[ Screamed stilted between layers of glass, and storms stutter before the battered bird of your breath breaks wings against your sternum — and you think, the world has settled and shrieked, in parts of gelid wonder, and still you are whole, feature of fractures and crackling, where your hand's wet red. And when was it, the moment between stink of learning lamp's oil like burnt viscera, and the great grind of Nightless City gravel churned between your whale's teeth, sharpened, when you knew: there sleeps in you starvation to eat the moon's swell in her birthing nights, there wakes in you anger to slaughter tempest.
And you breathed. Became you-I-him-that and distant, 'Hanguang-Jun' and 'this moment' and the animal fractions of you that cannot betray the whole. In sundering, sheltered.
And you pay Wei Ying in the loiter of every inhalation. You do not ask, if Wei Ying comes stranded with twilight and rain, or fresh with the petrichor of dawns after. Barely slip and step and tease yourself into formulas of courtesy: of quieting your wards before the smear of his shadow should strike and ignite them. Of opening your window to him, like the slack mouth of invitation. Of considering your hand on his, then, pivoted, your hand on his offerings, your hand on his possessions, your hand on the lingered warmth of his touch, and beneath the pebbled cicatrices of a fruit, citrus-like, and another, soft.
You do not look up, away, past the measure of his shoulder. If marble bit harder, you'd take the knee. To make waste of obeisance now, before the Patriarch's teeth might fit your jugular, is to dishonour his claim of spoils won. Who are you, but fear of him, bone-ached, marrow-deep?
( 'Lan Zhan.' His gaze wanders. 'Resurrection.' He remembers enough to retrieve each fruit of its confinement, send it tumbled on the table, stab short their momentum. To seek out the dark of Wei Ying's dress, if not his cheek's pallor. ) ]
no subject
And you breathed. Became you-I-him-that and distant, 'Hanguang-Jun' and 'this moment' and the animal fractions of you that cannot betray the whole. In sundering, sheltered.
And you pay Wei Ying in the loiter of every inhalation. You do not ask, if Wei Ying comes stranded with twilight and rain, or fresh with the petrichor of dawns after. Barely slip and step and tease yourself into formulas of courtesy: of quieting your wards before the smear of his shadow should strike and ignite them. Of opening your window to him, like the slack mouth of invitation. Of considering your hand on his, then, pivoted, your hand on his offerings, your hand on his possessions, your hand on the lingered warmth of his touch, and beneath the pebbled cicatrices of a fruit, citrus-like, and another, soft.
You do not look up, away, past the measure of his shoulder. If marble bit harder, you'd take the knee. To make waste of obeisance now, before the Patriarch's teeth might fit your jugular, is to dishonour his claim of spoils won. Who are you, but fear of him, bone-ached, marrow-deep?
( 'Lan Zhan.' His gaze wanders. 'Resurrection.' He remembers enough to retrieve each fruit of its confinement, send it tumbled on the table, stab short their momentum. To seek out the dark of Wei Ying's dress, if not his cheek's pallor. ) ]
Apologies. Appetite flees me. [ No. Thinner: ] Fault is mine.
[ Take no offence in this, the decline. ]