Chapter Text
Qifrey does end up seeing Olruggio the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next, until all the sneaking away starts to look a bit suspicious, and the pair decide that spacing out their meetings would probably be smart. Olruggio questions Qifrey a bit about all the secrecy he insists upon, to which Qifrey is unsure how to respond. How can he possibly explain that, at this point, he’s mostly just embarrassed to tell Beldaruit that he’s finally made a friend?? It's better the professor thinks he’s out brooding or being a delinquent or something.
(And even more so: there really isn’t a scrap of himself that Qifrey has to himself. He knows just as much about his being as anyone else, and it feels so very delightful to finally have a secret).
In spite of Beldaruit’s quiet worrying, there really isn’t much delinquency going on. There simply isn’t any time for it! As winter treads onwards and the streets grow icy and frost-bitten even beneath the waves, the boys’ lessons increase with the notion that ‘there isn’t any reason to spend much time outside, anyway.’ Qifrey often finds himself staring glumly from the windows, pen listing in his tired grasp. He doesn’t care that the humidity outside makes his lashes clump with frost and his cheeks sting red and numb. So long has he been locked away studying that even after closing his eye, glyphs and keystones swim in his vision. Even beating the icy rime from his stiffened cloak would be preferable to this, as it would at least mean that he’d get to see Olruggio.
Later, sheltered in the warmth of their atelier, master and apprentice sit together for dinner. They don’t speak much; it has been a long day, and Beldaruit has grown rather good at determining Qifrey’s moods.
A great fire roars in the hearth and Qifrey’s temper roars clenched precariously behind his teeth. Despite how much better he’s gotten at controlling his sharper emotions, the longer he stays cooped up the more he can feel said control slowly, steadily fraying. He doesn’t care how cold it is. He doesn’t care that ‘one must study well if they’re to have time to spare come Silvernight,’ which he still doesn’t know about. It’s been a week since Qifrey last left the atelier, so busy has he been with lessons and studying and chores that send him running, running, running.
People are supposed to go outside every so often, aren’t they? Though what sits beyond the doorway can hardly be counted as outside, Qifrey thinks, staring miserably into his bowl. Beldaruit makes a questioning hum from across the table—apparently Qifrey’s melancholy has become too oppressive for him to keep pretending to ignore it. Qifrey doesn’t answer, watching from the corner of his eye as the fire spills coppery warmth all across the hearth.
I need to leave. Not forever—certainly not forever. Just for a little while, Qifrey thinks to himself, imagining how good ‘a little while’ would feel. I should like to taste fresh air, and maybe even see the sun. He tries to picture its face... though the image of glowing warmth that’s conjured there looks more like a witch's fire than any ancient star. Hm, Qifrey hums, swirling patterns into his soup. Although, perhaps they aren’t so different. In the few weeks they’ve known each other, Olruggio has always shone so brilliantly.
Yes, then. Qifrey will sneak away—just for a little bit.
He resolves himself to such a plan, already tracing the route to Olruggio’s atelier in his mind.
✧
He steals away the moment Beldaruit retires to his room, pausing only to grab his winter things and to scrawl a quick note on the off chance that the professor comes looking: I’ve gone on an adventure! I will return much happier for it, and will perhaps finally be able to focus on my lessons.
He then runs down the hall as quickly as he dares, bundling up in mittens and scarves as he goes until he finally snaps up the clasps of his cloak and slips from the kitchen window. He could use the front door, of course, but then all this sneaking wouldn’t be quite so exciting.
Qifrey darts down the shadowed streets, feeling strangely akin to the silverly minnows that flash hundreds of feet above. He sticks close to the walls as he goes, strangely worried about being stopped and questioned by some well-meaning adult. His small form is nearly invisible against the pale walls in his paler robes, boots like two little rounds of coal jogging beneath him. Taking a twisting route—to avoid the more well-traveled throughways, though mostly because the imagined danger of it all is very fun—he weaves from street to alleyway to staircase and back again. The route to Olruggio’s house is very familiar; even with all of the additional steps, he drifts towards it as steadily as a compass needle to the North.
Each step forward fills Qifrey with a bright and giddy joy. He cannot wait to see Olly, to tap at his window and see his smiling round face at last, and to crack the panes and whisper through them the wonderful, brilliant plan he’s made. Oh, how Olly will love it! He’s always saying they must do more than wander and buy roast mountain apples and sit on the stoop of the fountains discussing spellcraft. There’s nothing wrong with those things, of course—Qifrey rather enjoys them. But he agrees that perhaps they should do something more. They’re always reading histories and fairytales about wondrous witches who fight dragons, divert rivers, climb mountains, and save entire villages from ruin. Why shouldn’t they be doing those things as well? Olruggio certainly has the skill for it, Qifrey thinks happily. And though lacking still in spell-knowledge, he himself has a yearning to see all things. That must count for something! Beldrauit always says that the first step to magic is a sense of awe. Surely, then, so long as Qifrey is the one to push them out the door, Olruggio won’t mind if Qifrey tags along on his great adventures.
But away from these imaginings—back now to the plan. Qifrey has been researching, you see, and questioning Beldaruit about completely hypothetical, innocuous things ( what do you mean why am I asking, Professor?), and Qifrey is certain now that he knows how to escape this place.
He doubts the secret of it is intentional; it’s just that no one has ever thought to tell him (they often assume he knows more than he does), and he hadn’t wanted to worry Beldaruit with any obvious questions about leaving .
There are window-ways, supposedly, a whole big room of them that lead all over the Peninsula. In theory Qifrey has seen it—it’s how he was brought here, after all. But the memories of that first night are hazy, like trying to catch a figure in a fog. Like trying to catch smoke in fog—he knows it’s there, but any movement just sends it spiraling even further away.
The point is that Qifrey knows there to be window-ways, and knows that they lead Out. Moreso, this Hall is not a prison, and so it shouldn’t be any problem for them to slip their way into a place where they are—theoretically—allowed to be.
And if that fails Qifrey will still get to see Olruggio, to speak with him, to sit with him, to smile and whisper and stifle their laughter so that Olly’s professor isn’t awakened. And perhaps Olly will even share with Qifrey a bit of whatever wonderful new magic he has drawn up in the past week, and Qifrey will ooh and aah with genuine and well-practiced marvel.
Ah—speaking of which, here he is now. Qifrey finally rounds onto the correct street, Olruggio’s tall atelier listing against the other houses pressed along its sides. All the windows are dark, but that’s no matter. Qifrey knows the correct one.
With no small amount of effort, he scrabbles up the building's side, looking to all the world like a tiny white spider. He hooks a hand over Olruggio’s windowsill, pulling himself up with his elbows onto the ledge there. He raps his mittened fist quietly on the glass, breathing hard from the climb. His breath fogs up the windowpanes. Hm, this doesn’t seem to be working. Using his teeth, he pulls off a mitten and taps a bit harder, knocking his cold knuckles as loudly as he dares.
There’s a bang and a clatter from inside, and then suddenly Olruggio’s shocked face throws open the window. Qifrey scrambles, nearly pitching from the windowsill.
“ Qifrey! ” Olly whispers. “What are you—what are you doin’ here? How’d you even get up this high?!”
“I climbed, obviously,” Qifrey says, a bit smug. He’s gotten very good at this sort of thing (the way his arms shake with the effort of holding himself up isn’t important).
“Come in, come in! Before you fall—” Olly says frantically, grabbing Qifrey’s shoulder and hauling him in through the window. They collapse in a breathless little pile on the floor, Qifrey all wrapped up in his winter clothes and Olruggio in his pajamas.
“What are you doing here? ” Olly hisses, trying very hard to sound cross—though it’s ruined somewhat by the way he fusses and pats the frost from Qifrey’s sleeve and immediately draws a little flame to hold between them. Qifrey tugs off his mittens, sticking his hands as close to the fire as he dares.
“Aren’t you happy to see me?”
Olly flushes. “Sure, I’m happy to see you! I just—I’m just wondering why you’re climbin’ through my window in the middle of the night. S’not some kind of emergency, right…?”
Loosening his scarf, Qifrey huffs a laugh. “The emergency is that I haven’t left my atelier in a week, and it’s been so long since seeing you I’ve nearly forgotten your face!”
Olruggio frowns weakly. “Quit jokin’ around. I can tell you’ve got somethin’ spinning around up there.” He pokes Qifrey’s forehead in demonstration, Qifrey swatting him away with a splutter.
“Ah, I should’ve known you’d be too smart to let it be a surprise.”
At the word ‘surprise’, Olruggio’s face lights up a bit in curiousity. “Oh?”
“Mhm. I’ve got a plan .”
Qifrey leans forward to whisper it all in Olly’s ear, mindful of the professor sleeping a few doors down. In no time at all, Olruggio’s bundling into his own winter robes and carefully climbing out the window after Qifrey, any trepidation paling in the face of a promised adventure.
They have to travel a ways to reach the structure housing the window-ways, but once there, it’s shockingly easy to slip inside. A circular chamber spreads out before them with walls lined evenly in dozens of glyph-inscribed rings. The giant scrolls they're drawn upon flutter faintly in an invisible, near-imperceptible draft.
“Which one do we pick?” Olly asks, looking excitedly from the room’s tall columns to the low-burning wall sconces to the finely-detailed spells that surround them.
“I don’t know,” Qifrey admits. “I’d like to see the stars—the sky, I guess. Whichever one it is that can take us there.”
Olruggio hums in thought, stepping up to the window-way closest to them. He peers intently at its encircling sigils. “Well, I suppose they all probably lead outside, right? Guess this one’s as good as any.”
Agreeing, Qifrey steps through after Olly with little hesitation.
It’s so strange, is Qifrey's first thought—so strange to duck through an inner wall, but to step out into a moonlit field. The sudden change in air, light, and pressure makes him feel almost dizzy for a moment, so unused is he to the wind.
It’s cold, too. Not a bad cold, though, not the crypt-like chill of the Great Hall. This is winter as it’s meant to be felt.
A grassy hill rises up before them, and before Qifrey even realizes it, he’s racing up its slope. He wants to see. He wants to see all that he possibly can here.
Olruggio’s boots patter after him, crunching sharply over the frozen ground. With no fear of waking any professors, the two laugh wildly, voices echoing on the wind, and they shove and jump and race until finally they crest the hill, stumbling to a stop. A frigid wind whips around their cloaks, the shadowy valley unfurling before them in twilit blues and greens. Hills rise and dip and fall, wave-like, before giving way to distant trees and the faintly shimmering line of the horizon. Above them the darkened sky vaults in a way that makes Qifrey feel strangely untethered; for the first time, he is free of that weight pressing down on him. There is nothing to hold him down here, to bury him: nothing save clouds and stars and the immeasurable soft darkness that lurks between them. He is free, he is free. Qifrey is nearly dizzy with the feeling of it, his stomach leaping with such sweet vertigo.
How could he ever be expected to return to the Hall after this? He breathes deeply and tastes wind and grass and earth upon his tongue. The air is cold in a way that scraps his throat nearly raw, though oh, how clean it is. Free of salt, free of brine, free of the thickness of moisture and magic. He spins once, twice, light on his feet and laughing with the sheer joy that fills him at being canopied by stars.
“Oh, Olly,” he gasps, his voice soft and reverent. Perhaps if he speaks too loudly, too suddenly, then those fragile points of light will be startled from their perches. “Olly, it's so beautiful. It’s so—I can’t say, I can’t say. I haven’t the words for it.” He stops spinning then and tilts his head back, heedless of the way his cap slips from his hair. Qifrey’s single eye drinks in the deep velvet blue of the sky, the stars pinned to it like seed pearls and crystal on a witch’s cloak—and Qifrey himself is pinned there beneath it all, enraptured, enchanted. Not wanting to tear his gaze away, he fumbles for Olly’s hand, fingers catching on the boy’s sleeve. “How could one ever wish to live below when such beauty exists above? It’s like something from a story—I’ve read and read and read, but no text has come close to describing it. It’s like a dream.”
And it is. Though strange, though new, though shocking—Qifrey recognizes it the same way that one may recognize a certain turn of the road or the patterns of a conversation: with the soft bite of déjà vu. I’ve dreamt of this, Qifrey thinks. I’ve seen this above a house in the hills, above gardens and fruit trees. I’ve dreamt and dreamt and now I’ve finally come back to it.
Memory tickles at the back of Qifrey’s mind, coy and teasing. The hands of this one are more solid than most, though—it’s from before, though not Before. After forgetting and prior to entering the Hall.
He sees suddenly a different pattern of stars above him, obstructed by deadened, spindly trees. He is cold. Someone carries him, their soft-robed chest warm against his cheek, and they rock like a boat across the forest floor.
Qifrey makes a soft sound, finally looking back towards Olly. “I remember it now,” he says. “I’d forgotten, but now I remember. I’ve seen these stars before.”
Olruggio gives him a strange look, and he seems as if about to speak when—
“Oh.” Qifrey says, eye locking on something far ahead of them.
Suddenly Qifrey realizes how far they are from the Hall—or really, how not far at all. Just now, just at this particular noticing, he is aware of the distance: he on this hilltop and, scant miles to the west, the sea. He can still see it, even here. Even so far away, up so high, shrouded so by the dark and the cold and the stars. He can see it.
It is barely visible, thin and gray: only a scrap of the thing which Qifrey has always heard described as hugely endless and vastly unknowable. Descriptions that Qifrey knows, with grim certainly, to be true.
His breath catches in his throat, and the cold is suddenly uncomfortable. Delight curdles in his stomach. He can no longer feel his hands. Turning to Olruggio, though, Qifrey sees that the other boy has also noticed the faraway shore.
“I grew up in the mountains, y’know,” Olly says into the quiet. He sounds nearly breathless, and his eyes, too, are locked on that distant band of silver. There is no noise save his voice and the wind. “I never even saw the sea ‘til I came to the Hall, only knew how to picture it from wood carvings and old watercolors in some of my Professor’s books. Some of them— the really ancient ones— have got pictures and things patterned all along their page borders…”
Qifrey has seen books like these in Beldaruit’s library, great heavy things layered in dust and smelling of mildew, their illuminated pages so thin that ‘to turn’ is nearly synonymous with ‘to tear.’ He doesn’t tell Olruggio this, though— the boy loves explaining how things work, and Qifrey is more than pleased to listen.
Olruggio continues, his hands shaking excitedly, “...and some of them were all drawn up with designs of rising waves and tiny boats, and great big clouded skies. It looked like somethin’ you’d see on stained glass; I could hardly believe a bit of water could be so huge. But now I live right below it, and it’s—” he pauses suddenly, his face falling for a moment, “it’s different than it was before. Living here instead of there. But it’s still something, isn’t it? Somethin’ wonderful, living alongside the magic that carved the sea.”
Qifrey hums in response, unsure what to say to this. He can only recall the ocean from below — its surface is as real to him as the pen-and-ink dragons decorating those very books. Both things he knows to be real, objectively, but has never laid an eye upon. It’s hard for him to understand the wonder that Olruggio has for it.
He feels in that moment a great sadness: that he should look upon something so beautiful and feel only fear, and that he could never love it the way Olruggio does.
Qifrey swallows, his hands knotting in his robes. “I’d like to go back now, I think.”
Olly looks at him curiously. “Y’sure? We haven’t spent so long out here at all— I thought you wanted to get away for a bit.”
“Mn, I did,” Qifrey says and doesn’t elaborate.
After a moment’s hesitation, Olruggio pats his arm. “Alright, then, if you’re sure. It’s startin’ to look like rain, anyways.” Pulling out his pen, he draws a quick spell, making light flare in his palm and everything else fade to night.
“Rain?” Qifrey says, feeling suddenly very cold and small. That must be the dampness that he tastes in the air: crisp and clean, ever so slightly metallic.
The other witch nods, squinting up at the darkened sky. There are less stars than before.
Qifrey swallows, a terrible twisting feeling settling in his stomach. “Yes, let’s leave then.” Scooping up his cap he spins on his heel, already pacing quickly down the hillside. Olruggio hastens after, pulling his cloak tightly around him as the wind suddenly picks up again. Qifrey’s heart drums in his throat, his pen held so tightly in hand that he can feel it’s engravings digging into his palm. Olruggio is a silent presence beside him, worry radiating from him in waves.
They are just in sight of the window-way when the first few drops fall from the sky, and Qifrey feels something in him turn abruptly cold and dark and still. A raindrop patters onto the back of his hand; it is ice-cold even through his mitten. He cannot feel anything else.
He only realizes he’s stopped moving when he feels a hand grip his arm, pulling him to face Olruggio. His eye slides slowly from the dark horizon to the other witch’s face, everything seeming somehow to move far too fast and far too slow. They’ll never make it to the window-way in time—they’ll be lost in the dark and the cold and the rain, and Qifrey can already hardly see, hardly feel, and—
Olruggio lifts his cast flame close, illuminating their faces both in gold. Qifrey can feel the flame’s warm breathe against his cheek, his skin otherwise numb and icy. Olruggio’s grip tightens over Qifrey’s arm. He moves his hand up and down, brushing away some of the slowly accumulating raindrops there.
“Are you okay?” he asks quietly, brow furrowed and mouth twisted into a thin, worried line.
“I—” Qifrey starts, wanting at first to lie. He swallows the lump in his throat. “No. Not really.”
The words don’t sound like his own. He can’t believe he’s admitted to that.
Olruggio nods once, and then pulls them quickly the last few yards to the window-way.
Qifrey’s feet catch on the portal’s rim, and he’d have fallen had Olruggio not been holding his arm so. He collapses anyway, though, sinking to his knees the second they’re through the ring. He pulls at his scarf and the clasped neck of his cloak, feeling like he’s choking. He’s—he’s so cold. He’s so cold, and he can still hear rain through the open door behind them, pattering quietly and ever-present beneath the drum drum drum of his heart.
There’s some movement, then, and Olruggio sits carefully beside him. Their shoulders and folded knees press up together and something in Qifrey eases ever so slightly at the contact. Olly's positioned himself on Qifrey’s left side, so that he may see him—Qifrey feels suddenly like crying.
Olruggio doesn’t say anything at first. After a moment, though, he fumbles beside him and raises his little flame close to Qifrey.
The soft, curling warmth of it helps more than anything else, drawing all of his drifting thoughts back together. Like a lighthouse, he thinks, though he’s never seen one.
Qifrey wipes at his cheek, unsure if the wetness there is from tears or rain. “Sorry,” he mumbles, feeling strangely ashamed of it all. He feels like—like such a child. He rubs his hands over his knees, his arms, until they settle into a twisting nervous mess in his lap. “I… don’t much like the rain. Or—being cold.”
Olruggio makes a sound beside him. Qifrey sneaks a glance and sees the other boy staring strangely at his pen. He gives Qifrey a bleak smile, then. “Ah, well. I don’t either.”
Qifrey sits up a bit straighter. “The…rain?”
“No, the other one. The cold.” Olly chews his lip a moment, glancing back at his pen. “I’ll tell you about it one day.”
Qifrey’s fingers tangle with the edges of Olruggio’s robes, holding tight. He nods; he knows how frightful it can be, sometimes, to talk of certain things. It’s harder to pretend they didn’t happen that way.
“I will too,” he promises before he can lose his nerve. “One day, I’ll tell you, too.”
They share small smiles with one another, sitting there huddled in the shadows of the chamber. The little magic flame flickers between them, just warm enough to bring some feeling back into Qifrey’s limbs—he thinks then of Olly’s confession about the cold and how quick he always is to draw up a flame. How adept he’s made himself at creating warm things, at casting spells of heat and light and life. Qifrey runs his hand over the threading of Olruggio's cloak; this is an important thing he's just realized, he thinks. This is an important thing about Olruggio.
Slumping sideways, Qifrey lets his head fall onto Olly’s black-clad shoulder; the fabric is a bit damp against his cheek, but it’s thick and soft, and he can almost feel Olruggio's own warmth through it.
✧
They eventually walk back, reaching Olruggio’s atelier just as the strange magicked lights of the Hall begin to rise over the easternmost buildings. They stand there in silence, mittens tangled together.
“I’ll see you soon,” Qifrey finally says.
Olruggio nods. There are dark circles under his eyes, and he looks frightfully tired. “Yeah—see you then.”
Then their hands part, and Olruggio slips away through the door, turning back once to wave as he fights a yawn. Qifrey is then left to stand alone in the blue shadows of the street.
Feeling dazed slightly, he turns and drifts back to his own atelier, not bothering with the kitchen window this time. The halls stretch out long and dark and cold before him, portraits and patterned wallpaper winking dully in the low light.
He pulls off his coats and scarves the moment he pushes through the bedroom door, leaving it all piled at the foot of his bed. The sheets are cold, and he rubs at his eye a moment before lighting a single lamp. He has to strike the match four times before it finally ignites, so stiff are his fingers.
Qifrey looks sidelong at the papers scattered over his bedside table. He hasn’t the energy for writing tonight. But still— he feels scattered, drawn out too thin and shivering like a piece of cord about to snap. It will help. Maybe. It usually does, at least a little.
He carefully dips his pen, being mindful of his shaking hand.
Olruggio is more like me than I thought, Qifrey writes. He is very tired and his handwriting pays the price of it; the words scrawl up and down like plow scars in the earth. There are things that scare him in the same way they do me; I don’t know the shape of these fears yet, but he’s promised to tell me. I hope that I’ll be able to help him a bit, then. He has certainly helped me (even if he doesn’t know quite how much).
Qifrey lifts the pen a moment, suddenly remembering a particular thing he’d told Olly as they sat crouched in the window-way chamber. Heavens, why would he say that?! He can’t go back on it now, though—it’s a bit too late. He hisses through his teeth, putting pen to paper once more.
I promised to tell Olly about… me. My past. What little I know, at least—or at least those parts of it that still claw at me today. Those memories scare me, yet somehow, the thought of telling him scares me just the same. How can words be just as frightful as earth and dark and choking rain? I feel like it’ll be an admission of something terrible, though I know that’s silly. I’ve been very silly lately, I think.
I believe I should like to tell him, though. I’ve realized now that we really don’t know all that much about each other; I would like to know as much as he is willing to share, and I would like him to have as much as I am capable of giving. Olruggio is…very kind. That is one of the first things I noticed about him, after the magic and whatnot. He is so wonderfully, wonderfully kind, so I know that whatever I choose to tell him will not be as ruinous to our friendship as some parts of me may feel.
Things are getting better. Everything will go well. Of that, I am at least somewhat sure.