#aphukraineweek

[aphukraineweek]

so we’ve come to the end of aph ukraine week!! a big thank you to everyone who supported/participated, it’s been really fun! 🌻 🌻 🌻

we’ll still be reblogging any late submissions!

[meadowlarkx]

for @aphukraineweek day 6 - royalty

i wasn’t sure what to do for this theme so have beauty queen ukraine? She Cleans Up Nicely

[meadowlarkx]

for day 7 of @aphukraineweek - war (in this case, the khmelnytsky uprising of 1648)

I was hoping to write another thing for this instead, but it didn’t happen... so have short prosey ramblings??

"I know how Fortune is ever most friendly and alluring to those whom she strives to deceive, until she overwhelms them with grief beyond bearing, by deserting them when least expected. Are you trying to stay the force of her turning wheel? Ah! dull-witted mortal, if Fortune begin to stay still, she is no longer Fortune."  - Boethius, The Consolation Of Philosophy

The sun is rising in the sky, clear and not-quite-warm, moving slowly but surely until it locks into place at its zenith. Like May, moving towards summer. Light pours down on Irina through the thin grey air – white and peach and gold, glittering red as she wipes the edge of her sabre, soft-shining in her dirt-smeared hair: yellow plaits unraveling like a half-knitted project that a child tugs at until it’s a long untangled scribble of red yarn again and has returned once more to the start.

(“Yes! I remember who I am. I am the eldest child of Rus, Ukraina…”)

Her ash-streaked hair is the color of blighted wheat.

As the blood scatters across the ground in clean sweeps, painting the half-solid surface of the deep river mud near Zhovti Vody (burgundy on a slate grey background), white and yellow daffodils spring up in its wake.

  But the cheers rouse her. She casts aside her work; she stands and shades her eyes with the slow immediacy of habit.

Her lungs are still straining at the blue-red cloth of her kaftan. Her lynx eyes cut across to Khmelnytsky.

(“There is nothing left for you to do here,” and Irina wants nothing more than to keep at it until the kill, to lead the first of the overwhelming forces, ahead of even Kryvonis, to cut into Feliks’ soldiers with the sweet necessary pain of cleansing and raise the sapphire banner of Saint Michael high above their steaming bodies.

“Better,” Khmelnytsky quips, “to strike the first blows and then retain some measure of dignity. Show them you meant to do it.” (He’s careful not to mean it too much and insult her. Chernenko is mercurial: one month adoring; the next, wary. – And he will forget this advice, and soon.)

If I went back, I’d show them exactly what I mean to do, Irina thinks.

“Leave dignity to Łukasiewicz,” she says, and her grin is the same shape as her earrings, a crescent of hard, bright silver. (But she stays where she is.))

Irina looks back and – she inhales cold earth-scented air and

Her breath catches in her chest.

Her colors are waving over the encampment.

The mulberry flag glows and flickers like the flame of a torch – like fires or lanterns that can bring her Dnieper boats to shore when it’s a dark night and too near the cataracts. Beyond the earthworks, the grass rolls on and on.

She can hear the uproar somehow faintly and yet in detail – the carefully traced edges of a hand once splayed on paper. Shouts, screams, cheers, snippets of song. The disparate corpses scattered across the mud near her, the daffodils – rebirth – at her feet, seem to disappear from sight: fade and sweep away, leaving nothing but the broad expanse of space stretching ahead of her, diluted and sunlit and endless.

She’s crying now, face upturned, hot tears rising beneath her chest and cheeks, swelling into her eyes. Her face is streaked. Damp breath inhales a moment and she herself doesn’t know if she means to sing: her throat, nose, are too choked up. She sobs and claps and stands despite her knees giving out, and she cannot look away. Her mouth is moving; she is too happy to smile, too happy to call it ‘happy’ – people jostle her shoulders; it’s like standing in a sea.

There is a bonfire inside my ribs, she thinks, and cries.

(I am the cold gilded lightning of the archangel’s sword; I am separate, apart, myself, no less than you; I am the fire that devours/detonates rotten forest and raises jade-colored seedlings from the ash.)

Irina weeps over the mud and thanks God.

[theinkersartblog]

My drawing for days 4 and 5 for @aphukraineweek Ukraine as Queen Demeter for my Greek God AU

[gatoradeinthemorning]

aph Ukraine week day 6: royalty

here’s a lil poem thingy i wrote. it doesn't rly follow any of the prompts but whatever. I’m not really sure if I like it that much, but it’s all i have for today. 

she’s a regal woman but it doesn’t come easy

centuries of hardship rest on her squared shoulders

and though it’s heavy she holds her chin high

the wheat bows before her feet touch the ground

but it wasn’t always that way

before she was worshipped she was tread upon

ground into the snow like the end of a cigarette

the difference between her and a cigarette is that snow won’t extinguish her spark

she wears the headdress of a queen

upon her blonde hair tangled by the prairie wind

and the ground she walks is hard and cold

but her bare feet have grown accustomed to it

her crown has no diamonds but that’s alright

for she’s the diamond anyway.

[rainbowrocky248]

My submission for APH Ukraine week, day 4!! I know it's late @aphukraineweek Prompt: AU So here's a bunch of Nyo!Ukraine chibis!! In order: Canon military uniform, Male version of Ukraine's overalls, Gentleman AU, Sunflower AU, Cowboy AU [my personal fave ;3]

[meadowlarkx]

for day 4 of @aphukraineweek - AU

fairytale protagonist ukraine

[meadowlarkx]

for day 5 of @aphukraineweek - nature

ukraine keeps the best kitchen garden this is a fact(tm)