[ there is a slight hint of irony lacing the edge of his words, a bitterness that he can't quite contain - but he had always been honest to a fault with this brother of his, convinced from the years they spent together that anything he says must, naturally, run off like water from a duck's back.
he stops a few paces away from the other; no clasping of hands, no slapping on the back, this time, and perhaps never again - the gaze he shoots back in return for the smile is cold, old, a messy, conflicted thing as he scans wei wuxian over quickly, noting the skeletal thin fingers like sun bleached bones, the dark half moon circles under his eyes eclipsing the smile that is, however bright he makes it, only a pale echo of what he remembers.
his mouth twists, twitches like words are backed up in his throat, crowding to get out, maybe something about what's been happening - even something about whether he's eating anything properly, but in the end what comes out is : ] How can you stand to live in a place like this?
[ the crying of the crows overhead annoys him in ways he can't describe, the gnarled twisted dead things that substitute for trees seem merely like bodies of corpses, their blackened fingers reaching out to them. a far cry from what he is used to, and the discomfort is apparent in the hard set of his jaw as he stalks up, closing the remaining distance between them, passing wei wuxian to head up the path. ]
no subject
[ there is a slight hint of irony lacing the edge of his words, a bitterness that he can't quite contain - but he had always been honest to a fault with this brother of his, convinced from the years they spent together that anything he says must, naturally, run off like water from a duck's back.
he stops a few paces away from the other; no clasping of hands, no slapping on the back, this time, and perhaps never again - the gaze he shoots back in return for the smile is cold, old, a messy, conflicted thing as he scans wei wuxian over quickly, noting the skeletal thin fingers like sun bleached bones, the dark half moon circles under his eyes eclipsing the smile that is, however bright he makes it, only a pale echo of what he remembers.
his mouth twists, twitches like words are backed up in his throat, crowding to get out, maybe something about what's been happening - even something about whether he's eating anything properly, but in the end what comes out is : ] How can you stand to live in a place like this?
[ the crying of the crows overhead annoys him in ways he can't describe, the gnarled twisted dead things that substitute for trees seem merely like bodies of corpses, their blackened fingers reaching out to them. a far cry from what he is used to, and the discomfort is apparent in the hard set of his jaw as he stalks up, closing the remaining distance between them, passing wei wuxian to head up the path. ]