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]

[ 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.