Talpy



Recent works

Recent bookmarks

  1. Public Bookmark *

    Tags
    Summary

    Ilya. He is still sleeping fitfully in Irina’s bed, face crumpled and lips turned down. Irina leans over him and presses a single kiss to the crease between his eyebrows, and then leans back just enough to watch Ilya’s big, blue eyes blink open at her.

    She holds a finger against her lips, waiting until Ilya nods before she straightens up and beckons him to get out of bed. When Ilya is standing, Irina helps him into a clean sweater, his coat, scarf, and hat. Ilya looks terribly confused, but allows himself to be dressed like a toddler, watching his mother curiously but without question. He is twelve years old, certainly old enough to dress himself, and maybe Grigory has a point when he insists that Irina coddles Ilya too much, but, good heavens, that face, how could she not?

    It is not until Ilya notices the suitcase by the bedroom door that his expression changes. His eyes darken at first, and then his face screws up minutely, looking at Irina with thinly veiled horror.

    “Be completely silent, solnyshko,” Irina breathes. “We have to go.”

     

    Irina Rozanova chooses differently.

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    206,821
    Chapters:
    27/27
    Comments:
    148
    Kudos:
    515
    Bookmarks:
    189
    Hits:
    13,230

    19 Jun 2026

  2. Public Bookmark *

    Tags
    Summary

    [Sokka is five when the first mark appears. 

    It writes itself in a deep red like a wound, as if someone had carved the word “nonbender” in a messy font across the knuckles of his left hand, as if it was handwritten with a knife.

    When he asks his mother, as she applies salve on Sokka’s knuckles, she sighs deeply and says nothing for a few moments. 

    “Sometimes, spirits don’t make much sense.”

    Sokka has yet to turn thirteen when he wakes up screaming in pain, about ten soulmarks all over each other between his left shoulder and his ear, red and vivid like burning flesh. Among the few words that are somehow possible to read out of the disastrous scribbling, “disrespectful” and “coward” and “burned” and “sorry sorry sorry” are the ones that stand out the most to Sokka. He thinks, at the tender age of twelve, whoever did this to his soulmate will be sorry too, one day.

    A month after Hakoda leaves him with the job of the protector at the age of thirteen, Sokka realizes, with a bitter taste in his mouth, that he’s got more soulmarks than his entire village combined.]

    Or, to have a soulmark is to carry the vilest things that your soulmate believes about themselves on your skin.

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    23,034
    Chapters:
    1/1
    Collections:
    21
    Comments:
    327
    Kudos:
    11,355
    Bookmarks:
    2,788
    Hits:
    117,593

    13 Jun 2026

  3. Public Bookmark *

    Tags
    Summary

    The first thing that people notice when they look at Ilya is the way that the word disappointment carves itself in jagged, angry letters along his jawline. This is not the worst mark he bears—it’s just the most visible.

    (In which the most hurtful things your soulmate has thought about themself appear as words cut into your body. Shane and Ilya find reasons to love each other anyway.)

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    19,851
    Chapters:
    1/1
    Comments:
    58
    Kudos:
    752
    Bookmarks:
    164
    Hits:
    4,832

    13 Jun 2026

  4. Public Bookmark *

    Tags
    Summary

    Shane and Ilya collide on the ice in 2008, and Shane's career is over before it begins.

    In 2014, when they meet each other in a club in Boston, Ilya wants to make it up to him.

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    28,933
    Chapters:
    10/10
    Comments:
    555
    Kudos:
    2,881
    Bookmarks:
    786
    Hits:
    26,268

    05 Jun 2026

  5. Public Bookmark *

    Words:
    87,871
    Works:
    3
    Bookmarks:
    393

    29 May 2026