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A picnic outdoors is calm and peaceful, until the weather decides to change it drastically.
The sudden gust of wind is so strong it snaps a branch off the tree they’re sitting by, sending it flying until it hits Qifrey in the face, knocking his glasses off. He yelps, bringing a hand over the right side of his face.
“Master Qifrey, are you okay!?”
“I—I’m alright, Tetia,” he says, taking his glasses from Richeh who picked them up for him.
Coco notices his hand shaking as he puts them back on.
“If this wind keeps up, we should go back inside,” Agott says, “I don’t want my notes to get swept up.”
Coco looks up at the sky. “It looks like it might start storming.”
“Ah, let’s go back inside now!” Tetia says, quickly packing up their food.
“Master Qifrey?” Agott says, and the other three look back at him too.
Qifrey still has one hand is still over the right side of his face, and his eye looks wide and terrified.
“Master Qifrey?” Tetia asks quieter.
Richeh pokes his arm.
He doesn’t respond.
And when it starts raining, he flinches so violently you’d think he was struck.
And then he curls in on himself, bringing his other hand to his face and knocking his glasses right off again.
The immediate switch from silence to sharp, muffled gasps for air is so jarring it startles them all.
“Is he hurt?” Agott asks, running over and trying to pry his hands away from his face.
Richeh picks up the branch to inspect it. “It’s just a branch.”
“Well, it did hit him right in the face!” Agott says, though her efforts are fruitless.
“What’s wrong, Master Qifrey!?” Tetia asks, shaking his shoulder to try and get his attention.
Another strong gust of wind sends Agott’s wet notes flying, and the tree sways so aggressively Coco fears it might break again. “Everyone, we should really head back to the atelier!” she shouts.
“But Master Qifrey won’t move!” Tetia shouts.
“I don’t think it’d be safe to cast a levitation spell with this weather.”
“Then what do we do!?”
Then there’s a small whine. All four girls look at each other, searching for the source of the noise before they hear it once more, coming from their Master.
“I think he’s scared,” Coco says. She puts a hand on his back and starts rubbing it in circles like her mom used to do when she had a bad dream.
“Don’t be scared, Master Qifrey,” Tetia says, shifting from shaking his shoulder to hugging him from the side. “It’s okay!” she says, though the waver in her voice and tears in her eyes most definitely say otherwise.
Richeh silently joins the hug, while Agott tries once more to pry Qifrey’s hands away from his face.
“I don’t think hugging is going to solve anything!” she shouts, “Something is seriously wrong. He’s completely unresponsive!”
As the rain slowly settles back into a light drizzle, Qifrey shows no signs of improvement, no matter what they do.
Tetia is sobbing, Richeh is hugging her, and Coco is staring at Qifrey like she’s trying to will something to happen to snap him out of whatever this is.
“Tetia, Richeh,” Agott speaks up, “Go get Master Olly.”
Tetia grips Qifrey’s arm tighter. “But—”
“Do it. We can’t solve this on our own. He’ll know what to do.”
Tetia sniffles, and then she lets go of Qifrey. “Let’s go, Richeh.”
The two run off.
Coco and Agott don’t exchange any words while they wait, they just watch Qifrey to see if there’s any change.
(There isn’t.)
“…We’re back!” Tetia shouts, and Agott and Coco let out a sigh of relief when they see Olruggio with them.
Coco and Agott back away when Olruggio kneels down in front of Qifrey, giving them space.
“Can you girls head back to the atelier? I’ve got it from here.”
Tetia starts to protest, but Richeh grabs her hand, and they start to walk back.
Agott and Coco start to walk back too, but they both stop short. The rain has stopped now, and they’re behind the tree. They don’t say anything to each other, but they do listen in.
“Qifrey, it’s Olruggio. Can you hear me?”
Olruggio pulls Qifrey’s hands away from his face and holds them in his own.
It’s hard to see from a distance, but his face looks pretty flushed.
And the gasping is a lot louder without his hands covering his mouth.
“Look at me, Qifrey.”
“O… Olly—”
Qifrey starts stuttering so hard, it’s impossible to tell what he’s trying to say.
“I know,” Olruggio says, to Agott and Coco’s surprise. “You’re okay. You’re safe. The girls are sa—”
“The girls! I—I—I scared them, Te—Te—Tetia was—”
“Qifrey, breathe!” Olruggio shouts. “The girls are back at the atelier. We can talk to them later. It’ll be okay. You have to focus on calming down.”
Behind Qifrey’s white hair, a single drop of blood slides down his face.
Olruggio lets go of one of Qifrey’s hands in favour of brushing his bangs away, revealing a fairly shallow cut right above his scar.
“You got scratched by a falling branch, that’s all. Look at me, it’s okay.”
“T—t—too bright…”
Olruggio picks Qifrey’s glasses up off the ground and puts them back on his face.
“That better?”
Agott flinches when Qifrey breaks down sobbing. Loudly.
Olruggio hugs him, and whatever he says next isn’t quite audible from this distance but Qifrey’s “I can’t breathe” definitely is.
Agott hears a sniffle, and she looks beside her to see Coco crying.
“Maybe we should head back,” Agott says.
“Yeah.”
For a moment, they linger there, watching their Master sobbing and hyperventilating in the arms of Master Olly, whose face they can’t see.
And then Agott takes Coco’s hand, and they head back to the atelier.
It’s dark out when Olruggio returns to the atelier holding a sleeping Qifrey in his arms.
He shushes the conglomeration of questions with an “I’ll be right back,” before heading to Qifrey’s room.
The four girls wait with baited breath, and when he returns they all storm him again.
“Qifrey is alright, he just needs rest for now.”
“What happened?” Tetia and Coco ask in unison.
“First, can I fix you girls up some food? You must be hungry. It’s right about dinner time.”
“Richeh isn't hungry-cheh.”
“I’m not hungry either, I'm worried!” Tetia shouts, “We should go keep him company or something!”
The brushbuddy, draped over Coco’s shoulders, hops into the floor and dashes across it in the direction of Qifrey’s room.
“Come on everyone, we need to eat dinner,” Agott says, and as she's pulling out dishes to set on the table, one slips from her shaky grasp and shatters on the floor.
-
Qifrey wakes up with a start, but before he can even think about what that noise was, all of his attention is sucked up by a splitting headache.
The girls are shouting. Once Qifrey hears it, he’s out of bed in an instant and heading to the door.
His body has other plans though, and he unceremoniously faceplants before taking a single step.
As he's fighting against gravity to stand up again, or even just sit up, he hears Olly’s voice out there.
If Olly’s there, they’ll be okay.
He should really get up though. Even just to get something to drink.
One deep breath, and he lifts himself into a sitting position. Another deep breath, and he pulls himself up and back into his bed.
He picks up the glass of water that Olly left for him and only manages to take a single sip before it slips from his hand and spills onto his clothes and bedsheets.
When he curls in on himself, burying his head in his knees, he feels the brushbuddy climb up onto his shoulder and start rubbing against his face.
The events of today are uncomfortably hazy, but one thing Qifrey knows for certain is that he messed up. Badly.
The girls should never have seen him like that. He has to reassure them that he’s alright, but will they even trust him anymore?
The harsh slam of a door reverberates through the atelier.
“Richeh!” Qifrey hears Tetia shout, and then her quick footsteps down the hall.
Qifrey could have been fine. He could have just brushed it off. It was just a little nick above his eye, no real damage. He didn’t need to scare them like that. He was fine.
“Master Qifrey…?”
Qifrey looks up to see Coco peering through the crack in the door.
“Come in, Coco,” he says, wincing at the raspiness in his voice.
“Are you okay?” she asks, joining him on the bed when he pats a spot for her to come sit.
“I’m okay. I’m sorry for scaring you earlier.”
With the darkness, and the headache, it’s rather hard for him to read her expression.
“Are you really okay?”
Qifrey’s heart sinks.
“Yes, I’m okay, Coco.”
It startles him a little when Coco suddenly wraps her arms around him and squeezes so tight it’s as if she’s holding him together with her embrace alone.
He puts a hand on her back. “Sorry I’m all wet, I spilled my wa—”
“Were you scared?”
“Scared?”
“Earlier… when you…”
“Ah, um…”
“It’s okay if you were,” she says quickly, looking up at him like she’s trying to read his mind through gaze alone. “I get scared too. We all do.”
Deep breath. In. Out.
“Yes, I was scared.”
“Why?”
In. Out.
“I, um, when the… when I got hit by the…” Qifrey trails off.
Coco has tears in her eyes, and he can tell she wants to understand so, so badly.
“I remembered something scary,” Qifrey says.
“So you were scared of a memory?”
“Yes, well…”
In. Out.
“Sometimes memories, even though they’re from the past, can feel like they’re happening in the present. Even though it’s not real, the mind and body react like it is.”
“Is that why you were breathing so fast?”
“Yeah. You know how sometimes you wake up from a nightmare and your chest feels tight?”
She nods.
“It was kind of like that.”
Coco buries her face in Qifrey’s torso. “I was really worried.”
“I’m sorry for worrying you, Coco. I’m okay now, really.”
“No.”
“Hm?”
“Don’t be sorry. You couldn’t control it, right?”
“Well—”
“When I wake up from a nightmare and my chest feels tight, it’s not something I can control. You wouldn’t say that’s my fault, would you?”
“Of course not, Coco.”
“Then what happened today isn’t your fault either.”
“Alright, but I’m still—”
“I won’t accept any apologies.”
Qifrey sighs.
“Coco?”
This time it’s Agott peering through the doorway.
“Um, dinner’s ready,” she says, opening the door a little more.
Dinner. Last Qifrey remembers, they were eating lunch.
He can’t have been sleeping for that long, either, so that means…
Agott clears her throat.
“Right, you should go eat, Coco,” Qifrey says, “Thank you, Agott.”
She looks at him anxiously, like she wants to say something, but she stays silent as Coco joins her at the door.
When they leave, the door is left wide open.
Before Qifrey can even think about getting up to close it, he has another visitor.
“How’s your head?” Olly asks.
“Better,” Qifrey says, “Um, Tetia and Richeh?”
“In their room. Richeh is mad at me right now, so I’m giving her space for a bit,” he says, walking in and shutting the door behind him, “Maybe they’ll go eat now that I’m not at the dinner table.”
“What happened?”
“I wouldn’t answer some of their questions, ‘cause that should come from you, not me,” he says, sitting at the edge of the bed, “Coco said you talked to her.”
“I did. I need to talk to the others too, I really worried them.”
“And you worried me,” Olly says, with a soft expression that Qifrey couldn’t be more undeserving of. “Are you feeling okay? You barely slept since we got back, and you’re drenched—did you spill your water?”
“I’m okay, Olly,” Qifrey says as Olly starts drying his clothes and sheets with his rings. “Don’t worry, really. I can handle mysel—”
“Come eat with us. I think Coco and Agott would appreciate the company.”
Qifrey swallows. His chest feels tight, and he’s not sure how much longer he can methodically steady his breaths and keep their volume low.
“I think it’d be best if I slept a little longer.”
Olly sighs. “Alright. I’ll be back in a bit.”
When Qifrey lies back down, he tries to remember the details of what happened. Something little like that shouldn’t have set him off so bad.
He wonders if Tetia is alright. She was crying earlier, and last he heard was her chasing after an angry Richeh.
Richeh… she probably thought Olly was only withholding an explanation from her because she’s a child.
He closes his eye.
Agott looked uneasy when he saw her. He wonders if Coco has told her anything from their conversation.
He should… talk… to all of them…
…
-
Once Coco and Agott have eaten and gone back to their room, Olruggio is left fighting the urge to go and check on Qifrey constantly.
The last time he had an episode that bad has to have been when they were still kids. Well, the last that Olruggio witnessed, that is.
Once he’s finished tidying up the kitchen, he heads back to Qifrey’s room at last, but just as he’s about to knock, the door opens.
“Ah— Hey, Olly.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Better. I was just about to go talk to Tetia and Richeh.”
Qifrey smiles, and it doesn’t reach his eye. The colour has returned to his face, and his voice is no longer raspy, but there’s still a tremble in his hands that he’s clearly aware of, given the way that he rushes past Olruggio before he can reply, knowing the words of worry that’ll befall him if he stays put.
“Master Qifrey isn't really okay, is he?”
Olruggio turns around to see Agott, arms crossed and looking at him with a sharp gaze like she’s wanting him to challenge her, tell her she’s wrong, prove that she’s wrong.
“He'll be alright.”
“I don’t think you believe that.”
“Has he talked to you yet?
“No. Coco told me some stuff though, but…”
Agott blinks away her tears. Olruggio kneels down to meet her eyes.
“You’ve been friends since you were kids, and you—you look scared. Like something is wrong. Something is wrong. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Olruggio sighs. “You’re very perceptive, Agott. Yes, I'm worried about him. Of course I am. But I'm also comforted by the fact that I'm here for him and all of you to rely on.”
“What if something happens again?”
“We'll get through it, I promise you that.”
Agott nods, and then yawns.
“It’s getting late, you should head to bed.”
“I was going to practice a bit more before sleeping.”
“You can do that tomorrow.”
Agott sighs. “Fine.”
She leaves, and Olruggio heads into Qifrey’s room, leaving the door open and sitting on the edge of his bed.
He isn’t sure how long he sits there waiting, but eventually Qifrey returns, letting out a long sigh before looking up to see Olruggio.
“Hey, Olly.”
“You haven’t eaten yet.”
Qifrey closes the door and lies down on the bed, flat on his back.
He doesn’t say anything.
Olruggio turns to face him.
“I’m alright now, Olly,” Qifrey says, before Olruggio can even say anything else.
“You can’t seriously expect me to believe that, can you?” Olruggio says, grabbing one of Qifrey’s hands and interlacing their fingers. “What happened today?”
“I don't know. I got hurt. I felt blood. I lost my composure.”
“You were having flashbacks,” Olruggio says, gripping his hand tighter.
When Olruggio first arrived to the scene, Qifrey had been vaguely aware of his surroundings, but as Olruggio tried to bring him back down to earth, the more he lost touch with reality. He hadn't known where he was. He hadn't known his own age. He only knew that he was in pain and he felt like he couldn't breathe.
It had taken more than an hour just to get Qifrey to start to register where and when he was, and even longer to walk him through the breathing exercises they would do together as kids.
“I barely remember any of it,” Qifrey says, “I… I remember… being scared.”
He shuts his eye, his breathing getting unsteady again.
“Breathe.”
“I know,” he whispers, “Can… can you stay?”
“I was already planning to,” Olruggio says. He lies down beside Qifrey, taking his glasses off for him and setting them on the table before wrapping Qifrey in a tight hug.
Olruggio takes a deep exaggerated breath in, and out.
Qifrey follows along, matching the slow rhythm to the best of his ability until he falls asleep.
And soon after, Olruggio joins him in slumber.
They'll be alright.