[ Hands clean, mind dirtied. Wei Ying presents his achievements, the name and the spread of clothes, and Lan Wangji retaliates with the full regalia of Gusu Lan efficiency: first, to lay the children bare, Qingshan precious and easy with kicks and flustered punches of thin air, as if to punish the enemy Lan Wangji, who cannot resist to encroach in his villainy. As if he can, must be stopped, even as he inflicts on Qingshan the child-suffered indignity of stripping the short whip of his sash, first, then parting his layers and abandoning him cruelly unsupervised on the modesty bench, while Wangji progresses to his brother.
And then, the yao, a constant watery flux of shape and stability, fur and fast legs and his fluttered, shuddered pulse. Lan Wangji spares him the better part of his efforts, less to coax cooperation than to broker it soft, to ease him from bruised linens without inviting his panic. This, again, when Lan Wangji raises both children, Qingshan aggressive and imperial, perched on his lent father's shoulder, while the yao grapples with the inevitability of the waiting stillness of the bath water. Lan Wangji, reduced to one silk layer's obscenity for the bathing, a hesitant if coalescing shadow cast long over the bathtub's thick-polished wooden whirl.
Within: a whirl of hard salts and dried wisteria, and Lan Wangji does not say, You wasted coin, it is not of the season, not when each inn competes to recognise and gain the passing chief cultivator's favour. First, he means to dip his fingers, struggling to balance both children and grow a third limb. Then, fear forfeit, he only leans so the yao's foot might tease the water's rim, clicking his tongue when the boy-creature wrenches it back with a fuss, reminded of heat and scars and days of agony. ]
Qingbai will be of Shi.
[ A third son, so named. If not a child by the traditional account, then a creature in sore, striking need of care. The domesticity of the moment — of waving Wei Ying close, of handing over Qingshan, nearly blights his eyes blind.
He must ease Qingbai into subjecting himself to heat again, must trick and gently submerge him, as with the true rabbits, when they never encountered river waters before. Perhaps he should feel ill at ease, to welcome his... dubious husband at his side under the circumstances of transparent, road-worn garments, but here they stand, controlled by practicality, two parents solving the riddle of their ill-behaved children. ]
My third son is of discriminating taste. [ In fewer words than this indulgence: he objects, and Lan Wangji must wet his hand first, then cup Qingbai's limbs with it to prove the wetness brings no harm, only succor. But he pauses, midway, to search Wei Ying's gaze dark and Lan Wangji's own purpose baleful: ] Wei Ying. If he reverts to rabbit form...
[ ...and if Wei Ying is stolen his fresh son, what then? Wangji has born enough of Wei Ying's heartbreak to know its colours deep and true, to prepare in great advance for their arrival. ]
no subject
And then, the yao, a constant watery flux of shape and stability, fur and fast legs and his fluttered, shuddered pulse. Lan Wangji spares him the better part of his efforts, less to coax cooperation than to broker it soft, to ease him from bruised linens without inviting his panic. This, again, when Lan Wangji raises both children, Qingshan aggressive and imperial, perched on his lent father's shoulder, while the yao grapples with the inevitability of the waiting stillness of the bath water. Lan Wangji, reduced to one silk layer's obscenity for the bathing, a hesitant if coalescing shadow cast long over the bathtub's thick-polished wooden whirl.
Within: a whirl of hard salts and dried wisteria, and Lan Wangji does not say, You wasted coin, it is not of the season, not when each inn competes to recognise and gain the passing chief cultivator's favour. First, he means to dip his fingers, struggling to balance both children and grow a third limb. Then, fear forfeit, he only leans so the yao's foot might tease the water's rim, clicking his tongue when the boy-creature wrenches it back with a fuss, reminded of heat and scars and days of agony. ]
Qingbai will be of Shi.
[ A third son, so named. If not a child by the traditional account, then a creature in sore, striking need of care. The domesticity of the moment — of waving Wei Ying close, of handing over Qingshan, nearly blights his eyes blind.
He must ease Qingbai into subjecting himself to heat again, must trick and gently submerge him, as with the true rabbits, when they never encountered river waters before. Perhaps he should feel ill at ease, to welcome his... dubious husband at his side under the circumstances of transparent, road-worn garments, but here they stand, controlled by practicality, two parents solving the riddle of their ill-behaved children. ]
My third son is of discriminating taste. [ In fewer words than this indulgence: he objects, and Lan Wangji must wet his hand first, then cup Qingbai's limbs with it to prove the wetness brings no harm, only succor. But he pauses, midway, to search Wei Ying's gaze dark and Lan Wangji's own purpose baleful: ] Wei Ying. If he reverts to rabbit form...
[ ...and if Wei Ying is stolen his fresh son, what then? Wangji has born enough of Wei Ying's heartbreak to know its colours deep and true, to prepare in great advance for their arrival. ]