[ open post: Lan Wangji, training ]

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji is upside-down.

This is not unusual for him, although he is more used to practicing this in the company of students, his brother, or his husband.¹ Recently, however, his mind has come up against more turmoil than he would prefer, and turmoil of a variety that is unusual for him. It can't go amiss to return himself to the basics of his training.

He is in a small enough room, largely bare aside from the stick of sandalwood incense² he has set burning on a side table. Its scent drifts into the hallway, and anyone who follows it to the source may see a white-clad cultivator standing on his hands.

Well: standing on his hand. Lan Wangji needs one only to keep himself aloft, his body straight as an arrow. His hair is pulled into a ponytail so that it may pool off to one side over his neck and onto the floor rather than spilling in all directions, the long ends of his forehead ribbon tucked into the same tie and falling in the same way. He is in trousers and an undershirt of a decent heft, in deference to the fact that he is arguably in public.³

With the hand that is not currently holding him up, Lan Wangji is holding an ink brush. He is copying, from memory, the lines of a sutra.

¹Wei Ying is not good at it. Particularly not in his second body.
²This may explain it to anyone who has been wondering why he always smells faintly of sandalwood himself.
³If he does this in their quarters, Wei Ying insists it must be done with nothing on his torso at all. Lan Wangji invariably becomes distracted. Now anyone else is welcome to distract him (in a different way, ideally).

Comments

[timebethine]

The smell of sandalwood draws Laertes in before he quite remembers why it's familiar--but as soon as he sees Lan Wangji, he recognizes the aroma. He's immediately arrested by the casual display of strength and control, as much by the way Lan Wangji adjusts his weight over his single supporting arm as by the careful, minute movements of his hand as he copies the sutra. Laertes smiles, quick and flashing, unsure of whether to offer a greeting and interrupt or whether he should make his retreat. Compromising, he makes a silent bow of acknowledgment.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji had, in fact, intended to follow up with Laertes if the opportunity presented itself. He doesn't care to push people, but he also doesn't care to have given offense to someone with kind intentions. He watches Laertes bow, silent, and then gives himself the time necessary to write the final stroke of a character before he sets down his brush and, in a tidy little motion, returns his feet to the ground and his head to the space above his shoulders.

That done, he returns the bow with utmost correctness.

[timebethine]

"You needn't," Laertes begins, but then he stops himself. He has never known Lan Wangji to do anything for form's sake alone; a man who plunged into the lake to avoid a conversation would not interrupt his work to have one if he didn't wish to. "Thank you," he says instead. "What is it you write?"

[lightbearinglord]

"A portion of the Flower Garland Sutra." Lan Wangji smooths down his clothing and draws his ponytail back over his shoulder rather than letting the end of it trail down his front.

[timebethine]

"May I ask its significance?" Laertes asks. The letters swim for a moment--he seems to see them at once as words written in a familiar phonetic alphabet, and then as careful calligraphy. Trying to hold both of them in his mind at once is dizzying.

[lightbearinglord]

"This sutra speaks of interconnectedness. Think of a net, hung infinitely, in representation of the universe. Within each eye of the net, there hangs a glittering jewel. Inspecting any one jewel reveals every other jewel in the net, infinite in number." Lan Wangji glances down toward his paper where it sits on the floor, ink still drying.

[timebethine]

Laertes smiles at the image. It fills him with a quiet kind of peace to envision it, like gazing at the stars. "'Tis a kind of meditation," he guesses.

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn." Lan Wangji nods. "It focuses the mind to write the lines again and again."

[timebethine]

"And focuses it more sharply, to do so whilst standing on thy hand?"

[lightbearinglord]

"Yes." Lan Wangji pauses a moment, then: "That is a common training technique for my clan. For development of strength as well as for meditation."

Truthfully, there are times when Lan Wangji and his brother have simply carried out full conversations upside-down and side by side.

[timebethine]

"I'll have to try it," says Laertes. "Meditation helps--but sometimes, I find that my mind remains unquiet, try though I might to silence it."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji nods again, understanding enough of that. "Copying lines while standing on their hands is my students' least favored punishment," he offers. Sharing frivolous details of his life always seems to cheer Claudius; perhaps a similar technique, on a smaller scale, may work on Laertes.

[timebethine]

Laertes raises his brows. "Ought I to expect punishments, when I fail to attend?"

[lightbearinglord]

"You are not my disciple." Much as Lan Wangji misses the ones he has, or had.

[timebethine]

"Then both praise and punishment are mine to wield," says Laertes. Another long pause, and then he says, "I was wrong to speak of thy suffering, when last we spoke. Please accept my humblest apology."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji is mildly startled, and mildly uncomfortable. He does poorly with apologies. He and Wei Ying expressly do not trade them in their marriage.

"There is no need," he says, somewhat stiffly.

[timebethine]

"As thou likest," says Laertes. If he hears the stiffness in Lan Wangji's voice--and he certainly does--it doesn't rattle him the way silence did. "I'll leave thee to thy meditations."

[lightbearinglord]

There is some sense not of having misstepped, but of having missed a step entirely. Then again, that is a familiar sensation to Lan Wangji. He is mildly aggravated to find that some feelings never pass entirely out of his repertoire, as the feeling from when he was young and there seemed a painted screen perpetually hovering between himself and his peers.

At least this matter is, he presumes, behind them. "If you require further instruction, young master, ask." He bows.

[timebethine]

Laertes stands balanced on the point of departing--then he turns back to Lan Wangji and asks, "Is there more beyond meditation that thou might'st teach me?"

[lightbearinglord]

Partway through tightening his ponytail afresh and about to flip onto his hands again, Lan Wangji stops in place, caught out. "What do you wish to learn? I play the qin. I'm skilled with a blade. I know the remaining gentlemanly arts." The qin gets special mention, as it's the art he loves the best.

[timebethine]

"What is a qin?" Laertes asks. "A game, or an instrument?"

[lightbearinglord]

"A seven-stringed instrument. I can show you." Wangji is never far from Lan Wangji.

[timebethine]

"Please. I've only lately found an instrument of my own."

[lightbearinglord]

If this constituted an emergency, Lan Wangji could summon the qin to his side. As it is, that is a waste of spiritual energy. He flicks a look toward Laertes, a wait here, slips his feet back into the house slippers he had worn to find this room, and returns quickly to his quarters.

It isn't long before he's back, slightly better-assembled in two white robes over the undershirt and trousers he was already wearing. Wangji is strapped to his back, but as he steps again into that small room, Lan Wangji flips it into place where it can hover before him, at the ready. One hand supports it from beneath, although this is not strictly necessary.

[timebethine]

"It's like thy sword," says Laertes, trying and failing not to stare. He approaches to examine the qin, noting the lack of frets to help find and hold specific notes, recognizing the concomitant level of skill required. "With such long strings, it must have a deep voice."