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A tension clung to the walls of the atelier these days.
Threat seemed to follow the six of them everywhere, bloodshot eyes glared at their backs with every single step they took from its warm stone hearth. The brimmed caps, the knights, witches filled with suspicion that Qifrey, the original anomaly, kept producing more and more with his new apprentice.
Like master like student, some had said. Beldaruit and Qifrey both guilty of turning their backs on the principles to extend caring hands to children in terror. Whether it was out of care for their safety or out of flagrant disregard for the rules, these practicalities mattered not the judging stares; the whispers passed between fingers.
Coco inhaled the evening air into her lungs and closed her eyes. Her heart thundered in her chest, her stomach twisting at every fearful memory that she’d gained in abundance since her fingers, trembling with curiosity, dared to draw magic that had been long since forbidden.
She gripped her witch hat close to her chest. Tears dampened the fabric.
All of the thoughts crushed her. She was afraid.
The dragon was tall and terrifying. The weightlessness as she’d fallen from the cliffs into the riverbank had given her vertigo the next time she’d dared to use her sylphshoes. Romonon was dark, her emergence into the sun had reminded her painfully of the heat from the amplified snugstone. The ink that bled into the night sky, bloodthirsty, had given her nightmares until she couldn’t look at her own inkwell without feeling nauseous.
Because, despite it all, Coco was still a child.
A child who’d made a mistake she couldn’t fathom before being thrown into disaster after frightful disaster.
“Coco,” Agott mumbled. She sat down next to her on the hill outside the atelier, didn’t press when Coco didn’t move or respond as the flow of tears rushed as frantic as a river heavy with rain down her face.
Her name was the only word Agott spoke for half a clock mark.
Coco kept crying. Agott sniffled discreetly.
It was quiet except for the sounds of their childhoods burning to ash between their fingertips. It wasn’t fair that they had to be the ones to bear the burden of decades of mistakes and greed enacted by witches, both pointed cap and brimmed. Their beaming smiles, their dull morning classes, their growth as friends and apprentices, all of it had been smeared in ink until shaky childish magic and seals of danger were indistinguishable.
Arms wrapped around her shoulders. A nose buried into her robes, seeking to meld their bodies together until their pain and comfort was symbiotic.
Coco hooked her arms under Agott’s; she slammed her face into her shoulder. The sobs shook their small bodies. Calloused, ink stained fingers gripped at rippling sea-foam blue fabric for dear life. Agott’s nails, blunt from her dedicated grip on her pen, scratched across the cloth. They listened to the sound and winced, cried harder, continued to sit in this agonizing silence as they allowed themselves to be frightened children.
The breeze danced through their hair. It cooled Coco’s skin, sat in her lungs pleasantly with its fresh aroma. The herbs in the vegetable garden were thriving, unbothered by the winds and storms that weathered through the atelier’s fields.
She let nature’s strength heal her and let that tear be her last for the evening.
Agott calmed down too. Coco squeezed her hand.
“It’s so peaceful here,” Agott whispered. Her voice carried like birdsong in the lull.
“It is. It feels like it’s been forever since we last got to spend a morning lesson out here in the sun, or watch the stars at night,” Coco hummed. She looked up to the sky and sighed at the sight of those familiar lights shimmering away.
“We seem to be making a habit of spending more time than expected away from home,” Agott cupped the evening air in her hands. “First Romonon, now the festival.. It makes me want to never leave again.”
Coco looked down at the dewy grass. Frost began to sparkle on the tips. “I don’t want to leave again either. I just want to spend this winter curled around the hearth together, all of us. Tetia, Richeh, Master Olly and Master Qifrey.. you.”
“But we can’t,” Agott grit her teeth.
Somber, Coco shook her head. “We have to help Master Olly and Master Qifrey with the winter acts of service. We’re witches. We can’t stop drawing just because we’re afraid, not when there’s people who are even more afraid and need us to draw for them.”
The wind whistled past them. It carried Agott’s whispered secret to her ears.
“I’m scared.”
Surprised, Coco cocked her head at her. “It’s not like you to say that.”
“You weren’t here last winter,” she whispered. Her hands clutched at the skirt of her dress. “Things around the atelier get.. strange.. when the professors are called to help villages out after snowfall.”
“Hm? How?”
“It gets quiet, but not peaceful,'' Agott mumbled. “Master Olruggio doesn’t turn up for dinner even when he doesn’t have commissions. Master Qifrey smiles the way he does when he’s trying to protect us from something.”
“Oh. That does sound.. strange,” Coco hummed.
They stood in silence for a moment. Contemplating.
The breeze rustled their robes, sent small shivers through their bodies. Coco marveled at the way her skin prickled, how her hand was powerless to warm it without embroidering ink into the fabric. All she could do was rub her hands over her arms.
“I think a good witch is always at least a little scared,” Coco said. “We hold so much power, and we help people when the world turns against them. We can only help in the aftermath, there’s nothing we can do to stop the snow from falling or the riverbanks from flooding. It’s scary to have people rely on you when the thing you’re protecting them against is something you’re powerless to beat.”
“Coco,” Agott breathed.
Her curly hair fluttered against her cheeks. They sparkled with fresh tear tracks. She looked at Coco as though she had no clue how to respond, no hint as to how to convey the fear that rattled in her chest as well as the pride she held in her responsibility.
How did a child express the everlasting love they had for the magic that also caused them so much pain?
If Agott ever found the answer, Coco only hoped she would share it.
Coco smiled at her. “We’ll be fine. We have the professors, our sister apprentices and each other,” she held her hand in front of her and sighed. “Even when I’m scared, I feel like I can overcome anything when we draw together.”
Agott hiccuped. She shuffled closer.
Coco met her in the middle.
Warmth encased her hand. With complete, wholehearted trust, Coco allowed Agott to clasp their hands and raise them to her forehead. She laughed and pressed her own head forward to complete the promise.
“I want to draw magic with you,” Agott mumbled. Her fingers wiggled nervously against Coco’s. “I want to be the type of witch who gets to stay by your side.”
Coco smiled so wide it blurred her vision. The tears that threatened to spill probably didn’t help, either.
“Agott,” she laughed, thick with emotion. “You’re already the type of witch I want to have by my side.. just because you’re you. All I want you to be is the type of witch that makes you happy, I’ll be here no matter what.”
The ash-mottled dragons beat their wings in steady flight. Coco gripped Agott’s hand tighter and bumped their noses together. “We’ve always stuck together, right?”
Agott stumbled over her words for a moment, eyes wide in shock. “Of course,” she said. “And I’ll continue to stick by you. No matter what happens, no matter what you choose.”
Slowly, Agott pulled her witch hat from her head. She ran her finger along the tassel, letting its silken fibers slip between her fingers. Then, with a determined breath, she pulled it from the pin that allowed it to stand proud from the point of her hat.
Her hand extended it toward Coco.
Coco must’ve been mirroring her in a fairytale daze, because her tassel was laid in her hand too.
“We’ll do this together,” Coco nodded, determined. Then, she softened as tears dripped down her chin. “This can be our proof, right?”
Their hands clasped with a strength that no seal nor natural peril could pry. The tassels were wedged between, identical rivers of silk thread intertwining. They pressed their foreheads together once more, mouthed sacred words into the space where their soft laughter mingled, then let go with the new tassel that had been lovingly passed over.
Coco giggled at the sight of it. She bit her lip as it wobbled with a sentiment that bloomed so much bigger than she was capable of holding in her chest.
Arms reached out, encased the body of their sister apprentice, and squeezed.
Their laughs jumped through the sky like fluff from a sheep flower. Wistful, weightless, without worry as it soared towards the stars that glimmered in the sky.
From the kitchen, another pair with exchanged tassels dangling from their hats from an old promise took notice of the girls standing on the horizon. They’d not been witness to their secret swapping of tassels, yet somehow a flame flickered in one witch’s temples.
“Oh wow,” Olruggio murmured, eyes wide and shining. He spoke as though he’d seen a magnificent creature of myth stroll past him, dazed in amazement. “They swapped tassels.”
Qifrey, quite frankly, was absurdly lost.
“Pardon?”
“They swapped tassels!” Olruggio whacked Qifrey’s shoulder in a mixture of shock and excitement. “Coco and Agott, didn’t you see?”
“Didn’t I see- Olly, they’re wearing the same tassel, how on earth can you tell that they swapped them?”
“Qifrey!” He gasped, sounding so disappointed that Qifrey wondered if he should be apologizing. “It’s so obvious! Look at ‘em, those are the faces of children who’ve just swapped tassels and don’t want their masters to bug them about it, so you better not say anything!”
Olruggio didn’t need to worry about that, considering Qifrey was struggling to find a single word to say in response to the absolutely bizarre observation he’d just been handed. He simply stood there, staring at Olruggio wondering what on earth happened to him for him to be this in tune with his apprentice’s childhood crushes.
First the bracelets, no matter how horrendously wrong he’d been about them, and now the tassels. Somehow, Qifrey had a feeling Olruggio wasn’t wrong about this one.
He couldn’t place it, but those distant expressions were familiar to him only in memory. A glimpse of his own face in the reflection of the Argentgard’s lake shortly after his trip to the Tower of Tomes all those years ago. A shimmer of Olruggio’s when his eyes laid upon the ribbon that cascaded down Qifrey’s back, protecting it.
Qifrey chuckled to himself. He wound his arm around Olruggio’s waist and pulled him closer. His lips met dark, singed hair in a short kiss.
Regardless of what had happened between Agott and Coco, Qifrey only wished that they could find fifteen years of bliss from it.
Their smiles could be seen from the kitchen window, glowing like moonlight.