[ closed post: rabbit meditation power hour ]

[lightbearinglord]

The rabbits have been settling in. They have sweet, easygoing temperaments, which helps, and it helps, too, that the mansion has apparently noticed their presence and supplied Lan Wangji with a little wooden hutch for their keeping when he is not able to hold them. He does, on occasion, need his hands for other tasks. His preferred kitchen has also been forthcoming with hay and vegetables for their feeding. Wei Ying has already threatened to cook and eat them several times, which means he likes them and will be whittling toys for them any day now. Once winter passes, Lan Wangji will work on constructing a sturdier hutch for the outdoors as well, so that they can see the lake and the woods.¹

Because they are so sweet, and also so endearingly small, their presence is calming in itself. Lan Wangji does not exactly need help to meditate successfully -- he has been doing it daily since he was very young -- but the company does not go amiss, either. It is difficult to dwell overmuch on anything troublesome with two tiny, warm bodies in one's lap.

Lan Wangji is not actually meditating yet, but he is seated in that side room he prefers to use for the practice. There is incense burning, and he has a little brown rabbit, munching its way through a piece of watercress, perched on his knee. In his hands, he holds the equally little white rabbit, which is overall doing well, but which does have a greater tendency to startle and to want to hide itself. He is speaking to it under his breath, gently.

¹It's important for rabbits who began life in the bottom of a top hat to be exposed to nature.

Comments

[lightbearinglord]

In an instant, everything about Lan Wangji's demeanor sharpens. He was not slouching, but he manages to straighten regardless. With some effort of will, he keeps his grip gentle on the rabbit in his own hands. He releases one slow breath. "It is possible." He frowns. He had thought Galahad and Shen Yuan were friendly, and Shen Yuan claimed that Luo Binghe would not harm any friends of his with these dream manipulation abilities. "Luo Binghe has done the same to me."

[onthewillowsthere]

"He said it happened to him too. What was it like for you?"

[lightbearinglord]

Again, a silence, although not so long as the one that passed between them previously. "Luo Binghe does not care for me," Lan Wangji says, in a clear understatement. "The dream was crafted with cruelty, and I could not escape it." He hesitates. "I have experienced dreams from outside my own mind, or within it but influenced by another factor, before. They have a certain clarity and solidity that most dreams do not."

[onthewillowsthere]

He looks up, searching for Lan Wangji's gaze. "Mine was like that. Like a memory."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji meets Galahad's gaze levelly, expressionless. He considers. This is not the worst Luo Binghe could do, but it is cruel. "Shen Yuan was certain that Luo Binghe would not harm a friend of his. I hope he was not wrong."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Is there anyone else--" He presses his lips together. "Anyone you don't trust?"

[lightbearinglord]

As ever, Lan Wangji takes the time to think about the question. He largely remains blank-faced, but there is a certain hard set to his jaw. It is so tempting to blame Luo Binghe, but there is the matter of Shen Yuan and Galahad's friendship. Moreover, Lan Wangji knows too, too well the danger of laying the blame for evil deeds at the feet of the most convenient target. If Jin Zixun had not been so eager to pin the Thousand Sores, Hundred Holes curse on Wei Ying, Wei Ying might have made it to Jin Ling's one-month celebration. Jin Zixuan might have lived. Countless lives might have been spared.

Lan Wangji truly hates Luo Binghe. He will not forgive him, ever, for the pain he visited upon Claudius. But this is a place of endless possibilities, of people whose abilities exceed or skirt the boundaries of everything Lan Wangji once believed he knew.

Xiaoxue is nudging his hand with its head. Obliging, Lan Wangji pets its ears as he says, with deliberation, "It is easier to name those I do trust. Anyone may lie in the service of self-interest or if there is something they wish to hide."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods. He finds it impossible to tell whether people are trustworthy or untrustworthy, or even whether or not they find his presence tolerable or not -- if he could, he might not be so shy. It's useful to have Lan Wangji's opinion, even if it's not a very specific opinion.

"If there's anyone you think could hurt Claudius, tell me."

[lightbearinglord]

"I will," Lan Wangji says immediately. He has his own fears regarding Claudius' safety. "And I will look into the matter of your dreams." He is a cultivator, and an investigator, after all. The rules here are so different that he may not be successful, but he can do everything in his power.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you."

He falls into silence again, stroking Danding's nose, before speaking finally. "Will you teach me another meditation?"

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji has been consumed with his own thoughts; not drifting like a vessel on a lotus lake, but contemplating with purpose. Aornis mentioned her bad dreams, too, and Lan Wangji was quick, then, to warn her of Luo Binghe's possible influence. He may have been right, but he knows nothing of Aornis' history, of her possible enemies, of their abilities. A little wearily, he longs for home with a sharpness he has not felt in some days. Liberate, suppress, eliminate. Lan Wangji has always liked a clear set of rules. This will be nothing like the night-hunting he knows.

Mired in all of that, he is faintly startled to hear Galahad speak again, but he glances up again without showing it. "Yes. Now?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He looks down at the rabbit in his lap and then up again, a question: whether it's all right like this, with charges to be responsible for.

[lightbearinglord]

"I will monitor them," Lan Wangji assures him, "but they should eat first." He pulls his qiankun pouch off his waist and then fetches a smaller bag from within it. This is full of more watercress, and he offers a few sprigs to Galahad.

[onthewillowsthere]

He takes the sprigs and offers them to the brown rabbit, which wiggles its nose at the leaves for a moment before beginning to nibble, pulling the sprigs into its mouth efficiently.

[lightbearinglord]

This visual, too, is so sweet that Lan Wangji allows himself to release a portion of his various concerns for the time being. He feeds a bit more of the watercress to the white rabbit, now sitting tucked up against him on his thigh. "Tell me when you are ready."

[onthewillowsthere]

When Danding finishes the watercress, Galahad looks up again. "I'm ready."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji nods and resettles his weight, careful not to jostle little Xiaoxue. "Do you remember how we began the last time?"

[onthewillowsthere]

A hesitation. He has that memory somewhere, but it's not a clear one. Mostly what he remembers is being still and quiet and threshing wheat. "No," he says finally.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji accepts this without any particular disapproval. He was only asking, to be certain where to start. "Shut your eyes," he instructs. The incense is still burning, although the stick is nearly finished, and the room smells of sandalwood. There are faint sounds of the rabbits grooming themselves. "You only need to breathe. You may match me, if it helps."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad closes his eyes and does, in fact, match his breathing to Lan Wangji's. It's easier to copy someone else at first.

[lightbearinglord]

In that case, Lan Wangji closes his own eyes and breathes with care, each deliberate inhale followed by an equally deliberate exhale. His chest rises and falls, his middle dantian tucked safely behind his sternum. "Clear your mind," he says, once they have been breathing together long enough that the incense is poised just on the verge of burning itself out. "You have done it before. Reach for that same tranquility."

[onthewillowsthere]

The wheat. The field that Laurel first conjured -- it feels so much longer ago than two months. It's the thing Galahad remembers, and what he imagines Lan Wangji knows, so he sinks into himself the way he does when he's overwhelmed: when the weight of his estrangement from God falls upon him and his mind is silent and lonely; when the desire to do more than kiss Claudius takes over his body in a forest fire; when there are too many questions or questions he can't answer and all the words he'd grasp at slip through his fingers like water. He lets his body be a shell protecting the soft meat of himself. He stands in the middle of the field.

[lightbearinglord]

Because he is teaching Galahad, and because he vowed to keep watch over the rabbits, Lan Wangji tethers himself to greater awareness of his surroundings than he would if he were meditating on his own. Still, he skims the surface of it: the still, crystalline waters of the cold spring; the branching waterways of Caiyi that lead to Biling Lake; his own consciousness, calm and assured, gathering qi in the core of himself.

"Continue to breathe, and to follow your own breath." His voice is pitched low and steady. "Notice how it nourishes you. You share that breath with the universe. With me, with Xiaoxue and Danding, with the woods outside this building."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad pictures air coming in and out of his nostrils, falling down through his throat to his lungs -- although he stays standing in the same field, he imagines a school of tiny silvery fish, glinting in the river of his breath, streaming out of his body and into the stalks of wheat. The light flashes off their scales.

The soft, even sound of Lan Wangji's voice is soothing: it reminds him of a priest speaking the liturgy. There's no tone to try to understand. It's only words.

[lightbearinglord]

As before, the expansion and calming of Galahad's spiritual aura is nearly palpable. He is doing well, breathing in time with Lan Wangji. The incense has gone out now, and Xiaoxue has tucked itself into a small and warm bundle of life against Lan Wangji's ribcage. "Once you can sense our shared breath, you can sense, too, the interconnected nature of all things. The one produces the two. The two produces the three. The three produces the ten thousand things. Nature is in balance. Your mind reflects that balance."