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Dappled by the long shadows of the setting sun, the deep woods are serene, alive with birdsong and the scent of dirt still damp from the last rain. There would be no signs that a brimmed cap passed through here, if not for Qifrey pushing through the underbrush with his guidance orb held aloft, a scrap of dark cloth inside.
He should be on the coastline west of the Naakiwan Downs right now, and not anywhere near as far from the atelier as the dense forests by the Tower of Tomes. He was supposed to be answering the requests of a growing village, gone far too long without a witch’s help after a tumultuous Silver Eve — helping repair the enchantment that cleansed their drinking fountain after a frozen winter, adjusting the spells powering their fishing boats. At least, this is what Qifrey told his apprentices and Watchful Eye he would be doing, before his departure the other day.
They are sweet, to believe him. Qifrey misses their laughter, and regrets every evening by the hearth with Olruggio that he won’t have, but today, the forest is beautiful. It calls him ever deeper, and so does the threat of danger — a comfort even as Qifrey’s heart races, even as his eye flicks to the spaces between the trees, waiting for the brimmed cap to fire a spell at him. So long as Qifrey is afraid, the roots that were his constant company remain silent, and he could do as he wished.
Despite all that he tells himself to keep the Silverwood at bay, there had been a time in his life when Qifrey felt truly at peace. No fear for his life, no anxiety over his secret and what he must do to keep it, no uncertainty due to a past he couldn’t remember. However brief, it was those early days after he had left Olruggio to become a travelling witch, before the distance became too much for Qifrey, with nothing but the open skies as his north star.
A part of Qifrey wonders if it is the tree in him — the wish to stand solitary, touched only by sunlight and wind, to be nothing but a resting place for all manner of squirrel and sparrow seeking shelter. There are days when that existence sings to him, with its promise of release and silence and decisiveness. He would grow in one place and never hurt another soul again, and when they broke off his withered branches to harvest casting ink, Qifrey wouldn’t feel a thing. The Tower had given him that much to remember, from his time with the brimmed caps.
Of course, maybe it was the guilt that kept the branches at bay while he travelled. All he had to do was remember the guileless trust in Olruggio’s eyes when Qifrey said his goodbyes to him at the Great Hall, acting as if he was planning to return before the seasons changed.
Well. In the end, he had.
Qifrey shook his head. With his last days spent entirely alone, he had had far too much time to think. He steps gently around a rabbit’s burrow now, and can’t help but smile at the shining eyes that track him, wary of harm.
“I’m only passing through,” Qifrey murmurs. There is only the mound of a single burrow here, rather than the many that would signify a warren. All these rabbits have are each other. Qifrey wonders if he is the first human they have seen today, or if the brimmed cap he is tracking came through this part of the wood too.
This lively forest is nothing like the black boughs of Thristas, but as ever, Qifrey’s mind walks in its circles, landing back in that place. In all his time researching his past as a child, Qifrey has never asked Beldaruit where exactly he was found. By the time Qifrey felt himself brave enough to even think of returning to his grave, to face the possibility of encountering a brimmed cap himself, Olruggio was following him everywhere. Placing Olruggio in such danger was not an option.
And perhaps there was part of Qifrey which wanted to keep the place where he began to himself. He has always been selfish, and even in this, he wanted something of his own that Olruggio had not given him. Even if it was only the brutality of his beginning.
This train of thought is distracting, and Qifrey’s boot slips on a moss-covered rock. His perception was always worse in dim light, the depths of the shadows flattening and making it harder to judge where to place his feet. He first discovered this during his boyhood, watching Olruggio maneuver through new landscapes without a second thought, or how while flying, he could gauge how heavily or gently to land with ease. As Qifrey grew older, watching what other witches took to easily while he made the extra effort, he came to realize that it was his lack of another eye which had caused him to fall into that thorny crevasse on his first misadventure with Olruggio. Qifrey just hadn’t been able to notice it fast enough, to register what that flat darkness meant, whereas someone with both eyes might have been able to save themselves from such an accident.
And because of his kind heart, Olruggio had followed Qifrey down through the sawbrush leaves, his vision unclouded. That was the beginning of Qifrey causing him injury. It was also where Olruggio had first called him a friend.
If Olruggio were here he would chastise Qifrey, tell him to turn on a light in these dim woods. Of course, a spell like that would tip off the brimmed cap he was chasing, if his lead pointed true. Qifrey continues, even as night settles in.
So he doesn’t notice the spell glyph trap until it is too late.
“You can’t be serious. Olly, it’s beyond saving.”
“Don’t say that!” Olruggio exclaims, the black ribbon on his hat whirling as he shoots Qifrey a glare. He clutches the wooden box tighter to his chest, and the raven tucked inside squawks pitifully. It’s an enormous bird — Olruggio had to cradle it in both of his arms to carry it back to the Great Hall, the open wound in its chest smearing blood all over his sleeves. They’re still stained red, even now. “Ignore this jerk.”
Qifrey crosses his arms, but keeps pace with Olruggio anyways, as they cross the mist basin back towards their quarters. After they had come across this injured bird, Olruggio made them turn back to get it some help, ending tonight’s adventure early. Huddled in its box, the raven nibbles weakly at the edge of the white bandages wrapped around its torso, which had been inexpertly applied by a bewildered Sinocia. “We should have left it there. It’s not our business.”
“And what — just let nature take its course?”
“Yes, Olly —”
“You can be so cold sometimes,” Olruggio huffs, and he glances down at the raven. “Don’t listen to Qifrey — you’ll be up and flying again in no time at all.” He smiles and reaches in, petting the top of the bird’s head with the back of a knuckle. Surprisingly, it doesn’t peck his fingers off. Despite its defencelessness, the raven seems to have taken quite well to Olruggio, hardly struggling at all on their journey to the healing spire.
Qifrey has heard that ravens are quite clever. Perhaps the creature can already sense that its time is drawing near, and would prefer to spend it warm and dry, in the company of a boy too gentle for his own good. “You’re only going to get attached to it, Olly. Sinocia said —”
“Sinocia said there’s a chance!” Olruggio snaps, with certainty this time. A stubbornness has settled in behind his eyes, and Qifrey knows to bite his tongue. When Olruggio got like this about something, there was no use in trying to dissuade him. This will be a lesson that Qifrey cannot save him from. “I’ll make sure it gets lots of rest, and I’ll feed it the medicine we got from the healing spire, a-and then it’ll —”
Qifrey shakes his head. Tuning out Olruggio’s deluge of justifications, he peers into the box to see the raven crane its neck, staring up at the ocean’s worth of water churning above them. Qifrey follows its gaze to watch a school of fish swirl overhead, their scales shimmering silver from the light of the Great Hall, before vanishing behind its towers. The bird’s reaction is understandable — Qifrey hadn’t been able to believe the audacity of witches either, in his first few months of living here.
For the next week, Olruggio is either holed up in his room or the library, crafting a soft nest made of sheep’s wool and strips of bark, or tinkering with warming or cooling spells if the bird seemed fussy. He listens carefully to its croaking, as if the raven could tell them what it needed, spends hours and hours stroking its feathers.
Still, Qifrey knows better. When Olruggio gives it a name after the creature gets through a particularly bad night, fretting all the while, Qifrey privately vows to never use it.
As the raven grows weaker, Qifrey makes the trek back and forth from their quarters to Sinocia for medicine and updates, despite her increasing bafflement and lack of advice. The doctors of the healing spire treat humans and not animals, after all. And being hardly older than they are, Sinocia is still learning the trade herself, but she’s the only one willing to entertain Olruggio and his particular patient. “I know it’s still in pain, but make sure to use the same dosage as last time. We’re at the limits of what an animal of its size can take, and anymore would be dangerous,” she says. Qifrey watches as Sinocia pours yet another tranquileaf tincture into a tiny vial, stoppers it. “I’m sorry that there isn’t anything more I can do.”
“Was any of this worth it?” Qifrey asks. Surely doctors must think of these things, the way witches are trained to consider the impacts of the spells they create. “It’s only going to live for a bit longer.”
Sinocia watches him carefully for a moment, before folding the vial in his hand with a smile too knowing for Qifrey’s liking. “I can feel that you’re worried about how much he cares for it, but Olruggio made his choice. Even if the raven passes, he’ll know he tried. Hopefully he will still have fond memories of his time with it.”
But what about the bird? Qifrey wonders, as he wavers outside of Olruggio’s room. He can hear the raven’s cries from here, and tries to remember the right dosage for the pain, but he can’t recall if it was two drops or three, nor how often. Sinocia is sure to only give them small amounts at a time, but Qifrey can’t help but think about how too much of a medicine can turn it into a poison. Though Olruggio should know the dose.
Olruggio does, and in the end, it doesn’t matter. After the medicine, the raven quiets, enough for Qifrey and Olruggio to return to their exercises on spell construction, much neglected over the last few days. Nestling into the bed Olruggio had made for it, the raven tucks its head under a wing, as twin pen nibs scratch away on paper.
It is dead before they are finished.
There is little else to say. Qifrey does not press the outcome of the lesson for Olruggio, and nor does he comfort him through his tears, but he does help him bury it. He leads a weeping Olruggio to the surface to do so, finds them an open meadow among the wildflowers. It hadn’t seemed right to Qifrey, to leave such a winged creature to rot in the sands of the seabed.
They never bring the raven up again. But years later, Qifrey sometimes finds Olruggio on the roof of their atelier, when taking a moment to himself. Leaning back on his hands, with his neck craned up. Watching the birds fly by.
The world lurches around him, and Qifrey is sent tumbling into the underbrush. Rolling to a stop, he reaches for his palm quire — but nothing moves in the forest except the sway of branches in the wind.
He isn’t wounded, and neither brimmed cap nor beast leap out at him. Nothing is wrong, except for the fact that this is not the same place Qifrey had been only moments ago. It is a deep midnight now, and he can hear the faintest rush of a body of water, out of sight somewhere nearby.
Had the brimmed cap left behind a teleportation trap, like that incident with the dragon’s maze in Kalhn? Or was this more of a temporary shunting of the space around him —
No. It had been brief, but Qifrey caught a glimpse of the central sigil of the seal, some of the signs around it. The spell had displaced Qifrey to both another place within this forest, and another time.
“…Qifrey? Is that you?”
Qifrey stumbles to his feet. He wheels around, and sees a person who no longer exists.
Olruggio. Olruggio, only a bit older than Qifrey’s apprentices are now. He stands utterly still, but there is the faintest quiver at his lip, clear as day on a clean-shaven face, as he takes in what could be a trick, or an illusion, or the truth. All possibilities pointing to the use of forbidden magic.
He is so much smaller than Qifrey remembers. “How… how did you know it was me?”
“Of course it’s you. Only you’re so… you,” Olruggio says, taking in Qifrey’s face, his long, smoke-coloured cloak. He takes a step closer to get a better look, off the forest path. Now that Qifrey has a moment to breathe, this place seems familiar. He must have been here before, possibly with Olruggio himself, on one of their explorations. “Um. Do you need help? Did you… did you use forbidden mag —?”
“No!” Qifrey waves his hands in dismissal of such an idea, and keeps them open, where Olruggio can see them. Was he always this trusting of Qifrey? To step towards him, to offer his help, even when Olruggio thought Qifrey had turned to forbidden magic? “Listen Olruggio, I fell into a trap. I’m — I’m from the —”
“Ohhhh, whew!” Olruggio heaves a sigh, and the tension bleeds out of him. He grins, crooked and boyish. “That’s a relief. If you’re from our future, then my plan is going to work!”
All at once, Qifrey knows where they are, when they are. This is the path back from the Tower of Tomes. A black ribbon hangs from Olruggio’s hat, not yet exchanged. Qifrey throws a glance down the path, towards — “You’re —”
“Yes.” And there is the palm quire, clutched tight in Olruggio’s hands. “It — my plan really works, then?”
“…It works. To this day, it still works.” Qifrey gets to grow up, because of what Olruggio will do. Because of what Olruggio is willing to do for him, over and over.
A thought passes through him, quick as a shadow. Qifrey could end this all now, before it even begins.
He could lie, send Olruggio in the wrong direction towards his younger self. Qifrey could delay him enough so that the tree takes over, and Olruggio is entirely too late.
Or there was Qifrey’s best and most detested method, the one he inherited from this night. The spell on his cap, hidden under the flap. A mirror to the one that must be in Olruggio’s palm quire, even now.
Lost in thought, Qifrey nearly misses what Olruggio says next. “Could you… could you tell me about it?”
“Tell you about what?”
“About us!” Olruggio exclaims, waving his arms. “What happens when we grow up? Who do we become? Do I finally get to grow a beard?!”
This is one of the worst nights of Qifrey’s life, but somehow, Olruggio still manages to warm his heart. “You’ll find out yourself soon, Olly. It won’t be any good if you hear it from me now.” Qifrey was certain the spell’s affect was temporary, but who knew what would be permanent from this?
Olruggio shakes his head. “You were surprised to see me. That means… I never tell you. Because I won’t remember it.”
He was always so much brighter than Qifrey. Always was, and always would be. “Ah. I suppose you’re right.”
“Then — then it’s okay! So, c-could you —?” Olruggio’s knuckles are white, as he grips the palm quire. His hands are shaking.
Qifrey wasn’t able to see it then, as distraught as he was himself. But Olruggio is afraid.
That won’t do. Qifrey settles down by a tree, pats the grass beside him. He tries to give what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “Come, sit.” Olruggio shuffles over, plopping himself down in an ungainly splay of limbs. He never did quite outgrow that habit. “It’s really not all that exciting. We live ordinary lives, like any other. Yes, you grow some facial hair. But more notably, you become a great inventor, known far and wide. Your skills are sought after by villagers and nobles alike, and even the Wises rely on your services, from time to time.”
“That seems… important. I seem important, like they always said I’d be.” Olruggio wraps his arms around his knees, rests his chin on them. “Hmm. And what are you doing, then? Where are you, while I’m out there being famous?”
Qifrey blinks. Their arrangement is so familiar to him it hadn’t occurred to him that he would need to explain it. When had that happened? “Well, I’m there with you. Or rather, you’re with me, in my atelier. As my Watchful Eye.”
“Really?” Olruggio lifts his head, his eyes going wide. “Where? We aren’t stuck in the Great Hall, are we?”
“No, no.” Oh, this makes Qifrey recall a conversation they would have years from now, his own surprise that Olruggio didn’t want to return to Ghodrey, never even considered it. Why would I? Olruggio had scoffed, and that had been that. “Remember that old shepherd’s hut you showed me, in the Naakiwan Downs? The one beneath the wyrmherders’ path? We eventually fixed it up ourselves, made it into a proper home for witches. It’s quiet in the hills, but sometimes the nomads of the plains pass through, and they know our names and we know theirs. And every viewing season, we watch the passage stars come down and the dragons fly past, make an evening of it. That’s our atelier.”
Beside him, Olruggio hangs onto every word. A slow smile grows across his face, until he laughs. “That’s the place you said you wanted, for when you grew up. That’s… it’s perfect.”
Then, to Qifrey’s horror, tears begin welling in Olruggio’s eyes. “Olruggio! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! I’m just —” He wipes at his eyes, hiding his face in his hands. “W-what else?”
Qifrey frowns, but Olruggio peeks between his fingers, waiting for him to continue. Well. There was so much Qifrey could say. “We have four curious, wonderful apprentices, all growing up to become fine witches.” They are so brave, like Olruggio is now. Seeing him again, talking to him again — it makes Qifrey want to be brave too. “Even if you aren’t their master, each of them adore you and seek your counsel on their spells, and you’ve taken to it like I’ve always known you would. And although sometimes you are locked up in your room for too many nights or I’m off attending to the students’ lessons, most days we share a meal together. Even two, if you haven’t lost yourself to your contraptions and make me worry for your health.”
“…It all sounds like a dream. For that to be our home.” Even as he keeps smiling, Olruggio’s shoulders shake, and the tears keep rolling down his face. “But it’s real? You promise it’s real?”
“It is. I wouldn’t lie to you about this, Olly.” Qifrey wishes he would never have to lie to Olruggio. He has ever since the night they first became friends.
Olruggio sniffs. “I — I know you don’t do hugs, but —”
Qifrey reaches over, wraps him up tight. Olruggio hugs him back hard enough to bruise. “…It’s alright,” Qifrey says, but his voice sounds hollow, even to his own ears. It is strange — he knows how to comfort his students, each in a way that they would accept. Qifrey knew his role, so it was not difficult — to offer his understanding, that unconditional support. But for his best friend, for this… the words fail to come to him. The feeling that Qifrey would naturally reach for isn’t there. “You’re okay.”
Olruggio pulls away. He wipes a last time at his face, but there are no more tears. “…It must be very lonely for you.”
“What do you mean?”
Olruggio stands, holds out a tiny hand to help Qifrey up. He must know his pyreball spell is running out, the one that Qifrey’s younger self is currently staring into while slowly losing himself to the Silverwood. And with as smart as Olruggio is, he must even know that this time slip spell that Qifrey is caught in won’t last forever. While Qifrey leans most of his weight on the trunk of the tree, he takes Olruggio’s hand to stand. “I’m glad we stuck together, even after we were grown up. But you, you’re… you’re still doing this. Alone.”
Oh, Olly. He was the one who was about to carve away pieces of his mind and commend his life into another’s hands. Yet he still felt sorry for Qifrey.
Qifrey shouldn’t be surprised. After all, this was also the boy that Qifrey promised his life to. This is the boy he has harmed, again and again.
And if Qifrey chose another path now, it would only be once more. “Can I see the spell?”
Olruggio holds his palm quire out to Qifrey, without hesitation. The swiftness of it catches Qifrey off guard. Because despite his efforts, the Olruggio years from now, the one waiting for him in their atelier — he has learned to doubt Qifrey, sensing that much is being hidden from him and only carefully choosing when to ask.
Even after their promise saved Qifrey from death, did they ever really know each other again, after this? What was Olruggio keeping alive, but someone only half-there, something wearing the face of his friend that he never truly knew again?
When Qifrey opens the palm quire, the wretched spell is waiting for him — but there is something… off about it.
It is his version of the memory erasure spell, their version, not the one used by the Knights Moralis or any other. But the glaives are longer than Qifrey has ever seen — Olruggio has never drawn it this way, and therefore, neither has he. “This is the spell you found, in the Tower of Tomes?”
Olruggio nods, leaning in to get a better view. “Something wrong with it? It’s what I’ve found, and the spell should work… though I’m not entirely sure how it works.”
He wouldn’t, of course. Some of these signs are elements of forbidden magic, lost to the pointed caps since the Day of the Pact. The dangers of casting a spell that one doesn’t fully understand has been drilled into them since their first day of learning at the Great Hall, but Olruggio has decided to trust what he found, because this is the only solution he has to save Qifrey.
However, Qifrey has spent the years since this night digging where he should not, and has learned that glaives decide how thoroughly the spell will imbed itself into one’s body. He knows little beyond that, though Qifrey knows one thing. This is not their spell. “Olruggio. Do you trust me?”
Of course, Olruggio surprises Qifrey again. He leans back a bit, to consider Qifrey, watch his face. “…I trust you,” Olruggio says, and he steps aside, to let Qifrey do what he needs to. Not unconditional like Qifrey thought, but weighed and measured. Calculated. And in this, Qifrey isn’t sure if he appreciates the conclusion Olruggio has come to.
He looks down at the palm quire and swallows. There had never been another path, had there? Qifrey takes out his pen and fills in some of the negative space, shortens the glaives. Corrects the spell. “This is what it looked like, when you first showed it to me. This is how I’ve drawn it since.” So, so many times.
Olruggio’s face is somber, as he takes the spell. Qifrey has never seen him look like this, in all the years he has known him. He watches Olruggio trace a finger over the changes Qifrey made, before closing the palm quire and clipping it to his belt. “You know, you saved me too. This whole time, really. You’ve been saving me.”
Qifrey doesn’t know what he means. “It is you, who have rescued me. Over and over, ever since we first met.”
“Exactly — ever since we first met.” Olruggio takes in a shaking breath, but steels onward. “You didn’t care who I was, or what I could do. You didn’t even want me around.”
“Olly —”
“I-I was so lost, after failing at Nauz. But you… you made it so easy for me. And maybe it was pathetic of me, but I could feel you needed my help. That you were someone I could….” Olruggio squeezes his eyes shut. And Qifrey knows what words he wants to say now, has finally figured out how he feels, but there is no use, to say it now. Soon, all of this will be gone too. “After I lost everything, you became my new home. And you taught me that I could still be the witch I dreamed of being.”
Qifrey swallows. He had never known. Or maybe, Qifrey had never let himself think of it like that. Under his cloak, he grips his hands together tight, until the bones grind against each other.
“And I wanted that for you too.” Olruggio gives him a wobbly grin and gestures to Qifrey, his arms wide. “And here you are!”
Impossibly, Qifrey finds himself smiling back, even as a tear runs down his face. It’s not one of his practiced smiles. It rises unbidden, and gives nothing in the way of comfort. That’s alright. Their time is almost up, and everything that has transpired here will vanish with it. “We’re more than partners in pain then, hm?”
Olruggio frowns, some of the solemnity falling away in his puzzlement. “That sounds so grim.” He steps away from Qifrey and back onto the path, out of the underbrush. “I have to go now. Get back safely, alright?”
“I will,” Qifrey says, softly. “I’ll see you soon.”
With one last look back, Olruggio walks away, to do what he does best and save someone who needs saving. And as Qifrey did before, and as he will tonight, while choked by silver leaves — he watches Olruggio until he vanishes behind the trees.
There were nights where Qifrey bitterly wishes that none of this had ever come to pass. But here, for this moment — Qifrey hopes that Olruggio can feel, beyond word or memory, his gratitude.
“Hey, Qifrey — you got a minute?”
Qifrey looks up from his lesson plans, half-finished and scattered across the kitchen table as Olruggio takes the seat across from him, fiddling with something glowing in his hands. His beard is overgrown, and he looks haggard and underfed, but no more than his usual in the days before a Silver Eve. Though Qifrey wishes Olruggio would not keep such a yearly tradition at all. Before he departs with the girls, Qifrey will have to cook something easy for Olruggio to portion out for himself over the next few days, for those fleeting moments where he remembers to eat. A hearty stew would do, or a thick curry with rice. Qifrey would have to make both and perhaps something else, really, so that Olruggio has a variety to choose from. “Is that the next version of your phantasmal fireball spell?”
“Thought I’d show you my latest revision.” Qifrey accepts it, turns the contraption over in his hands to admire Olruggio’s work. The once-open flame now glimmers behind a clear crystal, its dangers effectively caged. “What do you think?”
“Between you and me, the first version of your spell was beautiful too,” says Qifrey, watching the unburning fire flicker. There was something about Olruggio’s flames — a core of warmth in their light that drew his eye, a dance to them that Qifrey could never quite find in any other. It made him want to punch through the crystal with his fingers, be he burned or cut or safe after all. “It’s almost a shame it has to be confined like this.”
“You know it must be. Would lead to a world of hurt if it wasn’t.”
When Qifrey goes to give the contraption back to its maker, he notices that Olruggio takes it with his non-dominant hand. Qifrey’s eye flicks to his other and catches a glimpse of raw, pink skin at the dip of Olruggio’s palm, the tell-tale swell of a fresh burn. “Olruggio, you should have said something!” Qifrey scolds, reaching for his pen and palm quire. Oh, how he hated it when Olruggio hurt himself. “What happened to wearing your gloves when you are working, like we agreed upon?”
Olruggio flushes with embarrassment. “I — uh — got careless myself. It’s supposed to be unburning, and all that.” He pulls his hand away, as if that would make Qifrey un-see the damage. “Qifrey, it’s not that bad —”
Qifrey ignores him, adding signs of cooling to a half-finished doodle. Finishing the circle, he tears it from his palm quire and places a sculpted water lotus in Olruggio’s hand. It fits perfectly in his palm, the cold magic within the open petals soothing the irritated skin. “I’m fetching the ointment — don’t you dare let go of that.”
“…Thanks. Always taking care of me.” Olruggio keeps quiet as Qifrey’s admonishments continue wash over him, and is still dutifully cradling the lotus by the time he returns with Sinocia’s medicinal ointment. She is sure to keep them stocked with plenty, these days. When Qifrey places a bowl by his hand for Olruggio to discard the lotus into, he looks sorry to see it go. “You always talk about how much you like my spells, but your water sculptures… ain’t never seen anything like them. Guess I’m glad you took my advice, back when we were kids.”
Qifrey can’t help but tense at that. Luckily, he had been daubing Olruggio’s burn with the medicine, and his reaction is obscured by Olruggio’s full body flinch. The injury is hardly one of Olruggio’s worse burns, but it couldn’t have been pleasant. Qifrey keeps his next touches as light as possible, gliding the ointment across tender skin. “I realized that I’ve never asked. Why did you choose fire in the first place?”
Olruggio shrugs. “Nothing complicated about it. Fire was what people needed, back in Ghodrey. And I was good at it.”
Qifrey has never been one to enjoy the Great Hall’s gossip, but the legends that swirled around Olruggio were impossible to ignore. Fire, the sword and shield, the most dangerous of the primary sigils. Used for such destruction in the days before the Pact. Some days, Qifrey wondered if Olruggio’s true joy was taming its volatility, in molding fire to help instead of hurt. “That can’t be all there is.”
“What about you? You didn’t have to stick with water,” Olruggio countered, his open palm still pliant in Qifrey’s hands. “You could have moved on, after you mastered it enough to keep it off of you.”
Damn Olruggio’s watchful eyes on him, a leash as well as a blessing. Qifrey feels himself drawn even now, a jittering fly circling the lip of a honey jar. He lets go of Olruggio’s hand and rinses the ointment from his fingers in the bowl of still water, its petals long gone. “What are you getting at?”
“I suppose… even after everything that has happened… I hoped you might have come around to the beauty of it. That given enough time, you had grown to love water too, in a way.” Olruggio nods at the discarded lotus spell, perfectly drawn. The signs perfectly balanced, the lines symmetrical and clearly practiced. The spell still elegant, even with its magic expended. “And everything it has given you. Even if it has hurt you.”
Why had Qifrey chosen water for his magic? Why had Qifrey chosen anything about his life, from his pastimes to the wines he liked to where he had built his atelier? Whose map had set him on this path, and whose map was Qifrey still bound to follow? Whose flame promised to be a hearth, had called on Qifrey to finally put away his lies, only to smother them both?
In spite of this stalemate they were locked in, Olruggio knows and knew Qifrey well. He knew, even as children, everything that Qifrey wanted, everything he would do and how to make him do it. There were no possibilities that Olruggio had not counted for, no permutations of this plan that would lead to it falling apart, to the point where Qifrey was still alive even today.
“You’re wrong,” Qifrey says, putting feeling behind it. He stands to leave, and OIruggio’s eyes burn into his back as he goes.
Dawn has broken through the trees, by the time Qifrey wakes in the forest. He is right where the spell had first activated, and judging by what he remembered of the spell’s composition, not much time could have passed. Likely, it was simply that the time that elapsed while he was in the past had also elapsed here.
Slowly, Qifrey sits up. He is still alive, if a bit dazed, and nearly right where he left off. So little has changed that for all Qifrey knew, his encounter with Olruggio could have been an elaborate dream, a hallucination conjured for him by too many days alone. If he had not caught a glimpse of the spell himself, Qifrey would have convinced himself that was so.
…Because it had been nice, to see him again.
Beneath his skin, the Silverwood shifts, the tangle within him unfurling. Qifrey slams his eye shut, clenches his hands in his cloak. He thinks of the sound of rain, of spaces cramped and dark, of a childhood spent under the ocean and of a childhood stolen from him. He thinks of an atelier he built himself with his own hands, with all his loves ensconced within, a refuge that he hoped would also be enough to contain his hate. The roots move again, stronger now, and Qifrey forces himself to remember why he was alone out here in the first place, how the brimmed cap he is chasing could be anywhere, and the primal instinct for survival makes the roots flinch back. He goes further — he could be struck down now, and everything — the search, the home, the fragile stalemate — would end. Qifrey would die as he is and be nothing more, still in the coffin they buried him in, still ensnared in the pact his best friend built for him. That would be the entirety of his life.
The Silverwood is choked to silence.
He waits another breath, but the roots do not move. Qifrey waits another beat anyways, before he lets himself think back again.
In the end, Qifrey supposes that he has proved there is little difference between himself and the parasite within him after all. How could he have let Olruggio go through with it? With the chance to undo it everything, with none of the excuses Qifrey’s younger self had — how dare he let Olruggio make this sacrifice for him? To let himself go on to hurt Olruggio, over and over?
But it happened, and happened still. And that version of Olruggio is no longer of this world, he isn’t anywhere he can be found. If there is anything left of him, then he is locked within Qifrey.
When Qifrey picks himself up from the ground, he spots his guidance orb cracked open in the grasses, scattered not far away. Upon collecting the disparate pieces, Qifrey finds the scrap of cloth too, and when he reassembles the orb, nothing is amiss. His lead jumps to life, the cloth pointing him deeper into the waking woods.
It is beyond tempting. As he does every day, Qifrey finds the forest beautiful. Someone he loved walked in there once, and never returned.
Someone he loved walked in there once, saw the mess laid bare, saw something that could not love him back. Someone Qifrey loved walked in and made a promise, and found a way to come back to him, again and again and again.
In turn, someone Olruggio loved was given a choice. And despite all he tells himself, despite the dead end that was his life, Qifrey has made that same choice too, over and over.
He closes his eye, takes in a long breath. Smells soil drying in the sun, pollen dancing upon wind, the moss creeping on bark. The blooming, verdant, growing things, turning in time with the seasons. Feels it all burrow inside, join the roots already living there.
Then Qifrey stows the guidance orb to his bag, buckles the flap. He lifts his head, and takes a last look into the forest, as deep into the trees as his eye can manage.
One day. But not yet.
When Qifrey turns, he leaves for home.