EliotQueliot

I got my art from @mariek-artblog in the mail yesterday!!!! I ordered an illustration of one of my favorite moments in the trilogy, and she also included this gorgeous extra drawing AND drew Margo on the envelope in one of my favorite costumes!!

I love the expressiveness and sweetness in Mariek's art. It feels infused with so much love for the characters and the story, and it's bringing me so much joy to be able to put these up in my house (yes I will be hanging up the envelope too!!). 🥰

Yes, I got your letter Yes, I’m doing better

queliot bingo boat quest

"Quentin."

Eliot was standing in the doorway, looking in his Fillorian court finery like he'd just detached himself from a Hans Holbein painting. He held a tumbler from the kitchen in one hand, full of whiskey, which he raised in greeting.

"You look like you've just seen a ghost," he said.

Quentin hugged him so hard that Eliot spilled his whiskey down his front, which he complained about loudly, but Quentin didn't care. He had to make sure Eliot was real and solid. It made no sense that he was here, but thank God he was. Quentin had had enough of sadness and horror and futility for one day. He needed a friend, somebody who knew him from the old days.

And seeing Eliot here, out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever, felt like proof that impossible things were still possible. He needed that too.

"It's so good to see you," he said.

"You too."

"You met Plum?"

"Yes, charming girl. I assume you're--?"

"No," Quentin said.

"Not even--?"

"No!"

Eliot shook his head sadly.

The envelopes were thick and made of the coarse bleached-white paper the centaurs made. On the first his name was written in an elegant calligraphic handwriting that Quentin recognized as Eliot’s. His vision swam; he had to sit down.

Inside it was a note. It was rolled around the flattened, dehydrated remains of what was once a single Merit Ultra Light cigarette, and it read as follows:

Dear Q,

Hell of a thing, getting you out of that dungeon. Richard showed up, finally, for which I suppose we should be grateful, though G-d knows he doesn’t make it easy.

We wanted to stay, Q, but it was hard, and getting harder every day. The centaurs said it wasn’t working. But if you’re reading this then you woke up after all. I’m sorry about everything. I know you are too. I know I said I didn’t need a family to become who I was supposed to be, but it turned out that I did. And it was you.

We’ll meet again.

--E

The disaster of the Beast had thrown off the previous year’s schedule. The regular contingent of Fourth Years had departed … [to a mysterious destination later revealed to be Brakebills South] but the second-semester group, which included [Quentin,] Eliot, [Margo], and Josh, had finished out the year at Brakebills as usual. To the extent that they speculated about it, they called themselves “the Spared.” Apparently whatever the faculty had in store for them was nasty enough as it was without the added threat of assault by an interdimensional carnivore.

…“So how come everybody comes back all skinny?” Quentin asked. [Margo] and Eliot were playing [pool], the rest of them lay on two beat-up Victorian couches. The room was small enough that they occasionally had to lean to one side to avoid the butt end of a cue.

[Eliot:] “That’s from all the skinny-dipping.”

“Hork hork hork,” said [Margo].

“Quentin should be good at that,” Josh added.

“Your fat ass could use some skinny-dipping.”

“I don’t want to go,” Alice said. “Can’t I get a doctor’s note or something? Like when they let the Christian kids out of sex ed? Isn’t anybody else worried?”

“Oh, I’m terrified.” If he was joking, Eliot gave no sign of it. He handed [Margo] the cue ball. It was decorated with trompe-l’oeil lunar craters to look like the moon. “I’m not strong like the rest of you. I’m weak. I’m a delicate flower.”

“Don’t worry, delicate flower,” [Margo] said. She made her shot without dropping her gaze, no-look. “Suffering will make you strong.”

[Having arrived at Brakebills South and turned back from geese to humans…]

“Hey, man,” Josh said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Is this place fucked up or what?”

“Doesn’t seem so bad,” Quentin said. “What time is skinny-dipping?”

“I might have been a little off base with that,” Eliot said gloomily, also probably not for the first time. “We did all get naked, anyway.”

They were all wearing identical white pajamas. Quentin felt like an inmate in an insane asylum. He wondered if Eliot was missing his secret boyfriend of the moment, whoever it was.

--The Magicians (book 1), Lev Grossman

While looking for the scene from The Magician King that I want to illustrate...just a few of the many moments that delight me in this book...all quotes are by Lev Grossman.

***

Quentin had had the room cleared out to the bare walls. ... There was some murmuring among the upper servants that such a spartan chamber was not entirely suitable for a king of Fillory, but Quentin had decided that one of the good things about being a king of Fillory was that you got to decide what's suitable for a king of Fillory.

And anyway, if it was high royal style they wanted, the High King was their man. Eliot had a bottomless appetite for it. His bedroom was the gilded, diamond-studded, pearl-encrusted rococo lair of a god-king. Whatever else it was, it was entirely suitable.

(Q sitting on the bed in silk pajamas; Eliot eventually stands by the window in a dressing gown "which looked too heavily embroidered to be comfortable")

(Q and El are watching the tournament together and whispering comments to one another)

***

Eliot walked in while Quentin was clearing the grand banquet hall. A column of footmen was filing out, carrying a chair each.

"Pardon me, Your Highness," Eliot said, "but what the hell are you doing?"

..."For the tournament. Sword fighting. You didn't see the posters?..."

"Well, can't you have it outside?"

"What if it rains?"

"What if I want to eat something?"

"I told them to serve dinner in your receiving room. So you'll have to do your receiving somewhere else. Maybe you can do that outside."

***

(Q's about to depart on Muntjac for the Outer Islands)

Eliot walked out onto the dock with Quentin to see him off.

"So," he said.

"So."

They stood together at the foot of the gangplank.

"You're really doing this."

"Did you think I was bluffing?"

"A little bit, yes," Eliot said. "Say good-bye to Julia for me. Don't forget what I told you about her."

..."I will. You'll be all right without us?'

"Better off." ...

Quentin remembered the first time they'd met, how odd Eliot's twisted jaw had looked. Now it was so familiar he didn't notice it. It looked like something natural, like a humpback whale's jaw.

...[Eliot:] "You're actually looking forward to this, aren't you?"

"If you want the truth, it's taking all my self-control just to stay standing here on the dock."

"All right," Eliot said. "Go. Oh, you've got an extra crew member. I forgot to tell you. The talking animals sent someone."

"What? Who?"

"Exactly. Who or what, I never know which. It's already on board. Sorry, it was politically expedient."

"You could have asked me."

"I would have, but I thought you might say no."

...Eliot had an air of effortless self-possession that made Quentin urgently want to be his friend, or maybe just be him period. He was obviously one of those people who felt at home in the world--he was naturally buoyant, where Quentin felt like he had to dog-paddle constantly, exhaustingly, humiliatingly, just to get one sip of air.

Quentin Coldwater and Eliot Waugh in my illustrations of The Magicians by Lev Grossman

(Quentin, Eliot, Janet [Margo], & Julia are riding through the Queenswood in Fillory. They’re chasing the Seeing Hare, one of the Unique Beasts of Fillory, which can see the future.)

“Toy with me, would you?” Eliot shouted. “Yah!”

He put the spurs to his black charger, which whinnied and reared obligingly and hoofed the empty air before lunging off the path into the woods after the hare. The crashing sound of his progress through the trees faded almost immediately. The branches sprang back into place behind him and were still again. Eliot was not shit at horseback riding.

…[Quentin is thinking about things.] The point wasn’t really to catch the hare. The point was—what was the point? What were they looking for? Back at the castle their lives were overflowing with pleasure. There was a whole staff there whose job it was to make sure that every day of their lives was absolutely perfect. It was like being the only guests at a twenty-star hotel that you never had to leave. Eliot was in heaven. It was everything he’d always loved about Brakebills—the wine, the food, the ceremony—with none of the work. Eliot loved being a king.

Quentin loved it too, but he was restless. He was looking for something else. He didn’t know what it was.

--The Magician King, Lev Grossman

“Fine. Okay. Give me the button.” [Quentin said]

…“I have something for you,” Eliot said. “I was saving it for when this was all over, but . . . well, I guess it’s all over.”

From inside his jacket Eliot brought out a silver pocket watch. Quentin would have known it anywhere: it was from the little clock-tree that had been growing in the magic clearing in the Queenswood, where all this began. Eliot must have harvested it when he went back there. It ticked away merrily, as if it were happy to see him again.

He put it in his pocket. He wasn’t in the mood for merriness. Too bad it wasn’t a gold watch: the classic retirement present.

“Thank you. It’s beautiful.” It was.

…Then Eliot hugged him, a long hug, and when he was done, he kissed Quentin on the mouth. That Quentin felt.

“Sorry,” Eliot said. “But you were kissing everybody else.”

He held out the button. Quentin’s hand shook. Even as he took it, almost before he touched it, he was floating up through cold water.

and the letter Eliot wrote him long before he woke up: