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un: absterge
The dead divulged at sea's shore: bereft, they haunt night waters. Buried ashore, they would wake to death's work.
Rest rites elude them.
Some among you wield fire unending. Lend light. The rest may release candles, salt and incense at sea.
If we do nothing of righteousness here, let us achieve this. What of the other dead?
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And also, I just don't want you to be too disappointed.
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[Because you won't be able to do anything about it, he doesn't want you to build p too much anticipation about it either.]
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I'll be at the shore with the incense very soon.
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[He's poor, Hanguang-jun. The incense is what's left of what you gave him in Sa-Hareth, he's been treasuring it.]
Oh wait... there's those wickless candles I had on the boat... maybe that could help?
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Action
They're still going to have to find a way to make wicks for the candles, and he hopes he'll be able to find more incense later... but then they haven't stayed in any place long enough for him to make up his little makeshift altar again, so, he can spare what he has for the dead, they need it more than him here.]
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Knelt, Lan Wangji did not anticipate Xie Lian's immediate presence — watches him, in the way a lion might consider prey that approaches him brazenly, startled free of predatory insinuation. Mouth agape, first, then stitched in a tenuous line, until tension claws his back and settles in the torn-flesh interstices of foregone scars.
Marks. Shackles. He glimpses neither shade nor silhouette of them on Xie Lian, but then, for all the obscenity of his frequent perversions, the young man does not favour the garments of a flower house concubine. Much of his modesty remains fettered, and Lan Wangji rewards the crippled nod to restraint with a wave of greeting, a tacit invitation for Xie Lian to collapse strategically in the sand beside him, without reaping ruin upon Lan Wangji's granular efforts to date. )
Toil on the candles. I attend the wards.
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[ He does kneel on the sand, ready to work. He knows enough, at least, to make wicks for the candles from some fabric threads braided together. There aren't that many candles, maybe five at the most that he still had, so it'll be quickly done.]
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( Routine appendages to any site of bloodshed, crime or violence, the brush strokes instinctive and well-known. The staples of ablution, for all the shifts and turns of sand fight him. What stillness can be achieved among the dead, when the land itself is unwilling? The winds sabotage effort. )
Cleansing. Clarity.
( Anything more would require inquiry, the intimate knowing of the spiritual hurts — and the ghosts of Ellethia's shores proved too many to question, rewarding Lan Wangji's earliest attempts with thin cuts and cord lashing and the bruises of his deep-knuckled hands. )
With hundreds dead, we are too few to attempt full exorcism. ( A war field would want the attention of hundreds of exorcists to excavate the ruins of its spiritual malice. The Burial Mounds can never hope to heal. )
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[If the spirits can find a bit of peace, then that's enough, really. Xie Lian almost wishes he was more knowledgeable in spells so he could do it, but even if he can exorcise some powerful ghosts on his own, this amount is a bit much, especially with his current limitations.]
That might be why we didn't find any human bodies in the city. People probably realized what was going on and decided putting them in the sea was safer.
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Or perhaps burned them, if they feared plague.
( The other possibility: that fear shrivelled dignity, squandered respect, exiled affection. That starveling eyes turned to corpses, fear-wet, and a decision was born that the risk of contamination with whatever ailing created the risen dead exceeded threadbare caution.
He humbles himself with stillness for a moment: rests, back a line unmoved and hands a wet knot on his lap, and he watches Xie Lian with predatory affinity. )
Shackle marks too may be awarded to contain the spread of misfortune.
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... Burning is always the safest option, if nothing else works.
[He's not sure what funerary rites these people normally have. There were graves, so potentially burying, but you can bury ashes too, so...
Lan Wangji's next quip has him shaking his head.]
My shackles were a punishment, and a deserved one. I actually asked for the second one myself.
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( Hummed, the knowing of it, in the distant, academic way Lan Wangji dedicates to acknowledging the night hunt reports of the youths of the sect who serve Hanguang-Jun. There is a purpose to bureaucracy, the quiet and tempered dissection of truth that only a mind alien to the emotional contrivances of a situation can simulate. Now, he watches Xie Lian negotiate the revelation of his — curses, though the word ill suits Lan Wangji — and he feels shamelessly removed, barely watching.
To receive one shackling, then request another. Either a crime so deep was committed that only redemption through spiritual amputation could be entertained, or sacrifice occurred to win a different advantage. Or the skill Xie Lian bore was so damning and great, that, as a man assaulted by the plush richness of colour might request the calm of blindness, Xie Lian too wished his strength dulled. Perhaps the request was as spittle, pale and corrosive, the mark of hubris — in the face of a benefactor Xie Lian wished would regret his generosity.
Dip of Wangji's brush sends the false cinnabar splattered. Local roots barely gave him the red pigments for forgery, and it is a more diluted paste, lacking the dignity of hard substance. He is slow with his marks. )
You speak so freely of your misfortune. ( As if he never learned the merits of discretion. A sign. ) What earned the second curse?
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[He's kind of an infamous legend.]
After my first banishment, I... was allowed to ascend again, but I felt I hadn't done anything to deserve it. Not only that, but it just didn't feel right to go back to Heaven when I felt I had failed at so many things. And there were people there that I wronged, too. I needed to be away, to remember what it means to get back to your feet and start moving forward again.
The Heavenly Emperor didn't really agree, and it kind of would not have looked good for him to send me back immediately after he pardoned me and allowed me to ascend again so we kind of hatched a little plot, and I pretended to attack him to give him a good reason to send me back down.
[That's not all there is too it, but the complicated politics behind it would be too difficult to explain from the start, when there's eight hundred years of it.
He shakes his head with a small smile.]
They still talk about how my second ascension lasted less than an incense stick.
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( Is not the way of gods, how they are made, how they bide, how they see themselves to embittered end and stalwart conclusion. Lan Wangji's brows pinch, mouth a line thinned and the grip of his fingers soft and straining over his brush. He writes again, lets the measured, borrowed truths of Xie Lian's mouth spill like chipped and dulled pearls, and asks himself if he is intended to take note of them — to collect them.
He believe what he speaks, is the hurt of it. Sincerity poisons better than artifice.
Sleep and ease and rest and bind. Simple instructions, mere rhetoric. He wonders, thoughts roiled, stormed and adrift, if they will take root or crumble. )
These wards cannot be tainted. Next you we are not in their presence, we may examine your marks.
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Believe him or not, it's of no consequence.]
the shackled don't affect anyone else but me, you don't need to worry about that. but it's better to finish this first anyway.