The grey light of Spain carries their history with it, and it's gleaming through the cracks. // Two long cons, in thirteen conversations.

Patience, Sakura decides, is for people who aren't holding lives in the space between their mind and their fingers.

"I'm starting to feel," says Lan Xichen, "that this was a counterproductive suggestion." Wei Wuxian looks down onto the pristine, tranquil cold springs of the Cloud Recesses. Sitting in the water, their bare shoulders rising like dumplings carefully spaced in a steaming-basket, are a large number of Lan disciples. "They seem to be doing better," he says, encouragingly. "If they--oh, no, I see what you mean." At the near bank, someone has pressed someone else against the rocks and is kissing them frantically.