[ They suit together, shadows a blurred, twined sketch prolonging the anorexic striations of the bamboo floor. Better if it were oiled, recently, the depth of the stain more mature, its moisture closed. Better, but too much asked of Yunmeng's periphery, where Jiang Wanyin's hospitality runs itself thinner and better bruised than the man's patience.
Will Lan Wangji hand the matter over to Yunmeng?
By right, the investigation no sooner left Lotus Pier than it reached ancestral grounds. Its jurisdiction spreads like jade beads cut loose off a string in Jiang Wanyin's broken hands — but for the chief cultivator, whose interest in all things supersedes that of a sect leader. If Hanguang-Jun were to exercise the gaunt, silvered splendour heralded by his guan, then —
No. He will not be so petty, not here, with two children in his arms, with Wei Ying a smear of kinetic warmth beside him. What has Jiang Wanyin still left, that Lan Wangji not taken? This, then. This temple. May he keep it. Lan Wangji can prove... generous, now and in all things.
Breath a strained, measured sigh, he leans into Wei Ying to surrender the lumped swell of the yao, who proves reticent to abdicate his perch before Lan Wangji tumbles him back into Wei Ying's waiting chest with a nudge of his nose to Qingbai's. There, forfeit. May Qingbai's life know no worse than these small moments of mourning, when his father's treachery expels him in the loving embrace of a second parent.
Then, Qingshan remains alone, rustling and reaching for the retreating Qingbai, where he had earlier begrudged his presence. He tilts, nearly tipping over the arm Lan Wangji's strapped at his back, turning only to slap his father with the broad, careful, sweet slab of his palm, missing cheek more than striking skin. A poor marksman, Wei Ying may weep if he had intended Qingshan for the bow. Drowned in a litany of gasp-babbled protests, each meant to drive attention to Qingbai's disappearance and to the great sin of Lan Wangji's fault in this matter, he asks, serenely: ]
Mercy. [ And when the flat of Qingshan's thumb strikes Wangji's mouth, and he dips in to greet it with a kiss, again: ] Mercy.
[ And ah, but affection ever does the trick, and master Qingshan consents to being refocused, cradled in his Lan father's arms, demolished, skin and bone, against the spread of Wangji's chest. Heartbeat to heartbeat, the old sing. Later, when he may tease a musical instrument, Lan Wangji will teach him to put the tender drumming of it in notes. This song, above all — except the one, which Wei Ying, helplessly ignorant, has the gall to remember as poorly as his answer to honest matrimony: ]
You refused me. [ This, for the annals of pedantry, a correction for the sake of smiles. Then, in the same breath, the true matter at hand, as they both know it so: ] Close the temple, we leave ghosts in the keep of dead things. [ Each thing, to its kind. A dreadful isolation. ] I like it not.
[ Like marshes, phantasms propagate in the damp of their salted tears, the horizon of their misery. Left to their own devices, they sink and spread, corrupting the ground with pox-like erosions. The priests are not brothers of suffering with those who fell dead of the volcano's gurgled, blazing laughter. The men of the temple were sacrificed, chosen and preyed on with intent by the once-living, where the first victims were merely casualties of hazard. Both regretted, earning respect — but their tolls written in different hues of cinnabar in the ledgers of malice.
And yet, leave doors and windows open, and hope and false security will sneak in, twitching like thieves, and the villagers will dare, will presume, will endanger themselves. In search of gold, or mystical artefacts, or seeking a night's shelter from the cold. Perhaps as a challenge among the growing young, to spend a night among famed ghosts and prove the esteem of their worthiness to their intended. Death lures eccentric tokens of favour to itself, like pressed flowers to its pocket. ]
Two cultivators are insufficient to purify so large a territory.
[ But he speaks it slow, inquisitive, like a schoolboy uncertain of his homework, begging the master's contradiction. ]
i request an adult
Will Lan Wangji hand the matter over to Yunmeng?
By right, the investigation no sooner left Lotus Pier than it reached ancestral grounds. Its jurisdiction spreads like jade beads cut loose off a string in Jiang Wanyin's broken hands — but for the chief cultivator, whose interest in all things supersedes that of a sect leader. If Hanguang-Jun were to exercise the gaunt, silvered splendour heralded by his guan, then —
No. He will not be so petty, not here, with two children in his arms, with Wei Ying a smear of kinetic warmth beside him. What has Jiang Wanyin still left, that Lan Wangji not taken? This, then. This temple. May he keep it. Lan Wangji can prove... generous, now and in all things.
Breath a strained, measured sigh, he leans into Wei Ying to surrender the lumped swell of the yao, who proves reticent to abdicate his perch before Lan Wangji tumbles him back into Wei Ying's waiting chest with a nudge of his nose to Qingbai's. There, forfeit. May Qingbai's life know no worse than these small moments of mourning, when his father's treachery expels him in the loving embrace of a second parent.
Then, Qingshan remains alone, rustling and reaching for the retreating Qingbai, where he had earlier begrudged his presence. He tilts, nearly tipping over the arm Lan Wangji's strapped at his back, turning only to slap his father with the broad, careful, sweet slab of his palm, missing cheek more than striking skin. A poor marksman, Wei Ying may weep if he had intended Qingshan for the bow. Drowned in a litany of gasp-babbled protests, each meant to drive attention to Qingbai's disappearance and to the great sin of Lan Wangji's fault in this matter, he asks, serenely: ]
Mercy. [ And when the flat of Qingshan's thumb strikes Wangji's mouth, and he dips in to greet it with a kiss, again: ] Mercy.
[ And ah, but affection ever does the trick, and master Qingshan consents to being refocused, cradled in his Lan father's arms, demolished, skin and bone, against the spread of Wangji's chest. Heartbeat to heartbeat, the old sing. Later, when he may tease a musical instrument, Lan Wangji will teach him to put the tender drumming of it in notes. This song, above all — except the one, which Wei Ying, helplessly ignorant, has the gall to remember as poorly as his answer to honest matrimony: ]
You refused me. [ This, for the annals of pedantry, a correction for the sake of smiles. Then, in the same breath, the true matter at hand, as they both know it so: ] Close the temple, we leave ghosts in the keep of dead things. [ Each thing, to its kind. A dreadful isolation. ] I like it not.
[ Like marshes, phantasms propagate in the damp of their salted tears, the horizon of their misery. Left to their own devices, they sink and spread, corrupting the ground with pox-like erosions. The priests are not brothers of suffering with those who fell dead of the volcano's gurgled, blazing laughter. The men of the temple were sacrificed, chosen and preyed on with intent by the once-living, where the first victims were merely casualties of hazard. Both regretted, earning respect — but their tolls written in different hues of cinnabar in the ledgers of malice.
And yet, leave doors and windows open, and hope and false security will sneak in, twitching like thieves, and the villagers will dare, will presume, will endanger themselves. In search of gold, or mystical artefacts, or seeking a night's shelter from the cold. Perhaps as a challenge among the growing young, to spend a night among famed ghosts and prove the esteem of their worthiness to their intended. Death lures eccentric tokens of favour to itself, like pressed flowers to its pocket. ]
Two cultivators are insufficient to purify so large a territory.
[ But he speaks it slow, inquisitive, like a schoolboy uncertain of his homework, begging the master's contradiction. ]