dei-lusional

Qifrey takes the goblet from Olruggio—half-filled, but still heavy in his hand. The corner of his mouth lifts when he notices your eyes lingering on its contents, stirred by quiet curiosity. As far as he remembers, you've never had the opportunity to imbibe before.

"Apprentice, do you want to—"

Before Qifrey can finish, you're already leaning across the table to pick up a decanter. Both men fall silent as you begin to pour carefully into an empty goblet.

"Um." Olruggio starts, visibly alarmed when the level of liquid continues creeping higher and higher. "That might be a little too much..."

You ignore him. Only when the goblet is filled nearly to the brim do you set the decanter back down, deep red swishing dangerously close to the rim as you lift it to your lips.

You take a cautious mouthful. At first, there's no reaction from you at all. Qifrey's about to gently prompt you when your face scrunches up ever so minutely.

"Euh."

Without another word, you push your goblet into his empty hand before ambling off into the festival crowd—presumably in search of water to wash the taste from your mouth. Qifrey sighs softly through his nose and looks down at the two drinks he's now holding, though the fondness tugging at the corner of his mouth ruins any real attempt at exasperation. He raises your abandoned goblet to his lips instead.

Olruggio stares after you until you disappear amongst the throng, before glancing sideways at Qifrey. "You spoil them," he says, after a while. Qifrey smiles faintly into the rim of your—his now, he supposes—cup.

"It's hard not to."

Olruggio watches him for a moment longer. For a second, Qifrey thinks he might speak further, but whatever is on his mind ultimately goes unvoiced. The two of them drink silently side by side beneath the flickering lanternlight instead, arms brushing ever so often, and Qifrey is starting to feel the faintest hum of warmth unfurling in his fingertips when a passing villager suddenly recognises him.

It's not long before Qifrey finds himself pulled into conversation. He barely manages a glimpse of Olruggio—grinning, goblet lifted teasingly in farewell—before an over-eager farmer tugs him further from the table, insisting he hear about this year's harvest. Another villager he vaguely recognises comes up to thank him profusely for removing a boulder that'd been damming the river upstream. A young couple insists he share a toast with them, while an elderly woman presses yet another cup of wine into Qifrey's hands and refuses to let him leave without trying her granddaughter's honeycakes.

By the time he manages to extricate himself and circle back to the wine tables, the powdered sugar from the pastries still clinging faintly to his tongue, he finds Olruggio sprawled face-first across the wood, snoring faintly. Qifrey stares at the two empty decanters next to him before slowly reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

He's drooling.

"…Unbelievable." Qifrey unclasps his cloak with a quiet sigh. The heavy fabric slips from his shoulders, and he gathers it carefully in his hands before draping it over Olruggio's slumped back. The man barely stirs, mumbling something utterly incomprehensible into the tabletop.

Qifrey shakes his head and goes to find you instead.

 He spots you eventually, near one of the smaller fires scattered along the edges of the square. It's quieter here, far enough from the heart of the celebrations that the festival clamour softens into a distant hum. You don't notice his approach—seated cross-legged with your back to him, next to a girl roughly your age. The flickering firelight washes over you both, casting your silhouettes in shifting glow and flickering shadow, outlined against the dark.

And the two of you are alone.

His steps slow on instinct. Even from a distance, Qifrey recognises her as the baker's daughter. He cannot make out your face from this angle but hers is plainly visible—dark curls pulled back from a heart-shaped face, a smile designed to put people at ease. Her eyes shine bright as polished amber as she speaks, hands moving expressively while the fire crackles warmly between you.

It hasn't been long since you passed the Pentacle's second test—he needs to ensure you don't accidentally let slip the secret behind magic. Qifrey lingers a few paces away, remaining just close enough to stay within earshot.

She's asking about your spells now. About the magic you've learned and yet to, the villages you've helped as a witch. Her fascination is written openly across her face, her smile bright at every answer you give. You're responding in your usual tone—brief, practical, somewhat curt—but she seems delighted to listen to them regardless. Even as Qifrey watches, she shifts closer gradually across the mat, until her shoulder bumps lightly against yours.

Quite suddenly, Qifrey realises what he's looking at. This girl isn't interested in magic. She's interested in you.

The thought lands strangely, oddly shaped and ill-fitting, a square cube shoved through a round hole. For a moment, Qifrey can only stand there half-hidden in the shadows, watching—and realising, with faint disbelief, that somewhere along the way, you've stopped being a child.

And he hadn't noticed. Not until now.

The baker's daughter is still talking animatedly beside you, chin propped in one hand as she rambles on about how exciting it must be to be a witch—learning magic, seeing things ordinary people never will. Every so often she laughs at one of your short replies, smiling as though your reticence only encourages her further. Eventually, her expression softens slightly.

"But it must get lonely sometimes, doesn't it?" she asks, tilting her head to look at you so that her dark hair spills over her shoulder. "Living all the way out there in the atelier?"

You shake your head. "I have Master," you say, plainly.

The words strike him with embarrassing force. Catch him off guard, soft and aching all at once, fingertips rolling over old bruises that have yet to fade. Qifrey still remembers what you'd said that day, by the fountain.

Master is the prettiest.

"No, I mean…" The girl blinks, then laughs softly under her breath, before nudging your shoulder lightly with hers. "Do you have someone you're interested in?"

You stare at her blankly. "What does that mean?"

Her smile widens. "It means someone you think about a lot," she explains patiently, leaning in with one hand cupped around her mouth, the ends of her hair tickling the curve of your shoulder. Qifrey can barely catch what she's saying from where he stands. "Someone whose smile makes your heart beat faster. Someone you want to kiss. Someone you like more than anyone else in the world."

Your brow furrows, before your gaze drops to your lap. From the shadows, just out of reach of the firelight, Qifrey feels a faint frisson of guilt stab through him; perhaps, he has kept you too isolated all these years as his apprentice. You should not have to learn about these things from a village girl beside a bonfire while he lingers awkwardly in the dark, hiding from your sight. As your master, Qifrey should have explained such matters himself—or at the very least, asked someone more experienced in these conversations to guide you through them.

You are frighteningly skilled in the domain of magic. You are quick to learn and quicker to understand, your mind sharper than most young witches your age, and you can navigate spells even some adults would struggle to grasp. It is his failing, then, that this conversation is leaving you aflounde—

"Oh. Then yes."

Qifrey stills.

The baker's daughter brightens at first—only for disappointment to flicker almost immediately across her face a second later. It's subtle, but unmistakeable. She leans in closer, echoing the question hovering in Qifrey's thoughts.

"Who is it?"

Qifrey should leave. This is not a conversation he ought to be listening in on; he should have walked away minutes earlier instead of lurking like a thief, making flimsy excuses for himself. He's just about to make a hasty retreat when, for some unfathomable reason, you suddenly look up and glance over your shoulder—eyes landing directly on where he stands just beyond reach of the firelight.

"Master."

Qifrey's heart vaults into his throat. Caught. "Sorry," he finds himself saying before he can think better of it. "Olruggio passed out from drinking too much, so…"

So what? His explanation trails off uselessly. The words feel awkward and clumsy in his dry mouth, slipping from his tongue without direction or purpose. Under your gaze Qifrey feels painfully transparent—as though you are picking apart every half-formed thought behind his fumbling excuse with ease. It is a deeply unsettling feeling, considering you are simply looking at him the way you always do.

Before Qifrey can scramble for another excuse—or perhaps, to flee entirely—you rise to your feet, brushing the dust from your clothes.

"It's alright. I can go."

Behind you, the girl's expression deflates with poorly concealed disappointment. It's quickly smoothed over with a smile, however, when you offer her a polite nod in farewell. Manners obliged, you cross the short stretch between you, grass crunching softly beneath your feet and fall into step next to Qifrey, the motion as easy and natural as drawing breath. Qifrey tries his best to keep his gaze from wandering as he leads the way back to the village square.

By now, majority of the festivities have begun to wind down. The two of you retrieve Olruggio from the wine tables; his friend is too drunk to do anything beyond mumble incoherently, much less offer any assistance. Qifrey quickly inks a levitating spell onto a stretcher you assemble from spare canvas and poles, and Olruggio moans tragically when you roll him onto it together.

"I'm never drinking again," he mumbles.

Qifrey sighs, one hand pressed to his forehead. "You say that every time."

"This time I mean it."

You snort softly under your breath, reaching down to cajole the stretcher into the air. "Mr. Olruggio can tell himself that tomorrow morning."

In response, Olruggio only groans.

Despite the sorry state Olruggio is in, it's a leisurely walk back to the atelier. Normally, Qifrey wouldn't mind the trek—embedded glowstones illuminate the winding path with soft pools of warm light, and the autumn wind is pleasantly cool against his cheeks—but tonight, his thoughts eat away incessantly at the edges of his mind. The question circles endlessly, its grip unrelenting, no matter how hard he tries to dismiss it.

There is someone.

Qifrey thinks hard, as you walk through the dark fields with Olruggio's stretcher floating between you, his soft snores accompanying the steady crunch of your footsteps on gravel. Who? Who have you been watching when Qifrey wasn't paying attention, thinking about, wanting to kiss? A few faces come to mind, but none feel right. And worse still is the uncomfortable realisation that he hadn't noticed—anything at all.

"Master?"

He nearly stumbles over his own feet. Qifrey's arms flail for balance, windmilling wildly, before he manages to catch himself at the last second. Faintly mortified, he glances over—only to realise belatedly you've been observing him the entire time.

"Master seems deep in thought," you say, unhelpfully.

Qifrey feels like an insect—pinned to a display card, positioned beneath a viewing glass, exposed to your wordless scrutiny—this feeling, again. He swallows and glances away, throat dry all of a sudden.

"Sorry." The admission slips out eventually, awkwardly. His own voice is oddly startling amidst the quiet rustling of wind in the fields. "I… overheard, earlier. What you and that girl were talking about."

You eye him for a moment before shrugging. "It's okay. I don't mind."

Now Qifrey just feels silly. The conversation lapses back into silence after that and Qifrey must bite his tongue to keep himself from prying further—your private life is your own, and if there are matters you've chosen not to bring to him, then he's no right to interfere. Yet on the other hand… as your master, is he not also responsible for your wellbeing beyond magic alone? For guiding you through all the fragile, complicated parts of adolescence no spellbook will prepare you for?

Unfortunately, Qifrey's own experience is painfully lacking—woefully inadequate for someone attempting to act as a proper mentor in this regard. He fights back the urge to scrunch his face up in frustration in front of you and drops his gaze to the path beneath his feet instead. Beldaruit had shoved a stack of books into his arms before he'd left the Argentgard—books about apprentice raising, books he hadn't so much as glanced through before abandoning them at the door. In hindsight, a mistake—because now, Qifrey hasn't the faintest idea how to broach this subject.

"Well," is how he ends up doing it, anyway. "The one you're interested in… what kind of person are they?"

You glance up and your eyes meet. Qifrey has to hope that the faint light of the glowstones are too dim to illuminate the desperate curiosity on his face.

"Master wants to know?"

"Of course." Your matters are Qifrey's matters, and the thought of you miserable or hurt over some unworthy fool makes something unpleasant tighten low in Qifrey's stomach. But you hadn't told him, and remembering that leaves behind a faint, irrational sting that Qifrey immediately tries to strangulate with both hands. "But if you don't want to tell me, that's alright too. I promise not to pry."

Olruggio snuffles loudly between the two of you. He'd fallen asleep before you'd even stepped foot out of the village and hasn't stirred since. Without looking, you reach over for the loose edge of his cloak and yank it carelessly over Olruggio's face.

"They're kind," you begin, after a few contemplative paces. Your voice is barely audible beneath the night wind, and Qifrey has to lean in to catch your words. "Gentle. Everything I do, they're always encouraging me, no matter how I perform. And when I'm standing by their side…" You inhale quietly, then push out a soft breath before continuing. "It feels like being under the shelter of a big tree—as if nothing can touch me there."

Qifrey searches for something to say in response and finds himself strangely empty-handed in the face of your frank response. An emotion he can't quite put a finger on twists like gnarled roots beneath his ribs.

"They sound like an amazing person," is what he says, at last.

You smile—more to yourself than him, cradling a secret you're not quite willing to place in his hands. It's soft-edged, quiet, so achingly sincere that Qifrey finds himself caught somewhere between looking away and simply staring. Terrible as the thought is, he's never imagined you capable of looking at someone that way—so unbearably tender Qifrey feels as though he's intruding simply by witnessing it.

Yet, he's been proven wrong. Someone has managed. Who? Just who managed to put such an expression on your face?

"Yeah." You nod, completely oblivious to his inner turmoil, lacing both hands behind your back as you walk. "They are."

Something sour settles against the roof of Qifrey's mouth but he swallows it down before it can fester into something uglier. Qifrey should feel relieved that you've found someone who makes you feel safe—it's what he wants for you. What he needs to do is trust your judgment.

"Do they know?"

You tilt your head at him like the answer should be obvious. "No."

"Oh. Well…" Qifrey coughs lightly, unsure. "If they're so important to you, then maybe you should tell them?" It seems like the next step in the natural order of things—or, at least Qifrey thinks it is. He doesn't know. His gaze flickers down to the snoring lump on the stretcher, one arm dangling limply over the side before he looks away again. You frown.

"How?"

Qifrey immediately regrets bringing up the subject at all. "Well, I…" He falters almost at once, floundering—fingers steepling together before he starts absently wringing both hands instead. It's an impossible struggle, scrambling desperately for words that don't make him sound completely inane while you stare. "I think it should… probably be somewhere private? With only the two of you?" Qifrey offers uncertainly, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth. "A good moment when the other person isn't busy or distracted… and all their attention is on you."

"Oh," you say, far too seriously. Qifrey can feel his face growing warmer by the second. Stars above, he wants to pluck off his hat and shove his head face-first into it until this conversation passes. But you are looking at him attentively, still awaiting your master's advice, and so Qifrey forces himself to continue.

"I don't think you need to prepare anything elaborate," he adds on, weakly. "The important thing is to be sincere when you do it."

"Sincere," you repeat.

"Yes. Even if they don't share the same feelings…" Qifrey clears his throat lightly. He desperately needs something to distract himself but has nothing. "If what you say is genuine, then I believe the other person will understand that."

You're silent for a moment. There's a thoughtful expression on your face that makes Qifrey wonder whether you are truly turning his disastrous advice over in your head.

"What about Master? Is there someone you're interested in?"

For the second time that night, Qifrey nearly trips over his own feet. He lurches dangerously for a second, gravel crunching sharply beneath the soles of his boots before he glances over with a light chastisement on his lips; certainly, you must be teasing him. But it doesn't seem so. You only regard Qifrey with those familiar, inquisitive eyes—and heat crawls slowly up his neck. It's moments like this that make him even more grateful for his collar.

"You…" Qifrey reaches out before he can think better of it. You startle, eyes darting up when his hand comes to settle atop your head.

"Master?"

"I don't have time for romance," Qifrey says, with a lightness he doesn't entirely feel. "My hands are already full with an apprentice like you."

"So Master is blaming me?"

Your disgruntled expression almost makes him laugh despite himself. "Perhaps." Qifrey doesn't elaborate, offering no further explanation before his hand begins ruffling through your hair instead. You let out a startled yelp and try to duck away, glaring up in poorly concealed offence while Qifrey smiles properly for the first time that night.

"Master!"

One day, you will leave the atelier behind. You will become a fine witch—far finer than Qifrey ever was—and perhaps you will travel farther than he's dared, to lands past the peninsula and beyond. Or perhaps you might follow in his footsteps, taking on apprentices of your own with kinder intentions than he did you, and maybe you will build a life with the person you spoke of so warmly tonight, your future unfolding slowly beside theirs instead of his. There are infinite prospects, such countless possibilities, yet the one thing Qifrey is certain of is this: that one day, inevitably, you will surpass him in every way, just as a sapling eventually outgrows the shade of the tree that shelters it. And that day…

Qifrey finds himself looking forward to it.

The spring weather here possesses a notoriously fickle mind; one moment the sun hangs bright and warm overhead, turning the hills of the Downs golden with its light—and the next there's rain scattering across the grassy slopes in glittering sheets. Olruggio's out today, on another job at some nearby lord's castle, and Qifrey is in the kitchen taking stock of the pantry staples when the first droplets begin pattering against the atelier windows. Frowning faintly, Qifrey glances up from baskets of legumes on the counter to peer out of the glass, just in time for the drizzle to abruptly thicken into heavy rain.

The laundry, Qifrey remembers suddenly, just as you exclaim, "The laundry!" from somewhere near the door.

"Apprentice—" he starts, intending to tell you to leave it and wait for the rain to pass, but you're already out before he can get the words out. Sighing softly through his nose, Qifrey crosses the atelier to where you've left the door hanging half-open instead and looks outside.

You've already made it to the clothing lines strung up beside Olruggio's workshop somehow. You're reaching up on your tiptoes, struggling to to tug down one of the larger bedsheets he'd hung earlier that morning, arms already laden with gathered laundry. Even as he watches the rain steadily soaks the darkening fabric of your robes, trickles down the strands of hair plastered to your cheeks.

Before he can think twice, Qifrey steps outside. The cold spring rain splashes across what little bare skin he has exposed, droplets scattering unrelentingly across his senses, but it's still enough to make him cringe. Qifrey ignores the discomfort, hurrying across the grass towards where you're wrestling with the sheets.

"Apprentice."

"Master?" you blurt, visibly shocked to find him standing beside you in the rain. "What are you—"

"Focus on getting the sheets down," Qifrey says, already reaching out to take the bundles of damp fabric from your arms while you tug the clothespins free. "I'll hold these."

You hurry obediently. Rainwater trickles unpleasantly down the back of Qifrey's neck in rivulets, but he exhales slowly through his mouth and keeps his attention of you instead. With your hands free, you dart quickly from line to line gathering the remaining laundry before shoving them into his arms. Qifrey is just about to take your wrist and make the mad dash back to the shelter of the atelier when—

"Wait!"

You tug at his robe before he can move. Qifrey blinks in confusion, droplets of rainwater catching on his lashes as you yank your palm quire from your inner sleeve, hunching protectively over the paper amidst the downpour. In your other hand, your wand. You set the nib against the page, sketching with quick, practiced strokes as the spell takes shape beneath your hand—sigils and keystones instantly familiar to Qifrey. Then you're rising onto your tiptoes again, leaning in close, and Qifrey's breath hitches when your fingertips brush over the bare column of his throat.

A slip of damp paper slides neatly into the folds of his collar. Qifrey glances up just as the rain parts above his head, as though held at bay by an invisible hand. Water continues pattering steadily against the grass, the atelier's shingles, your dripping sleeves—but not a single drop touches Qifrey.

"I've always wanted to do that," you say.

Qifrey looks down at you, frowning. "What about you?"

You shrug lightly. There's rainwater dripping from your wand, and your palm quire is soaked through. "I'm already wet. Doesn't matter."

Qifrey clicks his tongue softly at that, but before he has the chance to admonish you—or simply drag you beneath the shelter of his own arm instead—you're already turning on your heel. Qifrey huffs, fondness and faint exasperation mixed together, and follows after you, easily catching up with his longer stride.

"You've gotten good at that spell, haven't you?"

"It's my favourite."

Qifrey glances at you over his armful of laundry in mild surprise. You've always shown to be partial to water magic, but this is a simple spell—nothing more than practical utility, the sort of magic most witches learn early and rarely think about again. An odd choice, considering how much of your talent lies in far more complex magic. "Why that one?"

"It changed my life," you say, simply.

It's hard to keep the smile from his face when you slip past him and through the atelier's open doorway. It's a small thing, really, but the thought that you've kept that spell close all this time makes him absurdly happy. Qifrey shakes his head, warmth settling in his chest despite his damp clothes, before he follows you inside.

There is already a trail of water dripping across the flagstones. Qifrey pauses briefly to inspect the topmost sheet bundled in his arms, rubbing absently at the drenched fabric between his fingers. Despite your efforts, it looks like the whole lot will have to be rewashed—a pity. He'll toss them into the washing barrels later after he's drawn you a hot bath.

"Apprentice," Qifrey calls as he ruffles his damp hair roughly, glancing around the mess of the kitchen counter. He'd been sketching a moisture-extraction spell earlier before the rain interrupted things. The water on his glasses makes it difficult for Qifrey to spot his own quire and he tugs them from his face, but he can still hear your footsteps pattering about near the hearth. Qifrey swipes at the lenses with a sleeve before he finally finds what he's looking for, quickly flipping to a fresh page. "Come here. I'll draw a heating spell to—"

His throat abruptly closes around the rest of that sentence.

You're standing by the hearth, back half-turned to him as you wring water from the hem of your robe. It's soaked through, rainwater falling in steady drips from the sleeves, pooling at your bare feet—you must have kicked off your boots in the doorway earlier—and the wet cotton clings to the shape of you. It is what allows Qifrey to see: the water beading at the ripe peach-flushed skin of your nape, every divot of your spine beneath sodden cloth, where fabric gathers at your thighs and pulls taut at the small of your back. More than he should have ever allowed himself to.

Heat roils low in his gut, a long-starved beast rearing its head—familiar in its shape but frightening in its intensity. Desire.

Qifrey wrenches his gaze back to the kitchen counter, heart suddenly hammering hard and fast in his chest. What is wrong with him? You're his student. You're his apprentice. You are so young, still barely just a—

—but you haven't been for a while now, have you?

Dread, cold and tinged with something uglier Qifrey doesn't dare name, curls its claws viciously into his stomach. How can he be having these thoughts? Worse, how can he possibly still be lingering on them at all, instead of recoiling outright from sheer shame?

"Master?"

Qifrey's head snaps up. You've turned toward him, brow furrowed faintly in concern. Your hair is still dripping, and the firelight catches maddeningly on the droplets clinging to the tip of your nose, your upper lashes. He tightens his grip until the quire's bronze edges sink like fangs into his skin.

"The spell—" Qifrey tries, his voice sounding strained, strange to his own ears. "I need to—I forgot the—"

"Master?" You're too close all of a sudden, frowning openly now. "Are you feeling alright? You're acting strange—"

He turns away before you can come any nearer. There's a faint rushing noise in Qifrey's ears, so shrill it's almost a scream, rising to a fever pitch—loud enough that he can barely hear the rain outside.

"I forgot I have something urgent," Qifrey says abruptly. "Dry yourself off. And put on something warm."

He leaves before you can respond. His footsteps ring sharply down the hallway, too quick and uneven against the floorboards to be anything but fleeing. When Qifrey reaches his room he shuts the door firmly behind him before slumping back against the wood, breathing hard.

Master?

Qifrey groans and squeezes his eyes shut, digging the heel of his palm harshly against his good eye as though he might somehow scour the image from his mind. What is wrong with him? He's washed your hair before, when you'd broken your arm chasing quadryphons down the hillside just outside the atelier. It was him who'd changed your bandages and tended to you after Kestrel's Maw, applying creams and salves gently to your wounds as you'd tried not to wince and hiss. He's even shared a bed with you on nights when bad dreams left you sleepless and in need of a warm presence. And not once—never once—had he looked at you the way he just did.

Qifrey lets his hands fall between his knees. His palm quire slips loose from his fingers, clatters to the floorboards. On the page where he'd started sketching the heating spell for you, conjuring ink smears wet and crooked across the paper, dark stains blooming through the unfinished spell. Ruined.

When did this happen? Qifrey thinks despairingly to himself. When did I—

Qifrey cannot bring himself to finish the thought. The very idea makes something twist violently in his chest. Qifrey cannot put a name to it, because naming it would make it real, and making it real would make him a monster—even more of a monster than Qifrey ever thought he could be.

Qifrey throws himself desperately into avoidance after that.

Dangerous thoughts thrive when left in stillness, and so Qifrey gives himself none. He starts taking on jobs he normally wouldn't—ones that take him far from the atelier, some of them for days at a time. It's easier to exhaust himself into numbness than risk thinking too deeply at all. And when he cannot escape the atelier outright, Qifrey buries you beneath increasingly difficult assignments under the guide of preparing you for the Pentacle's third test—research work, spell reconstruction, transcription—anything that will keep you occupied in your room while he locks himself away somewhere else.

But at night, alone in his bed, the thoughts come anyway. Memories twisted into sick, perverted fantasy—the way your spine would feel under the curve of his palm through wet cotton, the warm press of your body against his in the dark, bare legs tangled with his. The soft whisper of your breath against his throat. Master. Master. Times before he can catch his thoughts they slip from his grasp, and he wonders what it would sound like if you said it different—if the word would catch on a moan, if it would break apart with a sigh against his mouth.

Master.

It's a futile exercise. Qifrey runs all the much harder, anyway.

In a desperate attempt to curb his thoughts, Qifrey turns towards safer, uncomplicated things instead. Olruggio's visibly surprised the first time Qifrey asks to accompany him on a job, but welcomes him with the same thoughtless warmth he does most things. And it's easier—easier to sink into the familiar steadiness of Olruggio's presence and gentle eyes, to lose himself in the long evenings spent shoulder-to-shoulder beneath the stars, to share spells and wine and laughter that doesn't ask anything of him. Easier than thinking about you.

You notice, of course. It would have been an insult to assume otherwise. But you've never been particularly forthcoming about your own feelings, and so you still call him "master" and do the work he assigns and prepare tea for him in the mornings. Tea that Qifrey now drinks steaming hot instead of lingering at the kitchen table with you, before leaving the atelier on yet another week-long job. You're upset by this new arrangement, that much is obvious, but at least Qifrey is spared the small mercy of having to confront it directly.

You'll grow accustomed to it eventually, Qifrey tells himself as you watch him tug on his cloak by the door, one hand already on the latch.

It'll pass.

You catch him one summer evening, vespertine insects chirping softly outside while the sun pulls and stretches at the atelier's shadows. Qifrey hears your approaching footsteps but does not turn around, busying himself instead with packing his satchel at the kitchen table, the light from the window staining his hands saffron-yellow.

You're quiet for a while, hovering silently behind him like a spectre. Eventually, you work up the courage to speak.

"Master, about dinner—"

"Hm? Ah, there's soup in the perpetual cookpot." Qifrey cuts you off before you can continue. He'd spent most of the afternoon preparing a fresh batch of shorecumber yoghurt soup while you were shut away in your room—as though feeding you properly could somehow compensate for everything else Qifrey's failed to do lately. "I also made some carapace and mountain apple salad, if you'd like."

"No, I'm not—" He catches the faintest edge of frustration creeping into your voice before you stop yourself. "I don't want perpetual soup."

Qifrey blows out a quiet breath between his teeth. The conversation is already slipping towards dangerous territory, toward questions he does not want to answer. He lowers his head to rummage through his satchel instead, pretending to check for an ink bottle he doesn't really need.

"Oh. Well then, there's some bread in the pantry that needs clearing, and—"

"Actually," you interrupt softly, "I was thinking I could cook for Master, tonight."

His fingers slip on the rounded glass. Qifrey barely catches the ink bottle before it can tumble from his hand and shatter across the table; the Qifrey of a few months ago would have accepted immediately, probably with an embarrassing amount of enthusiasm—but now the thought of sitting across from you at the dinner table feels almost terrifying. Your eyes are always watching, always observing; Qifrey is suddenly terrified you might somehow notice the ugliness festering behind his own.

The thought alone turns his stomach. No. No, he cannot.

"Sorry," Qifrey says, still refusing to turn around. "I'm helping Olruggio with a project tonight. I'll be late, so don't wait up for me." He gathers the loose papers scattered across the table, shoving them carelessly into his satchel as the pages crumple beneath his fingers.

"You're always late now."

Qifrey's thumb falls still against the clasp. Your words are quiet but the accusatory note in them pierces him cleanly, a bolting deer felled mid-flight. He turns slowly. You are standing behind him with your expression carefully blank, but Qifrey knows you too well by now not to recognise every little sign and tell—your shoulders held stiffly, hands clenched within the sleeves of your robe.

"Does…" You falter, voice lapsing briefly before you force out the words anyway. "Does Master not want me anymore? Because he has Mr. Olruggio now?"

All the air flees Qifrey's lungs at once like a rushing wind. What?

"Apprentice—" He hurriedly sets his satchel down on the table, but even with his hands freed Qifrey still does not dare reach out and touch you. You're not looking at him now, your gaze fixed stubbornly on the ground between his feet. His fingers curl helplessly into fists at his side, panic crawling up his throat like bile. "No. No, that's not—"

But it has been, hasn't it? Suddenly, horribly, Qifrey's reminded of the story you'd once told him—of the cliffs, of the sea. The way your parents had decided there were too many mouths to feed and chose yours to abandon because you'd been the smallest. And in his frantic attempt to bury his own shame, it dawns on Qifrey with terrible clarity that he has been doing the same thing to you all over again.

The realisation makes him sick all the way to his stomach.

"I'm sorry," he blurts out. "I'm so sorry. I—I've been an idiot."

You look up at him then, and Qifrey's breath catches painfully in his throat. Your eyes are stubbornly dry but rimmed faint red, shadowed with exhaustion. Your cheeks seem thinner, too. Questions strike him one after another in sickening succession: Have you not been sleeping properly? Eating as you should? Questions Qifrey would have—should have—been able to answer easily, had he paid you more than a passing glance these past few weeks.

He takes a step closer, then another, before Qifrey fully realises what he's doing. "I didn't mean to make you feel that way. I was just—I was just being selfish. Caught up in my own things. I forgot—" Every word that passes his lips feels empty, and his explanations sound like nothing more than excuses even to his own ears. Qifrey reaches out and gently loosens your fists from their white-knuckled grip on your robe, one finger at a time. Your hands are stiff in the cradle of his own. "I forgot you needed me to be here. I'm sorry."

You don't respond; you only look at him with those quiet, uncertain eyes—like the ones that had stared up at him in Havso all those years, dulled and wary all at once—as though weighing whether you can still trust the things he says to you. Please, Qifrey wants to beg. Please tell me I haven't already broken something I can't fix.

"I'll make it up to you," the words tumble out of him now, wobbly kneed and hurried, tripping over each other on the way out. "I promise. No more late nights, no more disappearing for days. And—I'll cook dinner. And make any dessert you like." Qifrey squeezes your fingers gently, almost desperately, trying to make you believe him in ways he doesn't know how. "I'm not going anywhere. Understand?"

You stare at him for what feels like an eternity. Slowly, you nod.

"Okay," you say.

Relief hits Qifrey like a blow to the gut. He wants, all at once, to pull you into his arms—to feel your smaller frame against his chest and hold you there until that bright-eyed certainty returns to you, to reassure himself that he has not yet destroyed whatever fragile thing exists between you beyond repair. But he is weak and a coward, too aware of himself now in all the wrong ways, and so Qifrey settles for simply holding your hands, his thumb stroking carefully over the faint ink-blot stains along your knuckles.

"What do you want for dinner?" he finally asks.

Your brow pinches. "You're not going to Mr. Olruggio's?"

"Olly's smart—I'm sure he'll figure the problem out without me." Qifrey reluctantly releases your hands to undo the clasp of his cloak. He hangs it carefully on its hook by the doorway before turning back to you with the best smile he can muster. "I'll stay in tonight—it's been a while since we've had dinner together."

Finally, something flickers across your face. Then—

"Stew," you say. Qifrey blinks.

"Stew," he repeats. "You mean, the one with the squash vegetables?"

"Yeah."

A quiet laugh escapes him before he can stop it. It's such a painfully simple request that Qifrey cannot help the sudden rush of fondness that swells in his chest—he would have cooked anything you'd asked for after all this. But you asked, and so Qifrey turns toward the kitchen instead, pushing his sleeves up to his elbows.

“Stew it is, then.”

That night, a knock comes at his door again.

Qifrey knows who it is before he opens it. It's been a while since you've sought the comfort of his bed—you haven't since he started pulling away—but you've always had the habit of reaching for him on nights you are frightened or too troubled to sleep on your own. And after today, Qifrey supposes he should have expected this.

"Master," you say quietly, when he nudges the door wider with a tentative hand. Part of him knows he should tell you no—however innocently this ritual started, it is surely inappropriate now, especially with the way his thoughts have muddied as of late. But you don't ask, and by the time Qifrey opens his mouth you are already slipping past him and into his room.

His refusal lodges itself in the back of his throat as he watches you from the doorway. You're already seated on the edge of his bed, bare feet tucked under his blankets while you reach for the pillow he keeps for you. It's routine, now; you arrange his bed to your liking and lie down once satisfied, and eventually Qifrey settles beside you with deliberate distance kept between your bodies. Sometimes he reads compendiums aloud until your breathing evens out, others he talks about whatever spellwork occupied his day. But most nights end the same way: you, tucked against his side, one of his hands absently combing through your hair until sleep finally absconds with your consciousness.

His presence comforts you, Qifrey supposes. The same way a baby suckles on a pacifier, or a frightened child reaches for a familiar blanket. You are not thinking of anything improper—not of the way the dim lamplight catches against the bare slope of your shoulder, nor the way his eyes lingers on the exposed sliver of skin for a second too long before he tears them away.

He's the only terrible one here. Perhaps Qifrey should gouge out his other eye, too.

"Master." You're watching him from the bed, knees drawn up beneath the blankets, waiting. "Are you coming?"

Qifrey has already been terrible enough of a master to you these past few weeks. The thought of rejecting you yet again because he cannot control his own mind is unbearable.

You turn down the lamp as Qifrey climbs carefully into bed next to you. The mattress dips beneath his knee in the dark, and he lies stiffly atop the blankets with his hands folded over his chest, squeezing his eye tightly shut. Even with his poor sight this close proximity is too much; he cannot—will not—look at you.

"Go to sleep," Qifrey says quietly.

You remain still at first. He can hear your soft breathing beside him in the dark, and for a fleeting moment Qifrey thinks you might have already drifted off.

But suddenly, you move. The mattress creaks as you turn on your side, blankets rustling, and then your arm is sliding around the curve of his waist. Qifrey's breath shudders out, lips parting in a soundless gasp. You pull yourself close, the entire line of body pressing flush against his own, and bury your face against his throat—nose barely skimming the sensitive stretch of skin just beneath his jaw—and Qifrey can feel can feel your heartbeat, thrumming against his ribs like it belongs behind them instead. Every place your bodies meet burns as though his nerves themselves have been doused in oil and set alight.

Sparks race down the length of his spine, flint striking steel in his belly. A feeling slips down his throat, thick as honey, sharp as glass. Qifrey cannot do this. He can't, he can not—

"Don't leave," you murmur, breath curling against the naked hollow of his throat. "Master can't ever leave me."

Your words are small in a way Qifrey has never heard before, fingers trembling faintly where they're twisted tightly into the fabric of his sleep shirt as though he might disappear the moment you let go. You're afraid—truly afraid—and Qifrey loathes the fact that he was the one who made you feel that way. So despite the quiet part of him still insisting this is wrong, that the line between master and apprentice was never meant to blur like this, Qifrey carefully threads his fingers through your hair and pulls you closer against him.

"I'm not going anywhere." His voice is barely a whisper in the dark. "I promise."

"Really?"

"Yes."

His answer must have finally reached that quiet, terrified child inside you, because not too long after that your grip on his shirt loosens and your breathing begins to even out to soft, damp exhales against his skin. You must be exhausted from today—or perhaps you simply haven't been sleeping properly for a long while, now. It shames him that he doesn't know the answer.

The shadows stretch and settle against the far wall, pale moonlight washing silver across the blankets at the foot of the bed, the tangled line of your legs beneath them. And Qifrey holds you in the dark and lets himself pretend—just for a little while—that this quiet, aching hunger within him is not something so terrible after all.

It's a good morning when Qifrey's worst headache yet hits.

The morning starts off pleasantly enough. Sunlight unfolds slowly in a corner of his room, warm and sleepy in a way that demands nothing of him, and Qifrey wakes to the sound of you pattering carefully about the kitchen. You're likely on your tiptoes, a valiant attempt not to rouse him—but a futile one, unfortunately; his left eye has always left him a sensitive sleeper. Qifrey tarries in bed for a moment longer before finally pushing himself upright, and fumbles blearily across the nightstand for his screwtop tin of glueflower paste.

There's already a steaming cup of erbe tea waiting for him on the kitchen table when he steps outside. It sits beside a half-finished piece of buttered toast, whose owner seems to have become distracted; you're standing at the sink with your back to him, attempting to wrestle a particularly fat willowgrape from your brushbuddy's grasp before the greedy creature can choke on it. Qifrey very pointedly ignores the stirring behind his ribs as he slides himself into his usual chair.

Your eyes find his over your shoulder, regardless. "Morning, Master."

The brushbuddy chirps, emboldened by your momentary lapse in attention, and instantly makes a grab with its tiny paws. Despite himself, Qifrey finds it difficult not to smile. A good morning, he thinks quietly to himself as he reaches for his cup. A perfect one, actually.

The pain strikes without warning. It is sudden, blinding—as though someone has driven an iron spike through his head and is now deliberately twisting it, grinding its point deeper into the soft tissue of his brain. Qifrey's vision swims. The cup slips from his spasming fingers, and then he feels the scalding splash of tea across his fingers, blistering hot. He groans into the heel of his palm, the sound muffled strangely, ringing in his ears as if he's underwater.

"Master?"

Your hands are on him all of a sudden—his shoulder, his waist, and then his forehead, damp and clammy with cold sweat. Qifrey register your touch only in fragments, words reaching him as though from some distant shore; the next moment he's half-collapsed on the couch, worn cushions sagging beneath his weight as you lower him carefully. He catches a glimpse of your face for less than a second—pale, jaw tight, lips pressed in a thin line—before you're gone, footsteps hurried and shouting for Olruggio.

Qifrey barely manages to make out the hushed snippets of your exchange before Olruggio's rushing out of the door. He squeezes his eye shut against the pounding in his skull. Part of him wants to protest—that it will pass, that calling for the doctor is pointless, that there is nothing they can do for the ailment that plagues him—but the words barely make it past his lips.

Suddenly, your hands are on the sides of his face again, slapping his cheek lightly to rouse him when his head lolls. "Master. Master." Your voice is gentle, but even in this state Qifrey can pick up the undercurrent of worry bleeding through. "Drink up."

Something presses against his lips—the blunt edge of a wooden spoon. Qifrey parts his mouth obediently without thinking, swallowing whatever you offer him.

The tincture is sharp and metallic like cold moonlight on his tongue, slipping down his throat. But its effect is immediate. The pain does not vanish but loosens its grip with alarming speed; the muggy fog over his thoughts lifts, his nausea easing, and the pressure behind his eye recedes.

Too quickly.

Qifrey grabs you by the wrist before you can pull away. You startle in his grip. "Did you use forbidden magic?" His voice comes out hoarse. "Tell me."

"Master—"

"What did you use?"

His gaze drops instinctively to your hands, searching for the telltale traces of fresh spellwork. Qifrey has spent years wrestling with these pains—yet no physician, tincture or elixir has ever managed to cut through one with such frightening speed. How could you have—

"Tell me, Apprentice," Qifrey repeats, and this time the fear seeps through despite his efforts to hide it. "You didn't use healing magic, did you?"

You look at him, and for a second Qifrey feels dread warp, cold and heavy, in his stomach. Then, slowly, you shake your head.

"No."

Qifrey blinks. "No?" But how—

"I didn't use healing magic." You glance down at the wrist still caught in his hand, before continuing. "I used magic during the extraction process—the spineneedles are delicate, so I used a preservation spell to stabilise the active compounds while the toxins boiled off during heating." You hesitate. "I've been researching it for a while, now."

Spineneedles. Relief floods through Qifrey, so suddenly he nearly sags back into the couch. Not forbidden magic. Just careful study, patient experimentation, and far more thought than any apprentice should be devoting to a problem like this.

"Perhaps my apprentice shouldn't be a witch after all," Qifrey mutters tiredly, tipping his head against the cushions. It's like all the tension has gone out of him, leaving only fatigue in its place. The ache in the back of his skull has lessened to a distant throb. "With your talent, you should be a doctor instead."

"If it'll cure Master, I'll be anything."

Your words are spoken matter-of-factly, but Qifrey's breath lodges thickly in his throat. Something about it feels dangerous, precarious, like he's standing on a sheet of ice so thin he can hear it cracking beneath his feet. Qifrey is suddenly reminded of another conversation similar to this one—one that had drifted too close to unspoken territory for comfort. You'd not been particularly satisfied with his answer then, but he had not possessed a better one to give. "Apprentice, we already had this discussion about why healing magic is forbidden—"

"I love Master."

You say it so matter-of-factly that Qifrey barely registers what you've said at all, until he does. Everything inside him seems to go still at once. Slowly, disbelievingly, he lifts his head.

You are still watching him, wrist resting within the loose cradle of his fingers. Surely, he must have misheard. But there is no embarrassment in your expression, nor nervous laughter, no frantic attempts to retract your words. Only certainty.

"You—"

"Master said confessions should be done sincerely," you interrupt quietly. "When it's only the two people involved, and all their attention is on me." You hesitate, just for a moment, and then: "I just wanted to Master to know he'd be worth it. Master is everything to me."

It's as if time has lapsed into nonexistence for a second. Qifrey can hear the soft rustle of the morning breeze stirring the kitchen curtains, the faint squeak of your brushbuddy as it slinks about the rafters—but all of it feels impossibly far away. Because you are still looking at him with that earnest, unwavering gaze, admitting to the same feelings Qifrey has spent months convincing himself belonged to him alone, and yet—you are his apprentice.

You are his apprentice.

You'd been little more than a child when he'd picked you up in Havso; young and impressionable back then, his to protect and care for. And now a terrible thought reaches deep into his chest, a worm burrowing into the rotten core of an apple—had he done this? Mistaken possession for care somehow, shaped your innocent devotion into something it was never meant to become? Every lesson huddled over spellbooks, every time he'd reached across the cluttered kitchen table to guide your hand, every reassurance whispered into your hair in the dark—suddenly they rearrange themselves into something more disgusting, grotesque beneath his scrutiny.

The possibility that he might have been cultivating this unknowingly all along sickens Qifrey to his stomach. The only thing that frightens him more is this: how desperately he wants, anyway.

You are so painfully ignorant of it all—the warped thoughts he has harboured of you, the nights he's lain awake, hand fisted in his pillow to keep it from wandering someplace it shouldn't. You don't know about the ways he's been slowly driving himself mad in the dark. You have no idea what kind of monster you have just confessed your love to.

"Apprentice," he manages at last. "You can't—you don't—this is only infatuation, and—"

Your hand closes around Qifrey's before he can drop your wrist—gently, like you're approaching a spooked stag, poised to bolt. Nausea rolls unpleasantly through his stomach.

"I know my feelings. Master needn't try convince me otherwise."

Your certainty is what unspools the remainder of his repudiation. He's helpless, Qifrey thinks ashamedly, to stand before it. For one treacherous second he imagines what it would be like not to pull away; to turn his hand beneath yours and weave your fingers together, to close the distance he's spent months desperately maintaining. He imagines allowing himself the same foolish hope he'd once indulged in with Olruggio—before knowledge, before loss and guilt had hollowed him out and taught him the price of wanting something he could never have.

The fantasy dies almost immediately.

"I don't see you that way." The lie scrapes against his throat on the way out, self-mutiliation—if words could cut, they would leave his pharynx in ribbons, a bloodied mess. But this must end here and now. "You're my apprentice, and I care for you a great deal, but nothing beyond that."

Silence settles between you, quiet folding in on itself. Then, softly, you say, "That's alright with me. I just wish Master would be more honest with me."

Qifrey has heard those words before—not spoken in exactly the same way, but close enough. Close enough that for one dizzying moment he is in two places at once: here, your wrist still caught in his grasp, and somewhere years ago, watching someone else he loved—still does—offer up everything for a wretched, unworthy cause.

All I have left to say is… just go easy on me, okay?

For a strange, terrible moment, Qifrey thinks he would have preferred anger. Hatred he could have endured. Tears he would have tried to comfort. Instead you place something infinitely more fragile in his hands and ask for nothing in return—and Qifrey wants to weep from the absurdity of it all. Who is he to deserve such grace, such senseless devotion?

You deserve better, Qifrey thinks, despairingly. But still he cannot bring himself to speak those words aloud, in the same way he cannot seem to release your hand and so they remain, lingering like ghosts—everything he wants to confess but can't ensnared in the silence between you.

The smoke reaches them before any messenger does—a dark, greasy plume unfurling against the pale morning sky. It is visible even from the atelier's window, though Qifrey does not notice it until Olruggio bursts into the room without warning, already yanking on his cloak as you glance up from your books.

"Fire," is all Olruggio needs to say, breathless, for Qifrey to understand. His hand closes around Qifrey's upper arm, drawing his attention toward the horizon. "It's coming from the direction of Hearthglen Village."

Qifrey is on his feet even before Olruggio finishes speaking. Despite the dry spells of summer, Hearthglen is protected by enough fireproofing spells to withstand far worse than a stray spark or lightning strike—Qifrey has full trust in Olruggio's magic, in this regard. Small fires could happen. But infernos capable of producing a column of smoke like that—thick and black enough to stain the horizon from miles away—are impossible.

Should not be possible.

"Apprentice," Qifrey calls over his shoulder as he strides urgently towards the door, pulling his hat onto his head along the way. "Stay here."

He doesn't wait to see if you listen. He and Olruggio are out of the door in the next second, sylph shoes flaring with green light as they take to the air, hurtling straight towards the smoke billowing upwards into the morning sky.

Qifrey should have trusted his instincts.

The fire is not natural—Qifrey knows it the instant they crest the hill and the village comes into view, fire licking at the thatched roofs, dragging barns and homes alike into its insatiable maw. And there they stand amidst the carnage—their white hat and trailing veil a stark smear against the smoke-charred sky—a single painted eye staring back at Qifrey from where their face should be. For a heartbeat, the years collapse inward and hate rises in the back of his throat like bile, acrid. But answers can wait—and people cannot.

Olruggio doesn't hesitate. He banks sharply left, already racing toward the line of burning buildings, shouting for the villagers to flee. Qifrey launches himself at the Brimmed Hat, water surging from the village well in a roaring column in response to his spell.

The Brimmed Hat laughs. They're infuriatingly talkative—they make several attempts to strike up a conversation in the middle of the fight, chattering away as though this is some pleasant afternoon stroll rather than a village burning around them. Qifrey ignores every word. Water tears through the square at his command, rushing in great swells to smother flames and strike at his opponent, but the Brimmed Hat dances around each strike, veil fluttering in the heat haze, that ominous painted eye seemingly able to see Qifrey's every move before it happens.

Out of the corner of his eye, Qifrey glimpses Olruggio moving through the smoke and chaos. Olruggio disappears into a burning building and emerges with a wailing child tucked carefully in the cradle of his arms, depositing them into a frantic mother's embrace before he turns back to the flames. Again and again he does this—vanishing into the smoke and reappearing with another villager in tow. The fire continues to spread, racing from rooftop to rooftop with unnatural hunger.

And then Qifrey sees it. Olruggio runs into another house, already half-consumed by flames. But one of its support beams has already begun to bow beneath the strain and the building is tilting dangerously; already Qifrey can hear the groan of timber in his mind under the strain. But before Qifrey can say anything—so much as do anything—it gives way. The entire structure collapses onto itself with a roar, disappearing beneath a shower of firebrands and burning debris. For a single, terrible instant, it resembles a funeral pyre.

It's only a momentary lapse, but it is enough. The spell catches him squarely in the chest.

Qifrey is on his hands and knees even before he registers the fall. He hunches over, scorched ground hot beneath his palms, and tries to clear his throat, but the damage presses heavily up his windpipe—wet and viscous. Blood. Qifrey chokes. The taste of copper floods his tongue.

"Oh dear." The Brimmed Hat drifts closer. Their veil flutters lazily behind them as they hover just in the corner of Qifrey's periphery. "Not so threatening now, are we?"

They raise their hand again. Qifrey tries to move but his body will not obey him, his wand slipping from between his fingers, viscid with his own blood. The cobblestones beneath him spin into dizzying tesselations. And then—

A blade of water cuts through the air. It hits the square with enough force to split stone, carving a deep furrow into the ground where the Brimmed Hat had just been standing just a second ago. Both Qifrey and the Brimmed Hat look up at the same time.

Qifrey almost doesn't recognise you at first, hovering above the town square, framed against the smoke-darkened sky. The hem of your cloak flaps in the wind, your wand and quire just barely visible beneath it. The Brimmed Hat's visage is concealed behind that painted eye, but Qifrey can tell that they're surprised. They turn toward you, hands lifting as if in greeting or surrender.

"Now that's intere—"

Another spell hurtles down. The Brimmed Hat vaults backwards, vanishing into a cloud of smoke before reappearing atop the remains of a collapsed building several yards away. Your magic obliterates the ground they had been standing on, stone and dirt exploding outwards in a violent spray.

"You're serious!" They sound more delighted than alarmed, laughter echoing through the ruined square. "What terrifying killing intent, for a Pointed Hat so young!"

You ignore them. The moment your feet touch the ground you are already running to Qifrey's side, dropping to your knees next to him hard enough to tear the fabric of your trousers. Your hands are on him immediately, one bracing his shoulder while the other presses desperately against the wound in his chest. Qifrey struggles to lift his head to, pain lancing through his chest with each ragged breath he drags into his lungs. The edges of his vision blurs every time he inhales—his ribs are definitely broken.

"I thought…" He coughs, the words coming out rasping and wet. "I told you to stay… at the atelier…"

"Master can punish me all he likes later." Blood continues seeping stubbornly between your fingers despite the pressure, but that isn't the problem—it's the fluid slowly accumulating in his lungs, the way his breathing has gone thick and rattling. Qifrey can see the moment realisation dawns behind your eyes as you listen to each uneven breath, and with it comes panic. When you meet his eyes again you look frighteningly young, your fingers slick and red with his blood.

"Master." Your voice catches. "Master, what do I do?"

The answer is supposed to be there; behind his teeth, on the tip of his tongue. Qifrey is your teacher, your master—he should know what to say, how to fix this. But the only thing staining his mouth now is blood.

"Master," you say again, and this time you almost sound like you're begging. "Please. Tell me what to do."

"Oh, how touching." The Brimmed Hat drifts over, knees tucked loosely against their chest. Their painted eye is now fixed entirely on you, and when they speak again, their voice seems to have softened into something coaxing, almost kind. "Such devotion. I haven't seen such an adorable master-apprentice pair in years."

You don't react. Your attention remains fixed wholly on Qifrey—one bloodstained hand pressed against his chest as you desperately rifle through the contents of your satchel, searching for something, anything that might help. The Brimmed Hat laughs, a little pitying.

"It's admirable how hard you're fighting to save him, little Pointed Hat. A shame that even if you succeed today, he'll be dead soon enough, anyway—though I suppose dead isn't quite the right word for it."

Qifrey's stomach drops.

"No," he chokes out at once when your hands go completely still. Blood flecks his lips as he struggles for breath. "Don't listen to them—"

"What do you mean?"

At your question, the Brimmed Hat tilts their head—and though their face remains hidden behind their white veil, Qifrey is suddenly, horribly certain that they are smiling.

"You haven't told them?" They click their tongue softly, delighted, almost sympathetic. The gesture is mild, mockingly gentle. It makes hatred surge through Qifrey so fiercely that, for a moment, it eclipses even the pain. "You should be more honest with your apprentice."

"Shut up—" Qifrey tries to force himself upright and immediately regrets it. Agony carves a white-hot line through his chest, stealing the breath from his lungs. A violent cough doubles him over, sends fresh blood bubbling between his lips and splattering across the cobblestones. "Apprentice, they're lying. Don't listen to—urgk—a word they say—"

But you are no longer looking at him. Qifrey feels a wave of panic surge through him, overwhelming, drowning him beneath it. He knows that look, is familiar with it—the expression you wear when confronted with a puzzle you cannot solve, when every thought narrows around a single question like a predator's jaws clamping around a prey animal's neck.

"Master," you say, very slowly. "What are they talking about?"

"I—"

The Brimmed Hat cuts across him with a low hum of amusement. "Little witch… did your master ever tell you about how the silverwood propagates before?"

Whatever remaining blood Qifrey has drains from his face.

"Unlike other plants, the silverwood spreads by lodging itself into animal hosts... even humans." They tilt their head at Qifrey, and he very briefly catches the flash of a sharp grin beneath their veil before they continue. "Gradually, it takes over the host's body bit by bit, until there is nothing left but a very beautiful silverwood tree." They spread their hands with a flourish, a theatrical gesture. "That is the fate awaiting your master, dear apprentice."

The words land like stones, sinking silently into still water. Qifrey dares not look at your face. He cannot. He is afraid of what he will see there—the dawning horror, the terrible understanding, the slow realisation of his deception.

Then the Brimmed Hat laughs.

"But do not despair!" They throw their arms wide, head cocking as they look at you. "We are witches, are we not? Magic exists to challenge the impossible, to overturn fate!" They hover just a little closer, voice lowering into something almost conspiratorial. "As long as you are willing, you can save your master. I'll even give you a nifty little spell to preserve his life until you can find a better solution." One hand, bare-skinned and terrifyingly human-like, slides up to curve around the shape of their mouth. "All you need to do is cast it yourself."

"Apprentice—" The word comes out mangled with fresh blood, thin and watery with his spit. "Apprentice—don't—you cannot—"

Qifrey tries to push himself up, to reach for you, to do anything to stop what he sees coming. His arms shake violently beneath him before they give way altogether, and he crashes back against the cobblestones hard enough to drive what little breath remains from his lungs. He needs to move. Why won't his body listen to him?

Slowly, you get to your feet. You move as though caught in a dream, entranced by some spell, hands hanging at your sides, stained with the drying streaks of his blood. And your face, your face—when he finally forces himself to look—is bloodless and set, and yet, so very terrifyingly calm.

"Apprentice," Qifrey begs, desperate. "Please."

Your office is quiet at this time of day, only filled by the clack of keys as you review some report or prepare your lecture for tomorrow. Qifrey does not have a single clue. He’s too preoccupied by his attempts to remain in awareness, arms folded into a makeshift bed with your sweater as his cushion. It’s perfumed with the scent he watches you mist across your body every morning, aside from the underlying hint of laundry he shares on his own. The familiarity of it is perhaps why you offered it to him, hoping he would follow its comforting smell into a short and simple nap. Because you succeed, you have to shush them quietly.

“Don’t wake him,” you instruct. “If that’s all, don’t you have something to do—studying, partying, or getting into all sorts of trouble?”

The words are a chorus, repeated with an ease that almost worries you. Yet, you don’t spare him a glance; your students have become too observant. Too involved. Neither you nor Qifrey are ignorant to the rumours that have taken root, growing larger each day that someone finds one of you in the other’s presence. Initially, it had meant nothing. The professors here commonly share living quarters, whereas Qifrey is specifically partnered with you—his room adjoining yours. But, somehow, the years have done little in silencing the suggestion of there being more between the two of you.

A student from one of your advanced classes laughs, the sound melding into that of the others when the only combination made should be between sigils and glyphs with their minds swirling in ideas and their gazes cast towards books rather than a cacophony of delight.

“Will asking if you’re dating Professor Qifrey count as getting in trouble?”

Instinctively, you sigh, face falling as you sink into your chair with a creak. At this, you do take a peek, worried that it was enough to rouse him when the ability to wake at every frivolous noise was instilled within him years ago; years before you had met and he was still training little witches who hadn’t even participated in something as rudimentary as The Consent of the Crown—the first of the Pentacle of Proving, a series of qualifications existing from the days of old. And that one look upon him is sufficient in causing another hushed uproar as your students find joy in something you do not completely understand.

You would be unable to answer even if you wished to.

Qifrey wakes, anyway. “Am I missing all the fun?” he asks with a yawn he fails to suppress. “Something curious always seems to occur when I’m here.”

“If only you were awake to see them,” you muse.

With that, he chuckles, voice somewhat raspy from misuse and potentially lowered into a timbre designed to provoke you. “Would you not be partly at fault?” he proposes. “Seeing as you were so kind as to lend me your sweater.”

Someone forces down a squeal—you struggle to do the same with your embarrassment.

“Okay—” you drawl out. “My appointment times are nearly over and I feel like going home early today.” In an expression of finality, you lightly strike your palm against the desk as if in congratulations for all the work done.

“Together, then?” Qifrey suggests, although it is more so directed at your audience than you. He does not have to ask. It is normal to return to the residence hall together, which is why he always occupies the space beside you, choosing to wait until your work is finished when his classes end earlier than yours.

Once your students depart, you huff. “Must you rile them up?”

He must, and so, he retorts, “must you be so rigid? They’re merely having their fun.” Then, he taps the power button of your computer the instant you save the open file so that you can join him in flipping through a binder filled with notes. “Though we may standardize spells, a fragment of ourselves is always left within the drawings, particularly those we fuse together. Yours are complicated but simple—”

“How contradictory.”

Qifrey's smile becomes relatively pointed, an intentionally coltish thing. “They’re efficient—is what I mean to say—no wasted mark within your beautifully enclosed combination of glyphs. If I didn’t know any better, I would say your expertise would be beneficial in less archaic disciplines.” Elegant fingers move from parchment towards plastic and metal. “Programming is similar, isn’t it? To nested glyphs.”

“But it can’t compare to contraptions and watching spells come to life,” you retort, watching Qifrey’s touch skim over the length of your dormant ink wand, having traded it for the very thing you believe is lesser than magic. “Or watching Olruggio react to whatever I find funny.”

“You really do love driving him up the wall, don’t you?”

All you do is grin, and he responds with a short laugh, more breath than sound as he rests his head on a closed fist. The skin of his cheek caves out a depression for his hand, plush skin spilling over his knuckles. Then, with his free hand, he takes your ink wand within his grip; through thumb and forefinger first—a show of careful consideration for a tool that is essentially your lifeline, solely and meticulously designed for you to wield the blood of Silverwood Trees. With the amount of years you attribute to it, it is practically impossible to replace.

However, this is Qifrey and you are safe within his touch.

But he reaches over, urging it into your hand as if you are a child who does not know where to begin to hold a component let alone draw a rune. Dumbly, you stare at him, disbelieving when you, yourself, are just as experienced as him.

“What?” He asks, gaze curious as they flutter between your loose grip and your countenance. “Forgotten what an ink wand is, have you?”

“Do you believe me so daft when it's no different from holding a pen?” The tone taken is not a mordant one despite your question. You're entertained, really, when Qifrey is the sort to put on a little drama for simple pleasure, a mannerism he accrued under Beldaruit and, potentially, from a younger Olruggio. “Are you sure it’s my memory that’s failing and not yours?”

“Care to explain why you seem so surprised, then?”

It was the ease of his touch.

“No,” you answer, and listen to him chuckle prior to his indulgence of you.

Qifrey’s fingertips glide over the back of your hand as you grip the ink wand properly just to prove to him something he is aware you haven’t forgotten. He takes a straight path, his other fingers joining the journey so that they can eventually curl over your wrist, allowing you to feel the texture of his skin as he leaves a trail of warmth that is satisfied in a brief moment, ended by the squeeze of your forearm.

“Not only were you practicing Olruggio’s warmstone spell but Coco’s cold compress…” He doesn’t speak further from the observation, allowing you to share as you like; hoping it will be more.

“Tired of asking questions?” Standing, you make your way to the small sofa within the room, glancing over your shoulder as an indication for him to follow. And although you are the first to reach it, Qifrey sits before you do, awaiting your answer. “Stay still,” you say, draping a heavy quilt over his lap.

“I haven’t seen this before.”

“It’s a surprise I’ve been preparing,” you tell him while searching for a little contraption you finished a few days ago. Opening it up, you show him the mechanism. “This spell is the same as Olruggio’s warmstone glyph, and the other is nearly identical but focused on cooling.” Qifrey listens closely, hesitating only for a second after you tuck the contraption into a pouch you hid at the quilt’s centre and find his hand to place it atop a protrusion once it aligns. “When you press here,” you say as you do just that, “the ring to heat the blanket completes; and when you press the other, it disengages to activate the cooling ring instead. It’ll regulate the temperature for you, Qifrey.”

When you look up, you can’t quite identify his expression, while Qifrey does his best to maintain his composure, mouth curling into a small smile with an eye closed into a crescent—polite and nothing more.

“It’s a wonderful prototype. The quilt is soft and comfortable—the perfect weight—and I can feel how flawless the dispersion keystones are; the temperature distribution is steady and even.”

The praise comes easily from him. It always does. As a professor, Qifrey is attentive to his students’ progress and never fails to appropriately acknowledge any accomplishment with sweet words. The ones you receive, however, are over miniscule actions and habits that mean nothing to those outside the bubble you share. Qifrey praises you when you overcome a difficult scene within your literary hobbies. He praises you when you win against him in some goofy game or absurd bet. And Qifrey praises you even in times you are not privy to: with others, to students, and when you’re fast asleep on the couch in your living room.

“It would be useful for hospitals, I imagine,” he remarks, “and popular with children if not for anyone.” He grins, now, delighted in being the subject of your test.

Joining his side, you sink into the cushion with a huff. “It’s ‘perfect’ because I made it for you, Qifrey.” The admission is honest, and perhaps that’s why any confidence slowly dissipates the more you speak. “You struggle with anything lighter or heavier, and you already toss and turn from your headaches, so if the temperature wasn’t even, I was afraid it would make it harder to sleep, not easier.”

The quiet that follows is slightly unsettling.

Qifrey’s mouth descends to form a distinct line, contemplative at most. He isn’t foolish. Qifrey is aware that this is a likely result of your inability to watch him deal with carefully veiled exhaustion any longer. But this is beyond any model created to identify any flaws and perfect the contraption for public use. Considering who you are, you would have made it universal as it’s futile to do testing on a product merely dedicated to him alone, and this forces him to acknowledge the very fact.

“Thank you,” he finally says, hands clutching onto the warm fabric to extend its shelter to you. He is undeserving in savouring this on his own. “You didn’t have to do this,” he adds, yet he is convinced his voice is impossibly tender, something he cannot control when it concerns you, especially once you pay him such close attention.

But his own upon you is equally as unravelling; with a stare so gentle that they remind of you of wasted nights within the confines of your shared space and not within an office that you possess purely in name. Although, you suppose, even your home together belongs to the academy. There is nothing dedicated to you and him—only a falsity you do not have the courage to make true.

And because this can’t be anything different, you have little issue with the silence thereafter.

Honestly, you should really return—perhaps visit a market on the way back, too. Earlier this morning, Qifrey noted that you’re running out of matcha with his own stock of his favourite spices depleted, of which he would be unable to make the stew you enjoy without. It’s only when you’re finished making a list in your head that you realize he’s begun to fidget, fingers having found the top of your thigh to trace curves over your slacks.

“Is that your flower spell?” you ask.

Qifrey hums softly. “That it is.”

“It’s slightly different,” you note. Usually, he employs the spell like a parlor trick for newly initiated children who know barely anything about magic, mimicking a rose in twisted ribbons of water. However, this time, the floral sign is different; bunched together in a cluster. Your brow furrows. “What flower would that make?”

“Hydrangeas,” Qifrey simply answers without anything more being said. His voice doesn’t even raise into a pleased lilt nor take on a playful timbre despite the stutter in your chest. The jump in beat feels particularly heavy when his index finger continues drawing a long curving path. “Would you like to guess this next?” he asks, touch featherlight as it measures the length of your thigh, curling upwards once it reaches your knee. Upon completing the snake-like shape, you feel him outline two round circles and four triangles. A small laugh bubbles up.

“That’s just a brushbuddy.”

“Just a brushbuddy?” he echoes, brow arched in faux indignation. “The stray you feed will be devastated to hear that—I am, already, by your answer.”

Shifting closer to permit him easier access to use you as a canvas, you give him a trivial shove that he exaggerates in a wobbly sway before steadying once again. You roll your eyes as you question, “how was I supposed to know it was our little friend?”

He merely grants you a grin—defiant—and begins again.

Qifrey details something alike that of a flower; four petals in each cardinal direction—billowing surrounded by a series of collection and repetition keystones alongside a pattern of nested water and wind sigils. You don’t recognize it.

“What is that?”

“A spell one of my old students conjured up,” Qifrey explains, “it forms and maintains a cloud to create a bed you may dream in.”

“Wow,” you start, “is this your way of telling me I need some sleep?” He is not alone in remaining awake during the witching hour. If you can hear Qifrey partaking in late night personal studies or choosing to get ahead of whatever work he elects is significant enough to lose sleep over, then you are sure he can hear you the same. Nevertheless, there are times where you find him in the middle of making tea, and one thing leads to another before you’re unable to tear yourselves away from each other. “Is that what you want of me?”

This time, he does not reply, taking a few seconds to decide how far he wishes to take this. How far he wishes to go with you. “Perhaps…” He trails off, swallowing a tightness he wasn’t aware was present in light of the thought he’s begun to turn around in his head. You’re patient, anyway, mimicking him with your own scrawling circles that plunge into an arching tail, a peak, and a loop followed by another drop that the following letters must form his name. He’s correct, and it pushes him to decide. Qifrey leans into your touch, disrupting your repeated handwriting. “I wouldn't say that's what I desire the most.”

He wants you to ask, that much you are certain.

You do, thigh pressing into the side of his as you lean against his shoulder. “And what is it that you want from me?”

He responds, in kind, with an inviting tilt of his head, eye flicking from one feature of your face to another, refusing to linger too long. “Would you like to guess?”

“No,” you say, airy when you can’t help but watch his mouth form each word. “Not really, no.”

Qifrey doesn’t move any further. “Not even one attempt?” he inquires, goading you to try.

You're afraid of what he may say, and so, you repeat your refusal regardless of how strong the temptation is. So much so that you lose to it through touch, hand sliding across the expanse of fabric adorning your laps, cautious of whether or not he may pull away or, worse, run. Surprisingly, he remains in place, hand finding your arms as it skims over his side—under the quilt—to find his waist. You listen to his soft breaths, of which quicken as your hand splays over the stretch of his back, dipping into the curve of his spine as you tug him closer.

He shakes slightly, no matter how he permits you to touch him, but before you may confirm that there is no sort of overstepping where you’ve altered your relationship with no remedy in sight, Qifrey chuckles lowly. “Shall I show you?” he asks, bangs brushing against your forehead as he finds himself closing that distance, captivated by what has arisen between you.

Your breath is warm on his lips, each puff of air forcing himself to dwell on every subtle movement impossible to witness if he were farther away. And when your lips part, he nearly thinks you may kiss him, instinctively leaning into the motion as shame draws a path down his gut with the aborted sound of shock that leaves you.

It’s unexpected. This is no place for romantic folly; the door is unlocked, the curtains are drawn, and the window is open—had any passerby been filled with a nosy impulse to peer into your office, your position with him would be mistaken as amorous affection in spite of it not yet fulfilled. You want for it, nonetheless, and mutter his name quietly as your hand drifts up to his cheek.

He leans into your touch, surrendering himself to whatever desire you may have of him. Qifrey does not believe it wouldn’t be enjoyable when everything with you is—the quiet moments in the morning, the ruckus you get up to, the quips you partake in, and the tedious responsibilities you alleviate from the other’s shoulders; he would never do without them. Though there’s an unmistakable hesitation within you, a disparate quality from your forward advances that he decides that he will act if you won’t.

Qifrey’s fingers find your jaw first, gliding over the line to discover the softness of your face, cupping the side within hand and allowing his thumb to sweep over the curve of your mouth. At the feeling, you open, and he has to restrain himself from moving too fast as he lets the digit press into your bottom lip. You close your eyes with another more hushed whisper of his name.

The kiss is slow—clumsy—as he slants his mouth over yours, and it’s as if your body is drawn alight with Qifrey as warm under your hands as you feel. The quilt slides off your lap, falling to the floor in folded ribbons as you part and join together again and again, finding a manner of affection that suits the two of you. And his fingers intertwine with yours, each jut of knuckle digging into your skin as he tightens his hold when you trace your tongue over his lip, shy and uncertain.

But when he permits that open-mouthed kiss, you press into him, flattening as much of your body against his from where you’re seated, side by side, and he muffles a groan into your mouth. Swallowing it, you part shortly after to pull both yours and his glasses off your faces, quickly placing it atop the table so that you can deepen the affection and properly taste the tea on his tongue.

Neither of you are aware of how much time you spend like that—exchanging wet kisses with a tacky sound as you try to quiet your shared moans and the rumpled rustle of fabric through the inability to keep your hands off each other; a threshold crossed and never to be returned to.

In the next separation, Qifrey has to lick the saliva from his lips as he asks through shallow panting, “is that enough of an answer?”

“I suppose that’s fine,” you try to say with as much pose you can manage, but fail upon the slight squeak in your throat. Regardless, you finish your thought. “I may need another, Master Qifrey.”

A hitched breath leaves his mouth at the title, and his eye narrows into something significantly heavier through the exasperation he attempts to offer you. It worsens when you reach forward, goosebumps rising under your fingertips as you slide your hand around the delicate curve of his neck. The skin flushes a darker red.

Qifrey leans in again.

ok first of all i lose my title of linguist of the english language because i had to search up the meaning of assiduity. i would want to associate it with honey but it starts with ass so (<- has the brain of a ten year old)

QIFREY SLEEPING AT MY DESK. QIFREY SLEEPING WITH M Y SWEATER. QIFREY SMELLING THE SCENT OF MY PERFUME AND THE DETERGENT THAT WE BOTH SHARE IM GOING TO E X P L O D E INTO THE SUN

ok side note. w h y is he watching me mist/spray perfume on myself. pervert 😔

shushing the students when they're making a racket why are they disturbing my completely platonic friendship only roommate colleague's rest!!!!!

"will asking if you're dating professor qifrey count as getting in trouble" i'm going to drop their grade

also help... i do hc him as a light sleeper who's very sensitive to light so he sleeps with complete blackout curtains... i would be worried about him too if he gets little sleep as it is 😔😔😔

WHY IS HE EGGING THEM ON

"someone forces down a squeal—you struggle to do the same with your embarrassment" HELLO I YELLED

WHY IS HE EGGING THEM ON A G A I N

help not my real life degree making a cameo in this fic ksjfgnkdjnf... i have seen people describe witch hat atelier's magic system to be a lot like programming though which i found really interesting!!!

help i would 100% ragebait olruggio... in my mind professor olruggio is always overseas attending artificer conferences and i video call him just to ask him for help with the stupidest spells ever and he just sighs and helps anyway while being half asleep

HIM RESTING!!! HIS HEAD ON HIS FIST!!! LOOKING AT ME!!!! HIM TAKING MY HAND!!!!!!!!!!

"it was the ease of his touch" what is this premarital hand holding SCREAMS WHAT ARE WE QIFREY WHAT ARE WE

making a temperature regulating blanket for qifrey... overcoming the limitations of the cold compress coco tried to make for him in that one chapter that doesn't make use of water... LOVING HIM TO THE POINT OF INVENTION...

me and olruggio lowkey fighting for first place for the number of patents dedicated to qifrey KDJGNSKJGNKSNG

"this spell is the same as olruggio's warmstone glyph" wow not me STRAIGHT UP STEALING HIS IP

"FOR YOU QIFREY" YEAH FOR YOU. MAYBE IT WOULD BE USEFUL FOR THE HOSPITALS. BUT IT'S FOR YOU QIFREY. ARGHHHHHHH

WHY IS HE CASUALLY TRACING CURVES OVER MY PANTS. DOESN'T HE KNOW I WILL JUMP HIM STRAIGHT IN THIS VERY PUBLIC OFFICE

him making a water bouquet of hydrangeas... and then making brushbuddy bwahahaha this was so cute and funny... brushbuddy will be our adopted pet dksngksngks 😩😭 look at us playing pretend at being a couple ahahaha i wonder why the students keep gossiping about us ahahahaha

is he creating a spell for a bed so we can get into it together aha qifrey you sly dog

hand finding his waist. dipping into the vurve of his spine. im going to die.

PDA ALERT!!!! PDA ALERT!!!!!!!!!!

QIFREY YOU'RE GOING TO GET BOTH OF US FIRED. im going to **** him on this couch oh my god

HELP AN OPEN MOUTHED KISS???? HIM GROANING INO MY MOUTH????? TASTING THE TEA ON HIS TONGUE??????

HIM LICKING THE SALIVA FROM HIS MOUTH AKJFNKDJNS HAVENT YOU DESTROYED ME ENOUGH HONEY

"i may need another master qifrey" "hand around the delicate curve of his neck" goodbye. im done. im never coming back here ever again

i lied im back here and honey thank you for the writing this beautiful piece for me i know i say that for so many of your pieces but wow. this qifrey feels like he's really MINE and im. i don't know i just don't have words im speechless i keep rereading and i want to kiss him so bad

you get personal pronouns for this blog post only because the writing was so damn immaculate i'm going straight back to my daily dose of delusional denial right after this

Qifrey doesn't know how long he stands there in the hallway, a restless spectre in the dark. Only that by the time he manages to pull himself away his feet are aching, and his breathing has slowed to the same steady rhythm as your own. He lingers for only a moment longer, still reluctant, before turning and making his way back down the hall.

His feet carry him over to one of the windows without thinking. Outside, the sloping hills reach for the edges of night's canopy, unfurling like a rug of silver-sheened fox fur toward the distant coast. And if he squints, Qifrey can just make out the scattering of mountain apple shrubs in the dark; its fruit he'd picked with you this morning chartreuse-yellow and not quite ripe, still carrying a faint, tart edge on the tongue.

The bandages on your arms had been clean when he'd changed them after dinner. Whatever other wounds you'd earned from your little misadventure are healing as well, smaller scabs darkening and already flaking at the edges. You're still young, your body more forgiving in ways his is less so, and Qifrey is thankful for that. More than he can put into words.

But thankful isn't enough anymore.

He's been selfish. Qifrey had taken you in to save himself—to keep the silverwood repressed dormant, to give himself sufficient worry so that the parasite in him wouldn't kill him. Somewhere along the way he'd convinced himself that this careful distance—thay feeding you, teaching you, keeping a roof over your head—would be enough. And in doing so, he'd unintentionally made you the receptacle for all his fears, his neglect, for every single one of his cruel words.

He's a poor excuse of a master. You deserve better.

Qifrey tries to remember what he needed once, as an apprentice. The recollections emerge in faint remnants. The stone floors of the Great Hall, his master's breezy voice weaving between the columns—they blur together like the night fog, each memory dissolving into the next until none stands clearly apart from the rest.

None except Olruggio.

They had snuck out together once, after passing the Pentacle of Proving's third test. Qifrey can still remember the thrill of it: the night wind in his hair, the dark plains of the Naakiwan Downs stretching endlessly into the night. The hut had appeared abandoned—perhaps once a shepherd's shelter, left to the slow mercy of time—its stairs half-rotted from rain, sagging dangerously under their own weight.

They'd taken to the roof with their sylph shoes instead. There, Qifrey had looked properly at the night sky for the first time—impossibly clear, strewn thick with stars, as though some divine hand had cast a scatter of diamonds across the velvet dark. And with nothing else around for miles to hem them in, the heavens had felt so very close—close enough for Qifrey to believe he could reach out with his hand and pluck the stars from the sky himself.

In that moment, even his dreams had felt within reach. Qifrey had once believed that if he could recover the past he'd lost, his joy might become something real—something worthy of standing proud beside Olruggio's without feeling like a poor facsimile of it, a shoddy imitation. A foolish ambition, perhaps, but it was his.

A child can dream, after all.

Qifrey exhales, a sigh catching between his teeth as he pulls his gaze from the window. There's no point dwelling on what-ifs and has-beens. He slips a hand into the pocket of his robes, fingers pushing into the spelled space folded within. The envelope he withdraws is slightly crumpled, edges creased from the many times he's folded and unfolded it again.

It's an official summons to the Great Hall, a request for his presence to discuss the status of his atelier. The tone employed is courteous, but there's no mistaking it. This is not an invitation he can refuse.

Qifrey's thumb lingers at the corner of the page, letting the edge catch against his skin. The Great Hall. He's never been fond of it, despite its grand resplendences and easy conveniences. There's a reason he came all the way out to the quiet edges of the Downs, to build something that belonged solely to him.

But you… you must be bored here. The atelier is so far removed from everything else, the quick, lively rhythm of other witches and apprentices. Even with the windowway, it is not the same. Here you only have him for company, the same brick and limestone walls day after day.

You've never complained, of course. You never do. Still, you should have others your age. Other witches. Friends.

Qifrey folds the letter one last time, and makes up his mind.

The next morning, Qifrey takes you to the Great Hall with him. The windowway deposits the two of you somewhere at the edge of Deepwater Castle, the world within its rings shifting as stone and sky give way to sea. Qifrey steps out first, taking a moment to steady himself on the slick platform. The air here is different—heavier and wetter, saturated with salt and a faint tinge of magic, and sunlight filters down in pale, weaving ribbons, catching on fish whose scales flash like scattered coins. Beyond the boundary of sea-mist, the ocean presses in on all sides, held at bay by complex spells written long before Qifrey was even born.

Qifrey turns, one hand already lifting to help you from the windowway. Despite his feelings towards the Great Hall, the sight of Deepwater Castle never quite loses its ability to take his breath away, and some quiet part of him wants—hopes—to perhaps see that same wonder on your face.

But you aren't looking. Not at the fish, the shimmering barrier, or even the mighty castle rising from the ocean floor. Instead your eyes are fixed on him, and your face is pale. Paler than he's ever seen it, even when he'd plucked you from the cliffside with serpentines coiling overhead, ready to tear you apart.

At some point you've grabbed hold of his sleeve. It's almost as if you're afraid he might vanish if you let go. Qifrey frowns, concerned.

"What's wrong?"

You shake your head. Qifrey waits, but nothing follows. You remain where you are—pale and wordless, knuckles stark against the dark fabric of his sleeve. Above, fish glide past with slow currents, a myriad of light and shadows shifting across your cheek, the flagstones. A bell tolls in the distance.

He doesn't want to push you. Not in this unfamiliar place, at least.

"Alright," Qifrey decides at last. "Come on."

The shopping gallery is a long corridor of shops, located somewhere within the lower levels of Deepwater Castle. It's just as Qifrey remembers it—crowded, lively, storefronts overflowing with eclectic wonders. Some hawk candied kelp and enlarged bunches of willowgrapes, others display glowing components in transparent jars, contraptions that whir and tick and occasionally emit small puffs of smoke. One roadside stall even offers miniature glass orbs no larger than a palm, each containing a captive, miniaturised sea creature—harmless, Qifrey knows, carefully calibrated spells etched into the glass to keep them comfortable and happy.

He walks slowly, careful to stay close by your side. You haven't let go of his sleeve, though your grip has loosened somewhat since entering the castle. Qifrey isn't sure if the gallery or countless unfamiliar sights is reason, but he's grateful, whichever it is.

"The baths are down this way," he says, gesturing down at a side corridor. "They have spells that mimic the ocean waves, and water sculptures enchanted to move like living creatures. Oh, and past that fountain—there—is the dining hall I used to eat at as an apprentice."

Qifrey glances at you as you walk. He'd brought you here to see the witches' stronghold with your own eyes, to experience its strange wonders the way he once had long ago. But watching you from the corner of his eye, he is unsure whether you are truly enjoying any of it.

"They served the best yam and horncap soup—filling and perfectly seasoned. I still dream about it till this day. Do you want to take a look?"

You don't answer immediately. Your eyes drift, a rudderless boat caught out at sea, though you meet his when Qifrey looks at you. Your gaze dips after a moment, however.

"If Master wants," you say.

Qifrey's frown deepens though he keeps it from his face. The last thing he wants is for you to think he's displeased with you. Qifrey likes to believe he knows you—not perfectly, of course, but enough to recognise the differences between your silences and your hesitations. This one, though, he cannot place. He doesn't know if your answer means you're unsure how to say no, or if you are uncertain about saying yes.

He considers pressing. But you've given him nothing, and Qifrey has learned—if a little slowly—that there are moments when that is all you're willing to offer.

"Perhaps later," Qifrey answers, keeping his voice light. "We'll see then."

You only nod.

The corridor eventually opens into a vast indoor courtyard. The high walls of the Argentgard rise steeply before you like the sides of a pale mountain, old sigils carved deep into stone. It's quieter here, removed from the bustle and chatter of the shopping gallery, as though even sound knows better than to linger. And for good reason: flanking the arched doors stand the Knights Moralis—their backs straight and rigid, clad in black and crimson ceremonial armour—holding on to banners that manage to look proud even when they're hanging still.

Qifrey stops at the threshold. He knows what awaits him on the other side of these doors. He's never much cared for these proceedings, the careful scrutiny dressed in civility. They unmoor him less than the grove of pale trees lying just behind these walls, anyway.

He slips a careful smile into place before turning back to you, bending slightly at the waist so that the two of you are eye to eye. "There is a courtyard just through that archway," he says, with a nod towards the columns on his left. It's outside one of the libraries he used to frequent as an apprentice—you might run into a few younger witches coming and going. "There are some benches for you to sit on, and a little fountain that sings. You can wait for me there. Or—" He reaches into his robes and draws out a small leather pouch. It clinks softly when he places it into your hand. "You can explore the shopping gallery. Spend this on whatever you want—food, books, even one of those glass orbs, if you like. Anything."

You glance down at the pouch, unblinking. After a while, Qifrey reaches for your hand and cups it in his own, gently folding your fingers over the worn leather.

"I won't be long," he says, softer this time. "It'll be an hour, two at most. You'll be fine on your own."

Your other hand tightens its grip on his sleeve. Then, slowly, you let go.

"Okay."

Qifrey hesitates. For a fleeting second he considers taking you with him—making you sit through the council's dry questions and pointed looks. He can already foresee it: their relentless probing into your past, the dogged interrogation about your origins as an unknowing. No, no. It is better to leave you here.

"Don't wander too far, alright?" Qifrey says gently as he straightens, glancing over his shoulder at the looming doors. "I'll be back soon."

He manages a few steps towards it before he looks back at you. You simply nod, like you always do.

"Okay."

The Argentgard is cold.

Not in terms of temperature, so to speak. The Great Hall is kept comfortably warm year-round—the same spells that generate sea-mist threaded carefully with seals to trap heat and prevent the place from feeling like a tomb. Perhaps the lingering chill comes from someplace else: the measuring and the weighing, the unshakeable sensation of being observed by eyes that see too much and miss very little.

Still, the gardens themselves are pleasant enough. Qifrey sits while the council members regard him across the table from their high-backed chairs, expressions unreadable as they scrutinize his files.

It isn't long before they begin their line of questioning. Have you been adhering to regulation? Of course. How many apprentices do you have? Just the one. Have you noticed any irregularities with the unknowing as of late? None. These interrogations are nothing new to Qifrey; he's learned to keep his voice steady and his answers brief, to offer nothing more than what is required.

When they've finally exhausted their endless list of questions, they move on to other matters. The council informs him of the Watchful Eyes—Pointed Hat witches tasked with overseeing ateliers too distant from the Great Hall, ensuring compliance and reporting any irregularities deemed worthy of concern. Qifrey doesn't like the idea of being monitored, but knows better than to push. The Council's decisions are never only suggestions, and resistance will only further invite the very scrutiny he'd prefer to avoid.

Yet, the meeting stretches on for longer than he'd expected. Questions are followed by more questions, which are in turn followed by discussions of revised protocols. By the time they start on the topic of procedural adjustments, Qifrey's mind is already beginning to drift—away from the council's murmurings and the silver trees of the Argentgard, back to the corridor where he'd left you.

Are you doing alright? he wonders. Did you find the courtyard? Did anyone approach you? Have you eaten anything?

The conversation drags. Each topic bleeds into the next, until Qifrey starts to think words themselves are beginning to lose all meaning. And then—

"One final matter," one council member says, pushing her glasses further up her nose to squint at the papers in her hand. "For your atelier's Watchful Eye—do you have anyone in mind?"

He's too tired to care, and eager to leave. "Choose whoever."

They exchange glances. A scribe sitting to his left jots down a few words, and then—thankfully, mercifully, finally—the meeting is adjourned. Qifrey is already halfway to the exit, perhaps a touch too quickly, when a familiar voice halts him.

"Qifrey. A moment, please."

He knows who it is even before he turns. Qifrey looks back, reluctantly, to see him—perched elegantly in his sealchair, hands clasped loosely in his lap, wearing that familiar half-smile of his. Briefly, Qifrey wonders whether it is truly him or merely another of his smoke clones, though the distinction stopped mattering years ago—sometime around the third occasion Qifrey spent twenty minutes arguing with one, before realising the real thing had never been there at all.

"I have other matters to attend to."

"Nonsense." The ram legs of Beldaruit's sealchair tread lightly through the grass, carrying him over to Qifrey's side. "You have time for tea. I insist."

"I really don't."

"Not even a few minutes to spare for your poor old master?"

At least the old man's fondness for theatrics hasn't changed. "No."

"That's so cruel, you know. I take you under my wing out of the kindness of my heart, raise you with all the care and devotion of a loving master, only to receive this kind of gratitude in my old age…"

He ends up following Beldaruit deeper into the Argentgard, albeit unwillingly. Here, in one of its more secluded groves, the silverwoods grow oldest and thickest—branches twisting towards the high, arched ceilings, their pale leaves gleaming softly like moonlight caught over the surface of a still lake. Qifrey sits across Beldaruit at a small table already set with a silver tea service, delicate porcelain cups and a plate of untouched pastries waiting neatly between them.

Qifrey pours, the same way he used to when he was an apprentice, and Beldaruit was still his master. They exchange the usual polite niceties: updates on mutual acquaintances (Qifrey hasn't kept in contact with some in years), comments on the weather (it never changes down here), and mild inquiries regarding the atelier. Qifrey answers in monosyllables, counting down the minutes until he can excuse himself without appearing discourteous.

"So," Beldaruit hums upon finishing his third pour. He sets down his teacup with a soft click. "Tell me about your new apprentice."

Qifrey's hand stills on his own. He should have known better than to think being confined to the ocean floor would keep anything from reaching Beldaruit's ears. "Word travels quickly."

"Can you blame us? There is very little to be excited about, under the sea." Beldaruit waves a hand vaguely through the air. "The fish are lovely, I suppose, but they make for dreadful conversationalists. One grows desperate for interesting news eventually."

Qifrey sighs. Suddenly the tea in his hand appears far less appetising than it did a moment ago.

"What do you want to know?"

"I want to know what they're like, of course. I'm curious as to what sort of student my apprentice is raising."

"Ex-apprentice."

Beldaruit dismisses the correction with an airy flick of his fingers. "Same thing. In my eyes, you're still the same old rascally apprentice." He leans back in his sealchair, ram legs dipping slightly, before he scratches thoughtfully at his chin. "Ah, I suppose that makes them my grand-apprentice, doesn't it?" Beldaruit's smile curls slightly at the edges. "I rather like the sound of that."

Qifrey fights the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose in exasperation. That, or do something equally childish—like pour the teapot directly into Beldaruit's lap, the way he might have done if he were still an apprentice.

"They're… clever," he begins slowly, if somewhat reluctantly. "They're exceptionally talented at complex spells—they can decipher the logic behind circles some fully fledged witches might struggle with. They learn quickly, too—they memorised every glyph in the foundational textbook by heart within a matter of weeks." Qifrey remembers the sight of you hunched over the kitchen table, tracing spells over and over until the bowl of water in front of you had run dry. "The only problem is that they work too hard. I have to remind them to eat, sometimes, and if there's a spell they can't master immediately, I know I'll find them awake in the middle of the night, still practicing it over and over—"

"B—o—ring." Beldaruit interrupts, dragging out the syllable out like a man enduring some unbearable inconvenience as he props his chin onto one hand. "Wow. That is all so terribly boring."

Qifrey stops talking to glare across the table. "Well, you asked."

"Spellwork this, textbook that." Beldaruit waves a disparaging hand, his sleeve rippling. "That's the sort of thing you put in an educational report to the Council. What I want to know is: what are they like to you?"

The question catches Qifrey off guard. And its answer drifts in, like incense smoke carried on the wind, without conscious thought or contemplation. He remembers the pale set of your mouth when you'd looked up at him from beneath his cloak for the first time. How wavering firelight reflects in your eyes when you're practicing spells late into the night. The dark, rust-coloured stain of your blood, drying slowly across his fingers.

The quiet cadence of your voice, and the faint upward lilt whenever you call, "Master".

Beldaruit is watching him differently now. The sharpness in those pale eyes has not faded—if anything, it has only grown keener, the edge of a blade freshly drawn across its whetstone. He appears to enjoying Qifrey's hesitation immensely. Qifrey isn't sure he prefers to know why—the inner workings of his former master's mind are a mystery to him.

"Let me make things simpler for you," Beldaruit says. He leans forward in his sealchair, fingers interlaced when he sets his hands on the table. "Do they surprise you?"

This time, his answer comes out without hesitation.

"Every day."

For a moment, Beldaruit looks almost surprised, himself. Then his expression slips into something softer, almost pleased, and for the briefest instant, Qifrey catches the faint shadow of the man he'd once called master—the man who'd sat beside his bed in the dark, distracting him from nightmares of suffocating darkness and unceasing rain with dancing figures shaped from smoke.

He doesn't push further. Beldaruit simply nods, and picks up his teacup once again.

"Good," he says. "That's what I wanted to hear."

The fountain is warbling a sweet, silver-bright melody when Qifrey finds you in the eastern courtyard. That's expected. What he wasn't expecting, however, is to find you amidst a handful of other witches your age.

He ducks behind a pillar before you can spot him. Qifrey should probably collect you, begin the journey home, but you look—well, not happy, exactly. You rarely ever look happy. But you look less solitary, at least, and that alone is something worth staying hidden for a few more minutes.

The young witches are talking about their own masters at the Great Hall. Qifrey catches fragments—familiar names he knows in passing, scattered mentions of the Three Wise. You wouldn't know any of these things—names and histories and hierarchies that carry weight and sway within the magical world—because Qifrey had never thought to teach them to you before. Now, he's wondering if he should have. Still, they speak with such easy enthusiasm it hardly seems to matter, their voices overlapping in excited bursts and trills.

"So, who's your master?" A girl with a tumble of chestnut curls asks you, eyes bright with curiosity. Qifrey stiffens suddenly before he can help it.

You answer simply, the same way you always do. "Master Qifrey."

The apprentice witches exchange glances. For a moment they look puzzled, until realisation ripples visibly throughout the small group.

"Oh," another pipes up. "You mean Beldaruit the Wise's apprentice?"

"Is he?"

"Yeah! What's he like?"

Qifrey's heart stumbles oddly in his chest, a brief, uncomfortable slip in rhythm. He should probably step out from behind the pillar, announce his presence before he overhears something not meant for his ears. But his feet refuse to move.

You seem to think about this for a while. Then—

"The prettiest."

Qifrey nearly chokes. The witches standing closest to you seem to echo his thoughts. "Huh?"

"Master Qifrey is the prettiest," you continue, matter-of-factly, as though clarifying something that ought to have been obvious to anyone with functioning eyes.

A ripple of laughter breaks through the group. "That's not usually a word people use to describe their masters," the girl who'd asked says between giggles, looking amused.

"Is that so?"

Qifrey's face burns so hot he fears he might combust like an overcast pyreball spell. He's suddenly grateful for the pillar concealing him from sight. Pretty. You could have said knowledgeable. Wise, kind, inspiring—any number of descriptive words more befitting of a teacher, a mentor, a master. Why would you…

He drags a hand down his face in an attempt to gather the scattered remains of his composure. It's painfully futile. When it becomes clear that the effort is hopeless, Qifrey steps out from behind the pillar, fixing what he hopes passes for a smile across his thoroughly frazzled expression.

"It's time to go," he says.

You look up at him. Your expression doesn't change in slightest—no flicker of embarrassment, no trace of awkwardness at the fact he might have overheard what you just said. You simply nod, offer the other witches a polite "goodbye", and cross the courtyard to stand at his side once more.

"Goodbye!" one of them calls, waving enthusiastically. "Hopefully we'll see you around again!"

You raise a hand in response, but nothing more.

"I'm sorry for taking so long," Qifrey says as the two of you walk away, leaving behind the chatter of the courtyard. His face still feels slightly warm. "But I think I needn't have worried—it looks like you made some friends."

You shrug. "They were nice."

It's not disagreement, though not quite agreement either—but Qifrey supposes that's simply how most first steps go; small, uncertain things, too fragile to name outright. He decides to count it as a victory all the same.

"I'll cook something nice for dinner." Qifrey glances sidelong at you. A carapace mash, perhaps, or the grilled vegetables he's noticed you favour. Judging from your empty hands, Qifrey doubts you've spent a single coin in the pouch he gave you. "You barely ate before we left this morning—you must be starving."

"Okay." You shift a step closer to his side. "Let's go home."

Your hand brushes his sleeve—not gripping, just touching—as though the proximity comes as naturally as breathing. Qifrey's breath catches softly in his chest.

After a while, he nods.

"Yeah," he says quietly. "Let's go home."

It rains that night.

True storms are rare out on the Downs, but a few times each year the weather falls into moods unpleasant enough to shake even the inland hills. Qifrey lies awake, listening to the wind howl across the moors surrounding the atelier while rain lashes relentlessly against the windows. He'll be getting no sleep tonight, he knows—he abandoned the attempt hours ago, resigning himself to counting the cracks in his ceiling and waiting for morning to arrive.

Then—

A soft knock sounds at his door.

Qifrey startles slightly amidst his tangle of blankets. For a moment, he eyes the faint shape of his bedroom door in the dark, wondering if his ears are playing tricks on him in the storm. But then the knock comes again—quieter, more hesitant this time.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed, hurriedly shrugging a loose robe over his shoulders. When he pulls open the door, Qifrey finds you standing outside in the hallway, absently smoothing over your nightclothes beneath the muted amber glow of the lamps.

There are only two people living in this atelier, yet Qifrey is still oddly surprised to find you standing at his door as you are now. You've never sought him out in the middle of the night before.

"Did something happen?"

You look faintly surprised to see him despite being the one who knocked. After a moment, you shake your head.

"I thought Master would be asleep."

Qifrey's lips twitch upwards slightly. He waits a little longer, expecting you to continue, but you say nothing more. You don't leave either. The two of you simply stand there, the door held ajar between you, rain clamouring noisily against the windows.

"It's, um," Qifrey coughs lightly, after an extended period of silence. "Rather late, isn't it."

 The observation hangs somewhat uselessly between the two of you. Still you nod solemnly, as though he's said something of grave importance.

"Mm."

"Do you need something?"

A shake of the head.

"Can't sleep?"

A pause. Then, slowly, you nod again.

"Oh."

His mind leapfrogs to a hundred possibilities at once. Is it the storm? The thunder, perhaps? Are the heating spells in your room inadequate? The questions crowd together faster than he can decide which to ask, but by the time he's settled on one, the silence has stretched long enough that interrupting it feels strange. The space between the two of you lapses into awkward quiet once again.

"…Can I stay here for a while?"

The request catches him off guard. This seems to be becoming a night of firsts—first the knock at his door, then this. You rarely ask anything of him at all. Qifrey steps aside quickly, holding the door wider for you.

"Of course. Come in."

You step over the threshold somewhat tentatively. Qifrey lets the door swing shut and ushers you towards the bed, where he carefully sits you at the foot of it. You're dressed only in your nightclothes, feet bare, so he quickly slips his robes from his shoulders to drape it around yours instead. It takes a few adjustments to ensure it sits properly—it's far too large on you—before Qifrey decides he's satisfied and settles next to you, mattress creaking softly beneath his weight.

The two of you sit in silence, accompanied by the steady patter of rain. When the quiet eventually begins to fray awkwardly at the edges, Qifrey clears his throat.

"Is there a reason you couldn't sleep?"

You don't respond immediately. Your fingers knit loosely in your lap, absently picking at a loose thread with your nails. Qifrey is beginning to suspect you don't actually want to answer it at all when you suddenly speak, your voice barely a murmur beneath the storm.

"…I had a bad dream."

Oh. "What about?"

"Drowning."

Qifrey goes very still.

"I think being in the Great Hall might have reminded me of it," you say. "Being surrounded by water—or maybe being so far beneath the surface."

Qifrey suddenly remembers the way you'd clung to his sleeve, when you'd first stepped out of the windowway. A quiet sense of dread coils unpleasantly in his stomach. "You've had a bad experience with the sea before?"

You nod.

"My parents tried to drown me when I was little." Qifrey's head snaps violently to look at you. The horror crashes through him with the force of a physical blow, the words a knife shoved viciously into his gut. "They had too many mouths to feed and I was the smallest, so they took me to the cliffs and threw me in. I guess they hoped it would look like an accident."

You say this with the same calm, thoughtful tone that you might use when explaining a conjecture about spell theory to him. Qifrey opens his mouth but nothing comes out.

Nothing will.

"I don't remember much," you continue, when he doesn't say anything. "Just that it was cold and dark and water would fill my mouth whenever I tried to scream. A fisherman found me eventually, so I survived."

"How old were you?"

"I'm not sure. Five, I think. Maybe six?"

You were just a child. The image his mind conjures is unbearable: small hands grasping helpless over dark water, frightened cries swallowed by the wind and waves. Your hands. Your cries.

Qifrey finds himself thinking, suddenly, of rain. Silver-fingered and relentless, falling in chilly sheets over Havso and you—crouched beneath that poor excuse of tarp, thin and soaked and frozen to the bone. They way you'd looked at him when he spelled away the rain above your head—not with wonder or gratitude, but the hollow-eyed stare of someone who'd learned never to expect anything from the world.

He can't stand it. Qifrey wants—needs—to say something. To find the right words to comfort you, or at least make it hurt less, or better yet, cast a counterclock spell and rewind time itself—back to that cliffside, years ago, so that Qifrey can pull you from the water long before the sea ever touches you. But there are no right words, no spell capable of undoing what has happened so long past, only this—you and him, now in this moment, everything Qifrey wants to say but can't snared in the silence between you.

Because what can he say in response to that? What words does he possess that could possibly be worth speaking?

"I'm afraid of water, too," Qifrey finds himself saying, eventually. "But not because of the sea. Rain."

His confession takes even him by surprise. You blink at the admission, glancing up from beneath your lashes, and Qifrey has to look away; instead, he fixes his gaze on his own feet, dangling over the bed next to yours.

"My old master found me in a box." The words trickle out slowly, like water leaking from a cracked vessel. "Buried in the ground and left for dead. I didn't have any memories—of my parents, where I came from—all I remembered was the rain. Pounding on the lid, seeping through the cracks…" He laughs once under his breath, though it's devoid of any humour. "I thought I was going to drown eventually. It felt like hell, waiting for death in the dark."

He hears you inhale softly.

"Beldaruit dug me up." Qifrey continues, more quietly now. "He took me in, taught me magic… but I never really got over my fear of water. It's why I worked so hard to master it." A faint smile touches the corners of his mouth. "Well, that, and to get out of the washing duty Beldaruit would assign me to whenever I mouthed off at him."

That doesn't make you laugh like he'd hoped it would. You kick out your feet idly, gaze lowered to where your hands are gathered in the too-long sleeves of his robe.

"I wonder if it would be better to forget," you say, finally. "All those unpleasant things."

Qifrey looks at you. Despite your words, there's no bitterness in your expression—an utter lack of anger or resentment Qifrey finds faintly unsettling. The question escapes him before he can turn it over in his head.

"Do you hate them?" he asks, more softly now. "Your parents, I mean. For doing that to you."

You barely hesitate.

"No." Your answer comes out certain. "If they hadn't, I would never have met Master."

In that brief moment Qifrey feels entirely stripped of words once again. The rain continues its persistent pummeling, thunder snarling overhead like some ancient beast, but all of it suddenly feels so very far away. He feels vaguely sick. There is no world in which Qifrey would ever consider what happened to you a fortune—no world in which a child should have been thrown into the sea simply that fate might orchestrate some so-called fortuitous encounter with him. None.

And yet—selfishly, horribly—the thought of never having met you at all leaves him painfully bereft.

"…That's not how that should work," Qifrey manages, at last. His fingers take an extended moment to release their death grip on the edge of the mattress. "Someone should have protected you long before you ever needed to meet me." Cared for you. Treasured you. Loved you.

"I have Master now," you shrug. "That's all that matters to me."

Qifrey wants to argue—to tell you that what your parents had done was unforgivable, that you deserved so much more than the scraps of kindness the world had handed you. But you seem so strangely at peace with it all the words die before they can leave his mouth. And who is he to condemn them, when he's been equally selfish in his own ways?

It's silent after that. The rain continues to pour, until Qifrey exhales through his nose, breaking the stillness.

"We should head to bed."

Your shoulders curl inward ever so slightly. "Oh."

"You can sleep here," he adds on hurriedly, before you can think he's urging you from his room. "In my bed, I mean. So you don't have to be alone."

The words come out stilted, somewhat awkwardly, in a tangled rush. You blink at him, visibly surprised—but not unpleasantly so. After a moment's hesitation you nod, and move slowly to crawl beneath the blankets. Qifrey rises to his feet and immediately busies himself with the covers and pillows, smoothing down a wrinkle in the blanket that's barely visible at all.

When there is nothing left for him to fuss over, Qifrey sits back down at the edge of the bed. You watch him from beneath the blankets where he'd tucked you in, quiet eyes following his movement amidst the dim amber glow of the bedside lamp. He can feel your gaze—warmth prickling along the side of his face like a thousand fine needles. He's about to fetch a book from one of the shelves to occupy his hands when he feels you tug lightly at the back of his shirt.

"I would feel better if Master were closer."

Every sensible instinct in him attempts to immediately object. You're tired, shaken from the nightmares, emotionally vulnerable from old memories dragged back to the surface. As your master, Qifrey is responsible for your wellbeing and safety above all else; it falls on him to maintain some semblance of proper distance, no matter the circumstance. And yet—

He cannot say no to you. He's never been able to say no to you.

Qifrey slips onto the bed beside you before he can think the better of it. He stretches himself out carefully atop the blankets, making sure to leave a respectable amount of space between your bodies. But after only a moment, you shift, body curling inward, until the crown of your head brushes lightly beneath his chin. He can feel the slow rhythm of your breath, each exhale whispering through the thin fabric of his nightshirt, where your face rests inches from the center of his chest.

Qifrey goes very still. This entire moment suddenly seems encased in thin glass—like one wrong movement, no matter how slight, might shatter it completely.

"Meeting Master was my greatest fortune," you whisper, so softly he almost misses it. "I'm the luckiest person in the world."

Qifrey's chest constricts. It's as if all the air has been squeezed from his lungs. His fingers flex once at his side, hesitant, suddenly aching. Slowly, he lifts a hand to your head. The angle is strange, the motion clumsy, but he threads his fingers carefully through your hair anyway, stroking as gently as he can.

"Sleep," he murmurs. "I'm here."

He cannot see your face, but he can tell the moment your eyes close when you curl a little more firmly against him, the way your entire body seems to soften. Your breathing gradually slows, and evens out into sleep. Qifrey remains awake. At some point, your hand shifts unconsciously beneath the blankets, drifting until your knuckles brush lightly against the center of his chest, directly over his heart.

Qifrey closes his eyes. You think that you are the luckiest person in the world. You are wrong.

It's him.

Time passes quietly after that.

The days flow past in their slow, gradual ways, likes ivy creeping over stone walls or sand grains slipping soundlessly through an hourglass. Summer deepens across the Downs, the hills surrounding the atelier growing thick with crocuses and millflowers before they fade gold beneath the heat. And somewhere, amidst it all, the shape of life revolving around the two of you changes once again.

Qifrey begins teaching you more advanced spells. Compound sigils, inverted glyphs, circles layered so delicately they resemble lacework more than magic. He half-expects you to struggle at first, but you take to it with astonishing ease. Some evenings end with the two of you still seated at the kitchen table long after dinner has gone cold, debating back and forth over spell theories while the heart burns low, and Qifrey finds himself sometimes deliberately taking opposing stances simply to watch you continue.

You speak more, now. You ask questions—small, ordinary things entirely unrelated to magic. When he is too absorbed in his work to notice you, you tug at his sleeve to get his attention rather than silently staring holes into the side of his face. And you laugh more often, too. It's still sporadic, rarely unrestrained, but the sound no longer catches Qifrey by surprise.

The headaches are worse, some days. The silverwood continues to grow in silence, patient as rot spreading beneath bark. And yet when Qifrey recalls the old myths—tales of men who cast aside kingdoms, futures, entire worlds, all for the taste of a single fruit beyond compare—he thinks he understands them. Never has he been so glad to grow accustomed to something so sweet.

And if there is anywhere in this world, anywhere at all, that Qifrey would choose to put down his roots, it would be here—in this quiet atelier he calls home, beneath the open sky, and the sound of your laugh still ringing inside it.

Qifrey hears the pegasus carriage before he sees it.

He's in the kitchen preparing lunch when the rush of distant wings cuts across the quiet of the Downs. It's not a common sound out here; very little ever flies this far across the peninsula except for the occasional courier and migrating ash-mottled dragons. Qifrey pauses with his knife hovering over some vegetables, half-chopped, before setting it aside, wiping his hands absently on a dishcloth.

The sound grows louder then abruptly fades, followed by muffled whinnying. Qifrey frowns. He crosses the atelier and pulls open the front door, squinting against the late afternoon sun, only to see—

"Olruggio!? What are you doing here?"

The man in question looks exhausted. His travelling cloak hangs crookedly from one shoulder, wrinkled from travel and pinned askew. There are several overstuffed bags—crammed to the seams with all sorts of magical trinkets and inventions, no doubt—abandoned by his feet next to the carriage platform. He drags a hand through his already disastrous hair, one eye twitching faintly in a manner Qifrey is all too familiar with.

"'What are you doing here', he says," Olruggio grumbles with a shake of his head. The pegasi whinny impatiently behind him, stamping their hooves in the grass. "I fly halfway across the peninsula by pegasus carriage to come here and this is the kind of welcome I get—"

Qifrey sputters, scrambling for something resembling a coherent response. He still hasn't the faintest idea what Olruggio is doing on his doorstep. "I—I mean, how was I supposed to know you were coming—"

Olruggio raises a dark brow.

"I suppose you don't know that I've been assigned as Watchful Eye to your atelier either?"

This time, Qifrey can truly do nothing but stare. Surely he's misheard. But the pegasus carriage, the luggage piled beside it, Olruggio himself standing here on his doorstep, arms folded across his chest—all of it says otherwise.

"The Council assigned you as my Watchful Eye?"

"Yes, and you'd know that already if you actually took the time to go through your correspondence—"

"You know I don't read most of the Council's letters!"

"And whose fault is that, exactly—oomf!"

Qifrey throws his arms around Olruggio before he can finish the sentence. Olruggio staggers back a step—words cutting off abruptly as Qifrey buries his face in his shoulder, taken by surprise—but only for a moment. Then strong arms close around Qifrey in return, tightening instinctively, drawing him into the safety of their embrace.

Beneath the scent of wind and travel dust, Olruggio smells of pine and woodsmoke. It's strange—Qifrey had almost forgotten what it felt like to stand this close to him again; how easily Olruggio's warmth still manages to disarm him, like some long-held vice he'd nearly convinced himself he no longer carried.

He's happy. There are too many emotions within him, sharp and tangled and colliding and overwhelming, but Qifrey chooses to focus on only one in this moment. He's so happy it hurts.

Eventually they part; Qifrey forces himself to pull away first, though his fingertips linger for a moment against Olruggio's arm, reluctant to surrender this closeness so soon after just getting it back. He's just about to open his mouth again when Olruggio's attention suddenly shifts over his shoulder, and his entire posture seems to stiffen at once.

Qifrey frowns faintly. He traces Olruggio's line of sight with his own, only to see you—standing in the doorway, staring openly at Olruggio. The brushbuddy hanging from your shoulder lets out a small, curious "pweee", before it wriggles free and plops onto the floorboards next to your feet. It circles your ankles once and scampers off into the atelier a second later, apparently deciding this situation no longer concerns it.

"Apprentice." Suddenly, absurdly, for no reason at all, Qifrey feels as though he's been caught doing something he shouldn't. He pretends not to notice the faint heat still clinging to his cheeks, stepping aside slightly so you can see past him as he gestures you closer. "This is Olruggio, the new Watchful Eye for our atelier. He's a dear friend of mine—we were apprentices at the Great Hall together."

You make no move to shift from the doorway. Behind him, Olruggio coughs awkwardly into his fist.

"Uhm. Hello."

You continue to stare at him in complete silence.

Olruggio's hand lowers slowly. "…Right," he says, after a beat. "Tough crowd."

Qifrey lets out a quiet huff. Normally, he's accommodating of your reticence, fond of it, even, but this is beginning to border on plain unfriendliness. "Apprentice," he reminds you gently. "It's rude not to greet people when they introduce themselves. I taught you manners, didn't I?"

Your gaze flickers toward him before it returns, reluctantly, to Olruggio.

"…Mr. Olruggio," you say, after a long pause.

Olruggio looks painfully out of his depth, mouth twisting uncomfortably as though he's not sure which shape best to put it in. "That's too formal," he mutters, in that brusque tone he always seems to default to whenever he's feeling awkward. His hand rubs over the back of his neck. "Look, you can just call me Olruggio, y'know. I'm not really one for all that honorific stuff."

"Mr. Olruggio," you repeat.

Qifrey presses his lips together, trying his best not to laugh despite the situation. Olruggio points accusingly at him, clearly flustered.

"Don't encourage this!"

He holds up both hands. "I'm not encouraging anything."

You stare between them for another long moment, expression unreadable as ever, before your gaze settles back on Qifrey. "Then, if there's nothing else, I'll go back to my room and finish my readings on recursive spells, Master."

Before either of them can respond, you turn and disappear back into the atelier. They watch you in silence until you're out of sight, footsteps fading up the stairs before Olruggio sighs heavily.

"I think they dislike me."

"Nonsense," Qifrey responds half-heartedly, still staring at the bannister. "They're just… well, shy. Besides, you're the most kindhearted person I know. There's no reason for them to dislike you."

Olruggio chokes on air. Qifrey glances over, frowning. "What?"

"Nothing." Olruggio coughs roughly, dragging a hand over his face before he meets Qifrey's eyes again. There's a faint flush dusting his neck, just visible beneath the rumpled collar of his shirt. "I just—ya sure you're alright with this? Your apprentice clearly isn't thrilled about me showing up out of nowhere."

"They're wary of strangers." Qifrey looks back at the hallway. He wonders if you're struggling with the idea of suddenly having to share the atelier with someone new. "I'm sure they'll warm up to you eventually."

"You know what? I'm not sure I believe you." Olruggio grunts as he stoops to gather his bags. Qifrey just laughs, putting a hand on Olruggio's shoulder to steer him towards the atelier door.

"Come on," he says. "Let's get you settled in."

After showing Olruggio to the atelier's side wing—the rooms he'd cleared out weeks ago in anticipation of the Watchful Eye's arrival—Qifrey returns to the kitchen. The vegetables still sit halfway peeled and chopped on the counter, knife exactly where he abandoned it earlier, but he finds himself oddly distracted now. Part of him still can hardly believe it's Olruggio, of all people. Fate has always possessed a strange, if somewhat twisted, sense of humour.

It's too late for lunch and still too early for dinner, but Qifrey busies himself tidying the counter for the sake of occupying his hands. This won't be enough, not when there's three to cook for, now. He's halfway through setting the vegetables aside when he suddenly notices you lingering in the doorway like a ghost.

Qifrey fumbles and nearly drops the carrot in the sink. "Apprentice."

"I finished my readings." There's a brief pause before you step properly into the kitchen, bare feet nearly soundless on the flagstones as they pad across the room. You hover by the table first, fiddling absently with his half-finished teacup, then linger near the pantry shelves before finally drifting over to the far end of the counter. Qifrey keeps you in the corner of his eye as he retrieves two more carapace yams and some onions from under the sink, watching your eyes move cautiously around the room.

"Is he gone?"

Qifrey picks up the knife again. "Olruggio's unpacking his things in the side wing. He'll be staying with us for the foreseeable future, as the atelier's Watchful Eye."

Your eyes flick briefly to the side, shoulders tightening a fraction. The corner of your mouth dips ever so slightly—subtle enough that most would never have perceived the shift in your expression. Qifrey does.

"Olruggio's a good samaritan at heart," he says, deliberately keeping his voice light as he resumes cutting the vegetables. "I've known him for years. He's not going to do anything to you."

"I didn't think that."

"Then what's wrong?"

You're silent for a while.

"Nothing," you say, eventually. "I just don't know him."

"You'll get to," Qifrey promises. "He's not so bad, once you get past the grumbling."

"Master sounds fond of him."

Qifrey's hands falter. You are merely making an observation; yet for some reason your words leave him feeling uncomfortably exposed—as though they have reached into a locked box tucked away in some dark corner of his heart and dragged it into the light, intruded upon something even he rarely allows himself to examine. He tries to think of a suitable response but comes up empty; anything honest feels too stripping to confess aloud, yet anything less feels woefully inadequate—a disservice to all that Olruggio means to him.

"He's a very dear friend to me," is all he says, eventually.

The conversation lapses into quiet after that. Qifrey finishes chopping the carrots into rough cubes before moving on to peeling the yams. The knife works steadily beneath his hand, rising and falling to strip away their tough outer layers to reveal the pale tuber flesh within. Beside him, the weight of your gaze follows—every shift and movement of his hands as he works.

And then—

"Can I help?"

That catches Qifrey off guard. He has to pause to make certain he's heard you correctly. "You want to cook with me?"

You hesitate for a moment before nodding. Surprise, warm and pleasant, flickers through him like the afternoon sunlight spilling in from the window. He shifts aside to make room for you at the counter. In all the time you've been a student in his atelier, you've never shown even the slightest interest in cooking. And more often than not, you neglect your own meals entirely unless he places food directly into your hands—a poor habit that seems to have carried over from your early years of living on Havso's streets. It's something Qifrey has yet to successfully change.

He hands you the knife. You hold it awkwardly at first, grip uncertain as you lower the sharp edge to the yam. Qifrey hurries to stop you before you can nick your fingers.

"No, no. Like this." Qifrey steps in behind you, gently adjusting your hand around the handle. "Careful. Keep the fingers of your other hand tucked inward, always resting against the flat of the blade." He guides your knuckles into place over the yam. "Just like that. That way, you'll never cut yourself."

You remain still for a moment. Then your fingers curl slowly beneath his, obediently taking on the shape he guides them into.

"Very good." The praise comes naturally. It's as if he is simply teaching you another spell—you've always been a diligent student, and it is easy to praise you. For a second Qifrey is reminded of a moment much like this one, though far longer ago—of the first time he'd placed a wand into your grasp and held his hand, guiding you carefully through lines and circles. Your fingers had been almost entirely swallowed by his own, back then. But now, they curl easily against his palm, and when he leans over you like this, your shoulders brush closer to his chest than he remembers.

"Master?"

Qifrey startles. He hadn't realised he'd gone still. He looks down just as you look up—eyes bright and intelligent and touched with the faintest trace of concern, as though trying to decipher where his thoughts have wandered.

"I just—I was just thinking about something," Qifrey fumbles to say, quickly smoothing it over with a smile. He starts to pull away just as you bring the knife down hard against the cutting board, and the sound startles him into grabbing your hands again on instinct. "Not so hard! You'll cut a finger off."

"…Sorry."

"No, no, don't apologise." The fault is his—it's your first time using a knife, and just because you're good at drawing spells doesn't mean you will instinctively know how to cut and slice. He guides your hands through the motions again, patiently correcting the angle of the blade, and soon enough you pick it up with the same speed you seem to do everything else. Eventually Qifrey leaves you to slowly cube the yams on your own, while he moves on to peel the remaining vegetables in the sink.

For a short time, only the soft rhythm of chopping fills the kitchen. Then, Qifrey asks, idly. "Should we invite him over for dinner?"

You don't look up from the cutting board. "I think Master should give Mr. Olruggio some time to settle in."

Qifrey blinks once before deciding you're probably right.

"That's true," he concedes. I'll bring him some food later, then."

He does just that a few hours later, after you've helped with the dishes and retreated back to the solitude of your room—to further practice magic, no doubt. Qifrey ladles a portion of the leftover stew carefully onto a tray, alongside a fork and spoon—because he knows Olruggio well enough to suspect he's neglected to pack a single item required for actual daily living—and covers everything with a cloth to keep it warm. The bridge connecting to the side wing is only a short walk, and it isn't long before Qifrey is standing outside, knocking on Olruggio's door.

Olruggio answers looking mildly disastrous, soot smeared across one cheek. "One of my warming devices exploded while I was unpacking earlier," he mutters in explanation before Qifrey can even ask. Olruggio looks exhausted—he must be tired from the long travel, the unpacking—but his expression softens ever so slightly when he sees the tray in Qifrey's hands. "You cooked."

"Knew you wouldn't have remembered to eat, otherwise." Qifrey steps inside as Olruggio holds the door wider, setting the tray down on a stool—the small table near the window has almost vanished entirely beneath piles of oddly-shaped knick-knacks and loose papers. "Cream stew with roasted yams. My apprentice helped."

Olruggio raises an eyebrow. "They did?"

"Yeah."

"You sure it isn't poisoned?"

Qifrey snorts softly when his friend reaches for the spoon, anyway. He watches Olruggio scoop up a generous helping of stew, thick and creamy and dribbling over the side, only blowing over it once before he shoves it impatiently into his mouth. Olruggio practically moans.

"You shouldn't have become a witch," Olruggio mumbles around the spoon between his teeth. "You should have become a cook in some castle somewhere. You would've been loaded."

"Don't be ridiculous."

The two of them end up sitting on the floor while Olruggio decimates the stew with barely any pause between bites. The bowl's nearly empty by the time Qifrey notices the yam pieces gathered at the bottom—his neat cubes sitting amidst uneven, slightly misshapen chunks. His line of mouth softens, fond, even before he realises it.

When he looks up again, Qifrey finds Olruggio's eyes on him, over the rim of his spoon. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing, just—" Olruggio huffs softly through his nose, expression gentling in the low light. "You really adore your apprentice, don't you?"

Qifrey's mouth parts. Of course I do, he wants to say. They're my apprentice. Any master would. The words ruminate, strangely defensive on the tip on the tip of his tongue all of a sudden, but in the end, all that comes out is only a simple, quiet:

"…Yeah."

Olruggio's face cracks into one of those rare smiles. The sight of it makes Qifrey's chest ache faintly.

"I'm glad."

Qifrey blinks. "Why?"

"I dunno." Olruggio leans back slightly, one hand braced against the floor while the other rolls the spoon, licked clean, between his fingers. "You just… you stopped contacting me for a while, after the Tower of Tomes. I thought it was because you were giving up on searching for your past, so—" He blows out a breath, dark hair on his brow stirring faintly. "So I tried to give you your space, but you never really reached out after. I was… I guess I was just worried about you, this entire time." He shrugs, cut-sapphire eyes softening to a summer-sky hue. "But seeing you like this—an atelier of your own, an apprentice who's clearly territorial over you, by the way—you're doing far better than I'd hoped. I'm happy for you."

Qifrey's throat closes. He glances down at the tray sitting between them, feels flayed open by Olruggio's gaze, his unbearable kindness. Olruggio is so coarse with his words and yet tenderness spills out of him regardless—his actions, his spells, in everything he does and considers.

Qifrey had run from it. After Olruggio had excised his own memories, Qifrey could no longer bear to look his friend in the eye—could not bear the constant reminder of what Olruggio had chosen to sacrifice in his stead, nor the agonising knowledge of knowing he would never be able to confess. The separation had brought him comfort, for a while—enough solace for the silverwood buried inside him to begin growing once more, forcing him to take on an apprentice.

But perhaps that brief period of selfish respite had been enough. It has to be. Qifrey cannot run forever, and at the very least, being near Olruggio once again means the silverwood in him will halt its growth once more.

Thank you, I'm sorry, Qifrey doesn't say. Instead, he swallows the words thick in his throat, and smiles.

Qifrey doesn't move. Once, he might have hesitated—torn between capturing you himself, to spare you what mercy he can in the only way left to him, or calling for Olruggio to carry out what he can not. Now, Qifrey knows he can do neither. He simply sits at the table, tea cold in his hands, and looks at you.

"You shouldn't be here."

"I shouldn't be doing many things," you agree, slipping off the sill with thoughtless ease. Your boots land on the kitchen floor without a sound. "And yet, here I am."

"If anyone sees you—"

"No one will see me." You step forward, a faint smile tugging at the corner of your lips as though amused by his concern, closing the distance between you. "I'm very good at not being seen, these days."

Qifrey should probably stand. Put the table between you, if nothing else, to restore some semblance of distance, of sense. Instead, he remains where he is, drinking in the sight of you—like a man parched beyond reason yet trying desperately not to let it show.

"Why are you here?"

"Business." That tells him nothing at all—it could mean anything from a private matter to some nefarious plot tied to the Brimmed Hats. Your steps are slow and deliberate as you move around the table—the same table where you'd once had tea with him every morning, where he'd guided your wand through countless spells and sigils. "I heard you've gotten another apprentice, recently. Four's ambitious, even for you."

You know about Coco. "They're good students."

"They have a good teacher." Your hand trails lightly along the edge of the table as you walk, as though tracing over the memories embedded in the wood grain with your fingertips. "Do they remind you of me?"

"No."

He says it too quickly. Your laugh lingers in the quiet corners of the kitchen, the walls pressing in from all sides—giving the truth nowhere to run or hide.

"Liar."

Your voice is light. Teasing.

"I saw one of them in the market, today," you continue, leaning briefly over the table as if to confide some closely guarded secret. "The girl with the dark, curly hair… she carries herself very seriously, doesn't she? Like she's trying her best to be absolutely perfect."

"You've been watching my apprentices?"

"I've been watching you." You come to a stop at his side, a smile curling on your lips. You're s +o close now—close enough to reach out and touch, to catch a faint whiff of whatever is lingering on your skin: petrichor and night air and something faintly metallic, and beneath that—the familiar fragrance of lavender and lemon verbena, the same scent as his own body soap. "I've always been watching you, Master."

The words settle over him like first frost—the kind that goes unnoticed until it's already there. Qifrey should probably be afraid. Any sensible witch would be, with a Brimmed Hat standing just within reach. But the fear doesn't come. Instead, there is only that familiar, hollow ache inside the cage of his ribs—one Qifrey thought he'd already learned to live with—now stirring back to life, as though no time had passed at all.

"Why are you here?" he asks again. This time, his voice comes out barely above a whisper.

"Can't a student miss their teacher?"

Qifrey squeezes his eye shut. "You're not my student any longer."

Your smile falters for the space of a breath. "I suppose not," you murmur. A beat passes. "Then, maybe I just missed you."

The words hang between you, as fragile as spun glass. Qifrey doesn't dare to open his eyes—not yet. He cannot bear to look at your face and have to decide which truth would wound him more: if you meant it, or if you didn't.

"You need to leave," he says, instead. "Before someone wakes up—one of the apprentices could come downstairs and see you. Now. Before I—"

"Before you what?" Your breath ghosts across the sensitive outer shell of his ear, and his good eye flies open. You are right there—faces close enough for him to count each lash as you blink, the half-smile you're wearing softened by the low flicker of firelight. "Before you call for Mr. Olruggio? Or before you summon the knights?"

Qifrey's hands clench into fists at his sides. His palm quire still sits in his pocket. He could—

"Master." Your voice is soft, certain. "You aren't going to report me."

"You don't know that."

"I do." You reach up to touch his face, and Qifrey flinches from that small contact alone—caughtt between pulling back and leaning into your touch. He knows your hands intimately—the shape of them, the faint ridge of every faded scar, the way they once fit so easily against his own. "If you were going to report me, you would have done it the first time I returned. Or the second. Or the third." The corner of your mouth curls upwards, slow and amused. "Or perhaps you were too tired to remember this—I recall you were quite exhausted by the end of our previous… encounters, after all."

Qifrey's cheeks heat fiercely at the reminder. "It was a momentary lapse of judgment."

At some point, your hand has slipped from his cheek to his neck, your thumb stroking idly over his quickening pulse. He remembers when you'd been his apprentice—how uncertain you'd been with physical contact, and the way it'd only ever seemed acceptable when it came from him. Now, it feels as though the roles have been reversed, although he's not exactly uncomfortable with your hands on him. Perhaps therein lies the problem.

"That's right." There's something quiet—maybe fondness, perhaps pride—caught in the curve of your smile. "I'm Master's biggest mistake."

Qifrey exhales. The immediate denial catches somewhere in the back of his throat. He doesn't know what he wants to tell you—that you were never a mistake, that every moment since you left has been shaped and coloured by your absence.

Even if he did, he doesn't know if he should. He hasn't the words, anyway, and it's hard to think straight—especially with your thumb continuing its slow, maddening stroke along the side of his throat.

"My apprentices," he says, grasping for something, anything, to hold on to. "They're sleeping upstairs. If they wake up and see you—"

"They won't." Your finger hooks into the collar of his undershirt, dragging it down inch by inch until your breath whispers over Qifrey's collarbone. "I made sure of it. A little sleeping incense, nothing harmful. They'll sleep till morning."

Qifrey's breath catches, chair legs scraping noisily against the kitchen floor as he stands abruptly. "You cast magic on them?"

"Is that impolite? Forgive my lack of etiquette." Your smile widens, innocence and wickedness all tangled together. "I have no apprentices of my own, unfortunately—just a master who won't admit he misses me."

"I don't—"

"Liar."

You take another step closer, and then your chest is pressing up against his. Qifrey can feel a heartbeat—yours or his own, he can no longer tell—pounding so hard he's almost certain you can hear it in the quiet.

"Tell me to leave," you murmur. There's no teasing left in your voice now, only something quieter, more serious. "I'll go and not come back. You'll never see me again."

Qifrey cannot even find it in him to open his mouth. The words lodge like river stones in his throat.

"That's what I thought." A smile tugs at your mouth, but it doesn't quite reach your eyes. There's something faintly sad in your gaze instead. Your hand slides down—brushing past his collarbone, dragging over the hollow of his throat—before finally settling over his chest, fingers splayed over the desperate racing of his heart. "You're still the same, Master. Always so dishonest with everyone—including yourself."

"Don't call me that." His hands come up to grip your shoulders, fingers tightening for a fleeting second before… nothing. Neither pushing you away nor pulling you in. It's as if that simple touch alone is enough to unmoor him. "Not—not tonight. Not when we—"

"Not when we…?"

Qifrey doesn't remember when this habit of repeating his words back to him began—only that you've been doing it since you were an apprentice, always seeking out his confirmation, his approval. He looks at you now. You've slipped off your hat, and for a moment he catches a glimpse of the apprentice he'd once cared for—loved, in a way he had never allowed himself to name, and perhaps, still does.

"Not…" His exhale leaves him like a surrender. "Not when I'm trying very hard to remember why I need to report you."

You laugh sweetly. "Let me help, then."

Qifrey closes his eye. And when your lips meet his, deep and torturous in their slowness, he doesn't pull away. Your hands are on his chest, pushing, and then Qifrey's back meets the edge of the table, the wood digging into the base of his spine as your mouth slants over his.

You kiss him teasingly at first: soft bites to his lower lip, a slow drag of your tongue across the cupid's bow of his mouth. Your hands slide down his chest, finding the fastenings of his robes. The fabric gives way beneath your touch, as easily as its wearer, and when your fingers brush over his nipples through his undershirt he shivers—actually shivers—like some virginal boy from a rural village being touched for the first time.

"Wait," he breathes against your mouth. "Wait—"

You don't. Your fingers find the hem of his undershirt and tug, pulling it up over his stomach, his chest, his shoulders. Qifrey raises his arms without thinking—without choosing—and then his shirt is on the floor and his torso is bare to your eyes, your hands on his skin—palms flat, fingers spread—feeling every ridge of muscle and bone as if you are memorising him by touch all over again.

"This is wrong," he mutters, because the silence while you strip him bare is too much. "This isn't—we shouldn't—"

You lower your mouth to suck at the hollow of his throat, and every thought flees Qifrey's mind at once. "What's wrong?"

Nothing. Everything. Qifrey throws a hand over his face, flustered. "I used to be your master."

"You'll always be my master."

 He groans as loudly as he dares. "That doesn't make things any better."

You laugh just beneath the curve of his jaw, the sound sending warmth tingling down his spine. "Does Master feel as if he's taking advantage of his poor apprentice?" Your fingers trace formless patterns down his chest, over the softness of his stomach, stopping just above the waistband of his trousers. "His innocent, naive student who would touch themselves late at night, with their master's laundry pressed to their face, knowing they had to be silent because he was sleeping in the room just below theirs?"

Qifrey nearly chokes. "You—"

"It's alright." You lean in to kiss his cheek, the corner of his mouth. "My master is a very honourable man. Luckily…" Your fingers toy with the waist of his trousers, teasing at the strings. "…his apprentice isn't."

Before Qifrey can respond, you're already spinning him around. His hands barely catch the edge of the table before your body is pressing against his back, crowding him forward until it bumps into his thighs.

"What are you—"

You grind your hips just once against him, and whatever Qifrey had been about to say dissolves in his throat. Because he feels it—a hardness pressing insistently against his rear, considerable enough to turn his breathing shallow. Qifrey twists his head around to stare at you. He must look absolutely ridiculous—half-undressed and pinned to a table by his former apprentice, hair falling into too-wide eyes, mouth hanging open like a fish washed up on shore.

There's a laugh on your lips as you lean down to kiss him. Your chin catches on his shoulder, and his glasses slip slightly askew as your noses bump together.

"Body alteration magic," you mumble against his mouth, still smiling. Qifrey barely manages to gather his thoughts long enough to form a coherent response.

"Why?"

"Why else?" Your mouth drifts to his ear, gently catching the lobe between your teeth. "To make Master feel good, of course."

"But we don't… we don't have to do it like—" Like that, he wants to say. Qifrey imagines it for only a second—robes pushed down to his knees while you bend him over the table—and suddenly his entire mouth goes dry, thoughts oscillating wildly between shame and desire.

"You're always saying you feel guilty for taking advantage of your apprentice." Your fingers curl against the soft scattering of hair just beneath his navel, nails scratching lightly across the sensitive skin there. His entire body shudders. "So how about you let me take advantage of you for once, Master?"

Qifrey feels almost feverish. "You…"

"I want to make Master feel good," you murmur into the curve of his neck, lips brushing sweetly over his pulse point—too innocent for what you're offering. "I'll be so, so good for you, Master. I swear it."

His hands find the edge of the table again, gripping hard. This is madness. He has four apprentices sleeping soundly upstairs—still children, none the wiser—and a Brimmed Hat wanted dead or alive by the Knights Moralis standing in his atelier. And yet…

Qifrey lowers himself onto his elbows as though in a trance. The action arches his back, ever so slightly, and his legs spread to the breadth of his shoulders as if to yield the most private part of himself to your gaze, your touch. He can already feel his lower half twitching in anticipation—a shameful, undeniable ache that makes his entire face prickle with heat as his hips shift. It's as if his entire body is following a command that his mind has yet to accept.

"You're being so good," you breathe, and the words alone are enough to send heat pooling low in the heat of Qifrey's belly. Your hands find the fastenings of his trousers, fingers slipping easily over the strings. "Just let me take care of you, Master."

The knot loosens. His trousers slide down to his thighs, his knees, then drop to pool at his ankles. They're soon followed by his smallclothes. The kitchen air holds on to the lingering heat of the fire but is already cooling quickly, and it raises a faint shiver along his arms, the expanse of his chest, the now exposed curve of his rear.

Your lips find the back of his shoulder. You exhale softly there, almost reverent, before continuing to trail slow kisses across his skin, following the line of his shoulder to his nape. His head tips forward instinctively, chin dropping against his collarbone to give you more access—wanting, yielding to your touch.

"Master has done this with Mr. Olruggio before, hasn't he? I'm not the first."

Qifrey hadn't been expecting the question. It flusters him more than he cares to admit—naked in front of you, with your hands still resting possessively on the narrow jut of his hips. "Y-yes," he admits, shifting his weight nervously onto his other foot.

"And the last time?" Your hand slides down his back, following the curve of his spine until it comes to rest on one cheek, squeezing idly. Qifrey can't help the sound that escapes him—a breathy, pathetic moan that doesn't seem to come from his own mouth. "How long ago?"

His entire face feels hot. "Why do you want to know?"

You don't answer him immediately. Instead, you take hold of his other cheek and squeeze, pushing upward until the tight furl of his hole is revealed to your gaze. His hips jerk forward against the table edge with a gasp, his own cock half-hard and leaking against his thigh. You continue to knead his flesh in your hands, your intentions clear as mirror glass.

"To know how much I should prepare Master."

It's embarrassing, how arousing the thought alone is. Qifrey squeezes his eye shut in desperation, licking his lips, trying to remember how to form words, sentences.

"Not… not for a long time." The admission feels awkward, clumsy on his tongue. "Not since the time before… before you left."

Your hand stills on the small of his back. "Before I left?"

"Yes."

"All those months ago?"

"Yes, yes." A quiet whimper escapes him when you fondle his ass roughly, and heat drops low in his stomach, stirring his cock further. Is it really so surprising? There were moments, after you left, when Qifrey had been tempted by the thought of seeking out Olruggio's arms again, the familiar warmth of his bed. But he could never go through with it, in the end—could never do it without thinking of you. "Why are you asking so many questio—ohhh—"

Your hand has begun moving again, this time gently stroking the sensitive skin of his inner thigh. His legs part further of their own accord, as if desperate for more of you, your touch.

"Then, I'll be very thorough with Master." You sound pleased, for some reason—though Qifrey hasn't the faintest idea why.

Your hands leave him for a brief moment, and then there's a quiet sound of a bottle being uncorked. The subtle scent of arnica wafts into the air, vaguely familiar, followed by the soft, tacky noises of something slick being spread over skin. The massage oil from the kitchen cabinet, Qifrey realises. Of course you'd know where to find it; he'd used it on you countless times when you were still his apprentice, massaging your hands when your wrists cramped from overuse. If someone had told him back then how you would be using it on him now, Qifrey thinks he would have died of embarrassment on the spot.

You take your time, letting him every second of anticipation. And then your slickened fingers are there, gently circling his rim, and Qifrey nearly jumps out of his own skin. The wisp of a single breath pushes out sharply between his pursed lips.

"Relax, Master," you murmur. "I'll be gentle."

Your finger presses into him. Only the tip, just barely—but it's enough to make him shudder. The stretch is foreign and familiar all at once. It's been a while since he last had anything inside him, and even this small intrusion is enough to make his breath catch, his body slowly remembering how to yield.

The word escapes him even before he realises it. "Please…"

"Please what?" You crook your finger gently, the tip just brushing over the spot inside of him that makes his vision swim, and Qifrey's plea dissolves in his mouth. "Tell me what you need."

More, he wants to say, but before he can speak you've already supplied it, a second finger joining the first. Qifrey bites down on his moan, his breathing coming out hard and rapid. You work him open with steady hands, waiting patiently for his body to yield around your fingers before you add a third, curling them deep inside of him until he's almost dizzy. His cock is fully hard now, nerves catching alight each time it brushes the table with every small shift of his hips, precome smearing across the cloth.

"You're taking me so well," you whisper, and the praise makes him want to whimper. "So good for me, Master. So good."

He wants to tell you to stop calling him that—that the sound of him calling him Master in the midst of such unspeakable acts makes his head spin. But then you are shifting behind him, and Qifrey barely has to to twist over his shoulder before you're getting down on one knee. The next moment, your mouth is on him—and then he forgets how to speak in its entirety.

Your tongue traces over his rim, lapping at the tight ring of muscle, over your own fingers, still spreading him open. Qifrey bites down on his fist, the desperate sound he's made muffled into his knuckles, but it's still too loud, too much. He wasn't expecting you to do that—wasn't expecting you at all, tonight—and he hadn't cleaned himself down there, hadn't prepared himself for—

"D-don't—" is all he manages, voice shaking. "It's—wait—dirty… hah—ah—"

It's like you don't hear him. Or, considering the fact that the two of you are about as close as two people can physically be, you ignore him completely. The tip of your tongue probes at him, wet with saliva, before you bury your face between his cheeks, nose pressed into the cleft of his ass. Your tongue fucking into him wth short, little thrusts alongside your fingers. And just like that, Qifrey's dragged untouched over the edge, his protests dissolving into a trembling, indistinct syllable as he comes.

Your mouth stays on him, working him through the waves of pleasure rolling through his body. But he grows oversensitive quickly—his first orgasm in months. When he reaches back with trembling fingers to push your head away, however, you catch his wrist and pin it to the table next to his hip.

Qifrey claws at open air, his other hand scrabbling desperately against wood. Still you don't let up. Your tongue is softer now, lapping at him something almost resembling tenderness, and you moan softly against him as you draw out the last shudders of his release.

You continue to lick and suck at his hole, only pulling back with a wet, obscene sound when you've finally had your fill. Qifrey slumps against the table, his knees weak. You press a delicate kiss to the back of his thighs, each one soft and almost reverent.

"You taste good, Master," you whisper into the crook of his knee. He can hear the smile in your voice. Qifrey doesn't know whether he wants to see it or bury his face in the table and never look at you again. "So sweet, just like I always thought you would be."

He pushes himself up on trembling arms to glare at you over his shoulder, though he doubts it's very effective with the mortified flush high on his cheeks. "Don't say things like that."

"Why not?" Your tongue traces a slow circle around his rim, and his hips jerk—a helpless, involuntary action that makes him want to die. "Every part of Master is perfect to me."

"You—"

You laugh then, the sound too warm and innocent for whatever filthy things your mouth has just been doing, and then you're kissing him again. His knees, his inner thighs, the narrow dip of his waist, slowly making your way up his body—like you have all the time in the world and not just this stolen night. When you reach his necl, you take his chin in your unsoiled hand, pulling him in. Your lips meet softly—and then your tongue pushes past his lips, licking almost shyly at his front teeth until his mouth falls open a little more. Your tongue slips inside.

Something else comes with it—the taste of oil, slightly bitter, and something muskier, unmistakably himself. And then you are squeezing the softness of his cheeks, forcing his mouth wider, before you spit into his mouth.

Some rational thought buried far in the back of his mind tells him he should be disgusted. Instead, he moans into your mouth—a wanton, needy sound that makes his own cheeks heat—and sucks on your tongue like he cannot get enough. He feels your lips curl into a smile against his own.

"You've been so good, Master," you murmur. "Let me reward you."

Qifrey feels your hand on his back again, palm dragging up the full length of his spine, pushing him gently towards the table. He goes almost entirely without resistance until his cheek is lying flat against it, the crumpled tablecloth twisted in his fisted hands. Your body is warm over his, one arm wrapping around his waist, holding him steady.

He hears the slick sounds of you oiling yourself up, before you're pressing the tip of your length to his rim. The sensation steals the breath from Qifrey's lungs. He can only feel the tip, bluntly testing at his entrance—already stretched from your fingers, already loosened—but it's big. Bigger than Olruggio, bigger than anyone or anything he's ever taken. Why would you choose to—

"Breathe," you whisper. "I'll go slow."

He tries. He tries, and then—you are pushing into him. True to your word, you move slowly, sinking each inch into him with an unhurriedness that borders on torture, splitting him open on your cock. Qifrey feels as though you are forcing the air from his lungs, and his mouth opens on a whimper that is too desperate, too loud.

His whole body trembles around your length, muscles fluttering, trying to adjust to the stretch. Have you even bottomed out, yet? He's so full, impossibly so, and yet somehow that unbearable emptiness lingers—Qifrey wants more. His hips push back in an attempt to take you to the base, to force you to give him everything at once, but then your hand is gripping at his hip with surprising strength, stilling him.

"Patience, Master," you murmur, though your voice is teasing, and part of him knows that you are enjoying this. "You've only taken me halfway and you're already panting like a bitch in heat. I don't want to hurt you."

Qifrey's head swims. Halfway. The idea that he still has so much more to go seems terrifying when he is already so full, and yet he cannot bring himself to care. Something deeper than want—something that goes beyond mere need—has its claws in him now, desperate for you in a way that erases all rationality. He tries again, deliberately clenching hard around you.

Your hips jerk forward with a sharp groan, and Qifrey chokes on a moan as your girth splits him open, the stretch burning like fire in the best possible way. But then your grip tightens on his hip—so hard he is certain there will be bruises in the shape of your fingers blooming there come morning—and your other hand comes up to fist in his hair, dragging his head back until the two of you are eye to eye.

"That wasn't very obedient of you, Master."

He tries to meet your stare evenly—which is difficult when he's currently all but impaled on your cock.

"You—ah—are the one who's being disobedient—"

"How so?"

Qifrey squirms where he's pinned between you and the table. Your cock slips half out of him with all his fidgeting, and Qifrey nearly whines, frustration ratcheting. "Your Master," he says, his attempt at sounding sharp ruined by the breathlessness in his voice, "is telling you to fuck him."

Your grip on his hair loosens ever so slightly. For a moment, neither of you move. The kitchen is silent except for the crackle of the dying fire and the sound of his harsh, uneven breathing.

"You're sure?"

He's never been less sure of anything in his life. "Yes."

You stare at him for a moment longer before your lips, some unreadable emotion passing behind your eyes before your lips curl into a disbelieving smile. Before Qifrey can ask what that means, your fingers curl into the slightly damp hair at his nape, before you're pushing him forward again—more gently than he expects—until his cheek meets the table once more.

"Don't move," you say. He doesn't think he could, even if he tried.

And then you start fucking him in earnest.

The first hard thrust punches the breath from his lungs, his glasses clattering from the bridge of his nose to the table. The second make him cry out—a wrecked, strangled sound that has him immediately cramming his own hand over his mouth in his attempts to muffle it. The hand on the back of his neck keeps him pinned even as he writhes beneath you, toes curling, bare feet lifting helplessly off the kitchen floor as you drive into him again and again.

The reality isn't as simple or easy as the fantasy; the pain steals his breath, but even that is pleasurable somehow, one sensation bleeding into the other until he cannot tell where the former ends and the latter begins. You fuck him like you've been waiting years for this—like every choice in your life was leading you to this moment—to him, bent over this table and falling apart beneath you. And Qifrey can't do anything but take it, his hands splayed flat on the table, cheek pressed against the wood where he can still smell the ghost of morning tea, the faint trace of herbs and ink, the memory of a thousand breakfasts shared across its surface.

"Please," he hears himself moan into his own hand. He doesn't know what he's begging for. "Please, please, please—"

"Shh." Your grip on his neck tights, thrusts not slowing in the least. "I'll give you everything, Master. Everything."

He comes. Qifrey's whole body arches, contorting violently beneath you—too much, too much—a mangled sound that could be a gasp or a sob or your name or all of them at once tearing itself from his mouth. He can feel you in his stomach, in the back of his throat, everywhere—and then he is tumbling off the edge, shattering into a thousand pieces. The pleasure is white-hot, blinding, and he wraps his own shaking hand around his cock, shuddering as he spills over his fingers, the last waves of his orgasm rolling through him.

He returns to the feeling of your lips all over his face—his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, his chin—kissing away tears he hadn't even realised were falling. You whisper praise every spot your mouth lands, words falling on him like a sunshower he doesn't mind being caught in. Qifrey curls into you, blindly seeking out your lips with a desperation that has nothing to do with lust. You seem to realise what he's looking for before he has to say it, and you catch his mouth with yours, kissing him so softly it almost undoes him all over again.

His breath begins to even out, slowing to a steady rhythm. There is something about your arms around him, the warmth and weight of you still pressed against his back, that makes Qifrey feel more drowsy and sated than he has been in months.

He's about to let his good eye close, eyelids suddenly heavy, when he feels you shift inside of him. A weak moan slips past his lips, unbidden. You are still hard inside him, he realises with a start. You didn't come.

Qifrey glances back at you over his shoulder in alarm to see you smiling. That familiar, infuriating, dangerous smile.

"You didn't think we were done already, did you, Master?"

By the time the fire has burned down to embers, Qifrey stops being able to think in words. There are only sounds now—broken, breathless things that spill from his lips without permission, muffled into his own fist. He is barely standing; his legs gave out at some indiscernible point, and you had barely paused to laugh and wrap your arm around his waist before your cock resumed fucking into him. He's long since passed the point of pleasure, slipping into some indistinct place—where all sensation seems to blur together, and the only thing that seems to remain is you, your breath in his ear, your body moving against his in the dark.

And yet, somehow, you still have not come. Qifrey suspects magic, some kind of body alteration spell keeping you hard and full, driving him to the edge of insanity. It should be too much. But something in him still craves more—wants to feel you spill deep inside him, your warmth marking him somewhere that no one will ever see or know.

"One more," you murmur against his shoulder. You're unbearably warm, breath hot on his skin, slick with sweat. "I think Master has one more in him."

You said that earlier, too. He doesn't. He can't. Qifrey has already give you everything—twice, thrice, he's lost count—and his cock is soft now, bouncing uselessly against his thigh with each thrust. But something is building low in his belly again anyway, a pressure that has nothing to do with hardness and everything to do with the way you fill him up. Your hand splays across his stomach, as if you're trying to feel yourself from the outside.

"I can't," he hears himself beg, in a garbled, wrecked voice he doesn't recognise as his own. "Please, I can't—"

"You can." Your arm tightens around his waist, thrusts deepening to something almost cruel in the way each one drags against every inch of him. Stars burst behind his closed eyelids. "You can, Master. For me."

Qifrey sobs. An actual sob—broken and desperate—even as his fingers claw at the table and his legs tremble with the effort of staying upright. His hips push back against you of their own accord and you groan in appreciation, rolling your own into him with a precision that makes his vision blur.

And then he hears it.

A creak. He recognises where it's from instinctively, without thinking—the floorboards outside one of the bedrooms upstairs. His entire body seizes, eye flying open.

"W-wait—"

Surprisingly, you do—thrusts slowing to a leisurely grind that Qifrey unfortunately finds just as devastating. Your hand comes up to cup his cheek, gently angling his face towards yours.

"Master?"

"My apprentices," he manages, mouth working soundlessly around the words. His throat is raw, his entire body trembling with the effort of keeping his voice hushed. "Upstairs. I heard—"

"Are you sure?"

"If they come down—"

"Looks like you'll have to be quiet then."

His head snaps around at your tone, just enough to catch a glimpse of your face over his shoulder. You don't look at all concerned by the fact that one of his apprentices might be awake upstairs. Instead you're smiling: a dangerous, terribly wicked smile.

Qifrey's head spins. "What are you—"

Before he can finish that sentence, you move again—a slow, shallow roll of your hips that has your length grinding into that spot in him—and Qifrey's words dissolve into a choked gasp that he barely manages to smother into the crook of his arm.

"Stop," he hisses, alarmed. "They'll hear—"

"Then don't let them hear." you do it again, your cock dragging against his sensitive walls, sending sparks racing up his spine. Qifrey bites down on his own tongue in desperation. "I'm not going to stop."

You're merciless. You sink into him with deep strokes, thrusts that pull nearly all the way out before shoving back in, as if deliberately trying to make him cry out. It's like you want him to get caught. He bites down on his bottom lip so hard he tastes blood.

"Ah, ah." Your fingers find his mouth, gently tugging it from between his teeth in stark contrast to the relentless way you're fucking him. Your thumb presses down on the plump flesh there, soothing the sting. "That's mine to bite."

Qifrey pants. The floorboards creak again, louder this time, followed by the sound of light footsteps. Agott. That's Agott's room. She's been working hard on mastering a light spell this week, staying up late to practice her sigils by candlelight even when he'd told her to get some sleep. If she walks into the kitchen and sees her master bent over the table, being taken from behind by a fugitive—

His body clamps down on the cock inside him at the thought, much to Qifrey's horror. He drops his forehead against the wood, praying desperately that you don't notice.

You notice, of course. You always do.

"Oh?" Your thrusts turn slow and shallow in a way that makes him whine. "Does Master actually like the thought of being caught? Of being seen like this?"

"N-no—"

You roll your hips again, slow and deliberate, and the sound that tears out of him barely sounds human. He shoves his wrist between his teeth, biting down hard to muffle the whimper that threatens to escape. And once again, his body betrays him—clenching embarrassingly tight around the hard, throbbing length buried inside him—as if trying to beg you to stay.

"You're not very truthful, are you, Master?" Your hand slides around his hip, palm flat against his lower stomach, fingers splaying across the sensitive skin just above where you're buried inside him. He shudders. You lean over him until your lips are at his ear. "I prefer it when you're honest with me."

You resume your earlier rhythm. But now each thrust seems more forceful than the last, each snap of your hips seems intent on driving him past silence, every last scrap of restraint he has left. It is all he can do to muffle the sounds escaping him, his teeth sinking so deep into his own forearm he thinks he might break skin. But perhaps all his efforts are pointless anyway—Qifrey is suddenly, horrifyingly aware of aware of every obscene sound his body is making: the wet squelch of his body sucking you in greedily each time you sink into him, the slap of skin against skin, his own ragged breaths in tandem with your quiet exhales as you drive your cock into him deeper, pleasure filling him like rain flooding a river.

He is close. Too close. He can feel it building again—pressure low in his belly, tingling at the base of his spine—and he tries to hold back, knowing someone will hear.

But then you shift. Your hips press flush against his ass, grinding into the spot deep inside of him, and his vision blurs.

He comes with a cry that is far too loud, knees buckling like an elm tree in a storm. His hands slip on the table. His body convulses—once, twice, three times—and then he's flinching, sobbing into his own hand as he falls apart. The pleasure's all encompassing, hinging on ecstasy, a fine tremor wracking his whole body.

You don't stop. Your hand slides around his hip and finds his cock—half-hard and neglected, head weeping—and your fingers wrap around his length before stroking him hard and fast in time with each thrust of your hips. Qifrey chokes, body jerking. He's still caught in the throes of his current orgasm, desperately sensitive, and then you're dragging him straight into another. He comes again with a bitten wail that sounds more animal than human, cum spurting weakly across the rumpled tablecloth in white, pulsing ribbons, vision going dark at the edges.

"Master," he hears you whisper, as though in awe. The raw, wrecked quality of your voice is enough to make his entire body tremble. "Master."

Your hips shove bruisingly against him, as if you want to bury yourself inside him forever, to stay in the tight heat of his body until nothing else exists outside this moment—and then Qifrey feels you come inside him with a low sigh that feels like relief, your warmth filling him. Somehow, impossibly, he comes again, his spent body clenching weakly around you, milking you for everything you have to give. The hand that had been gripping his hair gentles, fingers carding through the sweat soaked strands as though he is someone precious, someone loved.

He closes his eye.

The two of you stay like that for a while longer, until you sigh against the damp curve of his neck and finally take a step back. Your cock slides out of him, leaving him suddenly, painfully empty, and Qifrey's knees instantly buckle beneath him. He would have crumpled straight to the floor if you hadn't caught him—arms wrapping around his waist, your laughter warm and slightly breathless against his shoulder.

"Careful, Master," you tease. "Can't have you falling for a Brimmed Hat, now."

Qifrey wants to say something biting, or something clever, at least—remind you just who was the master and who was the apprentice, reclaim some fragments of his shattered dignity. But then you're lifting him—arms hooked under his knees, pulling his legs around his waist—before you're carrying him through the dark atelier with the easy familiarity of someone who knows it by heart. Past the cold fireplace, the stairs that lead to the apprentices' bedrooms, to the small chamber he uses for his own.

When had you become so strong?

You step inside with an easy familiarity of someone who still belongs. Like this, Qifrey can pretend—that it's simply another night with just the two of you in this atelier, and you've had a bad dream again, climbing into your master's bed in search of his comfort.

You set him down on the bed with careful hands, the mattress creaking slightly under his weight. The sheets are cool against his heated skin. Qifrey watches, dazed, as you turn down the lamp on his bedside table to a dim glow, and crawl in after him—your hat discarded somewhere in the kitchen, still fully clothed while he lies completely bare beneath you. As though he was the only one who'd been taken apart—moaning shamelessly like a brothel whore as his apprentices slept upstairs—

He sits up in alarm, his forehead nearly knocking into yours. His apprentices. He'd completely forgotten—the creaking floorboards, the footsteps. Qifrey should be angry. Furious, even, at how you ignored him and kept going. Maybe he is. Or he wants to be. But he can't tell—not when every nerve in his body is still singing your name, his thighs trembling, your spend still leaking from his ruined hole and onto the sheets beneath him.

"Master?" You're looking at him with something like concern, your brow furrowed. He should probably kick you out of his bed, go upstairs and figure out if his apprentices heard anything. He doesn't.

"You're insane," is all Qifrey manages instead. His voice is hoarse.

You tilt your head form where you're fluffing up a pillow next to him, looking mildly perplexed for a moment. And then you smile—bright, wide and utterly unrepentant—in a way he is starting to realise he's unable to hate.

"Pointed Hats are really so innocent," you giggle—actually giggle—swooping in to press a kiss to his cheek. Your hand slips into the pocket of your robes and retrieves a familiar object: a palm quire, sitting in your outstretched hand. Qifrey recognises the sigil for wind in the center, but not the keystones around it. "A sound manipulation spell, Master. I thought it might liven things up for you."

Qifrey stares at you. The creaking floorboards, the footsteps above him in Agott's room… so this was all it had been? He remembers the way he'd tried so desperately to stay silent, the fear of being caught, the shame of realising how much the thought of being seen had only made him more sensitive, more responsive—how you'd used it to drag orgasm after orgasm out of him until he couldn't think straight.

"You—"

"I wanted to hear you, Master." You smile, burying your face in his thigh, nuzzling there like some overgrown cat. "Don't worry—I wouldn't let anyone hear any of those precious sounds you make. The spell blocks out all noises within a certain range, too. I worked very hard on it."

He looks at you in disbelief. Your smile widens.

"Are you proud of me, Master—"

He smacks you.

"Ah—ow? Master?"

He hits you again—on your arm, your shoulder, your chest. Open-handed, palm stinging pleasantly, nowhere near hard enough to truly hurt.

"You're so terrible," Qifrey hisses between swats. "You—I can't believe—you manipulated me—"

"Ow. Ow, ouch, ow—" You duck away from his hands, but his bed is only so big, and you seem loath to put any space at all between the two of you. You are pouting, though, and the expression is so unlike the reticent, closed-off apprentice you had once been that Qifrey's heart aches. You never used to pout, whine, or even complain. But now you are looking at him like a child who's been denied dessert, and he hates to admit it, but he likes seeing you like this. No longer holding yourself back, or suppressing every flicker of feeling behind that careful, blank mask, too afraid to want for anything.

"I was only trying to make it feel better for Master—"

"By lying to me." He whacks your shoulder, lighter this time. "I didn't teach you any of this sort of behaviour, you—"

His hand is halfway to your shoulder again when you catch his wrist. your fingers wrap around the delicate bone there, thumb pressing into his pulse, and then you're dragging Qifrey close, pulling him across the space between you until he is nearly in your lap, your faces close enough for him to feel your breath across his lips.

"Was it good for you, Master?" you ask softly. "Did you enjoy it?"

His breath catches.

"Don't call me that," he mutters.

"Master—"

"Call me Qifrey." The words come out quiet and uncertain, barely above a murmur, almost like an admission he isn't yet ready to face himself. He has to look away, fixing his gaze on some crease in the sheets at the foot of his bed, unwilling to meet your eyes. His ears are burning. "When we do such things next time. At least."

You are quiet for a long while. Qifrey glares at the sheets for a few more agonising seconds that feels like forever, wondering if you've even heard him at all, before he takes a deep breath and glances back at you—only to see you staring at him, eyes wide and lips slightly parted. A myriad of expressions flicker across your face: surprise, disbelief, affection… and something that looks dangerously like hope.

"So," you say slowly, as if you're afraid he might take it back if you speak too quickly, "Master is saying that he wants there to be a next time?"

The flickering light from his magic lamp catches the edges of your smile. Your fingers are still wrapped loosely around his wrist, as though you have no intention of letting go—not even for a second—and you're looking at him just as you once did, back when you were his apprentice, as though he'd hung the moon in the sky and handed you the stars.

Qifrey's heart throbs.

He smacks you again—more fluster than force, this time. "Are you some sort of beast?" he scolds, forcing the words out in a chastising tone that does little to hide the ache tightening in his chest. "If I had known how insatiable you were, I'd never—"

You're laughing. Actually laughing, bright and unguarded, the kind of laugh Qifrey had memorised and tucked away like precious jewels, each one saved for the quiet nights when he'd missed you the most.

"Qifrey," you say, delighted, as though testing the weight of it, the feel of it on your tongue. You speak it aloud like a secret, like his name is something you have been waiting for years to speak aloud. "Qifrey. Qifrey."

"Stop that."

"Qifrey."

"I said stop—"

You kiss him—quick and warm, the shape of your laugh pressing against his mouth before you pull back, still holding on to his wrist.

"Next time," you say. "It's a date."

He opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again.

"You're impossible."

"Not impossible," you correct, pressing his hand to the curve of your smiling cheek as if to let him feel just how happy you are. "Insatiable. For you."

Qifrey swallows. His throat suddenly feels tight.

"When do you have to go?"

You blink up at him, clearly not expecting the question. For just a moment—barely a breath—a quiet look comes over your face. Then it is gone, hidden beneath a smile.

"By sunrise."

Qifrey remains quiet for a moment. By all rights, he should let whatever transpired in his kitchen be enough. Say that he's tired, that you've had your fun and he's had his, and pretend this never happened until the next time it does—when you climb through his window and he falls into you again in the dark.

He looks down. There's a damp spot growing on the blanket between his legs, where your spend has been slowly dripping out of him. The sheets will have to be laundered, the stain washed out in the morning before any of his apprentices wake up and catch sight of it. And yet, for some reason Qifrey cannot justify or name, he loathes the idea of it.

What is wrong with you, he thinks, faintly. What is wrong with you…

But he moves anyway. Sits back on his heels, shuffling back slowly until he's propped against the pillows and his back is resting against the headboard. You blink up at him, seemingly unsure of what he is doing, until he bites his lips and slowly—slowly—spreads his legs.

He sees the way your lips part, eyes darkening in realisation. "Master…?"

"I said, call me Qifrey." His voice is hoarse, his face burning. But even as shame crawls up his spine, he reaches down around his knees and slowly pulls himself apart under your stare.

Your breath stops.

He can feel it—the intensity of his gaze. You're staring at his hole: sore, still twitching, pink and wet and dripping slowly. Your eyes go dark—darker than silverwood ink spilled over parchment—and his entire face feels hot. His ears, his chest, down to the very tips of his fingers holding himself open, an unmistakable invitation.

Perhaps you'd cast some sort of body alteration spell on him as well. It's unbelievable—unbelievable—that Qifrey could still want more after everything you've already done to him. And yet—

Maybe, the one who is truly insatiable, is him.

"Put it back in me," he says.

"…Huh?"

If anything, he is satisfied by the way you've been rendered speechless instead for once. You always seem to have a ready quip, a clever remark at hand. But now, he decides that it would be best to show you without words.

Qifrey licks his lips. Gathers the cum trickling out of him on two fingers and slowly, deliberately—even as you watch—pushes it back inside.

The stretch makes his lips part on a moan. It's just two fingers—barely anything compared to what you've made him endure tonight—but his body is sensitive now, every nerve ending raw and alive. He can feel everything: the drying stickiness of your spend, the tight clutch of his own hole, the way his loosened rim flutters around his knuckles even as a quiet, breathy whine escapes him. He doesn't take his eyes off you.

Neither do you.

For a long moment, neither of you move. And then you are on him, pushing him down into the mattress, your weight pinning him flat. Your hands grip his wrists hard enough to bruise, eyes darker than the sky on a moonless, starless night—and it makes a shiver run up his spine. You look like a predator about to eat him alive.

Your voice is low, barely recognisable as you push his knees back. "You're going to regret saying that, Qifrey."

Qifrey lifts his chin, defiant. Tries to meet your eyes, even with his face flushed amd his body trembling, his hole clenching around nothing, begging for you.

"Do you promise?"

You smile.

He finds you one afternoon as ordinary as any other. It's raining when he reaches the port town of Havso—a steady patter that turns the cobblestones slick and darkens the wood of every dock and doorway. For all the precision Qifrey has honed over water, getting wet remains an irritation he's never quite outgrown, and the sound of rain prickles at his awareness like a thousand fine needles, impossible to ignore. He hurries through the narrow streets, searching the shops—for a new cast iron pot to replace the one that had cracked last week, some twine for binding dried herbs, other small sundries—when he sees you.

The canvas awning you're huddled beneath is doing almost nothing at all—not to protect you from the cold spring rain, or from the sharp, biting winds sweeping in from the coast. Water drips steadily from the hem of your smock, your hair plastered in wet strings to your narrow cheeks. Despite this, you don't move.

Qifrey doesn't mean to stop. But he does.

You look up when his shadow falls over you. He takes the edge of his cloak, the water dispelling spell inked discretely beneath its hem, and sweeps it in a gentle arc above your head. The rain above you curves away. Your eyes widen ever so slightly, your gaze tracing the water trickling off the air as though sliding off an invisible dome, before you look back at him again.

"I don't like getting wet," Qifrey says, in manner of explanation.

You simply stare. For a moment, Qifrey wonders if you speak the common tongue at all—it's not uncommon for sailors from foreign kingdoms to abandon unwanted children in port towns like this—or if you're simply mute.

"You're soaked," he tries again, more gently this time. "Do you have anywhere to go?"

Silence stretches in the space between each of his heartbeats. The rain patters, fingertips dancing along the boundary he's drawn. Then, you shake your head.

So you do understand him. Qifrey should have guessed—children like you are a dime a dozen here, orphans, strays, the overlooked and unclaimed. No one would notice if one or more vanished from the edges of the docks.

Convenient, a colder part of him supplies. You are old enough to comprehend, young enough to be malleable, and compared to an apprentice born into a family of witches, you won't know enough of magic—and by extension, the silverwood—to ask questions that he doesn't want or know how to explain.

He takes you in.

The first few weeks are easier than he expects. You come to him with no poor habits to unlearn—no stubborn rune-drawing tendencies, no theoretical 'shortcuts' circulated by some of the lazier professors in the Great Hall. Teaching you is like working on a blank sheet of parchment. You simply watch what he does and try to do the same. And when you fail—which is often—you do not seem to be affected or frustrated. You simply do it again.

The only real issue is that you have never learned to write. Qifrey watches your hand wobble across the parchment—leaving dark splotches in some places, lines breaking off in others. Your fingers wrap around the ink wand like a stick you've picked off the ground, all knuckles and no finesse.

Qifrey lets out a quiet sigh.

"Your grip is wrong."

You look up at him, uncomprehending. Qifrey sighs again and hesitates, just briefly, before he steps closer and leans down. His hand slides over your fingers, carefully adjusting each one until the wand rests properly between them, the tip hovering just above the parchment.

"Like that."

The moment he releases you, however, your grip tightens again reflexively. The wood of the ink wand creaks faintly in protest. He quickly takes your hand again.

"Gently," he murmurs. "Like holding a robin's egg."

Qifrey guides your hand across the parchment. A straight line. A square. A circle. Your hand relaxes under his, just a little.

"Just like that," he says, and lets go. You look at the ink wand in your hand. "Now, try again."

You practice until the sun goes down.

He teaches you the basics. The three basic components that make up every spell, the five elemental sigils for fire, wind, water, earth and light. The keystones that govern a spell's direction and strength and purpose, how the sizes of the rings can affect its range and potency. Everything he says, you memorise. And everything he teaches you, you practice until you can reproduce it by heart.

After only about a few months of training, Qifrey dares to say that you've reached the standard that most witches your age who've grown up around magic would be at. The rate at which you're learning is… unexpected, to say the least. He should be pleased. Any decent teacher would be.

Qifrey tells himself this as he watches you inscribe a heating spell along the belly of a copper kettle. It's a reasonably complex problem for a beginner—the spell must conjure heat but not fire, be stable enough to maintain an even boil, hot enough to warm but not so fierce as to warp or melt the metal. It's a careful balance of precision and power that tends to elude most newcomers to spellcasting.

You hand him the kettle when you finish. Qifrey pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and lifts it up to his good eye, turning it slightly in the flickering light coming from the fireplace. The dispersion keystones are neatly drawn, arranged around the central fire sigil in two concentric circles. The limiting keystones sit where they should, too—balanced on either side, ready to dampen the spell the moment the heat climbs too high.

"Good," Qifrey says at last. The word feels thinner than it should be. He lingers a moment longer than necessary, as if searching for some flaw to justify a correction, but finds none. "We'll be able to use this to brew tea in the mornings, now."

You nod once at his assessment from where you're watching him by the kitchen table, then ask, "What next?"

There is no flicker of pride. No satisfaction in your work, no pause to take in what you've done. Just a simple what next, as if each perfected spell is nothing more than a marker on a long road you don't care much to tread on.

The first thin root of worry pushes through the soil of his chest.

Qifrey tries to keep his distance at first. He really does. A master-apprentice relationship only needs to go so deep for one to learn and the other to worry, and too much closeness would be counterproductive in his attempts to keep the silverwood at bay. He buys you all sorts of magical books and supplies you with wands and ink when you need it. He cooks, too, warm and filling meals that nourish the body and are rich in nutrients, until the hollowness in your cheeks softens, replaced by a healthier, rounded plumpness. He corrects your glyphs when he spots mistakes and guides your hand when your lines falter. It barely assauges the guilt in his chest.

You don't make it easier for him. Through no fault of your own, he knows, and yet somehow, that only makes it worse. You don't seek him out for any needs outside of your magic studies, never ask for anything, and eat exactly what he puts in front of you without comment. You wake up at dawn to start the tea kettle, and from there you start practicing magic without ceasing until he has to firmly tell you to go to bed.

There are no tantrums, no complaints, no childish demands for attention or affection. Surely, even children must have their preferences. Trinkets they like, foods they refuse to eat. But you are quiet and serious and wrong in a way that he cannot name, and Qifrey finds himself watching you much the same way Beldaruit had once watched him.

"You don't have to keep doing that," he tells you one evening. You're hunched over the kitchen with a half-empty cup of water, the parchment in front of you crowded with dozens of identical glyphs. The fire sigil that you'd just traced over in water glistens for a moment, then fades as the parchment slowly dries. You must have drawn the same glyph at least a hundred times now.

You don't look up, dipping your wand in water again. "My circles aren't perfectly round yet."

"You don't have to master everything in a single day. You could take a break."

"Why?"

Qifrey doesn't have an answer for that. Or rather, it's perhaps that he has too many. Because you look tired but refuse to admit it. Because your hands will cramp if you keep going. Because watching you work yourself into the ground makes me feel something too similar to what I used to feel for Olruggio, and that scares me.

"It was only a suggestion."

You consider it for a moment, and then turn back to your parchment. Qifrey sighs, pushing aside his robes to lower himself into the chair across from you.

"Do you have any reason for learning magic?"

You rotate your wrist once in the air before setting the wand's nib to parchment. "You asked me to."

"That's my reason, not yours."

"It's the only one I have."

Qifrey watches your hand move across the paper, and something in his chest tightens. This arrangement is supposed to be simple—selfish, yes, but simple. You are supposed to ask things of him, to need him in small, manageable ways that keep him worried just enough about your progress and studies without causing him too much concern. You have done exactly just that.

And yet here he is, worrying about you constantly for a completely different reason.

He thinks of Beldaruit's gentle gaze, the soft curl of smoke illusions coaxed into being on nights when sleep proved treacherous, when the memories of darkness and rain pounding unceasingly against metal and claustrophobia set in. He remembers Olruggio's warm smile and even warmer eyes, the ribbon on his hat that Qifrey still touches sometimes in the dark, tracing the multiple preservation sigils he's inked onto the silk.

His reminder to never forget, to never grow complacent.

"Take a break," he says again, and this time, there's something in his voice that makes you stop.

You look at him for a long moment, head tilting slightly to the side. It reminds Qifrey vaguely of a sparrow. Finally, you speak.

"You're worried," you say, as though you're making an observation. Qifrey forces a smile.

"I'm your master. It's what I'm supposed to do."

You glance down at your parchment once more. For a moment he thinks you might refuse, ignore his words and go right back to practicing, but then you set your wand down next to the paper and push your chair back, legs scraping along the slate flagstones.

"I'll continue tomorrow," you announce, without looking at him.

"Good," he says in response, and the two of you sit in silence at the kitchen table, undisturbed except for the crackling of the fireplace, and Qifrey has to remember how to breathe without counting the spaces between each one.

Hearthglen Village is about a few furlongs from the atelier, more often than not in need of small, persistent fixes, and thusly, the ideal place for you to practice using magic after passing the Pentacle of Proving's second test. Qifrey walks beside you through the small handful of thatched cottages scattered through the patchwork quilt of farmfields, returning the villagers' greetings with easy familiarity. It's always good to maintain good relations with the unknowing, especially those living nearby.

Eventually, the two of you arrive in front of the client who'd requested Qifrey's services. The problem is simple: a farmer's irrigation ditch has gone haywire somehow, and now his turnips are drowning in mud. Qifrey could fix it alone in ten minutes, but that isn't the point. He nods towards the field, giving you an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

"Go on."

You hesitate only for a moment before you go, hovering tentatively over the knee deep muck with your sylph shoes as you float out to the irrigation ditch. Your expression is reminiscent of a wet cat's—vaguely displeased, faintly affronted, as though the world has committed a personal offense by being this unpleasant. Qifrey has to hold back a smile.

In the meantime, Qifrey chats with the farmer as you work—something about the summer heat this year, the stubbornness of the soil—but he makes sure to never let you slip from his sights. You're already at the ditch, hat bobbing as you hover over the mud. He can almost picture your hand beneath the shelter of your cloak: fingers wrapped around the wand, drawing those precise lines that you'd practiced over and over again with unswerving confidence.

He's listening to a rundown of this year's cabbage harvest when a faint rumble echoes across the field. The earth shifts, groaning as though rousing from a long slumber, and then the water starts to move. Mud loosens and starts to drain from the fields, revealing the green leaves of the turnips peeking out through the soil once more. It's quickly replaced by a steady stream of clear water.

The farmer's face brightens with relief. He claps his hands together with a delighted laugh, already turning to call out his thanks as you drift back over to the solid ground of the path, the hem of your cloak splattered with drying mud. You don't smile back; instead you wipe the faint sheen of sweat from your brow and look to Qifrey for approval.

He pushes his glasses up and nods once. "Well done."

You accept his verdict the same way you accept everything else—quietly, without visible pride or disappointment. The farmer tries to press a basket overflowing with all variety of squash into your hands and your eyes find Qifrey's like you aren't sure what to do with gratitude. He takes it for you.

"They're a natural," the farmer nudges Qifrey as he moves to leave. "Where'd you find a talent like that?" Despite the surge of pride that races through him, he hesitates.

"They found me," Qifrey says, instead.

More villagers request your help over the course of the afternoon. A family's goat wandered into a small ravine, a child's kite got stuck in a tree. You lift the frantically bleating animal to safety with a levitating spell, and coax the wind into tugging the kite loose from an elm's tangled branches while the village children gather to watch you work with eyes full of wonder. The girl bounces on her heels as the toy finally drifts down into your waiting hand, and you hand it over without a smile.

The child hugs your legs anyway. You stand there awkwardly, arms glued to your sides, and Qifrey has to look away before he laughs.

Hours later, after the last request has been fulfilled and the sun is low enough to turn the clouds a warm ombre-ochre, you and Qifrey decide to walk home, the path stretching before you like a pale ribbon through the fields. You walk next to him in silence, as you always do, fingers stained with smudges of black ink and clay soil.

"You did well today," he says.

"Thank you."

"But."

You glance at him then. Just a slight flicker of the eyes, darting sideways and upwards. You've learned, by now, that your master is far from straightforward around topics that are necessary but difficult to broach.

"But?"

"But magic doesn't seem to make you happy," he finishes.

You neither deny nor confirm it. Your steps just slow slightly against the gravel scattered on the path, stones crunching beneath the soles of your boots. For a while, there is only the sound of the wind moving through the wheat fields.

Eventually, you speak.

"Does it have to?"

Qifrey thinks about that. About the way you've perfected every spell he's taught you but never once asked to learn any out of your own desire. About how you can spend hours, days, drawing circles and lines over and over again simply because he tells you to. About how quickly you've become good at magic—and how little of it seems to belong to you.

"It doesn't have to," Qifrey says, at last. He's cast all sorts of magic in his life, spells that have burned and hollowed, ones that have scarred and pained him beyond what any physical wound can. Not all of it was joy. Not all of it was kind.

Yet.

"But you should find a reason. To desire magic, I mean."

You glance at him, eyes briefly searching, as though weighing the shape of his words, their meaning. He licks his lips, suddenly dry.

"Magic is meant to grant wishes of the people," he says, more gently now. "To bless them. That includes yourself." His lips press together, smile half-formed before faltering, and the wind moves through the fields, rustling restlessly through the long grass. "I—I hope you can learn magic not because I tell you to, but because you want to."

The last sentence escapes him in a rush, as though forced from his lungs with some sort of wind dispelling spell. The thought settles heavy in his chest again, the silverwood shuddering. For all his care—for all the effort he's poured into teaching you properly, responsibly—one truth remains unchanged: Qifrey had taken you in because he needed an apprentice. Not out of kindness. Not out of any noble intent he can comfortably name.

He doesn't know what he would say if you ever asked him why. Any lie would feel too great a disservice to the one person he'd thrust this fate upon, and the truth feels brittle, insufficient—something that would fracture the moment he speaks it aloud.

But you never have. Sometimes, he suspects that you already know.

The remainder of the walk back passes in silence. The sky fades from sienna to lavender before deepening to a dark indigo. One by one, the first stars emerge at the very top of the firmament, their light faint and trembling. You say nothing, and Qifrey tells himself to give you time—you need space to process things, and pressuring you would only make you retreat further into yourself, like a snail hiding in its own shell.

The atelier comes into view at the end of the lane, its windows dark. Qifrey steps ahead, undoing the sealing glyphs on the door. It swings open with a soft creak, and he pauses, holding it ajar for you to step through.

You don't.

He turns back to see you standing a step behind the threshold, gaze lowered to the path at your feet, as though something he cannot see there has snared your attention and taken it captive. Qifrey frowns, head tilting.

"Apprentice?"

You don't answer immediately, hands in your pockets, the tip of your boot scuffing the ground. Then, quietly—

"I want to cure Master."

For a moment, Qifrey forgets how to breathe. He can only stare at you, mouth slightly parted. The words fail to catch despite him having nothing to say. Your voice had been small, careful—like you'd been turning the words over in your mouth for miles, smoothing their edges so they wouldn't cut your tongue on the way out. Of all the things he'd imagined you might say, this had never even been within his considerations.

He grips the door handle a little more firmly for support. The brass carvings bite its patterns into his skin of his palm.

"Cure me," he repeats, dumbly.

"Yes." You nod, the movement slow, as if hesitant in your admission. "The headaches that you try to hide from me. And your right eye, too," you add, pointing at the side of his face covered by his hair, as if he might not know the one. "You touch it when you think I'm not watching, but it seems like it hurts."

Qifrey didn't realise you'd noticed. He thought he'd been careful.

"I thought I asked you," he says, more quietly, more unsteadily now, "to want something for yourself."

"I don't like seeing Master in pain."

Qifrey’s grip on the door falters. Something tightens in his chest—perhaps the silverwood, perhaps something else, so sharp it cuts him open like a blade, and yet he doesn't know whether he wants to let go. For so long, he's been waiting—for you to want something, to reach beyond instruction, to claim even the smallest piece of magic for your own.

And you have.

Qifrey exhales slowly, the sound thin against the quiet of the evening. For once, there is no ready answer waiting behind his teeth. He thinks of Olruggio's face, the path to salvation he'd offered Qifrey paved with the pieces of his own memory. He thinks of the tree growing inside of him, its roots tangled in his ribs, its branches seeking the sun through where his eye once used to be.

Healing magic is a direct alteration of the body, and every form of body alteration is forbidden—banned on the Day of the Pact, enforced by the Knights Moralis with iron and fire. And even if it wasn't, the silverwood is not merely an illness. There is no cure for what grows inside of him.

But you don't know any of that.

So Qifrey smiles softly. Releases his death grip on the door, pulling away to rest a hand on top of your head, the same way Beldaruit used to do for him.

"That's very kind of you," he says.

Your expression doesn't change, but the tautness in your shoulders loosens just a fraction, as if you'd been bracing for him to laugh at you, to dismiss your dream as a fool's flight and fancy. Instead, he pushes the door open wider and gestures you inside.

"Come on," Qifrey tells you, swallowing the sudden thickness lodged in his throat. "Wash up. I'll make squash stew for dinner."

You nod and disappear up the steps to the second floor. Your footsteps fade quickly, and soon Qifrey's ears pick up the sound of running water, of the bath being filled.

He remains in the doorway a moment longer, one hand braced against the frame, the other lifting—almost unconsciously—to brush over where his right eye used to be, featherlight. The motion is familiar, thoughtless. Almost habitual.

But he's been exposed, now. A deprecating laugh escapes him, the wisps of it slipping between his teeth. It's only now, Qifrey thinks, that he's beginning to realise just how foolish he'd been.

He's fallen into the pit that he'd dug with his own two hands.

Sleep eludes Qifrey that night.

He lies on his back, one arm thrown over his forehead, the other resting on his chest. Beneath skin and bone, the cage of his ribs, the silverwood pulses its slow, patient rhythm, waiting. The ceiling above him is indistinguishable in the dark, but he's stared at it so many sleepless nights that he can recall to memory the grain of every plank, the small water stain in the corner that faintly resembles a bird in flight.

Just above him, in the room upstairs, you are sleeping soundly—or he hopes so, at least. Belly full of squash stew, dreaming of pleasant things. That you are warm and resting, and that, for once, you are not pushing yourself past the point of sense simply because he asked it of you.

I want to cure Master.

Qifrey turns onto his side, facing the wall. His pillowcase smells faintly of lavender—scented sachets you'd made last week, making use of some aromatics a village herbalist had given you for your help. He'd accepted one when you'd offered it, almost without thinking, assuming that it was thoughtful but practical gesture.

Now, the scent lingers like smoke.

Beldaruit used to say that the best apprentices were the ones who could surprise you. Qifrey always assumed he meant talent, insight, some brilliant intuition that no one else could replicate. Someone who could make teachers lean forward in their seats and think, that's the one.

But here, lying in his bed, your words from hours ago still sitting warm in his chest, he wonders if the old man had meant something else entirely.

Qifrey pushes out a breath, the tip of his tongue pressing behind his teeth. You will learn about the forbidden magic, eventually. Every witch does—and as your master, it will be his responsibility to teach you about it. Some things are too dangerous. Some lines cannot be crossed. All magic that is drawn on the human body or affects the human body is outlawed.

And that includes healing magic.

You will learn that, and then you will not ask too many questions about why his eye cannot be fixed. Eventually, you will move on and find another, better wish.

But for now, Qifrey takes your words and folds them carefully, tucking them away into the furthest corner of his heart where the silverwood cannot reach. He closes his one good eye and waits for the sun to rise once again. And when it does, Qifrey will greet you in the kitchen downstairs with a cup of hot tea and a smile, he will teach you combination sigils and binding spells, and he will never bring it up again.

Because some wishes are too heavy to be said aloud, and some teachers are too selfish to let them go.

Summer slips unnoticed into autumn, and autumn, in turn, yields to winter. Qifrey teaches you to crochet, then to knit—awkward at first, fingers too stiff around the slumbersheep yarn until Qifrey takes your hands and guides you through the movements, much in the same way he does when teaching you spells. He shows you how to tend to the heating spells that keep the house warm without burning it down, how to summon precise gusts of wind to blow snow off the atelier's sloping roofs. And the months pass just as the weather changes—gradual, inevitable, marked only in hindsight by the shift in the air, the thinning of light.

And as you grow older, Qifrey finds the distance he once tried so carefully to maintain eroded by the same unrelenting tide. Bit by bit, day by day—until one morning he wakes up and realises he cannot quite remember what it feels like to not have you there.

It's not something that changes overnight. Instead, it is a thousand small, mundane things—the way his hand moves without thinking to drop two cubes of sugar into your teacup, the copper kettle with your heating spell whistling behind him on the stove. You're at the basin with your sleeves rolled up to your elbows, washing a skillet faintly smelling of bacon while a brushbuddy dozes on your shoulder. Everything is good, and everything is warm.

This is dangerous, Qifrey thinks. And then he thinks it again, because the first time hadn't been enough to make him stop.

The morning he's forced to confront it comes without warning. Quietly, unassumingly, a thief in the night.

Qifrey notices that something is different the moment he steps into the quiet of the kitchen. The kettle is cold, and the matching cups that a travelling potter had made for you sit upturned on the counter, untouched from where you'd set them aside to dry last night. He stands in the doorway for a moment, listening. The atelier breathes around him like an extension of his own body—the soft creak of timber settling, the low whisper of wind along the eaves—but beneath it, nothing. No quiet patter of footsteps in the floor upstairs. No water running in the washroom.

Perhaps you're sleeping in, he tells himself. The idea is almost pleasant. You never do; you're always awake before him, tea already steeped, moving around the kitchen to prepare breakfast—presence slipped so easily into his morning routine that he'd stopped noticing it altogether.

Qifrey sets the kettle to heat, before rummaging for the battered tin of tea leaves in the overhead shelf. He prepares a cup for you, placing it at the chair that has become yours in all but name, and sits across it with his own. The brew's a little more astringent than he's used to—steeped a touch too long, perhaps—but he drinks it anyway, idly sorting through the neglected stack of mail from the council.

The sun climbs higher in the sky. Light spills through the kitchen window, between the gap in the curtains, inching slowly across the table to catch on the rim of your untouched cup. Qifrey looks through the latest spell you've been working on: an attempt at replicating his Palm Dragon Teacup. He makes small suggestions in the margins, noting down more efficient arrangements and combinations of keystones, ideas for refining its precision. Still, it's good work. Your work is always good.

More time passes. He finally completes drafting a letter to the Great Hall—something about independent ateliers and watchful eyes—and sends it off before picking up a book about complex fire spells. Qifrey thumbs through the pages slowly, more out of idleness than focus, pausing every now and then when something catches his eye. A variation making use of the stabilising keystone. A more efficient heat-dispersal glyph. He dog-ears about six different pages with the intention of showing them to you later, when he looks up and realises that your tea has long gone cold.

Qifrey closes his book, sets it aside, and heads for the stairs.

Your bedroom door is closed.

That isn't surprising to Qifrey. You've always been a private person by nature, and you're even moreso protective of your few possessions, your personal space. Qifrey learned early on not to intrude without invitation or cause.

But your diversion from routine is… odd. Surely you will forgive his worry.

Qifrey hesitates, knuckles hovering over the wood of your door, before he knocks. "Apprentice?"

No answer.

He knocks again, a little sharper this time. "It's past noon. If you want to sleep in, just let me know, alright? You deserve the rest."

Still no answer.

The thin thread of unease tightens around his chest.

"I'm coming in."

The door swings open easily beneath his hand. The room that he steps into is familiar and empty. Your blankets are carefully folded at the foot of the bed, your traveling cloak absent from its hook by the window. And your sylph shoes, the ones that he'd helped you mend just last week, are missing from their place next to the dresser.

Qifrey stands in the center of the room, the air suddenly going very, very still. The silverwood in his chest trembles.

Calm down, he tells himself firmly. Your bed is made—your absence must be deliberate. There must be some sort of explanation. Perhaps you wanted a taste of mischief, to act your age for once. Perhaps you snuck out to one of the nearby villagers, Hearthglen or Azmar, to meet people, make friends. Be normal. You mentioned the daughter of Azmar's baker last week. He recalls a girl your age with flour on her apron who'd been fascinated with your magic. Perhaps you've gone to pay her a visit.

He turns slowly, forcing his gaze to move along with him. Your ink wands are in a little cup on your table, textbooks sitting in rows on the shelf where they belong. Encyclopedias, histories, grimoires he'd deemed safe for for your learning. Nothing out of place. He's about to leave the room, fetch a guidance orb just to make sure that you're alright, when—

Something small and furtive shifts between a gap in the books. The brushbuddy's tail twitches into view before it darts back into the narrow space behind, as though caught somewhere it shouldn't be.

Qifrey frowns.

He reaches up and pulls the entire front row of volumes aside, setting them down on the table with a heavy thump. Dust stirs in the air. Behind them sits another, shorter stack of books, tucked neatly out of sight. Aside from him, there isn't another occupant in this atelier for you to hide things from. Which means you meant to conceal this deliberately. From him.

Why?

Qifrey ignores the cold uncertainty in his chest, picking up the first book. Medical journal. Second. Herbal remedies of the Southern Continent. Third, an encyclopedia on human anatomy, although only the section on ophthalmology is bookmarked, annotated so densely that barely any margin is left untouched. The rest of the books are of a similar vein.

Only the last one is different—a notebook, worn pages filled with a cramped but script that he would recognise anywhere. The rest are filled with sketches—plants that even he doesn't recognise at first glance, roots and leaves and bulbs rendered with careful attention to detail. Analgesic properties. Toxic in high doses. Antispasmodic. Causes hallucinations.

He flips through more rapidly, pulse quickening, but the later pages only get worse.

Burn, left forearm. Applied tincture from ground monoceros horn and milkwort. Moderate pain reduction, mild nausea. Bruise, right knee. Poultice from steeped elderwood and nightpoppy. Significant pain relief, but results in complete loss of sensation and movement in area. Lasts three hours. Burn—

Qifrey's vision blurs. His other hand grips the edge of your chair, knuckles white, breath coming out sharp and shallow as he forces himself to breathe. You've been hurting yourself. On purpose. Testing remedies for… for—

He doesn't dare to let that thought complete itself. He turns the pages quickly, skimming past entries until he reaches the last one. The ink is smudged where the parchment presses together, as if you'd jotted it down and closed it in a hurry. It's still faintly wet.

There is a rough sketch of silvery stems and thin, needle-like leaves. Spineneedles, you've labelled them. Your notes crowd the margins: potent pain-relieving properties. Possible long-term restorative effects. Grows only in steep valleys inhabited by winged serpentines, venom necessary for germination. And below it—

Kestrel's Maw, eight furlongs north of atelier. Serpentines least active at dusk and dawn.

Qifrey feels his blood turn to ice in his veins. Outside the window, the sun hangs high in the cold winter sky, almost at its zenith—long past dawn, past any reasonable margin of safety. It's far too late. You should have been back hours ago. No, worse—you should have never gone at all, risking your life for such foolish, pointless endeavours. You should have been in this very room, sleeping soundly beneath the blankets, unharmed and safe and under Qifrey's protective eye. Instead—

He'd flown over Kestrel's Maw once, years ago. He still remembers the way the cliffs drop away into nothing, wind screaming through the narrow ravines, strong enough to throw even an experienced witch off balance. And the serpentines there are especially aggressive—great, winged creatures with beaks like drawn swords—nesting in the crevices where the spineneedles grow.

And that's where you've gone.

I'm responsible for this, Qifrey thinks numbly, and the words are a realisation as much as an accusation aimed at himself. I did this. I made you this way. I wanted someone to worry about, and now—

The image comes to him, unbidden: your body, broken at the base of the ravine. Impaled by sharp spikes at the bottom, limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Cloak ripped and dark with blood, flesh torn from your bones by monstrous beaks. And your face—that quiet, serious, earnest face—pale, chest still, eyes open yet blank and vacant and unseeing and—

No.

No.

Qifrey runs. He doesn't think. He doesn't allow himself to. The door is too far—he shoves your shutters open and throws himself out of the second floor window, into the harsh midday sunlight. For a second, wind rushes up to meet him, flailing, falling—before the sylph seal beneath his feet flares. And then he's airborne, rising too fast but not fast enough, the wind tearing at his hair, the fragile control he's forcing himself to hold together.

Please, not them, is all he can think as he hurtles through the sky. Not my apprentice. Not them. I'll do anything. Please, please, please—

He doesn't know who he's begging, only that he'll beg anything, bargain everything—if it means that you're still alive when he arrives.

Even from a distance, the ravine makes for an unnerving sight. The karst pinnacles spear upwards as though they seek to pierce the sky, like the vicious teeth of some enormous, long-dead beast. Qifrey had forgotten how sharp they were, every edge honed to something hostile. Even the light falls strangely, splintered by stone so that shadows fall where they shouldn't, fractured into shifting planes that make depth and distance difficult to judge.

He clears the plains beneath him with unmatched speed, wind tearing past him—

—and then, he sees you.

You're clinging to a narrow outcropping perhaps fifty feet below the cliff's edge, body pressed close to the rock wall as though trying to become one with it yourself. Your sylph shoes are missing from one foot, and there's a long rend in your cloak. You aren't moving—only holding on, just barely—feet perilously close to the edge of a fatal, yawning drop below.

Above you, three winged serpentines circle patiently in the air. Their beaks hang slightly open, tongues flickering you as if tasting the air—your blood, your fear, the inevitability of what's next. The only mercy here is that they're not attacking. They are waiting, drawing it out. The same way a cat toys with a mouse it already knows cannot escape.

Qifrey doesn't stop or slow. He dives.

The wind screams past his ears, rising to a fever pitch as he plummets. His palm quire slips into his hand by instinct alone, wand flying over the paper in sharp, practiced strokes before he can even spare a thought as to who might be watching.

The spell takes shape in a single breath. Water wrenches itself from the air, the thin moisture caught in wind and stone, surging upwards into a coiling mass until it takes shape—a great, fluid dragon, its body twisting through the open air with a roar that echoes throughout the entire length of the gorge.

Two serpentines are caught in its jaws almost immediately, their cries cut short amidst the sound of snapping wing and bone. The third shrieks, veering sharply away before wheeling back, beak gaping in fury—but Qifrey is already moving, one arm wrapping around your waist and tearing you off the cliff face, hauling you bodily into the open air. You make a quiet sound in the back of your throat—the closest to afraid he's ever heard you—fingers gripping at the front of his shirt.

"Master—"

"Don't call me that right now."

The serpentines shriek behind him, rallying. Qifrey presses the sylph seal on his boots together, the weight of you unwieldy and palpable in his arms, and flies home.

You don't speak on the way back. Neither does he.

The atelier rises into view at the edge of the fields, its familiar shape cutting through the blur of wind and motion. He lands harder than he intends, knees buckling for a second before he forces himself forward—half-carrying, half-dragging you through the front door. Your cup remains where he left it, untouched on the kitchen table, and he sets you down onto the chair—the same one he'd been sitting in just an hour prior, drinking tea and so, so oblivious—more roughly than he intends.

You don't complain. You never do. The same way you never protest, never ask, never tell him anything—

Qifrey turns away. His hands are shaking. He wrenches open the drawers, rifling through them with none of his usual care, yanking out bandages, salves, clean gauzes. Something clenches in his chest like a fist, squeezing, tight, so tight.

"What were you thinking?" he snaps. He almost doesn't recognise his own voice—low and taut and cutting. "Going to such a dangerous place—alone—without telling anyone—without asking—"

He finds the antiseptic, shoved into the back of a drawer. His fingers slip on the stopper, trembling faintly.

"You could have died. Do you understand that? You could have died. Those creatures—they could have—" Sent you plummeting down the cliff. Eaten you. Torn you to pieces. He can't bring himself to finish the sentence. The images they conjure are too much to bear.

He whirls around again, still not quite looking at your face, and takes your left arm. The cuts are worse up close—long, ragged scratches that split skin, dried blood flaking at the edges. Your palms and fingers are raw and abraded from where you must have clung to the sharp rock.

Qifrey dabs at them with more force than necessary. You flinch just once, before going still again.

"Rash. Reckless. Stupid." The words spill out of him like water from a broken dam. They're sharp enough to wound, meant to hurt, and he knows this even as he says them but cannot bring himself to stop. "I didn't teach you that. I taught you to think, to assess, not throw yourself off cliffs for—for worthless plants—"

"Master—"

"I said don't." Hearing that title alone makes him want to scream. "Don't call me that now. You don't have any right to when you—"

"It's Master's fault."

The words land like a slap. Qifrey turns to look at you—one hand frozen over a roll of bandages, the echo of them stinging—only to find your mouth drawn taut in a stubborn line. And your eyes, those quiet, watchful eyes that have always followed him so carefully, are hard with something he's never seen in them before. Not guilt. Not shame. Something closer to accusation.

As though he is the one who has wronged you.

"Oh, it's my fault," he repeats, his voice rising sharply on its own, an unpleasant mixture of anger and incredulity. "I didn't tell you to sneak out without telling me. I didn't tell you to seek out winged beasts you have no experience fighting. I didn't tell you to—"

"Yes, because Master never tells me anything—"

"For good reason!" He throws his hands up, the dishcloth—stained with your blood—twisting taut between his white knuckled fingers. Qifrey wants to shake you. Maybe tear his hair out. Another part of him—a smaller, quieter part—wants to lock you in this atelier and throw away the key forever, just to make sure that you are safe. "There are things I don't tell you because they are dangerous, things that I am trying—I have been trying—to protect you from—"

"I don't need to be protected like a child—"

"Then stop acting like one!" Qifrey is shouting now. He knows that he is shouting. He can't stop. "Sneaking around behind my back, hiding books in your room, burning and cutting yourself, putting yourself in mortal danger for a cure that doesn't exist!"

Your obstinate expression only darkens further. "Master can't know for certain—"

"I do!" His hands come down hard on the tabletop, and you flinch. Your teacup jumps, porcelain clattering as it tips. Cold tea spills across the gingham patterns. "I know because—" Because he's already been to the Tower of Memories, and he knows that what ails him is no illness or curse. "—because I've already read every book, tried every remedy—I know that there is no cure! There is no cure, and there will never be, so stop trying to throw your life away for something so—"

"I won't!"

Something in Qifrey snaps.

"If you're so unwilling to listen to me," he says, his voice suddenly cold and flat, in a way that doesn't belong to him, "then maybe you should no longer be my apprentice."

The moment those words leave his mouth, Qifrey knows at once that he would do anything to take them back—tear them out of the air, swallow them whole even if they cut his throat to ribbons—but the damage is already done.

You go very still. The anger doesn't leave you, not entirely, but something beneath it fractures—hairline cracks spiderwebbing across thin river ice. Your mouth works soundlessly, shaping around words that don't make it out, before pressing into a thin, bloodless line.

When he dares a glance up again, your lashes are wet. You're not crying—you never have, not in front of him, at least—but your eyes are bright, too bright now, in a way that feels dangerously close. Your lower lip wobbles only once before you sink your teeth into it and force it still.

Qifrey hates water. The sound of rain makes his chest tight, and the feeling of being wet makes his skin crawl. He hates the way it blurs the fading remnants of his vision, the way it soaks through his clothes and leeches the heat from his bones, the way it reminds him of things he's forgotten and things he wishes he could forget.

But this—this—is worse.

Qifrey's hands falter, then drop back to his sides. Why had they even been raised in the first place? The kitchen is too quiet now, empty except for the phantom ghosts of your anger and his, the steady drip of tea from the table's edge, forming a puddle on the flagstones beneath. He feels exhausted all of a sudden—wrung dry and scraped hollow.

It's only then that he notices the bag. Your hand—the other one, still dirty and bleeding—is curled around a small pouch of cloth, pressed so tightly against your chest that your knuckles have gone white. Even after everything, you are still clinging to it. Still trying, desperately, to keep it safe.

"Give me the bag," he says.

Your eyes jump to Qifrey's face. You glance down at the bag, as though just only remembering thtat it's there, before your fingers tighten around it again, spine curving over it protectively. Hesitation flickers across your expression for a brief second, before you give a small, stubborn shake of the head.

No.

Qifrey sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, patience fraying, before he reins himself in forcefully. He's done more than enough damage, today. "I won't—I'm not going to do anything to it," he says, trying to sound reassuring, more gentle. He doesn't know if he succeeds. "Just—please. Give me the bag."

You stare at him for a moment longer, as though wordlessly weighing whether you can trust his words. Then, slowly, reluctantly—you loosen your death grip on the pouch and hold it out.

It's surprisingly light in his hand, once he takes it. Almost as though it holds nothing inside at all. His fingers, still faintly numb and tacky with your blood, fumble with the drawstrings as he pulls them loose. He looks inside.

A handful of silver leaves lie scattered across the bottom of the pouch. Thin and gleaming, each one shaped like a sewing needle. Spineneedles. Carefully gathered, but so few of them—barely enough to brew a single thumb-sized vial of tincture.

Yet the mere sight of them is enough to strip all the anger from him in an instant. Qifrey stares down into the pouch, the thin scatter of silver leaves there glinting faintly like stars in the night sky, and feels something inside him give way.

He isn't angry with you. He's never been angry with you. The one whom Qifrey is so unbearably angry with, so deeply ashamed of—is himself. Because the only reason you did any of this—pushed yourself to such lengths, put yourself in harm's way—is because he let you believe he could be cured. He'd smiled and selfishly kept the words you'd uttered that day close to his heart, like a precious treasure, and in doing so, he'd unwittingly sent you hurtling straight into danger's embrace.

A slow, quiet breath escapes him. Qifrey slowly lets himself sink to his knees in front of your chair, suddenly weary in a way that he cannot quite name.

You shift at the movement, glancing down at him with something uncertain in your expression, unsure of his moods.

"…Master?"

He sets the pouch on the table and carefully takes your hands in his. You try to tug them back to your chest on instinct but he holds on to your wrists, gentle but insistent. Qifrey turns them over, palms out, your fingers curling slightly, and looks at the small, round marks he's never looked close enough to notice before. Burn scars. Old and new, layered together, a wordless record of every time you had pressed pain into your own body in search of something that might help him.

His throat closes around the words he doesn't have.

"Thank you," is all he can say, in the end. Even then, it feels inadequate. "For trying to cure me. For going to such lengths to ease my pain." Qifrey pauses, his thumb brushing over a half-healed scab on your knuckle. "But it… it won't work."

You look at him, then. The defiance has receded from your eyes, leaving behind a thin, wavering uncertainty in its place. "How can Master be so sure it will not work?"

Because I've already tried everything. Because I read about it in the Tower, and I know the truth. Because the problem isn't my eye or the headaches—it is the tree growing inside of me, the parasite that will kill me if I stop worrying, if I stop hurting, if I let myself be happy for even a moment.

But Qifrey cannot say that. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. His fingers drift down unconsciously to brush the ribbon trailing from the top of his hat.

"Because, like I said, I've tried every remedy in existence." He shakes his head with a defeated smile, squeezing your hands. "Nothing works. And it only hurts me more—more than my eye or any headache—to see my beloved apprentice put themself in danger for my sake."

You go still, fingers curling loosely under his own.

"I should be the one protecting you," he continues. "Not the other way around. That—that's the whole point of having an apprentice." Qifrey almost laughs at that, the line of his mouth twisting into the shape of a half-formed, self-deprecating smile. Oh, he was so, so foolish. "I'm supposed to keep you safe. And yet, here you are, throwing yourself into danger for me."

His gaze drops back to your hands, the small scars scattered across your skin.

"I'm content," Qifrey says quietly. "With what I have now. The atelier. You." And as the words leave him, he realises that they are not merely for your sake—they are true, plain and simple. "The pain is small in comparison."

You don't speak for a moment. The afternoon light has shifted, turning golden and syrupy, pooling on the floor between you like liquid honey. Qifrey can hear the sound of his own heartbeat in the silence, a slow, steady march in his ears.

"But I don't like to see Master in pain."

Your voice is small, but matter-of-fact. You say it in the same way you might state an obvious truth, such as fire is hot and water is clear and the sun rises in the east. As if it's simply a fact of the universe that you dislike seeing him in pain—and therefore, you must do something about it.

Qifrey's heart clenches, a sharp and sudden thing. Before he can think better of it he's already leaning forward to gather you into his arms. It's the first time he's ever hugged you, he realises distantly. He's held you when you were learning to use sylph shoes for the first time, guided your hand and wand through careful strokes, rested a light hand on your head once or twice—but never anything like this. Never returned even a fraction of the quiet comfort you've given him simply by being there. Some master he's been.

You go stiff for a moment against his chest, caught off guard by the suddenness of the gesture. A few breaths pass before your shoulders loosen, ever so slightly, and then your forehead dips, coming to rest slowly against the line of his collarbone. And your hands, one half-bandaged and the other still dirty with smeared blood and dirt, come up to grip tentatively at the back of his shirt.

When had you become so precious to him?

He closes his one good eye and presses his face into the top of your head, ignoring the way his glasses push up on the bridge of his nose. Your hair smells faintly of lemon verbena and soap. "Don't do something so dangerous again, alright?" His voice comes out muffled, even to his own ears. "Promise me."

There's a long pause. Then: "I don't want to give up, Master."

Qifrey sighs, something between an amused sigh and weary acceptance. Clearly, it'd been wishful thinking at best to hope otherwise, and the fault for it lies squarely with him. He draws back just enough to look at you. Your fingers tighten in his shirt.

"If you have any ideas," he says at last, the words coming together with reluctant resignation, "tell me first. Before you do anything. We'll experiment together—here, in the atelier, where it's safe." His eye narrows slightly, a faint edge of sternness threading through the softness. "I won't stop you from trying. But I'm not going to lose you to a cliff face or anything else, and there will be no forbidden magic. Do you understand?"

You hold his gaze. For a moment your expression is unreadable—eyes too much like mirrors, reflecting too much of him back at himself, too clearly, too honestly. Then, slowly, you nod.

"Okay."

"Good." The word leaves him more easily than expected, as though some heavy weight has finally been lifted from his shoulders. Qifrey pulls you in again, a brief but quieter second embrace, before he lets you go and leans back. Even with the space between you now, the residual warmth of you lingers, settling into the hollow places between his ribs like sunlight.

"I'll make dinner tonight," he announces, getting to his feet. "You should get some rest. But first—let me finish treating your arms."

"Okay."

You hold your arms out obediently. He takes them, careful as though he's handling some priceless, irreplaceable magical artifact, tutting softly under his breath at the state of you. The cuts, the burns, the bruising—he tends to each with attentive hands, and insists on drawing you a bath of milk and herbs as he works, all while you squirm and offer half-hearted rejections in protest.

Somewhere in his chest, the silverwood stirs.

You attend your lectures and make sure to get there at least fifteen minutes early, during which you spend that time studying. On Tuesdays and Thursdays you work at the Cozy Chimera and you never forget a single creature's needs and, even more, a customer's order. You like your major and you believe yourself good at it, too. Above all, you’re fortunate to have the opportunity to pursue a tertiary education so you swore you would pass all your classes no matter what it took.

To do this, you find yourself awake even in the late quints of the Curtain-Fall Hour, hunched over your desk with only the Thief Star as your witness, burning just as bright but as aimless as you feel. It’s never enough until the words start to blur, no longer recognizable until you wake sometime after where nothing has stuck and everything has escaped into the night. And, in your fatigue, you continue your routine.

You rise and skip breakfast—no time to eat when you need to study before the lecture starts. Yet, your body aches with improper sleeping positions and an inability to keep your eyes open. Then, on Tuesday and Thursdays, you steal yourself away in hidden rooms to catch a breath, forcing yourself through your exhaustion and pretending you don’t notice Chocolate Pudding’s worried cries as you berate yourself for remembering each request but serving the wrong person.

Still, you have faith that your passion and hard work will be worth it, and convey this through each certain smile and assurance of I’m alright. And this is true so long as you think of Jericha, a lonely boat, and the deep rolling expanse of blue. This memory is enough to remind yourself of your dreams, something only possible in Okhema and the paradise she grants her people.

But you should have never trusted Cyrene when it came to your electives.

Initially, you hesitated as you could have joined her and Castorice in a literature class, replicating another semester home to a single short reprieve in your day-to-day after you became friends during a similar one in freshman year. Only, Cyrene was certain it was destiny for you to enrol in Professor Anaxagoras’ class that she went as far as choosing the exact course for you. Try out philosophy, she begged. It's just thinking, she urged you.

Yeah, well, it's not just thinking when you’re stuck in your tiny apartment with a pile of books and articles explaining various schools of thought broken down by their development and each relevant philosopher. From Professor Anaxagoras’ slides, it didn't seem all that bad until you actually looked at a page from one of your assigned readings and realized how impenetrable the prose was to your unfamiliar eyes. It didn’t take long for you to get lost in Kierkegaard after being stuck headfirst in Nietzsche before your head started reeling from Camus.

What makes this even worse is that Castorice is your roommate; not because you’re sharing a space with her but the fact that you can’t spend your evenings giddy over some new love story she’s found when you’re busy reviewing the same sentences again and again with an inability to comprehend any of it. A part of you can’t bring yourself to pull her into your anguish either, as Castorice is so busy with her own studies, work, and extracurriculars that asking for help feels inconsiderate.

That leaves you with one solution: if Cyrene was the one who convinced you to take this course, then you're going to make your problem her problem, too.

♡ Cyrene: Love of My Life

You: CYRENE You: where are you?

While you wait, you decide she deserves a new contact name but, unfortunately, she answers fairly quickly—she always does—so you’re only able to settle on something that isn’t very fun.

♡ CYigh: loml but do NOT trust

Cyrene: At the student lounge Cyrene: Why? miss me? You: something like that </3 Cyrene: It would be easier if you just admitted it~ Cyrene: I’ll go grab your favourite drink ♪ You: do u know i’m in love with u Cyrene: Then get over here and say it to my face <3 mwah!

The exchange is almost enough to alleviate your worries that a small laugh slips out, but as you go on your way to find her, it only takes a few minutes for your shoes to do the same on ice—less humours for you but Cifera would have certainly thought it funny. And from how you’ve practically pushed your body to the brink, you pull a muscle, because of course you do. With a groan, you dust off your dignity and decide to avoid spending too much time at the library today so you can get home before Castorice and avoid her concern.

It’s a constant thing in this season with the Holy City especially cold. Castorice’s ability to brave every significant drop in temperature is not lost on you, and knowing you come from a port city has her more considerate of how you fare in frigid weather and frost littered streets. Each path of Okhema University is the same, the open layout of campus doing little to shield you with its architecture, allowing for gusts of wind to dump snow in large piles over fields once filled with grass so green you would spend your days reading under trees and having picnics with your friends.

Suffice to say, you are counting down the seconds until winter ends.

Once you reach the student lounge, you spot Cyrene before she sees you, sitting off to the side and speaking animatedly with Hyacine and Mydeimos. The former you are familiar to a degree, not so different from Cyrene’s charming smiles and sweet words but less mischievous with a grounded disposition. Mydeimos' own disposition even more so where you almost believed him more staid than you until you heard of silly bets and terrible punishments. 

“And why do you look like you’re caught in a daydream, hmm?” Cyrene's voice pulls you from your thoughts as she pats down the space beside her, of which you promptly take. “Your texts sounded urgent—are you okay?”

When you glance over at Mydeimos, he merely nods in greeting, but you know Hyacine is only hiding her worry when you peek at her next to him, noticing her curious but tight smile.

Offering your own, you assure them, “I’m fine!” but rescind it a second later. “Actually, I’m going to fail and it’s all your fault,” you whine as you allow Cyrene to pass a cup of warm, unsweetened tea into your hands, your complaints fizzling out with a subsequent thank you.

“Me?” she blinks through a short laugh. “Maybe if you agreed to come out with me—sure—but you’ve holed yourself up in classes and work.” Her expression turns troubled in a way you dislike, concealed by cheeky words. “I’ve been deprived of your company, you know!”

You stop your breath from catching and smile wider. “I’ve missed you too, and I’m sorry. Professor Anaxagoras’ philosophy class is going to kill me.”

“You?” she questions with her brows raised, disbelieving that your suggestion could be possible. “You’re being dramatic.”

“Did you get a sixty-two on your project again?” Mydeimos interrupts, and he appears genuinely concerned, likely considering how he was a witness to when Professor Anaxagoras released that exact result.

“Worse,” you declare. “I’m going to fail the upcoming midterm. It’s worth twenty-percent of my grade, while the final is thirty. It’s over.” And Mydeimos looks as distressed as you feel with the knowledge, mentally preparing for your imminent meltdown.

Hyacine leans forward and slides an individual packet of your favourite cookies across the table; you take them. “You’re going to be alright,” she says, “you have three weeks to prepare, including this one.”

“Will you give me a hint?” you propose, but it escapes your mouth as a plea she doesn’t entertain.

“Nope!” she answers, gentling her tone when you snap the treat in half with your teeth. “But I can help you schedule a meeting with Professor Anaxa or you can have one with me—”

When her sentence ends in an aborted breath, you return your attention from your second cookie to her. Hyacine is staring at Cyrene and you believe they’re sharing some sort of silent conversation before you hear a small bump under the table. Looking down, Cyrene crosses her legs together only to lean into your side and you reciprocate, telling yourself that you should go shopping with her at a later time since her new shoes look so nice.

“Weren’t you just telling us about how busy you are at the clinic, Hyacine?” Cyrene’s head tilts, falling on top of yours as you rest your temple against her shoulder, letting them speak as you debate the shame in taking up Hyacine’s offer to face either her or your professor with how you haven’t made sufficient headway in your studies.

Mydeimos’ face scrunches up. “I thought Hyacine had a—” His words end in a short yelp and disgruntled look.

“You okay, Mydeimos?” you ask, and then look under the table again. “Is this too low? Why do you all keep banging your knees on it?”

“Our legs knocked together and Mydei was startled,” Cyrene explains, and he appears to want to correct ‘startled’ when he is confident in not doing exactly that when it occurs, but Cyrene continues. “You’re so silly, Mydei.”

“You should be more careful, Mydei,” Hyacine agrees and squeezes his arm with an unfamiliar expression.

“Right?” Cyrene says, not giving him an opportunity to respond that you aren’t able to resist the snort. Ignoring his (not) pout, you focus on Cyrene’s question: “You remember Phainon, right? Tall, white hair, and a little bit of a dork?”

You do but only through stories aside from meeting him during Cyrene’s birthday party and short hellos when he picks up or drops off Castorice from debate club. He was what you expected from the rumours you caught around campus—popular from his culinary skills and how much time he spends at the athletic centre if not for his face and boyish charm. But through Cyrene, any swoon-worthy façade you may have developed for him is impossible, replaced with the image of Phainon who is no different from when he was younger—a big softie who would cry when Cyrene scraped her knees, your friend guiding him back home in tears with laughter on her tongue when she was the one who was hurt.

He’s nice—you guess—since he always makes sure Castorice gets home safe when it’s dark out, and also excitable from the very little interaction you’ve had with him, but that’s as far as your opinion goes, honestly.

“How could I forget about your childhood friend?” you tell Cyrene.

“Great!” She clasps her hands together with a delighted sound. “Phainon takes the same class as you.”

“Oh!” Hyacine vocalizes, perking up at the mention. “Phainon does have the material down fairly well. He’s one of Professor Anaxa’s favourite students.”

“Exactly!” Cyrene agrees. “He can tutor you.”

You want to say what but Mydeimos interrupts you.

“Phainon isn’t even here to say yes but you’re offering for him?” Believing it improper, he sounds scandalized by the idea.

Cyrene waves a manicured hand as if brushing away his concern. “He’ll say yes,” she responds, “you know him.” Then, she starts typing with one hand and continues to explain, gesturing towards you while placating Mydeimos. “They’d feel too bad to take advantage of him too.” She looks at you. “You would never, right?” You shake your head. “See? So Phai won’t even fall into that terrible habit of overworking himself!”

This time, you do say, “what.” Cyrene twists on the cushion, turning her back to you as you try to reach over. “Wait, he does that? I don’t want to—”

“Oh, great!” Cyrene interrupts, her voice alike that of a song. “He says he’ll head right over!”

You sigh, take a second packet of cookies from Cyrene’s outstretched hand, tear it open, and let her make another decision for you. Fortunately, it doesn't take long for Phainon to arrive.

He ruffles his hair as he approaches, chest heaving beneath his heavy trench coat with clumps of small crystalline dots fading into the fabric. There’s already a grin on his face from the sight of the four of you together, and his cheeks are frozen pink, the colour creeping up to the tips of his ears.

“Did you run here?” Mydeimos asks in a gruff voice, crossing his arms. “You could have slipped.”

“Is that something you would have done?” Phainon retorts, voice smug in a way you’ve only heard on occasions where Mydeimos is involved. This does not surprise you, but his focus on you does. “Hello,” he starts, significantly more polite with you. “I haven’t seen you in awhile.”

When you meet his eyes, you notice the snowflakes still drying on his lashes. “I think the last time was when you picked up Cas for debate club.” By the time you’re finished speaking, they’re gone.

“Right!” Phainon agrees, seemingly happy you remembered. “I dropped off some cookies for you to share—did you like them?”

“I did. They were sweet,” you say, never having eaten something of Phainon’s that you didn’t enjoy. His friends are practically taste testers for whatever cooking and baking experiments he conjures up, and as you live with Castorice, she is kind enough to share the delicious gifts with you. It’s the perks of knowing a culinary student you suppose.

“Castorice told me your favourite brand is—” Cutting himself off, he glances down at the table as he sits, and continues speaking with a small laugh while pointing at the opened wrappers. “Well, those,” Phainon says while getting comfortable across from you as Hyacine and Mydeimos shift down the cushions to make appropriate room for him. “I used toasted brown sugar and tried different flour and spice combinations to replicate it. Was I close?”

“You were!” He’s so excited about your opinion that your voice matches his level, bright and unbridled. “Thank you, Phainon. I didn’t know Cas told you that.” The moment the sentence leaves your mouth, he pauses, and it’s only then that you notice the others have completely left the conversation; or, that they simply never joined it.

And Cyrene changes that, now, by saying, “Phainon.” His gaze shifts to her and you follow, but the glance she spares you is a short and final one. “The tutoring?”

“Yes, that’s right.” Phainon nods. “The tutoring, right!”

Peering at him, you make sure it really is alright. “Cyrene asked in my place and I hope you don’t owe her a favour.”

You wait for Cyrene’s miffed interruption but it never comes. Instead, Phainon just tells you, “I don’t mind helping, and it can help me brush up on my studies too.” His kindness is easy; simple despite barely knowing you, and you do have a smidge of trust in him when everyone else has no reservations about his character.

“If you’re sure,” you say with a shrug. “You’re in the Thursday section, right?”

“I am.” Phainon nods in confirmation, and his head tilts as he says, “that means you’re at Professor Anaxa’s mercy today, then? ”

“Unfortunately,” you sigh, sinking into your seat like a deflating balloon. “No wonder we don’t see each other.” Maybe you wouldn’t be stuck in this predicament in the first place if you ended up in the same section from the beginning, but you had to switch out of the Thursday lecture because Arielle likes to give the chimeras check-ups before Friday and the subsequent weekend as this is the busiest period for the café.

“Looks like that'll change from now on,” Phainon adds in a cheery tone that makes you feel slightly guilty.

“I promise I'll compensate you,” you declare with a conviction that you hope carries your full intent to do so.

Hearing that, he chuckles a little, amused but not cruel. “You really don't have to,” he says sincerely.

Still, it doesn’t seem right—Phainon must be busy too. And you’re starting to understand why Cyrene implied that he is easily taken advantage of as you stare down at your hand and then back up at him. “What about drinks?” you suggest.

“I'm not good with alcohol,” Phainon admits with a sheepish smile.

“I meant café-related drinks—coffee, teas, and the like,” you clarify. Arielle would be happy if someone like Phainon were to try her menu; he is sure to appreciate all the care she puts into it. “I can also bring snacks.”

“Actually...” Phainon trails off to think for a moment, undeniably serious with your proposal. “Shouldn’t I bring snacks? I can make you my favourite Chimera Cookies!” Then his voice turns smug. “They’re so addicting that I could—and have—eaten a dozen in one day.”

You snort imagining Phainon wolf down that many. “I didn't expect that. Cyrene always described you as a health nut.”

“I mean—I do like working out but even I have my vices,” Phainon says with a dramatic sigh to show that this really is the solution. “Can anyone resist the temptation of a sweet treat in the face of a bitter reality?”

“Cyrene is right,” you say, but your friend doesn’t look over at the mention of her name.

“About what?” Phainon blinks, his focus remaining on you.

“You're a dork,” you say, letting a genuine grin grow on your face. And the scoff he attempts fails with his own smile, leading you to admit, “it's cute.” There is nothing else for you to be but honest because you can’t describe him as otherwise.

This catches Cyrene’s attention and you’re unsure of why she looks so contemplative, but the thought leaves just as quickly as it comes when the table rattles again with a sharp thump that's followed by Phainon awkwardly clearing his throat. He must have hit his knee, too.

“Anyway, what are you having trouble with?” Phainon subsequently asks, likely wanting to save face just as Mydeimos had.

“Do you have ten minutes?” you answer with your own question, letting your face scrunch up to show displeasure at how much you’re struggling exactly.

Phainon glances at the far wall before he says, “I do, but you don't.”

“What?” You look behind you and squint, but there’s a rustle that causes you to turn back and see Phainon sliding a rechargeable hand warmer in your direction.

“Your class starts soon,” he says, delighted by what, you aren’t sure—he doesn’t seem like the type to be thrilled by someone else’s distress when your head whips around to find that Hyacine is no longer there. You hurriedly adjust your scarf and bonnet, and take the hand warmer with a soft thank you before he continues. “We can figure out when to meet up another time. You should hurry.” His smile is playful. “You don’t want Professor Anaxa to put you on the spot for being late.”

“Okay,” you quickly agree, “yeah, that sounds fine.” You nod once and again afterwards as you slip out of the booth with Cyrene following you. You wave goodbye to Mydeimos and Phainon, and wonder why she isn’t staying.

“I told Hyacine to go on ahead so I could walk you to class!” she clarifies, softly nudging you forward because you really don’t have time.

“Cyrene,” you whine, dragging out her name with a pout since you know you can’t answer whatever Professor Anaxagoras will quiz you on. “Why didn’t you just tell me Hyacine was leaving?”

She doesn’t answer, instead patting your head with a short laugh but it doesn’t sound directed towards you, and when you look over, she’s staring at Phainon who is focused on Mydeimos. The latter appears unimpressed, his mouth set in a line that is unusually suspicious with Phainon’s tense shoulders.

But Cyrene continues guiding you towards the door and calls out, “alright boys, don't get into too much trouble while I'm gone!”

You follow behind her, sparing Phainon one last glance and ignoring how much lighter you feel when he notices and offers you a comforting smile, eyes closed into crescents as if everything will be alright.

♡ CYaviour, Unknown

Cyrene: I added the three of us to a group chat so you can save Phai's number~ Cyrene: How lovely is this? two of my favourite people together! <3 Unknown: Hey! I'm actually pretty excited to tutor you haha. I've never done this before! Cyrene: nerd Phainon: So mean! Right in front of my darling new pupil too. :( You: why do i feel like i’m going to fail Phainon: No way! :O I’d never let that happen! You: i thought you've done this before :’) Phainon: I've always wanted to so I'm determined to help! Phainon: I promise I'm not doing it for the free drinks. Cyrene: Yeah! Cyrene: He’s doing it to spend time with someone so cute! You: CYRENE. Phainon: CYRENEASJKSA Cyrene: See! he didn’t deny it ♪ Phainon: YOU KNOW I DON’T LIE >:( Cyrene: OH. I SEE. You: help Phainon: I know where you live, Cy. Cyrene: What a coincidence! your darling new pupil does too! maybe you should come over at the same time~ Cyrene: While I’m not home~ Cyrene: Alone~ You: i don't know if i should be grateful that i'm not the one at the end of your teasing for once Cyrene: I take every chance I get when Phainon is involved <3 Phainon: </3 Cyrene: Want to see some silly photos from when he was younger? Phainon: WAIT You: …yes please Cyrene sent three images.

Peeling off your jacket, the door shuts behind you, intercepting the winter air's pursuit as you step through the warmth of your apartment.

“Cas!” you call out. “I’m home!” It was Parting Hour by the time your shift ended, but you had to stay longer after Vigethos and Fig Stew were involved in a scuffle with another pair of chimeras in the Garden of Life.

Although Cozy Chimera is a café, it’s nothing like pet cafés in other cities—chimeras are not pets but helpful companions, after all. Throughout the history of Okhema, they’ve congregated at the Garden to not only be assigned their duties but find a space to call their own. The café is merely one way the city raises funds for its upkeep with chimeras coming and going as they please for a break or a check-up before returning to their responsibilities. And your work here is a welcome one, allowing you to gain experience you wouldn’t have if you only focused on studying to become a Gardener instead.

Castorice peeks over from the kitchen, holding a spatula and wearing an apron she had sewn and decorated herself a few months ago. “Do you want me to make you tea?” she asks in her usual soft-spoken timbre. “I’m still cooking dinner and it was cold out today…”

“I’m okay!” you say, “we can save the tea for later.” Finding your place on the other side of her, you sweep your eyes over the counters to figure out what she needs to do next. You wash your hands as you offer, “I’ll help you cook as a thank you for massaging my ankle after I fell yesterday.”

She passes you your matching apron with a soft smile. “You don’t have to thank me for that, but you shouldn’t try to hide it if you’re hurt.” You’re tying the ends around your waist as she continues scolding you lightly. “Did you slip again today? You’re stiff.”

“You sound like Hyacine,” you tease her, beginning to chop vegetables. “I’m okay. The chimeras got into some trouble so I feel a bit sore.”

“Vigethos and Fig Stew?” she asks, reaching over for the spice rack.

You sigh. “When isn’t it the two of them?”

“They remind me of Phainon and Mydei,” she says with a giggle. “They always have a bet running or are riling each other up!” When you hum, she turns the conversation to focus on Phainon. “Did the two of you decide on the tutoring sessions?”

“We’re going to talk about it later,” you inform her. “I still have to write down everything that confused me about this week’s readings.”

Castorice makes some room for you to drop the ingredients into the boiling liquid, watching you with curious gaze. “Not the lecture?” she wonders.

“Professor Anaxagoras is good at explaining it all and his slides are easy to read,” you say, and she makes a sound of acknowledgement as you begin to stir. “But the actual books and journal articles are excruciating. Whenever we have a test, I struggle when it’s not on content he doesn’t cover directly.”

“It’s difficult to get accustomed to the language,” she agrees. “I’m sure it’s because you’re used to jargon involving chimeras’ medical needs and behaviour rather than philosophers writing three pages to say one thing.”

“What’s with that, anyway?” you ask because Castorice has taken more of these classes than you with her double major in creative writing and literature.

She shrugs, setting the lid on the pot and wiping the counters clean as you join her in tidying up. “Well, it’s all about thinking, right? They make concepts complicated because they’re trying to find answers and you can’t do it without immersing yourself; they’re careful about the words they use and what they mean.” Castorice hums to herself as she contemplates it further. “If they just said their argument outright, you likely wouldn’t believe them, but they might not be able to explain it without making it difficult in because the point is that it is difficult to comprehend.”

“Cyrene said it wouldn’t be ‘that bad,’” you groan, collapsing into the sofa with Castorice as you let the soup simmer.

“I know. I was there,” she says while squeezing your arm with a gentle, comforting touch. “But it’ll work out with Phainon’s help.” The smile you meet her with must be conflicted because she changes the subject thereafter. “Do you want to hear about what I wrote today?”

You do, and so, she tells you.

Once a week, Castorice regales you with books she’s read, fanfiction she’s planning, or original fiction she’s writing. Today, it’s the third of these—a love story about a party of two broken up by a hired mercenary. She started this around the time you first met, but put so much care into creating the worldbuilding and relationships that it wasn’t until now that she was able to write the mercenary’s seeming betrayal. The words on the page make your heart ache, and the tears that fall disguise the liberation of your anxieties, a wave that sweeps through your body and forces you to relax.

If Castorice knows, she doesn’t ask, but she does make you laugh and the rest of your night continues just like that: in your last little bubble of normalcy.

Phainon

Phainon: Do you want to meet up sometime soon? Phainon: We’ve been so busy that the week is almost up already. D: Phainon: Does tomorrow sound okay? You: sure! You: i finished the list of what i need help with :’) it’s long Phainon: Haha that’s fine. I wouldn’t mind even if it was three pages! Phainon: But I hope it isn’t for your sake… Phainon: After this week, I can also sit in your lecture and see what Professor Anaxa teaches. You: but you already go on thursdays? Phainon: It’s okay, I enjoy it. Phainon: But each section has different slides. You: what. Phainon: He hates it when we exchange test answers, so he gives each section a few unique facts that only sound important but the core curriculum is the same Phainon: It’s how he figures out who is paying attention You: what the fuck. You: he’s evil. Phainon: It’s a little funny, you have to admit You: that’s because !!! You: you’re good at this ueueue Phainon: You’ll be good at it too after I tutor you!! :D You: lol that rhymed You: and what if you’re good at learning but bad at teaching so i’m doomed Phainon: You have no faith in me :( Phainon: I volunteer sometimes and I think that has to count for something… right? You: oh that’s cute :O Phainon: do you do something similar? You: Not anymore You: I used to teach kids how to swim in Jericha Phainon: the port city? You: Yep Phainon: my family sends a lot of grain there because of the trade Phainon: we run a farm haha You: You and Cyrene used to live in Aedes Elysiae, right? You: Aedes Elysiae always sounds so nice when she talks about it Phainon: yeah, I miss it sometimes Phainon: do you miss Jericha? You: I do Phainon: I'd love to hear more about it Phainon: Only if you want to tell me! You: Will you tell me about your farm in exchange? Phainon is typing… Phainon: if you want me to You: I do You: Why wouldn’t I? Phainon: okay Phainon: I want to know about Jericha too

Phainon has to be doing this on purpose.

Two hours ago, you locked yourselves up in this tiny study room together with Arielle’s signature unsweetened tea, Phainon’s array of snacks, and a horrible amount of books and notes. Going over your troubles was a simple and quick endeavour, Phainon skimming the paper before turning to you to go down the list and familiarize himself with what you know, what you’re struggling with, and how he can help. Even more, munching on a vegetable or a homemade granola bar relieved you of your restlessness. And you also said as such, complimenting him on his efforts because you don’t think you could ever go back to store-bought oat treats after this, but his silence on your own provision is undeniably distracting.

You’re holding your breath as he takes a long, drawn-out sip. Then, he takes another only to say, “nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism can be confusing since they’re similar.” But you’re more preoccupied by his mouth around the straw rather than the words they make. “Professor Anaxa simplified it too much so I think that’s where you’re getting lost,” Phainon adds, already crossing it out on the list with the certainty you’ll understand soon.

When he looks up, your eyes dart to his eyes and then back to his lips for a split second before you catch yourself, immediately following a path further down towards the notes on the table. “What?” you reply. “I wasn’t listening.” The admission makes you feel bad when Phainon is trying his best, and you can’t help but peek at him in a timid manner as you speak to him because of it. “I’m sorry, can you please repeat that?”

His cheeks are stained a soft pink.

“It’s okay,” he says in a breathless voice—he must be frustrated with you. There’s a pause, and this validates your worry because he is no doubt detangling the feeling as Phainon is too kind to express any upset. “...What was distracting you?” he asks.

“I—” you start and look up to see the colour darken before he averts his eyes. “Do you like the drink?”

He blinks. “What?”

“You haven’t said whether or not you like the tea,” you clarify. “I was expecting more of a reaction since you’re in culinary studies.”

Arielle was surprised you bought two when you visited this morning, and you explained the situation to her alongside Phainon’s background, leading to her insistence that you get his opinion. Truthfully, you were also curious since it’s your favourite.

Phainon’s mouth is slightly agape as he listens to you, his skin returning to its usual colour. He’s quiet, finally considering it as he shakes his head softly as if ridding himself of something or in exasperation of how ridiculous your interruption had been.

“Oh,” you breathe out a disappointed sound. “You don’t like it?”

“No,” he quickly responds, and then realizes that you’ll interpret it as dislike when he really means to refute you. “No, I do like it. I’ve had it before so I didn’t have anything to say.”

“You did? From the Cozy Chimera?” He nods and you inquire further, “when?”

“Cyrene and I went last year,” he explains. “We were passing by but you weren’t working that day.” He rests his chin on his hand and his expression turns coltish. “Did Arielle want to know what I had to say? She likely forgot that I’ve had it before.”

You release a small chuckle. “She did.” There was something in her disposition that told you she wouldn’t have let you leave if you didn’t agree to ask, actually. “Wait, you make it sound like you know each other.”

At the question, his demeanor settles into something more natural. “I had too much to say about the pie, so whenever I visit, she makes me taste and review what I can,” he says.

That’s strange. “I’ve never seen you around,” you comment, letting your confusion wash over your face. Arielle hasn’t spoken about someone like Phainon, either. “And I like to think I remember all the customers and chimeras.”

Phainon shrugs, noncommittal. “I don’t go often since I spend a lot of my free time volunteering or practicing my cooking and baking.”

“And working out, right?” you say with a tilt of your head, trying to tease him because of all the gossip surrounding Phainon and his physique.

But this only makes him grin; his eyes narrowing after he mimics you, tipping his head in the same direction to meet your gaze and ask, “is it obvious?” It makes you feel vulnerable, the same way as when you let yourself float across Jericha’s waters—boundless where anything could catch you. “I didn’t know you paid attention to things like that.”

“Cyrene says you’re addicted to protein powder,” you squawk, lacking any decorum after the way he looked at you and needing to save yourself the dignity from wanting to dive headfirst into whatever that was about.

“I am not!” he retorts with a pout. His voice had raised, causing the both of you to stare at the door, ready with an apology if someone were to knock. Nothing comes, so he settles down. “Let’s go back to ‘life has no meaning,’ yeah?” When you agree, he asks, “are you getting confused between the three of them?”

“I am,” you confirm. “I understand that all three believe life has no meaning, but when I complete the assigned readings, they start getting mixed up in my head.”

“Think of it like this,” Phainon starts, taking a pen and drawing the beginnings of what you assume to be a clumsy-looking house. He sections off the bottom and explains, “nihilism is the foundation and the rest are how we react to it.”

When you glance at him, he’s already focused on you, and you understand he wants to make sure you’re on the same page before moving on. So, you confirm, “and nihilism tells us that if existence has no meaning, then our lives don’t matter.”

Unfortunately, Phainon corrects you: “don’t say that on the midterm. Professor Anaxa will tear into your wording because it’s easily misconstrued.” He pauses just so he can laugh when he perceives the distress you’re drowning in after getting it wrong already. Somehow, it loosens the knot in your chest. “It makes it sound like you’re measuring how significant something is, but nihilism isn’t comparing existence to anything,” he elaborates. “Did you take critical thinking?”

“I didn’t,” you groan, hoping that it doesn’t matter much, and if it does, that Phainon can help you. “There was no pre-requisite and Cyrene told me this would be, in her words, ‘just thinking.’”

“Of course she did,” he sighs, and it feels like he knows more than you do in regards to how this started in the first place, but you aren’t able to ask when he returns to the topic. “Okay, here—when you word it like that, you have to look at the reverse: if our lives don’t matter, then existence has no meaning, but that’s not what nihilism is saying. Nihilism says nothing has meaning: not our morality, our belief systems, or one plus one equals two.”

“Not even basic math?” you say with a bewildered gawk because you believe it as silly as the expression your face contorts into.

“Not even basic math,” Phainon repeats after you. “There is nothing you can do to make something matter when nothing ever will. So when you say ‘matter,’ it’s similar to asking someone ‘does it matter to you?’ That individual and subjective opinion is absurdism and existentialism—we can try to make our lives matter, but existence itself will always have no meaning or it refuses to tell us if it does.”

“And absurdism is like something being funny or ridiculous, right?” He nods, and you take that as a sign to keep going. “That if nothing has meaning, you find joy despite that.” And you pick out The Myth of Sisyphus to flip through the pages to try and show him that he can believe in your efforts. “Even if it doesn’t work out because of the ‘silence of the world,’ you keep going with a ‘longing for happiness.’”

“Right, that’s why Camus mentions Sisyphus—‘one must imagine Sisyphus happy’—because we sometimes have to do things we don’t want to do just to survive; to keep going,” Phainon expands on what you say and draws an additional room to the house. “So if being alive doesn’t have meaning, searching for it can make us happy, even if we don’t get that answer.”

“The pursuit of meaning might be possible,” you finish with a solemn sincerity you hide from Phainon. Your family knows this all too well. 

“On the other hand, existentialism is choosing to take responsibility for the freedom you have. If nothing has meaning, then it's our purpose to create it from nothing, however we do so,” he explains while drawing a second room. “But this can lead to despair when your purpose is equal to your identity, and that identity can shatter—like if I wasn’t able to cook anymore because of an injury, for example.” Despite it, Phainon doesn’t seem too upset by the thought, secure in how he feels.

“But in absurdism, this attempt can be as fruitless as Sisyphus because existence is irrational, so the ‘absurd’ comes from it, and through it there is defiance,” you conclude, pulling everything together and finally grasping it all. This is apparent by how Phainon hums in acknowledgement, a delighted sound that lets you relax.

“Feel better?” Phainon watches you crunch on another granola bar as a reward—he’s probably happy that you’re both enjoying his baking and released from your torment. “They’re all hard reads.”

“I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to be able to read this all day, every day, let alone write it,” you breathe out, watching Phainon check his watch followed by his phone. “I know Cas takes these courses for her major, but you’re just doing it for fun, right?”

“And for the debate club, but I like being well-read,” Phainon answers, twirling his pen around a finger in a distracting performance. “I also like reading up on history.”

“What about fiction?” His little trick comes to an end with your question, and he seems slightly embarrassed by whatever answer he has.

“I like love stories.” It starts as a mumble that rises in volume so you can hear him clearly, but he diverts your attention by gently taking your hand in his and trying to help you replicate how he manipulated the pen. “Castorice and I talk about them when we can, but the more dramatic, the better.”

While watching Phainon maneuver your fingers, silence befalls you both. You should have expected his interests in love and drama, especially when Cyrene tells you about every time Phainon cries over one for some strange reason, though you assume it stems from some form of affection for him. When you make your attempt, the pen spins, a weak movement that is unable to complete its rotation. 

“...What about fanfiction?” you ask.

The pen drops, and you hear Phainon’s quiet but sharp inhale. When you look at each other, you can see he realizes that he can’t escape the question. Instead, he admits, “yeah,” in a pitiful voice accompanied by an expression that would be best equated to a puppy.

“Yeah?” You snort, leaning closer as he shifts away. “Just ‘yeah?’”

The grin on your face makes him laugh, yet it doesn’t last long when your fingers hook into the leg of his chair and pull him right back towards you. “Please, I—” his words catch as you invade his space, deciding that you’ll get revenge for the small stunt he pulled on you earlier, even if you still don’t understand it.

“You what?” you repeat after him.

Phainon seems a bit flustered by the interaction and, to his relief, you’re unable to continue teasing him as there’s a series of three acute knocks on the door while someone calls out that your timeslot is over—this room is mine.

“Just a minute,” Phainon replies with a small shout. Then, he starts tidying up with your assistance.

You group various stacks of loose papers and handouts, collating them and tapping the bottom of the stack against the table before tucking them back where they belong. Phainon cleans up the various crumbs, wipes the wood clean, and quietly slips the container of baked treats into your bag. Together, you figure out whose winter accessory is whose, bundling yourselves up and then making your way outside with short, awkward sentences filling the silence until you stop at a crossroads.

It’s dark already— the Dawn Device has dimmed with Oronyx gifting its moons with Aquilla’s light—much earlier than usual with the season. The temperature reminds you of this, too, each breath leaving you as a puff of smoke that dissipates in the air.

“Get home safe,” you say to Phainon, knowing that he lives on one side of the city with Cyrene and Mydeimos, and you on the other with Castorice. Both of you are close enough to campus to not bother with a car, but far enough that you understand Phainon’s worry.

And he steps forward with hesitation in his eyes to offer, “I can walk you back,” but you only shake your head to refuse.

“I can manage on my own; I’ve made a farther trek from the Garden of Life back to our apartment,” you say, and he tries to contest your refusal but you don’t allow him to, cutting him off with your own concern. “I don’t want you to get home late with how dark it is.”

It doesn’t seem to be enough to appease him as Phainon argues, “I always make sure Castorice gets back safe so it won’t be a problem; I’ve done it before...” The words trail off slowly as you come to face him, close enough that your breaths intertwine, unable to discern one cloud of heat from the other.

“Next time, I’ll walk you home,” you insist, pulling the hand warmer Phainon gave you from your pocket and returning it to him, unable to feel his touch when your fingers brush past, both your skin and his covered by soft cotton. “I have a morning shift at the Cozy Chimera so I can’t tonight.”

“Okay,” Phainon mutters, squeezing the device in his hand—you made sure to charge it, not wanting to give it back drained of power in the event that he only had one. “...Do you want to book another study room for Monday?”

You do.

After conveying this with a yes and a simple nod, you exchange a good night and go your separate ways. Again, you do your best not to slip on ice, not merely because of Castorice but because you know Phainon will also be worried if he finds out. He seemed as such all day whenever you became frustrated or hopeless, discerning each expression from the body language you thought you perfected in concealing such difficult emotions. He was even happier when you did well, and because the smile he met you with is seared into your vision, you look. 

When you believe yourself a good distance away from where you parted, you turn your head and take just one peak. And although you discover him doing the same, you whip back around and neither of you bring it up thereafter.

Phainon

Phainon: And what’s the difference between Kierkegaard and Camus? You: faith Phainon: What about it? :O You: Kierkegaard believes the universe could have inherent meaning through religion, but Camus says that this isn’t correct because that means you take a “leap” that dissolves the purpose of the absurd by trusting a god who isn’t “silent” like Camus’ universe You: so when i mentioned ‘matters,’ Kierkegaard’s existentialism finds that through a god because it is greater than themselves, which reframes metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics You: but there’s another version of existentialism that is atheistic where everything is our responsibility because there is no god Phainon: You answered my other questions before I asked! Phainon: You’re getting good at this! you should be proud :D Phainon: Only after one session too You: it’s all thanks to you, phai Phainon is typing… You: i know we’re seeing each other on monday, but do you have more time to help me? Phainon: what days were you thinking about? You: literally any day you’re free You: but i don’t want you to be stuck with me all week ueueue Phainon: I don’t mind You: are you sure, phai? Phainon is typing… Phainon: yeah Phainon: I had fun :)

You try to avoid Professor Anaxagoras’ stare when you pass him on the way to your seat, but he conveniently stops you. Or, well, he stops the both of you.

“Phainon,” Professor Anaxagoras says in a clipped tone that causes you to freeze and said man to smile. “What are you doing here?”

When Phainon told you that he would sit in your lecture to make sure you had your bases fully covered, you thought it was merely pleasantries—something said to be nice because he is nice, but held little expectation considering how long it took for the first session to happen at all, no matter how productive. But Phainon texted you earlier today with the desire to walk there together, and the only answer you had for him was okay.

Simply put, this class was lonely. You were familiar with many of the students in your major, and any electives you took were usually shared with Cyrene and Castorice, but the former was so assured that you had to take this class because it was in the cards, and her subsequent confidence in your supposed success made you compliant. As a result, you took this course alone.

You don’t want to let her down.

Regardless, Phainon simply tells Professor Anaxagoras, “I’m attending your lecture!” His voice is so cheery and matter-of-fact as if there is nothing to be suspicious of.

“This isn’t your section,” your professor reminds him with a narrowed eye. “Do tell me what you’re up to.”

Your companion takes a moment to reply, time trickling along by the second, which only makes Professor Anaxagoras more skeptical that he glances at you, attempting to figure out if you’re involved in this somehow. Fortunately, Phaion is able to come up with something before it shows on your face.

“I needed another review,” he declares, and you can tell this is a weak response from the way your professor’s mouth twitches in amusement.

“You?” he says to Phainon, crossing his arms and looking between the two of you. “You told me you read ahead, did you not?” The words are enough to dismantle Phainon’s excuse, but he does not waver.

“Well, that doesn’t mean I know it like the back of my hand.” Phainon’s head tilts, conveying innocent curiosity instead of the coquettish intent from when you last saw him partake in this habit. But when you hear his next words, you realize that it’s not so different. “That sounds like cheap validity, Professor Anaxagoras,” Phainon proposes, “that’s unlike you.”

Surprisingly, your professor barks out a laugh that silences the room. “Go,” he says, “but don’t participate—you’ll have your chance during your own lecture.”

“Thank you, Professor Anaxa!” Phainon chirps out, following you to where you usually sit. As he does, he waves to your classmates and you begin to understand how well-loved someone like Phainon is.

When you first met at Cyrene’s birthday party, you were familiar with him as if he was a myth in Amphoreus’ beloved legends. You learned he was studious and punctual, and that despite once submitting a blank assignment, he didn't fail the course since his other grades were so high. With him tutoring you now, you can see how that was possible, and you’re certain that you aren’t the first recipient of Phainon’s kindness. And this is largely because he’s a common source of infatuation with men and women being giddy at seeing or speaking to him. To some degree, you feel the same, but it doesn’t go further than this—you can recognize what everyone sees in him but still maintain this distance, refusing to enter a stream of feelings that would be too dangerous to get swept away in.

Swallowing, you clear your throat and get your space ready for the lecture. “What’s cheap validity?” you ask once Phainon is done chatting with someone you’re unfamiliar with.

“What I mentioned with Professor Anaxa?” he clarifies and you nod. “It’s related to argumentation; we can make anything ‘valid’ just by saying a premise is true,” Phainon explains. “He implied that I don’t need to review the content again because I read ahead so I must know it, but just because I read it doesn’t mean I understand it.”

Without knowing him for long, you’ve been made aware of how mischievous he can be, enjoying teasing Mydeimos and riling him up just for a reaction, so this additional instance with your professor must mean the previous flirtation with you is a momentary delight for him instead of earnest interest. The thought makes something uncomfortable rise within you, but you push it down and act playful for his sake.

“So just like me?” you ask with a faux sigh and watch his mouth open. “Don’t answer that.” He laughs when you pout, folding his arms together over the desk as he observes you. Looking away, you stare at the far wall and ask, “can you teach it to me? After you corrected me last week, I think if I learned more about critical thinking and argument formulation it would help me avoid getting annihilated by our professor.”

“Okay,” he simply says.

“That’s it? It’s that easy?” You can’t stop yourself from double-checking, shrinking into yourself when you’ve already asked for so much. “You’ll have to spend even more time tutoring me.”

“That doesn’t sound like a problem to me,” he states, and it’s enough to lure your attention to him. But as the words are no different from how he normally speaks, you pretend it doesn’t mean anything more than it does.

You aren’t able to press the matter, either, as Professor Anaxagoras begins the lecture, so you just nod in acknowledgement and watch him smile before he faces forward. And irregardless of all the comments on his character, he is a good teacher. Professor Anaxagoras never discourages a question, favours discussion and alternative opinions, and is most of all passionate about what he teaches—not a single lecture is boring nor an assignment dull. If your grades were only based on his synthesis of the material, then you would pass undoubtedly, but they aren’t, which puts you in this predicament with Phainon in the first place.

While scribbling down a few points from a conversation between Professor Anaxagoras and another student in fear of the first making some comment in semblance of one of his ‘ways to determine who is listening,’ you see if Phainon is doing the same. He isn’t. Currently, his brows are scrunched up, staring hard at his screen where you see a grid of boxes filled with grey, yellow, and green letters.

Tearing a piece of paper from your notebook, you write ‘you look like you’re going to lose’ and slide it to him. The moment he sees it, he snorts, taking his own pen to leave his response underneath yours in neat, round cursive: ‘I’d like to see you try.’ After reading the provocation, Phainon gives you a wry smile, arrogant for someone so modest, and this forces you to accept his challenge.

You open up the same game on your browser, and start entering words one by one, narrowing down the letters with Phainon watching you try to solve it in as little attempts as possible after he failed all six. Every time he looks away, you nudge him softly with your elbow until he presses his shoulder to yours just so you believe you have his full attention rather than dividing it between the game and your professor.

He releases a quiet little huff when you nearly succeed in three, and in the fourth, you do with repose. The moment all the letters turn green, you angle your head towards him just as he does, and this close, you can see the clarity in his eyes—the colour so blue they remind you of waves lapping at the shore, light and free before pulling back into depths of water you can’t begin to understand.

“You win,” Phainon whispers as he settles back into his seat and returns his focus to Professor Anaxagoras’ monologue.

Struggling to do the same, you spend the rest of the lecture stealing glances and let the minutes pass until two hours are up and it’s time to leave. Phainon waits for you to pack up, doesn’t speak to anyone other than offering a wave on the way out, and then only nods when Professor Anaxagoras greets him goodbye. He matches your pace and trusts you to lead him away, the crunch of snow being the only indication of this with his shoes leaving marks indented slightly behind you.

You stop and ask him, “do you have a class after this?”

Whatever trance he seems to be in ends with your question, and he tells you, “I do, but it’s not until a few hours from now.” Then, he asks his own: “you have work today, right?” When you nod, he continues speaking, already heading towards the Garden of Life with the certainty you’ll follow. “I’ll walk you there and explain what you missed while you were trying to beat me.”

The tone he uses is difficult to describe. Phainon still carries the same charisma he always does, but his usual playfulness is undercut by a facial expression that is strangely ascetic. It’s confusing and, even more, your own reaction to him is lost on you once you realize that he is, undeniably, soft—simple and difficult to ignore.

Still, you step forward, and you trust him.

Phainon

You: did your parents send over the pictures of your chickens? You: of kevin and FLAME REAVER Phainon sent two images. Phainon: take them and stop making fun of me! Phainon: the name is cool because he looks cool!! Phainon: I WAS THIRTEEN OKAY You: i didn’t even say anything You: was it a phase Phainon: I'm going to start crying. You: according to cyrene, you always are ASJDBSDGK Phainon: DO YOU EVEN LIKE ME You: yeah lol You: Of course I do Phainon is typing… You: I know we barely spoke despite having mutual friends You: But I’m glad we’re close like this now Phainon: me too

There's no doubt about it: Arielle loves Phainon.

All this week, Phainon booked study rooms for the two of you when possible, and during the evenings where you’ve locked yourself up to focus on your notes, he texts you a mix of philosophy and nonsense, keeping you awake when he struggles to do the same the closer the clock marches towards midnight. Now, it’s the weekend, and Phainon suddenly dropped by the Cozy Chimera with the intention to continue studying between your breaks or any lull in your responsibilities in the event that the two of you aren’t distracted by unrelated topics. Thankfully, Arielle does not mind and this would be beneficial to you if not for how busy you are.

And the reason for this is the Day of Reunion.

Legends say that today is when Mnestia returned from their journey whereby they learned of affection between friends, family, and lovers, allowing them to truly understand their endearment for Cerces. With this knowledge, they wove all the love they gathered into their body and heart to form a golden chrysalis as a gift for their second confession. Cerces accepted and now the tree and the butterfly are forever intertwined, which is currently mimicked by all on this annual celebration of love.

Together with Arielle, you adorned the Cozy Chimera in golds, greens, and pinks through woven ribbons and various hearts in honour of the custom. The menu also changed slightly—cakes and pies all decorated with basket-weave designs, cookies in checker-boards, and bread in braided twists. The chimers are also dressed up if they so please, flaunting similar patterned scarves that also keep them warm. As such, the café has become a popular date spot for couples especially, leaving you little time to entertain Phainon’s intention to aid you in your midterm preparation.

Though, for once, you do not feel remorseful with how giddy he looks surrounded by cakes that not even you have tried.

“How is it?” you hear Arielle ask when you pass by to serve the customer sitting at the table beside Phainon. “Do you think the flavours are fine?” This morning, she baked an Earl Grey cake that was frosted in vanilla buttercream, and when you asked what it was for, she merely told you that Phainon was visiting, which was how you found out he was coming at all.

Phainon hums, a content sound despite his slight critique. “I think the simple syrup is too sweet—it’s overpowering the tea flavour so you should reduce the sugar in your sponge cake to compensate for it.” He takes another bite anyway as it’s bad to waste food, but you really just think he enjoys it.

Arielle writes down his comment but continues to scribble away, already recalculating the ratios in her head. Then, she surveys the table to see what Phainon has and hasn’t tried to say, “what about the cookies?” when she sees a few missing from the pile.

“I love them!” Phainon answers only to sheepishly touch his cheek. “Or, that might be biased.”

She seems confused so you join the conversation. “Phainon loves cookies,” you say, stepping between Arielle and the side of the table. “I think it wouldn’t matter what new flavour you made so long as they’re sugar cookies—he’ll always have a perfect review.” You shift a few inches back to your original position as Vigethos leaves Phainon’s vicinity with a cookie clutched in his teeth, hiding the chimera from Arielle’s view when he isn’t allowed to be snacking on duty.

This explanation only makes Arielle more invested, however, believing Phainon to be a connoisseur of sugar cookies. But there’s a soft howl that can only belong to Chocolate Pudding, altering you that another customer requires your assistance, leaving your friend in your boss’ care. You say a little apology in your head and try to forget how cute Phainon is when he conveys his desire to be rescued through an endearing look that is saved just for you.

By the time you can finally spend time with Phainon, it’s evening and the café is closing. And for all he’s been spoiled, he assists you and Arielle in cleaning up, but what you speak about is completely unrelated to his purpose in being here. This doesn’t change when you walk him home, either, enraptured instead with each other.

“Before you go…” Phainon trails off. “I have something for you.” He turns his back to unlock the door, fiddling with the keys for longer than what is normal that you end up looking over his shoulder.

It startles him, and you apologize softly before asking, “is Cyrene and Mydeimos home?” You want to say hello as whenever you have a moment to spare, it’s now commonly spent with Phainon.

“They aren’t,” he tells you with a soft laugh. “There was some plan to meet up with Hyacine but I don’t know all the details since I was busy.” You want to ask exactly why that is, but he turns the door knob and slips inside, already shucking off his jacket. “It’ll only take a second.”

You blow on your hands as you wait, pressing them to your cheeks afterwards to warm up the skin. Phainon catches you like this when he returns, holding a bag in his hands alongside a pair of gloves and his handwarmer.

All three are for you.

“For your hard work,” he explains. “And because you forgot your gloves.”

You take the accessory first, pulling them over your hands and tell yourself that your chest doesn’t tighten when Phainon reaches over to fix your scarf, adjusting it slightly as if unsatisfied with how it covers you. Once finished, he presses the hand warmer into your palm, his own fingers hot to the touch, and your eyes travel up the vein on his arm—a path he only reveals to you—leading you to a dark horizontal mark that looks like a minor burn.

Before he pulls away, you grab his arm, turning it around in your hold with him unable to stop you, his own free hand occupied by the gift bag—he doesn’t make a fuss. “What happened?” you ask, worry dripping from your tone as you stare down at the injury.

Phainon tips his own head downwards and his bangs brush your forehead when he says, “I was too excited while baking and bumped the inside of the oven.”

Your gaze snaps to him just to scold him, “aren’t you always baking? How could you be so reckless?” But he doesn’t appear to mind, the twitch of his mouth telling you of such with his eyes quietly fixed on your face, of which is overflowing with concern. “Stop smiling; no wonder Mydeimos gets worked-up so easily by you.”

“Why is that?” Phaionon passes the bag to you with a sardonic laugh.

He already knows the answer, aware of his infuriating impudence that attracts people like you—responsible, disciplined, and unadventurous. First Cyrene pulls you in with a similar magnetism, and now Phainon shows the exact result of the two of them growing up together. So although you were prepared to encounter him like this, you still find him attractive.

You take the gift with a miffed attitude, a small thank you, and say, “because you act like everything is entertaining to you.”

His mouth curls higher—a devastating thing. “I’m just happy,” he retorts.

“Sure you are.” Unable to maintain eye-contact any longer, you focus on the gift. “What is this?”

“Just open it when you get home,” he says, leaning against the doorframe with a maddeningly casual demeanour that you decide you’ve had enough of him for tonight. “Thank you for walking me.” And again, he softens.

This time, you don’t have to look to know that he watches you leave.

The entire way home, you twirl the hand warmer around in your palm, twisting it again and again as if holding it in one place for too long would burn you. It’s not that cold today, either, but you still cut through campus in a straight line and quick steps, excitement filling your chest to see what exactly is in the bag. A part of you nearly wants to stop just for a peek but with all the restraint you have, you’re able to make it to your apartment, unlocking it quicker than Phainon had with his own.

It’s dim inside, and you do call out softly for Castorice to which you receive no answer. It’s only after you finish stripping yourself of your boots and winter jacket that you see her slumbering softly on the couch with a novel nestled on her lap.

“Castorice,” you murmur softly, “you’ll strain your neck like this.” She isn’t difficult to wake up, her eyes fluttering only after a few gentle nudges.

“You’re home?” she says with a clipped yawn, asking just for the sake of it while she checks the time on her phone. “Did you only return now?”

You agree, and upon seeing her curiosity as to why, you explain, “Phainon came by the café and I walked him home.”

“That’s sweet.” Castorice stretches and stands, walking to her bedroom with you following behind. “Phainon never lets anyone do anything for him,” she comments.

“Really?” You want to know more, but she’s already slipping into her space.

“Yeah,” Castorice confirms. “Thank you for taking care of him.” And this is all she says to you other than a hushed good night; the words lingering in your head as you stare at the wood of the door before opening your own.

Setting the bag on your desk, you can’t help but stare at it; nothing more. There’s a weight to it while the bag itself is innocuous if not for the light blue ribbon and similarly coloured crinkled sheets of filler paper sticking out from the top, decorated with parallel wave-like lines that never meet. That enough tells you that this cannot be a gift for the Day of Reunion.

You clear the surface of your desk around it anyway, afraid of dirtying whatever is inside or ruining it by accidentally bumping it against another object. Then, you tug on the ribbon, releasing the knot and folding the length of it neatly. The same is done with the filler paper, and each crease you make is easy with how soft it feels. And Phainon’s attention to detail in his gift does not go unnoticed by you when the box that lies at the bottom is in the same colour as the rest.

But there’s a note taped to the top in gentle swirling handwriting. It’s nothing special—straightforward without any preamble, which is surprising for someone like him who could talk for an endless amount of time. You think it’s because he could listen to you the same, and that realization would make your chest ache if it hadn’t already from the little square. Everything is simple with this man, even this.

Except, what lies in the box isn’t.

When you lift the lid, a pie stares back at you; its surface is decorated with a neat lattice-top, interwoven with braided pieces and adorned with a fluted edge. The smell is also mouth-watering regardless of how long it sat there, no doubt a testament to Phainon’s hard work, and you don’t have to taste it to know that it's his own recipe. You’re certain that he would have made multiple to get it perfect, testing different combinations of ingredients and ratios the same way Arielle does because something like this is, put plainly, a labour of love.

The affection that drowns you is perhaps only surpassed by the relief that settles at the bottom of your stomach when your eyes trace his words, again and again: ‘I’m proud of you — Phainon.’

Tucking the note to your chest, you find your phone and decide to call home.

♧ Farming and Fishing

Cyrene: So… it’s the last week before the reckoning Cyrene: How are the tutoring sessions going? Phainon: Good. :D we figured out a way to make it easier to digest Phainon: I think they're used to it now! Cyrene: Oh? so they won't need you anymore Cyrene: And here I was hoping the two people I love so much would continue to get along. what a pity! Phainon is typing… You: CYRENE You: don't listen to her, phai Cyrene: phai? You: i still need your help with a few other readings, and i'm scared after seeing professor anaxagoras' midterm review You: Also, I think we get along just fine :D Phainon is typing… Phainon: crazy, right? the one for the final always looks worse, but he never lets you leave without feeling like you learned something :) Phainon: though you may lose it trying to reach the finish line :( You: i tried some of the questions and i might be overthinking it You: after you explained propositional logic, i'm terrified he’ll find a fallacy and misconstrued my answers Cyrene: misconstrued?? Phainon: we can go over them again tomorrow if you have time Phainon: either a call or we can book a study room again You: i have a shift at the cozy chimera ueueue Phainon: I can visit again if you're comfortable with it Phainon: quiz you on breaks or if business is slow You: arielle does want to hear your opinion on the changes to the new cake before it’s added to the menu… You: and it’s been awhile since i’ve seen you Phainon: we saw each other during your lecture yesterday? You: but i didn’t see you today Phainon is typing… Cyrene changed the group chat name to ‘Cy's Lessons in Third-Wheeling’ Phainon changed the group chat name to ‘We love Cyrene’ You changed the group chat name to ‘We love Cyrene (and we're sorry)’ Cyrene: Fine Cyrene: I guess you two are cute ♪

You’re on a deadline. You’re on a terribly precise and impending deadline; and you’re not going to fail.

First, you have to review chimera biology because it’s not only the first midterm you have to write but your work at the Cozy Chimera has given you first-hand knowledge, making your review painless and manageable. From their anatomy to behaviour, you almost know it like the back of your hand, going so far as to understand what habits chimeras adopt when they are hurt or ill. Next is chimera evolution as you still struggle to remember certain events concerning the history with Georios, the dates conflating with the development of classical Amphorean epistemology. The third on your list is project management for chimeras where studying is less burying your head into books and more completing practice questions.

The burying your head into books is what happens after all of the aforementioned is done and you’re unable to put it off for any longer despite numerous tutoring sessions and Phainon’s drop-ins at the café. The pages are littered with colour-coded tabs, sticky notes marking important years, philosophers, concepts, and critical inquiry. Each matching entry within your notes is just as organized, a poor imitation of the method of loci where instead of associating pieces of information with locations, you’re merely forcing yourself to understand and remember through strict headings followed by clear information you’re rewriting in order of development.

A biscuit snaps between your teeth just as your focus breaks when Castorice’s voice cuts through the air, a merciful and soft timbre. “You're still up?”

The question is more disbelieving than anything—when she went to work in the morning, you had taken up station in the living room with her permission; and when she returned, you took a momentary break to eat dinner and spend some time with her until she retreated to her room to rest. She left you with your torment in the second quint of the Parting Hour; it is now the fourth of the Curtain-Fall.

“If I study in my room, I'll start getting sleepy,” you answer, and Castorice’s expression somehow turns more sympathetic than what you believe possible.

You must truly appear pathetic: the edges of your lips down-turned in a pout you have no control over; your chest rising and falling in breaths that aren’t quite relaxed, unable to do so when each passing second in another closer to your doom; and blinking rapidly in short bursts when you’re about to dose of. Really, you’re a fish that’s been scooped out of water and dropped onto the pier, drying out in sunlight that’s impossible to enjoy as you’re too busy flopping and flailing in hopes of saving yourself.

So, you also tell Castorice, “I’m okay, please go back to bed.”

She hesitates but thankfully relents. “Don't stay up too long,” she says, leaving to do as you requested, and you wait for the thud of her bedroom door closing before you continue.

Normally, Castorice wouldn’t ease off, always wanting the best for those closest to her without sentiment alone; she will celebrate you, intervene when you act against your best interests, and quietly partake in little acts to ease your burdens. Despite this, she is also aware of your stubbornness and how nothing she says will convince you.

But your phone dings, and because it’s Phainon, you look.

𖤓 Phainon

Phainon: why are you awake? You: wasn’t your bedtime two quints ago Phainon: I was doing something Phainon: More importantly! What are you doing?  You: i feel anxious and pulling an all nighter before an exam is a bad idea You: so i'm doing it four days before Phainon: I quizzed you yesterday and you did really well?? You: that doesn’t count. you were distracted with cake testing and i had chimeras to check up on You: i bet you would have asked me better questions if we weren’t busy Phainon: you’re crazy Phainon: I'm coming over Phainon: If that's okay. Phainon: If not, just say so! Phainon: But I can come over and help if you need it, and if you're not uncomfortable by the offer! You: i have cookies

It doesn't take long for Phainon to show up.

He's bundled up from head-to-toe—a bonnet covering his hair, a scarf tightly wound around his neck, and mittens covering his hands. Each accessory looks slightly damp, the snow that clung to the fabric likely melted on his way up whereas his cheeks are still slightly flushed. At least, this time, his ears are covered and spared from the chill.

Your head tilts as you let him in. “That cold out?” you ask, taking his bag from him so he can unfurl himself and gesturing towards the spare slippers next to the shoe rack. 

Once he’s finished, he takes it back from you and follows you inside to retort, “have you not looked out your window?”

Actually, you haven’t, and your back had protested when you stood to open the door for him, having sat in one position too long, determined to focus as much as possible. He sinks into the couch, going over all the notes and articles you’ve laid out on the coffee table while you walk over to see just how bad the weather is.

A blanket of white envelopes the streets, each passing car leaving streaks of dark black, revealing the asphalt underneath while all other areas aren’t granted the same treatment with how heavily it’s snowing. From here, you think you can see the path Phainon took to enter the building, the ghost of his footsteps disappearing. And after experiencing the severity of Okhema’s storms—of which Castorice says pales in comparison to Aidonia’s—you don’t need to check the forecast to know that it will not stop until hours from now.

“Phainon…” you start, turning to see him already watching you at the window, your tone taut enough to draw his attention. “How did you get here?”

“I walked,” he simply says, casting his gaze back towards the table and rotating loose, disarranged pages around so that he can read them. “I can leave if you change your mind—it’s not a problem,” he continues with a blink directed towards you, relaxed without any displeasure. “I just wanted to drop something off, anyway.”

“That’s not—” you pause; what more could he give you? He tutored you in philosophy only for you to need more lessons in something else entirely just to be careful, then the snacks, especially the pie, and now this. All you do is take from him, so you say, “you came all this way but it’s late, and I think we might get snowed in.”

“Are you uncomfortable with me being here?” Phainon asks as you approach, following each of your movements and observing your body language. Little by little, he grows more tense, starting with his posture straightening when you had cut yourself off, shoulders pulled back. Then, there was his smile, practiced and perfect, and full of expected charm instead of his usual giddied grin, marked by the way it grows softly and slowly like a gentle rolling tide.

“I’m not,” you answer, and show him this by sitting on the carpet and resting your back against the couch, right beside his legs, close enough so that your shoulder grazes his calf. “But I don’t want you to be stuck here if you didn’t plan to stay long. We only have the couch, too, unless you’re okay with taking my bed; I’ll sleep here so you can be comfortable.”

He laughs. Phainon’s shoulders shake softly as he sinks into the space beside you so he can nudge his elbow against yours, a touch you’ve become familiar with. “I’ll take the couch—sleep in your own bed.”

Leaning into his side, you tilt your head, mustering a pitiful expression that isn’t hard considering the all-nighter you’ve decided to brave; wide-eyed with the corners of your mouth drawn downwards and your lip jutted out. “But—” you try to plead, however Phainon immediately pulls away.

Refusing to look at you, he says, “I don’t want to invade your space, and we only decided I would visit half a quint ago.” Quieting, he turns another piece of paper right-side up to add, “I wanted to see you, so it’s my fault; don’t worry about it. You get so focused so I should have realized you wouldn’t notice all the snow—you being busy with Nietzsche’s will to power and everything.” He waves the sheet in front of your face before setting it back down.

His smile is exactly as it should be.

To match the attempt to lighten the atmosphere and avoid his admission, you stand to go fetch him a cup of the tea you made earlier while saying, “he’s right: suffering is integral and never-ending but I do not love this.” You pass him the filled mug when you plop back into the space beside him only to drape yourself over the table—and thereby your notes—in a dramatic show of exhaustion.

“What? Are you telling me you don't want to repeat this again and again in an eternal recurrence?” he jests, taking a sip before pulling his bag into his lap to remove a laptop and two binders. “You'll figure out your amor fati when this is all over.”

“Whatever comes after better be worth it for me to want to be stuck in a loop,” you whine, brain turned to mush. “I can't believe we're making philosophy jokes right now.”

Phainon starts laughing, louder than you deserve that he must be losing it at this late hour, but he appears to realize this and cuts himself off, careful not to wake Castorice. “Here,” he says, setting a dark blue binder in front of you.

“What's this?” you ask, yet you go ahead and open the cover, slowly flipping through the pages before he can respond. It's a review of the entire semester with Phainon’s predictions of what some questions might be like based on his familiarity with your professor’s examinations. “Phainon?”

“I was planning on dropping by tomorrow to hand it off,” he says, plain and indifferent as if you aren't holding an absolute laborious amount of work. Phainon only shrugs. “I was awake because I was making my finishing touches, so if you're staying up, I thought: might as well give it to you now.”

His consideration makes it difficult for you to stop yourself—you slowly reach over in case he wants to pull away, but once you find that he doesn't, you hook your arm around his shoulder and pull him close. Phainon freezes at the contact despite expecting it that you nearly let go if not for his arm curling around your middle, the motion causing you to slide along the carpet until he's tugged you against him so that your bodies mold together.

He’s warmer than you expected. It’s a struggle to pull away.

But you do, and neither you nor Phainon comment on the manner in which you’ve expressed your thanks. There’s studying to be had, on your part more than him, even if you suspect Phainon to be sneaking peeks at topics unrelated to philosophy, his eyes twinkling like sunlight on water each time you see them flit over lines concerning gastronomy. The tea pot empties, the Thief Star comes and it passes, and the early quints of the Entry Hour arrive.

All the while, Phainon remains at your side. When you shift to the couch, he follows, letting you throw your legs over his lap as you sit at opposite ends, quizzing each other back and forth. When he returns to the living room after a short bathroom break to see you on the floor again, turning the pages of the dark blue binder, he chooses to sit across from you, your feet grazing against each other with each adjustment in posture. And when you begin to doze off, Phainon’s hand catches your head before it can hit the table, having slipped off your closed fist that had propped it up.

His touch gentles after the sudden contact, a feather-light connection he hesitates to pull away from.

There’s a bandaid wrapped around one of his fingers, the material a stark contrast against the slightly dry skin of his palm, a symptom of how frequently he washes his hands to keep them clean while cooking. On the base of his forefinger, you can feel a callous, likely from where the knife rests when he’s chopping ingredients, but even the hardened skin there isn’t enough to make you believe Phainon is anything but soft. Besides, he’s so warm. He’s so warm that you want to fall asleep like this, letting your head tip further while Phainon laughs, a bright sound that nearly startles you awake.

“You should lie down on the couch,” he recommends, voice much closer than you expected. At some point, he rose from his position to take your hands in his, guiding you to stand with him.

Too tired, you let him move you, but Phainon has to wrap an arm around your waist as you lean into his side, unsteady on your feet. “No, I have to finish this section,” you protest anyway; it leaves your mouth slurred. “I don’t remember all of it yet.” Despite your words, you let him lower you into the couch with Phainon sitting back on the floor.

“It won’t stick if you’re half asleep,” he says through a yawn that influences your own.

“Watch me,” you retort, and softly whack him with a pillow in an act of defiance before tucking it under your head.

Phainon only chuckles. “You can’t even keep your eyes open.” He’s right, as always.

Forcing yourself to stay awake for a bit longer, you blink quickly to evade sleep and see Phainon resting his head on his arms, of which are folded in front of him and resting beside you. If he were to press his chest against the couch to get closer, your noses would touch.

You call out his name quietly, and it’s the only sound other than your joint breathing and the violent wind outside the window. Although it was already discussed, he really won’t be able to leave at this rate. You don’t want him to. It’s the one thing you hate—being left behind. If you could have it your way, Phainon would be a persistent part of your life: never leaving, never too far out of reach, and always so easy to find, but you know you can’t always have what you want.

“Yeah?” His own eyes are struggling to stay wide awake, but he tries his best for you.

“Thanks for studying with me all the time,” you say.

Phainon shifts slightly and the couch dips; you wonder if he’s going to move to the recliner. He doesn’t, merely a change in posture as he gets more comfortable to placate you, “you don’t have to say thank you when you treat me all the time.”

“I don’t think it counts when you made all our snacks by hand,” you remind him.

“I didn’t grow the vegetables,” Phainon jests, the words leaving him in a short chuckle.

“You could have,” you argue, refusing to let him have the last say because you know he really may be able to do it if he had access to farmland again. Then, you say, “I want to see Aedes Elysiae one day.”

Phainon’s breath catches slightly, a hitched sound that you hang onto until it releases with a soft exhale. “Maybe. I’d like to see Jericha too,” he replies.

Closing your eyes, you hope the same—that you can show him the neighbourhood you grew up in, the pier you remember through goodbyes, and the coast you believed to be a treasure trove, searching for sea glass in the colour of his eyes before you ever knew he existed.

“Maybe,” you repeat after him just to hear him laugh one more time, praying his joy will follow you into your dreams.

“Go to sleep,” Phainon whispers, “I’ll stay right here.”

When you wake up the next morning to Castorice’s soft humming and the smell of Golden Honeycakes, Phainon is still fast asleep beside you, having kept a promise you hadn’t realized he made. Counting each of his eyelashes, you make your own with the intention to bake him something he likes as an apology for his back that is no doubt sore after remaining in that position all night.

𖤓 Phai

You: where are you You: did you see that our grades are out? Phainon: ARE THEY? did you pass? Phainon: I mean: I'm sure you did. Phainon: but did you? You: where are you? Phainon: at the student lounge Phainon: Is everything alright? You: wait for me Phainon: okay

Something inside you tells you to run.

You weave past students, down staircases, and across campus just to find him and afraid of making him wait for too long. With the end of the Mount of Balance, the snow has started to melt, leaving puddles made from melted ice; mirrors for the sky rather than frozen shards you could slip on again. Still, each of your exhales leaves your mouth like smoke—the weather not quite warm yet—and you’re panting a little by the time you spot Phainon at the entrance of the student lounge.

There’s a dull ache in your chest at the sight of him, but you decide it must be because of the path you took all the way from the third floor of the science building paired with how much cold air you inhaled in your haste. And when Phainon notices you rushing towards him, he grins, wide and unbridled with his dimple peeking out like the Sun through the clouds.

“Phainon!” you call, trying to capture his attention although you already have it—he gravitates towards you as if you’re a magnet he could never separate from. You bound into him and he catches you in a hug, spinning you once before continuing in another rotation after he hears your laughter. “I passed!”

The moment you meet, his cologne fills your senses and you have to stop yourself from tucking your head into his shoulder. When he rested next to you a few weeks ago, it enveloped you like a soft, fragrant cloud of citrus and delicate blossoms, but you weren’t able to linger on it long after falling asleep moments later. It’s a mild scent that could never be nauseating—warm and as comforting as he is, like fresh laundry or the Sun on your skin.

You don’t want it to end.

But he puts you down to say, “I knew you would.” Yet his touch doesn't leave you. Phainon’s hands travel down your arms and over your elbows and wrists, the affection heavy even through the fabric of your jacket.

When he intertwines your fingers together, you pull away and huff, “if you ‘knew,’ then why did you ask when I texted you?” 

“We all need a back-up plan,” he answers only to jump away when you try to swat at him. And before you can tuck your hands back into your pockets, he catches one and squeezes. You allow it, realizing only after he lets go that your desire to mess with him is weaker than your wish to have his hand in yours for longer.

“How did you do?” you ask, tilting your head and then scrunching your face into a pointed look when he grows timid. “How well did you do?”

“My grade was…” he trails off and finishes with a suspicious “...fine.” And the way he avoids your eyes must be modesty considering how sheepish he becomes whenever you try to praise him. Although you wanted a good grade, Phainon scoring higher than you is merely an indication of his own hard work. It’s also motivation for you to do better.

Stepping closer, you cross your arms and lean into his space, the image of petulance that somehow surfaces when he’s around. “Higher than eighty?” you ask and he nods. “Eighty-five.” Again. “Phainon.” His name leaves your mouth as an impassive front but he is always able to read how you really feel.

“Since when were you competitive?” Phainon wonders, and his tone turns airy with his eyes more impish than he appears. “Do you want to bet on who has the higher score?”

“You’re infuriating,” you squawk out, louder than he’s ever heard you that he’s cheeky enough to laugh. “If you wanted to compete, then we should have bet on it before the midterm!”

“I can tell you’re happy about your grade,” he says, a genuine smile on his lips—one that he tries to reign in but is unable to. But once you nod in agreement and try to reply, he quiets, face falling for a moment that you would have nearly missed it if you turned your attention away from him. Then, his mouth curls upwards again, a rehearsed thing so similar to your own. “You seem okay now. Do you want to put a pause on our tutoring slash study sessions?”

Truthfully, you don’t think you need them anymore. Phainon helped you determine why exactly you were struggling so much, and then went as far as assisting you in finding a way to make the information digestible. After reading the articles and books from front to back numerous times, it’s also become easier to do so with the recent assigned readings post-midterm. And Professor Anaxagoras always said that he exists not to tell you what to think but show you how you can; your critical thinking skills have improved and so has your reading and writing. It also helped you figure out what’s important to you.

“No, I still need you,” you admit. Spending time together and quizzing each other has proven to be a superior tactic for studying in comparison to your late night sessions alone—Phainon is better at keeping you awake despite how little sleep you get, ignoring how he is sometimes more distracting than anything, but even that is a way for you to destress. In all, this means that Phainon is a positive influence on your grades. But you replied so quickly that you hadn’t thought much about what you said and clarify, “if it’s okay with you, anyway. We still have the exam.”

“Right,” Phainon replies, and his reaction doesn’t indicate that he’s upset by the fact that you still need his help. Looking closer, he actually looks relieved.

“Right,” you repeat, quieter than you intended with you burying your chin into your scarf and shifting from one foot to another. You wanted to avoid the topic entirely, which is why you concentrated on his result rather than yours, but as it worked out in your favour, you suppose it’s fine.

Phainon clears his throat, bringing your attention back to him so that he can tip his head towards the business building. “Is today your lecture on project management?” he asks, but you’re certain it’s only a pretence—he already knows your schedule by heart the same way you know his.

“Yeah,” you agree with a simple nod. Then, you check the time on your phone, seeing that it’s almost time for it to start.

“I'll walk you,” Phainon says, having already decided because seeing each other safely to a destination is normal for the two of you now. Whether it’s after your shift at the café, or a tutoring or study session, you and Phainon take turns making sure the other gets home safe. This—the ‘walking each other to class’—is new, however, but not unwelcome.

And when he holds out his arm for you to take, you loop yours with his without any hesitation.

✿ Cas: Fraternizing with the First Male Lead

Castorice: Can you please ask Phainon where the topic of “character structure” is for our debate preparation? Castorice: There’s so much to do with the semester ending and I can't remember which book it was in. ( ;´ - `;) You: ??? You: why don’t you just text him? :O Castorice: You answer quicker! You: really? he usually answers in a few minutes if he isn’t busy You: and how did you know i was with him? You: I forgot to tell you today :( I'm sorry, I'll be back late :( Castorice: when aren’t you with him (@_@;) Castorice: And it's okay, I need to finish writing the ‘there was only one bed’ scene after the main character gets caught in the rain with your favourite love interest. Castorice: It’s easier to do it when you aren’t around to lose your mind. (´ｖ｀) You: MY FAVOURITE ENEMY. NEIKOS DOESN’T DESERVE THEM You: you ask me to beta read only to tear my heart out, you monster You: khaslana has suffered TOO MUCH when he’s so sweet. i’ll never forget how he took care of them despite how they pretended everything was fine Castorice: ≖‿≖ You: are you going to make the tension and yearning really good at least? You: and phainon says it’s in Badhwar’s section of Practical Ethics Castorice: Please give him my thanks. Castorice: ◉‿◉

Phainon’s face is currently twisted into a mix of rapt fascination and determination.

He has a test coming up concerning cultural studies and gastronomy, so this ‘session’ is just an excuse for the two of you to study together-but-separately rather than discuss this week’s philosophy reading. The entire time, you’ve tried your best to avoid distracting him, yet you do miss his voice despite hearing it just a moment ago when he fulfilled Castorice’s request.

Your usual discipline fails you, and you gently poke Phainon’s cheek with the back of your pen. “What's the debate about?” you ask, trying not to smile too broadly when his eyes flicker to yours.

He puts his book down to answer, “love.” Then, his head tilts with a curiosity in his eyes, as if waiting for a particular reaction from you that you don’t grant, merely listening closely. “Professor Anaxa wanted to go with a broad topic and have us narrow it down towards our own interests. Castorice and I are arguing that love is more than just a feeling.”

That doesn’t seem too difficult.

“Well, it is, right?” you say, "you choose to commit to someone and love them no matter what, you respect and care for your friends, or you believe you have a responsibility to your family members; these are all actions you perform, not feelings you have." You’re certain of this because this is how you’ve learned of love and seen it in your own life, but Phainon grins and his expression fills with pleasure over your answer.

“But is that love? Or is that a product of it—something you do because you feel it?” he challenges you. “We’re trying to prove that love is more than a feeling by looking at the purpose of love itself.”

The words are slightly dizzying. “You sound like one of our readings, or even Professor Anaxagoras,” you say, drawing circles on the table with the tip of your finger. But you let the words settle and answer anyway, “I guess it’s a product.”

If Castorice and Phainon are arguing that love is more than a feeling, then how could they discuss what you said without it only being a reaction? Thinking back on your family, you’re lucky enough to have people who were kind to you growing up—who made sacrifices for you and your little brother’s sake. People say that you instinctively love your family, but that isn’t quite true with those who have difficult lives. More importantly, ‘care’ may also be equal to ‘obligation.’ With your friends and a significant other, you would choose to love them because you know them and spend time with them. So is ‘knowing’ love? Is love a feeling you develop through shared time?

“You’re thinking hard.” Phainon’s voice is playful as he mimics you, poking the furrow in your brow until your face relaxes; the tip of his finger leaves a haze of warmth from where he touched you—a distinct difference from your pen and his cheek. “It’s difficult, right?” he implores you to agree so you nod. “When we look at the philosophy of love, we look at what love is, how different it is from admiration, if it is a response to the object of your affections or is it giving something ‘value’ or meaning because you love it or them, and why love is important.”

It makes you wonder what Castorice was looking for, so you ask, “what’s character structure?”

With a low hum, Phainon thinks for a moment to recall everything. “Badhwar quotes other people, but she says that ‘character structure’ is this complicated amalgamation of ‘attention’ and ‘sensitivity’ for someone where an act of ‘love’ isn’t just related to desire or a goal but a ‘look of love.’”

Excited to talk to Phainon about his debate topics rather than just watch him prepare for once, you interrupt, “that sounds like a movie—when the screen goes hazy like a dream where two characters look at each other as if they’re the only people in the room.” The connection comes easy; just the other week, you and Phainon watched a love story where the director planned exactly that.

“I guess,” Phainon says, leaning back in his chair and knocking his knee against yours with the adjustment. “Looking at someone else like they’re the only person there is kind of what she was going for.” He clicks something on his laptop, scrolls through the document, and then begins to read: “‘love is an ongoing affirmation [...] for [their] own sake—that is, non-instrumentally or as an end in [themselves]’ by looking at them.’”

Still a little confused, you ask, “what’s instrumentally?”

The answer is instantaneous, Phainon having a thorough understanding of it all, never unprepared and always working so hard. “It’s how she explains Aristotle’s view of friendship where there is an inherent ‘usefulness’ to forming relationships with each other. So when she says love is ‘non-instrumental,’ it means we don’t gain anything from love itself, like money, gifts, or status."

“What about loving someone so much that it turns to hatred?” you propose, “or confusing love with hatred.”

Phainon perks up with your addition, and his eyes seem to shine with some degree of interest  the same way you assume they do when he’s actually in the throes of a competition. “She actually debates that—that ‘knowledge’ is also important to ‘hate’ so what makes love so different from hate?” He adds his own thoughts next. “Sometimes, love is twisted; some people hurt those they supposedly ‘love’ and still call it love, and the ‘beloved’ also sees that mistreatment as love, but that’s not right. So we say that the ‘proper’ way to love someone is through genuine care and consideration for the other person, but why do we feel that way? What if that care is too much, or it gets tangled with control, sadness, or grief?”

“What if that care is too little?” you offer, and then continue when Phainon tilts his head, his signature way to show you his interest in knowing more, of which you’re so familiar with now. “What if ‘care’ means they’re absent? Because they love you, they have to leave for your benefit.”

“Like a necessity?” Phainon says, a terse and stern reply. His gaze is too knowing and too observant.

You pivot instead. “A necessity,” you repeat to confirm his elaboration, “like a parent who isn’t home because they always have to work.” Waving your hands while explaining, you hope to palliate his expression, “or similar to Khaslana and how he betrayed the main character as a form of sacrifice. What does love mean, then?”

“Badhwar does consider something similar to ‘absence’ when looking at whether love is irreplaceable,” Phainon says, “where if you lose someone and love someone else, the love for person A is different from person B.” You’re about to reply but then Phainon taps his fingers against his lips, a thoughtful action as he starts synthesizing the information from the chapter he’s referencing in his head. “But she does say that if person C was biologically the same as person A and would make similar choices—like Nietschze’s eternal return—then love is replaceable, especially as after the relationship starts, we can change unexpectedly.”

“We’re just talking in circles now,” you whine, draping yourself over your chimera biology books in a melodramatic display of your exasperation—a habit of yours that he himself is familiar with when it comes to you.

But, again, Phainon copies you, pressing his cheek to the wood so he can look at you and meet your eyes. He’s giggling the entire time he says, “she repeats that we have to love someone for who they are, but even that doesn’t have one interpretation according to her.”

What.

“What?” you reiterate the only reaction your brain has. Although you enjoy how happy Phainon is right now, philosophy, and especially ethics, heavily succeeds in talking in circles while also leading you on only to become more confusing in its attempts of clarifying a concept. “What’s the point of this,” you laugh, the sound blending together with his.

“Badhwar says that to love is to ‘actualize ourselves,’ which means our identities change by loving someone else, so Castorice and I want to show that love is also ‘value’ because we can help the person we love realize more about themselves and learn about ourselves in exchange.” The tips of Phainon’s fingers find yours, and he watches the way they slowly intertwine instead of focusing on your eyes. “Similar to when we discussed life and what it means to ‘matter,’ loving someone for their ‘own sake’ and existence reveals some part of them that only seems ordinary.” Then, his eyes flutter back to yours, as clear as when you first saw them this close. “Badhwar’s ‘look of love’ joined with shared experiences means that we understand the other person, ourselves, and the world through love,” he finishes.

“Have you ever loved anyone before?” The question leaves you as a mutter, as quiet as a drop of water that disturbs the surface of the ocean. “Romantically, I mean.”

There’s a shift in the air, marked by the small, aborted breath that leaves his lips—you can’t help but stare. But when his cheeks redden, you don’t look away, too busy letting the reality of this moment cascade over you as you watch his stare fall to your own mouth before leaving. If you were braver, then you would move, but you aren’t so you stay right where he can follow.

“I don’t think I've ever felt so strongly about someone to say I was in love with them,” Phainon says so honestly that you don’t have to worry about him soothing any pain that may be inflicted if the opposite were true. Then, he mumbles, “have you?”

You don’t wait to answer, letting the words leave you as a hushed secret. “No, I haven’t,” you say.

With that, Phainon abruptly ends the conversation, choosing not to press the topic further with a small complaint about his neck feeling sore from the position you were both in. You don’t express that you had the same ache, merely laughing off his whiny tone as it was inconsequential to your desire to know more about him.

And when he turns away from you, you pretend you don’t see his mouth curl into a grin.

✿ CASket of the Second Male Lead

Castorice: Are you coming home for dinner? Castorice: I’m craving tiramisu from our favourite Italian place. ◉‿◉ You: phainon and i are going to keep studying You: you should go ahead and get it!! you deserve it after finishing the debate last week! Castorice: I’ll just eat some leftovers and we can have it together sometime soon. Castorice: And please tell him I say hello. Castorice: Have fun on your study date! (˵ ¬ᴗ¬˵) You: ??? You: he’s just tutoring me, cas lol Castorice: I thought Castorice: nevermind Castorice: get home safe Castorice: …unless Phainon is walking you home tonight? You: yep! You: why so dramatic with the “…” lol he does the same for you Castorice: i guess Castorice: ◉‿◉ You: why are you making that face You: DID YOU KILL SOMEONE OFF AGAIN Castorice: ◉‿◉

The moment you put your phone down, Phainon asks, “why do you look like you’re going to cry?” Only, he looks equally upset by the sight of you that you wouldn’t be surprised if tears welled up in his own eyes.

You laugh, much to his confusion, but you keep the little observation to yourself and explain, “Castorice was telling me about a story.” And saying that actually does make you want to cry.

It instantly piques his interest; he leans towards you with a curious tilt of his head and a grin that threatens to appear on his face. “What story?” If your reaction is this easily distressed, he more than likely hopes it’s outstandingly dramatic. “What happens in it?” he wonders.

Dramatically, you pause, staring at him to increase the tension between the both of you. Then, you ask quietly as if it’s a secret, “does Cas tell you about her original story?”

“Sometimes…” Phainon’s grin finally blooms, and although the words trail off, they’re provocative to see if you’re thinking of the same thing without quite revealing what exactly.

Your eyes narrow, trying not to laugh despite your anguish. “Did you read what happened recently?” you ask with little elaboration.

“She killed Khaslana.” Phainon’s reply is instantaneous with his own disbelief crashing through his face.

You release a dramatic gasp accompanied by your arms thrown in the air, scandalized by something you already know because you still can’t believe it yourself. “She killed Khaslana!” you repeat after him, hands falling back to the table with the intention to bang your fists on it before realizing where you are and easing the impact as your skin meets wood.

No matter how you soften the disturbance, Phainon’s snort and terrible attempts to keep his laughter restricted to under his breath fail, and the two of you are shushed. Of course, you both express your apologies, but remorse fills you for a second, especially with the stares, and even more with the scolding and warning received because you’re in the middle of the library of all places instead of a study room.

But then you look at Phainon who has some sick sort of delight in his eyes.

“That was your fault,” he taunts you, chin tutting up as he leans back in a casual show of decadence. It’s surprising—normally he would be repentant after momentarily inconveniencing others, but even Phainon can get lost in momentarily troublesome endeavours.

This may also be partly influenced by your own break in character. If you were to tell your past self about all the small ways you’ve changed since meeting Phainon, you’re certain they would be mortified; what happened to your strict schedule? Cyrene has made multiple attempts to get you to let go, but it never worked—your shifts at the Cozy Chimera are interwoven between lectures and labs; on Thursdays, you’re an assistant to medical check-ups for chimeras; once a week, Castorice captivates you with stories; and between everything you do for the sake of your future, you try to maintain your relationships as best as you can. It felt so restricting, but they’re always so patient with you, anyhow.

You don’t want to think about it any further, so you hiss, “you laugh so loudly,” and flip the cover of his book so it falls shut and he loses his place. “Can you cackle any quieter?” His lips wobble at that, and you scold him before the sound slips out with a straightforward, “Phainon.”

“Yes?” he purrs, hand resting on the back of your chair to invade your space. You try to lean away, flustered by his change in attitude, but his hand moves to the armrest, fingers curling around it to drag the chair forward similar to how you had so long ago, forcing you closer when your smile matches his. “What is it? Do you not like me so happy?”

You do, actually. You prefer him this way, in fact. 

“I like you when you’re not annoying,” you reply, forcing your mouth into a flat line.

“So you always like me because I’m cute, right?” Phainon whispers; you have to be quiet or you’ll get kicked out so there’s no other reason for the drop in his tone, a low timbre you aren’t sure how to react to. “You said I was a dork and that was cute, remember?” he explains with a hopeful, breathless chuckle that conceals his agitation.

You blink. “Did I?” you reply, not remembering the interaction; you’ve had so many conversations with Phainon by now that the concept of expressing your slight interest in him makes you squeamish. In the situation that you did court him, it would be a planned and intentional thing, not an off-hand comment you can’t recall.

Phainon laughs again, a tight sound you have no opportunity to unwind when he returns to his original position, back against the chair and growing the distance between you. “Nevermind, it’s nothing,” he says, tapping his pen against the table in three dull knocks before twirling it around his thumb, a trick that always distracts you. “I must have confused you with someone else.”

What? you almost say with your heart leaping in your chest only to land with a splash of cold water that shocks you to attention. But it’s not enough to help you focus on Phainon’s little monologue after his admission, something about Khaslana and the main character’s accidental kiss that he still isn’t over and how he hopes to convince Castorice to give them another chance before she kills him off. Admittedly, you also want better for Khaslana, but you can’t stop repeating the words in your head—that someone else has outrightly told Phainon that he’s cute.

It’s true. It’s undeniable. It’s simply how Phainon is, but you still dislike it the same; the feeling tangling with the desire for him to be praised as much as he deserves against the reality of someone else other than your mutual friends expressing the sentiment, especially you. Before you met him, you were already aware that this was the way others looked at him—in wonder, in admiration, and in longing. It didn’t matter until now.

Swallowing it down, you prevent yourself from drowning and simply go back to prepping for your final exams. There are more important things for you to agonize over, even if they may be your growing affection for him rather than jealousy.

𖤓 Phai

Phainon: Look! Phainon sent two images. Phainon: It's Chocolate Pudding and Vigethos. Phainon: Do you like them? Phainon: I used the same recipe from when I tried to replicate your favourite cookies so I promise they taste good! :) You: I do like them! They look so cute but I'm sure they'll taste even better!! You: Is this for a practical or for fun? :O Phainon is typing… Phainon: they're for you You: lol are you trying to bribe me into another bet between you and mydeimos? You: because it's working Phainon is typing…

“What are you grinning about?” Cyrene’s voice makes you jump, keen and suspicious as if she already knows the reason, and you almost drop your phone.

With the semester ending and finals out of the way, you’ve finally granted yourself the opportunity to go shopping with her. Aside from gaining first-hand experience with chimeras, you’ve gained money, and although most of that money has contributed to your tuition, the rest has gone into your savings when it’s not needed for necessities here in Okhema or back home in Jericha. This means you barely spoil yourself, and Cyrene decided long ago that it cannot go on for any longer. She had come to you and said, in her words, live a little! What’s the point of money if all you’re going to do is save it?

Thinking about it more, she’s right. Your second year of university is over now, the only thing left being the results of each final, yet the most riveting thing you’ve achieved has to be resetting a chimera’s dislocated leg. Not everyone is one for frat parties or jumping from relationship to relationship—you know for sure that this isn’t you—but there has to be more to this than, well, this.

Cyrene huffs, exasperated as if she doesn’t know what to do with you. “Now why are you pouting?” Her hand finds your shoulders, squeezing softly as her nails leave small indentations into the fabric—not painful, merely a grounding touch. “Hmm?”

“Nothing,” you say offhandedly with a smile, “I was just trying to decide between those two sweaters.” To dissolve the slight concern on her face, your own hand falls atop of hers, imitating her touch. For a moment, you think you’re unable to fool her, but she only takes the time to consider the options you’ve provided her with.

“The second one,” she suggests, “you’ll be absolutely mesmerizing in that colour! I think the fit is better too, going by the other clothes I’ve seen you in.” With a soft hum and a thank you, you fold the sweater into your basket, and continue browsing clothes, but Cyrene continues to say, “if you want to thank me, you could tell me who you were texting.” Her voice is raised at the end of her sentence, an inviting provocation that comes to you as playful curiosity.

“Just Phainon,” you answer, quick and effortless in hopes of the interaction coming across as insignificant when you’re aware this can lead to her teasing.

“Just Phainon?” she repeats, and you’ve realized you’ve failed to avoid it. It likely wasn’t possible so long as the person you spoke to was him.

“What?” you ask with a detached tone, pulling off a pair of slacks from a rack and observing the stitching. This would be nice to wear to an internship, and you force this stream of consciousness to show on your face—contemplative and staid to hide the panic.

“You two talk a lot,” she observes while tugging on the fabric of the garment to test its give. “This would be hard to move in with the chimeras.”

Putting it back, you check the blend of another pair, show it to Cyrene, and find your size when she approves. “I guess,” you answer.

When she holds up a blouse to her chest, you nod in agreement for her to take it, but she doesn’t thank you for the help and instead says, “you’ve also gotten pretty close.”

You stop her from backing up into a rack of clothing as she continues to press you, catching her arm with your hand. “Cy,” you start with a stern utterance of her name. “What are you trying to say?”

“Nothing,” she quickly responds, but in her case, she does not try to conceal how suspicious she’s acting. It wouldn’t be surprising if she attempted to set you up with him, you’ve seen her not only do the same with Castorice and Cifera but succeed. Yet she subverts your expectations when she merely says, “I’m happy.”

Her voice is so soft, and you realize that it’s similar to Phainon’s when he’s honest. This is not to say that Cyrene has ever lied to you—never maliciously, anyway, only for silly pranks or surprises that make way for your laughter as she would never hurt you. And you think you’re happy too; happy you met her and Castorice; happy you met Cifera and Mydei; and happy that all this has guided you to Phainon.

“I think you’re good for him,” Cyrene continues. “Phainon is—” Then, she cuts herself off to ruminate on something related to him that only she would know because they spent years growing up together. “I can read him like the back of my hand, but that doesn’t mean I can do something about it, or that he’ll listen.” She huffs, “honestly, he’s so difficult,” yet she still sounds so fond.

Your head tilts. “But?” 

She offers you a matching grin to the one you flaunt when you’re pretending everything is alright. “But Phainon doesn’t like being seen. He likes to smile and laugh and…” She trails off, dumping the contents of her basket out and over the surface of the self-checkout while you do the same. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with him.”

“Do you think I changed him?” you ask. Once Cyrene registers the question, her movements hesitate for a moment; is this what the conversation is really about? But then she enters her pin into the payment terminal and you decide that she momentarily forgot it in the hope that her behaviour indicates that your assumption is wrong.

Only, she agrees, “you did,” and you’re ultimately unable to fool yourself into thinking otherwise. “He can never say no to you. I don’t think he’s capable of it.”

“I would hate that,” you reply quickly. It makes you feel sort of bad, sort of not: Cyrene told you that Phainon is the type to be easily taken advantage of, and your family has already given so much that you can’t take anymore. But does this also mean that you’re special to him?

“That’s not…” Cyrene exhales slowly, finding the proper words for what she wants to say as she helps you tuck your new clothes into a bag. She’s just like Phainon—always so helpful and considerate with the little things. “You’ve changed too. Before you were always so strict with everything you do, but Phainon made you softer, and Titan knows I tried to do the same.”

“Do you hate it?”

Her laugh is light and disarming for someone like you. “No.” She shakes her head, looping your arms together to walk out of the mall. “You’re happier, and Phainon is too. He always tries so hard just like you do, but the two of you somehow mellowed each other out!” She ends with a giggle that rings out like a bell.

The conversation remains just as vibrant thereafter with Cyrene.

You’re sitting in the passenger seat of her car while she cycles through a variety of topics from how her finals went to her plans for the next few months until your junior year starts. Aside from wanting to visit a flower garden, apparently Aglaea is hosting a gala for her upcoming spring collection. The woman may be a renowned fashion designer but to Cyrene and Phainon, she is like an aunt despite being unrelated by blood. And with the mention of her party, Cyrene was instantly inspired to host her own for all of her friends, especially as you’ve finally become closer to Phainon.

“It’s a miracle I was able to get you two to finally talk,” she bemoans, “I almost gave up, but it only takes one convenient seed of fate to get friendship to blossom!”

Friendship.

It’s enough to turn your thoughts murky, a slow pollution that starts when the word enters your ears and stops at your heart. All this time, you’ve avoided giving a name to whatever is happening between you and Phainon recently. Before he became your tutor, he was an acquaintance that was really just a stranger—someone you were polite and amiable with but no more than that. Then, he became a source of comfort that you began to seek out.

You don’t have to stay up late studying because you can just ask Phainon to quiz you, but you are also afraid to see how concerned he might become if you appear to him dizzy and deprived of sleep. You don’t skip meals using an excuse related to class or work anymore because Phainon has made a habit of asking with the looming threat to cook for you, and the first time you didn’t believe him, he showed up with something warm to fill your stomach. You also never have to hide in one of Cozy Chimera’s closets to avoid worrying Arielle with your exhaustion as that’s simply no longer part of your ‘normal’ after he slipped into your routine.

And you can no longer think of Jericha without thinking of Aedes Elysiae, the memories interwoven with all the stories Phainon shared with you just to hear your own.

“Cyrene,” you start, grabbing the seat belt drawn across your abdomen to steady how shaky your voice is. Your heart twists as you try to prepare the words, and regret not doing it before you uttered her name with so much gravity that you can’t peddle back even if you wanted to.

“What is it?” she asks, eyes quickly fluttering to you before returning to the road in front of her. “Are we sharing secrets?” Her attempt to be cheeky is a dull joy—it’s an out; a chance for you to change your mind.

Squeezing your fingers tighter around the strap, you try to calm the skip of your heart and ignore the tiny sound of a chime, instead, taking the plunge. “Yes, I have something to tell you.”

“Then…” She hums, low and melodious. “I won’t tell a soul.”

If you don’t say it now, you know you’ll never face it, pushing it to the end of your list of responsibilities until you’re numb to it—you don’t want that to happen. So as quickly as you’ve let him enter your life, you say, “I have a crush.”

At first, there’s silence. An oppressive, worrying silence undermined by the rumble of the car that it makes you want to swallow back the words. Then, she snorts, and you’re reminded of who exactly you’re dealing with.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes through a giggle, “I was expecting something worse.” Her shoulders are shaking, but you know her laughter isn’t a form of ridicule but another way to relieve you. “You’re so cute! I thought I’d never see you daydreaming about someone.”

Whining her name, you sink deeper into the seat, boneless and weary from acknowledging your feelings. “I’m serious. I don’t know what to do.”

She repeats your name back with a small, giddy huff that's followed by a quip. “Oh, you're serious about this, huh?” You nod although she’s busy looking at the road. “So,” she drags out the word, “who is it?”

Before you can answer, you hear your phone chime twice in quick succession, begging you to check. So, you do, because he always has wonderfully convenient timing when you need him more than you realize.

𖤓 Phai

Phainon: No, there's no bet. Phainon: But there is something important I want to ask you. Phainon: When can I see you again?

Even when you slip your phone back into your pocket and bring your attention to her, she doesn’t ask who distracted you; she already knows. And with all the love Cyrene has for fate, you believe this wouldn’t have ended any other way.

“I think I'm into your childhood friend,” you say, much more breathless than you intended. The declaration swells from the bottom of your stomach, unsettled as if not allowed to remain dormant and forcing you to confront it. “I think I like Phainon.”

There’s so much affection in your chest that a warmth radiates until it spreads through your body. You said the words with apprehension in fear of her reaction or your own, you aren’t sure, but rather than think, you can already tell that you know. Still, your admission was said simply without fanfare, mustering all the cold prudence and restraint you’re capable of so that this remains a final thing.

But when the car comes to a stop and gives Cyrene an opportunity to look at you, all she does is smile.

a/n. References:

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus.

Badhwar, Neera K. “Love.” The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics, edited by Hugh LaFollette, 2003, pp. 42–69.

Helm, Bennett, “Love.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2001. Link.