𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔡𝔢𝔞𝔱𝔥𝔩𝔢𝔰𝔰 ꤪꤨꤪꤪ

hi !! hello !! unnecessary yapfest and meta that i'll tidy up at some point, but the classicist in me decided to lock tf in for an ancient myth verse and also i just find this rabbit hole sooooo interesting and potentially relevant to buyan's (and viy's) primordial lore !! might have to do a part ii about koschei's maternal roots in an ancient context, but first focusing on his paternal roots, i think the closest equivalent would be the cimmerians. historically, they were indo-european horse archers from the late-bronze age and iron age who occupied the sea of azov region and spread towards the anatolian region. they were later displaced by the scythians and would be considered one of many ancient ancestors of the crimean tatars today. however, in greco-roman epics and poems, the cimmerians were mythologized as a society living right at the border of the underworld. . . you know, like the country of death !! look how gothic and gloomy homer gets when he describes them in the odyssey:

we reached the limits of deep-flowing ocean, where the cimmerians live and have their city. their land is covered up in mist and cloud; the shining sun god never looks on them with his bright beams— not when he rises up into the starry sky, nor when he turns back from the heavens to earth. destructive night blankets the world for all poor mortals there.

drawing inspiration from this, there were a few other poets who mythologized the cimmerians in a similar manner, like when ovid sets their land as bordering the chthonic house of hypnos in metamorphosis:

near the cimmerians there's a deep-set cave inside a hollowed peak, the hearth and home of sluggish sleep. phoebus' rays can't reach it— not when he rises, reaches noon, or sets. the ground sprouts misty clouds and dusky gloom. no sleepless rooster sings to wake aurora. no anxious dogs nor geese [...] no beasts, no flocks, no branches shaken by the wind, no cries of human voices echo through it.

or the spookiest and most relevant culmination of the mythos from valerius flaccus in his version of the argonautica. after the argonauts killed their host (king cyzius of the doliones) they receive advice from mopsus (a seer within their crew) on how to cleanse themselves of the miasma (greek concept of "blood guilt" or spiritual pollution) by performing a chthonic mystery that comes from the land of the cimmerians. he says:

𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐎𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟕, 𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟖. It's been two days since Tatia's, which means two-whole days' worth of photographs, videos, and uncordial campus commentary, with more yet to come, have been pickled for safekeeping on the internet, each pixel a crystal of salt, each hot take like sour vinegar, soaking in a brine that will only get more pungent with time. In just two days, Marzanna Seitbekova had begun living a rather different life. And in just two days, her sense of what a dollar was worth had also shifted quite considerably -- forty-eight hours and some quarter-life crisising later, and an $1,900 flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, then Frankfurt to Almaty didn't seem all that expensive anymore.

There's still time left to decide.

At least the drive up to the house was a peaceful thirty minutes; the stars are collecting in the sky like silverlight beetles, spying on her, rumoring, in a way she didn't quite mind. No music plays. No people are tittering. There's just the coolness and sound of wind gentling in from the window rolled down, and its even rustling upon a little pink paper; directions to the farm that Inna had given her, drawn, of course, in unimpeachable, old-money cursive, and ink as blue as swan lake.

The house itself had seen better days, though the bones of it are strong, not constructed from dreams and catalogue paper the way most houses are these days. They make dollhouses for little girls shaped like this one, Marzanna thinks, a pleasant thought she hopes might soothe the tickling beneath her skin when she walks the path up to the creaking stairs, and raps her cold knuckles on the paint peeling off the door.

It doesn't.

then he tried to speak again, dimmer this time though no less stubborn. his mouth tauter, his shoulders stiffer. defiance glimmered there in his grey eyes, a hint of the real personality that lurked beneath a veneer of manners and private schoolboy charm. (he both hated and liked koschei's perceived immunity, it was a jolt to his carefully crafted expectations.)

here were creatives. madmen. alchemists, even. and their struggle to turn a dream into gold ( or a truly immortal legacy ) was about as terrible and raw and cut-throat as any other war. most dreams were guaranteed not to survive it. it's why the conservatory culls the weak and mediocre far before they even reach their senior years. so why bother to make friends? or fear to make an unsolicited enemy or two when it was the stinging but most tangible proof of genius?

koschei remembers sitting through the flickers of james' own, when lebedeva had dragged him to see hamlet in support of a friend; even as a five-minute fool, preening for royal favor, there wasn't a single seat in that audience that hadn't been endeared to him. he'd loathe to admit himself briefly included. even now, immeasurably annoyed as he'd been, it was still a deliberate effort not to fall prey to james' well-spun charms.

as long as no one else compares. ( as long as she keeps coming back. )

❛❛ altruism. is that what we're calling it? ❜❜ as if he'd even be here tonight if his own scholarship weren't on the line. or that he hadn't found himself cast in an underdog's position enough times to know the idea of this little torture ritual had been seeping from her head to the root all night. taunting and elusive as she seems, they're both where they want to be: poised in the balancing act between a fawn for the taking and a snake in the grass. he fawns just a bit longer. taken by how artful the flutist's fingers were with his undressing. her scratches over the deep-breathing drum of his torso have him suck in a sharp breath, loosened into a self-satisfied hum. ❛❛ you haven't heard then: i'll have to be a blue bird this season. rescuing maidens from the pasha. ever so eager to please a friend. ❜❜

𓆩 ♔ 𓆪 IT'S ALIVEEE !!!!

For once, she obeys Koschei, if only because the tessellated micas that made up the scales along her joints shiver upwards. Between his first words and the last sweet kiss of his breathing upon her brow, she sifts her reaching fingers through the air, knowing that these clusters of fresh, saline pinks and cyans, so unlike the parched and ugly grains found high in the towers of the Chernosvyat, can only mean one thing. And her heart, in a defiant act of mutiny, climbs up her throat-- to demand at last its share over her senses.

Sands that shade of Caspian black, a sea glade of grown lavenders, waters braided with brack; forgetting both herself and the very notion of speech altogether, eyes gone fluttering and wide, she wriggles like a taffy newt out of his grasp, perhaps too dizzy to notice that familiar hex of shards upon her toes when she stands on her own. She looks back at him just once, but it is a very long once, an afraid and true and Marzanna-named once, and then darts ahead.

It lasts a while, all her playing. All her testing of the might of the Tsar's enchantments between her curious fingers, and the limits of her own nature for prying very deeply into things. Several times did she chase and try to catch the shadows as though they were fireflies, sipped from the flowers so nurtured by the mysterious Black Sea, and many, many times did she feel among the waters the way a sailor clutches his maid after a lonely and long voyage. So full of frenzy and distraction was she that, when tiredness at last began to take its place inside of her, she had forgotten to discard the greater portion of her feeling into the wind; a routine that she nearly never neglected.

Time passes. Then, like a ribbon of falling silk, she drifts slowly into the magicked edge of the shore, sitting among lapping foams and ghost crabs that wander and click sweetly by the hem of her wet dress. And when Koschei takes his equal place beside her, he cannot see her face-- she is hiding it away in the safety of her palms.

it speaks of how easy it would be to leave his death untouched while the chance remains. ( — just a pinch of sea salt, that's all. in an instant, she would be boiled up in your cauldron. her skin no more than a fragrant froth. her bones turned into a suite of the rarest jewels ) . . . even if he'd been desperate enough, there was no such chance. for whatever the reason, koschei had been deliberate in his escorting her here with his pockets emptied of treachery. convincing himself that seeing her vanquished rather than conquered would be too costly for the war effort. that he still had control over himself and the situation. see how serenely she drifts back to the bank? at last perfectly subdued and content, he thinks. no sooner does he inch toward her than he finds himself sorely mistaken.

❛❛ why are you weeping ? stop it, ❜❜ he says — infected by the sudden burst of adella's overwhelm, though hardly in a position to demand a thing, with his being compelled to his knees over it. she fails to abide him, so his long fingers shuck past the shell of her hands. to cradle and caress her raw pearl of a face. ❛❛ adelinka . . . i do not wish to sew your eyes shut, but i will; your tears are too precious to waste over cantrips. ❜❜ terribly selfish as he could have been, there were men who would have done the unthinkable for just a drop of her sorrow; and try as he may to cheapen his gestures, this at least— the sharp discomforts that remain intolerant to her anguish, the care with which he kisses her lids to staunch her tears — was a very real and very weighty thing.