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After the disaster of Silver Eve, Professor (er–Watchful Eye) Olruggio had made a suggestion that the girls share rooms for a few days. Tetia kept having nightmares and going into Richeh’s room anyway, so it wouldn’t be much of a change.
Agott, who had already shared a sleeping space with them all during the festival, was frankly ready to get back to her own bed. However, Coco had clung onto the idea with an unshakeable grip, like if she was alone, she might crumble into dust.
So, here they were.
Everything was alright. They knew how to stay out of each other’s ways by now. Except…It was becoming obvious that Agott had missed a lot of what actually happened during Silver Eve.
They were all tired, yes. They’d all been scared that night, and were exceedingly glad it was over. They all had lingering doubts and worries, for sure.
But Coco? She was a wreck.
Not during the day. She was normal during the day, if a little dimmer than usual. It was only during the quiet depths of the night that her true pain presented itself—a time that, of course, was shared with Agott, and Agott alone.
It wasn’t like she tried to rope Agott into it. She always waited until Agott’s breathing had evened out before she gave up pretending to sleep. What she didn’t know was that she wasn’t the only one skilled at pretending.
Agott wasn’t sure exactly why she began to watch Coco. She already didn’t get enough sleep, and this wasn’t helping. It also made her feel a fair amount like a creep. I avoid Coco. I make her feel bad. I help her. I watch her nightly breakdowns. Anything but being normal, huh?
She just…couldn’t stop. Sometimes she felt like she was losing her mind, as if Coco’s soul was imprinted with some kind of forbidden magic that made her impossible to look away from. It scared Agott. It enthralled her. Occasionally, it even made her want to comfort Coco.
And say what? Agott was skilled at magic. She was a hard worker. She was a problem solver. Yet when it came to others’ feelings, she was much better at hurting them than soothing them, especially when it came to words.
After the first night of witnessing Coco’s frame shake with sobs, she’d made a reasonable decision to notify professor Qifrey, then be done with it. Maybe Tetia too. Anyone. Anyone but me.
Then the day was over and she hadn’t said a word.
Professor Qifrey must’ve known what Coco had seen anyway, right? Those two had been together for most of the leech fiasco. What would Agott’s words do but worry him more? If he hadn’t been able to make Coco feel better yet, what would intervening do?
Dammit. I need to sleep. That thought cycled back each night as the issue grew. Coco’s emotions weren’t dulled by time. Agott never convinced herself to sleep. Again and again they played this game that only one of them was aware of, Agott wondering, What have you seen? What have you done? and Coco’s only answer being muffled tears.
The final straw was when Agott caught Coco doodling on a piece of paper under a small light—but not spells. Gravestones. Beautiful ones, worthy of a king’s burial, but disturbing nonetheless.
Agott’s heart raced. Her first thought was a selfish one: Please don’t be about her mom. Though she’d apologized for her words from earlier, that didn’t make them go away. If Coco had learned something about her mom, something so terrible as to put her in this state, then Agott could never be forgiven.
Please, please…
In her concern, she forgot to be quiet. She moved too much and the bed creaked. Across the room, Coco went completely still.
Uh oh.
Agott didn’t know whether to close her eyes and go back to pretending, or to use this opportunity to try and talk to Coco. The answer was obvious. However, she couldn’t get her body to obey. Just sleep, Agott. You have so much to do tomorrow. Sleep!
Coco turned. The side of her face and a few strands of hair were illuminated by the light; the rest of her was shrouded in darkness. Her eyes were visibly watery even from a distance, her cheeks wet, one covered in a bandage. Her expression…
Agott missed her opportunity to resume her act. They made eye contact.
Coco flinched back and stayed in that horrified position for a good few moments. Then she seemed to accept that she wasn’t hallucinating, and whispered out an apology. “Oh! I…I’m, um, sorry for waking you. The light must have been too bright…I’ll turn it off now.” She fumbled with the contraption.
“Wait,” Agott said, too loud. If she was really going to do this, then it didn’t have to be pitch black in the meanwhile.
Coco stopped.
Agott knew she had to say something, and the most logical question fell out first. “If you’re trying to do this in secret, why were you so adamant about sharing a room with me?”
Coco didn’t have an immediate answer. She was curled up, and her cheeks were still wet, and Agott wondered if her words had come out too harsh. “I’m finding that a lot of things that I do don’t make sense anymore,” Coco finally said.
Agott shifted in her bed so that she was resting on her elbow. She could relate to that answer. Still, it was awfully deep for this time of night. “You didn’t wake me up,” she said.
“Oh. Good.”
“Coco.” Agott couldn’t stop herself from speaking. “What are you drawing?”
Coco shoved the papers away like they were poisonous. “Nothing.” The word came out too fast, too panicked. “It’s nothing.”
“Most people don’t treat nothing like that.”
Coco frowned. She wiped off her cheeks. “Well, most people sleep at night too, so I guess we just don’t meet the requirements.”
It wasn’t quite rude, but had a bit more bite than was typical of Coco. Agott’s lack of response made her backtrack.
“I didn’t mean that. I won’t keep you up any longer.”
“It’s fine,” Agott said, stopping her from putting out the light once more. It was so odd being the one forcing the conversation forward instead of the other way around. “But, um….” Her sentence got caught in her throat. Asking what she needed to ask was like getting Tetia to calm down—impossible. She clenched her fists in frustration.
“Huh?” Coco, ever naive.
“Is…” Agott willed herself with all her strength to go on. “...Is it about your mother?” She didn’t explain what “it” was, hoping it was clear. Not sleeping. The crying. Everything.
A pause. “My mom? No—just the festival messed me up a little. In the head. I guess.” She gave an awkward smile.
Phew. Agott knew it was bad to be relieved, but she was. The festival was something she had attended, could deal with. Mothers? She wasn’t much of an expert on those.
“You saved everyone,” Agott said, with a matter-of-fact tone, grateful the darkness hid her reddening face. “If you could do that, then you already know what you have to do if anything else happens.”
“No,” Coco mumbled. “I didn’t save anyone. And I had no idea what I was doing.”
Agott didn’t know what to say to oppose such intense insecurity. If she coped with hers by practicing until it hurt, how did Coco cope? “If you have those ideas intuitively, that’s probably even better,” she settled on.
Coco scooted closer to Agott’s bed and looked up at her with those big, sad eyes. “Agott, you helped me so much. Everyone did. Our professors, the wise, and all those other witches. We had everyone and everything, and it still wasn’t enough.” Her whole body trembled, and she reached back to crumple one of her drawings into a ball.
“I don’t get it,” Agott admitted. “It was terrifying, I agree. Lots of people got hurt. I mean, heaven’s sake, we were fighting a bloodsucking monster. But we won. Of course, we could have done better. I intend to keep working hard, so nobody gets hurt next time. Still, that’s all the more reason to work hard. Not to give up.”
“I’m not giving up,” Coco rushed out. “I couldn’t. There’s still so many people I owe. I just…I…” her voice caught and fresh tears threatened to spill over. “No magic can bring back someone’s life.” Her voice faltered at that last word, and she turned around so Agott couldn’t see her face, only her shaking shoulders.
Agott’s heart dropped. What did she mean? Once again, that question: What did you see?
“I didn’t know there were any casualties,” Agott said.
“I’m not sure if I’m even allowed to talk about it,” Coco choked out.
“Why? Who would stop you?”
Coco went silent; Agott wanted to shake the answers out of her. Agott from a few weeks—hell, days—ago might have gone for it, and yelled at her too.
Tonight, Agott controlled herself. “Does it have to do with the brimmed caps?”
“I don’t know what those words mean anymore.” Coco picked up her ball of paper and smoothed it out. “I guess he was one, by witch society standards. But he didn’t know anything. It was the only thing keeping him alive. And now…” The paper was crushed once more.
Agott sometimes thought back to Tetia’s distress when they had faced the dragon, how she’d despaired over being in that situation at their age, how wrong and unfair it was. At the time, she and Agott had both blamed Coco. And, well, it was Coco that the brimmed caps were after. Only now could Agott understand that it was due to that interest that Coco suffered the most.
Because Agott had seen some heartbreaking things in her life, but she’d never watched the light drain out of someone’s eyes. Brimmed cap or not, that was unfair. That was wrong.
She couldn’t think of anything to say to help. All that came out was, “Have you told anyone?”
Coco sighed with a sort of heavy weariness that usually only arrived after years of hard work. “It doesn’t matter.”
It obviously did, and saying otherwise sounded more like Richeh’s stubbornness or Agott’s own standoffishness than Coco’s bright optimism. Agott had a sudden—horrifying—vision of Coco remaining like this forever, never being able to bounce back, never being herself again. Could it really happen that fast? Probably. Agott knew all about one bad moment defining a significant portion of your life. After the first test, she assumed it was impossible for Coco’s spirit to be broken. In fact, that was one of the things that had made her so angry. But now, the thought of being wrong made her feel sick.
Agott, in one motion, ripped her sheets off and got out of bed. The end caught on her foot, and she stumbled into a piece of furniture in the dark. “Ow! Shit!”
“Oh! Are you okay?” Coco asked.
Agott’s face felt hot. “That never happened.” Before Coco could say more about it, Agott approached her and sat next to her under the glow of the light, conscious of how messy her hair was and how unprepared she was to have this conversation.
She picked out one of Coco's gravestone drawings out from the pile. Coco reached her hand out to stop her, then let it drop.
“If you weren’t a witch, you could be an architect with these lines,” Agott praised honestly.
“Hah. Yeah. Straight lines, kind of my thing.”
“If it makes you feel better, you should build one of them.”
Coco stared at her. “What?”
Agott shrugged, acting more casual than she felt, not knowing where her own train of thought was going. “I don’t see what’s wrong about making a tribute to someone you cared about. I’m sure Professor Qifrey would understand.”
Coco chewed on a piece of her hair. “I didn’t really know him at all. I’m not sure it's my place.”
Agott let out a frustrated huff. As someone who was almost always thinking about herself, it seemed clear what Coco should do. However, Coco wasn’t like that. All she thought about was other people’s feelings, and she feared disrespecting even the dead.
“Let me put it like this. If you do nothing for this person, will anyone?” Framing it like that appealed more to that whole I-must-save-everyone attitude.
Coco seemed to contemplate it for a long while. She took her hair out of her mouth and said, “I’m not sure. I… know someone who cared about him much more than me, but I don’t know if he has the means to—you know, make a whole monument. And he’s probably too upset right now to plan anything.”
“Then it’s settled,” Agott said simply.
Coco stared at her, expression unreadable. Then alarmingly, her eyes filled with tears again.
“Oh great witches of old, give me strength,” Agott muttered, tilting her head skyward.
But Coco grabbed her arm, bringing her back to reality. “Agott, can I…would it be okay if…” She trailed off.
Can you what? Agott had a feeling she knew the rest, and said with all the false reluctance she could muster, “Yes, you can hug me.”
There was silence.
Coco blinked at her. “That’s not what I was going to say?"
What. Agott turned red from head to toe, whole body overflowing with embarrassment. How could she have screwed that up? Heavens, she would never recover. She fumbled for an explanation. “I thought—Well, what was I supposed to think—!?”
Suddenly, Coco moved forward and captured her in an embrace. “Just kidding.”
Agott was at once relieved, angry, and in disbelief. Coco, upset and tired, still managed to poke fun at her! Ridiculous! She considered shoving Coco away for her actions, but softened at the small, trembling hands that clung onto the back of her nightclothes. Mushy, indulgent Agott wrapped her arms around Coco, returning the affection.
It was…nice. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d hugged someone like that. Coco smelled of sweet things and her hair ticked Agott’s cheek. They slotted together perfectly, like maybe they were meant to be holding onto each other forever.
But it was also dangerous. Closeness to Coco meant closeness to the thoughts that scared Agott most. Thoughts like: her hair is so soft. I wonder how she’ll style it when she’s older. She’ll be pretty either way. She already is. I want to stay like this. I want to stay with her.
Agott knew it wasn’t wrong to admire her fellow apprentices. Except, she had never felt quite the same way about Tetia or Richeh. She admired them as well. Just…not in the same way. Not in the way that made her heart speed up and her mind turn to mush.
If it went any further, Agott was sure to drop everything to follow her. And that was a problem.
Coco pulled back after a few moments. She wasn’t crying anymore. Her hands remained at Agott’s sides. “Thank you.”
Agott shrugged again. “Yeah. Just don’t get used to it or whatever.”
Coco, for the first time of the night, gave a genuine smile. They sat together in a comfortable quiet for a short while, watching the light ripple in the lamp contraption. It felt like time had stopped, in a way. Like tomorrow would wait for them, as long as they needed. Of course, that wasn’t true. They were both going to be very tired in the morning.
“You said a bad word,” Coco spoke quietly into the darkness.
“Huh?” Agott looked at her.
“Earlier, when you hurt yourself.”
Agott sighed and looked off to the side. “I told you to forget that. You’re too innocent anyway. Did they only speak in hymns in your village?”
Coco laughed. “No, no, other way around. It’s the witches who never curse. The people back in my village said all sorts of things that would make professor Qifrey pass out. I mean I guess the witches say some stuff, but mostly privately, right?”
Agott had never really thought about it. But imagining anyone who attended her mother’s events speaking improperly felt like a real crime. She herself tried to speak with dignity. There were aspects of witch society that must’ve seemed strict to somebody from the outside. She wondered, just for a blink, how she would have turned out if she were born an outsider. She would have been an entirely different person, for sure. It was almost scary. “You have to do some pretending to make it in life,” she decided.
Coco shot her a half-smile that probably meant she didn’t fully agree. “Maybe.” She paused for a long while. “I think I’ll take you there one day. Home.”
“Your village?” Agott asked unnecessarily. It was hard to remember that ‘home’ for Coco wasn’t just their atelier.
“Mhm. Teach you how outsiders wash their clothes and dishes.”
Agott sat back and contemplated. She would look like a fish out of water all the way out there. ”I don’t understand why you would go back to that way when you know a better one now.”
The curve of Coco’s lips flattened back out. “I mean, it is faster with magic. And I love magic. So I probably wouldn’t do it like that anymore, but…” Her chest rose and fell in a deep breath. “...I guess I can’t help but miss it anyway.”
Agott somewhat understood. There were people in her past that had shamed and bullied her that she was still desperate to impress, despite logic. Although, Coco's reminiscing came from a softer place. It made Agott’s heart ache, as if she’d lived that life too. “I suppose I can give it a shot sometime,” she allowed.
Coco raised an eyebrow. “Bet you’ll be good at it like everything else.”
Agott seriously couldn’t handle all these compliments. “I’m only good at the things I’m good at because I work hard.”
“‘I’m only good at the things I’m good at because I’m good at them,’” Coco mocked lightheartedly, and even Agott had to let out a huff of laughter at how dumb it sounded.
The two of them spent a while longer looking over Coco’s drawings and improving upon them. Agott felt a strange pride in helping someone else for once. Coco didn’t mind being critiqued one bit, and was very open to suggestions once her initial self-consciousness wore off. But ultimately, Agott told her that it was her project, and to do what she wanted with it. If it were Agott, she wouldn’t want her ideas being altered, and she did her best to transfer some self-servingness to her friend, as she’d tried at the festival.
“You’re so amazing,” Coco said once they were wrapping up, admiring their more refined sketches for monuments.
“Stop saying those things,” Agott replied, blushing for what might have been the 100th time in one night.
“I mean it. Thank you.”
“You’ve already thanked me.”
Coco grinned. “I’ll do it as many times as I have to.”
Agott rolled her eyes. “Now you sound like Tetia.”
And there was no arguing with that.
They eventually made it back into their beds, Coco seeming more relaxed than she had in a while. It was a relief to Agott as well. The prospect of Coco’s real personality shining back through, and it being partially due to her help, made her feel warm and fuzzy. Strangely, she thought she might miss sharing a room together, might miss seeing the steady rise and fall of Coco’s shoulders that meant, just for now, she’d let go of her burdens and decided to let herself rest.
“Goodnight, Coco,” Agott whispered, knowing there would be no response. Then she let her eyes fall shut, and drifted into her own deep slumber.
She dreamed of a faraway village, and folding clothes by hand with a beautiful girl.