Chapter Text
Tetia had always been a romantic.
She’d grown up alongside sweeping, passionate tales of star-crossed lovers and dashing fairytale princes. While other children her age would pull faces or complain in disgust she would lean in and listen to the stories bloom before her with rapt attention, heart bursting with anticipation.
She was a girl who loved love.
At the tender age of 12, she had begun to collect romance books. A trip to Kalhn with Qifrey and her fellow apprentices would lead to a trip to the bookstore. Of course, each girl had her different tastes. Agott would make a beeline for the nonfiction section, Coco would swoon over anything that had “magic” on it, Richeh would stare in silent contemplation at the murder mysteries.
As of late, Tetia had acquired a new book. It had curling cursive writing on the cover and the image of two witches embracing under a pink sunset and had been signed by the author, a witch by the name of Polly Periwinkle. (It was called, rather dramatically, The Duke’s Secret Passion. Richeh told her matter-of-factly that it looked extremely sappy. Tetia didn’t much care.)
She read it in two sittings, and by the end of it she was giggling to herself and blushing as pink as her hair. It was a really good book.
In the days that followed, Tetia began to observe certain happenings within the atelier that reminded her an awful lot of the events unfolding in the book. Parallels, if you may.
Specifically concerning Master Qifrey and his Watchful Eye.
Of course, Qifrey always stood (rather stubbornly, in Tetia’s opinion) by the notion that he and Olruggio were just old friends. He even had the gall to call Master Olly “old friend” to his face.
To Tetia, this was no proof of a definitive platonic relationship. Rather, it fed her growing theory of Master Qifrey’s wider issues of long-term romantic repression and unconscious pining. It was a very common symptom of slow-burn childhood friends to lovers in denial, which Tetia had diagnosed Qifrey and Olruggio with.
Recent observable evidence gathered was as follows:
- Master Qifrey and Master Olly brushed hands at six clock-marks in the afternoon while cooking together. Master Qifrey blushed.
- Master Qifrey gave Master Olruggio a shoulder massage to help with his neck pain.
- Master Olly made Master Qifrey a brand-new wand that doesn’t run out of ink and writes underwater.
She explained all of this very carefully to Richeh, Agott and Coco while they were supposed to be practising sculptural spells. Master Qifrey had gone out shopping for supplies in Kalhn, and Master Olly was tinkering away in his workshop. It was the perfect cover.
“I don’t see how this proves anything,” Agott said practically. “Master Qifrey and Master Olly could just be good friends. Friends make gifts for each other all the time.”
“That’s true!” Coco chimed in. “Tartah made me a pen once as well!”
“He did?” Agott frowned. “When?”
“The point is,” Tetia interrupted valiantly, “they are friends, but they’re in love with each other and they don’t know it!”
She seemed to have lost the thread, because Agott was now interrogating Coco about her relationship with Tartah. Tetia looked hopelessly at Richeh, who was carefully trying to grow an elaborate crystal tower and not paying any attention at all.
“What do you think, Richeh?”
“Richeh thinks,” said Richeh, so quiet yet somehow silencing both Agott and Coco, “that Master Qifrey and Master Olly are in love.”
Clink. She put the last piece of crystal in place.
Tetia beamed at her.
“See! Richeh agrees!”
“But there’s no evidence,” Agott folded her arms. “All the examples you’ve just listed are things friends could do for each other. You can’t form conclusions without evidence.”
“Aha!” Tetia was prepared for this. “But I do have evidence!”
She whipped out her signed edition of The Duke’s Secret Passion and brandished it like a trophy.
Richeh, who’d already had enough of Tetia reading it to her every night, promptly let her forehead thud on the table.
Coco’s eyes lit up. “What’s this?”
“This,” Tetia said proudly, “holds the answer to all our questions!”
“A fictional romance book,” Agott scoffed. “Such texts can hardly be considered reliable.”
“But don’t you see!” Tetia’s eyes were sparkling with determination. “It’s true love, Agott! They’re in love but they’re in denial!”
“I’m… not sure I follow.”
“There are different kinds of basic love languages,” Tetia explained sagely. “I believe that Master Qifrey and Master Olly’s love language is expressed through acts of service. It’s scientific and everything!”
And she proceeded to expound upon every significant interaction of she’d observed from Qifrey and Olruggio from the past few weeks. She laid down the book with flourish and detailed the events of it, triumphantly pointed out all the parallels and information and things, until Richeh started to go glaze-eyed and Coco was nodding along in tandem and Agott was running out of counterarguments.
The result was this: one furiously blushing Agott, one sunnily smiling Coco, one sleeping Richeh, and Tetia, grinning as if Silver Eve had come early. She shut the book with an emphatical thump.
“That decides it!” Tetia pronounced. “Master Qifrey and Olly are in love!”
Agott muttered something inaudible into her hands.
They’d been too busy debating up until that point they failed to hear the distant footsteps and the sound of the front door being pulled open.
It was only when a familiar voice drifted from the next room that the girls hurriedly retrieved their books and wands and palm quires and diligently went back to pretending to study.
“Did somebody say my name?”
Qifrey, fresh from his shopping, stepped into the room with a placid smile plastered on his face and arms full of groceries.
Four apprentices stared at him with expressions ranging from complete disinterest to mild panic.
“Of course not, Master Qifrey!” Coco waved her arms frantically. “We were just talking about, um, crystals! Yes!” She looked desperately at Richeh. Richeh gave a thumbs up.
“Yup!” Tetia chimed in, eyes wide and innocent. “Crystals are so pretty and sparkly!”
“A three-dimensional lattice of repeating ions,” said Richeh seriously.
Everyone stared at her.
“Really fascinating!” said Coco.
Agott smacked her palm to her forehead.
“That’s good to hear!” Qifrey, fortunately, was none-the-wiser. He seemed to be preoccupied with something. “Well, you four carry on now, I’ll be back to look at your spells. I need to speak to Olly about something.” And he bustled off down the hall.
All four apprentices shared a look loaded with heavy meaning.
“What do you think they’re doing in there?” Coco wondered.
“Things,” Richeh said darkly.
_____________________
The next day, Coco came up with a very important question.
“If Master Qifrey and Master Olly are in love,” she pondered as they drew up levitation spells under the shade of a tree outside the atelier, “then does that mean they’re together together?”
It was a pleasant day. The sky was blue with just a dash of wispy clouds, the sun was out, the birds were singing. The girls were practising by themselves, out of earshot from Qifrey, who was making lunch in the atelier.
“I doubt it,” said Agott. “Otherwise we would know by now.”
“They’re in denial, you see!” Tetia said excitedly. “Just like how in the book, the duke was in denial about his feelings for his childhood best friend!”
Agott pursed her lips and looked like she had some point of disagreement to make, but evidently she could not think of a proper way to word it, so she said nothing. Tetia could see, however, that she still had doubts.
“Why don’t we ask Master Qifrey, then?” Coco asked.
“We should ask it him a really sneaky way,” Tetia decided. “We can watch his reaction and see if he slips up!”
And so, a plan was made.
At lunch, the girls all gathered in the kitchen to help Qifrey unload the plates. They all settled down for delicious rolls and freshly baked bread. Olruggio emerged from his cave of a workshop to join them and they congregated on a large table together to eat.
Richeh picked out a large piece of ham the size of a plate, opened her mouth impossibly large, and shoved it down her gullet. Coco snuck the brushbuddy pieces of carrot under the table.
Tetia coughed loudly to get Agott’s attention. Agott ignored her.
Coco gave Agott a long look. Tetia coughed again, more emphatically.
“Did I add too much pepper, Tetia?” Qifrey seemed immediately concerned. “I fear I may have gone too heavy on the spice.”
“No, no!” Tetia chirped. “Your food is delicious as always, Master Qifrey!” She wiggled her eyebrows pointedly at Agott.
Agott, the nominated (and somewhat unwilling) spokesperson, heaved a long-suffering sigh.
“Master Qifrey,” she started, at the same time Richeh said with a very straight face—
“Are you and Master Olly in love—”
Olruggio choked on his bread. Qifrey’s cheeks turned a very delicate shade of scarlet.
“—in love with TURNIPS!” Tetia blurted, smacking a hand over Richeh’s mouth. “Because stars, I love turnips! They’re really pointy and yummy and stuff!”
“Yeah!” Coco pitched in helpfully.
“Mmf,” said Richeh.
Agott raised her eyes beseechingly to the heavens.
“I hadn’t realised you all liked turnips so much!” Qifrey looked a little surprised, but truly delighted. “I love the enthusiasm! Vegetables are a very important part of our diet. I’ll be sure to cook more for dinner.”
“Yay!” Tetia said weakly.
At the conclusion of lunch, the girls went off to Tetia and Richeh’s room to discuss their findings.
Agott raised a brow at Tetia. “Turnips. Seriously?”
Tetia threw herself on a cushion with a groan. “I was panicking, okay? It was the first edible thing I thought of!”
“I don’t like turnips,” said Richeh.
“I do!” Coco said.
“Well, I do too,” Agott said.
This went on for a bit before Tetia managed to wrestle the direction of conversation back under control.
“The situation is more serious than I thought,” she interlaced her fingers gravely.
Indeed, it was looking dire. Qifrey and Olruggio had known each other all their lives since they were children, and they still could not even admit to themselves the truth about their feelings, even while their acts of deep love were evident in every action they took.
“You’re laying it on thick,” Richeh observed.
Tetia shushed her.
“So that’s why,” she went on, “it’s our responsibility as apprentices, in the best interests of our teachers…”
Agott muttered something that Tetia ignored.
“…that we get them together! It’ll be our super special, top-secret mission!”
Coco raised her hand enthusiastically.
“Yes, Coco!” Tetia said.
“Do we have a code name?”
That was a good question. Tetia thought long and hard.
“We’ll call it Operation: Get Master Qifrey and Olly Together!”
“No,” Agott snapped. “We’re calling it the Courtship Conspiracy.” She got up to leave.
“That’s such a cool name, Agott!” Coco cheered. Agott’s ears went pink.
Thus, commenced the meeting. The girls went on with their day feeling emboldened by the duties of their new mission, Tetia most of it — for it was she, after all, who had conceived such a pivotal movement.
Unfortunately for the girls, they would soon come to realise their task to be rather more difficult than they had ever initially envisioned.