i will never get over asra and the apprentice . imagine being a teenage wayward nomadic magician w/ no family and you meet this beautiful kind soul at a masquerade while you're there performing for coins. and when the empress comes by during the parade this person ushers you into their aunt's magic shop and you become friends and then year after year you see them at the masquerade, until eventually you start staying w them for weeks at a time and then traveling again, sometimes even bringing them with you. eventually they inherit the shop and you start kind of living there, and you've fallen so deeply in love but the red plague takes over the city and your lover wants to stay and use their magic to help the sick. it's ridiculous, you have your own little hideout you could both go to on the outskirts of the city, they don't need to be a hero. but they've always been better than you. kinder, more skilled in magic, more loving. you say things you can never take back and you leave them to their fate, only to regret it weeks later and of course, of course they're gone, the shop is empty and you follow the trail of their magic to that mass grave of an island where they burn the corpses. you dig and dig until your fingers bleed but all you can find are their bones and ash.
