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The snowfall season snuck up on the Atelier that year quicker than it had in those past. At least it felt that way to Agathe, who had trouble recalling a busier time for her professor, and that was saying something; Professor Qifrey always had his hands full.
Usually to the chagrin of Professor Olruggio. On this occasion, however, even Professor Olruggio failed to scrape up exasperation at Professor Qifrey’s propensity for tiring himself out. Busy with his own seasonal tasks, assigned to him by the Assembly, he left the Atelier early and returned to it late. Professor Qifrey would consequently take up night work and stick to the confines of the Atelier by day as the sole remaining adult.
And Coco.
Coco had been rocked off balance by the shift in convention. It was to be expected – this was her first time entering a new witching season. Never before had she experienced the ruckus that came with it: repair of frayed heating glyphs, stocking up on food to endure the harsh cold, de-icing of roads to ensure safe passage. It was, Agathe supposed, to be expected.
And yet nobody would expect an apprentice to volunteer to personally accompany her professors on their tasks!
“This is Coco we’re talking about,” Tetia remarked, when Coco set out with Professor Olruggio on the first day, running to the open Windowway with a bread bun hanging from her mouth. “Don’t act so surprised, Agathe.”
“I just want to know how she’s even allowed,” Agathe said. “We need to be studying for our third test and plus, she’s nowhere close to being a fully-fledged witch yet!”
“You know she’s not doing magic,” said Richè, nibbling on a bun of her own. “Coco is just there to observe.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do.”
“Aga-nnoyance is a tiring mood.”
Agathe huffed. Fine! Coco could do whatever she liked. See if Agathe cared about their shared room suddenly feeling empty, or about the lack of enthusiastic nattering while they practiced their magic. It meant squat to her and Agathe Arkrome would continue to study for her upcoming third test as if absolutely nothing was wrong with the fact that she hadn’t said a proper word to Coco in four days.
That night, Agathe lay curled up in bed, on the brink of dozing off, when a heavy weight dropping on the edge of her mattress jolted her awake. She sprang back, hand instinctively going to her lamp. A dim yellow light bobbed its way into existence and lit up the intruder, their features going from hazy to unmistakable.
“Wuh… Switch it off, Agathe…” slurred Coco. She’d somehow plopped herself onto Agathe’s bed and stayed there now, ensconced in a not-quite-sitting, not-quite-lying position. A hand feebly shielded her eyes from the abrupt attack of brightness.
“Coco!” Agathe held herself very still. “This… this isn’t your bed.”
Coco let out a groan and made a move to grab the pillow, aggressively flinging her head onto it and stretching her body out on the bed.
“Are– are you sick?”
Coco shook her head.
Agathe hesitated. “Is something wrong?”
No movement. And then a soft: “Tired.”
Agathe sighed. “Gosh, Coco. Why do you… why do you do this to yourself? You’ve been working your fingers down to the bone everyday for the past week. No wonder you’re tired.”
She received no response. The silence was encouraging. “You give so much of yourself to others. With your magic, with your patience, with your time. It’s…” She peered upwards, where the lamp dimly illuminated the translucent canopy she’d created above her bed. “It’s unbelievable how much you care.”
Miniature constellations lined the gauze-like material, floating amiably above the two girls. Coco remained still, chest heaving with even breaths, as if she’d gone to sleep. Agathe looked away. “Maybe you should let yourself be cared for too, sometimes.”
She toyed with a handful of the blanket, deliberating for a moment, before she swept it over Coco and herself. Agathe couldn’t send her back to her own bed in this state. If she were to be frank, she didn’t want to. Coco had to be taken care of. Agathe wanted to be the one to do that. It was a dangerous, fathomless urge, a sort of pull that Agathe had never had to reckon with before, but as all things involving Coco, the pull was impossible to refuse.
Her hand hovered at the lamp.
“What are those drawings above us?”
She jerked, frittering fingers upsetting the lamp and momentarily extinguishing the light. “Christ!”
Coco’s eyes were scarcely open. A drowsy green stare, made brown by the shade, directed up above in languorous curiosity. Hair that was almost always in animation, flying this way and that as the witch moved, lay now in lazy pools atop the pillow. She looked comfortable. Agathe didn’t dare breathe.
She was so pretty.
The thought was enough to have Agathe squealing to herself, so she started to talk instead. “The constellations…?”
Coco breathed softly, pressing her lips together. “Constellations.”
“They’re my favourite ones,” Agathe offered, tucking herself into the blanket. She moved precisely, so as to not touch Coco and ruin things. “My family–”
She stopped, but Coco was still listening.
“My family watched the stars a lot. There are many books on them in the Tower. I wasn’t ever allowed to read one, but my grandmother taught me how to recognise a few. And the stories behind them.”
Coco hummed. “Reminds me of… the glyphs. The beautiful ones. At the festival.”
“Oh!” Agathe understood instantly. It was a silly thought, but sometimes she felt that even the strongest witches at the Assembly couldn’t hope to erase the memory of her and Coco basking under starlight, trading smiles and magic on their perch at the top of the wall. “That’s a really good observation. Many of those keystones were designed with the corresponding constellation in mind.”
There was shuffling and suddenly they were almost shoulder to shoulder. Coco pointed towards a pattern. “Is that a bow tie?”
Agathe snorted. “It’s Cassiopeia.”
“What’d she do?”
“Said her daughter was prettier than the sea nymphs. They swam back to their father, god of the sea, who sent a sea monster after Cassiopeia’s daughter in revenge.” Gradually, she grew more relaxed. “But her daughter wasn’t in danger for long, for a handsome hero came to save her! He defeated the sea monster and took the maiden’s hand in marriage. And they lived happily ever after.”
A weak chuckle. “You’re a good storyteller, Agathe.”
Agathe reddened, feeling self-conscious but emboldened. “I can do even better. See that one there? It’s called Corvus. It was a crow that was told by a god to bring him water, for a sacrifice. They sacrificed loads of things in constellation stories. Grandmother says that days of the forbidden magic were like that too.”
“People sacrificed things?”
“Like their humanity, for more power. Grandmother says it’s a good thing there are strict laws now, so that nobody can ever reach that level of power again.”
Coco hummed. “It hasn’t stopped them though, has it?”
There was a nervous tension creeping up on them and Agathe could taste it. This wasn’t a topic she wanted to linger on.
“So, Corvus,” she said. “He messed up the mission seriously bad. He delayed getting water for days because he was waiting for a fig tree to grow. How dumb is that?”
“Maybe he wanted figs very badly.”
“Okay, fine, maybe he wanted figs. Still dumb to disobey a god over, but okay. But! Then! This crow! Fails to get the water and brings back a water snake instead. Because they’re so much easier to find than literal water.”
Coco was giggling. Small, sweet huffs that had Agathe preening. She’d made Coco laugh!
“So, this crow goes back to the god with a water snake in its beak and tells him the water snake had been blocking the water supply.”
“No!” Coco covered her mouth in glee. “That’s so dumb!”
“See? And, as he should, the god flung both of them into the sky and now they’re a constellation.”
Her friend peered into the shadows. “Is the water snake up there?”
Agathe scoffed. “As if I’d include such a lame constellation in my collection.”
“I didn’t know you were snobby about stars, Agathe.”
She was teasing. And instead of recoiling and biting back, Agathe let herself be teased.
“Constellations are no light topic. I’d take you outside and show you the real deal if I could.”
But it had been snowing incessantly since the dawn of the new season and the sky was completely clouded over. Coco sighed and then she was turning on her side, her face pressed against Agathe’s shoulder and their hands brushing. “I’d like to see them with you.”
Agathe couldn’t take her eyes off Coco.
The two girls lounged side by side in a honeyed silence, impossibly warm despite the snow building up just outside. Agathe must have drifted off to sleep eventually, though how she did was a mystery to her. Her heart had been beating like a drum.
When she woke up to find the other side of the bed vacant, something within her deflated. Coco would have gone back to professor-chaperoning duty, of course she would have. Why would Agathe’s banal words have changed her mind?
Agathe flung off the covers in frustration, deeply regretting the decision the moment she was hit with the frigid winter air. She hurried to find a shawl she could wrap around herself, much too cold to draw heating glyphs – sometimes the witch’s way was too inconvenient a way. She supposed she ought to switch a light on too, the sky being as dark as sin in spite of the clock closing in on seven. That was before an unusual glow from the center of the room caught her attention.
A round, bright owlcat danced around its spot halfway between their beds. Agathe didn’t remember drawing any such magic before passing out.
There was a note on the oak table beneath it: Good morning Agathe! Sorry for troubling you yesterday. I hope you slept well anyway. I drew this after I woke up. It was the first Agathe-exclusive magic you showed me! An owlcat of light.
The orb wafted to Agathe. She looked at it, and the note, and the bed on the opposite end of the room. It was occupied, a tiny frame bunched up in various blankets. Gentle snoring buzzed through the area and Agathe didn’t know how she’d missed it before. A small smile found its way to her face.
Coco had listened. She had stayed.
The owlcat’s light was dull but Agathe felt it gleaming within her with the intensity of a thousand summer suns. It made perfect sense that Coco had mastered it so soon, in retrospect. Constellations were composed fully of straight lines, after all.