un: absterge | video, might as well get a show with your wake-up

[downswing]

( The stage, set: pale dawns drowning fair maiden Emilia's boudoir, mid-invasion. The lady, aghast, but bravely holding back (onto?) Wrath — one of three gentlemen drenched in chimney soot for their orgy visit.

RIP: four porcelain bowls shattered on the floor, a wall stabbed with dining cutlery, a decapitated statue, inked parchment (protective, silent) littered on the balcony and ceiling spreads. A table broke its back to sweeten Jiang Cheng's fall. The man himself lies sprawled or scratching (unclear). Chimney bricks are still coughing down into the fireplace.

In the midst of the chaos, a dishevelled Lan Wangji — perched precipitously on the back of a chair — calls for silence. A heartbeat later, he sets the communicator closer to the balcony, so that everyone who neglected to turn off their device overnight can bask in the shouting and screaming of anti-Macaluso protesters outside.

Enjoy a minute of that. Violence is good for the ears. )

The lady's quarters — ( ...quite. ) ...lack vantage. What stokes their anger?

( And then, an awkward pause later: )

Morning's greetings.

( ooc: backdated to the first day of protests. Enjoy your 5:10am wake-up call, in between the ruckus of Jiang Cheng, Lan Wangji and Wrath slipping down the wrong chimney into Emilia's quarters, and Macaludo's protesters raising a storm. Just. Enjoy that. )

Comments

[downswing]

The side of skin bared, backs bent and no weapons.

[wenderer]

Skin bared, backs bent…

[ He grins ]

Sounds like a good time.

[downswing]

Oppression does?

[wenderer]

Hahaha!

[ In a sing-song voice: ]

I'm teasing you. Are you always this serious? Tsk, tsk, that won't do at all.

[downswing]

It suffices me. It will suffice you.

[wenderer]

[ He promised not to worry Wei Wuxian's sore point. He promised nothing about Lan Wangji's, therefore: ]

I doubt that very much.

[downswing]

My humour takes precedence to their suffering?

[wenderer]

Are they suffering? What makes you so sure?

1/3

[downswing]

Men do not enshroud in clamour to no pu —

[downswing]

( ...ah. Sect leader Yao. A hundred modest blessings on his name, his rule, his legacy. )

[downswing]

No proof guides me.

[wenderer]

If anything, we're the ones suffering, being awakened at this hour.

[downswing]

You have struck the age of frailty?

text

[wenderer]

[ He doesn't answer this immediately; Zhou Zishu had just asked him to procure wine, and so off he went.

A little while later, however, he texts: ]

Do you know anyone who can exert spiritual power through music?

1/2

[downswing]

( ...ah. )

[downswing]

To what end?

[wenderer]

Healing.

[downswing]

Only spiritual cleansing.

[wenderer]

[ w e l p

he'd hoped for a backup plan, but looks like he's got roof duty for the duration. It's fine, he'll sleep when he's dead. ]

Noted.

[downswing]

Who hurts?

[wenderer]

[ crickets ]

[downswing]

( A long-suffering species. )


You have made your qualm my own.

[wenderer]

[ he is 100% not answering this, your qualms are your own business.







however later the following night, the sound of a xiao, drifting from the rooftop, infused with powerful healing spiritual energy, might be disturbing to a sensitive person's sleep. ]

[downswing]

[ Wen Kexing's qualms, named Lan Wangji's own. Wangji's retaliation, also: he hears. Wakes with the first scratch of clatter woven back as song, drenched in the immodesty of only five silk layers, bound to his body. May Cloud Recesses forgive the slight.

And he hunts. Night groans wide and dark around him, its maws incomprehensibly feral. They grind, teeth blunt, and he feels himself the morsel, drifting indelibly between labour of leisure and chase of duty, knowing qi scattered, intent wasted. Sorcery compels and enshrouds him, familiar.

Musical mending, as the healers of Gusu Lan practise it — the prowess of Cloud Recesses, alchemically injected as the substance set to fill the form of mistress Wen's abilities. He knows it, like itch beneath skin, claws ribboning flesh.

And then, rooftops scouted, talismans screaming with proximity to the source of magical burst, he finds him: Wen Kexing, frail under the bloodied eye of an abortive moon, half misted. A poor target, when Lan Wangji breaks his land in a fleeting crouch to bide his footing on oiled tile, before he rises securely.

Tense, on the unsheathing: Bichen's blade reveals herself like teeth of winter pallor in a hag's strained grin. A comfortable, if tenuous weight: Wangji weighs, then directs her, first at Wen Kexing's xiao — humble greetings, and fond recollection of Zewu-Jun's — then at the narrow, trembled line of his throat.

Short of touch. Short of intent. Tension slicks Wangji's hand like sleet. Like carnage, taste of iron distant. This is not his cause to defend, not his territory. He owes no blood shed. And yet: ]

Crawl back.

[ If the healing were sufficient, it would be played to its intended. Wen Kexing plays to his own futility. Cowards earn no right of audience. ]

[wenderer]

[ Excuse you, all he wants to do is be appropriately sad and dramatic for a while, where no one can see. Even if he uses up his entire well of spiritual energy, it's a small price to pay.

Thus he's startled by the intrusion, still more by the sword at his throat. Just what has he done to annoy the man, other than play music too late at night? Just sleep, idiot, and bathe in the spiritual healing; it's no one's problem but his own, that he's cast a wide net.

He pulls the xiao from his lips. ]

Not a music lover?

[ Ordinarily he's welcome the opportunity to spar, to physically work out his myriad frustrations. But his spiritual energy is, as noted, depleted. So he just leans backwards, to dodge the sword and roll out of the way. ]