desultorily | open post

He couldn't leave the messages hanging. His brother was in some sort of crisis and it was partially his fault (even if he was half dead and depressed at the time) and he wanted to make it up to him. So on the next day, he physically sought Wuxian out and had ever intention of doing something with him. Whatever the man wanted to do!

He owed at least that much.

The problem now was finding his gremlin of a brother.

[ ooc: I'll be here! Just... slow. And I may throw in a book character just for funsies, too. <3 ]

Listen, the trick of it, tell the spoiled lanky things, the gossips and the cheats and the porcelain-faced young masters. And teach them: skies yearn for blood like the midday's, morning pallor eroding, brassy. At cliff's edge, weeds cannibalise themselves, hot wire spewing, turning, could be filigree, could be drought. Step back, closer to the mountain's root. You are in Yunmeng, you are Yunmeng, seek out the lip of quagmire and shallow waters. If lakes won't have you, find the greeneries that spill and tumble, know your land, your sect leader's.

And then, the work begins: master archers stir both arms to toil, but disciples should slap free their arrogance and choose a single starting point, the limb of sacrifice. Bow carved to their measure, though its ribs hollow and tame, and Wei Wuxian should have known, they all should have known, what they practised for years in the training grounds would never serve at war. Slaughter wants the hard bones of a battle bow, the ache of groaning heft, the magnificence of a weapon that opens to you like maws and hunger, teething at your arm's strain.

Then, the instructions: aim. Smooth draw, back molten, line of the shoulders even. Find the tree — a circle, a branch, a stone your brother disciple's thrown you — and pull the arrow, sat on the string's ledge, until your arm reaches the anchor point where you are line, the arrow's spine extended, where you draw and your body wails for the loan of it, vector and momentum, for the loss of both. Draw stationed, as infants do. But better, draw in movement. Catch an enemy's arrow and return it, red-gaining. Always, remember their face when they topple down. If you've put only the slow hurt in them, and not the end, spare another shot. Kill cleanly. Store three arrows in the draw hand's keep, snarling obscenities against your quiver, and shoot —

( And shoot the Sun down. )

Wei Wuxian thinks, pale scars braiding over his knuckles, he has not taught disciples in a lifetime. He thinks, back burdened and sweat licking white anger on his cheeks, his nape, that lifetime was his. Funny. Very funny.

There are disciples in Yunmeng again. Absent passage papers, sneaked in like cats or strays, but Wei Wuxian's seen them. Eclipsed by their betters, men raised, trained, polished, rehearsing their battle forms. Keep them farther from the walls, or four sects will know your secrets. Know this: Yunmeng will never burn again.

And Wei Wuxian should ask, if he is a brother, cheek smeared with soot, fingers with the cinnabar of road inks, if he yet bears limbs, his limbs unbroken, if he can crawl and slip and ease into Yunmeng still, if Jiang Cheng allows it — then he should finish his charity an give Wei Wuxian disciples to nag and nurture. Give him purpo —

Else, they have this: the day, dripping into afternoon hours, mouth of the rising cliffs looming, old forests bowed and bending and rebelling, a green blight against barren ground — and Wei Wuxian, a shi deep in his practice, only fourteen arrows to his name, recovered every half minute, back wet and flesh roiling. He hears the faint rustle of Jiang Cheng's step before he sees him, a thrumming, rippling irritation that fissures the beat of the woods' exhalation, of Wei Wuxian's heart. He turns, as he should, a rounded pivot: bow trained, string swollen under a waiting draw, arrow grazing heating air, and Jiang Cheng squarely in target —

"Pfeeeewwww," Wei Wuxian hisses, but finishes with whistling, in the closest, poisoned approximation of an arrow in motion. He does not fire, but, "You're dead."

It spills of him, laughter, like poison and puss draining. Burns, and he releases the arrow to wheeze-stab hard ground, before lowering the bow. A gentleman, they raised him, honoured and true: when he bows (does he? to a sect leader?) it's to a mouth sundered by grin's sting, to his hands in neat fold.

"This humble hermit greets sect leader Jiang."

And by Wei Wuxian's feet, an awkward tumble, two of Jiang Cheng's woefully deceased pheasants also greet their master. Think nothing of them. War spoils. Wei Wuxian gently nudges a fat thing with his foot, as if it might span to shield it. Out of sight, out of Jiang Cheng's mind, soon in Wei Wuxian's belly. As the proverbs told.

( ooc: ah, never worry about le-slow with me! I crawl too. )

Sandu Sengshou has his own network of spies. Not as impressive as Nie Zongzhou, but still there. They've been keeping tabs on Wei Wuxian since the Guanyin Temple incident, since Wuxian left with others not him and now seemingly alone once more. He had surely thought...

Merely thought. Not assumed. He tried to, at least. Cheng had ordered his disciples that Wuxian was to pass through unmolested and uncontested, lest some dullard with notions of heroism meet the end of his Zidian. And as he kept track of his once brother's whereabouts, he set to thinking what he wanted to do now. How could he repair the rift? He thought originally that it wouldn't happen this lifetime: Their paths had been too divergent and there was no hope to reconcile. But the talk on the wind hinted that perhaps...Perhaps there was a chance, slim as it was.

So now he traversed the back hills of his realm sans guards (he doesn't need them) with a satchel over his shoulder and his brows furrowed as he overthinks everything. His sword he kept at home but it was unseemly to be without some weapon, so the snake remained coiled and dormant on his wrist.

He almost decides to give up when he heard it. Cheng's first reaction was to duck and scatter but he didn't feel the wind shift. Instead, he merely hears the sound and Cheng pops his head up, scowling a bit as he hears the fated words. The flash of a smirk comes over his face when Wuxian laughs but he's quick to school his features when the other recovers. He watches the salute and wonders if Wuxian ever did that in the past with any sincerity. Ever? Then he spies the pheasants.

"Tch. Don't mash them with your foot! The feathers are still good." Really. He has no idea how to fix any of this between them and he's terrified it's not fixable at all. He no longer feels like the terrifying sect leader who has alienated everyone. For a time, he's just the idolizing younger brother, trying to do his best not to be completely swallowed by his elder's shadow. He rushes a step forward, pausing only when it seems like his quarry will flee and then he sighs, eyes rolling in exasperation. "Looks like you brought dinner," he started, slowly unshouldering his pack and revealing some other foodstuffs along with two pots. "I brought the drink."

A branch offering peace. Hopefully, a miracle would happen.

There's a moment when they lesson every rabbit in Gusu Lan: skittish, limbs lines and tension drawing with electric stagger, a crawl on their napes. He thinks he sees the early svelte rise of Jiang Cheng's hairs, rebelling. He's coaxing strays and speculation to his pocket again, stranded and transfixed, and his hand soft when he leans to collect one pheasant, then the second, by the neck and barely bound with thin twine and an empty prayer.

Black laughter threatens him again; his grin spills, then stitches again, and his legs draw back together in shivered, obedient posture. The great pressure of a waiting wind, the susurration of it starting, silences him still. If he blinks now, Jiang Cheng will disappear. Behind him, the waxing sun blights his eyes. He can't look at Jiang Cheng. Can't look away —

Raises, arm trailing bright shades of shaking shadow, the two pheasants. A gift, to the sect leader.

"I can't cook them," but he says it with the pride of a young master, as if it doesn't summon wet and spittle on jie(jiejiejiejiejie)'s deep grave to have learned so little, nothing through osmosis. As if Wen Qing wouldn't teach him the back of her ghostly hand for the admission: months on the Yiling road, and him a vagabond, a good-for-nothing. Rice, he can play that game. Win it. Water and vinegar and tender care to choose the grain without staleness and squalor. A lick of heat, and done. But the meats —

No, no. In Jiang Cheng and a camp fire, Wei Wuxian will trust.

"Tsk. Curse your birth stars, what luck they gave you. You'll have to look after my old bones. Cook my dinner with your lily hands —" The courtesy nod, inexorable. "And spare me the wine, too. Keep me fat and happy and full, and I won't tell your nephew the stories of your troubled youth." A pause, then, "...true or helped along."

With each passing moment, it felt as if the years were melting away. Nothing seemed to have changed, even the lack of cooking skills. But when he came to telling secrets--he frowned.

"Your nephew will learn all of your troubles," he huffed, countering as best as he could without scaring Wuxian off. Then, because he figured he might as well. He was damned as it was and if he wasn't going to go into the reincarnation cycle within the next hundred years, he might as well go all out.

Cheng eyed the pheasants and then looked back to Wuxian, his jaw set. "I don't want to be brothers in the next life." The statement hangs heavy between them. Unable to hold it any longer, he sweeps forward to encase the other man into a tight hug, his voice equally tight and soft. "Not until we learn to be brothers again in this life."

He drops the birds.

There's a rattling in him. Later, he'll say: bones, skin taut, flesh withered. The tectonic shift of a body borrowed out of time, remembering theatrical performances.

Later, he will say, the beat of his heart is a dying, panicked bird. That it gallops and stays and surges, until he expects it will burst the cage of his chest open and slip into Jiang Cheng, and it'll be two parts Wei Wuxian has donated his brother, and won't that earn him a lifetime's gift of wine? Earnest gratitude? A nod?

Later, he'll say every word that excuses the pallor of his cheek, that ridicules the hour, that teases the crumbling force of his brother as Jiang Cheng reaches for him.

Now, Wei Wuxian holds onto Jiang Cheng gracelessly, child-like, arms fettered each side of his brother, as if he were taking root or braiding himself to a lifeline.

"Jiang Cheng." No. He shifts his arms. Weakens the hold. When Wei Wuxian drags them down, he binds around Jiang Cheng ribs, as if intimacy is a precious gift, a noble indiscretion. An embrace like a silhouette of itself, gaining warmth in hungry increments. Kind. Distantly, it strikes him, he imitates. "I think this is how she hugged."

He remembers. Knows the devastating truth of it — that he lived sixteen years of misted death, but his body has its private gallery of truths, that it recalls Jiang Yanli's touch closer than Jiang Cheng must. Even in this, Wei Wuxian's cheated his brother. Uuuuoooooooooooofffff.

"Hey. Hey, you. What's this? A new recourse in duel? Is this how gentlemen win all their wars now? Through tickling battles? Jiang Cheeeeeeeeeng, mercy, mercy. I'm only — whatever age will name me small and sweet, but also still capable of pilfering your wine. So, the elder part of three. Four? Drink to my day, I've grown."

But he's not letting go first. "I'll raise the pheasants to bite your shins and have my justice."

The one statement has him catching his breath as they sink to the ground together. Both A-Jie and Wuxian were his betters in physical contact but oh, how he tried before the war destroyed his youth. Once his sect had been decimated, there... there was no time. A people to rule and an orphaned child to raise. And even when A-Ling had gotten too old for hugs and would push him away in his child's independence, well. He stopped after....

When Wuxian wiggles just a bit, Cheng is terrified and just clings harder, refusing to release him. Something that could be mistaken for a whimper leaves him. "Keep insisting your four and you'll have no wine," Cheng grumbles, relaxing in small increments when Wuxian isn't wigglng away.

Soaring birds bleat white above them. Dart, one and the second and the sky stabbed, striped. He watches them, head tipped back, while Jiang Cheng clings to him, and he becomes only a biological accessory of his brother's need — proof, remnant, that whatever fealty was once sworn lives still in debt unpaid. That he gives it back now, two hands empty and bound.

"Toddlers steal wine," he murmurs, and the sky will rain within hours, he smells it. The lotus incense they abuse, far too literally, on the Pier. Beneath it, harrowed petrichor. In that same breath, "I think I missed this." And, "I don't remember."

What is it Lan Zhan says of him? Fool? No. Shameless? Forever. And negligent? Since the day he was born, then drifting in this world, stealing jars as a toddler, meandering to the afterworld, and what does wine taste there? He breathes. He breathes —

And he taps Jiang Cheng's side, emptily, never breaking the bond. "Say. That's my rib. I'll ransom it. I have two peanuts. One chestnut. I have a... you should let go."

He breathes, until he can't no further. He's missed this.

"No." This time he's the petulant one.

Jiang Cheng can't, and more importantly, doesn't want to let go. "I let go and you'll run off and I will never see you again. I can't keep searching for you in the bottom of the cliffs. I can't keep hoping that maybe you didn't die, that maybe you'll stay and be my second, like we agreed to when you were stealing wine. I can't keep being a shell of myself because I hate who I am now."

He knows now if he does, he'll never be able to reclaim what he lost. And he's not losing it again.

"...it's a good chestnut." Weakly, bartered. Sand dripped between fingertips. His bow lances the ground, a deformity of neglected shadow. He watches it tremble and retract and overspill, over Jiang Cheng's shoulder, as if distraction might diverge him from the moment. What is there to hate? How time turned the crude metal of adolescentine uncertainty into gold.

Hound on the bone, they never taught Jiang Cheng to let go. He says, "I can't breathe."

Hears, for both of them, Who are you, to be hated? Sixteen years, stale nuts and tortured stone at a temple's end. What's the world become?

"I'm." Here, listen, the heartbeat of him, like the dripping staccato of afternoon rain. Rivers' tumult. They know this, they're a pier people. Sunlight burns his eyes. His hand drifts to his brother's back again. "Jiang Cheng, don't bloody your hands, let me breathe. I need —"

He's barely contained. A fragment of whistling, and every dead of the forest world would sunder them. Jiang Cheng isn't what fetters him, but better the man to blame. "Just a moment."

The plea for air finally gets to him and he draws back, letting go, knowing well enough his decorum is pathetic. "Right." In the need to so something, he moves to the pheasants. They weren't going to cook themselves after all and they needed to be prepared. Wuxian can't cook. Cheng is better-gotten better over time. He still can't copy A-Jie's soup recipe though he tries.

For now he can busy himself with plucking and cleaning the birds and preparing them to go on a spit, all the while trying to sneak glances and trying to figure out Wuxian in the process.

Blood spilling from open wounds would have undermined the moment. He recoils, as if stung and his injuries went salted, the moment Jiang Cheng releases him — and he slips to the ground, awkward, never quite easing to a knee or sweetening the fall. Molten, and the whispered cadence of grass blades fat and full beneath him, prickling his fingertips. Hard, dried ground bruises his fingertips.

Distantly, Jiang Cheng recovers purpose. Whatever hawks a bow had terrified from looming surveillance crowd on by, smears of dark where Wei Wuxian looks up, the scratch of his eyes unblinking. What is there to think of? His lungs fill. He crawls back, on all, fours, clumsy — after some time, when whatever tension pulled taut between them seems to have dispersed on the string that still binds him to Jiang Cheng.

Unbidden, he lands himself against Jiang Cheng, shifting to sit. "Lend me your back."

But he conquers the distance before Jiang Cheng can concede it, ribs and spine and a wealth of stiffened lines, the feeble warmth of Wei Wuxian's flesh filling out the negative space in the wake of his brother, contorted over their — dinner. If he is small like this, if he is water, if he is still and shifting only when Jiang Cheng leans away first, or inwards, thereafter, he can balance out their equation.

He can be negligible. Invisible. Tolerated. Home. And he brittles, breaks, laughs for it:

"What a sect leader you are. Inhospitable! I'll tell everyone, scream it from every rooftop. 'I came to Yunmeng, and they left my toes to freeze, my fingers to die, my spine to stiffen!' 'They fed me nothing!' 'They beat me at each co...' " A pause, to consider the inevitability that this, more than anything, might prove true. "...how are you cooking my lunch?"

As if he doesn't know they only have the meat and the wine and rare mushrooms, for their appetites.

There's only a small grunt from Cheng as Wuxian drapes himself over him. There's a broader smile on his face that he's certain is not noticed. When Wuxian goes on his tirade, Cheng ignores it as he plucks the feathers out, putting aside the good ones. They could make good lures for fish or the stiffer ones could be fletchings.

He pauses at the last question, then finishes the plucking. "Who said I was cooking?" The delivery is smooth and without a hint of ire or tease once the birds are spit and ready to go. But in the end, when he shifts to try and look at Wuxian, there's a glimmer of mischief in his eyes. "Do you want to get wood or am I saddled with a four-year-old who can't find wood for a fire?"

"The four-year-old fetched the birds," he protests between choice yawns, maw unhinged and serpentine, because it's tiring business, strapping yourself to your brother's back and nobly shifting so he can still go about his toil. Now and then, Wei Wuxian hums along with Jiang Cheng's progress, sparing his brother a careful, considering nod, before pushing his hand up to point afar, where the mountains sketch white-tipped lines in the horizon.

"Shot them there, right there. Against the sun's stream. They didn't use to hide in those forest crowns, what happe..."

...ah. Whatever happens to birds and bees and animals and the fragile configuration of their ecosystems in the span of sixteen years. Fresh roads were built, hunters began to prefer different pastures. They adapted, and now Wei Wuxian must play the same game, seeking them out in deeper pockets of wilderness.

And anyway, Jiang Cheng can't have a care for it. What sect leader still walks his forests, knows his grounds? To look at Jiang Cheng's finery, to feel it stretched and prim against Wei Wuxian's wrist, surely his brother doesn't still exert himself with sentry watches and rangers' patrols and carefree practicalities.

"It's hardly fair, is it? Cheaters. Growing and changing, while I blinked for a few moments."

"Not fair at all," he agrees, looking out over to the area that Wuxian pointed. He'd been too busy to really take casual walks through his lands, even when he volunteered to teach A-Ling night hunting. But now...

"If you aren't going to collect the wood, you can hold the spits, at least." Hopefully he could have a fire going within the half-hour and get the birds cooking. If he remembered correctly, there was a fallen tree with enough dead wood for a fire. They could be relaxing out here in the 'wilds' shortly.

"Why'd you leave?" He's not talking about the battle at Evernight. He was talking about the destruction of the temple.

It spills from him like every drop of wine Lan Zhan has — cruelly, most cruel, a man like winter's scorn, iced through! — ever begrudged him, "Why did you?"

And loitering dark between them, Why did anyone? Only the Lans lingered to watch their dead and their red hands in the wake of Guanyin, and they do not speak of Zewu-Jun, do not ask how many feasts have erupted in the Unclean Realm since the — tragedy of Jin Guangyao's untimely demise. There is blood between them in the sects, life debt and fate strings.

Wei Wuxian didn't flee first. Shame exorcised him from the premise. And now it sours him, mouth dry and tongue slack, until he uncurls from behind Jiang Cheng to shift and crawl again, pointedly ignoring his brother's instruction. Cooking, pah. He was told there is wine — and the mound of white bright jars clinks as he rummages through Jiang Cheng's offerings with the discriminating eye of a man who intends, now that the sun shines brightly on his back, to not see it again for a sennight whole.

"There were blood and screams and rooftops." A pause, then, chirpily, "That doesn't bode well for me, historically. So! So, then." So, he turns to Jiang Cheng with his pick of the wine jars, half-filled and sloshing pleasantly when he gives the container a token swirl. On the fat swell of rough porcelain gleams the signature of a Pier's merchant shop, and so Wei Wuxian holds it up for the Jiang leader's blessing. Kindly name this sacrifice worthy.

"Empty roads want wanderers like beautiful women want poets. Who was I to deny them?" A pause. "Why did you come here?"

The retort back as him on the defensive at first. It wasn't about him, this time and it had been a hard lesson to learn when he had a squalling infant, also furious and terrified of the world, on his hip. He listened, for the time being the birds forgotten as Wuxian dove into the wine. He didn't stop him. In the time his brother needed him the most, Jiang Cheng wasn't there. Wuxian can have all the wine.

And then the question makes him pause. "I wanted my brother back." After more than a decade of loss, he wanted something back. He searched and searched, found no scrap of him, certain that no one found mercy in his torture. And now he had seen his brother had been vindicated with the assistance of children who never really knew him. Because adults were two close-minded and set in their ways to learn the truth-him included.

He went to collect the wood, returning quickly enough and half fearing that Wuxian would have darted off with the wine. And he found himself unable to blame him at all if he did that. Why would anyone want to stay with him, anyway? He had worked so hard to drive them all off before they died once he became attached.

But you never had him close.

And now Jiang Cheng slithered as if Wei Wuxian has burned or tortured him, as if they're both black creatures of deep land, light-sheltered. Alone, Wei Wuxian punishes the wine jar with, first, a swig and a turn, and a careful, finessed sip — and another, and the third more, until between his mouth's toll and what washes down the column of his throat, half the contents have gone worn and wasted. ( He swallows. )

Acrid, he supposes. No, sweet. The aftertaste of something sunlight in the back of his mouth, and lotus seed, inevitably, added to high-polished finish. The brand of Yunmeng artifice, regional sophistication. You're not of the Pier if you haven't injected generous increments of a plant that doesn't belong in all your symbols and foods and banners and the weapons too, and the fragrances. The silks, inevitably. There was a time when Wei Wuxian's sword oil reeked of the pond.

And now he drinks his borrowed childhood.

"You never married," he murmurs when Jiang Cheng returns, never looking up from where he's started on two toils: another wine jar, defiled and half-spilled beside him. And his hands, bare claws stabbing hard ground, helped along by an arrow gripped too close to the tip that unearths, with his free hand, a small hole for the fire's keep. If they mean to roast their birds, they'll want the rubble Wei Wuxian has extricated and gathered on the side, raised like the empty mouth of a hollowed fortress.

"Did you..." A moment, thawed. Wen Qing. "Should I be speaking to you about her? Really. You'll cry on me. You look dreadful crying. Very red-eyed. Puffy. Your voice thins, reedy."

He gave a one-shoulder shrug in answer and then rolled his eyes at the continuance. "You, above all others, would know best," he said dryly. He was quiet for a moment as he started the fire, carefully nursing the spark before speaking again in low tones.

"She died for you. And I thought that my standing as a sect leader was in jeopardy and did nothing. And I was...angry. Took it out on the wrong people." The Wens who had nothing to do with the war, the cultivators who latched onto the new fad that Wuxian had unwittingly conjured and many latched on with great ferocity. A fad that Cheng watched grow. With such careless grace, his brother did such things. "I was angry that she stood for the same things I valued, yet her values were not directed towards me. Much like you." There was no venom in the words, just tired acceptance. Not once did his eyes glance at Wuxian while he fed the little fire, giving it stronger and bigger pieces of wood before he thought it was ready to roast two birds. "Didn't know that a person could be jealous of values. But if it brought about death...I didn't want anyone else to be subject to it. So I didn't."

He sat back once everything was to his liking, his back still straight and tall even if he did sit in the dirt. His eyes focused on the flames as he sighed. "And I had an ophaned nephew to raise, no matter how the Jins felt that he was their property."

He listens. At the end of his days, hair pale before the time of his brother or the man who yet names himself his soulmate, if Wei Wuxian counts no further feats, he will have this: Jiang Cheng came to him, a fortress unravelling, each word descending fresh stone. Wei Wuxian sits, obediently, as if he were a child again and uncle immortal beside him, hands folded primly on his knees, stealing glances — to Jiang Cheng's mouth, spitting out the rare accidental cruelty ( 'Much like you.' ), to the flames, contorting in high susurrations.

Wen Qing. Jiang Cheng. Unseen, unnamed but immaculate, Jiang Yanli, drifting between them. Her echo, this boy Wei Wuxian has yet to claim and hone and hold close, like a sword &mash; Jin Ling, whose arms look unaccustomed to embracing. Did Jiang Cheng know to hug him?

"...he looks too much like him, our Ling-a-Ling. Too little like her," he rasps, and stretches out to the side, only to recover the latest jar of wine, to weigh and walk his mouth on the rim.

"Even if I charmed his face, he still wouldn't look enough like her." After all, Xue Yang learned the way of that trick from parchments known. He hums, agreeably dim, deafened by fire, crackling. "I could try. Would you hold him down while I...? Hmmm?"

...yes. Inflict more injuries of stuttered madness, trauma of old, illusions of misplaced grandeur on this poor boy the world intended to swallow whole. But spat him out. Perhaps that's what they all are, survivors: bile and bone and rot no dry-spun intestines can weather. Not resilient for their endurance, but sour like — he laughs, chokes it — ground peony.

He's.... not exactly certain if Wuxian's all there. The knowledge isn't surprising, though. A lot happened prior to his death, and so much time had passed before now. It would not be unreasonable to have a soul fracture and this was the end result-not like anyone knew it to be the case.

And the fracture began with the sacrifice to a brother, anyway.

The talk about changing A-Ling makes his skin creep and he nudges Wuxian as he shakes his head. "He's not her. He's fine as he is. Could be better if it weren't me and...But that can't be changed and I don't want to, either." He would have been better if his parents had lived. A-Jie would have raised him so well and he would have been---not broken like these two. He begs for forgiveness from her every night.

He stills, crisp and brittle, watching Jiang Cheng from the slanted corner of his eyes, before a murmured, "I wouldn't really cha - "

Right. Wei Wuxian is who he is, with his reputation, with the... unfortunate series of precedents that light his path like heralds of chaos. Perhaps some caution isn't misplaced here, though forgive the prickly turn of his brows, before he drips out a quiet exhalation and soothes the reputational wound to his dark, singed heart with more wine. Nice brew, really. Bless the silver of the Pier, and the soul medicine it provides.

And anyway. Anyway.

"...he turned out fine. He hasn't declared war on the sects, sabotaged his clan, wedded his sister, fled orthodoxy or shamed Carp Tower with a bastardised topknot. What more can you ask of him?"

At Jin Ling's age, some — who will go unnamed, but have the good sense to look about hard ground and not in their brother's eyes — were already merrily traipsing towards disaster. Jin Ling, by earnest contrast, is... accomplished. Peppery in temperament, though Wei Wuxian would point to Yunmeng's culinary heritage to name the cause. A little... finnicky in manners and gait, but Jin Zixuan couldn't be entirely exorcised from the blood of his son, surely. As compromises go, Jin Ling is a perfectly reasonable negotiation between shijie(jiejiejiejie)'s nurturing heart and the fattened cheeks of a winter-readied squirrel — Wei Wuxian, for one, is satisfied.

"What more did you want from him? Praise at every archery competition? The skins of eight ghouls under his sash? Oh! Oh, halt! He's close to manhood and yet to end a war on his own," and let's please not think of their good friend Lan Zhan, already prevailing against those odds at the same age, "We should steal his dinner rice and send him out to sleep with the pier frogs, until he repents!"

"I want him to have a longer childhood than we did," Cheng murmurs softly, his eyes moving away from his brother and back to the fire as he watches the fat on the birds bubble and drip down to feed the flames. Something less...demanding than they had. And Jin Ling did have it for a while-but he was going to ascend at a younger age than Jiang Cheng had. He hoped the boy was more prepared for it as he sanctioned A-Ling to be in attendance to the petitions once every visit he was in Yunmeng. As nice the status was in terms of competition, it wasn't so nice when one didn't have friends. He remembered Wuxian pulling him into trouble all the time. Jin Ling... really didn't have that until recently-and now there would be less of it. Much less.

And he didn't think the others would appreciate him half running a neighboring sect.

A childhood longer than you did, raw on the tip of his treacherous tongue, because Wei Wuxian was a boy once — really? So the old tale goes, that he was one, between wrestling meat off discarded bones from hungry dog-beasts, between begging at doors or teasing the uglier, plainer dumplings that would hardly sell, anyway, from the merchants' ware tables. Was that a child, then? He wore the look of one, the face?

Uoooofffffffffffff. War didn't strip him of pristine innocence. The road and the absence of a family tore that veil before showers of sword and Wen arrow ever did. Before the sects rallied and turned hard backs against him. Before his early, whimsy death, before the fall. But Jiang Cheng's cheek looks pale, the fire flame's feverish before Wei Wuxian's playful fingers, when they wriggle to catch warmth, and he's sickened of quarrel.

"You're a good uncle." Circumstantially, the very best. "Better than some." Jin Guangyao. Wei Wuxian. The futile wealth of Jin Ling's distant or oath-bound relations. Who but Jiang Cheng was ever family to this child?

Not Wei Wuxian, not in all the ways that make a man a guardian. "Who'd have thought? Changed his swaddling with your two hands, did you? Washed his bottom cloth wraps at the river-side?"

He's not certain he wants to go through these memories. They held so much for him-yet Wuxian had very little. "Yes," he said softly, leaning a bit towards Wuxian's direction. "I walked the pier half the night most of the time. Both inconsolable and furious at our fates. Finding a went nurse on the Pier was...difficult."

He goes on to speak about the little milestones he managed to experience. Rolling over and walking happened in Jinlintai. The lost of his first tooth in Lotus Pier. The first fish catch. The several pheasant mishaps. Everything. It was easier to talk about Jin Ling's childhood than anything else, and the stories carried them through to the birds finishing on the fire. Cheng plucked the first stick and handed it over to Wuxian. "Here."

"...right. Of course." No wet nurses to spare, no attendants. Hardly the handful of recuperating refugees to drench in purples and filigree of silver and glorify as a 'sect.' Defying odds, Yunmeng Jiang rose from its embers. They would not have wasted personnel on little mouths and searching hands, on weeping children.

Jiang Cheng offers him the first bites of fine, fresh meat, and his nose wrinkles with the warmth it exudes, the comforting, stomach-wooing familiarity of juicy, smoke-thinned fats. Open, his mouth seems to unhinge, to graze the edges of the meat, preparing to bite &mash; only he pulls back at the last moment, carefully whispering lukewarm air on the cleaved meat, and holding the stick out towards Jiang Cheng after:

"I'm the Yiling Patriarch. There's a ransom inked painting with my..." He sighs, concedes the appearance. "Likeness in every market." Wearing three times the beard Wei Wuxian will never grow, more physical deformities than two ogres can muster, and a hunchback verging on mythological.

"You eat first. Have a taste. Make sure it's not poisoned."

By... the forests, presumably. Ah, to be an old, once-dead man, bereft of excuses to show your own brother the softness of your cheek.

Cheng turned his head towards Wuxian with a quizzical look. He took the pheasant and tested a bite as he thought about the statement posed. Then, because this was his brother, hummed low and took another bite. "I don't recall you with a beard that rivals longevity noodles."

The meat was really good. There was something to be said about campfire cooking. Even with the lack of spices and herbs, it was a good meal. "Considering you look nothing like your past memories, you are safe. No one should seek you out because you definitely are more delicate than your past self." With that, he took another bite, humming in relish as he waited for Wuxian to finally want the food.

"I look exactly as I ever did," he sing-songs, tsk firm and hissed and reedy between his teeth, rolling off the tongue. One heartbeat, another, and then his focus narrows and thins, and all he sees — all he can taste in the back of his mouth — is the phantom flavour of juicy, fat-trickling meat.

Jiang Cheng's fingers never did look more delicious. He ponders, briefly, the merits of making a fine attempt against his brother's hands, before deciding, ah. He does like his second life. With a gentle hand, he reaches for the sleeping skewers, where meat still catches colour.

Fussing, he retrieves a skewer, blowing air over it to ease the heat, before daring a careful nip. And a second. a third. Lovely.

"You're missing spice. How dare you?"

Cheng, of course, is oblivious to the odd thoughts in his brother's head. He watches critically enough for a brother concerned about his elder's health and knowing that he needed to keep the last surviving family member of his generation alive and well.

The chiding makes him roll his eyes. "You didn't tell me you were bringing pheasant. I would have dragged the spice chest out all the way here and you could have carried it back for me." But Wuxian is eating and Jiang Cheng is pleased. And relieved.

"Where are you sleeping tonight?"

"...ah." That, already. An easy, breezy complication. Diplomatically, even the thick of his battered skull knows the way of it: whatever sect he burdens with his extended, formally declared presence has to face casual inquiries into why, in particular, it deigns to host the Yiling Patriarch — however redeemed. He is a weapon, bloodied, a mote of dust under the taut canopy of Lan Zhan's lingering reputation. Any step past Hanguang-Jun's remit is an intrusion into the political matters of another clan.

And Yunmeng, long and sprawling and wet from the waters and humid heat of their patient lakes, hardly burned and rose again to bear witness to Wei Wuxian's (third? fourth?) scandals. No, no. Better to chew philosophically on the next bite, contemplate the merits of spice generally and pepper particularly, and conclude:

"The weather's mild. This creaky old back can dare the field heroically."

A vagabond by any other name, adding the impossible wealth of his peanuts. But the truth of his gauntness is this: stones do battle with his spine, chew at his bones. A night on the road will mince what scant meat's left on him and thin him, raw.

...and there won't be condiments to salt him then, either.

"What? Why? There's a perfectly good bed for you at home."

Even in the restoration, Jiang Cheng made certain there was always room for family. A-Ling had her rooms when he visited. Wuxian's, while they never collected dust, remained unused.

He still didn't comprehend why Wei Wuxian would continue to avoid his sect. Yes, yes, he didn't forget the defectment. But how well did that hold up, anyway? And it wasn't like Cheng wasn't innocent in keeping that reputation unsullied. He'd done plenty on his own to spark gossip and fear. And he didn't care. It kept his people safe and that was what mattered to him.

Ah, this, then. The play, the pretend, the inevitable but indomitable souring of the meal in his mouth. Pity, the flesh tender. One day, one day soon, he'll bide a few bites whole without risk of carnage beside him, of conflict, of — disputes.

He swallows, savours the burn of it down.

"And where's home, Jiang Cheng?" No, Be still, his traitor's heart. There's the laughter of it, spilling like red when arrows strike for his chest, and he pulled, he remembers, knuckles blanched, he wrenched out the lone one that struck its target. "My home, not yours."

Where have they constructed this great, nebulous place of his belonging? Lotus Pier will tolerate him like a sickness for a few days of hardship, but lingering will only deepen the wounds he deals Jiang Cheng's reputation with each heartbeat. There's a point past which a body bleeds out, however aptly cultivated.

He reaches, brazenly, for the glistened wing of another chicken still licked by flame, hissing when the heat scorches him, neglecting the half a bird waiting unattended in his hand. The thieved parts always taste finer. "I'll have my way, thank you."

"Fine." It wasn't petulant. Perhaps a bit defeated. All this time, before Wuxian's...disappearance, he had fought to gain his brother's favor. His brother's brotherhood again. And nothing had changed. So be it. He was done fighting. The only person below him now in terms of friends at this point was probably Nie Huaisang. And he hadn't had true friends in a very long time, if ever. He could live without them.

But in that moment, his appetite had waned and stared at the fire, trying not to mope too badly. He still had a nephew to look after until the demands of running a sect pulled him away. Maybe then he would ponder the merits of finding someone.

...ah. How they bleed deeper, these needle pricklings, these scratches of stubborn nails, these short bites. How they wound worse than clever stabbing. He searches Jiang Cheng's face for every stab scar Suibian never did stoke, but Wei Wuxian's bitter tongue brokered.

And, sigh reedy, he surrenders his half-lightened skewer back to the crackling fire. The bits and the bobs and the meat trinkets will char past bearing, by the time guilt allows him another morsel. That'll be his penalty, earned.

"Stop that. The frowning. You'll wrinkle worse than vellum skins." Heed Wei Wuxian, who never did take to calligraphy past coupling tendrils of spilled ink into the tremors and undulations that sketch out fiends and night follies and monsters.

Wet, when he eases down on forest grass, and gravel tickles his nape, his shoulders. His arms knot taut to cushion a head burdened by storms of empty, white thought.

"It's a free road. I can't stop you dozing beside me." But hummed, "Might kick you, when you snore, but that's fair and wise and noble and earned. It's very good of me, as your brother, to hit you when you're down. It asserts my authority."

All hail Wei Wuxian, blood spiller. All fear him.

Edited 2021-11-12 00:25 (UTC)

At the initial chiding, Jiang Cheng scowled all the more, visibly resisting the opportunity to glare back at him. More hoops to jump. More sacrifices to make to what yield? Clearly, not having a brother back home. Perhaps Wuxian was correct: they could no longer be brothers in this life.

The thing was that Cheng was tired of accepting the bullshit that was fate. "I don't snore. Kick yourself when you wake up to the noise." He flopped down in the fine silks, removing the guan from his hair and setting it aside. "You should have a guard, but I'm not free to do this every time."

He didn't have the freedom that Wei Wuxian did. Perhaps it was for the best.

"I know," he murmurs, and doesn't stir for a moment, grass blades tickling his leg, his knee. What would it cost him, to become one with churned ground? To be buried here, final and still? How would the sun sweep over his limbs, blanch his bones, lull him back to the river flows?

"Aiiiiyaaa. Should I steal a baby, do you think? A little Lan. They're so cute and fat-cheeked." And prone to bursting from filth after months of burial, like turnips. He thinks of a-Yuan — darling, precious Sizhui — and the smile that teases the corners of his mouth shapes them up high. "What about Jin Ling? I'll fetch him a toothpick, he can keep stabbing me."

Teach him, he needn't say, turn of his arm idle when he reaches to tug at the nearest, dearest rim of Jiang Cheng's sleeve, Teach him not to keep aiming for the same stab wounds you placed upon me.

"Stay the night. I'm so small and frail. The wind will blow me away." Not if he keeps usurping every last piece of pheasant meat.

He listens to Wuxian, turning when he felt the tug on his sleeve. The way Wuxian smiles makes him wonder what he was thinking about. "Why steal children? There are plenty who are wards and need a guiding hand."

When he heard his brother's wailing, he rolled his eyes, lifting up his arm in the process. "And you'll try stealing my robes to keep warm, too. I know the order things." Just this time, maybe this would be the last time he needed to bend over-maybe this time Wuxian would realize how....how sorry he was. How he wished everything was different. How Cheng understood now that he should have listened.

"Yield them early, then," he offers, and this time, reaching, Jiang Cheng's barely a hair's width's distance afar and away, and Wei Wuxian's fingers pinch mightily from an unguarded thigh — for what is a nearby sibling's limb, if not a gently waiting opportunity? The ancients would never forgive Wei Wuxian if, supine on a manicured grass breadth, he did not coordinate his thoughts to the war arts. Indeed, how can a man resist? And if that man is once dead, twice yearning for the chance to punish a younger brother with the petty cruelties only an older sibling may deliver?

Let no one think the lesser of Wei Wuxian for his appetites. He is small, so very small, shivered under son, a victim — if he has murmured the rhetoric once to Lan Zhan, he has advertised his shrivelled sensibilities a million times over.

...besides, he's still to plan how he'll pinch the precious treasure trove of the soft inside of Jiang Cheng's elbow, next.

"I can't take your wards. Imagine it. Every minor sect would line up to defect. You'd have to feed them, while they trot down your corridors and wait for an audience!" Gasp, awe, tragedy. "The nerve. Some want seconds and the good pickles. Jiang Cheng, Jiang Wanyin, sect leader Jiang. They'll eat you out of house and home. You'll have to hide with the lake fishes."

[ He sleeps in raspy heat and the cloying claustrophobia of stone wet and looming, on crackled threadbare sheepskins and ground Wei Wuxian breaks with warming talismans. He sleeps, unmoored and gathered like a sickness-growth, contained within himself, limbs quieted and corseting Fourth Uncle’s back. He sleeps when a night like this sprawls, slow-billowed and coiled, wind snarling the obscenities of winter’s start against his spine, and his mouth a fissured gasp, his fists stitched to his belly.

He sleeps, their precious baby Yuan, wherever he’s left to take root, on the dark shore of his makeshift bed, wheezing. Coreless, like the whole of Wei Wuxian, his cave drenches its walls in borrowed rust and flickered, fledgling teethings of brass. A low, simmered flame burns at the heart. No wood to stoke a deeper heat, not in Yiling, not when they still charge four times the going rate for strangers that infest the local markets. They are not of the people, too pale, too known.

Before Wei Wuxian — emptied cups, off-balanced. The ghost of apprehension on Wen Qing’s face, now and then, is the same fractured porcelain. And which will chip first? In his house of bodies and bones, he has puppets to spare. And hissing, he slaps the tendril of a spirit’s make, rattles the knobby putrefaction of its shadow limb, when it stretches to tease the frayed rim of the sleeping child’s sheepskin ]

Aiiiiiiiiii. He’s cradled enough.

[ Few of the spirits that haunt him retain the strength for awareness. Of these, a smaller contingent survive a second summon. Still, Wei Wuxian speaks to them as if they are blood brothers, and they should know every truth of his life’s yarn, that precious darling Yuan was jolted awake by soldiers, swords rapping swords, then taking fire to his doors, that his grandmother rocked him and whispered the smoke would take them first, not the gutting. What did she know? The Jins intended captives.

And now Yuan bolts, when he is stirred without warning, bright white-wild eyes and shrieks soaring. No need for that, tonight. Dinner — a negotiation of clouded water and cabbage trims — was gentle. Wen Ning exhausted himself with only the expected fuss. Even Wen Qing has only numbered her death threats to Wei Wuxian on one hand. Lethargy growls in his bones, sinks young teeth in his flesh, and goads him to pleasant, dull hurts.

Wei Wuxian’s reward for his valian rescue: instinctively, baby Yuan kicks at his shin. He catches the svelte span of the tiny rabbit leg, and only leans in to slip his mouth over a bared ankle. Then, he raises his eyes, lizard-like cold, to Wen Qing after. Grins: ]

Say, ignoble accomplice. Bring the shovel. [ Another kiss, whispered to the pinked, naked span of the sleeping boy’s foot sole. Obligingly, Yuan kicks Wei Wuxian’s cheek. ] I’m burying this unfilial child back in the field until he learns his manners.

[ This lack of piety cannot stand. ]

[ what he has said about her in the past still rings true – her hands were not made for this hard labor. but they have hardened over time, learned to evolve with their changing environment. these hands continue to heal, to work, to threaten wei wuxian himself whenever he decides to act out of turn or out of line or against whatever rules they have tentatively agreed upon if they are to maintain this way of living for as long as they can.

for people without a home, the mound has become their community, a place to return to at night when the markets have been unkind or when soldiers stomp through their grounds to disturb their uncertain peace.

( what is peace in a time like this? wen qing certainly does not know. )

there is no peace when baby yuan has become upset and wei wuxian has taken it upon himself to discipline with a few harsh words. she stands and folds her arms as she approaches, regarding him with tired eyes and a tired smile. ]

And when will that be? He will surely grow into a turnip by then.

[ perhaps he might listen to the sound of her voice as she reaches out to soothe her palm over his worried brow. ] You would not want such a fate, would you, little one? I will not allow him to bury you tonight.

[ Betrayal! Consummate. Anguish! Woe. He gasps, turning to face Wen Qing — and you, mistress Wen? — with a hand slapped fairly over the hollow thing, his chest, and the beating dark cockles of his heart. How she wounds him, guts him, withdraws the sword he's seldom seen her carry, let alone draw. A nightmare woman.

Downed, he collapses tragically beside the tepid knot of the child, careful to break his fall at the last moment and to contain and quiet himself, until he is a tangle of limbs and scant morsels of flesh, and couching the back of sweet Yuan. Warming him, when Yuan inevitably strikes again, because what is a despot without his excesses?

With the sigh of every man who has been defeated by fate, fortune and a cantankerous toddler, Wei Wuxian cards his fingers through the light bite of Yuan's soft hair, carding it away. ]

Shhhhhh, don't heed her. You want to be a cabbage, don't you? [ And he dips in, mouth broken in the spills of an infectious grin, to whisper his secrets: ] I'll stew you with old goat.

[ When he drags the child to his chest — Yuan a grudging, growling mound of convulsive limbs and cooed protests — it's partly to save him from night's currents, partly to steal him from Wen Qing's grasp. So there. He nods at her, the shades of her fatigue-won pallor, what little the dying flickers of flame still parade of the other refugees behind her. They seek their own sleeping quarters, make their arrangements. Silently, clumsily, but gaining a sense of their own purpose now on these lands they'll rake and order and claim for their own. ]

Hey-ho. Nudged them to their sleep?

[ The old, the sickly, the crippled. The people of Qishan Wen, Wen Qing's subordinates far more than Wei Wuxian's creatures. Debt tames men, but blood buys fealty. They watch her in soot and greys and spy, still, their queen. ]

Morpheus has tread upon the waking world’s land more in the past few months than he has in millennia put together. What once had been a century’s gap tightened to every few weeks, a diligence to perform his job differently following the wake of cleaning up his realm’s mishaps. This time is no different, where he’s making a concerted effort to get to know a particular dreamer that reached out to him. The once-imperious lord of dreams would have coldly rebuffed such efforts in the past, but he’s been ever so slightly humbled of late. If there’s one thing Morpheus can’t abide when presented to him as fact it’s that he hasn’t been doing his job as well as he could have. That Death made a valid point in him connecting with his dreamers on a more even playing field, outside of just when they can’t help but enter his realm.

So it is that Morpheus keeps his word, he’s nothing if not a being who honors his promises, appearing as dusk gives way to night. He’s cloaked in his usual black clothing, with boots that never actually get dusty and a coat that’s for show to protect against the cold. He can feel chilled, but it takes the depths of hell to have that impact on him, often derived from inner fear rather than purely weather. His entire being is a craft of will, often appearing as what the dreamer would find easiest to understand. It is only when Morpheus desires to put someone on the back foot that he takes a form that would cause unease. Such is not the case right now.

He has a bottle of wine in hand, one plucked from a person’s dreams and of a particular good vintage. Coming to Wei Wuxian’s abode, he politely even knocks, holding the bottle out when the door is opened to present. “I trust the art of bringing a gift when one arrives hasn’t gone out of style.”

Two hollowed sticks and one cracked stone and a wealth of broken bones, that's what Wei Wuxian's travel home is made of: a dead shepherd's (abandoned) loaned encampment, walls cluttered and dainty before a hardening wintered breeze. Sky all slate and the sun a pale fever, Wei Wuxian's hands working inside, but cold. He remembers, distantly, that bodies invite warmth and court fire. He does not raise a flame.

At this feet, a blasphemy of baubles and a death trap of spilled talismans, partly activated on the floor. Outside, great bright sheets of matted glass: clouds roiling, seeming on on the cusp of trembling down their snow. He hears the patter — one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three-four, one-two: footsteps, and living, given their organic, shifting cadence. Spirits always perform the same number of steps, like verses in poetry learned entirely by heart.

And he does answer, spumes of ink settling on his palms, the corner of his mouth, the better part of a robed shoulder. What good is black linen, if it'll still betray its stains? He's laughter, all white teeth and unslept eyes and the churning restlessness that comes of bouts of insomnia and productivity, after. Inspiration is the work of muses; if not that, opiates; absent all these, sheer chance. He's happened on a night of rare industry.

And now, a guest.

"It has! You're late and out of fashions. It's only poxes and war banners and long lost bastard urchins. That's all a righteous home will take." And his borrowed door, groaning open. "Come in, come in. Don't mind the... everything. The everything of it all. You look —" A beat. "Like anyone. You could be anyone. Or no one at all."

Morpheus can sense the passage of both people and time that permeate not merely the abode, but the man in front of him as well. It’s well and true enough that none are impervious to the imprints the world around them leaves, no matter how hardened a heart or incorporeal a being. Morpheus doesn’t count himself outside of that fact, nor above it, not as he once might have. It isn’t a failing to admit being impacted, to carrying weight around that is not merely his, so long as it is balanced enough to not make one trod or stop. It doesn’t seem to Morpheus that Wei Wuxian is in any danger of ceasing his endeavors anytime soon, either.

His head dips in a graceful, respectful nod before he steps further inside. The nip of the coming winter air doesn’t bother him, it takes the depths of Hell to make such a mark. Sometimes a hell of his own making too, but tonight isn’t one of those times. His gaze is not unlike the midnight sky as he looks around the space out of curiosity rather than judgment. All pieces and parts to help him frame the person he’s with, in a way that’s outside of just the Dreaming.

“Outdated indeed I should like to be, then. Though it would not be the first time I took an opposing view with what others found acceptable or claimed righteous.” A long life has given him a long perspective, one that’s often enough not measured up to what those around him feel. “I am indeed no one.” He’s but an aspect of an anthropomorphic concept. “Though I can alter how I appear if there is an image you would find more at ease.” Morpheus always has some personal touches to his appearances, like his penchant for black colors, but he’s amended his look many times to suit the dreamer in front of him.

For now though he merely jut a pale chin towards the floor, where the talismans lie. “I interrupted you?”

"Yes." Chirpy, breeze, in the way of powdered snow. It doesn't matter. There're wine and a man, and he's remembering, clumsy, that hospitality binds to startle his windows open, just so, and clear the air of the sickness of his stale obsession. With futility, with the inability to do different, comes fixation. He scatters his papers each way with idle kicks.

"You've come a long way." A beat. "You didn't. Which is it?"

None. What does he know of dreaming? Zhou Gong is a distant, inauspicious proposition. He thinks, fleetingly — flinched gazes here and there, but then his guest is already inside — to check his wards. No, what good of it? The trouble with vast, immutable beings is that they inhabit a world beyond containment. If he feared for his life, the time to remember so is long gone.

He drags a stool, shaky on a hind leg. Another, cracked. They'll do. He wants to invite his guest, bid him down — waves instead. All chatter, all nonsense. The white, restless noise of him crackling. Stop speaking, and you're — alone. And wait. "You're not a malignant demon, are you? Still making up your mind? You should tell me, before anything. I should die informed!"

As matters of courtesy go.

A long way, or no? It is a curious question that perhaps doesn't want an answer. Dream is well aware of the role he often plays. He's but a natural element, a host to provide a platform upon which people might work out their toils and troubles. He is not meant to reveal secrets, for looking behind the curtain is inviting a point of view rather to be made plain. Dream takes his duty seriously, he will fulfill what his dreamers require. For a long time he figured that was for him to remain at a distance. Now? He's trying to figure out a balance.

"I am no demon, nor do I wish you ill. I thank you for inviting me into your home. It is a graciousness that I do not take lightly."

Dream steps forward, his feet making noise but nothing, no dust from his travels, clinging to his glistening boots. He sits like a graceful cat despite his long, angular form upon one of the stools. His pale hands rest upon his thighs, a study in stone, as though he could sit like this for centuries without problem. Although in truth he's more malleable than that, isn't he? More fluid, for all his rigid reserve. He is not the set paths of Destiny's gardens. He cannot be.

"It is an easy path to find a location. To be invited into a space however, to take the time to incur such an offer, that can be a long and winding road."

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oooooooo... let us sully this!

\o/

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Work has not been kind....

I'm so sorry! It's been the same here. I hope things lighten up for us!

Christmas will be my next set of three days off. lol

Come forth, Christmas :(

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