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(no subject)
WHO: Lan Wangji, a triad of misfits, perhaps everyone ever — OPEN FOR BUSINESS payments cash upfront
WHEN: first half of July
WHERE: canyons, mountain roads, encampment
WHAT: in which stone is struck (badly), ghosts are drawn into conversation (worse), and small children cry (inevitably)
WARNINGS: blood rains, talk of harpies, Lan Wangji
NOTE: happy to put up a starter for you, if you want to join in on this dubious fun, or feel free to bring your own! Lan Wangji is... drifting... between phantoms, investigations, watches and the stone canyon.
also after sizhui's return, we like this man sane → lee chang
There settles a sullen, quiet ache of routine over the caravan, like a widespread, fading bruise. Normalcy, written in (another’s) blood calligraphy: the ghosts that wake to greet them, too often unknowing of the day that’s barely passed. The convoy travellers, grim-soaked and battling the petty hardships of sleep on gravelly ground, limbs lolling, backs a mellow, constant bend. The winged crea — harpies, spearing the skies, ravaging the caravan at night with tosses of lone bone. The red rains, soaking Lan Wangji throughout his watch, whatever the hour, wet slick of persistent horror seeping into sunrise. The canyons, stealing his son, stone a folly.
...and days such as this, when they walk unguarded, onwards and upwards, and the children of travellers encounter their favourite haven, the laced, pale spread of Lan Wangji’s robes, and, Oh — but it’s a girl this once, pretty and sweet and her arms coiled like a fledgling snake, rounding Wangji's knee.Sweets? No, he is without, though last he spoke so, he persuaded the old man Mazyar to spare the quarter of a pear, and the half-bare mouth of a toddler, still growing its teeth, savaged the moist flesh, pleased. Trinkets? At times, scraps of paper stolen from Wei Ying’s nest of the evening, folded in figures of rabbits or dragons or butterflies — absent, on this day.
Fool of a man, but he’s fought this before, triumphed in the face of Sizhui’s charms. He remembers his weapon then, and searches it now, but with Wei Ying lost to the crowds (traitor) and the girl all grin and pleading in her two-year-old glory, Lan Wangji must... make do.
"Do not think to flee."
And he must certainly call out the familiar back of master Lee Chang, who must think himself subtle, slinking away in Lan Wangji’s one hour of need.
Presumptuous, when a little girl now requests play, and Wangji expects they are past due, are they not? A time for questioning their fellow caravan travellers.
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He can't quite ignore a - demand? plea? - such as this.
He turns, eyebrows raised, and steps over to the two of them.
"Do you require assistance, Master Lan?"
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Paper unfolded, the girl barely spans an arm's length, collected from rain of dust and rubble and debris in Lan Wangji's steady embrace, to balance on his hip. He has raised a child before, awash with glory and privilege — Hanguang-Jun, spared the misery of a toddler's rearing by three years of seclusion, attended by a legion of sect nursemaids and tutors after — but this much he knows: how to comfort, hold, balance. How to avail himself of the logistics.
"And we, a mother's wisdom." His eyes drift, white of his knuckles tight when his grip lifts. At the far side of the road, where caravan travellers negotiate an end to their encampment, breaking branches and tent poles and collecting their wares, casting stone over the remains of fire. And between them, tangled like wisps of weed, the ghosts, mutinously silent — ever watchful, ever following. "We walk among too many men."
These men, who will not learn their fates without gloriously bastardising the silence spell.
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He's learned a little, in his time since he left the palace. But this... This is something he has never learned.
The only child in a palace full of attendants - what does he know of child rearing? His memories of his father are mostly clouded by warnings, dark words etched again and again until they were carved into Lee Chang's very spine. Survive. You must survive.
He is fairly certain his father never pictured this for him. Place, or people. He let out a breath.
"I have no wisdom to offer," he said slowly. He glanced around, eyes seeking Ylsa - but the wolf that she was had caught scent of the child and scattered far more quickly than he had. She was up ahead, catching up to Karsa to speak in hushed whispered. He sighed.
"Or attendants to offer it."
However, he did step up closer, slipping hands into his clothes to find anything tucked away that could be of use.
"Who's is she?"
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...him. Them, Lan Wangji decides, glance measuring and absent when it traverses Lee Chang again to find him altogether suitable. There are those who sell themselves too quickly to a soft-hearted cause among them, and those only wedded and bedded with the sword, and those too — two, at a choice count — who only suit massacre and madness. And then, steely and brazen, there is Jiang Wanyin.
But Lee Chang is half oil of good manners, half waters of impulse. Together, his inclinations might combine into a person of passably righteous example, whole.
"She offers no name," he clarifies, before Lee Chang need ask. But there are women beyond them, rushing with the day's linen to take advantage of the waters purified beyond. One, or an overwhelmed father, shoulders narrow and eyes blind with the morning's fatigue after a night's watch, may have lost a charge.
"We will go." There, where Lan Wangji tips his head to nod in direction. "You may ask them. Ask what they know of our — companions, also."