Silence is always a struggle to bear -- he bore it so easily, he thinks, as a child, but that was when he had a duty to be seen and not heard. Now it feels remiss to let a conversation lapse, a failure if he can't smooth over the slightest awkward pause. Frankly speaking, it raises his blood pressure. He remembers lamenting to Lan Wangji that between Lancelot and Galahad, he would have to bear the burden of speech like Atlas on his shoulders.

So perhaps he's putting the burden down. With the next, sigh-like breath, he wills his shoulders to sink. He lets them rest. He listens to the silence, and recognizes there's still sound in it. Their breaths still stir the shared air. It's a kind of touch, Claudius recalls from diagrams. Sound moves on waves, and like fingers strumming harp strings, it brushes by something in the outer ear.

The ten thousand things carry yin and embrace yang. Carrying like a sound, like cotton seeds on the wind.