[ closed post: the unprotected path ]

[lightbearinglord]

If the calendar speaks true, this miserable season will draw to a close in a matter of days. Lan Wangji considers himself a patient man, but it has felt interminable. Admittedly, the conclusion of Dark will not eradicate the bulk of his concerns. The danger to Magnus will remain. He worries that the sense he has had lately, the slippery terror as if there is something he is forgetting, when he knows full well that he forgets almost nothing, will fail to abate with the turning of the calendar. If nothing else, however, he hopes that the kitchens will bend to his wishes again, and that he will be granted the ability to make a truly inadvisable volume of noodles as he threatened to do when Dark had only recently begun. Wei Ying deserves a feast exactly to his tastes, for all the game he has brought in for the good of the mansion, and for everything else about him besides that.

For the time being, Lan Wangji is making do with what he has. What he has is very little by now. There is a watery soup simmering on the stove, the burner on low, and Lan Wangji is seated at the kitchen table with a well of freshly-ground ink and a sheet of xuan paper before him. Claudius asked for his precepts of marriage. It is a surprisingly difficult task. He knows the depths of the trust, openness, and understanding that bind him to Wei Ying, but codifying any of it is another matter.

He is poised there with the ink brush in his hand, statue-still and blank of face, as he thinks.