so! for the ao3 wrapped - how about 3? or 29?
Oh, thank you! Let's see—
#3 is answered here.
29) Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?
Always a bit of a tough choice, I think! There are some good lines that have not yet seen the light of day, because they reside in my WIP folder for now, but if I'm allowed a bit of pretension, this passage from edge of night, break of day (mlc, li lianhua-centric, t) hit pretty much the exact notes I wanted it to. It is a little extra, but on purpose?
The waves roll in steeper swells against his shins. The wind that spurs them also whips Di Feisheng's half-loose hair back. In his stillness, he could be the carved statue of a god of war, standing sentinel over the empty shore. "Do you think a person can change their nature?" "I didn't think you were one for philosophy, Commander Di." Something in Li Lianhua flares, a heat so long gone he thought it snuffed for good. "You told me you were someone else, and no longer Li Xiangyi. Still I knew you: from the way you thought, the way you moved. If the heart of you didn't change that much in a decade, how much could Fang Duobing's change in three months? Could he give up his love for you, his faith in you, and simply stop?" "Oh, and what do you want me to do about it?" Li Lianhua clambers onto the nearest rock, out of the swell. "He's your disciple. He declared you his greatest confidant, his dearest friend. Why do you ask me?" The wind is suddenly chilly, the hem of his robe dragging sodden. "Because you can bear it. Because you've gone through things that break most people, and come out unbroken." Di Feisheng is quiet. Even the sound of the sea fades until the silence resounds in its own perfection. I ask you because your strength keeps me alive. I ask you because you won't leave me in peace. I ask you because I need your resolve now—your spine, as you say, for what I have to do. "Not unbroken," Di Feisheng says, soft and measured—a gentleness and a truth in one. "But alive. Only the living have choices, Li Xiangyi. Do you know yours?"
