His response as easy as the steps he takes, the glance back over a shoulder to Lan Zhan, the sway of his lashes when they descend and lift again, not coy, not trying, but fluttered nonetheless. All for:
"You better get busy then."
His womb is only producing so many. Lan Zhan can step in with some of the bearing of children of his blood, just as they match step, out of this unlikely landscape of bare truth to a barren heart at the centre of the village.
Says nothing to the shift in positions between them, too used to it when Lan Zhan is on high alert, in the moments before they're joined action, not just sword and shielded. He breathes in, inhales the scents of village life, of town existence, and the thrumming energies that should be within and are off kilter, present but off tempo.
He can feel them, brushing up against his head, a pressure like the weather's heft before the arrival of a looming storm.
"By music," he says, offering a truth and one that he doesn't think Lan Zhan understands to its depth; even pulling from himself, music is his weaving of control, of cleansing. The songs change, the pull turning from tidal to gentled downstream inevitability, but here... music on the living is hard, because it tries, too often, to direct.
"I'll anchor." Better in this to concede to Lan Zhan's capacities, where his aren't strictly as helpful in this case. Not when it becomes chancy, with the living and the drained poisons of the dead. "And ward, but Lan Zhan, it's for them."
The talisman comes as he wills it to, out of his holding pouch, and he shows it to Lan Zhan, body posture relaxed. Not yet inviting the snakes hidden in townsfolk to finding their target worth striking in their unaimed hunger. The red lines on yellow paper sketch out a familiar story to one who'd seen the many such decorating Wen Ning's neck in his hardest days, grotesque pearls strung on spider's webbing, calling a consciousness home from the chaos of the resentment that had driven it to drowning.
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"You better get busy then."
His womb is only producing so many. Lan Zhan can step in with some of the bearing of children of his blood, just as they match step, out of this unlikely landscape of bare truth to a barren heart at the centre of the village.
Says nothing to the shift in positions between them, too used to it when Lan Zhan is on high alert, in the moments before they're joined action, not just sword and shielded. He breathes in, inhales the scents of village life, of town existence, and the thrumming energies that should be within and are off kilter, present but off tempo.
He can feel them, brushing up against his head, a pressure like the weather's heft before the arrival of a looming storm.
"By music," he says, offering a truth and one that he doesn't think Lan Zhan understands to its depth; even pulling from himself, music is his weaving of control, of cleansing. The songs change, the pull turning from tidal to gentled downstream inevitability, but here... music on the living is hard, because it tries, too often, to direct.
"I'll anchor." Better in this to concede to Lan Zhan's capacities, where his aren't strictly as helpful in this case. Not when it becomes chancy, with the living and the drained poisons of the dead. "And ward, but Lan Zhan, it's for them."
The talisman comes as he wills it to, out of his holding pouch, and he shows it to Lan Zhan, body posture relaxed. Not yet inviting the snakes hidden in townsfolk to finding their target worth striking in their unaimed hunger. The red lines on yellow paper sketch out a familiar story to one who'd seen the many such decorating Wen Ning's neck in his hardest days, grotesque pearls strung on spider's webbing, calling a consciousness home from the chaos of the resentment that had driven it to drowning.