He laughs, does not intend it. Crystalline and brittle, scratches on diamond beds. "No man has claim to Yiling. The Patriarch surrendered his."
In death, in the long chase after, the metaphor of the cultivation sects' hounds at his shivered feet. Wei Ying walks these lands more to haunt them — begrudges the lesser ghosts he spies here their frailty of their inheritance, the blunt, bastard dullness of their claws, the silken terror of their transgression. Under Wei Ying's hand, Wangji's tea pours limpid and earthy now, and he strains to balance the cup between two hands, to honour it with careful sip — tasting the granular muddiness of leaf, the threat of idle friction.
"What do you give me?" Empty dowry, poorly brokered. Let Zewu-Jun negotiate for the sect, on the occasion of nuptials he will not know to celebrate. Their secret on pale-dead lips, blued. Shake of his head, hair tumbled and the look of him porcelain stripped and scratched and strained, and he is no second Jade of Lan here, only — foreign. Indistinct in his whites, shrouded already in the exotic veneer of an 'outsider.'
If this were a love match, his brother would coax free from the cage of Wei Ying's gentle fingers the pledge of alliance, the token tolerance of the dead, if not — for terror of abuse — their service. If this were an arrangement of convenience between two sects, Zewu-Jun would wrench land and teeth from Wei Ying's bloodied mouth. But they breed and raise and shelter a fledgling thing, nameless among Lan Wangji's bastards. He finds his loose footing strangely soothing.
"You misunderstand me. I want no land. No bindings." Perhaps in this, he is the cherished, spoiled son of a sect that has yet to exile him — in contrast to Wei Ying, face drawn and alight with the pains of enforced, ill-begotten defection. A simple thing, between the laggard pulse of a slow heart, to say, I wish for nothing, when Wangji's coin purse sings full, and his hands go rich with possibility, when the simplest undulation of his voice commands the sects. To renounce, knowing it will not be accepted — that is true privilege. When his hand singes his forehead ribbon, it lingers, in love with the easy hurt of its symbol.
"I keep the signs of the sect." For as many days as Zewu-Jun chooses seclusion, Lan Wangji is the sect. "I have my children, Bichen, my reputation. Allow me to want nothing more."
no subject
In death, in the long chase after, the metaphor of the cultivation sects' hounds at his shivered feet. Wei Ying walks these lands more to haunt them — begrudges the lesser ghosts he spies here their frailty of their inheritance, the blunt, bastard dullness of their claws, the silken terror of their transgression. Under Wei Ying's hand, Wangji's tea pours limpid and earthy now, and he strains to balance the cup between two hands, to honour it with careful sip — tasting the granular muddiness of leaf, the threat of idle friction.
"What do you give me?" Empty dowry, poorly brokered. Let Zewu-Jun negotiate for the sect, on the occasion of nuptials he will not know to celebrate. Their secret on pale-dead lips, blued. Shake of his head, hair tumbled and the look of him porcelain stripped and scratched and strained, and he is no second Jade of Lan here, only — foreign. Indistinct in his whites, shrouded already in the exotic veneer of an 'outsider.'
If this were a love match, his brother would coax free from the cage of Wei Ying's gentle fingers the pledge of alliance, the token tolerance of the dead, if not — for terror of abuse — their service. If this were an arrangement of convenience between two sects, Zewu-Jun would wrench land and teeth from Wei Ying's bloodied mouth. But they breed and raise and shelter a fledgling thing, nameless among Lan Wangji's bastards. He finds his loose footing strangely soothing.
"You misunderstand me. I want no land. No bindings." Perhaps in this, he is the cherished, spoiled son of a sect that has yet to exile him — in contrast to Wei Ying, face drawn and alight with the pains of enforced, ill-begotten defection. A simple thing, between the laggard pulse of a slow heart, to say, I wish for nothing, when Wangji's coin purse sings full, and his hands go rich with possibility, when the simplest undulation of his voice commands the sects. To renounce, knowing it will not be accepted — that is true privilege. When his hand singes his forehead ribbon, it lingers, in love with the easy hurt of its symbol.
"I keep the signs of the sect." For as many days as Zewu-Jun chooses seclusion, Lan Wangji is the sect. "I have my children, Bichen, my reputation. Allow me to want nothing more."