un: heart-fluttering hummingbird | audio (forward-dated: 24 May)

[downswing]

( A silence to his mouth, begrudging. The words, when he does speak them, gravel between teeth: )

...apologies. The blood in the northern halls will want more hands for the washing.

We made insufficient attempt.


( ooc: posted today for ooc ease, but assume this comes up after Sizhui/Eleven/Mingyu speak with the miners, around 24 May. Alina and Lan Wangji have given the miners their mercy kill, before they could fully transition, and removed the bodies from where they were kept... but clean-up. )

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[downswing]

( This man, once more, intending to set his rags to the purpose of Lan Wangji's riches.

He owes, he decides, in substitute of greeting — he owes, and he will repay in silks or trinkets of practicality here, in inks or a comb. For this, the help Xie Lian ever offers without request for compensation. For the hands he purposed to the work of furthering Wei Ying's comfort.

They meet in a reddened room, reeking of plaster and gelid lye. Lan Wangji already knelt, dragging his cloth and rags over the diluted coatings of the floor, as if he cast a brush unto paints. ]

Apologies. You must toil, each time we meet.

[scrapgege]

Don't worry about it. I'm used to doing these things. It doesn't bother me.

[Blood doesn't bother him either, quite obviously, and he kneels down as well to start scrubbing.]

You had to behead them, didn't you? There's nothing else that stops them, I have heard.

[So of course there's a lot of blood.]

What did you do with the bodies?

[downswing]

No need to recount.

[ Beheading, no — but cutting, fine and clean, in many parts. Lacerations born of the silvered wire, of Alina's treacherously beautiful skill. Later, when his hand no longer trembles on the cleansing rag, when he has done with the tenuous task of repelling the dregs of filth from his floors, he must ask the nature of her ability. Sorcery, past definition, the reshaping of light whole.

No need to trouble this poor man with the graphic detail of their earlier arrangement. That deed that needed doing has finalised, detail unto whole, blood spilled. What comes now is mere cleansing. ]

The forest. For burial or burning.

[ He has heard word that the remains are sought for cremation, to reunite the dead with the warmth they seem to hunt down during their brief re-animation. ]

[scrapgege]

[If only Wangji knew the horrors Xie Lian has seen, and the ones he has committed himself... But for now, he'll happily remain just a man in this cultivator's eyes. His own hands don't tremble as he scrubs with single-minded purpose.]

It's probably best to cremate them and disperse the ashes. Make sure they aren't all together in one place, so nothing can come back.

[downswing]

[ And violate the integrity of the body, reduce it from shape to particles. Certainly. It is within their reach and grasp to emaciate personhood from the shelter of being to dust, soon to glisten, cold and mute, in crisp winter air.

He stills enough to stare at the man, to give the rag in his hands a long, perfunctory squeeze and kneading over the bucket. To wrestle it to form again, flat and pressed within every cavity of the floor underfoot.

Apply: the bridge of his palm, the strength of his wrist, a long lean. He makes attempt. Wei Ying would still not approve of it. ]

No doubt, they had families.

[ Families that might benefit of the comforts of witnessing the bodies before their last departure. ]

[scrapgege]

Hm. But we can't find them in time. We can't really delay making sure the bodies won't rise again, can we?

[Xie Lian works small area by small area, first scrubbing with the wet rag to dislodge the particles, then wetting the rag some more to rinse. They'll probably need to just dunk the whole place in water at the end to rinse it off.]

If there's ashes, and they're still all together, they could come back as a ghost.

[downswing]

The dead only rise, animated.

[ Chenqing. The Stygian amulet. Ever a fount to spill rivulets of strength, dark, heady and claw-thin, spanning lifeless limbs. Alone, spirits seldom return to the same vessel, not when the vessel has been vanquished, chipped and torn. Exorcism severs link and belonging. Crude, the destruction of the possessed shell tatters even the last call point of nostalgia.

Spirits bond with sentiment. It is known. Wei Ying lived and lied and breathed and fell for that knowledge. Ghosts, mind — and what of them? Let them people this house, let them ruin it. What will more voices do, but thicken the fold? Are they so sickened by wanderers that they cannot feed one mouth further?

In grief, ghosts kept Lan Wangji's vigil. Let them come, then. He learns after Xie Lian's manner, the patterns and strokes and the push of his hand, scrubbing without fervour, imitating the points when he should rinse in time with Xie Lian. Repeat. Apply himself. ]

You fear ghosts?

[ Most men entertain superstition, though few walk the wanderer's road. ]

[scrapgege]

[Xie Lian's hand comes up to grab the crystal ring around a chain that he wears around his neck. And he smiles.]

No, I don't fear them. Not any more than I fear people. Actually, I might fear people more than ghosts.

... But it's a thankless existence, and unless one has a goal, a will, it's hard to maintain any kind of conscience as a ghost. These people suffered enough. They don't deserve that.

[downswing]

[ The people here deserve none of their plights, their hauntings. The heavy, steeled weight of the undead burden that's infiltrated them deeper, darker than their midnight cold. What comforts does the life of this citadel bring?

The sluggish, trickled drag of life between feats of surviving the chills or the mine's work, raising children to worship mounds of salt. Ingratiating oneself before visiting merchants, fearing half of the land and the forests, and culminating, at the end of one's day, in eerie, shuddered encounters with local undead.

He would not wish himself existence here, not even for the price of peace. Wei Ying might disapprove, but Lan Wangji knows himself, his heart's appetites for beauty. Cloud Recesses was cold, and — he pushes on the cloth, lashing the flood — they still carved room out for the arts, for pleasure. For life, without —

...he pauses, eyes needle point when they prick Xie Lian's profile, measure him. ]

How many ghosts have you acquainted?

[ Unnatural for a man to keep the company of dead, lest he is a necromancer, an exorcist. Even wandering cultivators, let alone hermits, limit their exposure to well-defined, counted night hunts. ]

[scrapgege]

Well...

[Xie Lian goes back to his scrubbing, a bit more vigorously. The wood groans a bit as he does, and he eases the pressure just a little.]

After all these years, I've sort of lost count.

[downswing]

[ An endless tally. Ghosts. The air of desaturated, negligent indifference. A man who presents himself before blood without a car, applying himself dutifully to the extraction, little moved.

There was execution here, and you asked nothing of its turbulence. The air shifts around, more than with him, as if Xie Lian is —

And there is a frailty in Lan Wangji at odds with the murky glass of their frowning window panes, the constant glare-down of greyed skies. With how he moves, serpentine, snaking two fingers of one hand to tape the span of Xie Lian's wrist, when it next bares and turns itself on the cleaning cloth, to take his...

...pulse. ]

I do not understand you.

[scrapgege]

[Xie Lian blinks at the touch to his wrists, and looks up at Lan Wangji, eyebrows slightly raised, but he doesn't pull his hand away, or look even vaguely offended by the assumption.]

I'm not a ghost, if that's what you're wondering. Nor am I dead.

... I can't die, actually.

[downswing]

[ Quivered, spasming, living. Xie Lian's pulse beats, and the tips of Lan Wangji's fingers smear warmth atop it in granules, like pulverised tea leaf that never deigns to dissolve fully. Alive. Well. A storm, brewing. Blood seeking its first boil.

He is not a ghost. Lan Wangji's touch withdraws, and he yearns, inexorably, for ablution, pinching at the cleansing cloth on the ground to wet his hand. Swept blood weeps out, pinked and soft. He swallows hard, dry, around the reminder.

On this day, he has released two ghosts already. He need not discover a third. ]

All men must die.

[ Only spirits persist until they exhaust themselves, like a candle burned at both ends. Only demons, making of passing men their home, one swapped for the next. Only memories, and those soured. ]

You did not cultivate immortality.

[ By own admission, own terrible mouth. ]

[scrapgege]

I didn't ascend because of that, no. I told you I am not a cultivator, I just studied it as a child.

[Let him tell you a little story, Wangji.]

A long time ago, in the country of Xianle, there was a demon ghost on Yinian bridge. A young man came along and fought the demon ghost, and he killed it, freeing the people from it. And this fight was witnessed by the heavens, and so the young man ascended.

[Another smile.]

Does that answer your question?

[Which you actually did not ask, by the way.]

[downswing]

[ A mortal, devoid of mortality. A god, yet to be ascended.

Not a ghost. Unable to die. Called unto ascension — but... perhaps having yet to attain it. Reconsidered, at the last moment? Did he, or did his betters? Did he renounce his title? Was he, perhaps, cast out?

The possibilities peel away in layers of mute, threadbare understanding. He feels like a child, collecting glistened stone from the river bank, thinking it wept pearls — when the truth likely lies distant from his hands. They withdraw from the man, tenderly apologetic. He has overstepped here, assumed, scarred with presumption. Pulse, but not his beat to taste and take, not Lan Wangji's to measure. ]

What are you?

[ An itch, under his skin, poison of his blood. If he calls the guqin now, any dead would be compelled to give him righteous answer. But this man is not dead — the riddle replays itself. ]

[scrapgege]

[He is not dead, but he has no reason to lie either. What good would it do anyway? And it's not like that knowledge is forbidden or likely to be used against him.

But he's going to keep scrubbing while he answers, because that blood won't clean itself.]

When I first ascended, they called me 花冠武神, the Flower Crown Martial God.

... Many things happened after that, but I was banished from the Heavens. Twice. So I spent most of my time as a God in the Mortal Realm, alongside humans. Actually, I ascended again for the third time not that long ago.

I don't know that I would still call myself a Martial God, or that anyone else would, really. It's not really that important either. But I do count as a Heavenly official.