Chapter Text
ONE.
During their first year in the atelier, Qifrey accompanies Olruggio north for the winter.
For most of the first clock mark, he finds himself watching him. The plains of Naakiwan Downs stretch wide around them, the fields cut down to winter stubble and the furrows silvered with frost beneath a sky that remains stubbornly clear of snow, but Qifrey’s attention rarely stays on any of it for long. Olruggio walks a few paces ahead, and every time Qifrey looks away, his gaze eventually finds him again.
Perhaps he is still relearning how to have him where he can look at him at all. Three years have left their mark on Olruggio more plainly than Qifrey likes. His hair has grown shaggier, dark circles sit beneath his eyes, and a patchy beard now covers his jaw. Qifrey has learned enough about his working habits over the last few weeks to understand some of the weariness, though understanding it has only given him something new to worry about.
Then Olruggio frowns at something in the distance and glances back to make sure Qifrey is still behind him, and suddenly he looks so familiar that Qifrey’s chest aches. He has always done that, checking for Qifrey without seeming to think about it. Qifrey has spent years remembering places through small moments like this, and the time apart has done nothing to change the habit. If anything, he looks more closely now that he knows what it is to go years without anything new to remember.
Olruggio stops so suddenly that Qifrey nearly walks into him.
He’d been watching a loose strand of black hair move against the back of Olruggio’s neck and only catches himself with half a step to spare and retreats instinctively before either of them can touch.
He has been doing that often since Olruggio returned into his life – stepping out of spaces he once stood in without thought. Qifrey knows Olruggio has noticed, though he has yet to mention it, and the silence has made Qifrey painfully aware of every small retreat.
Olruggio doesn’t look at him for long. His attention shifts towards the side of the road instead, and Qifrey follows his gaze before asking, “What is it?”
“We’ll check these as we go.” Olruggio points towards the shallow ditch, where a beast warding tower stands among the dead grass.
Qifrey had been too busy looking at him to notice it. “Ah,” he says, turning towards the tower. “I suppose that’s part of our duty as witches.”
Olruggio makes his way down into the ditch, and Qifrey follows, grateful for something practical to turn his attention towards.
Up close, the beast warding tower rises well above them, its stacked bricks tapering towards the top and darkening near the base with age and rain. Olruggio crouches beside the circular hatch and clears away the dead grass before opening it.
“I replaced this one last winter,” he says, peering inside.
Qifrey crouches beside him. “Then it shouldn’t be failing already.”
“No.” Olruggio reaches towards the framed hide within. “Something’s wrong.”
A closer look reveals the problem soon enough. The tower’s water-repelling glyphs have worn through in places, allowing damp to seep into the brickwork and damage the beast warding glyph inside. Olruggio takes the beast-repelling glyph while Qifrey works on the water seals, each of them opening their palm quires and settling into the repairs without discussion.
The ease of it bothers Qifrey almost as much as it comforts him.
The time apart should have made them unfamiliar with each other somewhere, yet Olruggio still shifts aside before Qifrey needs the space, and Qifrey knows from the set of his mouth when he is dissatisfied with a line before Olruggio says anything. Their hands fall into the same old rhythm as though the years between them have been nothing more than a long interruption.
When they finish, Qifrey runs his eyes over the repaired lines once more before closing his palm quire. “This should hold longer now.”
Olruggio gives the tower a final look and nods. “It should.”
They close the hatch, gather their things, and return to the road.
By the time they return to the road, the wind has picked up. It moves hard across the open plains, and Qifrey draws his robes closer around himself as they walk.
He has always been more susceptible to the cold than Olruggio. The warming glyphs worked into the underside of his clothes help, but only to a point, and the chill still finds its way through after enough time outdoors. He flexes his fingers inside his gloves and keeps moving.
Olruggio glances back after a while and raises an amused eyebrow at the sight of Qifrey clutching his robes shut. He had already found it funny when Qifrey put on nearly twice the amount of furs Olruggio had packed for the trip, and apparently the sight was still funny. “You’re still cold?”
Qifrey frowns. “Not everyone spent years living in the snow, Olly.”
That earns him a grin, but Olruggio does not answer. He simply slows until Qifrey catches up, then reaches for the fur draped over his own shoulders and pulls it free. “Here.” Before Qifrey can respond, Olruggio steps closer and lifts the fur as though to settle it around him himself. Qifrey flinches back on instinct, frightened by what Olruggio’s touch might do to him after all this time.
The hurt crosses Olruggio’s face too quickly for him to hide it, and Qifrey’s stomach drops with it. He wants to explain, but there is nothing he can say without opening the door to questions he cannot answer. Olruggio steps back instead, lowering his hands before holding the fur out to him. “Put it on.”
For a moment, Qifrey can only look at him. Then he takes the fur carefully, making sure their fingers do not touch. “Thank you.” Olruggio turns back towards the road before Qifrey finishes fastening it around his shoulders, and Qifrey is left following with the expression on Olruggio’s face lodged painfully in his mind.
By the time they reach the closest village, the sun is already setting behind the fields. There is no sense beginning work in the dark, so they spend the last of the light speaking with the villagers about what they could help with instead.
“Mostly the lumber,” one of the older men tells them, pointing towards several stacks beneath a long shelter near the storehouse. “The rain caught us two days ago. We covered what we could, but a good portion of it is still damp.”
By then, the last of the light has nearly gone, and Qifrey can feel the day’s walking catching up with him. Olruggio seems to be feeling it too, because after a brief pause he asks, “Is there anywhere nearby we could get something to eat?”
A broad-faced woman standing near the back of the group, her greying hair braided tightly over one shoulder, steps forward. “If you don’t mind, you can eat in my house. I’ve got frillram stew on the fire, and there’s plenty of it.”
Qifrey smiles. “We’d be very grateful.”
“Then come along,” she says, already turning towards the houses. “My children would love to have some company.”
Qifrey and Olruggio fall into step behind her as she leads them towards the western end of the village, where the houses thin out against the fields. Hers sits near the edge, a low stone house with a weathered barn standing beside it.
The woman ushers them inside, and warmth meets Qifrey almost immediately. The house is small, but every part of it looks used: coats crowd the hooks beside the door, a basket of mending sits beneath one of the chairs, and the table has already been laid for supper. The smell of the stew fills the room, rich enough after a day on the road that Qifrey feels his hunger sharpen at once.
His atelier does not feel like this yet. He has lived there long enough to know every room, but there are still corners that look newly claimed - shelves waiting to be filled and walls that have not gathered much history. He hopes they will, eventually. Having Olruggio there has already changed the place in ways Qifrey had not expected, leaving another coat by the door and another cup beside the sink, small signs of a life beginning to settle alongside his own. It is a start, at least.
He barely has time to finish the thought before two children come thundering down the hall.
“Mr. Beardy-Witch!”
Olruggio stops short as they throw themselves at him, catching his balance just in time. The older boy grabs fistfuls of his robes, while the girl chooses to wrap both arms around his waist. “Careful,” Olruggio says, though neither of them appears to listen, or care.
“You came back!” the boy says, beaming up at him.
Qifrey laughs before he can help it, partly from surprise and mostly at the look of long-suffering resignation on Olruggio’s face. Despite the expression, one of his hands has already come down to steady the girl where she clings to him. “You seem popular, Olly.”
“Don’t,” Olruggio huffs out.
“Are you going to do magic again?” the boy asks. He has the restless energy of a child barely managing to stand in one place, shifting from foot to foot while he waits for the answer.
“Tomorrow.”
“What kind?”
“You’ll find out tomorrow.”
Olruggio looks towards their mother for help, but she only smiles to herself as she begins setting bowls on the table. Qifrey has to bite back another laugh as the girl makes use of Olruggio’s distraction to start climbing onto his back with obvious familiarity.
“They were like this last year too,” Olruggio tells him.
The girl manages to hook her arms over his shoulders and peers at Qifrey from beside his head, her hair half-fallen out of its braid from the effort. “He fixed all our lanterns.”
“I fixed three snowlanterns.”
“All of them,” she insists.
Olruggio sighs. “Apparently all of them.”
“Nina, Nico, leave the witch alone long enough to let him eat,” their mother says, setting the last of the bowls on the table. “You can ask him questions after he’s had his fill.”
The children obey only in the loosest sense of the word. By the time everyone sits down, they have claimed the seats on either side of Olruggio, and the chatter resumes almost immediately.
Qifrey says little as he eats, content to listen. They want to know where Olruggio has been, whether he has seen any strange beasts, what kind of magic he will use tomorrow, and whether witches ever sleep. Olruggio answers every question with the same patient attention, even when one follows so quickly after another that he barely has time to return to his stew.
Qifrey feels his lips quirk into a smile before he can help it. In a few months, there will be apprentices at the atelier too, children with questions of their own who will inevitably find their way to Olruggio. Watching him now, Qifrey can already imagine how easily he will make room for them. Olruggio has always been generous with his kindness.
It occurs to him that this might become a familiar sight someday.
The thought is interrupted when the woman looks across the table at Qifrey. “Where are you two headed after this?”
“North,” he replies. “To Ghodrey.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Ghodrey? I’ve only ever heard stories about it. They say it gets bitterly cold up there.” She glances towards their packs near the door. “Do you have enough food for the road? I can put something together before you leave.”
“That’s very kind of you, but we should be all right.” Qifrey smiles. “If you have somewhere we could sleep tonight, though, we’d be grateful.”
“You can use the barn beside the house.” Her expression softens slightly as she looks towards the window. “There haven’t been any animals in it since summer. My husband fell ill and passed, and I sold them afterward to help us get by.”
Qifrey’s smile fades into something gentler. “I’m sorry.”
She gives a small nod, accepting the sympathy without dwelling on it. “It’s dry, and it keeps the wind out. You’re welcome to it.”
“Thank you,” Qifrey says. “That would be more than enough.”
By the time they finish eating, the children have begun to flag, their questions coming more slowly until their mother finally sends them to bed. The boy protests that he isn’t tired even as he yawns through the complaint, while the girl has already started leaning against Olruggio’s arm. Their mother eventually herds them both from the table, and the house grows noticeably quieter once their footsteps disappear down the hall.
Qifrey and Olruggio help clear the bowls before gathering their things. When they’re ready, the woman takes a lantern from beside the door and leads them back outside. The cold catches at Qifrey almost immediately after the warmth of the house, and he pulls Olruggio’s fur closer around his shoulders as they cross the short stretch of ground between the house and the barn.
“There’s clean straw inside,” she tells them as she works the door open. “It should keep the wind off you, at least.”
Qifrey steps in after Olruggio and feels the difference as soon as the doors close behind them. “This is perfect,” he says. “Thank you again.”
She wishes them good night and leaves them with the lantern, her footsteps fading back towards the house.
Qifrey begins to unpack their bedrolls and blankets while Olruggio prepares a pyreball between them. Heat blooms across the place, steady and contained, and by the time Qifrey settles beneath his blankets, exhaustion has begun to weigh pleasantly through his limbs. They have spent nearly the entire day walking, and he is grateful simply to be lying down.
They lie on opposite sides of the fire without speaking. Once, that silence would never have lasted. Qifrey can remember nights when they talked until one of them stopped answering, their conversations wandering from one thing to another before sleep finally won. Now he keeps his eyes closed and listens to the low crackle of the fire, willing himself not to notice how much space sits between them.
Sleep is beginning to take him when Olruggio speaks.
“Are you asleep?”
Qifrey waits a moment. “Yes.”
Olruggio huffs out a quiet laugh. “Liar.”
The word catches somewhere beneath Qifrey’s ribs. He keeps his eyes closed and says nothing, and after that, Olruggio does not speak again. Qifrey lies awake for only a little longer before exhaustion finally carries him under.
ZERO.
The day after he wiped Olruggio’s memory for the third time, Qifrey left the Great Hall.
Each time had been necessary, and each time Olruggio had forgiven him. None of that changed what Qifrey had done. The person he loved most had trusted him with his mind and woken with pieces of it missing, and after everything that had once been taken from Qifrey himself, there were few things he could imagine hating more.
And so, he ran.
For nearly three years, he kept running under the guise of a search. He followed every false lead about the brimmed hats that reached him, crossed from one corner of Zozah to another, and arrived again and again at places where nothing waited for him. The disappointment was easier to bear than staying close to Olruggio and wondering how long it would be before he stumbled across the truth again, leaving Qifrey with the same terrible choice.
The relief he found in that distance did not last long. Without the guilt of taking pieces from Olruggio to keep the Silverwood in check, Qifrey began to feel the roots more sharply beneath his skin. The pain came often enough that he could no longer dismiss what it meant. He had left Olruggio to protect him, only to discover that the act of leaving was beginning to endanger the promise he’d made to him instead.
That realization made the choice simpler than he expected. If distance could not save him either, then there was no sense maintaining it.
After two years on the road, Qifrey began thinking about what came next before he had even chosen where he’d settle down now that he’d stopped running. Taking on apprentices seemed the most obvious answer. If the absence of Olruggio by his side was no longer enough to keep the Silverwood at bay, then perhaps responsibility would be. The worry of having a child depend on him would have to be enough.
It was with that thought in mind that he returned to the Naakiwan Downs. He had passed through the region countless times before, but this time the sight of the open plains pulled an old memory to the surface: himself, years younger, telling Olruggio beneath the same wide starry sky that he might like to settle somewhere like this when he was older.
That memory had been reason enough.
The atelier took longer to build than Qifrey expected. He planned for apprentices from the beginning, making room for workspaces and bedrooms that would not be his own, but somewhere along the way the design became larger still. Two separate structures began to take shape where one would have been enough.
Qifrey never quite admitted why.
He had chosen a place and made himself easy to find, and somewhere in his heart, he had already accepted what that meant. Sooner or later, Olruggio would find him.
The construction was finished by the end of summer. Once the last of the work was done, Qifrey took the fifth test and returned to the atelier to wait.
He didn’t have to wait long. Winter had only just begun to creep over the plains when there came a knock at the door, and Qifrey knew who it would be before he opened it.
Olruggio stood on the other side.
Qifrey had spent three years imagining this moment in one form or another, but even that had not prepared him for the force of seeing Olruggio again. The Silverwood reacted before he could gather himself, pain tearing sharply beneath his skin as the roots strained outward hard enough to make his knees nearly buckle. He caught himself against the doorframe and held there, forcing down the warmth that had risen with the sight of him.
What finally steadied him was the thought of what Olruggio’s return might eventually require of him. If Olruggio stayed close, then sooner or later he might stumble across the truth again, and Qifrey would be left with the same terrible choice he had spent three years trying to escape. The guilt arrived before the act itself, sharp enough to smother everything else, and slowly the roots retreated.
Only then could Qifrey properly look at him. Olruggio seemed older with the beginnings of the uneven beard Qifrey would later tease him about. Yet he regarded Qifrey with the same open fondness as ever, as though the years apart had done nothing to diminish it.
That, more than anything, made the guilt worse.
Olruggio let the silence stretch for a moment before lifting an eyebrow. “Are you going to invite me in?”
Qifrey stepped aside, and Olruggio passed him, pausing just inside to look around. His gaze moved slowly over the interior, taking in the shelves, the worktables, and the half-filled cupboards, while Qifrey remained near the door and watched him instead. He could not seem to stop. The time apart had left him greedy for every small detail, and before he quite realized it, his fingers had found the black ribbon hanging from his hat.
He closed his hand around it, giving himself something to hold instead of reaching for Olruggio. If seeing him again had been enough to nearly undo him, Qifrey did not trust what touching him might do.
“This is a nice place,” Olruggio said after a while. Then he turned, and the grin he gave Qifrey was so familiar that something in his chest tightened all over again. “Do you have anything to drink?”
Qifrey could not help smiling back. “I think I can manage that.”
He finally let go of the ribbon and headed towards the kitchen, grateful for the excuse to do something with his hands.
They drank well into the night, long enough for the stiffness between them to soften around the edges. By the time the bottle was nearly empty, Olruggio’s face had gone warm and flushed from the wine, and Qifrey had gathered just enough courage from his own glass to say, as casually as he could manage, that Olruggio’s room was already prepared.
Olruggio looked at him over the rim of his cup, bright-eyed and unmistakably knowing, but he spared Qifrey the embarrassment of saying anything about it. He only set the cup down and let Qifrey lead him through the atelier to the room waiting in the adjoined structure. Neither of them commented on the made bed, the cleared shelves, or the simple fact that Qifrey had built a home for himself and somehow already known to leave space in it for Olruggio.
After that, Olruggio had settled into the atelier beside him. At first, Qifrey did not quite know what to do with the proximity he had spent years denying himself, especially when he was still so afraid of what allowing himself too much of it might mean. In the end, he learned to manage it in smaller ways. He stepped aside before their shoulders could brush in narrow spaces, found reasons to keep his hands occupied when Olruggio came too near, and generally avoided giving himself the chance to discover what touching him again might do.
It helped that Olruggio spent much of his time shut away in his room with his commissions, working for hours without seeming to notice how much of the day had passed. Qifrey often brought his meals to him when it became obvious he would otherwise forget to eat, though Olruggio made a point of emerging for at least one meal each day. The first time he sat down to something Qifrey had cooked, he took a few bites before looking up with obvious surprise.
“This is actually good.”
Qifrey stared at him, unimpressed. “I can cook now, you know.”
Olruggio’s mouth curved around another bite. “I’ll have to try more of it before I decide.”
Qifrey rolled his eyes, but the smile came anyway. It was easy, sometimes, to fall back into this with him, and perhaps that was what frightened Qifrey most.
Two weeks after Olruggio returned, he mentioned over breakfast that he would be leaving for Ghodrey before winter properly set in. His mother had written to say she had been ill, and it had been too long since he had visited her. Qifrey understood all of that. Even so, the thought of Olruggio leaving again so soon after Qifrey had finally gotten him back opened something fearful in his chest, and before he could think better of it, he asked if he could come along.
Olruggio looked doubtful. “You hate the cold.”
“That’s what warming magic is for,” Qifrey said, with more confidence than he felt.
Olruggio studied his face for a long moment. Eventually, he sighed. “Fine.” His expression softened as he looked back down at his breakfast. “It would be nice to have you beside me.”
Qifrey looked down at his cup and decided, for his own sake, not to dwell on those words as Olruggio started talking about the road to Ghodrey.