( Collections of environment, scents and sights and sounds, the powerful evocations of memory. He has his own, and it's the sound of dogs, the flash of teeth, the scent of blood and terror in his tiny lungs. It hurts, thinking A-Yuan lived through some form of this, and his heart constricts within his chest, then he breathes regardless.
Closes his eyes at the hand in his hair, the fingers entangling firmly with the length of his parent's gift to him, the devotion he shows as any person does from home, not stripping himself of the body his parents gave him, as none of them do. Filial piety in the wearing of form, the way they grow without contestation, and he sighs, a soft sound swallowed by the susurrations of the sea, down the hill, cloaked in fog.
This is not a touch to lean into, not the rake of nails and fingers, blunt, against scalp, not the cupping of a head, or cheek, or jaw. Lan Zhan is both here, immediate, and distant, the anchoring of a river creature in the water weeds, the strain of waters pulled through tangled roots, strangling. He doesn't feel strangled now, and that perhaps is part of the ease in his bones, why he laughs and he sounds close to carefree.
He's not, not in the waking sea of dead. Not carefree, but perhaps, in part, lightened. )
Do you think this one will like me any better?
( And they no, no, it will not, that no animal rises ready and easy to his touch, but that people, spirits do, that which can be charmed in word or song. He is not a man given to quiet and stillness and silence by nature: he coaxes children, where the rabbits, looking for calmer spirits, shy. Where the donkey, seeking its own way, butts head with one equally independent, and slightly liable to spoils of free feeding along the way. )
no subject
Closes his eyes at the hand in his hair, the fingers entangling firmly with the length of his parent's gift to him, the devotion he shows as any person does from home, not stripping himself of the body his parents gave him, as none of them do. Filial piety in the wearing of form, the way they grow without contestation, and he sighs, a soft sound swallowed by the susurrations of the sea, down the hill, cloaked in fog.
This is not a touch to lean into, not the rake of nails and fingers, blunt, against scalp, not the cupping of a head, or cheek, or jaw. Lan Zhan is both here, immediate, and distant, the anchoring of a river creature in the water weeds, the strain of waters pulled through tangled roots, strangling. He doesn't feel strangled now, and that perhaps is part of the ease in his bones, why he laughs and he sounds close to carefree.
He's not, not in the waking sea of dead. Not carefree, but perhaps, in part, lightened. )
Do you think this one will like me any better?
( And they no, no, it will not, that no animal rises ready and easy to his touch, but that people, spirits do, that which can be charmed in word or song. He is not a man given to quiet and stillness and silence by nature: he coaxes children, where the rabbits, looking for calmer spirits, shy. Where the donkey, seeking its own way, butts head with one equally independent, and slightly liable to spoils of free feeding along the way. )