come on Laini Taylor just give my boy a redemption arc already | edit: she really did it huh | strange the dreamer sideblog | main: @bayta-darell | AO3: SatiricalDraperies
this blog is semi-inactive so don't expect regular posting :(
do feel free to tag me in anything Strange the Dreamer-related and I'll share it here!
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Lazlo wanted to go and find out. That was his dream, daring and magnificent: to go there, half across the world, and solve the mysteries for himself.
It was impossible, of course.
But when did that ever stop any dreamer from dreaming?
Once upon a time, a sister made a vow she didn't know how to break, and it broke her instead.
Once upon a time, a girl did the impossible, but she did it just a little too late.
Once upon a time, a woman finally gave up, and the sea was waiting. It was the wrong sea--red as blood and just as warm--but falling felt like freedom, like letting go of trying, and on the way down she took her first full breath in centuries.
Then it was all over.
Or maybe it wasn't.
The ones who know can't tell us, and the ones who tell us don't know.
New book I’m obsessed with? Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor.
The hopefulness? The compassion for humanity after generations of hurt at their hands? The whimsical return to childlike wonder brought on by fairytales and reading? I haven’t felt this way since watching 11’s Doctor Who. Give me 14 of them right now.
Calling all the Strange the Dreamer fans of this site (idk how many of you are out there)
Would anyone be interested in an Orpheus and Eurydice AU of the story? :3
Because I'm working on a fic like that rn (not long, might be just a one-shot, of a few chapters at best), so if there are people here who might be interested I might post it :3
Azareen puts her foot down when Eril-Fane starts talking about releasing her from their marriage vows.
The first time, she slaps him. "How dare you?" She hisses, and that is the end of that conversation.
"No," she says, the second time, and turns on her heel.
"You don't get to run before you talk to me," she says the third time. "I know we're both traumatized, and we're not making any big life choices now."
The fourth time, they argue like cats and dogs. Azareen knows nothing of what his last three years have been like, except what she's seen herself, because he won't say a word. "You're a coward," she throws at him. She pulls out all the cards she knows will hurt, just in case they might break through to him. "Your mother cried herself to sleep for years, I cried myself to sleep for years, and now you won't comfort us or accept our comfort. You tell the others not to be ashamed of what was done to them, and then you blame yourself for the same thing. Hypocrite!"
The fifth time Azareen kisses him until he shuts up. Literally just presses her mouth against his. He doesn't struggle, doesn't seem to know how to react.
He doesn't try a sixth time.
Instead, he sits down next to her on a dusty bench on a quiet morning. He presses closer than he has since Skathis took him to the citadel, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. He stares into the wall and his voice is wooden, but he talks.
Azareen gives him her silence, her time. He talks until he is hoarse and then he talks some more. He talks for three whole years worth of horror. And when he is done he hangs his head, and she's never seen him so defeated. He is proud, her husband, and strong and steady and larger than life. Azareen hates Isagol for bringing him so low. Hates all of the gods for their cruelty.
Azareen doesn't say anything. She simply rests her head on his shoulder, letting him carry all of her weight, trusts him with it. Lets him feel like he's doing something for her.
That is when he confesses that he doesn't trust himself any more. To tell right from wrong. Hate from love.
"I trust you with my heart," Azareen says, and that is that.
Fandom: Strange the Dreamer
Pairings: Azareen/Eril-Fane, Eril-Fane & Sarai, Eril-Fane/Isagol (mentioned), Korako & Novali
Rating: E
Warnings: Canon-typical violence, Blood & Gore, Character death, Non-con, Canon Compliant, the Carnage - and a bunch more, please beware! This is the version with the inevitable ending.
Read here on AO3.
he stood (shooting the messenger)
Isagol's games were insidious, and she liked to make Korako an unwilling participant. Asked her to bring the cinnamon-haired infant to her, displayed little Sarai like a triumph in front of Eril-Fane. Dangled the child within arm's reach just to see the conflict within the man as his protective instincts warred with disgust. At times, Isagol let him keep the memories of the infant for days at a time. Sarai fit in his large palms perfectly, a little rosebud mouth open in a yawn, and Korako watched from the doorway as the man cradled his child gently. So while Korako had little faith that his protective instincts, his honor, would win out, there was a chance. If only she had the time.
(She did not.)
They came around the corner as a mob, the largest and bloodiest man at the front. She met his eyes, placed herself squarely in the middle or the corridor to the nursery, and raised her hands in an universal gesture of surrender, pleas immediately spilling from her lips.
"Hear me out, Eril-Fane, please. The children, they can be–" her begging was cut short by his sword, thrust into her chest. His eyes were cold, and he didn't hesitate.
Fandom: Strange the Dreamer
Pairings: Korako & Eril-Fane, Eril-Fane & Sarai, Azareen/Eril-Fane, Korako & Novali, Eril-Fane/Isagol (mentioned)
Rating: E (for safety)
Warnings: Canon-typical violence, Non-con, etc. Please read the full tags on Ao3. This one is the one with the happier ending - no Carnage.
Read the fic here on Ao3.
i'm the albatross (i swept in at the rescue)
"It's alright," Korako said. "The big man, Sarai."
"Big man, " Sarai repeated, and started walking towards the warrior covered in blood. Her gait was no longer unsteady, and she crossed the distance easily. Eril-Fane visibly wrestled with his instincts for a bit, then handed his sword to the man beside him and knelt down on one knee to receive his daughter. She climbed trustingly into his arms when he opened them hesitantly, snuggling against his chest, and he lifted her off the floor, rising immediately. Eril-Fane shifted the girl to his left arm, balancing her on his hip like he had done it a thousand times before. He reclaimed his sword, and then stood still for a moment, undecided.
"Within hours?" He confirmed. Korako nodded, then leaned her head back against the wall. It would be a waiting game now, and she wasn't sure she'd be allowed to stick around for it.
"Mhmm," she hummed, offering up her throat. "They could be sent away," she suggested softly. "To orphanages far away from here. Just let them live, Eril-Fane."
He didn't answer.
-----
A Christmas gift for @tunguszka20
it's the wrong kind of place (to be thinking of you)
A New Year's present in case there's any other Azareen/Eril-Fane fans out there!
It was too raw to talk about, Eril-Fane thought. He had not said a word about his three years in the Citadel to anyone, besides the absolute necessary. Shame and guilt and grief and a twisted network of emotions, tangled like vines in his chest, kept him quiet.
He’d committed crimes he was unable to voice out loud. He’d slit the throat of a goddess he had been sure that he loved. He was still sure a part of him did, even if he logically knew she hadn’t earned or deserved that love. He’d broken so many of his principles under her thrall. He’d broken his marriage vows.
And then he had killed–
It did not bear thinking of.
Read on AO3 here. Please beware of the warnings and tags.
‘“you’re a storyteller. dream up something wild and improbable,” she pleaded. “something beautiful and full of monsters.”
“beautiful and full of monsters?”
“all the best stories are.”’
laini taylor always entwining beauty and horror in her stories, acknowledging that one cannot exist without the other, and that they in fact enhance one another. that the binary must exist at the cost of beautiful storytelling.
Korako was there, kneeling in the entrance to the nursery. On her shoulder the white, spectral bird that haunted the streets of...His mouth swallowed around the taste of ash at even the thought of his city's false name. His hands were covered in blood, it streaked across his chest and his face in terrible splashes. Where his sword hung in his hands it dripped to the floor painfully loud amidst the silence. The Citadel had never been this quiet before. Always in some corner there was sound and life and existence.
Now the blue of it was stained red in too many places to count. Viscera and blood from not just the gods but those too who's minds had been too broken to allow to live. They who cried at the discovery of the bodies instead of cheered, they who turned on them with threats and fear and grief. In his chest Eril-Fane felt that same grief try to stir time and time again but his fury kept cutting it back each time. He couldn't afford to let a single thought stray him from his task. He raised his sword, stolen from the collection of the god king, prepared to strike the Goddess of Secrets down when she spoke, her eyes meeting his.
"The children-" She appeared to cut herself off, voice thick with her own unshed tears. "Their talents-" A man makes painful choices.
Eril-Fane's blade swung true and her head rolled into her own pleading and outstretched hands before her body slumped over. When he stepped over her body into the nursery he saw two women, nursemaids, already dead and couldn't decide if Korako had done this or not. She'd not had any blood on her hands or her clothes but that didn't mean she wasn't capable. Already several of the chil- godspawn he corrected himself lay dead in their cots. Now was the time to finish them off.
For Azareen, his beauty, what choice but simple duty? These thoughts consumed his mind but they were not enough to drown out the screams of the terrified and dying children around him. He was not the only one dirtying his hands though. They all had a past to bury in this room.
And that's how you go on. You lay laughter over the dark parts. The more dark parts, the more you have to laugh. With defiance, with abandon, with hysteria, any way you can.
