[ A day's travel, but Wei Wuxian bides time. There are flows and ebbs of watered truth that sate this world, fill it to brim. And the first wave: he is expected. No, desired. Worse, anticipated.
If this were a battlefield (is), a general wouldn't give the advantage of the hour too, once he's surrendered the lay of the land. Beishan, by compromise. Midway, midway, and Wei Wuxian more recent to have traversed it, but he knows how this plays out: Lan Zhan will arrive with such immensity of purpose that he will scorch the earth beneath him and between them. Stiflingly, overwhelmingly trained. Wei Wuxian has seen the look of death on him and knows, marrow-deep, this man was instructed on cord before chords, on sunken teeth in the neck of writhing prey.
He thinks, he did not fear before, doling out whimsy invitations. He should have, dread unfolding with the molten lethargy of silk regalia slipping the body. Come morning, he begins to savour it: loitering half the way for stories with a merchant's caravan for half his travel, trading flowers with a peasant's toddler, meaner than a-Yuan was, before he had the nerve, the audacity, the complete lack of filial piety to lose the moon swell of his cheeks and grow in Wei Wuxian's absence.
Beishan, the hill crest. He reaches the town by the midday hour, hears the inevitable news from a rush of minders straggling after the quickened step of dirt-poxed sheep. Knows, Lan Zhan is —
Discards the thought and barters a few hours more in the town-side, vividly wooed by people, learning all of two merry songs, and one bawdy, and the gossip of the leading Zhou family, and did he know (he never knew) they had a third daughter no man saw? And she was ugly? Truly ugly? And her mother, a famed beauty. Her sisters, sold in matrimony to a cultivator and a scholar. The shame. The scandal.
He wears the sheen of others' whispers and controversy like his gladness, lets both infuse him. Alive. A world, around him, alive sixteen years later. Suffering the likes of the Zhou's luck-shunned daughter.
By sundown, he's — readied. The muscle of his comfort exercised, the sickness of his rushed energy, drained. Half a day after the meeting hour, he meanders uphill, licks of sunset starting to warm his back, gasps of silence provoked after eerie, tender breezes. It will be a hard winter here, where poppies and cornflower spot the fields but lash the ankle, crueller than flowers have a right to be, bred to hold strong.
No greeting. No expectations. He sits, beside where Lan Zhan stands, knees dragged up and the curve of his spine mindful, ready to absorb his welcome despite transgression — like any spoiled house cat who's never done the mouse war for her dinner, and thrived all the same. ]
You scared the midday shepherds.
[ A pale, sudden ghost in fine silks, whispered on the hill-side. Ufffffff, Lan Zhan.
Dig deeper than the first bones, and, I knew. I knew, and I dallied, and you waited hours, but look, the view. The view. ]
no subject
If this were a battlefield (is), a general wouldn't give the advantage of the hour too, once he's surrendered the lay of the land. Beishan, by compromise. Midway, midway, and Wei Wuxian more recent to have traversed it, but he knows how this plays out: Lan Zhan will arrive with such immensity of purpose that he will scorch the earth beneath him and between them. Stiflingly, overwhelmingly trained. Wei Wuxian has seen the look of death on him and knows, marrow-deep, this man was instructed on cord before chords, on sunken teeth in the neck of writhing prey.
He thinks, he did not fear before, doling out whimsy invitations. He should have, dread unfolding with the molten lethargy of silk regalia slipping the body. Come morning, he begins to savour it: loitering half the way for stories with a merchant's caravan for half his travel, trading flowers with a peasant's toddler, meaner than a-Yuan was, before he had the nerve, the audacity, the complete lack of filial piety to lose the moon swell of his cheeks and grow in Wei Wuxian's absence.
Beishan, the hill crest. He reaches the town by the midday hour, hears the inevitable news from a rush of minders straggling after the quickened step of dirt-poxed sheep. Knows, Lan Zhan is —
Discards the thought and barters a few hours more in the town-side, vividly wooed by people, learning all of two merry songs, and one bawdy, and the gossip of the leading Zhou family, and did he know (he never knew) they had a third daughter no man saw? And she was ugly? Truly ugly? And her mother, a famed beauty. Her sisters, sold in matrimony to a cultivator and a scholar. The shame. The scandal.
He wears the sheen of others' whispers and controversy like his gladness, lets both infuse him. Alive. A world, around him, alive sixteen years later. Suffering the likes of the Zhou's luck-shunned daughter.
By sundown, he's — readied. The muscle of his comfort exercised, the sickness of his rushed energy, drained. Half a day after the meeting hour, he meanders uphill, licks of sunset starting to warm his back, gasps of silence provoked after eerie, tender breezes. It will be a hard winter here, where poppies and cornflower spot the fields but lash the ankle, crueller than flowers have a right to be, bred to hold strong.
No greeting. No expectations. He sits, beside where Lan Zhan stands, knees dragged up and the curve of his spine mindful, ready to absorb his welcome despite transgression — like any spoiled house cat who's never done the mouse war for her dinner, and thrived all the same. ]
You scared the midday shepherds.
[ A pale, sudden ghost in fine silks, whispered on the hill-side. Ufffffff, Lan Zhan.
Dig deeper than the first bones, and, I knew. I knew, and I dallied, and you waited hours, but look, the view. The view. ]