"Lan Zhan? Do you know? When you finally decide 'this is it; I'm done', your whole world starts to get really quiet. I could hear the blood pumping through my veins louder than the battle going on around me. I could hear each tear drop as it fell of...
Lan Zhan sat down next to Wei Ying and handed him a box. Wei Ying lifted the lid to see two headbands: one in Lan blue, the other in black. He picked up the black one and examined the medallion in the middle. "These aren't clouds..."
"No," Lan Zhan answered. "It's the silhouette of the mountains as seen from Yiling city. You are the Yiling Patriarch, so I felt your headband should reflect that. It still gives you access to everything in Cloud Recesses." Lan Zhan plucked the ribbon out of Wei Ying's fingers and carefully tied it around his head. "Just like all the other Lan headbands, only your spouse should touch it."
Wei Ying leaned over and placed a teasing kiss on the edge of Lan Zhan's mouth. "You've already touched it, and we're not married, yet."
"You touched mine years before you agreed to marry me."
"When do I get to put yours on you?"
"During our wedding."
Wei Ying looked through the rest of the items in the box. Matching outer robes, one black, the other white, with the same silhouette of the Yiling mountains embroidered on the cuffs and hem. And embroidered on the front of them was a stylized phoenix: wings spread and blazing in metallic golds, reds, and oranges. "For the opening night banquet at Lanling," Lan Zhan explained. "As Head Cultivator, I am announced separately from the rest of the Lan Sect. You can walk in with me, if you'd like. Or by yourself. But I want to make it clear to everyone that you are not a disgraced member of the YunMengJiang Sect begging for re-admittance; you are the Yiling Patriarch and more than equal to any Sect leader there."
"And that you're my husband."
"Mmm"
"Why a phoenix? With my black and red, isn't that a bit too close to the Wen Sect's symbols?"
"Who other than you can really claim the phoenix as a symbol? Now go quickly or you'll be late to your sword practice." Wei Ying shuddered in remembrance of the one and only time he had been careless in paying attention to the time; Lan XiChen did not appreciate tardiness and he took it out on his student's hide. What was normally a taxing session that required him to soak in a hot bath afterwards had been turned into a grueling, torturous bout after which he was carried to rest in the healing waters of the Cold Spring for an hour.
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Wei Ying groaned in pleasure as Lan Zhan's clever fingers found another knot in his back and smoothed it out. He had arrived at the practice field exactly on time, which meant he was almost late, and ZeWu-Jun had increased the intensity of the training in punishment. "Oh, Lan Zhan? I know what I want as a wedding present from you." His partner hmmd to acknowledge he was listening. "After the conference, can we go to YunMeng and look for my parents' graves?"
Lan WangJi's hands stilled for a moment, then continued searching for and smoothing out knots. "Of course." It wasn't an odd request as they had already made arrangements to pray before his own parent's tomb before their wedding ceremony. But Wei Ying had no clear memory of where he had lived as a baby and no information as to where they died or were buried. YunMeng was a place to start looking, but there was an awful lot of countryside to search in. Perhaps some of Jiang FengMian's records escaped the Wen destruction....
