The sun can kiss her. Knife's edge, the parting thought: he watches Wei Ying with baleful, hawkish greed, sees his womb and its slow-baking work. After sixteen years' lull, consider haste.
"I think," he starts with the air of every petulant infant who has spotted the treat denied to him, of Sizhui when he was still Yuan, and sticky fingers trailed to catch the fineries stretched over merchants' stalls, "I shall have two."
Be warned, be wary. And Yiling, a widow, Wei Ying a mother, Lan Wangji their husband-witness, their cause, their resolution. The whip of his tongue stays, his hand ropes a quiet claw that clenches tight and pulsing at the plant root of his back, the bulb of his posture. He stifles his aches: counts milliseconds of yearning, then heartbeats, then moments whole, until he is the glass recipient of waters, roiling. And jasmine-bland, his gait slows, reshapes itself: he escorts, one hand on his sword's hilt, Bichen a shriek of hunger crystallised sharp, fettered.
Red, vibrant, bloodied beneath his sleeve — Wei Ying's string, trapped on his left wrist, shielded from the dangers of friction inherent in the bearing of the dominant hand. The Gusu Lan way, for all of Wei Ying's exceptions. It will serve. It has served well so far, served often.
The village is a world stitched together from patches of rags and misplaced thread, needles prickling. Each way, men turn with apprehension, the bright-eyed terror of creatures that know themselves hunted and small, and see their predators alive among them.
"I think," he murmurs, and concedes to the offensive inevitability of easing himself between Wei Ying and the nearest stranger, "you should call wards."
Not to arm or guard them, but for how people move, serpentine, how they gaze at each other with distrust mounting. How their touch lingers too often on blades held out, their eyes search jugulars. They are animals fed well with grudge and spite, to saturation. One flicker, and sparks will turn to effervescent flame and —
"...cleansing. Can you yet...?" In truth, he knows Wei Ying might be himself too deeply entrenched in startled energies to perform ablutions. Better, "Can you amplify what I anchor?"
The perimeter is too broad. Their watchers are too attentive of strangers. And the first taste of pure energy, when they come so drained, might prove...
no subject
"I think," he starts with the air of every petulant infant who has spotted the treat denied to him, of Sizhui when he was still Yuan, and sticky fingers trailed to catch the fineries stretched over merchants' stalls, "I shall have two."
Be warned, be wary. And Yiling, a widow, Wei Ying a mother, Lan Wangji their husband-witness, their cause, their resolution. The whip of his tongue stays, his hand ropes a quiet claw that clenches tight and pulsing at the plant root of his back, the bulb of his posture. He stifles his aches: counts milliseconds of yearning, then heartbeats, then moments whole, until he is the glass recipient of waters, roiling. And jasmine-bland, his gait slows, reshapes itself: he escorts, one hand on his sword's hilt, Bichen a shriek of hunger crystallised sharp, fettered.
Red, vibrant, bloodied beneath his sleeve — Wei Ying's string, trapped on his left wrist, shielded from the dangers of friction inherent in the bearing of the dominant hand. The Gusu Lan way, for all of Wei Ying's exceptions. It will serve. It has served well so far, served often.
The village is a world stitched together from patches of rags and misplaced thread, needles prickling. Each way, men turn with apprehension, the bright-eyed terror of creatures that know themselves hunted and small, and see their predators alive among them.
"I think," he murmurs, and concedes to the offensive inevitability of easing himself between Wei Ying and the nearest stranger, "you should call wards."
Not to arm or guard them, but for how people move, serpentine, how they gaze at each other with distrust mounting. How their touch lingers too often on blades held out, their eyes search jugulars. They are animals fed well with grudge and spite, to saturation. One flicker, and sparks will turn to effervescent flame and —
"...cleansing. Can you yet...?" In truth, he knows Wei Ying might be himself too deeply entrenched in startled energies to perform ablutions. Better, "Can you amplify what I anchor?"
The perimeter is too broad. Their watchers are too attentive of strangers. And the first taste of pure energy, when they come so drained, might prove...