#solya/marek

[goldgust]

That one mirror scene from Uprooted

[hollow-vok]

« They made a portrait together, sun and moon »

This sentence means a lot to me, no joke

This playlist is so good...who made it?? (It was me ofc)

[onmentalsafari]

Wrote a mareksolya ship manifesto

[theobscurepotato]

Yuletide Recs, Part 1

Still reading my way through this year's offerings, but here are a few stories that I especially loved:

The Noble Art of Falconry by misura (Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik)

“The Dragon doesn’t do rescues,” Solya said.

“He will for me,” Marek said with the supreme confidence born of being young and privileged.

Spot-on characterization of both Solya & Marek. A great pre-canon scene.

rear-view mirror by houndstoothed (Jurassic Park)

The burden of family. Lex and Tim, after the island.

I love Yuletide precisely because of fics like this one: a complex character-driven story that takes the canon and emotionally elevates it.

The Price of Salvation by Jubileen (A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens)

Scrooge received only one visit from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come.

Jacob Marley came many times.

This story brought tears to my eyes when I read it. Like the classic it builds from, this is an absolutely beautiful redemption story.

and my very excellent gifts:

delirium, or something like it by maleficaria, taywen (Golden Kamuy)

Ogata and Yuusaku get stranded in a cabin in the middle of a snow storm. It doesn’t quite go as expected.

Reading this fic was the equivalent of sitting down to a multi-course meal made entirely of your favorite dishes. The h/c, the forced closeness, the humor, the feelings...absolutely everything I could want from these two.

Winter Solstice by StraysInfiltrator (Coldfire Trilogy)

He had no place here, nor any right to take comfort in it. Yet with a deep sigh he pushed the carved panels open, and in he walked. The domed skylight rose above him, and the slanted evening light shimmered down over splendid garlands decked in tinsel and glass.

A clever and touching missing scene from canon. Made my heart ache in the best way.

[crowbito]

For micro fic: 34. bauble

ahh thank you for the prompt!! <3 it got a little long for a micro fic, oops.

bauble (572 words, Solya/Marek)

Marek’s suite is more or less what one would expect of a man of his status. Sumptuously appointed, as befits the second prince of Polnya; the heavy, high quality furniture is dinged and dented, one bedpost suspiciously chipped away at, like it had the dubious honour of playing an imaginary enemy. They look like they belonged to a spoiled boy who liked to play with swords and for whom consequences were few and far between, though the toy swords have been replaced by the real weaponry that now adorns the walls.

He is a boy no longer, after all. Which is why it is curious that the shelf beside his bed should have a broken whittled horse, and a withered rose that—bafflingly—has a preservation spell worked upon it by none other than the Sword herself.

Solya notices all of these details the first time he is invited to Marek’s chambers, though he finds the bed—and everything that it can be used for—by far the most interesting thing in the room. Besides Marek himself, of course.

The strange collection—if two disparate objects can be considered as such—stays in his mind, though. He could simply ask Marek why he has set them aside, but he loathes admitting ignorance on any subject, even one that he cannot conceivably be expected to know. (When he inquires, idly, about the rose to Alosha, she gives him an impatient look and claims to have no idea what he’s speaking of.)

He considers, and discards, the notion that they are somehow valuable sentimentally. Marek is the opposite of sentimental. He finds value only in that which is useful to him, and a broken toy and a dead flower are not that.

Solya knows that much, but he still trades Ragostok an undisclosed favour for the sapphire brooch he spies the Splendid creating one day. It almost isn’t worth it, for the knowing way Ragostok smirks at him after, but Marek has pretty manners when he can be bothered to use them and thanks Solya well for the brooch.

It’s a struggle not to frown when he sees it on the shelf with the horse and the rose, and he supposes he hasn’t actually managed it when Marek says, stiffly, “Sigmund whittled that horse for me when I was six.”

The rose is a faded shade of blue, which Solya has only seen beyond Polnya—and in Queen Hanna’s garden, when she still diligently tended it. What an oversight; he should have made the connection far earlier.

“You couldn’t find a suitable bauble from your father to add to the collection?” Solya asks mildly; it’s an awkward question, but it goes some way towards lightening the tense mood.

“No. I only want one thing from him.”

The crown, of course.

Solya glances at the toy horse—laying on its side, broken-off hind legs next to it. Is the damage from being thrown at a wall in a fit of childish rage? But even if it is, Marek went to the trouble of picking up the pieces and preserving them, along with a last memento from his mother. Well, there are other ways to secure the crown beyond the removal of the current heir, though they are more difficult.

“Why are we talking about the king now?” Marek asks, his eyes dark and intent. Solya smiles, and turns his thoughts to more immediate matters.

[kiraru21]

Uprooted fan cast

This is my dreamcast. 

Agnieszka (Saoirse Ronan)

Sarkan - the dragon (Colin Morgan)

Kasia (Lily James)

The Falcon (Tom Felton)

Prince Marek (Liam Hemsworth)

The Queen (Charlize Theron)

Alosha (Angela Bassett)

[ewa-jednak-chce-spac]

Uprooted, for the fandom ask ;)

the character i least understand: that chick from Kralia, who wanted to make fun of Agnieszka ;P

interactions i enjoyed the most: Agnieszka and Sarkan’s <3

the character who scares me the most: all magical creatures from the Wood

the character who is mostly like me: Agnieszka with a bit of Sarkan

hottest looks character: none? I mean, it’s a book without an adaptation, so I may guess only by looking at the fanarts, but it’s hard to choose Sarkan, if you know that in the book he’s described as average looking

one thing i dislike about my fave character: about Agnieszka? um... um... nothing?

one thing i like about my hated character: hm... let’s say it’s Marek; I like the fact that he truly loved his mother and that despite all his bad qualities, Naomi Novik was able to write his death in such way that it made me sad

a quote or scene that haunts me: hard to tell

a death that left me indifferent: I think that none - all of them saddened me :(

a character i wish died but didn’t: that book is an example of medium in which in the end I wish that everyone survived instead :(

my ship that never sailed: um... Solya x Kasia? XD it’s the only ship that somehow suits the criteria

[saessenach]

He turned a cold certain look over them like the sweep of a scythe. “For however many of them will be left,” he said. I shivered.

 “You still don’t think this is a good idea. Even after Jerzy.” A thin plume of smoke still rose from the Wood, where the heart-tree burned: we’d seen it yesterday. 

“It’s a dreadful idea,” the Dragon said. “But letting Marek lead you and Solya in there without me is a still-worse one. At least I have some idea what to expect. Come: we don’t have much time.” 

Agnieszka and Sarkan, from Naomi Novik’s Uprooted

[zevswarden]

Does Uprooted count as series?

Absolutely!!

❤ Favorite Male: Sarkan 

❤ Favorite Female: Agnieszka

❤ Favorite Pairing: Agnieszka x Sarkan 

✖ Least Favorite Character: Prince Marek

✔ who’s most like me: definitely Agnieszka lol I’m also a klutz

❤ most attractive: Sarkan

❤ three more characters that I like: Kasia, Solya, and...no third one comes to mind so I’m just gonna go with those two. 

send me a series and I’ll tell you...

[wherestoriescomefrom]

The Oldest Story in the World

hi i got really obsessed with Uprooted by Naomi Novik during a week where i have a paper and a presentations and i just had to get this out of my system. 

“You loved her.”

It was a statement. Not a question – as firm and rooted as the wood, as old as the valley, as endless as The Spindle. She was looking at him accusingly, holding up the small black book. The small letters of her name scribbled in the corner of the notebook.

He looked at her, his eyes steely.

“The woman who wrote this. You loved her,” she continued.

“I did,” he said, his tones clipped.

“What was she like?” asked Katerina. “She was my grandmother, after all. Of a sort.”

“Great-great-great Grandmother,” said Sarkan harshly. He didn’t like the kind of ownership that others could have. He didn’t like it – she was still his, she was his and his alone.

“Whichever,” said Katerina. She tossed her hair behind, and Sarkan involuntarily clenched. It was so like her – so impossibly like her, that he felt a surge of anger.

Sarkan shut his eyes. “She looked like you.”

When he opened his eyes, Katerina looked surprised. “Like me?” asked Katerina.

“Exactly like you.”

“Was that why -?”

“Yes,” said Sarkan. When Katerina had come to him – when she had said she had magic, he had been unable to comprehend anything beyond her hair, her eyes, her body. She wasn’t exactly her – not the same tiny fingers, the scar on her back, the same freckles on her shoulders, those were missing. Her dress wasn’t torn and messy, her hair were neatly tied – like some awful version of her, a version which was neat. And she spoke politely, she didn’t demand things of him; she didn’t shout at him at all.

It was painful. It was too much of a reminder of her – a ghost of her, pressing herself into the places that she had lived, where she had been – the untidy kitchen, which Katerina had cleaned. The room where she had put flowers, and on and on and on.

“Oh,” said Katerina. “What was her name?”

“Agnieszka,” said Sarkan softly.

Her name came alive then – the curtains fluttered, the plants crept a little closer to the window. There was a hush in the kitchen.

“What happened?” asked Katerina. “You don’t – have to –” she said. “I just – I just want to know –”

“I suppose she went into the Wood and never returned. Agnieszka gave up herself for the corruption to never return again,” said Sarkan.

“But she was nearly three hundred years old,” said Katerina quietly. “How could she have died?”

“I suppose being three hundred had something to do with it,” said Sarkan sarcastically. “Wizards become more powerful over the years, but they do die. They become weaker, eventually – even if their magic becomes more refined.”

Katerina touched the notebook. “What was she like?”

Sarkan felt the years then – he had aged, he had white hair now. Alosha was dead, Kasia was dead, Ballo was long dead, Solya was gone, the wood had become uncorrupted since Agnieszka died. Even the smaller heroes of the story were long gone – Wensa was gone, Marek was dead, Vladimir was dead. He was a monument to a lost people. They were history, almost certainly – every person of the story had inscribed themselves into the books of the world – but the people were gone.

The history books would never have remembered Agnieszka the right way. They wouldn’t remember how she had sticks in her hair, how she walked barefoot into the wood. They didn’t know the way Agnieszka pronounced her fulmia – they didn’t know the idiotic girl’s affinity to get into trouble, they didn’t know how she laughed at him, how she impatiently got cross with him.

They’d gotten soft in their old age. Less shouting matches, more small arguments, grumbled irritations. Kisses pressed by her on his cheek, calming him down – knowing everything he did in the day, and then getting him angry all over again.

“She was damnably intolerable,” he said finally. “She was irritating, she got on my nerves everyday – she ruined my library, and she almost certainly ruined my spells and my magic.”

“Her magic… was like mine?” asked Katerina cautiously.

He nodded tightly. “A mess. Just like yours. I tried to categorise it, I tried to understand what she did. It’s not meant to be understood, I suppose. It’s just meant to be worked with.”

“That’s how you knew how to train me,” said Katerina. “You worked with this magic before.”

“She’d have known better,” said Sarkan harshly. “She would have said something annoying, like, ‘you know none of that matters, Sarkan,’ and I would have strangled her. I haven’t the slightest what she meant – but I knew her. Her magic was a story – not the kind of story that has been printed and written down, but a story that has been told for a long time, over the years, by thousands of voices.”

He paused.

“I sound like her,” he said, frustrated.

“Are you both the story?” asked Katerina.

“There are a thousand stories about us,” said Sarkan finally.

Katerina touched her braid. “But there’s one story – the one about how Agnieszka the witch made the Dragon fall in love.”

Sarkan said nothing. “The oldest story in the world, girl,” he said crushingly.

“It’s a good story,” said Katerina in a small voice. “My favourite.”

“Love is a good story, nothing more,” he said. “How would you know – you’re so young, how would you know how much it takes to love? How well you have to know the person, how easily you’d be able to hurt her. How many times you did. How they eventually die – the happily ever after doesn’t come, girl. You’re left alone, thirty years after her death with barely enough life in you for more stories.”

“You miss her, don’t you?” asked Katerina.

“How could I not,” he said angrily. “She didn’t even have the decency to let me die first.”

“I’m sorry,” said Katerina. “I didn’t mean to –”

“I can see you did not,” said Sarkan. “Now go away. And you’d better be learning the corruption spells Yaga has written in her first notebook.”

Katerina turns around. She hesitates – and he senses it. He had turned to the kitchen, to where Agnieszka kept her herbs. He needed some of the ginger tea she would make. His throat had been giving him trouble.

She turns around again, and she presses the black notebook in his hand.

“She would be proud of you,” said Katerina. She looks, for a minute, as if she’d say something more. As if she’d tell him more about a woman that he knew for three hundred years and she never did.

And she was gone. Sarkan opened the black notebook – his now wrinkled fingers floated over the words she had written, codifying small spells which should not have worked. How she had laughed when he had been annoyed when they did, how much she shouted at him when he made her cross.

There was a rose pressed between the pages.

She came to him then – the illusion of the rose they had created, her fingers in his, her eyes wide and searching him, their magic mixing together, her lips smiling softly, her hair in tangles, her skirt already torn in some corner or the other.

How impossibly frustrating Agnieszka had become – how – how – how capable of causing him tears. The pages of the notebook caught the tears, laughing at him – reminding him as Agnieszka would have, that no matter how cross and angry he had been, how determined to have walls and nothing more – he had loved her. He had loved the impossible person who had written these words.

And there was nothing more he could do about it.

[hollow-vok]

Sketch of Marek and Solya i will never finish

[waywardwiz]

Solya ‘The Falcon’ and Prince Marek (Naomi Novik, Uprooted)

[theobscurepotato]

Me: no new WIPs until next month.

Also Me: a melodramatic lil' Uprooted drabble doesn't count.

Also Also Me: how is writing exactly 100 words somehow harder?

Sarkan & Solya (implied Solya/Marek).

***

Of course Borys would put them in a room together, Sarkan thinks to himself. 

Yet the rage he expects to feel is nowhere to be found, burned away along with the queen's body.

Hitched your cart to the wrong horse? he wants to say, when the look on Solya's face stops him. That careful mask is gone and in its place is something that decries mockery. 

"Marek--" Solya begins, but his breath catches, and Sarkan, remembering, finally understands.

That was the first sound to break the silence after the queen's fingertips pierced Marek's heart -- Solya's shocked, grief-sharp intake of breath. 

[crowbito]

Micro Story ask: 1. don't leave

...and I'll leave the pairing up to you. 🙂

thanks for requesting! <3 not sure why my mind went to Marek/Solya but uhhh here we are.

don’t leave

Solya was Named for his eyes. He’d always prided himself on them—on his ability to see what others could not, to look beneath, to see through illusion and deception. He had no qualms about using such measures to his own ends, but he would never fall for them himself.

Even now, he knows the vision before him is false; conjured by his slumbering mind, and his grief. But he cannot look away; instead, he overlooks all the ways that the Marek of his dreams is wrong. His image is perfect, of course, as Solya’s visual memory is perfect, but this Marek is too accommodating. Too eager to please Solya.

And Solya is too weak; he leans into the vision’s touch, though he knows, instinctively, that the calluses on his hands are not quite right, and he does not taste like Marek. It’s enough. It has to be enough.

“You need to wake up now, Falcon,” his prince—his liege—murmurs.

Solya scowls, so Marek kisses him again, until he relaxes.

“Solya.” He shivers; Marek has no magic, but he still speaks Solya’s Name like he means to invoke it. “Wake up.”

“Don’t,” Solya starts to say, “don’t leave m—” and then he is awake, hand outstretched in a musty room in Gidna. Leagues away from the capital; further still from Marek’s bones.

His eyes are wet when he presses his empty hand to them.

[hollow-vok]

Solya and Marek's moodboard side by side...

[hollow-vok]

Solya and Marek smol