#froggy fall

This is the last of the Froggy fall pictures, and the theme is spooky season. I really love how the little waltz turned out, it was fun making the beetle part of the spotlight, given his cameos in the previous pictures. I enjoyed this little trio, so perhaps I’ll draw them more in the future!

It was a challenge doing a spooky feeling colour scheme, and also making it look dark enough for a torch, without actually making it dark. I managed to include all of the daily prompts on this one, feeling happy about that!

If you want to see my sketches and my initial more nightly colour scheme, check my patreon! The post is available to free members, same with all the October art I did this month!

Chapter 25: Potion

         Beogi perhaps endured them as long as he could before bounding out of the cottage to find a warm mushroom to sit under or a lilypad at the pond to float on.  Yoongi couldn’t really blame him.  He hadn’t giggled or blushed so much in his entire life, and he felt stupid and silly and yet intoxicatingly happy.  Jimin made himself right at home in the cottage even though he did have an apartment in the village he showed Yoongi.  It was incredibly messy—that was Yoongi’s first impression—but also homey in its own way.

         “I prefer the forest,” the boy said, “but the only cottage around there was occupied.”

         “So—you’re trying to oust me?”

         “No!  There’s enough room for both of us!”  There was indeed.  Yoongi hadn’t shared his space since school with Hoseok, and parts of him tingled, the tiniest inconveniences making it seemingly harder to breathe.  But every time he actually thought about it, actually stopped to think for a second, actually breathed deeply–it was the easiest thing in the world to have Jimin beside him.  He didn’t have to think about it at all.  It just came naturally.

         Like the magic in the air that flowed through his lungs, he simply needed to breathe.

         Yoongi’s pride took a few hits, too, his embarrassment as Jimin watched him make potions or broomsticks or candles catching his whole face on fire, but as soon as Jimin came over and touched his hand or stood beside him, his pursing lips peering cutely into the pot, Yoongi felt confident.  A day flew by, and then a week, and Yoongi kept finding silver and golden hairs in his bathroom, on his desk, beside his pillow.  If bewitchment was a real thing, if someone could actually bottle up enticement, then Yoongi had drunk a gallon of it, because he was obsessed with Jimin.  And in return, the boy was obsessed with him.

         Yoongi wasn’t sure when he realized it.  It came to him like a sprout slowly poking through the earth.  Like the sun lazily creeping over a hill.  Like the wind changing as the seasons turned.  Like a breath of air that traveled down to his lungs.  Like that sensation that shot through his body until it reached his fingertips.  Like magic.

         With Halloween only a week away, Yoongi knew he was going to have a hard time keeping up with all of the orders he had.  This year felt more overwhelming than ever before, and it wasn’t just because Jimin was there as a very welcomed distraction.  It took a long time for Yoongi to realize that his potions were working.  Really working.  Because his herbs were growing.  Really growing.  People were raving about his candles, and his broomsticks looked cuter than ever.

         “I don’t get it,” he said one night as he stretched his fingers as Jimin poured them tea, the hay sticking to their clothes around their feet.  “What did you do to me?”

         “Well, if you’re talking about last night,” Jimin said, his smirk making Yoongi blush and shake his head, his fingers aching a bit as they curled around the mug he was offered.

         “I mean all this—” Yoongi said, hoping the boy knew what he meant as the broomsticks were drying and the herbs were growing out of control almost at this point.  “I’ve never had this much success.  My garden—you should have seen it before—well, you did.  It was embarrassing.  And now it’s—you only blend and bend, so I don’t know how you did it, but everything’s better now.”

         “I haven’t done anything,” Jimin said, which made Yoongi snort.  The packages inside he had added bows to, his aesthetic eye much more creative and cute than Yoongi’s ever had been, told him otherwise.  Yoongi twisted his lips, his cup warm on his leg as Jimin leaned against his leg and reached up to take one of his hands.  “Your magic is just working now.”

         “I don’t get it.”

         “I don’t know,” Jimin shrugged, the way he looked at Yoongi’s fingers making the boy blush a little.  “Maybe because you breathed my realm’s air.  Maybe because you breathe mine so often.”

         “I d—” Yoongi stammered, trying not to look at the boy’s lips as Jimin looked up at him.

         “I think you finally just figured out how to enhance things.”

         “What am I enhancing?  What do potions and plants and candles and these brooms have in common?”

         “Nothing,” Jimin said, his lips soft as he kissed Yoongi’s hand, “except you make them with these.”

         “My hands?”

         “Maybe you’re a forger and a fixer.”

         “A forger and a—Forging is bad!”

         “True, I couldn’t think of another f-word.”

         “Besides, we can’t create—”

         “No, and yet we can.  Of course we can.  You create potions and candles and broomsticks—you create so many things.”

         “But—” Yoongi mumbled.  “Witches can’t create.”

         “All witches do is create,” Jimin objected.  “We use our hands to do so.  I only have a wand for the look, really, but it also acts as an extension of my hand.”

         “You think my magic is my hands?”

         “No.  I mean, well, they can do some magic,” Jimin giggled as he pressed Yoongi’s hand against his face.  “But not the kind we’re talking about.  I just mean, I think you’re the witchiest witch I’ve ever met.”

         “What?  No, that doesn’t, what?”

         “You enhance what you have.  You use your hands to do it.  My only question is why are you fighting it?  Don’t you want to breathe?”

         “Well, yeah,” Yoongi said.