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Witch society was well structured to produce fine young witches. With decades of refining and rewriting and having a close eye on all matters of which relate to a witch, really, it’s no wonder that it would turn up so many fine individuals.
However, a oversight within this design was nearly inseparable from the world it created. Witches were a lonely folk, secretive, isolated from all those but perhaps the professor of their atelier. Friendships are sacred and rare, and anything more than that was even more of an anomaly.
Qifrey’s friend pulled his face away.
“Why did you do that?” Qifrey’s mouth stretched and pursed. The tingle of contact fizzled away.
His friend had a strange look to him, brows twisted in a peculiar way. Qifrey thinks the only time he had seen anything similar was a time when his friend was afraid of getting caught sneaking around by his professor. He was wiping his own mouth with the back of his hand.
“I dunno.”
“What do you mean you dunno?” Qifrey shifted in the grass, resting back on one arm. His other arm lay in his lap, draped over the bound notebook of pages of spells and journaling and illustrations. The chewed end of his wand rocked in between his fingers like a metronome.
He watched his friend shake his head, the long black tassel wriggling in sync, and slowly turn to his own ink-scrawled paper. “That was weird, huh? Sorry. I just saw my professor doing it to one of his associates- it was another professor from the city, and I thought maybe there was something to it. I don’t get it either. Sorry. Let’s go check out what's happening at the river.”
Oftentimes, witches barely had contact with their birth parents, being thrust into the care of the educator from a young age. It was more common, in fact, for a witch to never know who their predecessors even were, raised with the other children of the same age in community homes. And the witches and educators with partners of their own- secretive. It wasn’t something to be shown off, it was something to be kept private, sacred, hush.
These conditions weren’t purposeful, yet they did have a hand in keeping the number of witches small, traceable. Why spend the time to fix something if it broke in a convenient way?
Summertime in the underwater city was a unique time of the year. The bright sunshine that those on the surface bathed in would never make it this far down, yet the air was nonetheless thicker and more humid than usual, each breath just nearing suffocating. A witch in the seabed could never get the nicer components that make up a season, it seems.
Qifrey’s bedroom had a large open window hugging his bed that gave view to the entire sea. Oftentimes, he kept it drawn with a vibrant shimmering curtain- today he kept it open.
The evening sky barely made it into his window, the light just enough to illuminate the book sitting within his lap. His long and bare legs stuck up awkwardly through the fabric half bunched at his waist. He tugged at the black undershirt that he rarely changed off, an uncomfortable friction of fabric and skin and sweat begging for it to be shed.
His knee was knocking with the other boys, who had similarly stripped his robes to as little layers as possible. His face was flush with a pink glow, the trace amounts of facial hair dappling his upper lip highlighted by the windows light. His eyes were glued to the textbook, only averting to write something down in his blank pages. Qifrey pulled his leg away, and read the novel which lay in his hands.
It was something from an author of the unknowings, purchased for him by Beldarut as some kind of reward. The descriptions of bloody battles and betrayals and martyrs kept his attention enough, before the descriptions of tongues lashing and hands grasping had his mind absorbing every last word. His focus had him equally grossed out and fascinated, his heart catching in his chest if he let his own mind freely add to the narrative. The contents of the book felt almost blasphemous, and maybe it was a little too gorey and steamy to be appropriate for his age.
He heard the rustling of covers, and his eye dared peek into his peripheral to see his friend stretching and lying back against the wall, lazy like a well fed gryphon. The popping of muscles and bones a symphony from a witch who spent maybe a little too much time hunched over for their handiwork, the most slight whisper of a smile tracing Qifrey’s face at the sound.
“How’s it going? Painful?”
“...Yeah. I’m stumped.” His friend stayed in his relaxed position, the crescent of his chest breathing through the open buttons of his shirt. “Be honest with me, do you think I’ll actually be able to finish this before the presentations? Or should I just give up and try to present a fireball spell? Or just skip the presentation altogether? Fake my death?”
Qifrey threw his book aside, leaning over the bed to look at his friend's work. His lines and curves were always slightly bolder than his own, pressed with a firmer grip than Qifrey’s.
“Stop being dramatic, this is good. Couldn’t you stretch out talking about the proposal for this one for most of the presentation? Just focus on your best work.”
“This is one of two spells that I got. I’m meant to have six, Qifrey. And I haven’t even written up my speech. I’m screwed.”
Qifrey gently swatted him. “You always end up figuring it out. But you can’t keep procrastinating. Don’t leave it till the last night like you always do.”
He heard groaning, before his friend was equally hunched over as he was. “I’m screwed.”
“You’re being dumb Ollie.”
Qifrey could feel his long drawn out sigh breeze past his nose. His head turned to watch his friend's frustrated face, to watch his deep eyes and thick eyelashes flutter.
“Easy for you to say. You always get all your assignments in like, a month early. And the Sage doesn’t make you do these proposal presentations.”
Qifrey met his eyes. “You’re a smart witch. And you don’t miss deadlines. And you get like this every time and you’re fine. So you’re being dumb.”
The conversation dwindled into silence. Qifrey studied the different symbols scratched into the seals the other witch was drawing, gazing at the notes that traced the sides. His spells and drawings were neat- his handwriting was illegible. Qifrey lifted up one of his hands to gently drag across the paper, the leg it was placed upon twitching. He thought that it was possible to talk about a seal this complicated, with so many moving parts, for hours even, not just for the 6 minute presentation that was assigned. That boy's magic was truly incredible.
He could hear a faint thumping close to his ear, demanding his gaze back to his friend. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” His voice wavered slightly, and then Olruggio kissed Qifrey.
He pulled away. “Sorry.” His heartbeat, Qifrey realized, was so loud and rapid, and he thought it was a bomb about burst out of his chest. “Sorry.”
“Breathe,” he said softly, before leaning in a bit. He guessed Olruggio got his unspoken message, since he kissed him again. And a couple more times after that.
Qifrey’s hand rested on Olruggio’s shoulder, gripped probably a little tighter than what was comfortable. And the sweaty shaky hand on his neck was probably a fair payback for that discomfort, not like Qifrey particularly disliked it.
“...Oh. What about the Sage. I should stop.”
“Shush… The professor never comes into my room. Just… do it again.”
When witches discover something revolutionary, something life changing, it typically comes in the form of a circle of symbols and interconnecting lines, then spread through the world in the shape of a spell. It also sometimes manifests into something to keep for oneself, to drench in the secrecy they were raised in. And usually something like this would stop a witch from being able to have a Watchful Eye who was a little more than a friend, yet keeping it secret and unlabelled maybe, in true witch fashion, didn’t need to be fixed at all.
At the very least, nearly a decade later, Qifrey could keep sharing those shy and secret kisses, even if he never got to put a name with it.