lightbearinglord | [ closed post: your smile taught me how to quiet down my mind ]

Every expression Lan Zhan makes is adorable -- Claudius suspects it's that small face, magnifying even his smallest frown by sheer proportion. "First," he says, "I learned that a weed is only an unwanted plant. Before people began to cultivate plants in earnest, fields for rice and orchards for fruit and gardens for flowers, there weren't any weeds to be found. I mean that in two senses. In nature, weeds would be the first plants to regrow from a disaster — say a lightning-strike starts a forest fire, and trees that have stood for ages turn to ash overnight. They’ll also regrow if a group of humans flood a field to make those ride paddies I mentioned, or till the earth to plant fruit tree and flower seeds. So weeds tend to pop up wherever humanity goes, wherever we disturb the earth. They adapt; they fill the spaces others create for them. They say the Tao is the same way, don’t they?”

Lan Zhan's head bobs in another utterly serious nod of attentive understanding. The extent to which he is absorbing everything Claudius says to him is nearly palpable. He is sincerely fascinated. He also anticipates the possibility of a test at a later date. "Mn," he says, a perfect miniature reproduction of the habit that will follow him into adulthood. The shape changes but not the form; the more it moves, the more it yields. "What is second?"

“The second,” Claudius says, as he leads Lan Zhan further along, “is that even weeds have their virtues. An unwanted plant still shelters insects and caterpillars, even if does nothing for us — or it may do something for us that we’ve not yet discovered. When I was a child, I often fell ill or injured,” and learned to list them as likewise things, random afflictions with no solid cause. “I didn’t like to draw attention to myself, but gardens weed can go unmissed. I could pick healing herbs for myself without ruining the rest of the orchard, and with a little research, distill them. I knew so many hidden, overgrown corners of that garden — I could easily make my own private gardens within them.”

Claudius leads with authority, authority for which Lan Zhan is grateful as he drifts beside him in his wake. He wants to understand what he is being taught -- it has a gravity to it that he can't quite grasp, and yet he can feel, still, a sensation of pressure in his chest, distant alarm echoing behind it. He doesn't want to lose control of himself in the presence of yet another kind and patient adult, but it has been a day of glaring, overwhelming novelty. "Everything has a purpose," he volunteers.

"Everything finds a purpose," Claudius says, not quite a correction but an elucidation. “I thought I had none, but that experience growing gardens was what brought me here. Give or take a few misadventures inbetween.”

There’s a brief period, inbetween entering the bamboo forest and losing sight of the forest of trees, where bamboo is the only thing to be seen. Other signs of the inner garden come in more gradually. That’s the effect Claudius planned for, when he planted those first few stalks with Magnus, one hand holding his place in a book and the other sweeping towards the sky.

A Renaissance Garden — if that's what we're calling it — is something to be surveyed, he explained. It's something you can stare at from the balcony of a well-appointed palazzo and appreciate the pleasing geometry. A conqueror's perspective. But the gardens Lan Wangji knew were likely closer to the scholar's than the conqueror's. In a scholar's garden, you aren't meant to take it in all at once -- you're meant to walk those paths yourself, make your own discoveries. Something should always be kept hidden or out of reach, inviting you further in.

It felt grandiose even at the time, planting a forest within forest for the sake of an invitation. But the bamboo eventually gives way to a gently rolling landscape, an inner garden rich with wildflowers from another world and time. Claudius steps before a bed of them, now in full bloom, flowers bluer than the sky, than the depths of Gertrude’s eyes as Claudius remembered them, than Galahad’s eyes as he gazed into them each day. Gentian. Past that, there’s the rising curve of a maidenhair tree, small glimpses of structures wrought of vines by Magnus’s gift and Claudius’s research. Every step an invitation. Claudius keeps his eye on Lan Zhan, step by careful step, each one taken together.

It isn't quite like the Cloud Recesses, but it is more like it than anything Lan Zhan has seen here, at this strange and vast place seemingly made to confuse and distress him, yet. His eyes are wide, almost glassy with their light color, as he picks his way alongside Claudius through those delicate steps. Those flowers look just like those that carpet the outside of his mother's house, always framing her as she opens the door and allows him and his brother inside for their visitation.

He doesn't stop following alongside his chaperone. That would be rude and unmannerly. He is determined to behave well. But his hand tightens and tightens, small and fierce, around the larger one he holds, and his breath is caught in his chest, and his eyes are hot, his vision blurring.

"I was a wayward child, without direction," Claudius continues. "I did not know what my life's purpose should be. I found it, though I did not know it, tending to those garden patches ... learning what virtues were found in weeds, learning how all plants could flourish. In time, I learned what plants were found in other lands, what peoples lived with them, and how. I learned to make cordials of comfort and healing, places of beauty and peace. I made this place a gift for my friend, a man much like thee." He stoops down, plucks a gentian blossom from its bed, then tucks it in the ribbon of Lan Zhan's hairbun. "Dost thou like it?"

Lan Zhan stares helplessly, golden eyes wide and shining, a counterpoint to the way his chubby face stays, otherwise, so, so serious. "Yes, shushu," he says, telling the truth as gamely as ever, and then at once tears begin to spill silently down his cheeks. What if he never sits on his mother's lap and looks through her window at the gentians surrounding her house again? What if she never returns from wherever she's gone?

"There, there thou art." Claudius pets Lan Zhan's little head. "I would tell thee not to cry and spoil thy cute face, but thou art cute as ever. Cry as much as thou needest."

Lan Zhan expected to be scolded, perhaps, or for his tears to earn polite silence. Anything but this indulgent kindness. His breath hiccups, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He should apologize for the disruption, but he can't -- he can't speak.

"Shh, shh. I have thee," Claudius says, and other such soothing nonsense, petting Lan Zhan's head all the while.

It all wells up inside Lan Zhan, an animal growing too big for its skin. His long, long day; this beautiful garden, a thousand li from home and yet so like his home; fruit leather, whatever that is; the uncertainty over his mother; the punishment he knows must be impending whenever he returns to the Cloud Recesses, because he is sure to have broken curfew by then. The tears burn his face, and that in itself is overwhelming. When he turns his face into Claudius' unbearably kind hand, it feels like a search for comfort. When his breath snags again and he unthinkingly bites down hard on Claudius' wrist, which is attached to that gentle hand, it feels like something far worse, like there could have been no other route for any of these monstrosities to leave his body.

She teased me, Lan Wangji once said of his mother, both because I was incurably serious and because I bit her, or my brother, rather than speaking anytime I felt anything strongly. Of course she did. It's like being bit by Drosera, but more charming, and for once he thinks Claudius sees what Galahad and Magnus see when they look at her -- that abandoned creature they found in the shed, orphaned and hungry, biting even the hand that fed her lest that that source of food and comfort leave her too soon. No wonder they spoil her so terribly. "Ah!" He laughs. "Thou art like Lesbia's sparrow -- a girl from a poem. When thou art older, I will tell teach thee what that poem means. Lesbia loved her pet sparrow, and teased it so it bit her ... Hast thou lost thy voice, little sparrow? Thou hast had a strange and tiring day."

Lan Zhan likes poetry, he thinks, although much of it features characters he has yet to learn and concepts he barely understands. He likes the tidiness of most poems: a set number of characters in a line, a sparse collection of vivid images, meaning lurking somewhere within. Uncle says he'll understand them better with time.

He has lost his voice. He nods, swallowing hard, and finally lifts both hands to his face to scrub at his eyes with his sleeves. The bite was uncouth and uncivilized, but it hasn't made Claudius angry, somehow.

"Come with me. I'll recite to thee, and thou can'st rest -- dost thou know? I made this garden to be a place of relaxed meditation, but only thou canst tell me whether I succeeded." He lifts Lan Zhan into his arms -- that will make it easier to transport him to a resting place -- and speaks,

Hear me, sparrow, my lady’s pet,
Playing hawkishly in my lady’s lap,
Peck sharp the fingertip she offers you,
For she craves smarting distraction
From the smarter pangs of passion
She smothers so ardently within.

Being lifted surprises him for a moment, but it's not a bad surprise. He's still small enough to be carried from time to time, and he is too weary, too stunned by everything that's happened, to protest. Lan Zhan settles into his place in Claudius' arms. He nods, but he's silent. He doesn't want to interrupt the poetry.

[ closed post: your smile taught me how to quiet down my mind ]

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