( He heeds. Listens. Holds, his hands listlessly following Wei Ying's strands like a weaver knows threadbare silk strips or wool, binding. His fingers fumble, tangle. Snag. He does not tug, but evens, presses the pads on the length of Wei Ying's strands, feels out the imperceptible, resolute web of where texture neatens, then coarsens, then ribbons.
A woman. Children, crying. As young as a-Yuan, as tender. What could Wei Ying have done?
And what did he do? It sings in him, the rippling, raw, metallic deluge of listlessness. He has endured, over time, poison. The quiet thrumming of his dying core, beneath self-inflicted seals. Knows silence, intimately. A wilting of the self.
His fingers course again. Move, moving. His throat, the sweet-swelling jugular, the string of cartilages, moving. Sound, moving. He does not live in this body, in this moment, rasping: )
Your heart has spread so vast, you have become the Heavens.
( With mandate to rule, to rue, to ruin. To call up bones and bind back flesh and stitch life where strands have stripped stolen. Necromancy is arrogance, the artist's will above his work. It is war, a red-mouthed general birthing his tyranny.
He cannot approve. He cannot push his maudlin, defeated lover from his lap. Cannot exist at once as who he is and who he must be, to conclude the diplomacy of this encounter.
Zewu-Jun might. His hand stills once more. This does not concern his brother, does not concern Lan Wangji. Wei Ying. Wei Ying bears too much burden on shoulders small. )
no subject
( He heeds. Listens. Holds, his hands listlessly following Wei Ying's strands like a weaver knows threadbare silk strips or wool, binding. His fingers fumble, tangle. Snag. He does not tug, but evens, presses the pads on the length of Wei Ying's strands, feels out the imperceptible, resolute web of where texture neatens, then coarsens, then ribbons.
A woman. Children, crying. As young as a-Yuan, as tender. What could Wei Ying have done?
And what did he do? It sings in him, the rippling, raw, metallic deluge of listlessness. He has endured, over time, poison. The quiet thrumming of his dying core, beneath self-inflicted seals. Knows silence, intimately. A wilting of the self.
His fingers course again. Move, moving. His throat, the sweet-swelling jugular, the string of cartilages, moving. Sound, moving. He does not live in this body, in this moment, rasping: )
Your heart has spread so vast, you have become the Heavens.
( With mandate to rule, to rue, to ruin. To call up bones and bind back flesh and stitch life where strands have stripped stolen. Necromancy is arrogance, the artist's will above his work. It is war, a red-mouthed general birthing his tyranny.
He cannot approve. He cannot push his maudlin, defeated lover from his lap. Cannot exist at once as who he is and who he must be, to conclude the diplomacy of this encounter.
Zewu-Jun might. His hand stills once more. This does not concern his brother, does not concern Lan Wangji. Wei Ying. Wei Ying bears too much burden on shoulders small. )
Introduce us, later.