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Coco had disappeared and the atelier was a wreck.
In hindsight, they should have guessed that she would leave after presenting the occupants with “random” gifts left outside their bedroom doors in the middle of the night, but the panic that came with finding no trace of her after trying to seek her out to thank her for them still rose like the tide.
Qifrey and Olruggio had set out immediately to try and find their missing apprentice, leaving Beldaruit with the others, and they scoured the area before slowly spiralling out to Kahln and beyond, but all they found was Coco’s cap discarded on a grassy bank. They’d returned home, heads bowed, only to find the other three apprentices a wreck after finding a note that had fluttered off Coco’s bed simply detailing “I’m sorry”.
They’d all sat in the living room then, listless, while Brushbuddy kept running around the atelier to try and find his owner, letting out little nbii noises of heartbreak. Eventually, Agott had scooped the little creature up, burying her face into his fur while murmuring that Coco wasn’t coming back.
The atelier had remained stagnant for days, Agott snapping back into work with a focus that alarmed the rest. Richeh retreated into her hidden room to curl into a ball to deal with losing another family member after Riliphin, while Tetia hid under her covers, holding Coco’s favourite summer dress close to her while she cried.
Olruggio had tugged Qifrey after him, and they could be found workshopping location spells that returned nothing. Olruggio laid a glowstone path leading away from the atelier’s doors in case Coco came back home, and Qifrey prepared her favourite foods, storing them in a container that would keep them forever fresh. These were not moved from the coffee table, everyone working and eating around it when they emerged.
Coco didn’t return, but hope remained.
Coco was not having a good time. Restys and Ininia had returned for her after she had made it a while away from the atelier, screaming their names into the wind and begging for them to take her so she could atone for all her mistakes.
She’d seen the initial searches as they commenced, cloaked in an undetectable invisibility spell Ininia had shown her, and her heart shattered as she listened to her two father-figures shout her name over the cliffs with increasing desperation. She watched them take her cap from where she’d been forced to depart from it, and Coco broke. She stifled her sobs into her sleeves and pretended that as they left, her heart and soul wasn’t going with them.
But this was for them. One day they’d understand.
“Coco?” Restys--no, Master Restys--called to her. They landed lightly on a branch in front of her, and tilted their head sideways at her. With a swoop of their hand, the invisibility dispelled, but they kept their arm outstretched. “Will you not be coming home with us?”
Coco sniffed one last time before taking the proffered arm, and the two vanished into smoke.
She would return one day.
Coco growled in frustration, throwing herself to the floor and covering her head with her hands. The Brimmed Caps were meant to know so much more than Pointed Caps, yet there was not a single book that described how to rid herself of the spell on her mother and house. The only reason she’d come in the first place was to gain some sense of normality back, try and salvage the ruins of her life. Yet she couldn’t even do that.
“Coco?” A voice said softly, and she looked up to see Ininia crouched in front of her. “Are you alright?”
Tears welled in Coco’s eyes as Ininia reminded her of Tetia in that moment. She’d been crying a lot more than usual nowadays as she hit dead end after dead end, and she missed both the families she’d left behind. She saw Custas and Tartah enter the room then, sitting cross legged nearby and watching her despondent form.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she murmured in reply, and Ininia only hummed.
Coco was pulled to her feet in the next second and pulled towards the stairs of their atelier by the other girl, but she really wasn’t in the mood for fashion today. She wasn’t much interested in anything nowadays.
“I’m sorry, Ininia,” she said softly, tugging her hand gently out of the other girl’s. “I need to…to go do something.”
She turned on her heel at that, and fled out the front door. She needed to see her mother.
She’d been sitting on the grass on the crest of the hill leading to her first home for a while, just staring straight ahead and mourning the life she used to have once upon a time.
While magic was just a pipedream, and couldn’t hurt any of the people she loved.
“Coco?” a familiar voice rang out, and she turned to see a shock of white hair crest the hill, accompanied by a white skirt and cloak.
Her eyes widened in terror then, and she backed up two steps away from Qifrey, who was holding out a hand towards her in clear invitation, like he had all those months ago. Like when he was trying to convince Coco her secrets could also be his to bear.
She’d taken his hand, then. She wasn’t so sure she could take it now. And yet…
“Master,” she croaked, and he rushed up the hill to hold her, just as he’d always done. She started sobbing then, unable to stop as she leant against the man who had been her anchor for close to a year.
He held her until the tears stopped and turned into sniffles, like she was twelve again and she had singed his hair with a fire spell. He’d promised he was alright, but she’d cried at the possibility of hurting another one of her parents.
“Oh, Coco,” he breathed. “You’ve gotten so big.” Tears pricked at his own eyes in return. “Will you come home? Just once?”
She shook her head, tears falling once more as she trembled. “I can’t. I’ve already put you all into…into so much danger, and you can’t afford to have the Knights on your back any more than you already have. And…And the silverwood, I don’t know if the silverwood can handle any more stress. And I need to find a cure for my mother. But-”
She cut herself off then, but the squeeze of her hand stopped her from dissolving once more. And so it was then that she made her last tearful confession.
“But I miss all of you.”
He tugged her into his side, resting his chin on her head. She could hear the rumble of his voicebox as he spoke, the hitch of his breath as he tried to breathe through it just as she was. “You brave, brave girl, Coco. You have nothing to atone for, you won’t have the Knights on our backs. If it wasn’t you putting us into danger, it would be something else, someone else.” He stopped, exhaling once before stroking her hair once more. “I understand if you can’t come home yet, but know our doors are always open for you. We’re all waiting.”
She took in a shaky breath, nodding, before spotting a shrouded figure at the bottom of the hill. And it was with regret that she pulled away from Qifrey. “I…I have to go.”
He watched as she was tugged into Restys’ side, much as he did to her before, and she cast Qifrey a tentative smile and a mouthed “I love you” before she vanished into midair.
Qifrey sank to his knees, and tried to stop his heart from breaking all over again.
“I saw her today,” he announced to the atelier in a broken voice as he returned to his apprentices. “I saw Coco.”
“And she was alright?” Richeh spoke, sounding quieter than normal.
“Yes. I think she was.”
It was a lie, of course, but relationships in this community were built off lies, and lies were all they had now.
Coco had a new mission now.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she breathed, before taking out a fresh sheet of paper and starting to plan how to remove a silverwood seed.
Specifically from Qifrey.
It had taken months, months of planning and reiterating and editing and adjusting to get the spell just right, but Coco had finally done it. There was a single copy of the spell left under her pillow so someone could do the same for Custas if they loved him enough, and she didn’t doubt Tartah did. But this wasn’t her issue now.
Saving Qifrey was.
Despite her heartbreak, her sullen moods and her anger, this atelier had also been good to her, and so it was with a tinge of regret that she stepped into the night, closing the door and pressing a hand to it as if to say a last goodbye. They’d forget about her soon enough.
Coco pressed her feet together and let her sylph shoes fly her away, all the way to Qifrey’s atelier. She landed silent as a mouse, just before the glowstone path painstakingly maintained by Olruggio in case Coco came home.
Well.
She was here now.
The path lit up underneath Coco’s feet, and she stifled a sob at how the atelier was preparing for her to return home even when hope was draining day by day.
The door creaked open as it always did, but she wasn’t prepared to see Olruggio and Qifrey sitting at the kitchen table by lamplight. (She didn’t know, but they did this every night.) The floorboard creaked under her foot as she took another step, and then they were looking up sharply and their eyes were widening with disbelief.
The door swung shut behind Coco as she was enveloped by two pairs of arms, holding her as if she was the most precious thing in the world.
“Hi,” she murmured into the space between them, and then she was abruptly released and held by the shoulders by Olruggio, who was turning her around and seeing if she had so much as a cut on her.
Coco laughed and laughed and laughed at this, because otherwise she’d cry, and she had a very important mission, and she couldn’t afford a breakdown. Not yet.
“Missed you both,” she whispered, and then they were laughing too, and they were a mess on the floor.
One of the doors creaked above, and a bedraggled head of pink peeked out of the bedrooms. Once she spotted Coco though, she let out a shriek that woke up the other two sleeping apprentices, and the next thing Coco knew there was a pile of girls and their masters and she was right at the bottom, surrounded by her family.
“Are you…are you coming back to stay?” Agott spoke timidly, holding Coco’s hand in hers as though to memorise every line and ink stain.
“I’m…I’m not sure,” she said softly, and their faces fell as one. “It depends how well Master Qifrey takes his gift and if this even works.”
The aforementioned man looked up from taking in every detail of Coco, startled. “Me?”
“Yep,” she said more cheerily than she felt. “We do need to go outside for it, though.”
She led him outside, followed by the others, and then when they were far enough from the atelier, she spoke again.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” were her next words, and then there was a seal pressed against Qifrey’s bare skin and he closed his eye.
For a minute there was painpainpain, and Qifrey felt certain he was going to die. The others lurched forward at his cry, but then he was engulfed in light, and then it died down, and then he blinked open…two eyes?
And in front of him was Coco, but there was something terribly wrong, and she was curled on the ground in pain. Olruggio had gone to check on her, and for a terrible second he was afraid she wouldn’t wake up, but then she uncurled to lie on her back and…
And Qifrey felt his heart stop.
“I didn’t think it would hurt this much,” Coco huffed out, before blinking open one eye. And the other was occupied by the seed that had haunted his entire life, and he dropped to his knees in front of her.
“Coco!” he breathed out, shocked.
She rolled over to squint at him. “Your eyesight really is terrible, Master,” was all she said, and it was enough for him to snap out of his terror and inspect just what his beautiful, talented apprentice had done to herself.
A trembling hand landed on his cheek, and she looked at him with his electric blue eye full of fear and bittersweet melancholy. “Don’t cry, Master Qifrey,” she added. “This was…this was my gift to you. A sorry and a thank you, I suppose. And you of all people deserve that chance to live a better life. A full life. Me? I lost my chance at redemption the minute I donned that brimmed cap.”
She didn’t get the chance to say anything else as he tugged her into his lap with a cry, holding her close to himself and feeling her small hands clutch at the back of his robes.
“At least now you’ll have a badass silverwood tree in your garden,” was the last thing she said, sounding content, and then she let out one more breath and began to sprout.
Boughs grew from arms, and roots grew from legs, and branches melded out of her missing eye to join to the others, ripe with silver leaves that haunted Qifrey’s nightmares. She blinked at him, at all of them, tiredly. “I…didn’t think that was going to happen so quickly. But…” She stopped, swallowing, and began another sentence instead. “Live your life well, all of you,” she murmured to her captivated, horrified audience. And then she turned to him. “I love you, dad. Don’t forget me.”
And then she was gone. And Qifrey’s world broke again.
The clock struck midnight with twelve chimes.