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phyriaxi · 10 months

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Sketchbook Post! [ 1 ]

Welcome to my first sketchbook doodle dump!

I ended up having a bunch more drawings to share than I initially assumed, so I wanted to include some of my thoughts as well! This post will be quite a bit longer than usual :] thanks for stopping by!

CONTENTS:

NEW UNIVERSE (personal project work)

Sketches from life

Fanart (there's a lot of Arknights)

A couple of mini-comic sketches

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NEW UNIVERSE // character explorations and other doodles from my personal project!

I haven't really talked about it here, but for the past couple of years I've been working on an original story in my free time! The image above is a quick lineup of the main cast that I doodled while waiting at the station. Progress is slow, but the placeholder name is "NEW UNIVERSE", and I'm currently working on developing the stories for my characters and their origins!

(yes, i draw a lot of Arknights fanart ... but I do have some original work too LOL)

A couple characters you may have already seen are Lyda Khatra (the white-haired girl with bows in her hair) and Maria Serval (the lady who has horns and is usually smirking). They appear many times in my sketchbook, alongside many other characters that I'll try to introduce~

[ Clockwise from the top-left: Sara, Lyda Khatra, Kiron Schiavona, Red-Eye, Iris Serramount (2) ]

I recently found an old pack of red pencil leads prior to this page, so its purpose is mostly to test the material and less about the characters. But a bunch of them are on here, so I suppose it's a good chance to talk about them a bit :)

>> Sara, the top-left character drawn in light red pencil, is a young Verlin adult (note: Verlin are basically the in-universe demon people, and they're the counterpart to the angel-like Zaurites... it doesn't really give them powers or anything, I just wanted characters with horns and halos lol). She's pretty aloof and was originally a scout for the Blackbird Syndicate, one of the three power-holding entities currently in control of the (tentatively-named) city of Midria. However, she was quite terrible at her job, and they eventually realized that Sara enjoyed making/maintaining records of Midria's various fauna and cryptids. She is often followed around by a trio of little eyeball creatures :D

>> Lyda Khatra is the next character here, whom I've drawn a couple times before and posted here. In short, she's an agent for a security company known as WALTZ, which is in turn a subsidiary/cover of a group called The Styx. On missions, she partners with a boy named Sasha, but due to his unique condition (which I'm still expanding on, so I won't explain it here), she is often outcast by other WALTZ members and nicknamed "Miss Mortician". Truthfully, Lyda is just a child who ran from home, who believes that she won't ever have to acknowledge her fears if she can delude herself enough.

>> Following Lyda is Kiron Schiavona. He's a prodigy marksman who was discovered by one of the Administration's commanders, Elena Sparrow. He takes pride in his abilities, but for whatever reason, Elena has rarely assigned him to any proper missions.

>> Red-Eye is up next, in her usual twin-tailed hairstyle. She is from the Blackbird Syndicate's courier department, which is pretty much the city's only remaining postal/courier system. As a highly capable messenger, she and fellow courier Orion take on many high-priority delivery, retrieval, and escort missions. (additional note: I used to draw her with only one red eye, but somehow the heterochromia felt boring after a while, so both her eyes are usually red now. But either is fine)

>> Last on this page is Iris Serramount. Her story continues to be revised and rewritten, so there's not much I can say about her yet (except that she's 19, which is a fact that has stuck throughout most of her iterations).

Some other characters that I don't draw as often include Myra ("Malady"), Seremi and William Khatra (Lyda's older siblings who work for the Administration), and to a lesser extent, Maria Serval. Red-Eye's coworker/partner Orion doesn't get much time in the spotlight either :P

The following group of images includes a bunch of their sketches. Seremi is the one with the chin-length messy hair + a cape. She and Maria have a lot of history, and the two of them still work in the same division to this day. Myra/Malady is the one with the choppy hair, holding a chain-scythe in the third (?) image. Her original concept had her as a cowardly clairvoyant trying to take back her life for herself, but the clairvoyance isn't really relevant to the story anymore. Orion is in the last image.

(Yes, I did draw Arknights' Lappland with my Maria Serval in the first one. I'm a big fan of their 'shit-eating grin' energy lol)

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Sketches from/inspired by life // quick studies of people and places, often at the park

I'm lucky to live near many wonderful parks and greenspaces, which gives me a lot of opportunities to people-watch and draw from life. Admittedly, I only started taking advantage of this recently, but I'm glad to have started late rather than never :]

Also, I have access to this really awesome roof, which I take inspiration from in a couple of these drawings. It's in a pretty industrial but under-maintained area, but luckily that means there are lots of rusty pipes, worn bricks, and random metal gadgets that really scratch my aesthetic itch!! I hope to incorporate more of that visual feeling into my artwork going forward.

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FANART DOODLES // unsurprisingly, it's mostly Arknights

This is probably the content you're the most familiar with, albeit in a different style than usual. At this point, Lappland is my warm-up and passtime go-to, so she shows up a lot. I also drew Asuka from Evangelion the other day, and I really like how that sketch turned out!

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MINI-COMICS // doodles of scenes that popped into my head

I'm terrible at writing, especially when it comes to stories, so these are probably mediocre at best. But I hope to publish NEW UNIVERSE as a comic/manga-styled story eventually, so you could say these are just my first steps, hehe :]

1: Red-Eye and Courier receive an unconventional request

2: Commander Sparrow introduces Kiron to his new squad members, the Raptors (featuring Maria Serval being very snarky)

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That'll conclude this sketchbook post! If you've read this far: I know this was a REALLY long post, but I hope it was enjoyable! I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

There are a couple more drawings that I'm quite fond of, but unfortunately I've now hit the image limit for a tumblr post. Maybe I'll save them for next time :] I hope to make more posts like this in the future when I have the time. Usually the stuff in my sketchbook stays in there forever and I never share it with anyone (nor do I often take the time to look back and think about it), so this was a lot of fun for me!

>> Oh, and lastly, thank you very much for nearly 500 followers!! <3

#phyriaxi #original #my art #sketchbook #traditional art #oc #arknights #doodle dump #oc rambling #sketches #long reads #WOOHOO hoping i didn't mess up the formatting ... still getting used to text posts on here! :]

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aquitainequeen · 1 year

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All Is Bliss (Until Someone Loses An Eye): Chapter 7: Bet You Wish You'd Stayed In Bed

Thank you so, so much to the beautiful @ellynneversweet and @fairy-anon-godmother, for putting up with all my random pinging of ideas to them, and for helping me get this monster upright and off the slab after over a year!!!

Alina wakes up to the first day of the rest of her life.

It's a short sentence, but contains a lot of incidence.

***

It is a lovely morning in Os Alta, and Alina is a horrible malingerer.

She is also a woman who has been up at the crack of sparrow fart since time immemorial, and for the first time since she and Mal were dumped in Keramzin she could perhaps just lie here for just a little longer; experiencing soft sheets, this soft bed, this beautiful room full of beautiful things, the sheer utter luxury of knowing she has absolutely nothing to do.

No chores or lessons. No marching! No sketching in the cart and dreading bumps and jolts, no ever-lasting calculations and estimates of distance, no long stretches of sinking into the mud and holding the tools and tapes for the real cartographers. No camp fire to build back up or resurrect while choking on the ashes, no breakfast to reheat, no fucking freezing dew, and joy, oh joy! No more horseback riding.

There’s just this bed. Just this.

She could do all of that, but her body thinks it’s time she should be getting to work. She begs her flesh to let her rest and it only wants to be back on the horse once again, more and more confused at how Alina continues to resist any large movements.

Stupid body. She gets dragged over quite literally two thirds of Ravka, it feels like the feet of the entire First Army have been churning her thighs and arse into mud despite all of Fedyor’s salves, and yet her flesh also still thinks she should be getting up and doing jobs that don’t even exist any longer. From the way the General was acting during the last few days, Alina will probably never again have to wake up to freezing darkness while being soaked by fucking freezing dew; or to build, feed and grow a fire, or to bring it back to life from the embers; or to skin and joint a rabbit. She might still do those things, nothing’s ever certain, but she’ll probably never have to do them again.

She’ll never have to be at the beck and call of Petya, taking notes and calculations and scrambling to churn out drafts, having to compete with Alexei. She’ll never have to hear Raisa getting up first and being so maddeningly loud while doing it, calling them all ‘malingerers!’ while ironically lingering on the middle part of the insult.

She’ll never get to hear Raisa again. Oh, she’ll never see Alexei again.

Well. Alina’s definitely not going back to sleep after that, and nor does she deserve to. Horrible woman. Malingerer. Cursed. Backwater Buryat bitch. No man or woman should look at the side of the road she walks on!

The gauzy linings of the bed’s canopy are so nice to look at. Alina could lie here all heavy with the sheets and pillows sucking her down, watching them forever. Only forever will be a very long time if her ears are filled up with these new tears, creeping and tickling down either side of her head. If she bawls every time that she thinks of them all screaming and dying in the Fold, or Mal running after the carriage shouting and trying to keep up but slowing down, slowing down, she won’t be able to see or breathe for swollen eyes and blocked pipes. She’ll die, smothered by her own snot! Death by malingering, Raisa would definitely say.

She needs to get the grief and guilt for today out of the way. Right. Boris, the stupid prick who couldn’t follow a simple command like don’t light a fucking lantern in the Fold, is dead because he wouldn’t have lit the lantern if he hadn’t been in the Fold to begin with, because of her. Raisa, always picking at her, pick pick pick, she is dead because of Alina; she was so terrified just before the volcra grabbed her and if she was lucky she died right away. Please the saints that she died right away! What a fucking mess Alina is; the best prayer she can manage for someone who’s dead because of her is that they died quickly. Alexei is.

Nope. She’s had a fortnight to think and she’s decided: Alexei’s not dead. Alina didn’t see a body. She only saw him jumping off the skiff into the darkness. The Inferni lady said that if you leave the skiff you die, but that doesn’t mean Alexei died! He’s so fast. So fast! He could have run and kept running and none of the volcra would have been able to catch him. He could easily have followed the tracks the skiff made and got back to Kribirsk, and been there when she was being hauled away in the coach. Or, maybe he ran all the way over to West Ravka!

No, that’s just stupid. Fucking mad.

Although. Would it really be any more fucking mad than her being the Sun Summoner? That happened, so, why shouldn’t Alexei have made it out of the Fold, either on the East side or the West?

So that’s it. Alina’s got something to do after all. She’s got a plan! She needs to: survive today and all the days after, find a way out of this mess and this palace, find a way back to Kribirsk, find out what happened to Alexei and Mal, find them again and never, ever leave them again. Simple!

Right.

It is a fucking terrible plan. Why is she so terrible at plans? Clearly, she must never plan anything ever again.

Start smaller. She could begin with a letter to Mal. I’m sorry, I never would have left, they had to drag me into the carriage or I would have run to you. Also, sorry that I turned out to be Grisha and the Sun Summoner, but that doesn’t matter because I will find you again. And then she can write to Boris and Raisa’s families, Sorry I accidentally got your child horribly killed. It was because of love, which is a romantic motive, but it was still kind of murder.

Yes, that’s just the thing to make even more people want her dead. Repeat; Alina must never plan anything again. After this plan that she’s making right now at this very moment, no more plans! And no letters.

What she could do instead is, she could send them all the money that the Grisha would have paid if they’d found her back when she was little. And the Sun Summoner must be worth an absolute fortune! Yeah, they’ll still hate her, but probably not enough to refuse truly obscene amounts of cash. Mal could even get to leave the army! He can buy the farm like he’s always wanted, the nicest greenest richest farm, and he can stay safe and well and hundreds of miles away from the front lines or any possible border raids!

But the problem is: in order to find out about the reward and get it sent out, she’ll have to get up and face the day, everything beyond that door, and herself. For this she will give in to her body’s whinging, and get up.

Naturally every muscle in her body immediately starts shrilling with the pain and clamoring for her to stop moving at once and lie back down, how can she be so heartless? How can she be so cruel?! Stupid body.

So.

What’s she got to work with?

There was no Fedyor or Ivan to conveniently stand near her while she dozed off last night, and yet she’s somehow managed to get a full night’s sleep once more. She has the letter opener she stashed under her pillow, it didn’t fall to the floor during the night, hooray! And it has a sharp enough point. She has fancy light powers…

…that she has no idea how to actually use.

Perhaps now that she’s in the Little Palace, the lair of all Ravkan Grisha, it might happen this time? Might there be something in the air, if she tried again?

Alina sucks in a big breath and tries it again. And - nope. Yet a-fucking-gain, shaking her hands doesn’t do the trick. Nor does clasping her palms together in various curious ways like she’s seen the Summoners do, and then shaking them. Nor does saying ‘Let there be light!’ and wiggling her fingers.

Right. New plan! Another new plan, one more new plan before no more plans! Looking under the pillow, she has the letter opener she stashed last night. Anyone trying to sneak up on her will surely tremble at the sharp enough point of her trusty weapon! Yes, all she has to do is threaten to stick them with the pointy end. What else does she have? Her cartography kit, also still under the pillow; that and the clothes she’s standing up in are really all she has.

Ah.

It seems that she doesn’t even have the clothes she was standing up in. Someone must have come in during the night and taken her stuff and the kefta that she knows she left at the foot of the bed.

Someone was in here while she was asleep, watching her. Someone, some thing. Staring at her, and she didn’t hear them.

If they’d felt inclined towards a bit of bloody murder, she’d have been a daft snoozing sheep with her belly and throat and all her other soft places on display. All ready for a stabbing, and never mind the pointy end under her pillow.

Alina can’t think like this. It doesn’t do any good to think like this! Someone came in, they saw, they conquered their revulsion and took her clothes, they left, and she’s still alive.

If someone is hiding under the bed. If they’re down there, they surely won’t suspect anything while Alina’s very carefully getting on her front to lean through the curtains without jostling them and looking at the mattress, and then the bed frame, and then not under the bed frame, not just yet. She should wait a moment before looking. She should wait a minute.

This is stupid. So stupid. If there is actually someone under there, what the hells is she going to do? Start trying to stab them? Attempt to get off the bed and over to the door, without getting grabbed by the ankle or hamstrung and being pulled down to dusty death? Sit quite still and wait desperately for someone outside to come and check on her, and find some way to communicate what’s going on before they get hamstrung and the assassin comes wriggling out to start slaughtering her?

Stop it, stop it! If she keeps thinking then she’ll be stuck with blood rushing into her head and her back and backside on display this time, ready for a stabbing, staring at the bedframe forever. She has to do something. So. Do something, do something!

Beyond the bedframe is the floor. There’s floorboards. They’re a bit dusty. No one’s lying under the bed, staring right at her. Nobody on the far side of the bed, getting to their feet and about to strike at her legs and backside up top. Wait, be sure! All right, no one crouched at the bottom of the bed, ready to pounce. Just floorboards. Oh, thank saints.

By craning her neck to look around the bedroom again that it’s light and getting lighter, Alina does another estimate of the distance, even after walking the route several times yesterday. Still fifteen paces to get from the bed to the door, or for someone outside to reach the bed. Less, of course, if she or someone were in a hurry.

Forget wiggling her fingers for any measly light powers; Alina should dig her nails into her palms until her heart settles down and all the terror sweat she’s accumulated starts cooling. Once she’s got herself up right again and is sitting comfortably among the pillows, then she’ll begin. She squeezes for the old reliable pain to flare up. There’s the familiar feel of her skin so tight and ready to burst under her fingernails. In her right hand it seems as if her age-old scar is going to split open all the way across her palm, to her thumb! It’s like when Kirigan was just starting to scratch her with his creepy ring blade.

Of course, it’s only now that she thinks: is it breaking her skin that lets the light out? Would her nails do the trick, or does it need a sharp enough point?

Alina’s gut squirms when she looks down to her lap and the letter opener nestled within. It politely, firmly says no.

Her gut is very wise. It far outstrips her brain. If breaking the skin was all it took then she would have blinded the drüskelle right after he cracked her forehead open. She’d have been bleeding light every time she nicked a finger with her pen knife or scratched herself. Hells, she stuck a bit of broken crockery into her palm to fox the Grisha testers and squeezed, for fuck’s sake, and that did nothing.

Alina relaxes at last and sets her palms free, so as to let the pain burn itself up and out. The warmth built under her skin stays, that faint throbbing ache, throbbing – saints, it’s the first time Alina’s thought of this in years, why does it come to mind now? Those evenings when she was tiny, chasing the flickering fireflies and making her own little lights! She’d thought she imagined or dreamed those times but now in the, ha, the light of day, she clearly hadn’t.

Why’s she wasted so much time on this? This thing inside her she doesn’t trust, that she does not want? This isn’t helping her.

The key in the door clicks, which is bad, and it opens which is, oh, so much worse.

Remember, fifteen paces from the door to the bed. There’s a whole gaggle of them advancing. Hopefully assassins don’t come in gaggles? There’s time enough to grab a pillow and hide her lap and any glimpse of the letter opener or everything that might show beneath her shift, then the drapes are pulled back by please not a drüskelle, please not a drüskelle.

By a woman. Who, if she isn’t Godmother Fox from the stories, is clearly trying very hard to look like she is, with that hair and those eyes that Alina is sure could turn yellow in a blink, and that tilt of her head like she’s considering whether to snap and bite.

Everything that’s happened to Alina since she dragged everyone into the Fold and only she and Mal came out has been so utterly insane, so. Fine. Godmother Fox, trotting about the Little Palace, might as well show up at this point.

‘Good, you’re up.’ Godmother Fox’s head tilts a little further, looking more confused than likely to snap. ‘Are you all right?’

‘You startled me.’ And the women beyond Godmother Fox worry her. At least this fox lady has some colour in her, her eyes and that glorious blazing hair, but six more women in a row, all done up in identical white gowns with their heads wrapped up like corpses, and all of them staring dead at her? This is how horror stories begin. The point of the letter opener is digging into Alina’s thigh and she expects at any moment for it to poke a way into the meat of her. Maybe they’ll get to see whether she actually bleeds light after all.

‘Well, I’ll be certain not to make any more sudden movements. Up, up.’

Two of the other women in white get Alina fast by the arms. The pillow slides off her lap and just as she gets one foot on the floor so they can’t outright drag her off the bed something bangs right next to that foot, a rat, a Fjerdan assassin who was hiding really hard under the bed all along?!

Or, it could be the letter opener. Landing on the floor. Alina tries to force some spit back into her mouth.

There’s the slightest curl at the corner of Fox-lady’s mouth while she looks at the sodding letter opener and then meets Alina’s eyes again.‘That’s certainly a first.’

‘It was in case anyone attacked me during the night.’

‘A very sensible precaution, but thankfully no longer necessary. The Little Palace is the safest place in all of Ravka.’

Alina decides to test that, and also test how much the women in women are inclined to keep hold of her. She jerks her arms and they let go right away, so, all right! This is reassuring! Already a massive improvement over previous moments of captivity and being sent to the brig. Except: ‘Someone came in while I was sleeping and stole my clothes.’

‘That would have been me.’

There’s surely several ways to respond to that at this very moment, but Alina sticks with the safest. ‘What?’

‘I came to take your measurements last evening, but you were sound asleep and I hated to wake you.’

So...is it still creepy if she was being watched by someone like Fox-lady?

…yes. Yes, it is. ‘So you took my clothes?’

‘Would you rather that I’d measured you while you were asleep?’

‘No!’

‘Well, then. Get the bath started.’ As two women in white dart off and Fox-lady judges Alina’s face, she clearly decides on a different tack. ‘There have been oprichniki at your door since you first entered this room. Anyone who wishes to reach you has to go through several ranks of guards to get this far. And all that I did with your clothes was pass them along to someone who had far more need of them.’

‘Right, but need them for what?’ Since there are lots of things someone can need a person’s dress for. Alina is so very glad she kept her drawers on under her shift.

‘You’ll see, very shortly. However, I still need to take your true measurements, so keep quite still.’

Which is not the most reassuring thing a woman can hear when she’s outnumbered four to one and standing in only her shift.

She tries not to breathe while Godmother Fox walks about her and makes various soft noises that could mean anything from approval to disbelief to despair. She’s so glad that she crossed her arms over her breasts, right until Fox-lady tells her to uncross and extend them, like a scarecrow or a saint in an icon. It feels like she’s surrendering, or making herself a prime target for a sharp shooter, all her goods on full display in very convenient and unprotected stabbing positions once again. Then Godmother Fox whips out a long marked ribbon and starts with the measuring of various bits of her body, dividing her up like she’s a stretch of land to be charted and calling out the distances to her attendants.

It seems that, despite her bearing and her voice and all the embroidery and gold thread in her clothes, Fox-lady might not be an actual noble born lady; what with all this measuring and how close her hands are getting to Alina’s armpits and feet, none of which have had much of a wash during the journey to get here. Or before the Fold, either. Might she be General Kirigan’s housekeeper, the holder of the keys for the Little Palace? Fox-lady tells Alina to raise her arms a little higher, passing the ribbon around her back and then holding it tight about her breasts. Somehow this is the moment when she gets the nerve to ask: ‘What’s this all for?’

‘I’m simply making sure my estimates were correct. Which naturally they were, give or take a tiny amount, but I always like to make absolutely certain. Get my records to the team so they can make the final adjustments. Now, time for your bath.’

As they hurry Alina through the curtains to the next room, there’s a moment to see the huge bath has been filled to brimming while she was distracted, then either side of her a woman ducks down, grasps the hem of her shift and yanks it up over her breasts and face, whoop, it’s suddenly very chilly in here and it’s a struggle to get her hands back to her sides and not slap at another woman pulling down her drawers. There’s no need to cover her breasts and cleft like she’s ashamed. It’s just being naked. Not like she chose to whip her kit off to shock and appall all the fully clothed people.

Actually, with all of the women closing in now, perhaps she should have crossed her arms; it’d give them fewer handholds to seize and drag her towards the tub. Saints! Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Pulled from room to room, in and out of beds and shifts and fuck that’s hot baths, by women who clearly don’t like having to touch her and will hurt her in their attempts to get it over and done with? She’ll go mad before the day is out and stab someone after all, or at least bite them.

They’re very efficient, though, this lot. She can feel layers of skin coming off with each scrape of the sponge. The First Army would want them to help with handling and moving canons! And bloody saints, are they going to wash her hair??? Immediately, completely worth it. Yes, even worth having this particular attendant trying to pull her scalp off in the effort of undoing her braid, and before that having her goods on display to the whole room. Totally worth it. She doesn’t know what they’re slathering in her hair, what’s in it, what it smells of, but she loves all of it. She’s going to be so clean!

There’s a brush on her thigh which surely this time is a rat. Not on your life!

It is not a rat. It is one of the women, caught with her hand trapped tight between Alina’s thighs. She does also look like a drowned rat; she probably got the brunt of the water when Alina slammed her legs together and caused a massive wave. On the one hand, thank fuck and Sankt Mattheus that there isn’t actually a rat popping up between her legs like that time in the latrines. On the other hand: ‘What, what, what are you doing?’

‘Washing you.’ The woman rescues her hand from between Alina’s legs to show off the wash cloth. She even does a sarcastic little wave with it, with an air of (be charitable, be charitable!) stupid girl.

‘Thanks, but I can do that bit myself.’

The woman says nothing else to Alina; she does say to one of her fellow scrubbers, in Old Ravkan for some reason, ‘I heard all the wenches in the First walk stark naked to the bath tents and back, on offer for all the world to see.’ Oh, there’s the reason. ‘Guess she decided to be a prissy prude and guard her snatch with her life.’

We didn’t do anything like that, thanks, and in the First we also don’t just go around sticking our fingers up each other without so much as asking first…is what Alina wants to say, which means she probably shouldn’t. So instead she braces herself against the side of the tub, kicks her left leg up and, hooray! She manages not to flash everyone in the attempt and doesn’t nail the bitch in the chin or take her eye out with a toenail, but the key thing here is that she could have and the bitch clearly knows it. ‘Give me a cloth or something, I can wash myself.’

‘Please, do not trouble yourself. It is the duty and the pleasure of these women to attend upon you.’ So says Godmother Fox, watching the proceedings from a chair, with great interest and without amusement. ‘And Tatiana especially will attend upon your feet.’

Alina considers this, lowering her foot because it’s hard to hold it in this position for long and looking back up at the woman formerly known as bitch and now known as Tatiana, in time for their eyes to meet. It is evidently not Tatiana’s pleasure to attend upon Alina’s feet. Who can blame her? She might actually be better off scrubbing Alina’s cleft; she’s at least been managing to keep that somewhat clean even despite the saddle sores collected over two thirds of Ravka, and it doesn’t have these toenails. But she’s not letting this woman anywhere near her privates, and Tatiana’s not going to clean Alina’s feet, so it seems they’ve reached an impasse.

‘Oh? Or might it be that you do not wish to touch the Sun Summoner’s feet? Surely not, Tatiana? Surely instead, you do not feel worthy of touching her feet?’ There’s that tilt of Godmother Fox’s head again. Fox-lady is not at all quizzical despite her questioning, she already knows the answer and she’s deciding whether to bite. ‘In which case, you had better go and make yourself worthy. I find we have no further need for you.’

Fox-lady does a very good scathing stare. Alina’s not even the one being flayed by those eyes, and she half wants to hide under the water and not come up for air.

‘Out.’ Godmother Fox literally sounds like a fox barking. The wash rag drops into the water and Alina feels the breeze of Tatiana fleeing like a rabbit.

‘Now, please. Do pick up the pace. We don’t want to keep the Emperor waiting.’

There is a great stillness of women. Somehow there is a cold sweat starting up all over Alina, under the hot bath water. In the dead silence, her toes tingle and her toe nails fall off.

Alina says ‘What the fuck’ and everyone immediately tries to drown her for it, water dumped over and over her head, driving her further into the tub, her hair’s surely clean enough, soaking, tangling and strangling and it’s smothering her but they won’t let her free to pull it out of her nose, they’re going to take her fingernails next before she drowns! There is no fucking way she’s drowning in a bathtub and never getting back to Mal! ‘The fuck you will, get off!’

‘Leave her nails to me.’

They retreat to her shoulders and armpits, thankfully avoiding her breasts and she can get her hair off her face. Someone squishes her hand around a sponge, so she’d better get busy washing. Can’t go to see the Emperor fuck she’s going to see the Emperor all sticky and sour. There goes the grime and what might be most of her skin, floating all scummy upon the water. She feels quite peeled and fully boiled but she still has her fingernails.

Hoisted out of the bath like wet laundry but instead of being wrung out, they’re patting her dry as if she’s a newly finished letter. Isn’t she supposed to be in bleeding agony from her fallen toenails? Did the heat of the water kill the pain? Because there they still are, shiny, short and neat and utterly unbloodied. Are they still the same nails and she mistook, or did new ones shoot up to replace them?

While she’s contemplating her toes, the women launch a sneak attack and wrap her up in what must be some kind of cloth, but it honestly feels like cool water that’s yet somehow dry. It feels like she’s inside the General’s special flask when it turns vodka into water. She’d love to have some vodka right now. More than half a flask, cups and cups of it, then she’ll be pleasantly numb for when she’s trotted out in front of the Emperor and probably at least a few nobles, with her luck, all expecting a Sun Summoner straight out of The Lives of Saints and getting her instead. And it’s all going to be very terrible but she won’t care because she’ll be drunk off her tits!

Yet another woman comes forward without attacking, only holding up a towel. ‘For your hair, Sun Summoner; we’ll need to get it dry.’ Very true, she can’t just be dripping all over the place. She scrapes the hair back from her forehead and temples to help, just as she spots a gleam of light at the edge of her sight. Did she do that? Please let her have done that, then they’ll have something more to show the Emperor than a Buryat girl with nothing more to her than magically regrowing toenails! But no. It’s just the light catching in a cut glass, held out on a tray by one more woman.

This is her life now too, people waiting to offer things to her. No more Petya holding instruments out without even looking at Alina, knowing she’ll take them, or Alexei handing her a cup of milk, or Raisa shoving tent canvases into her arms, or Boris telling her to pick that up, we need to move, or that bastard cook refusing to give her any supper. No more of that. Now it’s curtsies and trays bearing glasses full of what turns out to be ice cold water, not vodka, which on the one hand dammit and on the other hand huzzah, because showing up in front of the Emperor even slightly off her tits is a fun fantasy but if she actually did it for real, it would put a decided crimp in her plan to stay alive long enough to find Alexei and Mal and Alexei.

It’s incredible how every part of her is sodden but her throat, which is so dry that the sides of it are sticking together. The water’s oh so cold, every single time she swallows some she has to gasp for more air and thaw her throat out again for another swig but she can’t stop because it’s such lovely, lovely cold water, how do they get it so cold?!

When Alina can think beyond the lovely cold again, there are only three women in white left about her; Godmother Fox, the woman who gave her the water and is waiting for her to give the glass back, and a woman setting out loads of dishes on the main table near the bed, who might also be the one who wrapped up her hair. Looking back from the door, perhaps after having watched the other women leave, Fox-lady seems a tad softer about her mouth and eyes. ‘I deeply apologise for Tatiana.’

Right, right. Tatiana and her bitchiness. ‘I’ve heard a lot worse.’ If things were ordinary Alina might still be upset about that for a while, but today fuck they’re dragging me before the Emperor and he’s expecting me to show off my supposed light powers that I have no idea how to actually fucking use it seems very small in the grand scheme of things.

‘But it was an exceedingly poor welcome for you, and I am truly sorry for it. Thankfully, it means we have ample reason for her never to be allowed in your presence again. Were you otherwise pleased with your attendants?’

‘They were all right? I suppose? Except for the dragging and the shoving. I liked it when they washed my hair, but I’d much rather have done the rest by myself.’

‘Good, good; then we can safely release them from your service as well. Olga and Tasiya will suffice.’

Olga bobs behind the tray, Tasiya bobs while placing the last dish and both of them duck their heads when Alina says ‘Thank you.’ Only two names to keep track of, then, thank saints, and they’re easy to tell apart even when they’re both all muffled up in white. That leaves Fox Lady, whom Alina can’t really go on calling Fox Lady or Godmother Fox; and Fox Lady clearly spots her moment and seizes it in her jaws, positioning herself front and centre. ‘For myself, I am Yevgeniya. But you must call me Genya. And you must also eat.’

How could this image of a woman possibly think that Alina would ever address her so intimately, or that she could eat at a time like this? She couldn’t even chew a bite of oh, oh wow. Not even a bite of salted salmon, blini, rye bread with sour cream, smoked fish, chicken noodle soup, pickled cucumber, herring salad, beef tongue with horseradish, dumpling, buttermilk pancakes with fish eggs, honey cake, or cottage cheese pancakes!

Well, perhaps one blini. With a spoonful of jam, why not?

As soon as she’s sat down someone pushes the chair closer to the table, so there’s less need to reach. So much choice! It’s bizarre how Alina’s suddenly craving that one particular blini just within spearing range. How can she be so hungry at a time like this? But the bath was incredibly hot, and when is she going to get another chance to try all these beautiful jams in their dishes, shining like jewels in an icon? Someone, Olga, it’s Olga, scoops up Alina’s prize just as she’s about to reach it and puts it on her plate, and seems ready to start piling more things onto it as well, only she stops and withdraws at a soft word from Fox-lady. Both she and Tasiya leave in a hurry, but they certainly got a better dismissal than Tatiana. Possibly better than the other women as well; Alina really was dead to the world while downing her lovely cold water.

‘They’re good girls,’ Fox-lady, Yevgeniya, says as she watches her subordinates go. ‘I have them very well trained.’ She seems pleased by that, and she keeps seeming pleased when she gets back to looking at Alina. Once again it feels like she’s walked into some kingdom beneath the earth where people other than Mal and Alexei are happy to see her, and Alina doesn’t like it. She wants her letter opener back. While trying to plan how best to divide and conquer her steaming blini, it’s now she notices that they gave her a spoon with all these dishes, but no knife. What, so she took a blade of sorts to bed one time, and suddenly she can’t be trusted with sharp objects?

‘I’m curious; after stabbing me, what was it you were planning on doing next?’

At this rate Alina might as well have not had a bath at all, with all the terror sweat and now this hot flash of stupid girl rushing through her and lingering in all her crannies. Stupid, sweaty body. It isn’t even as if she actually stabbed anybody! If she looks up right now and sees that Yevgeniya finds this situation funny, deeming her to be cute and adorable, Alina will really want to stab her. She wouldn’t, physically she can’t (unless she wants to try cutting the lady’s heart out with a spoon) but she’ll want to, and Yevgeniya, with all her You must call me Genya, will know it.

However, while Alina’s quelling all the stabby desires raging in her breast by slicing up the unoffending blini, she does have to concede that, after all, the letter opener was yet another stupid plan. If anyone managed to infiltrate this building and get to her while she was asleep, they definitely weren’t going to be held at bay with a letter opener. In which case Yevgeniya has just cause to find her funny, but! She does not have the right!

With the blini quite savaged in place of Yevgeniya’s breast and the flood of embarrassment receding because, again, fuck they’re dragging me before the Emperor, Alina’s ready to look back up at Yevgeniya. ‘Not sure. Probably I’d start bitching about how I got dragged across half of Ravka to keep me ‘safe’, and then literally the first morning here I had to shank someone.’

Yevgeniya snorts. Actually snorts! She does put her hand up right quick to cover her mouth and the offending nose, but perhaps it’s more in shock that such a noise came out of a nose such as hers than because she wants to hide how she’s smiling.

‘Apologies. That was quite an image. And I shouldn’t make fun.’

‘Yes, you really shouldn’t.’ But Yevgeniya has been laughing at Alina’s words rather than Alina herself - she’s almost certain - so: ‘I wasn’t really planning to stab you. Or anyone. I’ve just been seeing assassins with axes everywhere-’ gesturing to the spot where the drüskelle smashed her head open, ‘-for some odd reason.’

‘Entirely understandable. Forgive me, but-’ Yevegeniya pulls up the towel to get a better look at the aftermath. ‘Fedyor’s work?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And Ivan didn’t heal the scar?’

‘He did not.’

‘Did you ask him to?’

‘I did not.’

‘Saints’ sake. Right.’ Yevgeniya rubs her thumb over the offending scar, without quite touching skin to skin. This time the pressure isn’t a twist; more like Alina’s own fingers wiping a dirty mark off her skin, or Kirigan’s handkerchief mopping up all that dried blood.

All right. In fairness, it did take Alina far too long to realise, but! Up until a few minutes ago she was being mobbed by six women in white and also in dread fear for her goods, her skin, her cleft, her toenails and her life. Pardon her for not paying full heed to Yevgeniya’s gown that is not actually a gown, with white gold embroidery that is gorgeous but doesn’t exactly pop. Are those needles on the shoulders???

‘I’ve never seen a white kefta before. Is it another rank of Healer?’

‘Not precisely. I’m a Tailor.’

Yevegeniya moves away to another table by the window, leaving Alina to ponder this particular title. Where’s she heard that word? Let’s see; the quarter master’s tent, being given her apportioned shirts and sarafan, that man in the far end with the massive scissors. ‘…Isn’t that someone who cuts up cloth?’

‘It is, but don’t tell the court ladies. They think they’re being really clever.’

‘So your power is cutting things? Cloth? People?’ Because if it’s the last one and if Yevgeniya does it anything like Kirigan wielding the Cut, then white is a terrible choice for garments, the blood gets everywhere and Alina should know it must be murder to get it out-

‘Quite the opposite, in fact. I fix, and I also modify.’ Out of nowhere Yevgeniya swoops in and takes Alina by the hand as if she’s about to go to one knee and kiss it like they’re in a story, passing her free hand over Alina’s fingertips and letting go before Alina can so much as go oi! and snatch her hand away. ‘Like so.’

Those are her fingernails? Before, clean after having the dirt scraped out of them but still so raggedy and torn; now, neatly trimmed and shiny and a subtle shade of pink. ‘Oh. Wow.’ And then, on reflection: ‘Did. Did you do that with my toenails as well? In the bath?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry for the shock, but they were really driving me insane.’

It’s fine. This is fine. It’s fine. It’s all done now. They were gone, they grew back, it isn’t as if they can stick the bits that got shaved off back on, and her nails do look lovely, so Alina lets Yevegeniya have her other hand for the same treatment. ‘Thank you. A bit of warning would have been nice, though. I thought for a second I’d caught leprosy.’

‘As if your day couldn’t have gotten any worse.’

It’s not funny. Really it isn’t. Alina shouldn’t laugh.

‘I’ve never met a Tailor before.’

‘At present my talents aren’t called for much among the Second, but they are very much in demand amongst the court. My main duties are tied between serving Elizabeth and occasionally Peter, and saving various court ladies from sagging bosoms. Honestly, there are days I’d rather be facing the Fjerdans.’

‘Elizabeth. And Peter.’

‘Yes?’

‘You mean the Grand Duchess Elizabeth?’

‘Yes.’

Every which way Alina looks there is painted across her sight O fuck, I fantasised about stabbing the Grand Duchess’ handmaid in the tits.

Well. Shit.

#IT IS DONE #(collapses in a heap)#fic: all is bliss #shadow and bone fanfiction #shadow and bone fanfic #shadow and bone #the great #the great hulu #the great fanfiction #the great fanfic #alina starkov #genya safina #long post

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