#wip: anthologia sovietica

[sunlit-gully]

WIP GAMES

Rules: Make a week-long poll with the names of your wips, let it run, then write one sentence for every vote the winner received.

This poll will be up for a week, until 28th August.

[sunlit-gully]

Anthologia Sovietica: I already made a playlist for it. Each season should have at least 2 songs from this (not counting the tidbits of Soviet pop and folk that plays over other segments). And there are 9 seasons. Go figure.

Weathering the Waves: any folksy songs east of the Ural containing a melancholy tune and some string instruments will do as season theme songs.

Dyad: cutesy contemporary classical or hardcore orchestral, no in-between, thank you very much.

If your WIP became a TV show, what would the theme song be like? Instrumental? A repurposed pop song? A specially-written song with lyrics that explain the premise? A five-second musical sting over the show logo?

[sunlit-gully]

a wip by yours truly

ABOUT:

genre — anthology, slice of life

target word count — 3mil

status — first draft

themes — family / politics / war / love, grief, and love, again and again and again

warnings — violence and gore / death / substance, domestic, physical & psychological abuse / big trauma

SYNOPSIS:

All the Sokolenko are born in cradles of thorn. 1942. Mykola was struck with blast injury when he accidentally detonated an entire minefield, turning 10 Germans into one-time astronauts. The bigwigs up above, they gave him a medal, a quarantine hut, and a Georgian nurse called Medea by his side. Two week in and they found themselves cuddling together in bed. Two years in and Medea vanished in the maws of the Reich, while Mykola sobbed under the mask of a cool, calculating soldier. Eight years in and they knocked together a home, an unadorned thing, a bare nest on a bare tree, for themselves and a Jewish orphan boy. Fifteen years in and Mykola was alone. Again. 1992. Rusudan scrubbed off the blood scarlet smudged lipstick marks round the corner of her mouth with a forcefulness that surprised herself. She had just made out with her husband Kaspars in the middle of a Sukhumi forest moments ago, intensely as if they were the wildlife they were studying, intensely as if it might be their last time. Last time…Why had those words occurred to her? The woman shook her head at the unfinished thought - all the mess and debacle with the troubles in Abkhazia shouldn't be getting to her like this, it was supposed to be their day, it was supposed to be their day. Even if there had been gunshots right behind your backs…a treacherous voice squeaked faintly in her head. All of a sudden, Kaspars froze besides Rusudan, jaw clenched and eyes blown wide, in the middle of what she now realised as a bosky, shadowy canopy. Before she could open her mouth and ask her usually stoic husband what it was that bothered him so, she followed his eyes and saw it - the telltale red glint of a sniping laser. 2016. Gennadiy leant back on the creaky plane seat, fiddling with a Christmas card sent early, by Father, of course - the old man was afraid of all things late ever since Mother's death. Just some days ago he was singing his head off with all his colleagues in the Army Choir; his head still buzzed with echoes of the applaud; that bel canto movement of yours would move a heart of stone, so they said. He cared not a whit - now he was feeling quite nauseous indeed from the stuffy air, and already he was longing for the fresh sea breezes of Sochi, which the plane left just minutes ago. And out of the blue a hand clawed at Gennadiy's shoulder, just when fretful whispers were devolving into a savage uproar. It was clammy, shaky, and Gennadiy was frightened to see that his whole body was feeling just the same. And yet, he himself barely understood the panic till he saw the Black Sea growing nearer, nearer, nearer, through the jittering window, God above are there any lifeboats or what, guys we are crashing down the fucking sea, send the fucking SOS stop screaming stop screaming, now what the fuck was that boom- 2022. Sergey gazed at the virgin soil upturned of the frost-laced dirt road across a barren forest, the morning sun smothered by steely snow. His thoughts were bursting in odds and ends, but as long as it lasted he would be able to distract himself from the cold air and the rickety truck. This is where great grandpa called home, apparently, thought the young man. Who's gonna tell him his great grandson is also spilling blood over fascists in the very same land? His face broke into a bitter grin most decidedly unfitting for a young man barely out of university. To think he and I will be fighting against the same bunch, a century apart…Sergey glanced backwards; all his fellow boys were asleep, the sleep of battered men to whom peace was flitting. The young soldier toned his grin down to a weak twitch in the mouth and went back to guarding, the cold steel of rifle pressing against soft palms. And at that moment, as the snow spun and the soldiers snored and the wheels creaked and the winds howled, Sergey thought longingly of a time-locked drawer at home, containing nothing but a letter and a scrapbook. It was for his newborn son. All the Sokolenko are born in cradles of thorn.

[sunlit-gully]

"🎶 What song do they swear they hate until they’re alone and start singing it on repeat?" and "🔪 Open up this character's kitchen cupboards. What do you see?" for anyone from anthologia sovietica!

omg adklsjfkjskl thank you for making my inbox useful at last!

let's go with Lasha and Mykyta respectively. them youngest kids deserve more attention.

🎶 What song do they swear they hate until they’re alone and start singing it on repeat?

Lasha was (still is) vitriolically hateful to the song Arlekino for literally no reason, at least in public. Mostly because of the circus music riff at the beginning (Entry of the Gladiator), as well as the clown laughs between the verses that, according to him, 'provokes the heebies-jeebies violently'. But apart from that, man has literally no problem humming the rest of the tune while doing house chores; apparently, it had become an earworm of sorts to him.

Also, Lasha as a kid heard this song on radio right after a frightful sickness, so he had always associated it, though quite vaguely, with the end of all things bad. This does not diminish his hatred for the song's circus sound effects in any way.

🔪 Open up this character's kitchen cupboards. What do you see?

Mykyta? Kitchen cupboards solely containing actual cups and cutleries? Not a chance in hell. We're talking about a spy here. Any of those cutleries can hide intel, transmit signals (though to be fair the signals won't be very clear over the sizzles, but that's the point), act as dead drops, or just be general decoys. And the weaponry possibilities are as endless and creative as it gets - there was this one time Mykyta actually managed to gouge out the eyeball of an intruder with a marrow scoop, veins and all. Don't ask for more details;

Bon appétit.

[sunlit-gully]

🤥 LYING - are they good liars? do they have tells to show they're lying?

Doing this for Mykola Tykhomyrovych Sokolenko from Anthologia Sovietica.

He was not a good liar. He was not a great liar. He was a consummate liar.

To be frank, this is an unwritten requirement in his job, aka foreign intelligence. Yes, Mykola worked as a KGB officer, a Major General upon retirement, so would it be any surprise that he had a co(s)mically big repertoire of false identities? To list his most frequently used identities, in the Centre he was Comrade Smirnov, in Britain he was Sir Alan Ross Norton, in Ireland he was Séamus de Búrca, in Australia he was Scott Hardy, in New Zealand he was Ewan Muir, and in Scandinavia he was Axel Hansen. But his contemporaries, they only called him one thing.

The Virtuoso.

In his personal life, though, Mykola could not hide shit to save his life (he would not have wanted to anyway). Medea had proven time and time again that she could be trusted with secrets (which is, frankly, to be expected for a doctor) and could handle the more unsavoury side of married life, so Mykola saw little reason to lie about his thoughts and feelings in their relationship. As of his children, Mykola did somewhat deceive them, if you call putting on a stern, distant face after the mother's death qualifies as deception. To be fair, lying implied that a party was not aware of the truth; all his kids saw through the act immediately but chose not to comment on it to his face.

All in all, the stage missed out big time on Mykola Sokolenko the moment he entered KGB.

[sunlit-gully]

okay so imma be dumb for once and jump on strangers' bandwagon because how else do you make friends

ansov of course because i have no other content atm

Donetske, midsummer, 1921. For sixty days a searing wind hailing from the East had roamed across the sun-scorched, dull brown Donside steppes, from the silvery salt marshes, from the bloody fields where gunshots ring like songbirds chirping. Everywhere the grass shrivelled into a sickly, speckled yellow, and the wheat stalks a sickly, speckled white - they bowed down like the backs of old men. Along the summer track, the cattails and goosefoot curled among windlicked rues. The serried crowd of swarthy Cossack girls trampling those withered plants did not seem to have fared any better. Their cheeks, long since pallid, had as much life as the muted garlands dangling carelessly between their fingers. Kupala Night was coming to the stanytsya.

p/s: i'll be kinda honest, i've been drawn to eastern europe and their literature because somehow they just remind me of my home vietnam. this is proof us southeast asians should be recognised as upgraded balkaners.

WRITEBLR! how are you guys? what are you all working on these days?

use this post to share a snippet of your writing you're proud of (& link to your intros -- i'll boost!)

[sunlit-gully]

Hey! 13. What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color?

D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look? Both for any character you want!

oh my god thank you sjkdfhakshdfkjahskjfskjxncx

Let's go with Medea Kurauli from Anthologia Sovietica because. uhm. blorbo.

13. What colour do they think they look best in? Do they actually actually look best in that colour?

Dark blue and yes. Incidentally it's also a primary colour in Khevsur traditional clothes. Medea would kinda look like the lady in this picture:

D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?

Medea have always had the vibes of the lady above, but I have to figure out her specific features. Lika Kavjaradze is the most fitting, so far:

Also, Monica Bellucci is a really good reference:

[sunlit-gully]

Happy STS! Let's talk about secrets. Do your characters or world have them? Are they considered a good thing or bad? Who in your cast is most likely to spill one? ♥️

Let's go with Anthologia Sovietica again...because it's my most developed project so far. Rest assured, Eight of Stars isn't entirely forgotten. Oh, and also to keep it short, I'll focus on the first 2 generations.

Down to business, shall we? Well, of fucken course the world does. The first Sokolenko generation is already big on secrets; it's Mykola's whole shtick...which is unsurprising; we're talking about a KGB Major General here. And Medea had quite a few regarding her Chechen side in Nashkhoy and her imprisonment in Ravensbruck.

Lev never spoke of his summer fling Klara to any family members (at least, until that fateful Christmas party when he stumbled upon his illegitimate daughter, Ursula, and her family). Viktor is...reticent about his gay one-night stands during his time in underground theatres, to say the least (it's not exactly taboo in the family, but all of them prefer to let sleeping dogs lie). Rusudan kept her (never discovered) murder of her abusive ex Filip Adomaitis, of all things, better than the CIA keeps its classified operations. Lasha would never admit to having killed people in the Ossetian War, though it was for defense. And again, Mykyta, whose espionage career rivals his father, has secrets galore as well; his career spanned both KGB and FSB, and he was Major General upon resignation - make of that what you will.

Most of the time, secrets aren't much of a concern in the Sokolenko family. There's a reason they're secrets, after all, and almost everybody understands that reason. I said almost, because there are those who don't understand...or to be exact, there were those who didn't understand. An overwhelming majority of them were casualties of Mykola and Mykyta's spy wars.

At least it was nothing personal.

The ones most likely to spill the secrets are mostly the youngsters from the 4th and 5th generations. In particular, Tivadar, Laima, Carmen, Ketevan and Safaa are prime suspects, though to their credit they have been in excellent control of their tongues so far.

Whew, so much for keeping it short, huh?

[sunlit-gully]

Hi there, its Athena. Welcome to my new Thursday Ask-A-Thon where its basically a Thursday version of my Sunday Ask-A-Thon where I ask ya'll about your wips: Has there been any major changes in a character in terms of how you created them, to how they turned out as the wip went on?

hi again Athena.

Well, definitely! My two most fleshed out WIPs has gone through at least 4 pivotal changes, each. I'll go with Anthologia Sovietica.

Medea Kurauli was originally a guy called Malkhaz Artsividze. However, because I changed her backstory from a regular Tbilisi urbanite guy to a Khevsur highlander, I had to change her name as well as her surname ending to fit the background (-uri/uli suffixes in Georgian surnames are a great bet that the bearers come from the Northeast highlands). Also, her missing-in-action period was originally much more vague - at the beginning I just thought she'd get ping-ponged between various captors before somehow finally meeting her crush postwar. Oh well, the Vrba-Wetzler Report and the Red Orchestra gave me some nasty, but necessary ideas to sketch out an alternative. One more thing, I originally intended her to have only one birth kid with Mykola aside from Lev, but the more I thought about it the sooner I realised that those two pining idiots would definitely not keep their hands off each other. So, four birth kids it is.

Mykola Sokolenko was originally a girl called Maria Kogut. However, the name didn't hit me the right way - I had always envisioned the character's personality as fierce and elegant at the same time and Maria just wasn't what I had in mind. Also, I changed his backstory from just a nondescript Ukrainian peasant girl into a half-Jewish Cossack boy (I somewhat blame the influence on Tommy Shelby). The assault on his mother by a Cossack was there since the beginning, but I never connected it to a pogrom till I read about Fastiv. And after some obsessive repetitions of the Seventeen Moments of Spring soundtrack on piano I decided that giving Mykola a job in KGB would be very very fitting, actually.

Lev was originally just some random Jewish kid wandering in a nondescript Polish forest in a constant state of fatigue and hunger during the War, but then I got some fridge brilliance and thought 'oy, he can be the catalyst to Mykola and Medea's union!' So I gave him a much more active role; he evaded the Germans and the concentration camps, followed the nearest Soviet division he could find around till they gave up and let him be their scout, and eventually got trusted with establishing connections with local sympathisers because he could speak Polish and German fluently (this boy is fluent in 4 languages by the time he reached the age of 15 he is a chad alright). Note the last part: that's how Mykola found Medea.

Rusudan was originally supposed to be a nurse, following her mother's medical career. However, after some thinking I realised that her flippant, adventurous spirit would definitely feel stifled by the rather rigid hierarchy and heavy workload of the major Soviet hospitals, so instead I let her become a wildlife biologist. That way Rusudan got to be the cool science lady she deserved to be. Shame that her death turned out to be very early and tragic...

Lasha and Mykyta were actually last-minute additions. I was kinda on a whim and wanted to see how far the Sokolenko kids could travel and settle. The answer is very; Lasha ended up a cool lone ranger sort of ethnologist in the Caucasus, while Mykyta ended up following his dad's spying career but worked in a different department (Mykola was in the 3rd Department, his son in the 7th). I also gave them a sweet tooth and unnatural hunger for roasted meat of any kind, like their mother, as well as a love for horseriding, like their father.

[sunlit-gully]

‘All the Sokolenko are born in cradles of war.’

From my Anthologia Sovietica WIP.

@toribookworm22​ @a-fox-who-writes @theramwrites @mariahwritesstuff @pens-swords-stuff @aether-wasteland-s @tragicbackstoryenjoyer @sarahlizziewrites @notalazysod and open tag. feel free to join or ignore, no pressure.

Thanks for the tag @tired-twili !! ❤️

Rules: In a new post, show the last line you wrote and tag as many people as there are words.

“If by soon you mean in the next five hours, then yes, she’ll be coming soon,” Legend said, drily.

From my Lu Malink Tangled au. I’ll let y’all guess which character Legend plays the part of ;)

No pressure tags @louwhose @telemna-hyelle @skyward-floored @wolfwarden aaand anyone else who feels like doing this!

[sunlit-gully]

Happy WBW! What's the harshest part of your world? Be it a place, a law, something character-created or otherwise, what is just HARSH?

Answering for my WIP Anthologia Sovietica. Spoilers ahead, read at your own caution.

Well if Medea Kurauli's life wasn't some harsh shit I don't know what is.

She was born to Nino Chincharauli (a Khevsur Georgian) and Vakha Aldamov (a Chechen). The girl was the result of Vakha's illicit affair with his tachanka driver Nino, which ended in disaster because Nino turned out to be a traitor and a spy. In the end Vakha had to execute his own lover, in the middle of a battle no less, and unwillingly abandoned a newborn Medea.

Otar Kurauli, the ten-year-old son of the local forest ranger, was scouting around the ground when he stumbled upon Nino's corpse, now irreversibly disfigured by a northern goshawk. The infant wrestling with the bloodthirsty bird of prey, so Otar took pity on her and decided to adopt her, as his mother was also nursing a newborn son and would have milk to spare.

When Medea was about to enter secondary education, she had to part with her hometown for a boarding school in Dusheti and, 8 years later, Tbilisi State Medical University. This obviously changed the girl a lot; for the first time in her life, the highlander girl got to experience new ideas and sights, and escape from the oftentimes-unbearable oppressiveness of her parents, who were very much conservative and sceptical of Soviet authorities. Medea retained some old Khevsur garments and traditions, but generally she found nature, music, clothes, and her siblings the only good parts of her childhood.

War broke out 2 years after her admission, and Medea joined her division as a field medic. Her medical skills, while mostly cobbled during wartime, were very much sufficient for treating battle injuries, and as such she was the division's sweetheart.

Soon the young medic pined for the division's intelligence officer Mykola. But before any of them could confess, their tender feelings were disrupted when Medea sacrificed herself to divert the German’s attention during an ambush in Sandomierz, subsequently getting imprisoned in Ravensbrück camp. This was where she suffered from horrific, unethical medical experiments and cruel assaults by camp tyrants, resulting in a crippled leg she had to amputate (she later used a wooden prosthetic leg). Fortunately, thanks to the courage she showed to the camp's chief when she refused to drink with him to victory of Nazi arms, Medea avoided her execution and, finally, ran from Nazis. She later anonymously submitted a testimony of her time in the camp to the Nuremberg Trial.

After having fled Ravensbrück, she joined as an unofficial member of a division belonging to the underground KPD resistance movement in Berlin, fighting alongside Soviet troops. This was when she met Lev Adler, the unofficial scout of the Soviet division she was trying to contact. They took a shine to each other at first sight due to shared trauma - Lev had also lost his family and innocence to the Nazi Reich. During the Battle of Berlin, Medea was chosen as her underground unit's representative in a meeting meant to establish contact with the nearest Red Army division. Much to her joy, her long-lost lover Mykola was also present. By a stroke of luck, all three survived to Victory Day and went back to the Soviet Union a happy family (Lev Adler now Lev Sokolenko). Afterwards Medea also got 4 more kids with Mykola - Viktor, Rusudan, Lasha and Mykyta - and gradually settled into domestic bliss.

Too bad the bliss only lasted 12 years.

Remember Medea's wooden prosthetic leg? This is where it comes to play. During a business trip to her native Chaukhi mountains, the doctor got caught in a flood. Because her wooden leg broke in two, she was unable to run away in time from the oncoming landslide.

Suffice to say her family never recovered from the shock.

[sunlit-gully]

ABOUT ME

Xin chào, hello, bonjour! A decent intro post for this blog is WAY long overdue, but here it is at last. Studies have been super demanding, but my mental health has regained some semblance of health and positivity (despite, and somehow also thanks to, my ADHD) in, so I suppose I'm quite ready to handle more writing at the moment.

All being said and done, hello, hi, it's me your Vietnamese homegirl Ravine (she/her)! Welcome to my little Internet nook and, as my blog title goes, have a look around.

Oh, and a note on my politics. While it's not immediately relevant to my writing, take note that I am Marxist-Leninist. Cue mandatory DNI list of fascists, imperialists, radfems, pedos, and their reactionary hordes of lapdogs that I can't be assed to list.

Now, on a brighter note,

ABOUT MY WIPS

↠An ennealogy of loosely connected slice-of-life anthologies following the Sokolenko family, which spans 100 years, 36 ethnicities, and 2 continents.

↠Includes 9 main books and numerous side stories, one-shots, and drabbles.

↠Link to wip intro here.

↠Link to all character face claims + profiles (updating)

↠Tag used: #wip: anthologia sovietica

↠ An octalogy following the rise of an earth-shattering revolution led by eight prodigies in the fantasy Asian-inspired world Tenhar, where a power-hungry empire is threatening the natural harmony of human, spirits, and the Eight Elements.

↠Includes 8 main books and numerous side stories, one-shots, and drabbles.

↠Link to wip intro here.

↠Link to all character moodboards (updating)

↠Link to all character picrew face claims (updating)

↠Tag used: #wip: eight of stars

↠A slice-of-life series of loosely connected short stories following 'shadow couples' (according to MBTI personality theory) in various sorts of situations - some end in tragedy, others in happiness, yet others in utter pandemonium. Life, you know?

↠The series contain numerous one-shots and loosely connected drabbles. Full-fledged books may be considered if befitting reader requests and my own motivation.

↠Link to wip intro here.

↠Link to all character moodboards (updating)

↠Link to all character picrew face claims (updating)

↠ Tag used: #dyads

OTHER TAGS

#personal: for all things personal, but really, it's just miscellaneous. memes, life refs, nice stuffs - ya know, the trinkets in a magpie nest.

#writing nook: all things writing, which may or may not be related to the wips. almost always goes with #writeblr.

#commie cranny: it has been 0 days since Ravine last raged against late stage capitalism. companion tag is #political pieces, where I, predictably, rage against late stage capitalism in words.

#literally literature: my Thoughts™ on literature, i.e. books. much more obscure stuff than you think.

#another one bites the dust: me when my political enemies go to their allotted chthonic shithole (i am the crab, the crab, the crab that is raving)

[sunlit-gully]

thanks for the tag omg @theunboundwriter i love love LOVE your prompts

my words are: tear, frown, skin, heard, and lean/

tear:

I was sorry, beyond anything I can tell, for the little scamp. Many times, while I was returning after battles, I'd think, Let her grow up, in a stranger's arms, with a stranger's name. She'll grow a pretty girl of the mountains, and she'll adorn the Soviet land. And Vakha Audayev will leave a memory behind and not die like scrub in the valley…Excuse this old man's maudlin rambles, but I had wept tears over her, even if I hadn't known tears for ages, even if I never knew my little girl by name.

frown:

At the unpleasant sound, his face unconsciously twisted into a dismayed frown; the whole debacle was beginning to weight on him, and he wanted nothing more than to get this grisly business over and done with by dawn.

skin:

Sergey ran the pad of his thumb across the pristine fabric of his great-grandfather's peaked cap and idly wondered if the uniform would feel just the same on his skin, come tomorrow morning.

heard:

To this day I sometimes hear in the night as though someone's crying out, sobbing most pitifully…It's, it's…it is just as I had heard my sisters' wails as I blacked out…But there it is, it's conscience. And it hurts…

lean:

Gennadiy leant back on the creaky plane seat, fiddling with a Christmas card sent early, by Father, of course - the old man was afraid of all things late ever since Mother's death. Just some days ago he was singing his head off with all his colleagues in the Army Choir; his head still buzzed with echoes of the applaud; that bel canto movement of yours would move a heart of stone, so they said. He cared not a whit - now he was feeling quite nauseous indeed from the stuffy air, and already he was longing for the fresh sea breezes of Sochi, which the plane left just minutes ago.

and that's for today! tagging: @starkiller-009 @asterhaze @toribookworm22 @somniphobicfox @mjparkerwriting @sunset-a-story @mariahwritesstuff @athensoddcollections

Find the Word Tag

Thank you for the tag @oh-no-another-idea !!

My words are: lemon, despair, entertain, slant, and survey!

Lemon: couldn't find it.

Despair:

June slammed the door shut to her room, crumpling to the floor in a pitiful heap. She shoved her fist between her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut. She would not allow herself to cry, for she wanted the despair and anger to fester in her throat. A punishment she well deserved. 

Entertain:

June didn’t sleep that night. She was too restless to even entertain trying to sleep. Her head was pounding from having cried as hard as she had, the ache in her skull not pairing well with the one in her heart. Her hands fidgeted with the silver ring strung around her neck, the metal warm from her skin. 

Slant: surprisingly couldn't find this one either.

Survey:

She held the bear to her chest as she surveyed the bedroom, leaning against the crib as if she were still a child trapped inside. June had no memory of her mother when she was alive, but she could remember being stuck in her crib as she helplessly watched her writhe around on the floor. She was gasping for air, clawing at her throat as if she couldn’t breathe. Blood splattered from her lips with each lung-filled cough, her dark hair stuck to her face with sweat.

Tagging (with no pressure) @lingeringmirth , @eriquin , @acatwrites , @sunlit-gully , @berryzxx , @creatrackers

Your words are: Tear, Frown, Skin, Heard, and Lean

[sunlit-gully]

thanks for the tag @asterhaze! it's about time i unleash more ansov content anyway

tw:

wartime execution child abandonment (implied, but still) interrogation (self-)dehumanisation graphic description of death (by tuberculosis, so not exactly gory, but be warned)

1

Sergey ran the pad of his thumb across the pristine fabric of his great-grandfather's peaked cap and idly wondered if the uniform would feel just the same on his skin, come tomorrow morning. There was nothing left unfinished, of that the young man was sure - he had made all the farewell visits to relatives and neighbours, complete with tearful, motherly embraces from the babushkas and silent, fatherly toasts from the dedushkas. Sergey had also ironed out the bulk of his life's 'boring' problems - handing in the notice, clearing all the debts, mending the facilities at home. Hell, he even got his will ratified! He had done everything a responsible Russian man is supposed to do before conscription. Dawn was rising and the loose ends had been neatly tied. Except, perhaps, one.

2

The quiet river rippled - a garland had touched the water. The dusty leafs bobbed and rustled upon the waves. The candlelight flickered ever so slightly as it passed the reeds, the meadowsweet and the wild oleander adorning the riverside. Soon the garland was only a faint speckle of light and colour meandering across the darkening river. The girl who floated it heaved a hearty sigh of relief - it meant her fortunes would be bright, and her life would be happy. Indeed, she would very much like to muster all the luck she could get - despite being barely sixteen, she was the family's breadwinner now that her three brothers had all gone to war. How Mama had wailed and ailed at the news! The paupers and downtrodden of the stanytsya knew that the Sokolenko, poorest among the Cossacks, had much sorrow indeed, and felt for them dearly. Then the garland somehow stopped dead in its tracks.

3

She let out a small chuckle, and the baby clumsily replicated the sound, which only made her laugh even harder. Her cheeks had gained a rosy blush now, a far cry from the pallid hue earlier, though whether it came from the exercise or the happiness she herself could not tell. It didn't matter anyway. 'Although someone else's blood's in you,' Halyna murmured to her little brother, 'in the soul, I worry for you as for my own…' From the azure floor of the sky, a five-pointed star gently twinkled down to the homebound pair.

4

As he crossed piles after piles of rubble, the young commander could make out a gaggle of disheveled Hiwi men walking in single file towards his direction, trench coats flung haphazardly over their shoulders. He was glad to see them so - glad, indeed! Mykola was glad that they were pitiful to look at: footwraps on their feet instead of boots, footwraps on their heads. After all, it was with those feet that they kicked his comrades, his perished, nameless, faceless, many comrades, down those gaping, gaping, freezing abysses… After much shuffles they finally stood in a row, as still and obedient as little ducklings. Behind their backs, a freshly dug trench lay gaping, an open wound on the black soil. And in front of them, his men were loading rifles. Nobody said a thing. There was nothing to be said. Except the clicks and clacks of steel and the sporadic keels of the wind, the place was completely, unbearably silent.

5

'Explain yourself,' he spoke in German. The other man, as if jolted from some intense fever dream, stuttered his way through an introduction. 'Sir…Ehem, commander, good sir…My…euh, my name is…uh…they g-gave me a new name, a new one, in Trawniki I mean, it's Dieter…but you…uh…p-perhaps-' 'I will not use what they use,' came the reply in Russian. A Trawniki rat…a collaborator. 'Well, well sir…Then call me, ahem, Yaakov, sir.' Finally, a coherent sentence. Bravo, Yasha. 'Where is your commander?' 'I don't know…Must have gotten lost on the way. Gave no orders, nothing, all of us didn't know what to do…' 'You and your lot can't even hold for a second without an order, is what it is!' Mykola snapped. 'What are you even fighting for?' 'I don't know…Never thought of it.' 'Don't you read the newspapers?' 'No, I simply fulfill the orders of my superiors,' came the robotic reply, and Mykola internally cringed. 'Goddamn! Are you a human or a machine?' The captured man stared blankly for a moment at the unexpected question and then answered sullenly, 'We are all of us machines.'

6

The snow fell hard that solstice day. During the night the North Wind rose up, all the way from Chechnya, ringing the bell on Bear Cross Pass. The ensuing peals echoed across the wintry silence, across the rolling peaks and scarped gorges, till it reverbed within the Kurauli family's run-down ranger cabin. The bell chimes were soon drowned out by the keeling North Wind, which rustled the silvery mugwort shrubs on the valleys, wove the shaggy snowdrifts into tresses, and licked the hummocky ridges of the roads quite bare. Night enfolded the village in a silvery, dusky silence. Beyond the mossy huts and towers the Chaukhi mountains dozed, untamed, unmoving. At midnight, a wolf howled faintly in a faraway ravine; the dogs in the village replied, and young Otar woke up. Dropping his legs down over the side of the bedstead, the Khevsur youngster sat rubbing his stiffened ankle. Then he spat out, felt for his freshly minted bayonet rifle, locked the ranger cabin shut, and trudged on the fresh driven snow.

7

Rising from the blanket, Vakha sluggishly wiped his perspiring face with a handkerchief. His hands moved uncertainly; twice he missed his face and touched the pillow instead. 'Give me some water…What appalling heat! Noon already? There's something over the grasses, there's something…I gotta go, I gotta go now…'…' Medea scooped some water out of a pail with a cup, assured Vakha that he was going nowhere, and noted to herself mentally that it was past midnight. Her patient grabbed the cup hastily, spilt half the water onto his blanket, and cursed loudly. Then he pushed the nurse's hand away with his own cold hands, and drew a deep breath. After looking at the quarantine hut's flapping entrance, he turned his eyes on Medea, moved his lips as if he could break into a smile any moments now, and slowly let his sallow eyelids droop down. His elbows were pressed closely against his sides, and his hands, on which the fingers were weakly twitching, crept about his chest, moving towards his throat. A shadow fell upon his face all of a sudden, invading every part of it, staining the skin yellow and sharpening the jutting nose. His lips were neatly sealed back in its place, in a smile light as feather, but his breathing had ceased.

@athensoddcollections @mjparkerwriting @rbbess110 @sergeantnarwhalwrites @sunset-a-story @toribookworm22 @mariahwritesstuff and open tag because i'd like to see more of you guys' stuff

Seven Snippets, Seven People

Thank you @rmgrey-author for the tag HERE.

Rules: post seven snippets and tag seven people.

Okay, I have actually shared quite a bit of the first chapter of Masterpiece sort of on and off in tag games. So if I am repeating myself, I apologize. If you've seen my Masterpiece Masterpost Masterlist thing, you'll see why I hesitate to read over everything and double triple make sure I'm sharing something totally new. I also have new followers (THANK YOU ALL) so I'm also using new tag games as an excuse to introduce everyone.

1

Something about Dr. Hayes made him seem all knowing, like he knew too much for his own good. He was pale, with deep circles surrounding sunken eyes shadowed by thick-rimmed glasses. The man, if he was even human, slid a stack of papers across his wide desk. The psychiatrist looked at him, his hazel eyes unyielding.   "It seems like you've been around a long time Mr..." Dr. Hayes’s voice trailed off, his amber eyes narrowing as he waited for a reply.   "Just call me whatever you like." Dr. Hayes made a noise, unamused, before he continued. "Glen then." The psychiatrist waited for a response, but Glen said nothing. "So what can a human like me do for someone like you?"

2

"Word on the street is that you know about Dark Kind and that you speak to them frequently." Glen said, his navy eyes wandering around the room. Shelves and bookcases covered the far wall from ceiling to floor with books, filing cabinets, and pictures of people who resembled Dr. Hayes, only much too old. "Every night I'm afraid." Dr. Hayes replied, following Glen's gaze to the far wall. "This is your family's establishment?" Glen offered, his eyes settling on what seemed to be a family picture of the doctor and a black-haired woman. "It was." Dr. Hayes replied, clearing his throat. Glen's navy eyes snapped back to look at the psychiatrist, causing the man to nearly jump in his seat. "I'm surprised to see you in my office. They warned me to turn you away."

3

"Oh, really?" Glen said, his face seeming to brighten under the dim fluorescent light. "They warned me you are a liar, a manipulator, and a seducer. But those sorts of things don't bother me, especially coming from vampires." The doctor matched the vampire's gaze, still unwavering, and fearless. "It seems like I have a terrible reputation." Glen smiled, adjusting the leather satchel on his lap. "There are few who come after dark who don't."

4

There was a long silence between them and Glen grew uncomfortable again. This was not the first human he had encountered that wasn't afraid of him or unnecessarily rude, but Dr. Hayes was the first he had met in a century that scared him. The psychiatrist across from him had unknown connections, mysterious friends, and knew too much about what happened outside of the human sphere. Beyond that, it was the way Dr. Hayes looked at him. 

5

It was as if the psychiatrist had set his amber sights on him the moment he entered and no amount of running or trickery would get him to look away. Dr. Hayes stared at him, barely blinking, almost as if he was reading something written in Glen’s eyes. It was the depth that Dr. Hayes saw that terrified him, that left him feeling exposed and somehow weaker for it. Over two centuries’ worth of immortality and power, washed away with a single glare and the psychiatrist didn’t even seem interested in what he was seeing.   

6

"Why did you come here, Glen?" Dr. Hayes finally asked, leaning back in his chair.  "To talk to you." Glen said brightly, brushing back his golden hair with his fingers.  "As far as I'm aware, you are pretty fearless. So why come to me when there are plenty of vampires to talk about your past to?" "Curiosity." Glen said, his voice going flat as the psychiatrist's eyes glowed gold.  "I see." The doctor said sharply. Glen smiled back at him, pretending not to notice the doctor's odd eyes. "I don't like other vampires." Glen said sharply, a coy look crossing his face. "I find humans much more interesting. You all lack the experience to handle such long timelines like mine, your advice is so cute and simple. It's refreshing."

7

The doctor narrowed his eyes slightly, still obviously not amused. Glen chuckled, breaking into laughter when Dr. Hayes flashed him an angry look. His eyes had glowed softly before, fading back into amber after he spoke. Now they were shining brilliantly, as if from within, with an unnatural golden ichor. Glen had seen that color before, long ago, and the sight of it again caused his fingertips to tremble. Whatever, or whoever, had gotten their hands on Dr. Hayes was beyond him.

MUAHAHAHA -- I hope you enjoyed most of the first chapter of Masterpiece!! Thank you everyone who reads my tag games and tags me in them. I hope you enjoy this unannounced surprise!

Tagging: @doublegoblin @dyrewrites @gummybugg @kd-holloman @wardenwyrd @bright-willow-ravine @veetvoojagigthemagnificent @winterandwords @goldxdarkness @taveren-writing Also, @outpost51 - I'm tagging you here because you're on my Masterpiece taglist. <3

[sunlit-gully]

thanks for the tag @talesofsorrowandofruin! it's been some time since i actually did anything remotely writeblr on my so-called writeblr blog lmao

Rules: take the previous person's excerpt and rewrite it in your own style!

Your excerpt:

Leo scowled at the line. Out of morbid curiosity he’d sat down to reread the play, and somehow it was worse than he remembered. Who on God’s green earth called their wife ‘beloved angel’ — spelt 'beloved angle’, because Philpott clearly hadn’t paid attention in English class — in this day and age?

My rewrite:

Leo's eyes were now squinted tight shut as his face scrunched up, which was not entirely unwelcome - what was unwelcome proved to be the sickening, sappy abomination that was their old play. Has it always been this chock full of drivel? he asked himself, fully knowing (and loathing) the answer. Spelling mistakes, awkward turns of phrases, they stuck out like sore thumbs; no, they sprouted before his very eyes like mushrooms after rain. A case in point - Philpott, in his neverending genius, waxed poetic on some 'beloved angle' of a wife. An insult to angels and angles alike, Leo mused. And a nasty punt in the falling teeth of our old English teacher. Poor, poor Mr Jones.

tagging @somniphobicfox @toribookworm22 @mjparkerwriting @silverslipstream @sunset-a-story @saltwaterbells @sergeantnarwhalwrites hope your eyes weren't assaulted by my purple prose

My excerpt:

The platform's a place to say goodbye, always has been. The harried crowd around me, how many of them are saying their final farewells? Children, women; those who leave are overwhelmingly women and children. Right next to me a grandpa bids farewell to his daughter and grandchildren, and as the wheels rolled off he hobbled back to the walls with teary eyes. The passengers carry with them the last pieces of home in threadbare backpacks, patchy fur coats, and soulless stares.

Rewrite Tag

Thanks for tagging me, @on-noon! :D

Rules: take the previous person's excerpt and rewrite it in your own style!

Your excerpt:

She left the freshly dug graves to the isle of ash and shut herself into her box of a time machine. The sides pressed against Adreif's shoulders and vibrated as the box traveled perpendicular to time and space.

My rewrite:

Adreif left the freshly-dug graves to the isle of ash and returned to her time machine. It was so small that its sides pressed against her shoulders once she was inside. The whole box shuddered as it travelled through time and space.

Tagging @ashen-crest, @kjscottwrites, @sunlit-gully, and anyone else who wants to do this! :D

My excerpt:

Leo scowled at the line. Out of morbid curiosity he’d sat down to reread the play, and somehow it was worse than he remembered. Who on God’s green earth called their wife ‘beloved angel’ — spelt 'beloved angle’, because Philpott clearly hadn’t paid attention in English class — in this day and age?

[sunlit-gully]

thanks for the tag @sergeantnarwhalwrites, you gave me quite a timely reminder to rework my wips!

When the shaky signature dried at the bottom corner, Sergey hastily pinned the piece of paper upon the scrapbook's cover, closed the drawer shut, activated the safe's eighteen-year time lock, grabbed his almost empty rucksack, and drove off westward, where the recruiters were waiting, where the Sun had yet to shine.

Last Line Tag

Finally hopping on a tag from @aether-wasteland-s! Thanks for the tag!

I tag: @nanashi23 @jezifster @outpost51 @isherwoodj @sunlit-gully (Only if y'all want! Open tag too!)

At one point the bear morpher had wondered how anyone could fear morphers. The bear morpher was a child then. At first glance far less imposing. But as she grew a few feet. Packed on some pounds. Grew stronger. She recognized morphers were just as human as anyone else on the surface.

Soon she realized. That was what made them— herself— so terrifying.