( Twelve, dead by Wei Ying's deed, done. Eight returned, no doubt complicit to his violence. There is space in the interstices that carve Wei Ying's private agonies to inject his own horror. More thorns and clenched fist than fragile flower, he. Hands bloodied, palms torn, Lan Wangji knows what he has married, watches it — him — dark and smoke-danced, a man like the last gasp of a chokehold.
In the easy, breeze-swept cadence of grass blades paying tributes of prostration, in the absent trill of distantly roiling birds, he sees Wei Ying, and interrogates him, start to finish: where the questions of him begin, where sin bends and where it breaks and where it saturates his skin, seeps within sibilantly. He decides: )
Take a few steps back. ( And the afterthought nod, Please. ) Draw wards if they seek you.
( Natural, classical precautions. No less than Wei Ying had learned; no more than he has already doubtlessly dismissed. After, a simple exercise to trail his hands in the air in mute symphony, to practise his knuckles, ease and warm joint and bone. When he begins, the execution must prove flawless.
The dead speak to me, he does not say, nor, They accept no less than perfection.
And, No differently than you.
He plays, askance. Shrill, the first notes ever dissonant, a quieted but clawing aggression. There are rules to this, guidance: do not instigate conferences, do not invite to your table more mouths than you can feed. And yet, he is a graceless host, all his doors open. What will ease your hurt?
Below, waters settle, spume, agitate. Stones burn and roast beneath the midday sun, blanched like skins of mother crone, splotched unevenly. He waits for the trickle of trills, of sound peering in like a fragile whisper — shudders, when the voice answers him, already alert to know and read the words behind sound that is language — and then comes the second voice, rushed and hasty, a third.
He's setting his hands on the guqin to steady the strings and infuse them with his own qi, to force a cue among speakers, when the fifth rushes forth, the ninth, Lan Wangji barely keeps the pace past the fifteenth, then they double, the chords overwhelm, vibrate and draw taut and brittle, the eighty-first voice shouts, the hundredth already promises vengeance, some of the first weep —
So many of them, infectious and building like the waves of fever sickness, and waves of water that crest and burst and earth crumbles beneath him, onslaught of horror and trepidation and vibration, he breathes with the wreck of their screams, breathes with the constant tremble of power on his guqin, riding his hands, breathes with the fear of them —
It is surrender, when he waves his hand and forces Wangji removed, severed from physical existence too abruptly to allow a gentle cessation. I wanted. He stings, the waters of his eyes pooled deep on his cheeks, digging ravines. I wanted to help you.
Hand to his stomach, he quakes with a long, visceral heaving, like pigment breaking from oil, the parts of himself divorcing him. he catches himself on one arm, fingers sunken in grass, crisp, clean, green. To smell a colour, to welcome life's stab in his lungs. Distantly, he remembers, Wei Ying. Wei Ying expects an answer. Wei Ying. )
...they are hundreds.
( They knew. Saw the bones. But the spirits — his mouth slack and dry and his teeth raw — the spirits all lingered. )
no subject
In the easy, breeze-swept cadence of grass blades paying tributes of prostration, in the absent trill of distantly roiling birds, he sees Wei Ying, and interrogates him, start to finish: where the questions of him begin, where sin bends and where it breaks and where it saturates his skin, seeps within sibilantly. He decides: )
Take a few steps back. ( And the afterthought nod, Please. ) Draw wards if they seek you.
( Natural, classical precautions. No less than Wei Ying had learned; no more than he has already doubtlessly dismissed. After, a simple exercise to trail his hands in the air in mute symphony, to practise his knuckles, ease and warm joint and bone. When he begins, the execution must prove flawless.
The dead speak to me, he does not say, nor, They accept no less than perfection.
And, No differently than you.
He plays, askance. Shrill, the first notes ever dissonant, a quieted but clawing aggression. There are rules to this, guidance: do not instigate conferences, do not invite to your table more mouths than you can feed. And yet, he is a graceless host, all his doors open. What will ease your hurt?
Below, waters settle, spume, agitate. Stones burn and roast beneath the midday sun, blanched like skins of mother crone, splotched unevenly. He waits for the trickle of trills, of sound peering in like a fragile whisper — shudders, when the voice answers him, already alert to know and read the words behind sound that is language — and then comes the second voice, rushed and hasty, a third.
He's setting his hands on the guqin to steady the strings and infuse them with his own qi, to force a cue among speakers, when the fifth rushes forth, the ninth, Lan Wangji barely keeps the pace past the fifteenth, then they double, the chords overwhelm, vibrate and draw taut and brittle, the eighty-first voice shouts, the hundredth already promises vengeance, some of the first weep —
So many of them, infectious and building like the waves of fever sickness, and waves of water that crest and burst and earth crumbles beneath him, onslaught of horror and trepidation and vibration, he breathes with the wreck of their screams, breathes with the constant tremble of power on his guqin, riding his hands, breathes with the fear of them —
It is surrender, when he waves his hand and forces Wangji removed, severed from physical existence too abruptly to allow a gentle cessation. I wanted. He stings, the waters of his eyes pooled deep on his cheeks, digging ravines. I wanted to help you.
Hand to his stomach, he quakes with a long, visceral heaving, like pigment breaking from oil, the parts of himself divorcing him. he catches himself on one arm, fingers sunken in grass, crisp, clean, green. To smell a colour, to welcome life's stab in his lungs. Distantly, he remembers, Wei Ying. Wei Ying expects an answer. Wei Ying. )
...they are hundreds.
( They knew. Saw the bones. But the spirits — his mouth slack and dry and his teeth raw — the spirits all lingered. )