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Dior Homme Archives
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love, the armour saints wear
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Shadow and Bone (TV), The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova & Genya Safin
Characters: Genya Safin, The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova
Additional Tags: genya becoming a Tailor, Pre-Canon, Character Study, Loyalty, Duty, Sense of home, Grooming, Manipulation
Summary:
"Baghra told me after she saw you the very first time. She said you were talented, that girl could serve Ravka well." He laughs at his own impression before squeezing her hands earnestly. "I've seen it too. You are a diligent student, unique in your practice of the Small Science!"
With Kirigan's hands enveloping hers, and Genya feels caught in a reverse Saint's miniature, like Sankta Iritsya and her winding nettles or Santka Ruchna evoking the Firebird while her forest burnt around her.
She feels the warmth spread up her hands and towards her chest, the latent push of his amplifier power sloshing through her. It is a heady feeling, almost like too many sneaky sips of kvas after dinner, but without the room spinning because she feels perfectly grounded and there is no room for fear with power and confidence sparking off her every pore and nail.
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hello!! hope you're doing well and I'd like to start by thanking you for all your help and responses:)) Now, i was wondering where we draw the line in between creating a fantasy country and culture inspired by a real life country, and simply creating a fantasy country that IS a real life country. I would like my story to happen someplace where the readers will be able to recognize as Italy-based, just as they recognized, for example, Leigh Bardugo's Ravka as Russian-based. How can i do so without copy-pasting every single detail from Italy?
Real-Inspired Fantasy Country without Creating a Carbon Copy
First, thank you so much for your kind words. I'm so glad you're finding the blog to be helpful. ♥
There are several things that I think make Leigh Bardugo's portrayal of Ravka work so well:
1) Roots in the Language
There's actually an article in the archives of Leigh Bardugo's web site that talked about how she borrowed from the Russian language without using it completely. One way that she did this is by taking familiar English words like "sovereign" and combining it with a Russian root word or affixes, which is how she came up with the form of address "moi soverennyi" for the Darkling. Other words simply sound like Russian words because they use the same prominent letters or combinations of letters, or because they look/sound similar to Russian words. For example, "Ravka" bears some similarity to "Russia." They both begin with 'R' and end with 'A,' they both have a vowel as the second letter, and in the case of Ravka, the "vk" together are strongly reminiscent of Russian. In some cases, she did use actual Russian words, like Tsar and kvas, but only in places where she didn't feel it would take the reader out of the story.
2) Specific Time and Place
No country or culture is a monolith. "Ancient Egypt," for example, stretched across thousands of years of different dynasties, rooted in somewhat different parts of the same region. Old Kingdom Egypt at Giza would be somewhat different from Ptolemaic Egypt in Alexandria. Ravka was largely inspired by 19th century Tzarist Russia, which would be quite different from say 15th century Russia under Ivan III or Soviet Russia in 1955. Choosing a specific time, place, and culture within your inspiration country brings focus to the details that will best give the look and feel you want for your story.
3) Choose What to Use
There are all sorts of things from your source country you can use as inspiration for your fantasy country: geography, flora and fauna, language, architecture, food and drink, dance and song, mythology and folk tales, cultural traditions and festivals, clothing, social customs... the list goes on and on. It helps if you choose a few specific things to use as inspiration in your story. You might use the architecture, clothing, food, and drink as inspiration for your story, but everything else is wholly your own. Or, maybe you create your own architecture and clothing style, but you use the language, song and dance, and myth as inspiration. There's no right or wrong combination or amount, but knowing what you're using and what you're not creates much-needed consistency.
4) Use Your Original Ideas, Too
Ravka may bear similarities to Russia, but it has a lot of its own unique elements, too. The Grisha and their use the country's Second Army, the Grand Palace as home to the king and the Little Palace as home to the Grisha, the Fold, West Ravka, and their specific enemies are all concepts entirely unique to Leigh Bardugo's imagination. But, although they're not necessarily inspired by anything taken from Russia, the ideas are still complimentary with the Russian elements she did use as inspiration.
You can read more in my post Using an Existing Country as Inspiration. Good luck with your story! ♥
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In case you were wondering why wordbuilding for Ravka feels so random
After going down the rabbit hole in my search for answers I've stumbled across this conversation on goodreads dated back to the November of 2013, where Leigh Bardugo replied to some reasonable criticism about her 'cultural inspiration"- https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1533856-has-bardugo-talked-about-the-russian-inconsistencies
This conversation is quite long and miss Leigh gave about three replies to various questions from people that were deeply bothered by the very surface level research she did on the Russian cilture. Here are the major highlights, plus the other things I've found while goodling:
1) As far as I've understood - neither she nor her publishers expected the first book to blow up like this. So even though there was obvoiusy a lack of proper research and some mistakes variying from minor to insulting, now that she's an esteemed author Leigh claims all of it to be deliberate choices adding that "deliberate choices aren't necessarily good ones". She also tries to lift the responsibility off her shoulders, mentioning that her work "was reviewed not just by my editor, but by copy editors, proofreaders, multiple foreign editors, and foreign copy editors". Not a single word about actual Russian-speaking person/expert reviweing the text or helping her out with creating the Ravkan language though.
The only person she's ever credited as the one who helped her out with creating Ravkan is Erdene Ukhaasai from Mongolia that she's been friends on Facebook at the time (source on this one - https://ageofsteam.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/genre-friction-what-is-tsarpunk-by-leigh-bardugo/ ). The Facebook page under this name currently doesn't exist and the only results that Google shows on this person are the mentions that Leigh Bardugo gave in her interview, so unfortunately I couldn't reach out for clarification on this topic. Still, it's highly unlikey that someone with zero publications under their name would be a proffesional linguist and therefore qualified for such a task.
2) Within your secondary world, unless you are writing satire, things should make internal sense. That world could not arize independently of its context. The problem with the Bardugo's Ravka is that it's based on Russian Empire alone, yet she claims that "it's only Russian inspired" without acknowledging that most people that are not familiar with the culture will take it in as authentic. She takes the words and objects out of the context, misgenders names and last names and creates new 'russian-sounding" words without understanding how the grammar works. Which is a shame, given how flexible Russian language is - the possibility for the word-building is endless and with the right guidance she truly could make some unique and meaningful terms specifically for the Ravka. Also on the alcoholic kvas issue - Leigh proudly claims this as a solution to be a vodka "substitute", because vodka would be too on the nose and too common (more on the matter here -https://www.leighbardugo.com/grishaverse/the-archives/tongue-twister/). What didn't cross her mind is that instead of turning a non-alcoholic drink into strong booze for "wordbuilding" it would be much better to use less known drinks whic do contain alcohol - braga, samogon, nalivka - just to name a few.
3) To elaborate on some of the specific issues with names and last names: Leigh doesn't seem to understand how gendered surnames work in Russian. That's why we get stuff like Alina Starkov (when it's supposed to be Starkova, because she's a woman) and Alexander Morozova (Morozov would be a correct form) etc. This system is never consistent - Mal Oretsev gets to have a male surname, but so does Genya Safin and Zoya Nazyalensky has a weird non-gendered kind of in between last name (very much in fashion of Natasha Romanoff, who would be called Natalia Romanova in Russian).
Also must mention Ana Kuya - poor woman's name literally sounds like "why the f*ck" in Russian, that's about just as bad as naming your Asian character Whata Phuck. Again - none of this nonsense would happen if someone bothered to find a Russian-speaking person to read the text.
Other Russian words she tries to throw in seem to be the result of a bad Google Translate, rather than a conscious choice: for example the word otkazats'ya that she uses to describe non-grishas is actually a verb that translates as "to refuse". The noun with the meaning of "the refused one" would be otkaznik or otkazniki for a plural form. Same with sobachka ("small dog") - the context from the book suggests this nickname to be an insulting one, so the word we're really looking for would be shchenok ("puppy") or shavka ("mongrel", "cur"). The list of those examples, honestly, goes on and on.
4) Leigh does mention that she "can acknowledge that the choices I made in building the language and culture of Ravka came from a place of insularity and a type of privilege". However she's more keen to talk about how she has "certainly encountered critics, but I've also had Russian fans"...Which to me sounds about just as bad as stating "I do have *insert a minority racial group* friends and they say that me doing *insert a dubious act* is fine". The problem is that Russian culture has been demonized and overlooked for so long that most people (myself included) tend to praise content creators for including even the most sterytypical "insprations". Just because some people are willing to excuse her voluntary ignorance, doesn't mean that it's okay.
5) No books on Russian culture that she's mentioned as part of the resarch were written by Russian authors. And while reading the SaB it becomes crystal clear that that the major 'cultural inspiration' Leigh got was not from those books, but from the monstrosity that is her tsapunk pinterest board - https://www.pinterest.ru/lbardugo/tsarpunk-inspiration/ . About 80% of the stuff there doesn't even relate to Russian culture and the rest is a mash of modern knockoffs.
To summorize it: Leigh very much knew about the concerns surrounding her "Russian-inspired" Ravka which were respectfully brought to her consideration by her Russian speaking fans back in 2012-2013.
She said "I've taken it to heart and it's something that I've tried to be conscious of as I move forward in the series and my other work", apologized and then she did nothing to do better. She marketed Shadow and Bone as "Tsarpunk", fetishisizing Russian culture and using it as a unique setting to uplift a generic "light vs. dark" fantasy plot supported by the bland narrative of the Chosen One.
There was an effort and will to make a change for the better, not a single letter has been changed for us.
When I think about, I can't really remember anything that would ring as a thoughtful and clever element adapted into the story from Russian culture.
If everything is always altered or twisted, if there is nothing true or authentic then should you really call it Russian-inspired? Should you really make profit off it and call this aesthetic tsarpunk?
Leigh Bardugo could have fixed the most jarring problems with the material while doing the adaptation from book to screen, but she chose not to. There was no effort made to include more people of slavic descent as a major part of production team or as background actors. Almost nothing of the production design or clothing was inspired by Russian culture.
To elaborate: I'm not even mad. I'm just deeply sad and hurt by the indifference.
Some might argue that this book series was not written for Russians, that it was written for the western audience. But don't they deserve respectfully researched and authentic stories too?
#leigh berdugo#shadow and bone#sab#six of crows#grishaverse#alina starkov#bookblr#tsarpunk#mal oretsev#genya safin#zoya nazyalensky
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No Minor Miracles | Chapter 3
One Day in Midsummer
Our immortal idiots get some distance from each other and we learn a good dose of their back story.
Once he closed the door to her on his end, slipping back into his previous persona was painfully easy. Months he’d tortured himself trying to get back there and suddenly he was arrived.
The tether lay limp inside of him and pretending it did not actually exist was second nature again. He built a vacuum around it and shoved it full of his hate and indignation. Then he boxed it all in numb indifference and cast his shadows around it.
The space he held her in was carved out of himself and there was nothing but a hollow in her place.
Years wasted and he finally found the perfect shield against her charms. Aleksander allowed himself to really, truly hate her. Hatred he could dole out with practiced indifference.
A couple months passed before he started to feel like a facsimile of his former self again. Once he did, he ordered Ivan back. Fedyor too.
The two Heartrenders returned to Os Alta five months to the day after first receiving their assignments.
The day of their joint return, he invited them to dine with him in the War Room.
“I wanted to thank you both for the work you have done this winter. It did not go unseen. It will not go unrewarded.” He raised a glass to them.
Fedyor was blushing and cheery, smiling as he chewed his mutton and chased it with his wine. Ivan took a small sip but watched his General from his periphery.
Despite the effectiveness of the hollow, the loneliness was problematic. If felt as if he was built to seek her out. Given time and circumstances, the feeling would become too much to reconcile and he would become burst open again.
The obvious immediate remedy was sex. Pleasure would not fill him up for long but even kvas on an empty stomach could keep you alive in the permafrost.
He thought to take up with a Healer or even a Heartrender — familiar and respectable in the Grisha order. But eventually determined anyone with a Saints-given gift for pulling on his innards was a step backward, not forward.
If that were not enough, taking up with a soldier, even on a casual basis, would undermine his authority and position. That behavior bred gossip and instability in the ranks. This was how Tsars lost their power—slowly seeping out of the seams of their ill-managed exploits.
By default this left him to the pursuit of an otkazat’sya woman. Likely several so as to avoid sticky situations and questions.
And so a couple nights a week, the General would don attire fit for an Os Altan civilian and frequent the city taverns. It was not difficult to cloak himself in shadows to the edges of the Little Palace grounds and pass unnoticed into the city.
He did not wish to pay for the attentions of a woman nor did he want to go about the heady task of wooing one. Relieving tension by creating opportunities for tension was not ideal.
There were a series of short-lived escapades. No one memorable but the experiences were effective nonetheless. The exhausting aspect was hunting for someone suitable for an evening.
In the end it was quite accidentally that he found the most suitable partner with whom he could explore and expend his lust over a longer period of time. A simple barmaid and widow named Inna who rarely left her family-run tavern and who happened to have a small room above the dining hall.
She was easy-going and dark haired. She would have been plain if not for the look she sometimes had in her eyes when she looked at him. There was attraction but there was also a kind of resignation.
They had this in common.
Between them they shared an acquiescence about the hand they had been dealt in life that made them ideal sexual partners. Inna expected nothing and wanted nothing from him that he was not willing to provide.
Inna gave him permission to frequent the tavern so long as he remained discrete. In exchange, Aleksander gave her a fake name with a sparse cover story and for a few nights a week, they fucked like rabbits.
He never stayed the night. She did not ask him.
More often than not he took her from behind, one hand clamped to her hip and the other pulling back on her shoulder, her hair, her throat while she touched herself.
He was generous with her. More than she would ask from him anyway. When he finished quickly, he rarely let a beat pass before he was pulling her back to her knees and licking her to completion. Periodically he would bite her neck or pull on her nipples. They did not kiss.
Excepting of course when she kissed him on the cheek goodbye. It was a friendly thing to do.
Occasionally he gave her a small twitch of his mouth in return.
Inna did not ask for more. This was how they worked.
He did not mean to let it carry on so long with Inna. It was dangerous for many reasons. Both to his station and to her life. Something so casual was not worth the cost to keep for long.
However, now he was not counting time in doses of Alina and the spaces in-between her, time moved quickly once more.
Thoughts of her fell into the shadowed hollow of his chest. Pushed in and forgotten. Suffocated and drowned out. He was a Shadow Summoner after all. He held that ball of dark matter in a lazy swirling mist that pulled in his unwanted things like a celestial black hole at the center of a dying star.
Thoughts of her went in. They did not come back out. This was peace.
It was around that space, that something truly extraordinary occurred: he felt something like contentment for the first time since…well likely since the creation of the Fold.
The unrest born from creating the Fold seemed to be stilled. All of it could be attributed to this careful, internal balancing act: ensuring all his basic needs were met.
The General remained ruthless and decisive on the battlefield, delivering justice and instilling fear in the enemy. He doused his lust between the thighs and lips of a willing and uncomplicated woman.
And, most surprising of all, without meaning to, the General grew a bond with his Heartrenders. Not a close enough relationship to divulge the truth of his nighttime activities in the city, but enough that the periodic joke or personal question was exchanged.
It was sporadic and a little delicate, but he did feel less lonely when Ivan stood by him also seething after another round with the useless Boy King and Fedyor entertained them both stories from the Permafrost or the social structures happening within the Little Palace.
When was the last time he listened to a story for the sake of amusement? He could not remember. The dark archives in his chest might know but he did not attempt to check.
Two years passed in this way. The General visited camps, sent spies into enemy territory and visited Inna when he was back in Os Alta.
Ivan and Fedyor formalized their partnership with a ceremony, Aleksander signed as witness.
The General honored the union by bidding them to move into the Vezda suite. They remained stationed with him in Os Alta when he was not on the move. The suite sat unused for so long. It was only right for his right and left hand to be awarded with such finery.
Following his commission to get the suite ready for their return from a week long leave, the servants cleaning the rooms entrusted the random personal items from the rooms be returned to the General himself.
Funnily enough, had either of his Heartrenders been present that week, he was sure he would never have seen it. Would never have heard a word about it.
Yet it turned up one day. Set on the entry table in the receiving room. One night black, velvet kefta with gold stitching, folded and unworn. On top of it, one silk blue and gold scarf with tattered edges and fading colors.
He paused in his entryway.
His Oprichnik stirred to attention and he quickly closed the door behind him, leaving the guard outside.
His eyes lingered on the scarf. It was something he could not store into the shadowed cache of his chest. Pushed into a void.
He walked through to his War Room quickly, leaving the pile untouched.
The next few hours were spent immersed in missives, strategy and letter writing.
The Secessionist Party had long been gaining traction in West Ravka. This warranted attention not only in the eventuality of a Civil War but also because the party seemed to be stoking prejudice toward Grisha as well.
The General addressed letters to two of his Grisha across the Fold with instructions to gain entry to their meetings and report back.
Sealing the letters, he glanced up at the entry door as if someone called his name. His eyes lingered unseeing as he envisioned the thin scrap of blue fabric, innocently waiting on the other side.
An entire mission to Tsemna was planned from start to finish, down to which soldiers would be sent to answer the reports on Grisha being smuggled through the Fold. He sealed and sent the directives.
He walked with purpose to the entryway to leave his rooms entirely.
A streak of blue stained his periphery.
He touched the door handle.
He dropped his hand and turned, walking back through. A streak of blue for the other eye.
Lunch arrived. The servants left the doors to the entryway ajar. He shifted his chair.
Blue and gold and black neatly folded.
He wiped his mouth and got to his feet. His hands locked behind his back as he stared out the window at the grounds where Summoners trained by the lake.
He turned and walked through the open doors, grabbed the handle to the hall and began his descent to the grounds of the Little Palace.
The Tidemakers and Squallers paused their practice at the sight of The General. He waved a hand indicating they all continue.
After observing for twenty minutes and walking around, he settled on the most advance pair. For them he conjured Shadows held aloft in his palms, “You have one objective, keep my shadows from getting past your guard.”
The Squaller of the pair swallowed but the Tidemaker gave him a wicked smile and nodded.
He battled them six times over the next two hours. Each victory took longer for him to secure. By the third round, he allowed two other pairs to join their ranks against him.
By the fifth round, all the Summoners stood against him. One young Squaller in particular stood out.
He was a small and weedy Zemeni boy who had a way of twisting himself into the gaps left by his teammates and always seemed to deter a shadow when the General was on the cusp of victory.
During one impressive move, the young Squaller dodged a grasping shadow and quickly summoned a gust a wind so hard the General fell back a step and barked a laugh.
“Very well done. What is your name?”
“Kalem, sir.”
“You are very young for one so advanced. How long have you been training?”
The boys hesitated.
“I was brought to the Little Palace just a couple months ago.” The General caught the eye of the Squaller corporal overseeing the training who nodded in confirmation.
“A natural then. Very well done, Kalem. I look forward to our next match.”
He gave the boy a rare kind smile which the boy returned.
“I won’t go easy, sir.” The sheer cheek on the boy had another laugh tripping over his lips. This was a surprising day on several accounts.
“I expect nothing but the best. As you were.”
The loosely held ranks broke and with a firm pat to the shoulder of the Corporal, the General made his way back inside.
He wiped his brow with his handkerchief and smiled at the slight panting caused by his exertion. An Oprichnik opened the door to his rooms and the General’s smile faltered as it landed on the neatly folded scarf.
This thing that could not be shoved into the shadow void.
Tearing his eyes from it, he stalked past and took his seat at his desk where dinner arrived not two hours later.
That evening he waited for nightfall with increased anticipation. When the hour grew late enough, he conjured his shadows and moved through the grounds with ease.
Inna could tell something was different. Her eyes lingered on the General while he drank his kvas slowly and didn’t speak. He waited for her work to be done and when it was, he waited a few minutes before following her up the stairs.
When he entered she took him in with slight hesitation. In turn, his eyes categorized every feature of her face with determination. Her dark hair, her cautious eyes and the way she held her mouth. Poised on the cusp of speaking.
He crossed to her and took her face in both hands. His kissed her mouth. After a couple moments she opened for him.
He took her as a lover might, his tenderness edged with a desperation that felt misplaced to her given the otherwise balanced nature of their arrangement.
When they finished he rolled off her, sweating and panting with a forearm thrown across his eyes.
His chest was pounding.
He lay unmoving while he listened to her shift about the room. The gentle splish of water in the bowl as she was cleaning herself up, the swish of skirts and fabric as she got dressed.
When the movements stopped he stood and began to do the same. Inna took a seat at her vanity, watching her hands. The air thickened with a growing unease.
The General pulled his shirt on, pausing only to press a firm hand back against the pounding in his chest before continuing with his belt.
When he was dressed, she stood.
“I think perhaps this has run its course.” Inna said. She was not unkind. He nodded in agreement.
He kissed her cheek. She squeezed his hands. He left.
When he returned to his rooms, he took in an extra breath before entering.
His eyes fell to the entry table. It was bare.
The pounding in his chest intensified. He squeezed the shadows of the hollow tighter and walked to his room where he fell into a fitful sleep.
The next morning he took his breakfast in the study and when the servant came to collect his tray he stopped her.
“There was a set of items left in the entry yesterday—“
“I apologize, sir. One of the new girls can’t tell her arse from her elbow,” she reddened and clammed up, caught off guard by her own blunder.
The General waved it away, “Where were the items stored?”
“I’ll ask, sir.”
He nodded in dismissal.
Within the hour, the same servant returned, items in hand.
“Just there is fine. That will be all.”
She set them on the end table by his armchair.
He locked the door behind her and after allowing a moment for hesitation, sat in the armchair.
It was a familiar scene. Though the details felt almost deliberately different. It was the height of summer so there was no fire beneath the mantle. No fur draped across this back. The armchair he had a couple winters back was since replaced with a new one.
Aleksander himself felt different now. He hoped that would be enough.
His hand brushed the blue and gold silk and lifted it for inspection.
It did not smell like her as he imagined it might. It smelled woody and stale like the empty cabinet or drawer it lay in for the last fifteen years.
The colors and pattern he remembered well. She had been wearing it around her neck on the first day she appeared on the grounds.
Centuries of waiting for a Sum Summoner, the last hundred sending testers across Ravka, only for the woman herself to appear nearly out of nowhere and present herself to the Shadow Summoner as if the visit had been marked in his calendar all along.
She was a girl of barely twenty then. Powerful and skilled already. It unnerved him how prepared she was for him and how completely out of step he became around her.
She asked him not to reveal her identity to the King. Or to anyone really.
That was fine by him for he wanted to keep her all to himself but why risk it at all coming so close to the Royal family?
To have time with you. She had told him with a laugh, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Saints. How his heart stopped then.
Already enamored. Already pathetic.
The official story if anyone investigated was that she was an ambassador from a sector of the Shu Han/Ravka boarder. Their territory who was exhausted and rundown from the war and she was elected to negotiate peace on behalf of the Ravkan villagers. Ambassador at least explained why she sometimes sat in on meetings in the War Room.
They set her up in the Vezda suite and booked her for nearly every meal in the company of the General. Peace treaties are not resolved quickly and many hours logged was to be expected.
Either way, they did not bring her presence to the attention of the King. He was not considerably observant and her attendance in his Court was as innocuous as the presence of any other Grisha soldier.
Over their meals they discussed the current state of things. The ways in which the world operated in and around the existence of Grisha. She shared with him things she hoped for and strived to change and he probed for information about her beginnings.
Her origins were most mysterious and every time he brought up his questions (who trained her, who raised her, how did she learn she was Grisha, who knew about her outside of himself) she would frown and grow reticent and he would resolve to back down.
In the brightest light of day they disappeared to the forest for hours at a time where they summoned and dueled and acquainted themselves with each other while their lights and shadows weaved around them.
It was three weeks in before he dared to let her discover he was an amplifier. The trepidation on his face brought an adorable twist of confusion to her eyebrows and she asked after if he wished he hadn’t told her.
No, he was fine with her knowing. She did not seem to hunger for power enough that she would kill him and wear his bones to create a brighter beam. She looked very troubled by this statement.
She trailed a hand over the hair falling in his face and assured him that no, she could not ever bring herself to sacrifice him. Not for power or otherwise.
From there they had a free-for-all discussion of Grisha theory, debated amplifiers and motivators and training styles. He told her of Morozova’s creatures to which she looked further troubled and shook her head no. He gave her the journal containing Ilya’s documentation of his experiments and told her to consider seeking one in light of what good could be done for Grisha as opposed to a fear of power-grabbing.
She rolled her eyes at him which he cherished because of the high he felt from their freedom to be direct with each other. The journal was pushed into her hands and she yielded to consider it.
She kissed him first. They stood in the forest and her was hair wild with the humidity generated from her sun beams sizzling off the cool of his shadows and her eyes were bright and he was thinking about what to do with her anymore now he knew she could be like this. Now he knew he could be like this.
She pressed her lips against his.
His thoughts smeared against the walls of his brain and he could not regret the mess she had made of him any more than he could regret his own eagerness in returning her attentions at that moment.
Sweet. She was incredibly sweet with him. That was ultimately what eroded his sensibilities. It was too much kindness showered upon a long blackened soul. He was terrified she would stop.
Ivan remained too close by to not know what was going on between the two Summoners. Though he remained stubbornly stoic, the General could sense his unease. Could sense this was all too delicate, perhaps. He ignored the tensions.
A blissful month was passed in her confidence, making plans for a brighter future, enjoying a laugh over their meals and taking affections from her whenever she offered them. It was her idea to sneak off the grounds and into the city in disguise.
They sat in a pub over a shared pitcher of kvas, playing dice and listening to conversations from the normal otkazat’sya people around them. He felt lighter than he ever had before.
Upon their return to the Little Palace he thanked her with a kiss crushed to her lips within the tree-lined grounds. She pulled him in by the nape of his neck and he lifted her up, coaxing her legs around his waist. Against an ash tree he crowded himself close her, scrabbling for her warmth with a feral desperation that she reveled in.
He pressed his name into her ear. Could no longer bear her to call him by his military title.
When she repeated it back to him, broken over her breath and safely pressed back into the skin of his throat, he closed his eyes and felt the wetness gather in them.
He believes he would have made love to her in the shelter of the ash tree if not for a sound that broke them apart. Someone was hidden close by and she grew shy and kissed him goodnight before disappearing herself.
That evening Aleksander resolved himself to tell her the truth. He would trust her with the truth of himself and his history just as she had trusted him with her identity. Perhaps then she would open up to him about her past. Trust for trust seemed the only way forward. One of them had to make the first move.
Only he could not bring himself to do it.
At least not before she was discovered by his mother. Baghra, his life long antagonist. Baghra who discovered the existence of the Sun Summoner the next day. He wasn’t fully certain how she learned but he could guess it had something to do with that noise in the woods.
The one which interrupted them on what would become their last night together.
The old woman, presumably looking to save the Sun Summoner from the evil clutches of her son, cornered Alina. Baghra showed her the centuries of belongings stored up in the tunnel behind the stables. From Baghra she learned of his age and his transgressions and of the plans he long held for his fictional, fabled, imagined Sun Summoner.
Plans which would never have fit her.
Only he couldn’t tell her. She did not believe him.
Twinges of his betrayal against her saturated their burgeoning connection and he tried to remedy it with his truth. The truth that he did not know anything anymore. That he would not have done to her what he once planned and an earnest request that she just listen.
She was horrified at his lie. Horrified at the army he created in the Fold and repulsed by his designs on her. Was she to be just another of his pawns? Faceless and devoid of humanity in his eyes? Marked by her power and usefulness alone?
His attempt at an explanation did not start well.
Perhaps he felt her betrayal and that only spurred him on to his own sense of betrayal at her hands. Why did she tell him nothing about herself? Should he not have kept this hidden from her considering she could not trust him enough to give him a shred of her life before this? A hint about her beginnings? A clue as to what she wanted with him? How dare she ask more of him when she was not willing to move toward him either?
He made no apologies. He had plotted and he planned for a day when a Sun Summoner arrived and he would not waste a moment attempting to usher the Grisha into a new age. They deserved a swift deliverance.
Not a moment to pause, even at the expense of her wishes and opinions? She had asked him this.
His face hardened at her loss of belief in him and he stated truthfully that he had watched his people suffer long enough.
She disappeared that night. She did not take the help offered by Baghra.
Aleksander sent his mother away for her betrayal. Unable to fully explain to her that she was completely wrong about him. That he had changed. Because the fact was, it could not be possible for him to truly change over the course of some fifty days. His mother likely was right about him anyway and he did not owe her—nor any twenty-something glorified sunbeam—insight into his doubts or beliefs. Nor the gray matter in-between.
The Sun Summoner escaped with the journal in hand, of that he was certain, and he forgot to go looking for it. He ordered her room be closed and locked without permitting anyone further access.
He knew she made off with it because it was a year and some odd months later that she first appeared to him.
Aleksander would have believed he was dead if she told him so. In that moment it seemed like the very thing he wished for most in the world was returned to his side. Wishes such as those are not granted to the living. Nor the living dead which was closer to his state of being.
He could touch her. He did. Laid a palm to her face and closed his eyes in disbelief. Only she responded with a pained look and stepped back and he realized no true paradise of his would begin that way.
The burning of his chest told him what this was and he scoffed in disbelief at the new level of hell that would torment his presence on earth.
She did not know she could do this either. She had said. That she would appear to him. She simply felt a pull in her chest and followed it.
Embarrassment, he realized, ran through them equally and he scrambled inside himself to pull the plug for the sake of them both.
She vanished.
Only he could not shake how or why this new development had occurred. Why after all the time spent burning for her after her immediate departure from him was she suddenly able to appear?
Could he follow through to her as well?
It turned out he could.
This ill-timed discovery was made not five months after the first apparition when he felt a tugging call in his chest and followed it with disgraceful haste.
He found her wrapped in the tight embrace of another man. Her eyes were closed as he pawed at her chest and kissed her neck.
The all-consuming rampage of agony which lit up Aleksander like a flare brought her attention to his appearance. Her eyes flew open.
Her hand was curled lazily to the back of this mans head and Aleksander recognized the amplifier for what it was; pieces of the antlers of a stag encircled her wrist.
An answer, at least, to this nightmare.
Sheer panic and humiliation shone from her eyes until it seemed she too located the off switch within herself. In the next moment he was careening back through himself.
He woke up in his bed still utterly enraged and riddled with an inexplicable grief which made the cavities of his lungs and stomach feel cavernous as he tried to draw breath.
That was the worst one.
That toughened him up as nothing else had since meeting her. Not her leaving, not her abhorrence of his history nor her apparent misery at being tied to him—nothing toughened him so keenly as that singular encounter.
Perhaps it was because it reminded him inescapably of the way he had held her on their last night together. Wrapped up in her body and feeling sure it was his home.
Sure enough that she was his to give her his name and pray to the Saints that he could brand it on every inch of her skin. That she would let him.
Images of another man filling that space between her legs shook him of his idle dreams with the force of being bucked from a horse and thrown into the belly of the Unsea itself.
Unfortunately for them both, these unexpected visits continued this way over the course of the next year until she finally gained enough to control over her end to put a stop to them.
It was for the best. When they saw each other there were only barbs exchanged and the shared hurt which had long passed its expiration date was now a thriving cess-pool of passionate resentment.
The Age of Silence emerged from there and Aleksander spent the better part of ten years on the war front reassuring himself of his own ability to care for the Grisha. Something that someone as young as this Sun Summoner could hardly understand.
He did that until that night when his exhaustion eroded his good senses into gravel. Ten years had not been a bad run.
This was the after.
The blue silk sang its rasp of fibers over his skin as he ran it between his fingers. The carefully constructed world he forged the last two years had severe weak spots.
His chest was still pounding for one thing. This silk talisman in his hands called to everything locked away inside that black hole and the most he could do was try to temper the release.
His Heartrenders were gone and their company would not be here to drive this away.
Inna was a bridge now burned. He had broken a truce with her and it could not be remade.
Finally, this was an event the General knew would not and could not be delayed with an immersion into work.
This lived beyond work. Beyond lust or friendship. Beyond the seemingly never-ending expanse of his loneliness. She and everything he felt for her lived in the Inevitable now. His personal Inevitable.
Perhaps he was beginning to understand.
This Inevitable lived outside the confines of time. It simply was and would be.
The black hole which consumed more and more of his inner being was breaking open. The shadows dissipated and again he simply tried to temper it into a slow release lest he feel that onslaught of emotions and memories too quickly.
Aleksander braced himself for pain.
It did not come.
He felt the shadow of pain. Then a shadow of grief. A shadow of his soul-numbing sadness. They did not consume him as he feared.
He felt a wave of joy too. Contentment and desire. Levity and lust.
He searched himself for what he knew to be at the center of it all, the thing which he wrapped around his end of the tether a couple years ago: his unyielding resentment. Resentment of her for what she did to him. For how she ruined him. Resentment for himself for being unable to overcome it.
What he found there was now a shriveled thing. Something that was once a juicy fat on which he could chew all day was now dry-hardened and tougher than tack. It was a static, uninteresting thing that even his deep-seated grievances could not live on.
Aleksander saw the Inevitable now. He understood it now. At least, partially.
When he grasped the tether that evening after hours spent collecting himself and setting his own expectations, it was with deliberate calm and confidence.
He pulled.
#darklina fanfic#darklina#darklina fic#alina x aleksander#aleksander morozova#alina starkov#power dynamics#angst#grishaverse#smut#shadow and bone#mutual pining
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Too much Kvas
read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3uGiPft
by Rainbowdoggo84
Alina is very drunk and pulls the tether. She is having a bad day.
Words: 927, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
Fandoms: Shadow and Bone (TV), The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Categories: F/M
Characters: Alina Starkov, The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova, Mal Oretsev
Relationships: The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov
Additional Tags: Drinking, Book 2: Siege and Storm, Book 3: Ruin and Rising Spoilers
read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3uGiPft
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Berluti Edge Derby By Kris Van Assche
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Kris Van Assche Archives
#kris van assche#kva#kris van assche archives#fw13#parisian mood#parisian style#parisian vibe#parisian homme#essential homme#essentials#french style
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@grishatober day 11: ravka
it’s the night before nikolai lantsov is to be married, and both the women in his life are dreading the morning. nothing a little alcohol can’t fix, right?
for grishatober day 11.
#ehri kir taban#ehri kir-taban#zoya nazyalensky#zori#drunk hook-up#angst#they're both pining for other people#so why not bang each other#anyway#grishatober#grishatober day 11#grishatober 2020#grishaverse#grisha trilogy#tgt#rule of wolves#row#gv fic#fic#ao3
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Jaká Bude Asi Barva Roku 2020? - Matterhorn-moda.cz
Džíny, Ve Kterých To Na Jaře Roztočíte – Matterhorn-moda.cz Blog
I kdy (zatm) nen pli pleitost, kam vzt nov aty a oslniv outfity, neznamen to, e nemete snt o trendech na leton rok. Ale nejdv je teba si ct,. Dnes se d nosit vlastn ve, ijeme ve velmi liberln dob, kdy je kad stratgem vlastnho stylu. Ale kdybyste se chtly vyloen vyhnout umrajcm prvkm, vyvarujte se ledvinek.
Tak rad u neinvestovat do flitrovch kousk. Kadopdn to neznamen se obou prvk vzdvat. Trendy se vrac v nepedvdatelnch cyklech, proto veker odvn investice peliv uchovejte a vykejte, a zas pijde jejich as," doporuuje stylista. Zavane vtr aktuln stylish roku 2021 do vaich atnk, nebo je nechte odvt pry?Foto: Profimedia.
Módní šAty Jaro 2020-2021 - Zajímavé Nápady Pro Novou ...
V devadestkch toti neexistovalo sako bez! Dnes asto mv i prodlouen an extra-large stih. Velmi vraznm trendem nachzejc jarn sezony budou bezesporu partner saka. Dky velkm ramennm vycpvkm jsou velmi lichotiv pro eny s tvarem postavy hruka, kdy zakryj vt pozad a naopak pidaj danou strukturu v horn sti tla," doporuuje stylistka Irena Vokrojov.
Sako Mango, 999 KFoto: Archiv firem Zleva: Sako Massimo Dutti, 3295 K. Blejzr s. Oliver, 3999 KFoto: Profimedia. czRusk modelka Irina Shayk (34) je vdy obleen podle poslednch pattern, tud j v botnku nechybj ani bl kozakyJi na podzim se objevily bl kozaky a boots. Jestli je jet nemte, je nejvy as si je koupit professional nadchzejc jaro," mn Irena Vokrojov.
Módní Trendy 2020: Nosit Se Budou Vestičky, Puntíky I Bílé ...
Noste je stejn jako jejich ern kolegy, jen jim vnujte vc pe a ped prvnm noenm nezapomete na impregnaci. Foto: Archiv firemZleva: Gino Rossi, 1899 K (ke), prodv Eobuv. Tamaris, 2499 K (ke) Foto: Archiv firemZleva: Esprit, 1999 K. Monki, 1440 K, prodv ZalandoFoto: Profimedia. cz Nepehldnuteln kabelka z pehldky Louis Vuitton na jarn a letn sezonu 2021S postupujc zimou je teba e v ulicch trochu rozsvtit.
U kabelek, impressive, klobouk nebo i rukavic budou pevldat vrazn barevn kontrasty v podob lut a modr. Zaruen vdy rozz minimalistick outfit v neutrlnch odstnech," rad Irena Vokrojov. plnou novinkou jsou taky s delm tepenm. Pokud ale nemte potebu vlastnit vdy posledn fashionable, radji bych v tomto ppad doporuila investovat do jinch a nadasovch kousk," dodv k tomu stylistka.
Jarní Módní Trendy 2021 – Antorini®
epice H&M, 299 KFoto: Archiv firem Zleva: Baret Tonak, 500 K. Kabelka Gino Rossi, 2199 K, prodv CCCFoto: Profimedia. czZpvaka a modertorka Ashley Roberts (39) v koenkovm proveden trenkotuTak se tte na jaro kvli pchodu? Letos zkuste u konen dt anci jejich koen i koenkov variant, prost netradinmu stylu: Individualismus vyzdvihl do poped sebevdom, proto je soudob mda stle vraznj v charakteristickch prvcch vyzdvihujcch slu osobnosti.
Foto: Archiv firem Zleva: Kabt Bardot, 4699 K (imitace ke), prodv Regarding You. la F&F, 249 KFoto: Archiv firemZleva: Kabt Reserved, 999 K (koenka). Pono Oysho, 999 KFoto: Profimedia. czPehldka znaky Ideology a hned dva fashionable: metalick efekt a barva roku zkladn edA do jakch barev se smle oblkat? Zelenou m stbrn! Ale pokud vm metalick odstny nesed, nahrate je rudou nebo temn modrou," odpovd Honza Boublk.
Móda 2021 Jaro/léto - Dámské Novinky - Matterhorn-moda.cz
Foto: Archiv firemZleva: Metalick leading Vero Moda, 480 K. Body Trendyol, 439K, prodv ZootFoto: Archiv firemZleva: Mikina H&M, 399 K. aty Orsay, 1399 KSouasn situace vynesla na mdn vslun vechny druhy teplk, legn a mikin. Mdn znaky proto pichzej s kolekcemi, kde dostv o mnoho vc prostoru, ne by bvalo bn.
Ctm vak v ilch, e se bude jednat o rzn stihy a druhy kimon prost pohodln mda namsto upnut a vypasovan." Jednodue, i domc mda me bt elegantn a sofistikovan. Foto: Archiv firemZleva: Zavinovac mikina Mimi Lan Nguyen, 2290 K. Mikina Oysho, 999 KFoto: Archiv firem Zleva: Kalhoty Reserved, 649 K.
Nejmódnější Pánské Bundy - Dozvěďte Se O Trendech Pro Rok ...
S pchodem teplho nechci ztratit vc obleen, aby se oblkli do neho dobrho, jednoduch a elegantn, a vychutnat ndhernou poas. Zde a tam je prvn problm: atnk neaktualizoval se zimou! Musme rozebrat celebrity letn obleen zsoby, z nich nkter jsou prv vyel z mdy v roce 2018. Take co se m v tto sezn nosit? Bude ance pro losk motley a sandly? To nen tak snadn pijt na fashionable trendy jara a lta 2018.
Select A Pleased sk me ventiltoru v jakkoliv styl - z podnikn na romantick - Toto je hlavn plus ada seznu jaro-lto. Variace obchodnch soubory v tomto roce jsou velmi rznorod. Od puritnskho a psnho kostmu a po upmn hot bundy. Ve druh kategorii mete pst skuten a jarn a v letn obchodn aty.
Módní Trendy Roku 2021 Jsou Tady! Co Si Letos Pořídit Do šAtníku?
Odvn obraz mete sladit stylovm vstihem a uzavenmi botami. Vyberte si aty, sako v jasnch barvch: kva s mlkem, ed, bl porceln, nebo mal buky na svtlm pozad. obleky s zkmi kalhoty na jae-lto 2018 budou mimo podnikn. Pichzej ke zmn kalhoty - nejen e vzplanula od boku, ale stle s npadnmi kalhotch.
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