Work Text:
The first few times they had snuck out of the Great Hall, Olruggio’s master had blamed Beldaruit for raising his apprentice to be just as eccentric and willful as he was, his every action flying in the face of the unspoken rules of witch society– however, it quickly became clear that Olruggio was just as guilty as Qifrey. Every chance he got, Olruggio was leaping through a windowway with Qifrey at his side. He was not a fearful child who never wanted to see the outside world again like so many thought, at least not when his best friend was so easily awed by things Olruggio had once taken for granted. It reinvigorated him; he saw the world through a new lens whenever Qifrey came across something he’d never seen before. Even snow had some of its wonder return the first time Olruggio had watched Qifrey roll around in it, tentatively taste it, throw it by the handfuls at Olruggio until both of their cloaks were soaked through and they were huffing for breath.
It meant that even when they had nowhere in particular to go, they left the Great Hall. Tonight was like that; there was some event going on down below that neither apprentice wanted to attend, so they had slipped away before their masters could force them into their formalwear.
On aimless nights like these, when they let their feet guide them, they always found themselves back at Naakiwan Downs, near that dilapidated old shepherds hut, where the stars stretched out forever overhead and were nearly bright enough that they didn’t need their lanterns.
They sat on the remnants of an interior wall of the old hut, unwrapping their spoils that they’d swiped from the kitchens; plenty of sweets, little pastries that would have been passed out from silver platters, candied fruits crusted with crushed nuts and a decanter of weak, sweet wine that they set aside reverently. The wine was Olruggio’s score, and they had never stolen alcohol before. They weren’t even sure if they would drink it, but just knowing it was there and an option was exciting. They ate and chatted as they had a hundred nights before, until Qifrey suddenly stopped– Olruggio could practically see his ears perking up.
“What’s up?” He asked around a mouthful of fruit, leaning forward as Qifrey craned his neck, eventually setting aside his food to climb onto the low brick wall. A silence hung between them for a moment, interrupted by a strange, low whimper. Before Olruggio could say anything, Qifrey had jumped down and was running up the slope of the hill, the crest covered in a spray of wildflowers before dropping off into a craggy, low cliffside. Qifrey had nearly plummeted clean off of, Olruggio grabbing him by the back of his cloak and yanking him to safety.
“It’s a dragon!” Qifrey barely acknowledged Olruggio’s rescue, instead grabbing him by the arm and dragging him to the cliff edge. “It’s only a baby, too!”
Sure enough, in the shallow valley below was a dragon around the size of a pony. It was laid out awkwardly on the rocky ground, its chest raising slowly with careful breaths. It had one perfectly formed wing held close to its body, but the other one was malformed, smaller, with the membrane torn and full of holes.
“It’s hurt!” Qifrey cried, and before Olruggio could stop him he had pressed his sylph shoes together and taken off, slowly lowering himself down into the valley below. He landed only a handful of metres away from the dragon’s head, the creature blinking its eyes heavily at him. Olruggio cursed under his breath before following after Qifrey, his stomach in knots. He had a bad feeling about this. “Poor thing, it must have fallen during migration… I wonder where its parents are…”
Olruggio scratched at his palms nervously, following Qifrey’s careful footsteps. The dragon wasn’t very reactive to their presence, its deep, slow breaths ruffling Qifrey’s hair, the ribbon that decorated his cap flapping like a pennant behind him, “Qifrey…”
Ignored again. Qifrey rummaged through his bag until he found his vapor bubble, opening it carefully so as to not frighten the creature. Reaching out as far as he could, he carefully tipped the bottom of the vapor bubble until water gently spilled out by the dragon’s snout. After a moment, the dragon’s tongue curled out to lap slowly at the cool water. Qifrey’s gasp was one of excitement, fear, the heady mix of the two.
“Olly! Here, hold this while I go find some food!” Qifrey’s voice was only loud enough for Olruggio to just make out his words, but it was filled to the brim with excitement. There was no talking to him, so Olruggio simply took the vapor bubble and watched over his shoulder as his friend scrambled back up the cliffside. “We’re going to save a dragon!”
“Yeah…” Olruggio said weakly, but he knew the truth. Olruggio had grown up in the harsh northern climate where plenty of animals hid in the thick conifer forests that had surrounded the magical city he had been raised in. Only the strongest offspring survived; imperfect ones were often rejected by their parents, whether it be a deformity on the outside or something wrong on the inside, the parents always seemed to know and rather than waste resources on offspring that might not make it, they instead cut their losses.
It was awful, but it was also just the way things were in nature. All living things returned to the earth eventually. Some sooner than others.
But how could Qifrey possibly understand? He didn’t have any normal life experiences, especially when it came to wildlife and growing up around it. He had never found the frozen carcass of a deer in a roadside ditch, or seen a snake stealing eggs from a nest. And he loved dragons. There would be no way to tell him that this dragon was basically already dead. It was too thin and with its mangled wing, it couldn’t push itself up out of the valley. It had probably been here for a day or two already, its strength slowly fading while its flock flew off overhead. If anything, they would only be prolonging its suffering by feeding it.
Olruggio sniffled wetly, wiping his nose on his sleeve when he heard Qifrey returning. He had pilfered any scrap of meat he could from the food they’d stolen from the kitchens, carrying it in a napkin. “We can fetch some more tomorrow.”
“I’ll… I’ll start a fire.” Was all Olruggio could say. He set aside the vapor bubble and cleared a space for a pyreball array. Qifrey was trying to restrain his joy when he got close enough to the dragon to offer it the meat directly from his hands, though the dragon only gave the food an unenthusiastic huff.
“That’s alright, eat when you’re ready,” Qifrey soothed, setting down the small bundle before oh so carefully reaching out to pat the smooth, glimmering scales between its eyes. He’d never been so close to the creatures he loved so much, and he sat there stroking its massive head for a long time, though no matter how often he tried, the dragon wouldn’t take any of the food offered.
“I think it's really sick,” Olruggio said after some time. Qifrey had gotten himself well and truly settled with the dragon’s head in his lap, convinced that it must be a domesticated dragon that its herder would miss sooner or later, and would come back to rescue it. Olruggio couldn’t tell if Qifrey was lying to himself or if he really thought that was possible, but either way he didn’t have the heart to tell his friend the plain truth. The dragon was dying, otherwise it never would have let a human so close. If Qifrey had heard Olruggio’s comment, he said nothing, just curled around the dragon a little more. “... You should get some sleep. I’ll keep an eye on it. It likes you, it will probably go to sleep too.”
Qifrey fought sleep a little longer, but eventually he couldn’t help but nod off, his cloak rolled up and tucked behind his head as a makeshift pillow. Olruggio watched over the pair for as long as he could, trying to think his way through how to handle Qifrey’s grief when the inevitable happened… But by the time his eyes got too heavy to keep open, he hadn’t come up with any solutions. He would just have to muddle through on the spot.
***
Olruggio woke to the sound of sobbing and sunlight pouring over the cliffside into the small valley. On the other side of the spluttering pyreball, Qifrey was kneeling on the ground, his thin shoulders trembling and his hands white-knuckled where they clutched his cloak. The dragon was dead. It lay where it always had, its head tipped slightly to one side. Its huge eyes were half closed, and what was visible was glassy and sightless, with the membrane of its secondary lid caught in the corners, dry and unmoving. Olruggio stood up slowly, stepped around the camp fire, and carefully reached out to lay his hands over Qifrey’s shoulders. Qifrey jolted under his hands, tipping his head back to look at his friend. His face was a mess of snot and tears, his snow-white cheeks turned red and blotchy. He had been crying so hard that he’d given himself hiccups.
Something about Qifrey’s face gave Olruggio a sense of deja vu. His chest felt tight, and for a moment his head throbbed like someone was pressing down on his skull from above. He tried to shake the feeling off, crouching down to wrap his arms around Qifrey from behind, hugging him tightly against his chest.
“I’m sorry, Qifrey,” Olruggio mumbled against his friend’s shoulder. “There’s nothing you could have done.”
Qifrey's silence hung heavy between them. What he wanted to scream was that he was a witch. What was the point of witches if they couldn’t even save a dragon? Why was there nothing he could have done, when he had so much power in his hands? But they were pointless questions. He knew why his magic couldn’t save a dragon, just as he knew why it couldn't restore his right eye. He turned meekly in Olruggio’s arms, wrapping his arms around his friend in return. Olruggio sat very still, like Qifrey was an owlcat finally climbing into his lap after days of hiding under the sofa. His hands rested on Qifrey’s shoulderblades, and when this touch seemed to be accepted, he gently rubbed circles there.
“I don’t… Maybe it won’t make you feel better, but think of it this way. Even though it’s sad that this dragon is dead, there are lots of things that will flourish because of it.”
“... There are?” Qifrey sniffled, rubbing his wet face against Olruggio’s shoulder.
“Yeah. Um. The scalewolves have pups this time of year… This dragon will provide them with lots of food, so all their pups will get to grow up.” Olruggio explained as gently as he could. Qifrey was almost a dead weight in his arms, leaning heavily into Olruggio as he listened. Olruggio’s hands trembled faintly, moving over Qifrey’s back nervously. “And there are carrion birds that can feed their chicks the same way. A-and they can use the dragon’s scales in their nests to make them strong.”
Qifrey remained quiet, so Olruggio struggled on, unsure if this was helping at all.
“The decomposing body also helps the soil. In the end, the dragon will be reclaimed by the earth entirely, and then, w-well… Maybe it will be reborn as something even better next time around.” He concluded clumsily, slumping back to sit on his legs. Qifrey let him put some space between them, but his hands curled into the hem of Olruggio’s cloak, keeping them tethered.
“Better than a dragon?” There was a tinge of humour in Qifrey’s voice, even when it was still thick with grief. His hiccups had settled, his cheeks starting to dry. “I know you’re right… It just doesn’t seem fair. It’s not the dragon’s fault that it had a bad wing, and it even got this far in its migration, but in the end it was still left behind…”
Olruggio grabbed Qifrey’s hand so fast and so tight that it made Qifrey jump. Still, Olruggio didn’t let go, leaning forward so that their foreheads were nearly touching. “Qifrey. Dragons might be really smart, but in the end, they’re still animals. People aren’t the same. Just because someone is… different, doesn’t mean they’ll be left behind. Someone will always be willing to take care of them. Some people would– w-would even consider it an honor to take care of someone like that. They would dedicate their whole lives to it.”
Qifrey's pale eye was mostly pupil in that moment, and looking into it was like staring into a starry night sky, but also the darkest depths of the ocean. If Olruggio wasn’t careful, he might fall in. “Olly… You’re so funny sometimes.” Qifrey said. There was no mirth in his tone, his eye downcast. “I know people are different from dragons. I just wish this dragon hadn’t died.”
“O-oh.” Olruggio mumbled. “Yeah. Me too.”
“We should go back to the Great Hall. Maybe we’ve been gone long enough that our masters will be more worried than angry at us for skipping that gala.” Olruggio had completely forgotten that they’d shirked their duties the night before– sure, they were allowed to explore the outside world as much as they wanted since passing the third test, but their masters still expected them to give them some face from time to time. So they left the valley, but not before gently laying a crown of flowers on the dragon’s head. They walked back through the shepherd hut’s ruins, their snacks from the night before now being picked over by birds. The wine had been knocked over, the bottle smashed against the stones.
Olruggio stopped in the remains of a threshold, peering out across the rolling hills around them, the forest and wild flowers.
“Hey, Qifrey?”
“Yeah?” Qifrey came to a stop beside him, following his gaze to see what was so interesting.
“Do you still want to live here, once we leave the Great Hall?”
“I do,” Qifrey smiled, turning back toward the valley where the dragon lay. A soft breeze picked up, ruffling Qifrey from head to toe, like it might pick him up and send him tumbling through the sky like an autumn leaf or bright white apple blossom. “I want to see what grows here.”