Archive of Our Own

Agott woke with a jerk.

Her head wrenched upward and her foot kicked out. Immediately a sharp pain shot through her toes as her foot collided with one of the many books haphazardly piled at the end of her bed. She cried out, but the sound was covered up by the crashing of books and a long forgotten dinner plate and some other trinket she could not identify in the dark. Agott winced as she sat up, pulling her aching foot into her lap. The wince was more from causing so much noise rather than the pain in her toes. The lack of light told her it was still late in the night. She didn’t want to disturb anyone else’s sleep.

One sleepless witch a night was more than enough for the atelier full of notoriously poor sleepers.

Agott stared into the dark shadows where the books she kicked had fallen. She absently rubbed at her toes in an attempt to hasten their recovery. It was easier to focus on the physical pain in her foot than the tempest that swirled through her head and built pressure around her heart.

“Don’t be a dummy. It was just a nightmare,” she whispered to herself in the dark of her cluttered room.

There was a gentle knock on her bedroom door.

“Agott?” Coco’s soft voice called through the wooden barrier.

Agott closed her eyes. There was too much going on to face this right now. Coco was the last person she wanted to see. Coco was the only person she could ever see at this moment. Which one was the truth? Which part of herself should she listen to? The pain in her toes was already fading, leaving nothing to focus on but the noise inside her head. If only she could make out the words. There were too many voices.

“Are you alright? I thought I heard a crashing sound.” Coco entreated further in Agott’s silence. How Agott always admired her ability to surge on ahead through obstacles. It was her specialty after all.

“I’m fine,” Agott said, giving in. She could not win against Coco by running away.

“Can I come inside?”

“There is no reason for you to verify,” Agott rebuffed.

“It would make me feel better to see you,” Coco challenged. Why did she have to phrase it like that? Agott could already feel her heart trying to push the acquiescence out of her mouth. “It would help me get back to sleep.”

Agott’s shoulders fell as they pushed a heavy sigh from her chest. “Come in.”

Coco pushed open the door slowly. In one hand she held her winter robe tight around her. In the other she carried a floatglow lantern. Its soft rays chased away the shadows in the numerous nooks and crannies of Agott’s room. The mess of scattered items on the floor could clearly be seen now. Agott threw an offending look at them. They had betrayed her in making so much noise and bringing Coco into her room. Then she quickly looked back up at her fellow apprentice, not wanting to draw too much attention to the clutter. However, perceptive as always, Coco already caught on and was shaking her head at the mess. Agott felt a blush on her cheeks. Hopefully, the floatglow lantern’s lamp was too dim to note it.

Coco did her best to keep the worry from her face. At this point she was well aware of Agott’s aversion to too much direct care. However, she could not remove it entirely. Agott saw it in the questioning set of her eyebrows, in the tentative way her mouth was caught between a flat line and a tender smile.

“Now I can see that everything is in order,” Coco said quietly. Her eyes quickly flicked toward the scattered books on the floor. “Mostly.” Agott’s blush burned hotter. She ducked her head and busied her hands by adjusting the blanket in her lap.

“As I said, there was nothing to fret over,” Agott shot back. She didn’t really know what she was after. Now, that Coco was here, she didn’t really want to chase the other girl out of her room. Seeing her face had opened up a small space in her constricted chest. However, the embarrassment of her witnessing the clutter of her room was enough to choke her out again. She knew Coco was not entirely unaware of her habits. It was largely unavoidable as roommates. Having attention thrown on it was another thing entirely though. Agott was hyperaware of the slapdash order of her room and it made her self-conscious.

“Oh, I’m not so sure,” Coco said as she carefully picked her way over the mess. There was a teasing tone to her words. It kept Agott’s head down, unable to meet her eye. When Coco reached Agott’s bed she picked up a thin book that had fallen open on the mattress but didn’t make it all the way to the floor. “How do you manage to sleep with all this on your bed?”

“I don’t toss around in my sleep, so it’s fine,” Agott said, snatching the book from Coco.

At this Coco simply raised a single eyebrow and titled her head.

Coco eased herself onto the foot of Agott’s bed without invitation. Agott registered the intrusion in her mind, but her body acted separately, accommodating to give her more space. She wished she could smother this part of herself. The part that reacted negatively towards Coco out of reflex. She hadn’t meant it in a long time. It was never more than a shallow, unfounded thought, but it appeared all the same. Agott didn’t want to have these thoughts anymore. She was tired of that deep, dark part of herself that told her nothing but lies—about Coco, about magic, about herself.

“You should really put some of these away properly,” Coco said, leaning over to put her lantern on the window sill. “Can’t have them jumping out at you in your perfectly still sleep.”

Agott huffed out through her nose. She shot Coco a withering look, but there wasn’t much bite to it, and they both knew it. At this point in their relationship, they were both too familiar with each other for posturing. In the same vein that Coco knew Agott wasn’t truly glaring at her, Agott could see what Coco was doing. She was teasing her on the surface level, hitting easy targets, but that was all just a façade to whittle away at her defenses.

Agott thought, in some regard, perhaps she should have been annoyed by this. The only emotion she could feel though was appreciation. Coco’s patience was boundless and her grace came as easily as breathing. Agott did not know what she did to earn this. She had seen Coco’s anger and witnessed her belligerence. Never did she turn this upon Agott though. Even when she had full justification to do so. Agott still struggled to accept this. It was even harder to accept when Coco told her it was because of her magic.

It was easier to keep pretending.

So, as Coco began picking up the books that lined the edge of Agott’s bed, tucked in between her mattress and the wall, they both continued to play their parts. Agott would hastily snatch the books way, snipe about Coco touching her things. Coco would just laugh and chat about nothing. Their hands and eyes would meet in fleeting, skimming contacts until the tension of the dark began uncoil in the warm light of the floatglow lantern whose light seemed to envelope them and nothing more.

“Is this what you call being help—” Agott’s eyes arrested on the book Coco had just pulled out “—ful.” The last part of her word fell out of her slacked mouth more so than was spoken. Agott was frozen in a trance. She did not know the last time she had seen that book. It was strange. She used to handle it every single day. Then it came with less frequency. Still, she never thought there would be a time it would be so far from her mind she would lose track of it enough to be surprised by its reappearance.

Seeing it in Coco’s hands…

“Agott?” Coco asked, concern blatant on every syllable.

In lieu of answering, Agott simply reached out one slow moving hand to take the book. The hand bound leather felt familiar in her hands instantly. She carefully traced over the animal sigils that had been carved along its spine and borders. Her thumb brushed against the small teeth marks on one corner, placed there by an over rambunctious owlkitten. The House of Arklaum insignia at the center of the cover used to be inlaid with gold leaf. However, over the years there were a few sections that had fallen out. At any other time, with any other book, one might be able to call the wear signs of it being “well-loved”. Those words sounded like gibberish inside Agott’s head.

“Agott?” Coco tried again. “What is that book?”

Agott did not realize how lost she felt until Coco pulled her back to the present. Hearing her gentle words, looking at her face, it was like finding sanctuary. She was a signal fire for guidance on a foggy shoreline. For her face was bright, despite the scars, despite the worry that pinched her mouth, despite the lack of sleep around her eyes she was always bright and beautiful to Agott. It felt like a cold claw was gripping her heart, but with a deep breath she pushed it away. Looking at Coco for a moment longer she found the courage to open the book and slowly thumb through its fading pages.

“It’s not really a book,” Agott said quietly. “It’s… a collection of letters, I suppose. I think its purpose changed over time.”

“Letters? Like you save the ones you receive in there?”

Agott shook her head. “I never receive any letters,” she admitted bitterly.

She had a mild fascination as the handwriting in the book transformed from messy forms to clear and defined. The line weight changed over time. Towards the beginning it was light and thin. An unsure hand not ready to commit to permanently changing pristine parchment. Then it became more confident and heavier. There were a few pages where it was particularly dark and splattered from too much pressure and too much ink. It was a careless way of writing Agott was careful to stay away from. Yet, as the dates in these pages grew further and further apart, so many of the pages bore its evidence.

One particularly marred page made Agott stop. It was such a mess it was largely unintelligible. Even have being written in her own hand, Agott could not make out a majority of the words. There were only two lines she could read fully. They were near the bottom of the page, spaced graciously from the dark cloud of words above. The letters were small and shaky, surrounded by small water stains.

I miss you so much. I love you still.

Agott could not hold herself together any longer. She lifted the book to cover her face and let the tears spill from her eyes.

She had thought she had been getting better, finding a new way of magic, a better way. However, she could remember the emotions of this page so clearly. She realized she could never banish them out of her in writing alone. These feelings weren’t just being freshly remembered. They were still in her heart. They haunted her every day, every time she picked up a pen or opened a book of seals. They were with her every night when she laid in her bed, when she looked out the window and saw stars instead schools of fish. They were there in the nightmares that interrupted her sleep.

Arms came around her shoulders and pulled her close. The embrace was tight if not a bit awkward with the book between them, but Coco didn’t mind. She never minded Agott’s awkwardness. She pressed her cheek against Agott’s ear like she was trying to hold her as close as possible.

“It’s okay, Agott. You’ll be okay,” Coco murmured like she was chanting a spell. Agott released book, letting fall into her lap, and then onto the bed, and then onto the floor. She wrapped her arms around Coco in return. She gripped fistfuls of Coco’s robe at her back.

In that moment Agott realized three things; she was not alone, she had found a new meaning to magic itself, and home wasn’t a place she had never known.

Adina stood at her desk and stared down at the open page before her. She had read it before. She had read it at least three times since its appearance. It had startled her at first. She had gone so long without the smell of fresh ink and flowers. It surprised her even more as she watched the words print themselves across the page. The hand was steady, the spacing even, the letters flowing with an assuredness that she had never seen before in this book. The final shock came in the words themselves, in the declaration and challenge that they threw at her.

She had many emotions and even more words to say in response. She had recorded it all in a tightly bound scroll that she secured with leather and wax. The faintest of smiles played across the flat line of her mouth. Adina held the utmost certainty that this page, that the witch behind it, could never predict what that scroll held. Perhaps there should have been some hurt in that, but to Adina the spirit of it was invigorating. If either of them were to accept defeat, that would be depressing. It would be a sure and final end.

“Madam Librarian,” a deep voice called from outside her door. “The test will be starting soon.”

Adina closed the book on her desk. She traced a single finger across the insignia of House Arklaum, across countless animal sigils, across tiny teeth marks on a corner. Then she placed it back in its home on a small shelf next to her desk. It was with great care she safely tucked it between a gloss of rarely used sigils and a small, wooden chest.

The wooden chest was filled with countless drafts of seals—seals drawn in a dragon’s labyrinth, seals drawn in the Serpent Back Cave, seals drawn in Ezrest during the horror of Silver Eve. There were many similar spells drawn at those times, but these she kept because she recognized the hand that drew them. They painted a vibrant picture that no identical spell could create for her. These spells were not for the general library. They remained locked away in the head Librarian's private quarters.

She tucked the sealed scroll that she had written into the pocket of her robes. Then she dawned her cap. She did not need to check that everything was in perfect order. Everything always was. Even on this fateful day.

“I’ll be right along.”