Chapter Text
The wind whipped past the windows, rattling the shutters on the outside. Insistent tendrils find their way into every little crack and crevice between frame and glass, reaching out across the bedroom like ice-cold fingers grasping their way towards him. Orugio huddles deeper down into his bed, pulls a blanket over his head and tries to stop shivering. In the distance he can hear another moan, a terrible harmonisation with the wind as his Mother cries out in pain in her bedroom beyond.
It has been two weeks since he had last set eyes on his Mother, her auburn hair and warm, flickering smiles. Two weeks since he has last heard her laugh and the love in her voice as she spoke to him of stories or showed him another creative yet entirely logical sequence of sigils, keystones and rings. The town of Godley had once again been subjected to a terrible disease that swept through the populace with all the eagerness of an opportunistic scavenger. Only this time it had come knocking at his family’s door.
Orugio was an only child, five years old and bright as a button, living with his Mother and Father in their Atelier alongside a number of apprentice witches. At the moment there were three other boys, several years older than him, all studying underneath his Father’s instruction. Orugio had learned that helping out around the classroom - carefully topping up magic ink, neatly slotting circles of parchment into palm quires, even occasionally grinding components up in the pestle - soon warmed the others up to him. It often earned a broad smile from his Father too, a ruffle of his scruffy dark hair and words of praise. Orugio decided that he very much liked to be useful. It felt good to be wanted in other people’s lives.
In the main, his life so far had been a composition of warmth, comfort and happiness etched into place within the Atelier’s four walls. Yet Godley could be a hard place to live.
There was little problem in the way of money. It was an affluent town based on mercantile trades and several noble families had recently found their way to establish themselves on these Northern shores of the Zozah Peninsula. Within the boundaries there was a mixture of witch and unknowing alike. They muddled together like blackened silverwood in water - a potent blend, but dangerous to both if not distilled and handled properly.
Nature however did not care much for wealth or standing, and the seasons could be cruel.
Disease had a habit of spreading, straining the limits of those who practice medicine in the town. Witches assisted in other ways, trying to keep the peace and their secret both. It is one of the reasons Orugio's parents had made Godley their home. Whilst Orugio's father taught the next generation of witches, his Mother devised contraptions to aid in public health such as a mask lined with glyphs to help filtrate and generate fresh air through use of repetition signs and delicate aireform sigils - an invention that had been scaled up to provide ventilation in the clinics. There was even a handheld puffer version for people who were afflicted by Mireboa pleurisy, a condition that squeezed at and filled the lungs with mucus - much like the slippery snake, after which it had been named, does when it has caught its prey.
Since their arrival she has been in the employ of Lord and Lady Brisher, an eminent family that had come to the town seven years earlier from further shores. The lady of the house has a delicate disposition, spending much of her time sickly in bed or in a walking chair in her arboretum. Orugio’s Mother had worked from the start to make these areas in the house safe and protected havens for the other woman, working long hours away from the Atelier, even spending nights in the Manor when the Lady was having one of her fits. She became a companion of sorts for Lady Brisher it seems, keeping her magic both secret and intact amidst their conversations, and continuing her research during moments of quiet contemplation. As she has since told Orugio, witches draw without even needing to pick up a pen. Not on paper, but in the mind.
After Orugio was born, his Mother spent a little less time with the Brisher couple, though she still worked in their manor during the daylight hours and was occasionally asked to stay overnight. Since he can remember, his Mother would often make a big fuss of him if she had been away for longer than she had hoped, plenty of warm hugs and stories and talks of her latest ideas to stimulate him. Then she would listen and encourage as he talked and imagined and invented. These were some of Orugio’s favourite moments, head on his mother’s lap by the fire, or huddled together over sketches, all the while indulging in the special sweet treats that had been brought over fresh from the Brisher’s kitchens, crafted like the most intricate magic from the best cooks available in the town.
It was a little over two weeks ago that his Mother had been called out to assist with a town emergency. It was not just diseases that spread during the long nights that made up a significant portion of the time that passed in Godley, but a darkness that settled into the minds of some of the townsfolk who had been deprived of light. Orugio’s Mother had been called out to see if her respiratory magic could help with someone who had been brought down by banners just in time after attempting to take their own life through hanging. It was a topic that his parents sheltered from the young boy, but each time it happened there would be whispers in the streets, the usual routines disrupted as if the normal flow of energy of the town had jammed momentarily in its mechanism.
He might have never been told about such tragic events outright, but Olrugio understood enough. He had always been such an observant boy.
His Mother had returned that night, wan and listless, as if the fire within her had been smothered and was lacking in oxygen. It took a few days for the actual deprivation of air to settle into her lungs, hacking coughs developing into heaving cries. She had left the house in such a hurry, she had not taken her usual precautions that her work eschewed and was now paying the price. It seemed so unfair to Orugio, especially after everything she had done for others in order to combat such disease. As he sits in his bed he cannot help but sniff. The wetness on the tip of his nose could easily be attributed to the cold but the moisture on his cheeks was not so neatly excused. He hears his bedroom door open and hastily scrubs the back of his hand across his features, tucking himself into the blanket deeper and tighter.
“I’ll just light your fire and be on my way.”
Rich umber tone over driftwood pitch in both voice and complexion with heavier footsteps that tread across the room. This was Mpho, his Father’s friend. Though not isolated enough to warrant the allocation of an official Watchful Eye, in some ways Mpho felt like that to Orugio. He kept an eye on all of them at the Atelier, and he knew that his Father trusted the other man with his life, his apprentices and that of his family.
He was also a specialist of fire magic, something which greatly interested the boy. Before he realised he was popping his head up over the blankets and padding on over to watch the way Mpho worked.
“Ah there you are,” Mpho rumbles, deeply. “For a moment there I thought you had turned into a burrowing frost hare.”
Orugio draws his legs up and wraps his arms around the top of his knees, tear stained cheeks pushed into them but blue eyes focussing on the way flames swirl into life within the fireplace, a little dance all for him. Mpho, crouched at his side draws another few sigils, alters the flues on the grate, and the flames begin to form into rough shapes - a cake with candles, trees shedding their orange and red leaves, a bird taking flight with a phoenix flourish. Orugio smiles against his forearms but huffs out a sullen sounding, “Show-off.”
Mpho chuckles to himself and sits cross-legged on the floor. For a few moments there is silence except for the crackling of wood and the occasional wail that makes Orugio flinch into himself further as he stares into the flames. When he speaks again he can hear how his voice trembles, hates how he feels so weak and helpless, “When can I see Mama again?”
The large man shifts on his haunches. Orugio notices a tension across his brow, furrows deepening before dark brown eyes steady a look upon him, “Your parents don’t want you to get ill too.”
At first the apprentices had been sent away on a week-long sabbatical to the Great Hall. Orugio and his Father had waited patiently on one side of the Atelier whilst the healers attended to his Mother on the other. The Apprentices had come back two days ago and his Father had resumed his teaching. Orugio knows that his Mother is no longer in any form of "quarantine" as she called it.
“But Father ain’t ill and he’s been staying with her. It can’t be something that I can catch if that’s the case! It’s not fair! I want-” I want to see my Mama, he thinks, as he hiccups into the crook of his elbow and tries not to cry.
Suddenly he feels large arms hooking themselves under his armpits and his body lifted against a broad chest. He presses his face against the warm muscle and mumbles, almost inaudibly. “I miss her.”
“I know you do, little pyre-bug.” It is a nickname that was given to Orugio by his Mother. Mpho squeezes the boy closer as he feels wetness at his chest and the soft shudders of a child trying to suppress his emotions. “Let’s get you back to bed now and you can ask your Father about it in the morning, okay?”
It was that night that Orugio's Mother passed away. The flames of her life burned to ash in a heavy fever as he slept.