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Qifrey’s eye flutters open, his breath stuttering as he returns to consciousness. The beat of his heart is loud in his ears and he can feel it pulsing where his hand is crumpled against his chest. It takes him a moment to remember where he is. First, he becomes aware of various discomforts. One of his arms is dead asleep, smushed beneath his body and pricking with static as his breathing steadies and he shifts slightly. The right side of his face is pressed against the seam of the tome he evidently had been reading, and his empty eye socket pinches with a residual soreness from the pressure of being laid upon. He tries to right himself, and finds that he’s all tangled up in his dress and robe, twisted around his legs. He closes his eyes again for a moment and tries to steady his breathing, his heart still fluttering rhythmically with the remnants of a brief and troubled dream.
The liminal moment when he hangs at the tail-end of sleep – those few seconds of half-conscious blackness before he returns to the waking world – always brings his fragile mind back to the coffin, the soil, the roots, the rain. Only for a moment, a flicker of fear. But it’s enough that he nearly always wakes with a jolt, a feeling like he’s just been running and has barely escaped back to himself, back to the light. That pool of blackness, waiting to swallow him, usually taunts him for long and anxious minutes before he is ever able to fall asleep, and it’s rare that he drops off with any ease. Tonight, he must’ve been particularly exhausted.
He opens his eye again, coming back to himself fully and wriggling himself upright a bit. The soft warm glow of lamps illuminates the space he now remembers – Olruggio’s dorm room. He’s on the floor, lying amongst a jumble of floor cushions and pillows tossed from the bed, upon which they’d strewn about an array of books, scrolls, and sketchpads. They’d been in the throws of invention, some scheme to harvest crystals that Olruggio had sworn were hiding between the stones of a nearby riverbed they’d been splashing in all day prior.
Looking down and maneuvering to untangle his legs, he realizes he’s still wearing the clothes that Olruggio had lent him – his own were hanging above the washbasin, dry, but caked in mud and bits of river-weed. His clumsy feet had earned him a fall right into a mucky pool as they were making their way back across the fallen logs that led out of their secluded swimming-hole. He wrangled his foot free of the soft blue dress that was only a tad too small for him, and found another foot, not his own, tucked underneath the edge of his fuzzy velvet night-robe. His gaze follows the outstretched leg up to find the sprawled form of his best friend beside him on the pillows, peacefully conked out, mouth slightly open as his gentle breaths huff into the silence of the room. Qifrey realizes they must have been asleep for quite a while, for the silence is all about them, and not a footstep or soft echo of any voice can be heard in the adjoining rooms and corridors, meaning it must be late into the night now.
Qifrey sighs and stretches his neck, rolling further onto his back to free his numb limb from beneath his torso and shaking his limp wrist. He flexes his fingers, waiting as a tingling sensation begins to creep back into the digits. He pushes away the book that had served as his hard pillow, using his sleeve to sop up a small puddle of drool he’d left between the pages. Then he reaches up to pull over a more fitting cushion and settles back down upon it.
Now fully awake but feeling no inclination to leave the cozy little nest they’d made here on the floor, Qifrey takes a deep breath, letting the familiar feeling of the room wrap itself around his tired mind. It smells of Olruggio, a mix of smoke and heady spices that lingers from the incense his master often lights to soften the tinge of burnt paper that hangs in the air. But more than that, Qifrey can smell that subtler, more indescribable scent of the other boy clinging to the clothes he’s wrapped in. It’s a smell he could recognize anywhere now, having spent most of his days for the past year never more than a few feet from his best friend. A smell that had come to mean safety, comfort, joy. He dips his chin, bringing the collar of the night-robe up to his nose and breathing in. It sends a soft wave of tingles down the back of his neck, and he loves the feeling. He raises his gaze, and softly, tentatively, studies Olruggio’s sleeping form.
He’s flopped on his back, arms flung out, with his spellbook open and facedown on his chest, which rises and falls with a gentle rhythm. It’s slower than Qifrey’s own, and as he lays and watches his friend, he tries to match the steady fall of his carefree breaths. Inhale – one of Olruggio’s fingers twitches. Exhale – his long, dark lashes flutter against his soft cheek. Inhale – the movement of a little brown mole beneath his lower lip as his mouth opens slightly. Exhale – the glow of warm lamplight on his shiny black hair, falling softly against the pillow. He looks so peaceful. Happy, even in sleep. A light in the darkness.
Qifrey’s own measured breaths are drawn carefully. His heart has begun once again to thunder in his ears, but not out of fear. This time, it’s something else, something that flows like warm honey in his veins, something that sets his skin alight and buzzes in his ears. He can’t tear his eyes away from Olruggio beside him, revelling, though he does not know why, in his secret observations. If the sleeping boy were to open his eyes at that moment, he knew that he would retreat, would cast his gaze away, as he so often does in daylight. But he doesn’t want to look away. He never does, not when Olruggio smiles at him with that conspiratorial grin, gap between his teeth. Not when he catches his gaze across the room and pulls a ridiculous face, tongue out and eyes crossed. Not when he takes his hand and pulls him, headlong, into some new adventure for the day. But time and time again, when struck with the shining light of his friend’s face, Qifrey ducks his watery gaze to his own boots, as if he fears to be blinded. Because so often, he swears he can feel the sting of that brightness like a lit match behind his empty eye, and he recoils before he can be burned.
After that night Olruggio had first followed him out the window-way, the night they became true friends, it hadn’t taken long for Qifrey’s meager attempts at coldheartedness to fall away entirely. His haphazardly constructed walls hadn’t stood a chance against Olruggio’s persistent, foolhardy kindness, especially when he’d known from the moment they met that he didn’t truly want his barriers to remain. He wanted to bask in the light that was shone on him. But so often, he still felt completely helpless, almost frozen, in the face of it. He still never felt that he truly deserved it – Olruggio’s friendship, his steadfast dedication. But he didn’t want to let it go. Even when it stung, when it made his skin crawl in that strange way he didn’t understand, even when it hurt. Sometimes, when Oluggio would say something particularly kind to him, when he would throw his arm around him or lean his head on his shoulder, Qifrey was struck with an ache that seemed to seep out his bones, a stinging in his nerves that would seize his breath in his lungs. It had happened enough times that Olruggio had even accepted his sour faces, his awkward fumbles, and his hasty escapes as something that Qifrey just did. Just something he needed to do, because he was…different.
But Qifrey couldn’t accept it, because it didn’t feel like him when it happened. It felt like something else, something he couldn’t see but could feel, looming in the inky darkness at the edges of his mind. He wants to drive it away, to drench the shadows in sunlight and banish them forever. He doesn’t understand why, in those moments when the sun is warmest on his skin, when Olruggio smiles up at him from the riverbed, eyes shining, the shadows don’t retreat at all – they reach their hands around his throat and squeeze, harder.
He feels them squeezing now, in the dim light of Olruggio’s room, as he lays still and breathes and stares at the boy beside him. Olruggio’s nearest outstretched hand lies palm up, inviting, only a few inches from Qifrey’s own clenched fist. He feels a wriggle in his stomach. Butterflies, Olruggio says. Like the warm fuzzies. Olruggio holds his hand all the time, and he doesn’t usually get them, but now they feel like they may burst out him as he unclenches his fingers one by one.
He wants to reach out, wants to fold his chilly fingers into Olruggio’s warm ones.
He moves his hand, the tiniest inching motion, almost as if it seeks to escape his own notice. His heart stutters in his chest.
He wants to feel the smooth patches of skin on the pad of his thumb, and the base of his wrist, and the side of his pinky, where he’s burned himself and it’s scarred over.
He reaches his pointer finger, slowly, until it brushes Olruggio’s pinky. His blood is beating in his ears and he feels hot.
He wants to feel Olruggio’s hand clasp and hold him gently, just before he opens his eyes and sees him and smiles, a soft, sweet smile. A smile just for him.
He curls his pointer and thumb around Olruggio’s pinky and ring fingers, and everything else in the room fades away. It is as if this one spot, this connection point, alight with warmth, is the thing that anchors him to this world. He holds his breath. Then, Olruggio shifts slightly in his sleep, letting out a soft humm, and his hand squeezes gently around Qifrey’s.
Qifrey freezes – and then he feels it start to burn. The butterflies start to gnaw rapidly at his insides, searing a path from his stomach up his spine and into his throat. The warm fuzzies become piercing static in his ears as pain jolts through his skull, and he recoils, snatching his hand away from Olruggio and covering his mouth so as not to cry out. This is it, this is the feeling, the one that always makes him run away. But this is one of the worst times he can remember. Why? What is wrong with him? What has he done to deserve this? He curls into himself, pressing his face into the pillows and shaking as he tries to quell the feeling of something trying to push its way out of him. He feels his muscles seize as a wave of searing pain rips through him, setting his nerves alight. He whimpers, sucking air into his lungs and hissing it out slowly through his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut and feeling the darkness press against his eyelids.
He breathes, and breathes, and remembers the coffin, and remembers the rain, and remembers that he is empty, that he is nothing – and the darkness begins to seep into his throbbing head and push the pain away. He starts to feel less like he may explode and more like he just got over a bad fever. He sighs into the pillow.
He feels a hand on his shoulder.
“Qifrey?” Olruggio’s sleep-heavy voice whispers from beside him.
He stiffens. Could he pretend he was still asleep? His heart was beating fanatically and he was sweating, but he tried to still his breathing. The hand on his shoulder squeezes gently.
“Qifrey? What’s wrong?”
No luck. Olruggio knew him too well. A fresh thorn of pain twinges in his skull, and he twitches. Stiffly, he pushes his arms underneath him and sits up, nudging Olruggio’s hand off his shoulder. He raises his pale gaze from beneath his tousled, squashed bangs and finds his best friend’s concerned eyes boring into him. He looks away.
“Nothing. Just…had a bad dream.”
Olruggio’s brow furrows. His blue eyes dance back and forth across Qifrey’s pinched features, and for a moment, Qifrey doesn’t think he’ll accept the lie. But then Olruggio smiles, just a little, and leans back on his elbows.
“Well, you’re awake now, so it can’t get you no more, yeah?”
Qifrey’s heart twists. Oh, how he wished that could be true.
“...yeah.”
Olruggio yawns.
“What time is it? I don’t remember falling asleep.”
“I… don’t know.” It was always hard to tell time from within the watery fortress of the Great Hall, and Qifrey didn’t even feel like he knew where his body ended and the room began, let alone what hour it was. He felt dizzy, and as much as he wanted to curl back up into a ball and burrow into the pillows, he knew he couldn’t stay here – not where Olruggio could look at him, could see that he was hurting and try to help him. “I should go.”
“Aw c’mon, just sleepover! We’re already halfway there.” Olruggio giggles.
“No!” Qifrey squeaks, too quickly. “I…I should get back to my own room or – or my master will worry.” He starts to get up, and has to focus very hard on not keeling over. He manages to stand, and turns back only when he’s extricated himself from their mess of soft things.
Olruggio was frowning, his thoughts clear in his incredulous pout – Since when do you care about Master Beldaruit worrying? But he doesn’t argue.
“Okaaay. Your loss.” He makes a show of flopping back down into his nest of pillows, wiggling around and trying to look extra cozy. It just makes Qifrey’s head hurt.
“I’ll…see you tomorrow. Goodnight.” Sucking in a last deep breath, he cracks open the door, breaking the seal on the spell that was that room, and slips out into the corridor.
“Goodnight!” Olruggio calls in a loud whisper just as the door clicks shut.
Qifrey exhales, resting his forehead against the solid wood door for a moment. What had just happened? What was he feeling? He didn’t understand any of it: not the shivers of warmth, the fluttering in his stomach, the ache in his chest. Not the pain, not the fear, not the thing – the thing that had no name.
He feels like a ghost as he wanders through the dark, silent, empty halls back to his own room in Beldaruit’s wing. When he finally reaches his own bed, he drops onto it like a stone. Olruggio’s robe pooling around him, and his smell –
The pain again, a flicker behind his eye.
He sits up. As if his limbs move against his will, like an animal caught in a net, he throws the velvet robe off his shoulders, shoving it to the ground with his feet as he wrenches the dress over his head and tosses it across the room like it’s burned him.
He stares at their crumpled forms on the floor, shivering, breathing hard. He feels like he just did something cruel.
He buries himself beneath his blankets, curling into himself and pinching his eyes shut as a thick bubble of sadness wells in his throat. Then the tears come. His little body shakes with the effort of muffling his sobs as wave after wave crashes out of him. And he rocks himself, back and forth, back and forth, and the tears do not stop but eventually he falls into a drifting, stormy sleep.
That night, in his dreams, Olruggio is there. He holds out his hand, beckoning. Qifrey reaches out, and takes it – and he bursts into flame.