#everything in the poem about her with the bewildering realm

[pinkseas]

no bc like. is it just me or are the banshee and the original wishful aurosa outfit CRAZY complementary ???

the colors VERY obviously ofc, you have the banshee's red hair vs nikki's green, all the reds and silvers and grays and blacks vs the gold and white (even down to nikki's gold eyes vs the banshee's gray), but even beyond that just.

the roses get me so bad. both of their outfits HEAVILY incorporate them: both circlets, countless details on both dresses, both chokers, both tights and shoes.

on one hand, there are the banshee's red roses for elegance and passion (and very possibly sacrifice and martyrdom), versus nikki's golden ones for perseverance and eternity.

but beyond that, the banshee's roses bear GREAT resemblance to the desperate vines born of the dark. the ones that infected the wishing woods, born of the same power which caused the coma incidents. directly opposed by nikki's wishful aurosa, an outfit that specifically allowed her to wake the coma victims, to purify that darkness from their souls.

just. something about the banshee's extremely strong associations with death and corruption, and how she's been creating/capturing people as puppets but its clearly stated that she herself is a puppet of the dark as well. all of that death and entrapment, the warped and twisted eternity that comes with undeath in the first place.

versus nikki, who tracks the banshee down, who dances with her fearlessly, who's capable of matching her if not beating her outright in the styling competition even though the banshee is actively attempting to possess/corrupt her in the process.

we see it!! we see the banshee actively pulling nikki around like a puppet on strings, and we see nikki, halfway through, begin to Resist That Pull. to dance of her OWN accord, instead of under the banshee's influence. nikki's own ability to resist that corruption vs the wishful aurosa's ability to, at least to some degree, actively purify it.

the banshee as the sovereign of elegant and the wishful aurosa specifically as an elegant outfit. how well they compliment one another. death vs life, freedom vs control, purity vs corruption. eternal sleep vs finding eternity in waking.

[stiltonbasket]

Hi!! Could I perhaps request LQR baby-sitting A-Yu and A-Lan for the renouncement verse? Thanks, love you <333

(brief author’s note: please please reblog if you can, since that’s how we get prompts for future chapters!)

Lan Qiren’s nephews keep overworking themselves. 

This wouldn’t be a bad thing if they hadn’t been doing it for the last several years, but it’s beginning to wear on them. Xichen’s eyes are always red and swollen from writing letters by candlelight, and Lan Qiren doesn’t remember the last time he saw Wangji without trade reports in his arms and spit-up milk on his robes, so he finally puts his foot down and decides to give all three of them a break in early autumn. 

“Xichen, go take a soak in the hot springs,” he orders, sweeping into the hanshi and shoving everything on Lan Xichen’s desk up one of his sleeves. “Now.”

Lan Xichen is so exhausted that he tries to paint a line of calligraphy onto the expensive wood of his writing table. “Shufu?” 

“You heard me,” Lan Qiren scolds. “Go on! I’ll finish the petition forms by tomorrow.” 

Somewhat bewildered, Lan Xichen ambles out through the hanshi’s back door and splashes into the hot spring, leaving Lan Qiren to march down to the jingshi and confiscate all of Wangji’s trade contracts. He also confiscates baby A-Lan, who is lying in Lan Wangji’s lap and trying to eat his jade pendant. 

“What are you doing?” Wangji asks, watching him tug the rest of his letters out of Wei Ying’s hands and stuff those up his sleeves, too. “Uncle?” 

“You and Wei Ying need a rest,” he announces. “I am taking your work to the meishi, and I am also taking your children. Do not come to fetch them until sunset.” 

And with that, he straps Wei Shuilan to his chest and takes Lan Yu by the hand, bundling them off to his own residence before their parents have time to do much more than blink at him in confusion. 

“Huh,” Wei Wuxian says, after he leaves. “I think your uncle has a point, actually. Let’s go to bed, Lan Zhan.”

__

When Lan Qiren gets back to the meishi, he settles A-Lan down for a nap and gives Xiao-Yu a snack and some silver puzzle rings to improve his hand-eye coordination. “It almost reminds me of the old days,” he sighs, as Shuilan kicks her chubby little feet before falling asleep with her thumb in her mouth. “Even if Wangji never went down for naps without a fuss.” 

Lan Qiren was nineteen when he became acting sect leader, and he was also nineteen when he received custody of Xichen: not coincidentally, because the clan hoped that taking charge of the sect would prevent him from raising his nephew and allow one of them to take over his care instead. But Lan Qiren was nothing if not stubborn, so Lan Huan went with him everywhere—to meetings, discussion conferences, and even the odd wedding now and then, and was generally such an amiable baby that he adjusted to his uncle’s fraught travelling schedule without a fuss. In fact, the first time Lan Huan met Jiang Yanli had been during a week-long cultivation event at Lotus Pier, yawning in a sling on Lan Qiren’s back while Jiang Yanli napped on Jiang Fengmian’s chest, and Jiang Fengmian had even mentioned the possibility of a betrothal between the two babies when they were older. 

“My wife wants to contract an engagement between Xiao-Li and a son born to her sworn sister, but Jin-zongzhu and Jin-furen have not yet had a child,” Jiang-zongzhu had sighed, letting his daughter’s little fingers wrap around his. He looked heartbroken at the mere thought of parting from her, Lan Qiren remembers—which was probably why he named her yan li, to hate separation, because Jiang Yanli’s premature birth nearly stole her away from her parents the moment she entered the world. 

“Lanling is closer to Gusu than Yunmeng,” Lan Qiren pointed out. Yunmeng Jiang would make an excellent alliance by marriage, and he was fairly certain at the time that Jiang Yanli would grow up to resemble her mild-mannered father rather than her hot-tempered mother. He was right, of course, since Jiang-guniang took after Jiang Fengmian in both looks and character, but contracting a betrothal with her for Xichen would have done both of them a disservice—because Xichen could never have loved her as she would have wanted to be loved, and he could never have given her children, either. 

“Shugong?” a little voice says at Lan Qiren’s elbow, distracting him from the possibility of a world where Lan Huan married Jiang Yanli and crippled Lanling Jin’s influence after the Sunshot Campaign. “Xiao-Yu is done with the puzzle. I have another one?”

“Already?” Lan Qiren asks. This is yet another trait Xiaohui inherited from Wei Wuxian despite not being related to him, and Lan Qiren feels his heart swell with pride at his great-nephew’s intelligence. “Then you may play with the wooden blocks on that shelf, and see how high you can build your tower without letting it fall over.”

Xiao-Yu settles down on the hearthrug to stack up the fine-carved building blocks, and Lan Qiren goes through his nephew’s papers in peace for another hour before A-Lan wakes up from her nap and wails for her milk at the top of her lungs. 

“Do not cry,” Lan Qiren soothes, securing the child in her swaddle before heating a bottle with a warming talisman. “Here is your supper, and your xiongzhang is there on the mat.”

He has to keep A-Lan in his arms after that, since his tiny great-niece is so used to being held that putting her down would break her little heart; and Lan Qiren would rather die than let go of her, because he dearly misses holding his nephews, and not so long ago he was certain he would never have the chance to hold a baby again. 

And then, as if cuddling A-Lan to his chest wasn’t wonderful enough, Xiao-Yu pulls one of Wangji’s old picture books out of Lan Qiren’s storage trunk and runs over to sit in his lap, pushing the trade contracts aside and replacing them with the fable of the magic lotus lantern.

“Shugong, read to Xiao-Yu?” the little boy begs, snuggling into Lan Qiren’s overgown next to his cooing baby sister. “A-Die likes this story best.”

Of course he does, Lan Qiren thinks, as he flips the cover open and starts to read. The tale of the magic lotus lantern was written about a child whose mother was stolen away from him, taken back to the heavens by force when her godly brother discovered the magic lantern that illuminated her way to the mortal world—and for a while Wangji believed that his mother was like the immortal Sanshengmu, who loved a human man and had a child with him before returning to the realm she came from. Sanshengmu’s story ended with her being reunited with her husband and son, and the little Wangji never gave up hope that his own mother might come back in much the same way, even after he was old enough to stop believing in fairy stories. 

“Why did they fight?” Xiao-Yu asks, leaning closer to see the picture of the goddess’s lover with his brush and scroll. “That’s against the rules!”

“Sometimes people who love one another fight because they cannot understand their feelings,” Lan Qiren tells him, tapping the point of his soft button nose. “So it was with Sanshengmu and Liu Yanchang-gongzi, and when he awoke, she revealed her true identity, and explained why she sent a rainstorm to plague him after she read his poem. 

“Both apologized profusely. Days went by, and Liu Yanchang finally recovered. By then the goddess and the scholar had fallen deeply in love, and marriage naturally ensued. Encouraged by Goddess Sanshengmu, Liu Yanchang continued with his journey to the capital to take the imperial examination, and months later, the goddess gave birth to their son, whom she named Chenxiang.

“At the same time, the goddess’s celestial family had learned about her marriage to an earthly man. Her brother, known as Divine Erlang, found his unruly sister and demanded that she renounce her new family and return with him to their heavenly home, but Sanshengmu refused, and battled him with the power of her magical lotus lantern…”

__

“I want to paint a portrait of this,” Wei Wuxian whispers, when he and Lan Zhan creep into the meishi after sunset to find Lan Qiren fast asleep on the floor, with A-Lan snoozing on his chest and Xiao-Yu curled up in the crook of his arm. “They’re so sweet, Lan Zhan!”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan murmurs, his eyes softening as he looks at the open book on his uncle’s desk. Lan Qiren clearly just finished reading it before he fell asleep, because the book is open to the very last picture; a color painting of a goddess embracing a youth and an older man with a lotus-shaped lantern hanging at the crook of her elbow. “Bring a blanket and a pillow, Wei Ying. We should let them sleep.”

(Lan Qiren often finds himself toting his little great-nephew and niece around the Cloud Recesses after that, and Xiao-Yu’s favorite place to play in his parents’ absence is always the house where his shugong lives.)

[corvidfeathers]

entrances and exits

Hamlet kisses Horatio in the cold, shadowed corners of the library and teases a smile from him with pieces of Sophocles and Chaucer and Hamlet kisses Ophelia in the meadow under the sun and helps her thread flowers into her hair.  The two are separate, in his mind, the walls of the seasons and distance keeping the emotions from meeting and entangling.

But Horatio is not content with that.

or, how Horatio and Ophelia fall in love with each other (and with Hamlet) and how it changes everything

look i just finished a whole semester of a class where every assignment was basically writing shakespeare fanfic so here’s the most fanfic of it all.

Horatio first learns the name Ophelia when Hamlet returns to Wittenburg sun-golden and smiling.  Half a moment of hesitation, a summer’s worth of distance between them; Horatio wrote diligently, so he could feel, as he poured the week onto the page, the ghost of conversation between himself and his friend; so he could feel, for a moment, that he were travelling elsewhere even as obligation and circumstances held him far from Elsinore and Wittenburg both.  

Hamlet was not a constant writer; Horatio imagined him dashing out the letters when he had the time, caught between the rigors of his own scholarly pursuits and the demands of state.  The letters were long, touching on all matters in his friend’s thoughts but none in the earthly realm, and Horatio could only imagine the events of the summer were so out of his friend’s hands, all princely matters of duty and none of choice, so his letters were one of the few freedoms allowed one who had grown with the shackles of statehood.  

The quieter worry crept into his head now and then that perhaps writing to Horatio was a stray thought that passed through Hamlet’s idle hours now and then;  another obligation to a man best dismissed to past memories of mouths on mouths in a maze of spines and words.

Then the half-moment ends, and under threshold of the doorway both of Horatio’s misconceptions quietly die.  The second, when Hamlet’s mouth meets his as easily and fondly as he had kissed him farewell months before; the first, when Hamlet’s doublet slips under Horatio’s hands to reveal a trail of bruises blossoming down the skin of his neck.

The summer, Horatio learns, had not taken a companion from him. Nor had Hamlet passed it in staid, scholarly thought and family obligation.

Hamlet had not thought to write of it, he maintains, with an uncharacteristic laugh of surprise; he had no intention to lie, only knew Horatio would have no interest in sunny hours passed in the meadows outside Elsinore, of things like flowers and the whispered words of pretty girls, things that mattered not.  Hamlet says this in such a careful, insistent way, with such an arrogant tilt to his smile, that Horatio knows these things matter quite a lot.

Ophelia matters quite a lot.  That was the name Hamlet finally murmurs, some weeks later, when Horatio brings up the bewildered refrain of their reunion.  Ophelia, and though the glow of the hours he passed with her in the sun and the blossoms of her teeth on his neck have faded, by then, Horatio finds flowers pressed in books Hamlet passes to him, and he tastes the name on his tongue.  Ophelia.

*

Hamlet is reticent; Horatio knows he likes to build walls around the bonds he constructs, walls to keep the unwieldy bodies of friendship and lordship from crashing into each other.  In Wittenberg, Hamlet is a student, Horatio’s friend, in Elsinore, Hamlet is a prince, his father’s son, and in the meadow, Hamlet is Ophelia’s, and what that means, Horatio is not meant to know.

Hamlet kisses Horatio in the cold, shadowed corners of the library and teases a smile from him with pieces of Sophocles and Chaucer and Hamlet kisses Ophelia in the meadow under the sun and helps her thread flowers into her hair.  The two are separate, in his mind, the walls of the seasons and distance keeping the emotions from meeting and entangling.

But Horatio is not content with that, as much as he tries.  Intertwined with Hamlet in the cold confines of their students’ quarters after Hamlet’s January return to Wittenberg, Horatio finds, as always, that he can breath easier again; but also, that he cannot stop thinking of the notes he found earlier, tucked with care amongst the clothes in Hamlet’s trunk.  Reading the letters would be a betrayal he could not imagine; but neither can he escape seeing the blossoms pressed carefully between the pages, the scent of petals and perfume still lingering in the paper.  The scrawling hand, so light and yet so much like Hamlet’s.

Horatio does not push.  It is not his nature, not when Hamlet shies away from speaking of Ophelia.  Days pass when Horatio does not think of her at all, caught up in the way Hamlet smiles slyly across the lecture hall to him, content with being able to call the room he shares with Hamlet home.  The parts of Hamlet’s life he shares are the part of his own life he likes best; but he’d like to share all of it with Hamlet, not only the vaunted halls of Wittenberg, but his own humbler home too, and maybe… maybe even Elsinore.  And now and then, he finds another flower tucked in the carefully-printed pages of Hamlet’s collection and he wonders if she chose this poem on purpose, thinks he should like to meet this Ophelia.

*

At first, the only language Ophelia and Horatio share is Hamlet, and they speak only in entrances and exits.

Hamlet comes home to Elsinore with the merriment of their farewell festivities still ringing in his head, his fingers stained with ink and the careful path of Horatio’s kisses etched into his skin.  Perhaps Ophelia reads this; Horatio reads an answer, certainly, in the fact Hamlet returns to him in the fall again with skin golden and blossoming.  Ophelia has perfected the art of drawing flowers from Hamlet’s skin; Horatio marks kisses like a scholar marks pages, denoting interesting passages, but Ophelia kisses like she likes the way those kisses look on Hamlet’s skin.

One summer, as Horatio carefully pours out the sum of delights and miseries of his week to Hamlet, he scribbles a fragment of a poem at the bottom of the page.  Something he ran across in a latin text, a metaphor about flowers, clumsily and hastily translated to Danish not for the benefit of Hamlet- who is as well versed, if not so devoted to the language- but for Ophelia.

This reminded me of your Ophelia, and I thought you might like to share it with her, he writes, and then crosses it out, and writes I thought Ophelia might like this.

Whether Ophelia does or does not, whether she finds a poem a presumptuous gift from a man she never met, or whether Hamlet himself thinks to share it with her, Horatio never knows; what he does know is after that, Hamlet seems to concede some piece of the walls he built to keep his affections separate.

He writes of Ophelia’s love of words, of her sweet voice, of a wit so sharp her tongue could cut without a man even knowing his blood was being drawn.  Of long hours spent with her, away from the war brewing in the court, away from the bloodlust that stalked the castle’s halls.  How she alone at home can see Hamlet as he is; how he misses Horatio abroad, who shares her skill.

But Horatio only knows he loves Ophelia, just a little, when the first letter in her own hand arrives.

*

Ophelia’s correspondence does not end when Hamlet returns to Horatio; all throughout September and October, she writes to her lover’s lover of her garden, of the matters of state that crash about in her life as the warfever in Denmark ebbs and flows, of the frustration of being cooped up in the castle under her father’s eyes and the joy of the freedom she steals by slipping out to the woods and foraging for wild flowers and mushrooms before the snow comes.  I am fortunate the queen has a taste for mushrooms, she writes.  For my father will allow us any action that will please the Queen in his name.  Else he would not even allow me beyond the castle gates ever.

She has as sharp a wit as Hamlet always alluded to; she writes with pointed humor of the political mishaps and scandals of the court, particularly of things she overhears, when others think her incapable of understanding.  I write you this, she confesses, in one letter, for the pleasure of telling another, for I feel I hold too often the secrets of others, and yet, these trivial things could turn serious were I to pass them onto my lord Hamlet.  You know nothing of any of this, Horatio, and that is why I tell you.

Horatio writes back to say, he is pleased she tells him what she likes; but keeping secrets from Hamlet is not something he is sure he is capable of; in truth, not something he wants to do.  It is not that their are not boundaries between them; it is that he does not want to have to worry.  There are so many other things to worry of, and Hamlet is flighty, prone to high emotions and equally prone to repressing them.  Should something like a secret come between them, Horatio worries how long it would take for him to pry that from Hamlet.  Horatio does not want to worry.

He spends weeks worrying instead of offending Ophelia, of betraying her confidence.

Her next letter comes with a dismissal of his worries, and a confession.  In truth, I made it sound more serious than it is, she writes.  Hamlet has little interest in these small intrigues; he loses patience with talk of them very quickly.  But you, on the other hand, are not a lord and so they cannot burden you, so I will continue to write to you of them as long as they do not.

Horatio is only too happy to agree to that.  He knows too well the weight of too many words, waiting to be spoken to someone, anyone.  

*

Another summer comes, and Horatio finally works up the courage to confess the realization that has been blossoming in his mind all spring.  He opens his mouth one afternoon, sitting with Hamlet in the chill, late spring sun.

“I don’t want to go back home,” he says, at the same time Hamlet says “Come home with me,” and they stare at each other for a moment.  Hamlet’s dark eyes are wide and startled and then he laughs, and that is that.

The reality of meeting Ophelia does not occur to him until they are almost to Elsinore; it feels as if they should already have met, he knows her from the ink-scrawl of her words and the traces of perfume on the papers she send, the flowers pressed between them, the marks she leaves on Hamlet.  

It is strange at first, that the quiet girl Hamlet greets so formally is Ophelia.  She’s just as Hamlet described, but her eyes are downcast, her voice quiet as she receives Hamlet along with the rest of the court.  But Horatio waits, and listen, and realizes the stern-looking man at the king’s right hand always has his eyes on Ophelia, measuring the way she curtsies to Hamlet, the way she sits, the way she even draws breath with a cruel and measuring eye.  So often Ophelia writes of her father, but always with scorn, with dismissal; Horatio realizes he did not understand at all how that, too, was a confession, a defiance she was only safe to share with him and perhaps Hamlet. It is only, in a moment when the king finally draws the man’s cruel eyes away, Ophelia’s slide to Horatio and a flash of a smile crosses her face.

Out of the weight of her father’s eyes, Ophelia unfolds like a flower in the sun, suddenly having space where there was none before.  Horatio realizes, for the first time truly, Hamlet is not the only one to whom the walls of Elsinore are a binding weight.

*

It is that weight he feels again, standing beside Hamlet as Ophelia holds out the letters, letters from two and a half falls winters and springs apart.  Ophelia speaks, her voice restrained, her eyes wary, and it should not be so, not when they three are alone.

Horatio realizes this before Hamlet; Hamlet is too caught up in his own griefs.

Horatio is caught for a moment; his breath is stolen the walls of Elsinore closing in to crush the two he loves.

But Ophelia’s eyes find him, as Hamlet’s voice rises.  They have had so much practice speaking without words here; her eyes flicker to the wall, her eyes afraid, asking him to catch her meaning.

Horatio understands, a moment before Hamlet would have realized himself.  He catches Hamlet’s shoulder, and then Hamlet’s hand in his own, and leans in to murmur Ophelia’s message in his ear.

And from then, the story is a bit different.