( Husband. It burns the mouth, Do not ridicule. For he gave the gift of truth like rot and lichen on stone, like ink diluted, webbed and ebbing — a thing of natural, amorphous contortions. A stretched and translucent membrane, and beneath it, his pulse and heart bare. What is care, but bated breath, constant uncertainty of if and when the strike might come? Of wait, of wonder.
He thinks, mouth crippled and the line sour, his teeth will break for their clench, tatter their porcelain. Thinks, Wei Ying's hand is a line like coal, candid and incandescent, that it warms him, heart and hearth. Magic happens in the gasp between Lan Wangji's trembled no and wind caressing his back.
Wei Ying's toil reveals them, one, then all. Like glistened, slow sparks of light at sea. First, he thinks reflection. Then, silver. Then — bone. Carcass. He does not scream. There lives in him, antithesis to motion. A negation of all that this moment might wake in better, sweeter men. )
...else they might waken. ( Deathlessness houses here, spreads wings white as bone. He slips easily, hand rooting its grasp on Wei Ying's wrist, less to support him, than so Lan Wangji might bear himself down. One knee, then the other. Beneath silks, pebbles scratch and graze his knees.
He is too far to feel, to touch, to synchronise. Sundered, the dead and he are two beats pulsing in syncopation. ) Wei Ying. ( There is nothing to do here, not for them. Salts will not suffice, rites prove inexpensive. The carnage is too vast, hollowing flesh and mind. ) This is your Burial Mounds. ( Empty, emptied. A layered, hungering beast of slaughter. ) Wei Ying.
( Ash in his mouth, what does he call for? Only the strange, absent, childish conviction that to speak Wei Ying's name is to satisfy his private hurts. )
fine priorities. a good man.
He thinks, mouth crippled and the line sour, his teeth will break for their clench, tatter their porcelain. Thinks, Wei Ying's hand is a line like coal, candid and incandescent, that it warms him, heart and hearth. Magic happens in the gasp between Lan Wangji's trembled no and wind caressing his back.
Wei Ying's toil reveals them, one, then all. Like glistened, slow sparks of light at sea. First, he thinks reflection. Then, silver. Then — bone. Carcass. He does not scream. There lives in him, antithesis to motion. A negation of all that this moment might wake in better, sweeter men. )
...else they might waken. ( Deathlessness houses here, spreads wings white as bone. He slips easily, hand rooting its grasp on Wei Ying's wrist, less to support him, than so Lan Wangji might bear himself down. One knee, then the other. Beneath silks, pebbles scratch and graze his knees.
He is too far to feel, to touch, to synchronise. Sundered, the dead and he are two beats pulsing in syncopation. ) Wei Ying. ( There is nothing to do here, not for them. Salts will not suffice, rites prove inexpensive. The carnage is too vast, hollowing flesh and mind. ) This is your Burial Mounds. ( Empty, emptied. A layered, hungering beast of slaughter. ) Wei Ying.
( Ash in his mouth, what does he call for? Only the strange, absent, childish conviction that to speak Wei Ying's name is to satisfy his private hurts. )