Chapter Text
Eurydice - Orpheus, my love, still thy mournful heart. In bloom our joy
sprung, eternal and true. But all things conclude; to each their season. As
lives must begin, so too must they end.
If she had to choose a single word to describe the bard track, Skara would have to settle on versatility. There were other, more elegant words she might have preferred, but when it really came down to it, her teachers had stressed that same point again and again. Bards had to be able to sing, of course, but also to play instruments as their own accompaniment. If the works of previous generations was not to their satisfaction (and to Skara, it never was) they’d also have to compose their own works; to be performed, of course, for an exacting troupe of active and extremely judgmental musicians intent on extracting any flaw, any foible, and magnifying it for all to see.
Music, however, was only the tip of the iceberg.
Skara could dance, but never to their standards. Could make art (if provoked), but never to the same degree of excellence as her music. Her acting, on the other hand, well, that was something she had plenty of experience in. Most of her track-mates got along by just reading their lines and pushing whatever sentiment the author had clearly intended for the character. That was easy, simple even. But for Skara Jubal, dubbed the “Singer of Praises” in her fifth year and carrying its weight from then on, “simple” was never going to be anywhere near acceptable.
No, Skara felt the emotions of the characters she played the same way she felt her own. Often more so, if she was telling the truth. Like everything in her life, it came back to music. Her own thoughts, feelings, and emotions the backing harmony to the lead of the character. As one took to the fore, the other drew back, lending context, but never overpowering the main. It was a dance of the sort her teachers could appreciate - refined, precise, and perfect - and it was the sort of understanding of her craft that had made her top student in the first place.
“But tell me, dear herald of spring, how would you have me stay quiet,” Boscha stated, the question of it lost in the mechanical delivery; in the wooden stiffness of her body as she stood, all but motionless, three steps to the right of where she was meant to be.
It was also precisely the sort of thing that made Skara want to chuck the alchemist halfway across the Isles.
Stillness finally (thankfully) gave way to fluidity as Boscha stalked across the stage, looking more her reformed grudgby player self than a burgeoning theater witch with each deliberate thud of the boots she’d refused to change out of. It would have made for a great soldier’s gait, Skara begrudgingly admitted, but she was supposed to be playing Eurydice - a wood nymph, for Titan’s sake.
Forcing her breathing back to the closest she knew it’d get to being even, the bard forced herself to focus on one of her mother’s tried and true sayings.
“Better to lead by example than to expect one to know.”
Granted, that had been her go-to when Apollo was still learning how to feed himself, but it held up surprisingly well under the present circumstances. Boscha wasn’t hopeless; she couldn’t be. Skara just needed to be a better leader.
“I ask not for your quietude, dear child, but for your patience—” Skara paused for a moment, letting the point rest in the hollow of her words “—and by your patience, your love will be rewarded. For even now, an arrow flung by lyre’s string hurtles toward these very halls.”
“It does?” Boscha/Eurydice asked in a voice caught between two leads.
“Oh, it does,” Persephone, Queen of the Underworld replied. “It is untethered by the chains of death; unencumbered by the waters of Styx and Lethe; untempted by all the riches of the deep. To call its path true would be an insult to truth. To call it unerring would be to discredit all who have ever loosed one of its kind.” Persephone crossed the stage, taking Boscha/Eurydice’s hands in her own and locking her with a gaze she hoped would rouse the listless witch/nymph from her waking slumber. “It flies toward you, my child. Ever toward you.”
“Then I await its arrival, my queen,” Boscha replied, monotone swapped our for something almost resembling earnestness, “and shall mark each day until it has come.”
Melodies overlapped, met in destructive frequency, and scattered. Skara groaned as Persephone went with them, melting away into so many petals driven by a nonexistent gust. Still, the bard let it carry her along, putting as much distance as she could between herself and the source of her frustration.
“I messed up my lines, didn’t I?” Boscha asked, that damnable self-pitying tone in her voice readying her own pyre.
“No, you didn’t,” Skara corrected, massaging the space between her eyes and desperately wishing she could get at the offending organ beneath. Memorizing her lines was the least of Boscha’s worries. Reading emotion into them? Sure. Treating them like something other than the instructions to brew a philter of… something magic, she guessed? Absolutely.
Titan, she needed a break.
“No breaks,” Skara rasped instead, ignoring the look of concern on Boscha’s face and returning to her position at stage left.
“You sure about that, Pipes?” the alchemist asked her, closing the distance between them and stacking more kindling with each painfully un-deliberate step.
“We’ve got less than two weeks to get all of this in order,” Skara shot back, trying (and failing) to force her way back into the character.
“I get what you’re saying,” Boscha replied, absolutely not getting what she was saying and stacking it ever higher, “but you can’t just keep running yourself ragged like this.”
Elegant, regal, but always a bit sad. Torn by the love she chose and the one which persists regardless. Bound by obligation, by duty to the mortal wor-
“Are you listening to me?”
Ah, there was the match.
“I am trying to focus on the matter at hand,” Skara snapped back, each syllable placed and laced with the utmost care and vitriol. “You know, the play that I’m utterly failing to pull together? Kind of takes up a hundred percent of my attention, so I’m sorry if I can’t spare any for your sympathy.”
“Don’t be,” Boscha quipped back, that awful, empty chuckle accompanying it, “We both know I deserve it.”
“Would you stop with that already?” Skara finally demanded, the pyre driven to ignition between them. If she let her eyes unfocus, Skara swore the flames persisted beyond her imagination. That they might catch on the flickering of tongues; the casting of shadows that obscured and obfuscated the edges of the room, driving all attention to the charged space between them.
“Stop with what?” the alchemist asked, too surprised to hide the indignance at her question.
“Oh, now you can do indignance?” Skara replied, tone mockingly hollow, “Where was that when the shades made presumptions at Eurydice?”
“Like I know what a presumption is!” Boscha shouted back, “And I told you I was bad at acting!”
“Well, you’re good at lying,” Skara countered, “so you’re halfway there.”
“Oh please Skara, tell me how I’m lying,” Boscha demanded, seizing again on some other emotion than that stilted, uncertain nonsense she’d been putting on all night.
“ You’re bad at acting? You can’t get into the mind of a character?” the bard asked, echoing back her words. “Bosch, when have you ever stopped doing either! Suddenly you can’t pretend to be someone you aren’t; you can’t tap into emotions that aren’t yours? Please, I basically learned it from you!”
The last syllable curled off into an echo that rattled around the empty amphitheater. For a moment, Skara was worried her ploy hadn’t worked; that the little point of flickering light she’d gone through all the trouble of coaxing to life would snuff itself out and she’d be back at square one.
Then it roared.
“Go broil yourself, Skara,” Boscha spat at her, finally matching her performance syllable for syllable.
“Thank you!” the bard shouted back, her previously hidden excitement laid bare. Boscha stopped in her tracks, not five feet away from her, eyes wide as she beheld what Skara was certain must have been quite a sight.
“What?” the alchemist asked, voice low but no less laced with heat.
“You’ve been walking on eggshells with me ever since you came back.”
“Because I left y-”
“Oh, because you left me?” Skara shot back, voice high and reedy, but unable to even pretend to care about the tone, “Guess what, Bosch? I don’t care! I know that I should care, and pretty much everyone around me is all but sure I’ve gone crazy, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.”
“Skara-”
That voice, far too tender to be her.
“And do you know why I don’t care, Boscha?” the bard interjected, knowing if she gave the other witch an inch it’d be as good as giving her a mile, “Do you know why I’m standing here with you, three hours later than I’d planned, even though I’ve got a shift bright and early tomorrow?”
The tears were coming now, just beneath the surface. Endless practice ensured she could either dam them or let them flow free at a moment’s notice, but it hadn’t been until the past year that she could call them up on demand. No telling what had motivated that.
“Pipes, I-”
“It’s because I care about you, you idiot!” Skara shouted, cutting Boscha off yet again, “We’ve known each other since we could know anything. You have always been there and, even when you were gone, a part of me knew that you were coming back.” She closed the distance between them, raising a hand mere inches before letting it fall away. Still, the words tumbled past her lips, unbound by whatever force had held them back before. “That same part of me sees through that mask of yours; that knows you’re just roiling with emotions, waiting to be tap-”
“Titan be damned, Skara, could you take a second to breathe?”
She did, but it was shaky and harsh. Each inhale a knife that every subsequent exhale couldn’t hope to remove. All the while, Boscha watched her, livid eyes roving over every piece she’d laid bare. Taking in every hint of body language or minor tic that might give her some insight into the problem ahead of her. Because that’s what Skara was to her - a problem to overcome - the obstacle that made her a better version of herself each time she-
“Has it ever occurred to you that I’m tired of pretending to be someone I’m not?”
They might have stood for a thousand years or since the dawn of time, but Skara was damned certain that the stones of the amphitheater’s stage were about to crumble out from under her. It hadn’t occurred to her, because why would it? This was Boscha she was talking about. Nothing but two fists against the world; aggression the balm to every fear, utterly unable and unwilling to express her emotions without one or the other following soon after. She was the fuse that never stopped burning; the fire that never stopped raging.
She was everything Skara wasn’t, and that had been the point.
And there had been this part of her - this stupid, childish part - that had hoped the right words would bring her roaring back into focus. That this whole year-long hiatus had been just that; a momentary pause in their story. She’d never once considered (or maybe just never wanted to consider) that the two of them against the world had ever been in jeopardy, had ever been at risk of not coming back together. That Boscha showing up when she needed her most had been anything other than the universe righting itself was unthinkable. Even more so when she’d agreed to help her at the next possible opportunity. The seas boiled, the stars looked back at you, and Boscha helped her when she needed her. These were facts as unassailable as the Titan itself.
Or they had been.
“Then why’d you volunteer?” Skara asked, for once wholly unsure of the answer. “Don’t you dare say that you owe me,” she added, cutting off Boscha from saying what looked to be just that, “because as far as I’m concerned, saving my life frees you from any debts you may think you have.”
“You know it’s not that easy,” Boscha replied, and she did.
“Are you still going to stick around?” Skara asked instead, switching tacks in a desperate attempt to get some confirmation, some solid ground under her feet.
“Of course I am,” she replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. That part, at least, hadn’t changed, even if the rest of it was up in the air.
But that part of her still had to be sure.
“Why?” she asked, low and plaintive. It felt good, at last, to be able to feel that sort of weakness again. The sort of raw emotion that they’d reserved for those rare occasions where the absence of sensation took the ability to be anything but honest with it. Scattered moments in the deepest recesses of the school; on moonless nights and in the eaves of trees that blocked it. In casual brushes turned heated and the steadily growing piles of “almost’s” and “maybe’s” that stacked atop each other to scrape against Selune herself.
“You know why,” Boscha responded just as simply; as if everything that lay unexpressed could suddenly be brought to light with three little words.
It was enough.
~---~
Four cups met the counter, a forced smile between them, and the witch across from her graced Skara with a grimace that couldn’t hope to match her own. Wheeling it back, she tried to turn the expression to a smile, only to be met with the sort of sad, forced grin that told her she’d been anything but successful at keeping up the “happy customer service” facade. Sighing, she accepted the outstretched snails, paid suitable reverence to the Register, and ran their total.
One down, fifty thousand to go.
At least the place wasn’t busy, Skara assured herself, rapping her knuckles on the counter as she walked past it in an attempt to ward away the jinx. Now, if she could just do the same for the rest of her bad luck-
“Hiya, Skara!” a familiar voice called out, overpowering the bells that couldn’t hope to hold a candle to the sheer presence of Luz Noceda.
“Luz; it’s been a while,” Skara responded, unable to keep the smile off her face at the memory of a certain witch’s furiously blushing face the last time she’d passed through. As far as Skara was concerned, any two people who could make each other smile that often and that brightly di-
Damn it.
“In the flesh,” Luz responded, doing the sort of presentory turn only she could pull off. It was enough to prove that, yes, she was still wearing that one-size-too-big green jacket of hers. That the grey beanie permanently affixed to the top of her head hadn’t gone and skittered off somewhere, weird human hat that it was.
“I’d heard you left,” Skara replied, chuckling at the thought of the human having to deal with a proper beanie.
“Yeah, well, you know,” Luz tossed back, a grin of her own springing to her face, “Not like I could stay away for long.”
“And Amity?” Skara asked, remembering the second half of the rumor.
“So you heard?” Luz asked, her tone shifting so dramatically Skara stopped in her tracks.
“Yeah,” she admitted, the human seemingly no longer able to meet her eyes. “Word tends to travel fast,” the bard added, just to fill the silence, “and when the Matron’s apprentice leaves the Isles, that doesn’t stay secret for long.”
“Wishful thinking, I guess,” Luz remarked ruefully, still not answering Skara’s question.
“Doing better, I hope?”
“Much better, actually,” Luz practically gushed, flipping the switch just as quickly as she had the moment before. Her smile was just as contagious as Skara had remembered, but there was something else beneath it. This deeper sort of happiness that ran under the surface; a harmony of her own, lending context to the lead that rarely faltered. They’d bonded over it once, that act they both put on for the people around them. From the look of it, she’d started making it a reality.
It looked good on her.
Even if, as much as she hated to admit it, something else was curling its way through her chest. An ugly, serpentine sort of thing that clawed at her lungs and tried to pull its way past her lips. She pushed it down (barely), but the fact that it was trying so desperately to break free made her equally eager for a way out. If only there was something else she could-
Oh.
“Right,” Skara quipped, cheerfulness forced into her tone, “I have to actually do my job.”
Skara dialed back the intensity of her gaze after seeing the way Luz faltered at it, a spike of guilt driven through that envious little thing about her lungs, ending it in one fell blow.
“I… have no idea what I’m ordering,” Luz admitted, and the pressure in Skara’s chest broke into relieved laughter.
“You want what you got last time?” the bard asked.
“You remember what I got last time?”
“Luz, I’m a bard,” Skara replied, rapping her knuckles against her skull. “This thing? Steel trap.”
“God, I wish,” Luz replied in earnest, though what god she was appealing to was anyone’s guess. “To be honest, I always kind of put bard and music together. Never really stopped to think theater would be a part of it too, but that makes a lot of sense.”
Skara supposed she could trace the path from memorizing a drink order to being involved in theater, but she’d learned a long time ago not to try and trace the patterns that ran through her favorite human’s mind. It was really better to just go along with it.
She always got some laughs out of it, at least.
“Oh yeah,” Skara replied, starting on the drinks, “We’ve got music, of course, but there’s also theater, art design, poetry…”
“And dragging some sort of fae prince?” Luz interjected, one eyebrow raised. Skara paused in the act of pouring water from the kettle, completely caught off guard by the question.
“You heard about that?” she asked, feigning a nonchalant air as she grabbed the sequence of bottles needed to prepare Amity’s tea, the carefully measured series of pours that followed drawing her mind elsewhere...
Potions 202; the last one she’d been forced to take before officially declaring herself a bard. The hand that had guided her own long after giving up on verbal instructions. The way it clung to hers, as if desperate to keep her close.
“Gus and Willow filled me in,” Luz responded, dragging her out of her thoughts. “Even mentioned that Boscha dropped by.”
And there it was.
“Did I mention that to you and Amity the last time you were here?” Skara asked, unexpected self-consciousness cropping up as a last-minute addition to her litany of woes.
“Sure did,” Luz confirmed, a faint smirk across her features, “Seemed like it was on your mind.”
Of course she’d be able to pick up on other people’s deepest secrets when she was completely oblivious to her own. Of course Skara had opened her mouth and brought up Boscha the moment she felt at ease. Of course it would come back to bite her at the worst possible moment.
“Yeah,” Skara conceded, “I suppose it was.”
“So does that mean you’re…” Luz half asked, half trailed off, letting the question sit between them, waiting for Skara to pick it up at her leisure. The gesture didn’t go unappreciated, but the bard let it sit a bit longer as she finished the drinks regardless.
“We’re doing better,” she admitted, because she could honestly say they were, “but there’s still a way to go. Boscha’s…”
“Boscha?” Luz supplied.
“Yeah, exactly,” Skara responded, relieved, because somehow the tone of her voice made her think that Luz might just get exactly what that entailed. All the hardship, all the frustration, but also all of the assistance she’d been able to bring along with it. The sort of help she hadn’t even realized she’d been missing out on.
“But she’s been a big help getting everything together,” the bard added, adding the final shot of passionflower and passing Amity’s tea over the counter.
“Everything?” Luz asked, not even bothering to hide her utter confusion.
“Right, why would you know?” Skara asked herself, turning away to portion out what was absolutely a criminal amount of cream and sugar. “I’ve got this final project to do,” she added, by way of explanation, “You know, last term and all, but it’s just a lot.”
“What, are they having you write an entire play?” Luz asked, jokingly.
Skara didn’t respond.
“I- I was joking,” Luz admitted.
“Well, the faculty weren’t,” Skara sighed ruefully, “Not only do I have to write a play, but I also have to direct it, act in it, compose the music for it, and even handle the effects.” With each word, she felt herself grow a bit more breathless, that all too familiar mania seeping through until every word was accompanied by a hand motion so aggressive it shook the counter.
“Not to mention a half-dozen other things besides,” she concluded, pouring coffee to the top of Luz’s cup and setting it on the counter beside the tea.
“And that’s the project for all of the bard-track students?” Luz asked hopefully.
“Nope, just little old me,” Skara replied, simultaneously dashing her hopes and capping the drinks with a pair of lids.
“Why?” Luz asked, her incredulity a lovely release for the bard’s own.
“I’m top student in my track,” she responded, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “and that means I have to work even harder to defend that spot at the end of my time at Hexside.”
“So everyone else just gets off with nothing?”
“No, they’re supposed to try and either work with me or sabotage me,” Skara shot back, eyes darting over the counter as she searched for a pair of sleeves to wrap the cups in.
“Man, Isles really goes all in, doesn’t it?”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing,” Luz replied, “just rethinking how torn up I was about finals each semester.”
“Oh, we still have those too,” Skara quipped, wrapping the cups in their sleeves. She hesitated for a moment before taking a cloth and wiping the tops off. Her own stress was hardly an excuse for a sloppy job, she thought. Or maybe it was just something she could control; a nice thing she could do for someone clearly already having a good day.
“For what reason?” Luz shouted back, once again a voice for the bard’s frustrations.
“Beats me,” Skara replied, chuckling, “I just live here.”
“That could be the motto around here at this point,” Luz countered, laughing in kind. Skara carried the drinks along to the register, Luz following in her wake, and struck the complex series of shell-keys needed to persuade the Register that accepting snails was in its best interest.
“Kind of already is, believe me,” Skara replied, striking the last in the sequence and allowing herself a moment of satisfaction as the Register disgorged its internal storage compartment. “Well, here you are,” she added, passing the drinks over and holding out her hand for something to feed the thing before it started snapping.
“Thanks Skar, you’re a lifesaver,” Luz replied, meeting her hand with a high five and letting her stew in it for a moment. Skara blinked once, twice, before the human winked conspiratorially and pulled out her wallet. The bard waited, containing her laughter as she counted out the appropriate number of snails and passed them over.
She was mostly right, which was impressive to say the least. It had taken Skara a solid eight years to figure out the differing values based on the day of the week. Even if Luz ended up handing over some tenth pieces, thinking they were eighths.
“At your service,” Skara finally replied as she handed the change over, her face splitting into a sly grin, “and tell Amity I said hi when you see her.”
“Will do!” Luz tossed back, turning towards the door and making it halfway before something visibly shot up her spine and turned her round with an “Oh, one more thing” rattling off her lips.
“What might that be?”
“I had an idea for how to get Amity and Boscha to talk to each other again.”
From the sound of it, she’d just come up with it just now, but hey, it wasn’t like Skara had a better plan for how to overcome that particular hurdle. Then again, she reminded herself, humoring Luz was the sort of thing that toppled empires, so it was at least worth her time.
“I’m all ears.”
“Alright, so hear me out,” Luz began, darting back to the counter and setting the drinks back down so that her hands were freed for the all-important gestures that accompanied her plan. “What if I asked Amity to grab lunch with me, and you did the same with Boscha, and then we all just went to the same place?”
“You been sitting on that one for a while?” Skara teased, laughter no longer contained.
“Well, yeah,” Luz admitted, rubbing her neck, “but I haven’t seen you since then-”
“Hey, fair enough,” Skara interrupted, cutting any further explanation off, “I know you can get Amity to come,” she added, winking, “but me getting Boscha to tag along is a whole different story.”
“At least give it a shot?” Luz pleaded, fixing the bard with a look so adorably pleading Skara felt a harsh pang of sympathy for the witch that would undoubtedly be facing it within the hour.
“Fine, I’ll ‘give it a shot,’ assuming context matches meaning.”
“Alright,” Luz affirmed, nodding to herself and grabbing the two drinks off the counter (hopefully) for the last time. “It’s a date then,” she called over her shoulder, stepping out onto the street and leaving the shop thoroughly less bright than it had been the moment before.
“Suppose it is,” Skara muttered to herself, that Luz-brand smile still firmly affixed to her face. Shaking her head, the bard fiddled with her scroll under the counter, finger drifting along the surface before finding a song to match it and turning it up as much as she dared.
As for the smile itself? Well, it didn’t leave her face until long after her shift had ended.