#witchofwarmth

For Olruggio this is all so new... so Qifrey is trying to be gentle, to watch his Watchful Eye carefully.

As for himself, his fondness for Olruggio has had this ache to it, this pain, for years now. The small smile that appears on his face is practically as natural as breathing. Whether it’s genuine or not he could hardly tell you at this point.

“Almost like nothing ever happened,” he says.

It’s true in terms of the windowpane but so utterly untrue for everything--and everyone--else.

It’s still only been a few days back at the atelier for all of them. The girls are each unsettled in their own ways, ranging from the tetchy privateness of Agott and Riche to the desperate cheer of Tetia and Coco. They can sense it. They still don’t fully know how long they might have left in this little home before they might be abandoned again, and he hates that he’s created such a fear in them.

That they each are still choosing him as their teacher despite it all gives him the same melancholy feeling as Olruggio does: a fondness so fierce it is painful.

“... I make myself very hard to reach sometimes,” Qifrey adds. “That’s my own doing, not yours.”

Olruggio had never felt such scorching rage towards his friend before. Never a time he remembered, anyway.

Which is exactly the fucking problem, isn’t it?

He’s glad to be wearing his cloak. The heavy fabric hides how much he’s trembling with the force of his anger, and how his fingers buckle the shape of Qifrey’s hat in his hand. The brim is unpinned; glyph beneath stark against the white fabric.

What did you do to me? What did you take from me?

It had been an accident. Or inexplicable curiosity. Something about the pin holding Qifrey’s hat together had started bothering him, kept drawing his attention whenever the man took off his hat - like he expected him to pull it out - a shiver of anxiety crossing his chest. Which made no sense at all, then. It was only a hat.

Except, when Qifrey had left it unattended and Olruggio had decided to sate this strange urge to pull it himself...

He hadn’t even known memory glyphs could be reversed, not by simple recall - hadn’t that been what Qifrey had discovered in the Tower? But how could he even trust his word on that anymore. The sight of it brought back flashes, segments of a memory he couldn’t fully retrieve, of Qifrey... forcing the hat onto his head. More than once. Expression something fearsome, visceral, deaf to his own pleas for Qifrey to stop.

The memory had started his body quaking - some emotion between fear and betrayal washing over him - and by the time Qifrey had found him, still staring at the glyph beneath the brim, it had crystallised into agony.

Perhaps the worst part about his anger is that it’s for himself. Against Qifrey. And it felt selfish.

“We... need to talk,” he’d said, dangling the hat by the ribbon. “About what you did to me.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you like this.”

What a joke.

“Then how did you mean to hurt me, Qifrey?” he spits, “You of all people... I thought you at least knew the value of memory.”

You could argue Quifrey had been cornered all his life. Had always just been an animal desperately pacing a cage, whether he knew it or not. But not like this. The way Olruggio holds his old tassel so carelessly, hat hanging from it like something vile, makes Quifrery’s stomach turn to ice, and he’s frozen there in the kitchen, this slightly too small room that has been their safe haven in the world for years now. And Quifrey is cornered, his feet glued to the floor. Even in the moments when he took Olruggio’s memory... It was never because of this.

His heart is stuttering and his expression is blank because he knows but doesn’t want to know that this is the moment when he finally loses him. He didn’t want it to be like this. Hurting Olruggio was inevitable but if Quifrey had just managed to sneak away...

And yet a voice at the back of his head twists horribly and says You would’ve taken the cowardly way out and run away rather than face his rightful anger.

And: Isn’t it better for him to hate you?

Yes... Quifrey wants to protect Olruggio, of course he does, but wasn’t his habit of still clinging on to him through all this always selfish? Perhaps the most selfish thing he’s ever done in his life.

And it has hurt Olruggio. Immeasurably.

Why did I think I could have this?

“...” His mouth opens and then falls closed again hopelessly.

There aren’t any words that can make it better, that’s the thing. Not even lies.

“Olruggio, I...” I can’t tell him the whole truth. It will endanger him. If I told him I’d have to take it away again. “I cherish you more than anyone...”

He has nothing to offer. He’s cornered with nothing.

He deserves so much more than I can give him.

“I would never... change you. I was so careful not to change you. But...”

These words aren’t helping. He has nothing to fix this. He’s losing him.

“I’m so, so sorry.”

Winter was a difficult time of year for everyone on the Zoza peninsula, and a time when magic was needed most. Snow needs melting, homes heating, the longer nights lighting. Simple work in high demand.

It could run any fire-witch ragged. Olruggio tried to let the thought comfort him - that the thinness he felt was shared by his peers, and that they were pushing themselves alongside him. But... he knew his hands didn't just shake from the cold; and that strange shadows on the dark, snowy landscape wouldn't bother others so deeply.

He'd started having that nightmare again.

Blackened, frostbitten, curled up under the newest snowfall... the lanterns cold and dark along the road, and the houses colder and darker still.... small, shining torch wavering in the cold...

One of them.... moves

And Olruggio-

-wakes with a lurch, the ends on a scream tearing his throat. Shit. Where was he? Where? It was dark and cold and damp and... soft. Soft? He holds the ground beneath him and finds upholstery and blankets, a pillow, damp from his own clammy, shivering body.

The sofa...The atelier... I was only asleep.

With a shaky breath, he sits and tries to calm himself, but the sweat is making it hard to pull away from the memory. He's too tired. The heaviness in his body and the lightness of the shaking are disorienting.

If he wraps himself tightly, boils under his covers, he might remember how to breathe.

There's a light in the next corridor that he doesn't notice, the tapping of footsteps...

It’s not entirely unusual for Olruggio to make a little too much noise at weird hours, talking to himself or puttering around the kitchen for a midnight snack. There have even been one or two untranslatable exclamations from his atelier across the bridge while he’s been hard at work, and this is mostly just a normal part of living with him. Quifrey took the liberty of putting sound dampening glyphs on the doors to the girls’ dormitories a long time ago, because he too had a tendency for late night nattering.

But this... This is very different.

Quifrey has no such silencing spells around his own bedroom because he prefers to know exactly what’s going on at the atelier at all times, some might say a bit neurotically. But there are nights it proves useful instead of just paranoid.

He hadn’t been sleeping anyway. He’s lurching out of bed on reflex and grabbing his glasses, already out his door before the scream has even fully registered in his mind.

A scream... with so much pain in it. And horror. Something is very wrong.

His heart threatens to choke him for a few horrible moments, because of course he recognized Olruggio’s voice and Olruggio is extremely important, but he keeps himself steady and measured, and checks the living room first where Olruggio had fallen asleep on the sofa after dinner.

He’s still there, and Quifrey’s poor heart is allowed to fall down a few notches closer to its home ribcage again. Olruggio is sitting up in a tangle of blankets, whole and unharmed, but so very pale, sweat making pinpricks of his black hair stick at his forehead.

“Olruggio...”

Quifrey--for that is what the boy is called now--is not a fan of the Market Plaza. There’s a lot of... people. It’s noisy and it even gets crowded around lunch time. He’s a little lost and aimless without Beldarut to hide behind, but his master has been busier lately and, Quifrey suspects, trying to finagle excuses for Quifrey to try going out on his own anyway.

Quifrey resents it and doesn’t at the same time.

He just sort of drifts from stall to stall like a ghost... Of course he notices the weird looks he gets. And people gossip about him way more openly without Beldarut around.

He knows they hate him. He hates them back. Or at least he wants to.

He’s starting to get overwhelmed, the noise and the looks and his own out-of-placeness notching up and up until it’s buzzing around inside his head and then he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He doesn’t know what to do with his arms. Is it right for them to just hang like this? He stops to stare meaninglessly at a stall selling magical items, as if this might make him disappear.

Beldarut did give him a grocery list and a purse, but he also probably isn’t even expecting Quifrey to actually get anything. Again, Quifrey is just expected to not be useful...

He’s so distracted by his own whirling thoughts, that he flinches when all of the sudden the magical object he was staring at so intensely gets picked up by somebody. Oh. Someone is right next to him and he hadn’t even noticed.

He follows the hand up to a boy’s face, and his eyes immediately flit away again.

“That’s a stupid thing, you can have it.”

"I'll stop once you tell me what you're doing out here this late." He props a hand on his hip. "If you're going to be up, you should be somewhere warmer."

... It’s not the most effective coming from Olruggio, but Quifrey can’t really talk either. Perhaps they are at an impasse here.

@witchofwarmth: "it’s just easier, you know, at least in my head i can change" - tetia for richeh?

We are products of our past but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.

Tumblr Quotes

"Oh? You of all people are going to tell me that? Really?" Zazie laughs, voice echoing from behind their mask as they flutter above him.

richeh furrows her brow . something about this conversation feels off -- like there's a piece the professors have , and she doesn't . professor olruggio seems -- uncomfortable ? maybe ? she suspects he may be withholding information , but why ? anything less than blunt honesty is often confusing to her .