含光君

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.

It is clear enough that, indeed, something truly is toying with the people of this mansion. Lan Wangji cannot begin to guess at its motive. His visit with his brother brought him melancholy happiness; his meeting with Queen Gertrude brought him quiet, wrenching joy; the disastrous encounter with Jiang Wanyin brought him cold fury sharper than Bichen's edge, and crumpled Wei Ying's typically-unassailable resolve. What is the purpose of any of that? Is Wei Ying not allowed his peace after years of tumult and even more years of death? Lan Wangji still cannot regret his choice to stay, but he finds himself burdened more heavily with thoughts on the nature of this tiny world.

The visitors, such as they were, have dispersed. Lan Wangji did not meet all of them, but he caught wind of most, he believes. He will write to Lan Xichen later, but with Jiang Wanyin mercifully gone, there is nothing left that can be solved with Bichen's qi or Wangji's strings. He stayed for several reasons, many of them living under this roof right now. Their pains, their losses, their grief -- all of it matters.

Expressing care does not come naturally to him. Learning to be gentle was the work of many years. His mother was kind in a way that must have masked hidden ferocity, and then she died. He never knew his father, although only a single wall, two at most, separated them most days. His uncle loves him, but to describe Lan Qiren as gentle would be laughable. Lan Xichen's temperament is a marvel with all of that considered. Lan Wangji is thinking of his brother, and of Wei Ying's shijie and her lotus root and pork rib soup, as he sets to work in the kitchen this afternoon. Most of the time, he does this particular task in a tucked-away kitchen, stocked with all of the implements and ingredients of his liking, but he knows that this one sees a much greater volume of traffic. His own temperament prevents him from intruding on those whose wellbeing drives his concern, but he can hope that luck will be on his side.¹

All that is to say, Lan Wangji is cooking. His sleeves are bound up with strips of blue silk and his hair, along with the ends of his forehead ribbon, is braided neatly, courtesy of a sleepy-eyed but quick-fingered Wei Ying. A pot of seaweed and egg drop soup simmers on one burner; the other, not yet alight, houses a sizeable pan that awaits slices of pork, chilies, and tea tree mushrooms. The mushrooms in question are soaking and Lan Wangji is occupied at present with neatly mincing several cloves of garlic.

¹Despite that he was betrayed by the promises of the burn book and that Jiang Wanyin's luck appeared only as poor as it usually is.

[ This post can be a bit time-flexible and will remain open for the foreseeable future! Lan Wangji cooks for Wei Wuxian almost every day anyway, he's just moving his base of operations and cooking in larger quantities right now, so stop by anytime. ]

Lan Wangji has lived through worse feelings than this. He knows this. He has lived through a grief like the night sky dropping to the earth and compressing him beneath its blackness. He lived through the recovery from the discipline whip, weeks of physical pain so searing that he could not breathe, much less walk, without agony. This week, he has lost no one. He bears no injuries to his body or his spiritual power.

He is all the more frustrated, then, that he still feels so helpless with rage and humiliation. He has meditated for so long that it feels nearly indulgent. He has run his sword forms, and he has copied the first thousand of the Cloud Recesses rules for the comfort of it, and he has pinned Wei Ying up against the wall of their quarters and taken him with such punishing force that he laughed and wept and begged all at once until it was finished. That helped, because it always helps, and because Wei Ying required singular focus and care from Lan Wangji afterward. So did cutting down countless corpses. Neither helped as much as he would have preferred.

Perhaps it is the humiliation of it. There was a time when Lan Wangji walked upright on a broken leg for days on end in a seething and desperate bid to hold onto his pride and dignity, so that no member of Qishan Wen could point at him and say see, the Cloud Recesses burned at our hands and, look, we've broken Lan-er-gongzi, too. When he shuts his eyes, before he can slip into the comfort of meditative breathing, he hears Shen Qingqiu telling him that his story, Wei Ying's story, is open to him like the pages of a book, that everything Lan Wangji has kept close and guarded and precious is known to him already. He hears himself telling Galahad about the sacrificing curse, he sees himself crushing wood beneath his bare hand in front of Claudius, he hears himself confessing aloud to his poisonous jealousy toward anyone who has ever looked too long at Wei Ying.

In that same room where he once accidentally received several visitors mid-handstand, he sits. There is a stick of sandalwood incense in the corner, but it has burned out. Lan Wangji, cross-legged, is not meditating. He is looking quietly at the floor, and he is trying to clear his stubborn mind.

There is, it would seem, peace for the time being. The Yin Tiger Tally emits no more resentful energy, and Wei Ying is frantic only in the ways he is typically frantic. Claudius is happy, which removes a surprisingly significant portion of Lan Wangji's worry.

There is also, it would additionally seem, increasingly little reason to expect an escape from this mansion and its grounds anytime soon. This is not the Cloud Recesses, and it never will be, and Lan Wangji misses his family. It is, however, his home for now, and he has resolved to do what he can to understand the people here.

He has returned to the library, searched its stacks until he found some words that caught his attention as familiar, and plucked a volume. He sits now in a corner chair, reading up on Norse mythology.

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).