Chapter Text
Everywhere he went in the Akademiya’s hallways, chatter and rumors constantly accompanied him.
Murmuring behind his back, with a hand or sleeve in front of their mouth to hide and muffle their voices.
Yet to his ears their whispers came loud and clear. No matter how hard Tighnari tried to keep them as low as possible under the hat, pressed against the hair to confuse them and make them less noticeable.
Those ears were ridiculously bulky and impossible to hide.
He walked quickly, head down, so as not to meet the gaze of other students. He knew perfectly well that he was the laughingstock of the Akademiya at that moment, because of that spell ended up wrong. Constantly hearing the other students’ giggles and comments - because of those damn sensitive ears he had - was the most embarrassing aspect of the whole thing.
Something shifted nervously under his cloak.
Right, if he didn’t pay attention to his own emotions, that thing that he tried to hide under his clothes always betrayed him. It seemed to have a mind of its own. The bump under the fabric left no doubt of its presence. Nevertheless, ignoring it and pretending it didn’t exist was the quickest and easiest solution.
“Is something wrong?” His familiar's voice made Tighnari wince.
“Nothing.” He shrugged, lying. “Let's keep going.”
He heard the jackal spirit whining softly as he trotted to his side.
Like every day from the last week, Tighnari hurried to reach their room as soon as possible after finishing class. He couldn’t stand the crowds and confusion of people normally, let alone now that his senses were amplified so much.
“Hey, Tighnari, Cyno!” A voice greeted them cheerfully. “I finally found you!”
Tighnari was forced to stop, the hallway blocked by the person who had just greeted them, cutting them off.
It was Kaveh, one of the seniors. Elegant as always, he wore a long red cloak and a wide-brimmed hat with several gray and cerulean feathers tucked into the band.
He smiled happily, in stark contrast to the gray buzzard eagle that was perched on his left shoulder. His familiar's expression, in fact, was decidedly more annoyed, as if the two just had a little spat, something that happened very often between Kaveh and his familiar Alhaitham. The witch's ruffled hair, with a few small gray feathers sprouting from the golden locks on the eagle's side, spoke volumes.
“Are you guys busy this evening? Between classes and studying, it's been a long time since we've been able to organize something all together!”
Kaveh was a very popular witch throughout the Akademiya, famous for his eagerness to organize gatherings and parties of various kinds, as well as for his charismatic appearance that had earned him the title of "the prettiest boy and prettiest girl" of the whole school. He was sociable with everyone, always ready to party and help others when needed. However, only the closest friends who had known him the longest, as Tighnari, knew how thin was the line between his altruism and self-destructive behaviors, especially related to drinking and other somewhat… leisurely potions.
Every witch, after all, had their dark sides.
“Nope, I'm sorry. I have to study later.” Tighnari tried to evade him, sneaking off to the side to get away.
“Oh, come on, I haven't seen you in ages, ouch-! Alhaitham what's the matter with you?!” The blond brought a hand to his ear, trying to get the familiar’s beak out of his hair.
“Studying is what you should be doing too, since you are behind on the projects you have to turn in by the weekend! Instead of running around the Akademiya looking for weird junks all the time!” The eagle rebuked him in annoyance, without letting go.
“Relax, there is still time!” The witch protested, untangling himself and making several gray feathers flutter in the air. “How about Friday then? Sounds better eh, Nari?” He shouted to his friend who was already striding forward.
Tighnari merely waved his hand, without turning around or confirming. At that moment he just wanted to get away from the confusion and people.
When he rushed to his room, he slammed the door with a little too emphasis.
With a movement of his fingers quickly grew some tendrils by wrapping them around the knob like a padlock.
As soon as he closed the outside world behind him, Tighnari slowly slid to the floor with his back leaning against the old wooden door. He breathed a deep sigh of relief when he finally lifted his hat, freeing his aching ears from being pressed into a crumpled space for too long.
“Why don't you spend more time with them lately? You could use some distractions.” Cyno commented, settling beside him on his haunches.
The witch cast a bothered glance at his familiar.
The spirit he had contracted with, had taken on the appearance of a jackal with white fur and two deep crimson eyes. An unusual species for a familiar - since in most cases they were common animals like cats, crows and other birds or reptiles - but he didn’t care.
The bond between them allowed them both to sense their partner's mood and strong emotions, so it was useless to try to lie to him. Cyno was surely aware of Tighnari's sense of unease and discomfort at that moment.
“I… don't feel like it.” Tighnari admitted with a sigh, shaking his head. “And these are the reasons.”
He shifted his cloak to reveal a bushy tail with a green tip that kept fading into a darker green tone, the same shade of his hair, from which sprouted two pairs of long pointed ears, also covered with a layer of soft dark fur.
“Alhaitham and Kaveh have always been kind and nice to us, I don't think they mind your... current appearance.” The familiar tilted his head, not understanding what the real problem was.
Tighnari sighed again, this time more deeply.
“Well, it may have been a week, but I still haven't gotten used to it.” He replied flatly, bringing his knees closer to his chest to cross his arms over them. “I don't like to be seen like this more than the bare minimum in class. I'm the jester of the Akademiya, and the worst thing is that I'm forced to listen to all the comments and rumors about me with these ridiculous ears I have!”
He hid his face in his arms, and the earring he wore on his right ear jingled merrily as the three little gold leaves that made it up flapped over each other following his movements.
Cyno whined softly, pinning back his ears in turn. He knew that this situation was his fault, but now he didn’t know exactly how to solve it. And he really wanted to help his witch, motivated by more than just the duty arising from their contract.
He snuggled close to Tighnari, drawing his snout between the strands of dark hair to reach his face.
“Let them talk, what’s the matter?” He had to choose the right words not to hurt him further, but rather to lift his spirits by focusing on his strengths. “They are just jealous because your magic is stronger, more effective and longer lasting than their beginner spells that dissolve in a short time.”
Tighnari gave him a deadpan stare, raising a skeptical eyebrow. His ears twitched nervously. “This is not the exact description to say that I’m unable to cast temporary spells. My spells aren’t just pretty effective, they are truly permanent! I can turn any little mistake into a disaster that I cannot undo!”
“Yeah, and when you make mistakes then you work like crazy to develop even more powerful counterspells to make up for the misdeed, instead of letting everything work itself out over time like the other lazy idiot students who can't get their spells to work for more than a few hours at most.” The familiar grimaced, shrugging his shoulders.
“Ugh, why did I let myself be persuaded to make this contract?” Tighnari ran his hands through his hair, his expression exasperated. “Instead of improving the control of my magic, I have become even more unpredictable and unstable! If I used to struggle to manage a stream, I now find myself with a raging torrent of magic that only threatens to overflow in every moment! In any field outside of botany I’m a total disaster!”
Cyno rested his wet snout on his cheek to give him a ticklish lick. The witch giggled a little, caught off guard by that gesture, and the familiar was relieved when the sense of discomfort coming from his companion faded a little bit.
“You have to put your mind and emotions in order, only then you’ll be able to put your magic in the right place and find your balance. The problem isn’t the amount of power, but the way you decide to weave and unweave magic to your liking.” He tried to explain. “For whatever it's worth… I find your stubbornness to be a virtue rather than a flaw. Your talent for non-temporary spells - or disasters, as you call them - helps you continuously improve to develop new enchantments.”
Tighnari gently shook his muzzle off, rolling his eyes unimpressed by that subtle compliment. “Well but, you know, it's not so much the failures themselves that worry me. Rather, not knowing how to undo their effects. What will happen when I make such a big mistake that I cannot make up for it?”
“We will think about it when the time comes, but I don't think it’ll ever happen. If you can cast a spell, then you can also lift it. There is nothing we can’t do together. Your magic is wonderful and, after all, your power grows with you.”
The witch brought a hand to his face to hide a half smile. However, it didn’t escape the keen sight of his familiar.
“With us.” The boy whispered, barely moving his lips.
Cyno found himself inadvertently wagging his tail with great eagerness, thankful that the fur hid the skin of his face, which glowed a deep red from excitement.
Us.
That word was enough to bliss him.
He had to try to keep his instincts at bay, lest they flow through the bond that linked them and make it unmistakably obvious. Ever since they made their deal, about a couple of months earlier, he had always managed without problems to mask most of his feelings. Over the past week, however - since the incident - he had found himself repeatedly risking leaking some of his emotions, because of his partner's current appearance.
He gave advice on how to handle magic and he was the first one who couldn’t do as much to follow it.
He was just a disaster as a familiar. But in his defense, this was just his first contract ever.
The main problem was that his feelings toward that boy were only growing day by day since their first meeting. He was experiencing something he never thought would happen in his existence and he didn’t know exactly how to deal with it.
Meanwhile Tighnari, oblivious to the jackal's inner complexes, had gotten up, taking off his cloak to lay it on the bed. He stretched his arms making his bones crack and went to retrieve some books and ingredients from his own bookshelf.
“Come on, let's not waste any time. Today we can finally get back to work on your spell. I have an idea I'd like to test.”
He rolled up his sleeves and pulled out from under the bed an old cauldron that was worn and dented at the edge. It was small, but he would have to make do.
In the dorms, students were forbidden to perform spells and potions outside of regular classes, precisely to avoid unpleasant incidents like the one Tighnari had gotten himself into a few days earlier. The blackened stains on the wooden floor and some burned upholstery were still there to witness his mess.
Of course, with the explosion and the witch's sudden change in appearance, the council of Sages - the Akademiya's senior professors - had immediately sensed what had happened and decided to assign him numerous homeworks and extra lessons to punish him for his transgression.
However, the most severe punishment that bothered Tighnari was the total seizure of all his equipment - which he already kept illegally in his room - and most of his personal plants - according to the Sages, species not strictly ornamental but certainly kept for other purposes. As if creating recreational potions with plants was the main purpose of Tighnari's studies.
Of course, he couldn’t claim to be entirely innocent in this regard, as he had from time to time scraped together some money or favor from other students in exchange for some elixir provided underground. For his own use he preferred mushrooms to plants, but he didn’t waste time arguing with the Sages on this subject.
For Tighnari, plants were simply his life.
By studying them, he wanted to be able to show that just as spices and herbs were able to enrich foods and dishes, plants could do the same with potions and spells, making them better and more effective.
Since the incident, he had only managed to recover a small portion of his precious personal species, and now he had to limit himself in his experiments so as not to overexploit them before they grew a little more.
It would have taken him a long time to fill his room again with plants and flowers as he liked, but this was not among his priorities at the moment. Rather, a more pressing problem that needed to be solved was to be able to find basic tools such as flasks, stills and so on, so that he could be 100% operational again with his experiments. All the lab staff had been made aware of his transgression, so sneaking back and forth from classrooms unnoticed to scrape together even the most basic tools was proving to be no small feat.
So far, he wasn’t very lucky, so he would have to settle with an old cauldron found randomly among the laboratory discards and nothing more.
When Cyno had asked him why he insisted on brewing a potion for every single thing instead of operating spells directly on reality to change it, the witch had explained that creating potions was his personal way of better managing and channeling his magic. He felt more solid and experienced in that field, apart from mistakes and accidents of course. He also wanted to avoid repeating negative and traumatic experiences with uncontrolled magic, as had happened to him in the past during his first steps in the study of magic. Creating a potion It was more complicated, of course, but safer.
“No distillers, no extractors or purifiers, no stills...” He muttered to himself, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He pulled his own wand and a pair of round glasses out of his overalls pocket. “It seems like we should do it in the old fashioned way. Who knows, maybe this will be the right one. Are you ready?”
Cyno trotted beside him, positioning himself right in front, ready to assist his partner.
A witch, a familiar, a cauldron.
Nothing else.
Just the essentials.
Just perfect.
“Fur sure.”