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He’s not sure what about the witch he hates the most.
Sometimes, he thinks he hates her vanity, the knowing way she purses her lips in thought or tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. The smile she gives him when she catches his gaze, so indulgent it borders on smug.
There’s her recklessness. Her carelessness. Her seemingly endless and inexplicable wealth.
She’s a slob. She keeps a filthy home. He’s cleaned it top to bottom without so much as a thank you. She’s so in her own head most of the time that part of him doesn’t even think she’s noticed.
At least now he considers it decent enough for himself, if not too decent for a selfish and imprudent witch.
As his morning is barraged by new and terrible apparitions, however, shadows that have begun to peel themselves at the wall, as upstairs, Nina yells is yelling “Matthias! Matthias, what did you do?” he feels, decidedly, like he must hate her casual use of magic most of all.
Usually, he tries to hide the shudders that pass through him when she snaps her fingers and does something extraordinary. Conjure fire. Heal wounds. Remove demonic seals from the kitchen table. Like it’s so commonplace. Like he’s the odd one.
The idiot who doesn’t even have a talking fireplace in his own modest apartment.
And now, slime is starting to drip from the ceiling.
Once, he’d wondered with all this magic why she couldn’t be bothered to clean her own home.
In the weeks that have passed, it’s become clear that she much prefers the act of making a mess, and is far too easily distracted to remember to clean it up afterwards.
“Is this normal?” Matthias asks, lifting his arm up to cover his silver hair from whatever new ruckus Nina has decided to cause.
“It isn’t,” calls her little ward- Trassel. He’s been told many times. Matthias wonders if the memory lapses are from stress, or part of his continuing old age.
The boy with the nearly white-blonde hair who’s supposed to be learning magic is running down the stairs with his cloak hood pulled up. “She’s having one of her meltdowns.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Matthias says. Mostly, he’s certain she’s had several other meltdowns in his time here, and he’s not quite sure what makes this one special. “Why?”
“Matthias!” she yells again, running down the stairs after her apprentice.
What kind of parents send their child off to learn under someone like this?
Matthias realizes she’s wearing a towel, barely covering her indecent parts. “Look!” she says, pointing to her head.
There are long shadows dancing behind her, silhouettes of what could’ve once been men moving in a clockwise motion.
Almost like a halo. Sort of like the blades of a windmill.
“What am I looking for?” he snaps.
“My hair,” she says, holding it asunder, clumps in each fist, for emphasis.
Her towel, mercifully, is tucked tight enough around the top to stay up.
“It’s…” He studies her. “Redder?”
“It’s ruined,” she says, her voice just an octave away from a full sob. “You moved my shampoo the last time you cleaned. I don’t know what I just put in my hair!”
“Oh, my mistake Nina,” he says. “Apologies for not letting us live in a pigsty.”
She’s ignoring him.
“Nina, please calm down,” her Talking Fireplace tells her.
Sometimes, the Fireplace is the sanest one among them.
Those weird, vicious drops of slime- Seemingly part gelatin, part maple syrup- are dripping down like stalactites, until the tip of one gets too heavy and beads down onto the floor.
No surprise, Fireplace doesn’t particularly like that.
It pulses and moves back, almost taken out by a smaller glob that lands on the hearth. “It’s not that bad! You love red!”
The slime mostly looks like thick water. Odorless, as well. Will hopefully clean up with a few damp rags.
“Oh, she’s calling the spirits of darkness,” Trassel says. He’s clinging to Matthias’ arm. “Last time I saw her like this was when a girl broke up with her.”
Matthias lets out a huff. “I’m sure you can just dye it back,” he says, approaching Nina with the caution of wading through mud. “You look fine.”
He puts a tentative hand on her shoulder.
“Ugh!” That horrible slime is now sticking to his hand. He waves it in the air, trying to throw it off. “Okay. This is ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous!”
“Listen to the man, Nina,” Fireplace says.
She lets out the most dramatic sigh she can muster. “I see no point in carrying on if I can’t be beautiful,” she says.
Something about that snaps the fragile sense of self Matthias has been trying to rebuild around himself.
If he were a more self-aware man, he might be able to figure out what.
But all he can really think of is how utterly sick and tired he is of this woman. How much he loathes her.
She’s entitled and she’s rude and she’s uncouth and she’s so, so cloying- And she’s ruined the floors. He just mopped yesterday.
“How hard that must be for you,” Matthias says. The sound of his own voice grates in his ears. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been beautiful in my entire life.”
He storms off, out the door and into the rain before he can even contemplate how silly that must’ve sounded.
Of course he’s never been beautiful. Look at him. That wouldn’t even put a dent in Nina’s ego. She knows what he looks like as well as he does.
He looks down at his hands. Still wrinkled. Liverspotted.
Even before. He hadn’t been much to look at.
The rain is nice enough. Almost a blessing. He tilts his head back, letting it gently land on his forehead. His cheeks.
This is stupid. It’s stupid on multiple levels, which makes it worse. Upgrades it to idiotic.
For one, outside of knowing the very basics of being in a valley, Matthias has no idea where this valley actually is.
Nina could decide she’s had enough of him and teleport her home to wherever she pleases.
He should be more worried about that.
She’s so flighty. She could do it. Probably will.
But he doubts it just enough to stay outside. Besides. He’s not going to come crawling back in just yet.
She doesn’t deserve that from him. And she absolutely doesn’t deserve an apology.
What he should do is march back in there and tell her-
Tell her-
When he tries to form coherent thoughts, real complaints, he gets something like a lump in his throat.
If she’s so powerful, why can’t she fix him?
Does she not want to?
Is he meant to be like this?
Is he going to die soon?
Maybe that’s it. Maybe she knows. A little pity for an old man.
He isn't really ready. He thought he’d get more time.
Hard to know he’d been wasting his youth when he’d assumed he’d have a little more of it.
Matthias notices a sudden lack of rain on his face, though he can hear the patter of raindrops.
He opens his eyes.
Young man Matthias might’ve been more wary of a scarecrow following him around.
Old man Matthias is just happy for the company.
“You’re a kind man,” Matthias says to the scarecrow, who's holding an umbrella over his head.
Where did he even get one? Can he hold things? Conjure things?
His questions are interrupted by a tiny hand tugging at his sleeve.
“She’s in bad shape,” Trassel says.
Again, he has to ask. What kind of parents send their child off to live with the infamous witch Nina Zenik?
What kind of parents send their son south to live with his relatives, making watches?
He’ll care about the boy. If no one else can be bothered. “She’s just throwing a tantrum,” Matthias says. The words almost make him laugh to himself.
“Please?” Trassel asks.
Matthias gives a nod to the scarecrow, a small sign of thanks. “Thank you,” he says. He pauses. “Prince Scarecrow.”
“He’s a prince?” Trassel asks, as if just noticing the scarecrow for the first time.
“He’s polite like one,” Matthias says.
“Nina said that about you last week,” Trassel says. “You were out shopping.”
Matthias’ cheeks feel hot. “I wasn’t shopping,” he says. “I was getting supplies.”
“Okay,” Trassel says. “If that’s what you think.”
Nina’s home hasn’t moved a millimeter, not one bit, and the front door is still open.
Matthias sucks in a last breath of fresh air.
“Nina?” he calls into the dark. “Come on, Nina. You’re better than this.”
She’s still slumped over in her chair. Pitiful. Like a ball of sadness.
He feels a little pang for her. Something like sympathy. Something else like guilt.
He puts her arm over his shoulder, his own arm around her waist. She groans in abject misery.
“I know,” he cooes. “It’s hard when we don’t look the way we want.”
She’s not too hard to carry across the kitchen floor, at least.
He will have to wash his clothes to get the slime out, though.
Maybe burn them. That remains to be seen.
“Trass, can you run a hot bath?” Matthias asks.
“Yes, sir,” the boy says, already clamoring past them and up the stairs.
“You can still bathe yourself, right?” Matthias asks. Nina is leaning into his embrace, pressing against his side. “Because I absolutely cannot bathe you.”
“Tired,” she mutters.
“It would be incredibly rude of me,” Matthias says. “And besides. I have to start cleaning up the kitchen. And the stairs. And the bathroom once you’re finished, presumably.”
She mutters something noncommittal. Her head bumps his shoulder.
“Thank you,” she says, so quietly he almost misses it.
He turns his head to look at her and realizes her towel has fallen off.
Matthias flushes bright crimson, possibly even purple, and stares directly at the ceiling.