moon sets, crows cry

YÚN enfj • she/her • your friendly neighborhood russian blue

genshin worlds & characters • pokémon • all things languages

masterlist yumeship

🐇 enjoys: halo hair • strawberry matcha • skiing • shoes and vintage cars • travelling to hidden places around the world

I am a chronic writer of all things I see around me, whether that comes across in fully crafted stories, poems, fragmented excerpts, or a babbled line between a drink or ten

the sky above is grey. cloudlessly. but it’s not what you see most clearly. qifrey covers you like a blanket, his forearms in the damp riverbed on either side of your head, body held aloft to avoid crushing you too badly.

you wonder if you ought to be warier of this positioning. in a few years, maybe.

for now, you only blink. the water doesn’t land on him. magic. and covering you the way he is, it doesn’t land on you, either.

“are you all right, little apprentice?” he asks.

“yes. I think so.”

his hair is like the clouds he channeled into crushing a dragon, you think. soft and white, and without thinking, you lift your arms and bury your hands in his hair. he blinks at you, one indigo eye as blue as the river around you both.

“apprentice?”

“sorry,” you mumble.

you wonder if it’s something done in the aftermath of violence or destruction. to hold onto what comforts you. in this case, you know it’s qifrey himself. your master; your protector.

when a palm cups the back of your head, you look up to catch the sunlit halo of qifrey.

“what troubles you?” he hums. “I wondered if you’d come in for dinner with the others, but you’ve been out here lingering on the periphery of the atelier for hours now.”

“I’m just thinking, master.”

“thinking about what? surely, it can’t be more important than willowgrapes.”

his joke doesn’t inspire your amusement as it normally would. you kick your feet where they’re dangling off the balcony railing you’re sitting on. the wind blows gently in the dim sunset, and a great grief trembles in you.

“I don’t know if I fit in, is all,” you finally admit. “I’m afraid to spend too much time with the others. that they’ll see I’m not quite where I should be, where they are.”

qifrey doesn’t respond. you wince, closing your eyes, wondering if admitting this to your master was a misjudgement than the right opening to confess.

“a wise witch,” comes his voice after a moment, less amused but no less kind, “does not look down on his peers as they learn and grow.”

you peer up at him. “what if I’m not growing at all?”

“that’s hardly the case,” qifrey says, smiling down at you. “you’re part of my atelier, little apprentice. you’re growing with every step you take. why, I’m sure just sitting out here and pondering has helped you grow a bit more today than yesterday.”

you doubt that. but before you can press, qifrey settles one arm around you, lifting you off the balcony and onto his hip. you flail for a moment, unaccustomed to having been carried in such a way since you were a child, but qifrey only smiles easily, the golden light catching in his snowy hair and indigo eye.

“come, now,” he says warmly. “we shall have more talk of this tomorrow, and I’ll personally see to it that such doubts don’t bother you again.”

“and today?”