( He watches Wei Ying watch himself, a bird learning the bend and break of its own bones before the world-maddened rush of first flight and its claws teething at nest's edge. He feels — brittle in the way of fresh amputation, when instinct yet coaxes a missing limb to answer. The world is cinnabar and petty abysses, the blacks and reds of ledgers; Wei Ying is owed a finer grasp of family than he received in his youth, but only faces wan and divine may order his due retribution.

And Lan Wangji, fickle and the line of his shoulders trembled, the deep compulsion to reach a hand out in comfort, resisted to knot wet-like on his thighs, knuckles gristle and white-rawed. There are moments in a man's life when he is but a vessel for the torture of his heavy-weighted emotions, and Wei Ying's cup runs full.

What does Lan Wangji recall of his mother? A battered rasp, lip swollen full under the crown of his feral, feline teeth. He remembers her beautiful, kindly, exquisitely sophisticated, elegant, composed — every word a child encounters in early poems and transfers, generously, unto the tall, looming pillars of his private heroes. )

Eight gashes of crackled wood on her door. The winter creak of her porch. Gentians, lightly acerbic.

( The charcoal marks that sketch out a woman, and Lan Wangji's memory the guiding hand to carve her, something from the nothing of fragile, abortive recollection. Zewu-Jun would know more. Perhaps Uncle. And who are they but the stone-faced captors of Lan Wangji's infancy, the stewards of his awareness?

He withheld, when Wei Ying required himself. Intrudes once more now, spreading and sprawling his fingers through the cascade of silken dark, wrapping it loosely to belt his fingers. Beautiful. None of the other prominent advantages that elevate a match, but Wei Ying was beautiful before he massacred himself to be anything else. )

We shall procure you another donkey.