( There comes a turn, a time when every word is a private flaying, when he feels brutalised by the burden to reveal himself, to be known. How is it men release so many words upon words upon carelessness? It aches him. It burns. )

I am too small to fill your holes until they no longer leak your hurts, body and blood.

( Any man would be. The wraith of one, is Lan Wangji, pale and aggrieved and the long-hanging tragedy of his draped silks, scratching, hooking on barren earth, where the loose scrawl of port confinements seeps into pavement. The Mouse House is a sullen, dark, dusted thing, and its customs resemble it: no man queues. There is no order.

The waters of the desperate and the resigned well and ebb and tide, and Lan Wangji steers the dragon by heir reins to join the spumes, to wait untidily. Perhaps company should shame him. He is not his uncle's nephew.

He is not his father's son. )

I cannot stay, only sustain. You digest care. Churn it. Metabolise. Then bloom with spring.

( Be reborn, perhaps not sixteen years later. Sooner, hastened, with greed. He yearns, unambiguously, for reassurance: what is dead may not once more die. Wei Ying cannot give himself to his sorrow. A cruel, ambitious thing to ask. Wangji's mouth hungers, the turn of his hand when he reaches for Wei Ying's, searching blindly, steels. He squeezes a thumb, fingers. The knuckles whole. )

But now is your winter. You must sleep.