[And oh, it feels wrong and so right, strolling between the living and the dead.
Back home, they say Xie An’s heir has gone mad. The curse of something once beloved that won’t smile anymore: pity preceded their avoidance, but the moment the local populace realized his charming nature had gone grey along with the hair at his temples, he might as well have become a ghost. It’s not difficult to see, knowing that, why Yiling’s patriarch is so reviled and feared. It’s easier to stomach the sweetness of incense and gentle mourning of laid gifts, rather than the harshness of cheeks stained slick with salt from howling tears, the hollow, sunken skin of a corpse, echoing the concept of mortal impermanence.
So, maybe he has gone mad. To look at shapes in the dark that don’t quite sit right and feel no twinge of apprehension. Maybe Wei Wuxian has gone mad, too.
But then, if that’s the case, Xie Bi’an supposes they couldn’t be in better company.
He only flinches when he sees Fan Wujiu’s corpse. When he’s asked to relinquish the one thing he’s clung to for so long, that he’s well and truly forgotten he’s been holding onto it altogether— that his fingers, nails longer now, bite into its sides of their own volition, rejecting the request.]
You said I should be the first one he sees.
[Bi’an reiterates it, maybe because he’s stalling— maybe also because he doesn’t know how to let go, worrying on some level that Wei Wuxian will steal him away.]
no subject
Back home, they say Xie An’s heir has gone mad. The curse of something once beloved that won’t smile anymore: pity preceded their avoidance, but the moment the local populace realized his charming nature had gone grey along with the hair at his temples, he might as well have become a ghost. It’s not difficult to see, knowing that, why Yiling’s patriarch is so reviled and feared. It’s easier to stomach the sweetness of incense and gentle mourning of laid gifts, rather than the harshness of cheeks stained slick with salt from howling tears, the hollow, sunken skin of a corpse, echoing the concept of mortal impermanence.
So, maybe he has gone mad. To look at shapes in the dark that don’t quite sit right and feel no twinge of apprehension. Maybe Wei Wuxian has gone mad, too.
But then, if that’s the case, Xie Bi’an supposes they couldn’t be in better company.
He only flinches when he sees Fan Wujiu’s corpse. When he’s asked to relinquish the one thing he’s clung to for so long, that he’s well and truly forgotten he’s been holding onto it altogether— that his fingers, nails longer now, bite into its sides of their own volition, rejecting the request.]
You said I should be the first one he sees.
[Bi’an reiterates it, maybe because he’s stalling— maybe also because he doesn’t know how to let go, worrying on some level that Wei Wuxian will steal him away.]