Ying have his say of the one thing, while Lan Wangji retreats to shed grit and grime and silks for himself and his two children behind the modesty screen. ]
no subject
It's Wei Ying who answers him, while fresh accommodations go brokered. Wei Ying, who steps first, Wei Ying who flirts with toil unending, while Lan Wangji's shadow casts long and deep, a respectable distance behind him. Then, amid the fulmination of cloying, clawing incense, in a room far too expectant of a sophisticated traveller's tastes for a seating of the provinces —
...ah. May Lan Wangji suffer the presence of one of his children in the bathtub Arms steeled, he clings to their nameless rabbit son, then only raises his brow and calmly swoops in to wrest Qingshan free of Wei Ying, also. ]
Wei Ying. [ For how often he speaks the name, poison and honey, known and dissolving. Diluting. But granular, patient, seeding and present — humoured, perhaps, to serve reminders of the plain and the established. ] I raised a child.
[ Long years of dread and mourning and sickness and knee scrapes and bruising, when the first brushes with the sword turned an eruption of adolescent discoveries that heroes might win the wars of poetry, but they do not walk from combat of the living world entirely unscathed. That warriors are not born, but scrupulously crafted, and Sizhui, the hold on the hilt is weak, the turn of the calf too tense, the lines of defence too tender, and — there, the first blow bleeds into a wounding, and the boy (turned man) learns.
Perhaps there were nursemaids too, and a loving uncle, a fostering grandmaster. Perhaps a sect volunteered itself to pay the weak, strangled imprecation of a missing master's fatherhood, while he sought chaos in the wake of his soulmate's disaster.
No matter. He lays claim to Lan Sizhui's rearing, one moment and all. He will raise these two sons also, however dubious Wei Ying stands of his care. He pauses only the one moment: ]
Name your third son.
[ Let Wei Ying have his say of the one thing, while Lan Wangji retreats to shed grit and grime and silks for himself and his two children behind the modesty screen. ]