For all it was a scandal, it felt a lot more like enchantment.

All things considered, it is quite hard to run away properly, when your friends can, quite literally, follow you to the Ends Of The Universe And Back.

This is fairly annoying when your friends' primary motivations for hunting you down seems to be to pretend that Everything's Fine Without Him, Really, ruin your perfectly-sweet, perfectly-quiet happiness with a sudden onset of Relationship Crisis, and to sidle you into playing Therapist when your only qualifications for the role are that you were once (sort of; it's a long story) a God and/or have previously given some Exciting News to a random virgin woman and some shepherds, neither of which are particularly helpful.

Beelzebub is Mildly Furious, Gabriel is Quietly Amused: together they're, well, sort of just... Meh about it all? 

The week after Lan Xichen turns twenty-three, he is told that the elders have decided it is time: the matchmaker has been called.

Sect Leader Lan must find a wife.

It will, he is assured, simply be a process of him dictating his perfect woman to the matchmaker who will find the girl and make suitable introductions. Zewu-jun is, after all, the First Jade of Lan; who would refuse him?

This is less comforting than it's supposed to be because Lan Xichen is left with the awkward, mortifying ordeal of considering the prospect of a wife, and all the books on the subject are, well, unhelpful for a man of his temperament.

It is his greatest challenge yet, so, naturally, he ropes all his brothers into it - willing, unwilling, unwitting.

(Shufu is simply grateful there are no more Explanations required. Twice was twice more than enough.) 

There are Jiangshi corpses on the streets, a statue dancing through the parks, and rumours of Yin Iron and corruption slipping in with the mists from the sea.

These things are normal.

There is a toddler found alone on a boat and burning, a strange man with a red ribbon sits in Lan Wangji's seat, and the Little Apple Twist mocktail now has vodka.

These things are not.

Or, Wei Wuxian returns to Hong Kong and really, everything spirals out of control from there.

Wen Qing: this chat wasn't created so you could spam everyone in it with your endless crying over lan zhan

Wen Qing: it's been a thousand years, how is this still going on?

Jiang Wanyin: thinking this would ever stop was your first mistake

Jiang Wanyin: the second is thinking wuxian created this chat for anything other than bitching

Jin Zixuan: Didn't Huaisang create this chat?

Nie Huaisang: for the vibes~~~

a beat; and life

a second; and life again

the clock strikes midnight; her again

there are moments that should be photographs; 

then there are moments which are more

and she stumbled earlier but you fall now

What's your poison, then, sir? 

Even gods sin. 

astronomical twilight (def.): the last stage of dusk before night

- palm-against-palm and wood between, elm and silver lime and Veela hair and dragon heartstring and there is no difference, nothing at all between us - 

Cœur du lion - mon cœur - mon frère, je suis noyé. 

The line between the living and the dead is stretched thin, fragile and breakable like glass; there are ghosts in the stars, ghosts in his head, and everything fades with the dawn. 

They say Regulus is dead. They say Lord Voldemort is fled, a wraith wrapped in smoke. 

They say, they say - but what do normal people know? 

When one door shuts - oh, but there is always another possibility, always another future; another hundred, another thousand, and it is maddening to know fragments of them all but never enough, never enough to be more than a sickly, sweaty, sleepless mess.

I blink, and -

(Gellert Grindelwald is expelled.) 

Impossible banner by grumpy cat @HPFT

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. 

In 1924, Albus buys a dreamcatcher in San Francisco and is reminded that melancholy, for him, is a mistake.