He should not indulge, should not murmur, "Mmmm. On battered knees, counting ants and worms."
— but he remembers. Heavens have and hold him, he recalls, ancient and dust-licked steps, splintered by the heft of their grandeur. How the coarsened silk of Wei Ying's robes lent them polish, how he preoccupied himself with all that stood a flickered distraction on long, summer's youthful days, when the midday sun dappled fine white on his cheeks before they learned to fissure for tears.
They were children, once. Boys, before war. Hands do not recover their shape after knowing the sword's hilt. How must a tea cup now fill the strain of that absence? And yet he drinks, to the supervising smile of a child-server, relieved her patrons remember enough of their tolerance to promise no impatience or violence or words of anger.
"You have no patience." And Lan Wangji lacks the academic spirit to teach it. "Make no pledges. Walk the world. Where our paths intersect, they converge."
no subject
— but he remembers. Heavens have and hold him, he recalls, ancient and dust-licked steps, splintered by the heft of their grandeur. How the coarsened silk of Wei Ying's robes lent them polish, how he preoccupied himself with all that stood a flickered distraction on long, summer's youthful days, when the midday sun dappled fine white on his cheeks before they learned to fissure for tears.
They were children, once. Boys, before war. Hands do not recover their shape after knowing the sword's hilt. How must a tea cup now fill the strain of that absence? And yet he drinks, to the supervising smile of a child-server, relieved her patrons remember enough of their tolerance to promise no impatience or violence or words of anger.
"You have no patience." And Lan Wangji lacks the academic spirit to teach it. "Make no pledges. Walk the world. Where our paths intersect, they converge."