Yes, yes. A big change for cultivation. Very important. I wonder, and I dazzle. All hail me.
[ Tender lubrication, thin poison of disbelief and mockery, mildly brewed. A smile turned patiently not at Lan Zhan, but at his feeble attempts to deflect — a strategy Wei Wuxian was denied with fireflies for company in the open field, barely an hour before. It feels more artful here, amid the muted din of settled patrons and the rushed pitter-patter of servers, hunched down by the heft of brimming treys. Wei Wuxian still rejects it. ]
Lan Zhan. If words cost you a great deal, I have a crown we can trade in.
[ Wei Wuxian should not take it upon himself to raise and jiggle the battered satchel that hides a prized Lan heirloom, in evidence. Does anyway, before safely returning it on his lap, where only thieves with a penchant for honoured suicide might presume to challenge themselves with stealing, in the presence of the chief cultivator. ]
Speak freely. About you. Indulge me.
[ There are changes, great and minute, invisible and known. A singed brand here, three hundred lashes there. The foul, ignominious betrayal of a wrinkle, Wei Wuxian suspects, when Lan Zhan furrows his brows just so. ]
How long did until you could play the guqin again? After... [ His lips thirst; in a fit of whim and fancy, he has already gently nudged their server to return the wine to the barrel of flavoured water whence it came from. He teethes at his lower lip, as if the flush of blood beneath might soothe it. ] Your back.
[ There is delicacy in approaching an instrument that casual torture at one's clan's hands has a tendency to disrupt. Not that Wei Wuxian has spent a handful of white nights planning well-earned retaliation against the safely anonymous elder who must have delivered Lan Zhan's punishment. The band of them who may well have taken turns. ]
no subject
[ Tender lubrication, thin poison of disbelief and mockery, mildly brewed. A smile turned patiently not at Lan Zhan, but at his feeble attempts to deflect — a strategy Wei Wuxian was denied with fireflies for company in the open field, barely an hour before. It feels more artful here, amid the muted din of settled patrons and the rushed pitter-patter of servers, hunched down by the heft of brimming treys. Wei Wuxian still rejects it. ]
Lan Zhan. If words cost you a great deal, I have a crown we can trade in.
[ Wei Wuxian should not take it upon himself to raise and jiggle the battered satchel that hides a prized Lan heirloom, in evidence. Does anyway, before safely returning it on his lap, where only thieves with a penchant for honoured suicide might presume to challenge themselves with stealing, in the presence of the chief cultivator. ]
Speak freely. About you. Indulge me.
[ There are changes, great and minute, invisible and known. A singed brand here, three hundred lashes there. The foul, ignominious betrayal of a wrinkle, Wei Wuxian suspects, when Lan Zhan furrows his brows just so. ]
How long did until you could play the guqin again? After... [ His lips thirst; in a fit of whim and fancy, he has already gently nudged their server to return the wine to the barrel of flavoured water whence it came from. He teethes at his lower lip, as if the flush of blood beneath might soothe it. ] Your back.
[ There is delicacy in approaching an instrument that casual torture at one's clan's hands has a tendency to disrupt. Not that Wei Wuxian has spent a handful of white nights planning well-earned retaliation against the safely anonymous elder who must have delivered Lan Zhan's punishment. The band of them who may well have taken turns. ]