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The atelier was meant to be a place of learning, but Qifrey was constantly being surprised by how avid the girls were to study magic. After the fourth time he found Coco and Agott still at their desks well after midnight, after already having chided them multiple times about needing to sleep and do other things besides dive into books of sigils and signs and practice drawing spells, it was time to bring in the heavy weaponry.
The knock at their study door barely lifted either girl's head from where she bent over her desk. "Come in," Coco called absently, drawing a sign for the eighteenth time in the last clockmark, determined to perfect it before she went to bed.
Expecting Qifrey there to chide them again, she was surprised to hear Olruggio's gruff voice instead. "Open the door for me, my hands are full." Agott's brows rose, and she popped up to get the door for their Watchful Eye. "Yep, just like he said," Olly muttered as he entered with a tray in his hands bearing two cups of steaming tea and a plate of little cookies between them. "Is this my fault after all?"
"Is what your fault, Master Olly?" Agott asked, taking the tray from him. The older witch looked about as tired as he usually did, which was to say extremely. Coco put down her pen and turned to smile up at him.
"Is it my fault you girls think you can get away with pullin' all-nighters for no good reason?" He took the tray back from Agott. "Sit down, will ya? Here, one for each of you."
The cup he handed her was perfectly toasty warm between Coco's hands. She hadn't even noticed how her right hand was aching from hours of drawing, but the heat soothed the hurt very well. Breathing in, she smiled at the scent of willowgrape billowing in the rising steam. "Thank you," she chirped, holding it without taking a sip.
Olruggio gave her a narrow-eyed look, and said, "It's more effective when you drink it."
"We're not babies, you don't need to rock us to sleep and tuck us in," Agott said, rolling her eyes, but she drank from her cup anyways.
"I wonder if babies might be easier to wrangle," Olruggio said, "At least babies wouldn't be up until half dawn, drawin' all night long!"
"Isn't it good that we're being diligent?" Coco asked. She really didn't want to give up until she'd mastered tonight's sign, but under Olruggio's continued glare, she gave in and sipped the sweet, soothing tea.
"You might think you're bein' diligent, but what you're doin' is wreckin' your focus for tomorrow. Trust me, girls, you do not want to end up like me."
"But you're an extremely talented witch," Agott said, a furrow in her brow, "why wouldn't we want to be like you?"
Olruggio put a hand to his face to hide the blush that always appeared when he received a compliment. "You're both gonna be extremely talented witches, I know that already. But you gotta have other things in your lives to do besides spellwork and housework, all right? Sleep is important, havin' hobbies is important, doin' what makes you happy is important."
"But learning magic makes me happy," Coco said. She eyed the cookies Olly still held until he offered her the plate so she could snag a couple. "Sleeping does not make me happy," she added grimly, and bit into a cookie.
Agott wiggled her hand expectantly until she received some cookies too. "Sleeping is just a waste of time I could be working on improving my skills," she scoffed, giving lie to her words with a huge yawn.
"Yeah, I felt both those ways when I was your age too," Olruggio said ruefully, "but these are the years you're developin' habits that'll last your whole lives, okay? I mean, look at me…" He waved a hand at his face. "You don't wanna get used to pushin' yourself until you got no choice but to collapse. Too much of that and you'll end up exhausted and ugly."
"You're not ugly, Master Olly," Coco said. "Tired and ugly aren't the same thing."
"They get to be the same thing after long enough," Olly sighed.
"Master Qifrey likes looking at you," Agott observed, smirking when Olly covered his face with both hands. "Anyways, you're what, thirty years older than us? We can get away with studying late now when we're learning the most."
"Thirty-!" When his hands dropped, Olly looked like she'd sucker-punched him. "I am barely twenty years older than you, okay, how old do you think me and Qifrey are anyways?"
"You're older than him, right?" Coco asked innocently.
"Only by two months!"
"Oh. You look way older than he does." Coco tilted her head and said, "Maybe it's because of the beard."
"It's because when I was your age I did what you're doin' now and no one stopped me before I started doin' it every night as a matter o' course," Olruggio said wearily, "I'm tryin' to keep you from endin' up this way, girls, work with me here, would ya?"
From across the room, Coco glanced at Agott, imagining not for the first time what she would look like older, but adding the untidy hair, under-eye bags, and sallow complexion that Olruggio habitually displayed— and shook her head sharply to clear the vision. "But if I don't like sleeping and I want to do spellwork all night…."
"That's why you need a hobby," Olruggio said, happy to get back onto his original track and away from the touchy topic of his age. "Havin' somethin' to do in the evenings to wind down makes it easier to sleep."
"I have a hobby already," Agott said, brushing cookie crumbs off the reference book she'd been using before slipping a marktea bookmark into it and closing it.
"Reading books about magic isn't a hobby when you're an apprentice," Olly said severely.
"I have another hobby," Agott insisted, making a face at him.
"Really?"
"I keep a diary," she muttered, evading his curious gaze. "I only write in it when I'm in my own room."
"Okay, that's solid practice for keepin' a diary," Olly conceded. "What about you, Coco, is there somethin' you like doin' that's got nothin' to do with magic?"
Coco looked down into her near-empty teacup, thinking about her life before the atelier, before the forbidden magic drew an immutable line between life as an Unknowing and life as a witch. Since being taken under Qifrey's tutelage, she'd thrown herself completely into her studies, but when she lived with her mother, there had been several things she'd done just for the fun of it. "I liked making dolls from the fabric scraps my mother couldn't use," she said quietly. "But I don't get scraps any more."
"Needlework, that's a great one," Olruggio said. "Did you know spells can be sewn— no, never mind, this is not about spellwork—" He sighed deeply at the bright look in Coco's eyes at his slip of the tongue. "If you like makin' dolls, we can get what you need for that, no problem."
"I'd like that," Coco said, and hid a yawn behind one ink-stained hand.
"Good," Olruggio said, and took the empty teacup from her. "Go to bed and think about what the first doll you wanna make will be." He turned and found Agott holding her cup out to him already. "And you—"
"You don't need to tell me what to do," Agott said. "I already write in it before bed every night."
"In that case, you might need an extra hobby."
"No. I'll be better about not staying up all night." It was clearly a lie, but she was just as clearly tired out right now, and he could always stand as an object lesson on the dangers of sleep deprivation if one was still needed in the future. "Good night, Master Olly. Good night, Coco." She went down the back stairs toward her room, leaving Coco to study Olruggio's face with a small frown on her own.
"Master Olly… what are your hobbies?"
"Nothin' that'd be suitable for you," he said immediately, thinking of nights measured by the filling and emptying of loop chalices, of all the woodworking and sculpting and other crafting he did, not for the joy of making simple things, but to fill his endless commission list and to develop new contraptions that would help people he might never meet. Do what you love for a job and every day of your life will be endless work, he thought with a familiar sense of resignation.
"So… you just came in here to tell us all the things we should do that you never do," Coco said. She crossed her arms in a show of determination and said, "I'll do a hobby if you will. I can teach you how to sew!"
Olruggio knew how to sew already, in the most basic and general sense, but it was good for the students to become teachers at their own talents, and as the daughter of a seamstress Coco undoubtedly had skills he could pick up from her. "Sure, Coco. I'll get what we need and you can start teachin' me, if you promise not to make fun of my stitches."
"You don't make fun of my spell seals even when they're really bad, you just show me how to fix them," Coco said, pouting slightly. "I wouldn't make fun of you for not being good at something new. I'm not mean."
"No, you're not mean at all," Olruggio said softly, and reached out to ruffle her hair. "All right, deal. Now go to bed, will ya?"
"Only if you go to bed too," she said in a no-nonsense tone that was frankly ridiculous coming out of a sleepy-eyed eleven-year-old.
Olly breathed a laugh and nodded. "I will. Promise."
"Okay." Coco paused at the top of the steps to look back and smile at him. "Sweet dreams, Master Olly."
"Good night, Coco."
Curled in her bed a few minutes later, Coco let her mind wander through the dolls that were fossilized in the crystal remnants of her home— the lopsided quadryphon that had been her first ever attempt, a dragon that looked more like a griffin since it was made from fuzzy fabric, the scalewolf that she had been working on before the forbidden magic ensured it would never be completed. Her favorite dolls had been the ones her mother helped her make, of the two of them— dark haired mama doll, green-haired daughter doll, with several pretty dresses she could change them into.
Dolls of the people she loved were the most precious, Coco thought sleepily, and there were so many people she loved now that she would enjoy crafting into dolls. As a hobby, it would keep her busy for months to create an atelier's worth of dolls. She wondered if Master Olly would take her to buy her own fabric if she asked nicely.
Three weeks later, the hours after dinner found Coco on the couch with Olruggio on one side and Tetia, who had asked to join the sewing lessons, on the other, demonstrating medium-difficulty stitch types with an embroidery hoop held so both her students could see the motion of her needle. The floatglow lantern hung over her head, illuminating the fabric well as she kept her stitching slow to show them every step of the process.
Olruggio watched with a hand stroking his beard absently. The first week, she'd only shown him things he was already able to do, albeit without her tidy and regular stitches; the second had been for decorative stitches, and now they were getting into the weeds, stitches with purposes: to edge a blanket, to invisibly seal a hem, to hold together fabric that might need to flex as it was used. Practical lessons, ones he enjoyed very much. When he'd agreed to Coco's bargain, he hadn't realized that she had so many useful stitches to share with him; it had been wrong to assume that her youth meant her pursuits would lean toward frivolity. Just because she wanted to make dolls didn't make the skills she was teaching him less useful for anything made of fabric that might need a repair or an upgrade.
"I don't get it," Tetia said, leaning down until her hair almost blocked the light over Coco's hoop. "How does this make the fabric flexible?"
"It's not the fabric that needs to be flexible, it's the seam," Coco said, tying off one stitch to snip the thread, knot it, and start again in a new row. "See how going back and forth gives it some ease, instead of the tension with a straight stitch? Straight stitches aren't good for edges like neck holes and wrists on stretchy fabrics, if one stitch pops the whole thing will come undone. But doing it this way lets it give instead of popping."
"Ohhhh," Tetia said, nodding. "All right, that makes sense."
"You're a good teacher, Coco," Olruggio said. "One day you'll make an excellent master, I know it."
"Oh," Coco said, flushing with the praise. She didn't let herself think past saving her mother when she thought about the future; the idea of an atelier of her own, apprentices, a Watchful Eye— it was too much, too far, too uncertain. (Too beautiful, to think of Agott at her side the way Olruggio was at Qifrey's; too painful, to think of any other witch in her place.) "Thank you, Master Olly."
Across the living room, Qifrey looked up from where he was helping Agott derive the purpose of an obscure sign in a spellbook she'd been going through cover to cover, barely repressing a smile at the sight of his best friend learning from his newest apprentice. Olly might have grumbled toothlessly about teaching the girls when he wasn't their master; it was adorable to see that he wouldn't complain to learn from them.
Richeh was the first to retire for the night, wanting to spend time in her secret hideaway before bedtime. Agott went next, once she was satisfied that she understood the spell that had her stuck. By the time Tetia said her good-nights and left the room, Coco looked no sleepier than she had just after dinner, and she didn't shift off the couch, just made more room for Olruggio while she observed his reproduction of tonight's stitches.
"You should go to bed soon, Coco," Qifrey said. "It's getting late."
She looked up from Olly's hoop and pushed her hair behind her ear. "It is? Oh, I guess so." She had no intention of going to sleep, but her own bedroom was where she had the fabric for her personal project, not wanting even Agott to catch a glimpse before the whole set was ready to show off. The night before she had finished stitching the last of the girl-sized doll bodies; tonight she was determined to get one of the adult-sized ones done before turning in. "It looks like you have this stitch down perfectly, Master Olly, good job!" When she patted him on the head the way he'd absently done to each of the girls before, he looked startled enough to make her giggle as she stood. "Have a good night, Masters!"
"Good night," Olly said, still a little stunned to have his own method of praising students turned back on himself.
"Sleep well, Coco," Qifrey called after her, and waited to hear the door to her study close behind her before he moved onto the couch beside Olruggio. "May I see what you did tonight?"
"Sure, why not?" He tilted the hoop so Qifrey could see while he finished up the last of the stitching. It wasn't much to look at— a few rows of specialized stitches, starting uneven but becoming quite regular by the last iteration of each. "I'm pickin' it up all right, I think."
"Coco certainly thinks so," Qifrey said, amusement all over his face. "Are you enjoying learning?"
"I always enjoy learnin' somethin' new," Olly said. "Never know what might be the key to the next thing I'm asked to make, after all."
"I'm sure you're already making plans for when your skill level matches your ambitions to create."
"You know how I operate better than anyone," Olly laughed quietly, knotting off his thread and securing the needle before he set the hoop aside and stretched his arms over his head. His back let out an alarming series of pops. "Ugh. Speakin' of how I operate, I should get back to the drawing board…"
"You could. Or you could join me in the kitchen for a little treat," Qifrey said.
"…I do like a little treat," Olly said with a grin. "What kinda treat are we talkin' here?"
"Nolnoa finally got his hands on some spices I asked after a while ago, and I picked some fresh rocklodge ginger this afternoon. I was thinking gingersnaps, or maybe gingerbread..."
"Snaps," Olly said immediately, "gingersnaps please, you know I love the crunch."
"If you mince the ginger and handle the baking, I'll do the rest of the work."
"Deal!"
In her own room while the adults negotiated their midnight delight, Coco was thinking about them while she stitched the body of an unspecified doll. She was still designing the clothes for the dolls; Qifrey's clothes were further along, so she decided this doll would be his. At this point, it didn't make a difference to the sewing, but she liked to have the person in mind while she worked on their doll. (That probably had something to do with why Agott's doll had taken half again as long as the other two apprentices and twice as long as her own; Coco kept getting lost in thought about her and realizing minutes later that her needle had stilled while her mind wandered.)
After what she'd learned after the terrible, magical night of Silver Eve, Coco was noticing how often Qifrey's expression slipped into melancholy when he thought no one was paying attention to him. She couldn't imagine how scary it had to be to know that happiness could kill you, or how difficult it had to be to stave happiness off in a home as safe and warm and full of affection as their atelier.
It wouldn't hurt him for her to aim her feelings at the doll— all the gratitude and respect and astonishment and love that she felt for the man who'd pulled her from her own unwitting doom and carried her into the world of magic she'd so long desired to join. Maybe after the set was finished, the Qifrey doll could get all of the hugs that the human Qifrey couldn't risk accepting without the silverwood threatening his life.
Lost in her warm and gentle emotions, Coco didn't realize how drowsy she was until the needle went into her finger and startled her out of her reverie. She hadn't quite finished the doll body yet, but… if she was going to fill this doll with all her affection, it would be okay if it took her a little longer to work on it. She could go to sleep now, and wake up early enough to finish it before it was time for breakfast— and then when she came down to eat she would already be in a good mood to greet her master, starting the day off right for a lesson that Qifrey had promised would challenge all of the girls.
By the time spring began, Coco had four of the six dolls finished. Her own had been the first completed, because if she was going to make a mistake while figuring out the details, it was best to do it on her own doll. Embroidering the face had been easy; deciding how to do the hair was harder. The clothes were no problem, at least. It took a couple of weeks for her to be satisfied with it, but once she'd done it the first time, she was confident going into the second.
Richeh's had been the second finished. Her straight hair and flat expressions were the easiest to craft. Coco begged a tiny crystal ribbon from her without telling her why, to put in the doll's hand. Tetia's had been third, and took the longest so far; Coco had needed to dye uncarded wool with throne tea to get something like her hair color and consistency, with an undyed puff in her hand for cloud magic.
She'd done Olruggio's fourth, and told herself she wasn't putting off finishing the apprentice dolls for any particular reason. The Olly doll's beard had given her a little trouble; she couldn't simply stitch it while looking at him, and it didn't seem right the first two times she'd done it and then pulled the thread out to try again. She'd traded him a remedial lesson on buttonholes in exchange for a little box of scraps from his contraption crafting, so the doll held a small blue chip meant to be a snugstone that was clearly left over from when he'd made the real ones.
Coco sat on her bed and held the unfinished dolls in either hand. In her left, Qifrey, whose doll was clothed and face was stitched but was still bald and unspectacled; in her right, Agott, whose hair and clothes were done, but whose face Coco hesitated to attempt for reasons she couldn't verbalize even in her own mind.
She was so close to being done. All that was left were those final three things, and then she could show off what she'd been doing almost every night before bed for months. Every time she thought about the reactions of the atelier's inhabitants, she couldn't help wiggling a little in excitement, but first—
She put down the Agott doll and picked up the white fabric and thread she was using for Qifrey's hair. It had taken her long nights of trying new methods on scraps of scraps to figure out how she wanted to do his hair, but she thought she had it down now, so it was time to stop practicing and make the final version real. Each small and precise stitch to hold the carefully cut swoops in place was done holding her breath; it felt like she couldn't inhale deeply until the final stitch secured a fold of fabric over where the doll's right eye would have been.
The glasses were going to be the hardest part, she knew; the box Olly had given her held dull-edged fragments of glass and little snips of wire, but she might need to borrow his tools to make something so small. It would be simpler if she could ask him to make them, since he'd made the full-sized versions, but she couldn't ask without explaining why she needed it, and even though she trusted him to be able to keep a secret, she still didn't want to reveal anything before all was ready.
Looking at the practice hairstyles scattered on her windowsill, Coco realized with a start that if Olly had made Qifrey's glasses, he had certainly made draft versions without the spellwork. If he still had any of them, Coco could ask for one and then use a seal to miniaturize them. She had a feeling he would approve once he saw the use she'd made of them.
Delighted with the realization, she gave the Qifrey doll a hug and gently set it beside the other completed dolls. One spell and one stitch and he'd be complete too.
That only left Agott. Agott, whose expression had always been so stormy when Coco arrived. Agott, who had been smiling at her more often lately, even when Coco simply walked into the room. Agott, who made Coco's insides do a weird flip every time she smiled like that, for no reason at all except that Coco was there.
"Stop being ridiculous," she whispered aloud, "it's not that difficult!" But it was. How could she stitch something as startlingly lovely as Agott's unprompted smile? She should just make the doll with a serious expression. That would be simple, right? But what would Agott think if Coco showed her a doll with a solemn face, when she'd been so visibly happy to see Coco lately? What if she thought that Coco didn't notice her smiles?
With a drawn-out sigh, Coco flopped backwards on her bed, staring up at the ceiling like she might find an answer written there. What to do about Agott was a question that had been keeping her up at night well beyond each evening's work on the dolls, and then following her into her dreams. At least when Agott was the subject of her dreams, they were never nightmares…
Okay. She had to ask Olruggio for a pair of glasses; she could ask him about this too. Olly would keep her secret. He already knew she was making the dolls, since he'd bought the fabric for her. He'd think the actual secret was how she felt about Agott… and from what she'd observed, Olruggio had ample practice in not saying a word about feelings that needed to be secret, even if they were obvious to anyone with eyes.
It was late, but not so late that the chronically sleep-deprived Watchful Eye was likely to be asleep. She tiptoed through the house and across the catwalk to where she hoped she'd get the help she needed.
"Master Olly?" Even though she'd long understood that the curse nailed to his door wasn't anything real, Coco still hesitated to knock. But if he left it cracked, that was fair game to push it open far enough to call in to him.
"What is it, Coco?" Unsurprisingly, it sounded like he was at his work bench. She took the question as invitation, and put her shoes together to lift her up to his level. He put down his pen, rubbed at his tired eyes, and gave her a curious look. "Somethin' up?"
Now that she was in front of him, the question she had seemed so silly, he would think she was silly— "Um, you know I'm making dolls, right?"
"Yeah, I remember why we bought all that fabric. Why, are they ready? I wanna see 'em!"
"No, they're not done yet! I, uh, I needed…" Ask the easy part first. "I was wondering if you had anything left over from when you were making Master Qifrey's glasses. Like, a first version, or something…"
"Pfft, I went through six tryin' to perfect the design, I'm sure they're kickin' around somewhere." He sat back and looked up, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Yeah, I think… maybe over here?" Coco stepped back to let him cross over to the bench by the window and start pulling boxes out from under it. "Not this… not this… definitely not this," he said, and shoved that one all the way back under the bench. "C'mon, I know I kept… yes!" He tilted an open box at her, and Coco could see a pile of frames with cloudy glass lenses, light and dark. Some of them didn't look like Qifrey's current glasses, the wrong shape to the bridge of them, but there—
"Could I have these?" she asked, lifting out the pair that looked closest to the ones he wore now.
"Sure, I don't need 'em." He didn't get up from the floor, still sifting through boxes. "If you're gonna use a miniaturizing spell, you might wanna refine it first with somethin' unimportant that size. Easier to fine-tune with a stand-in, trust me."
"Right! Thank you." Coco held the glasses up to her own nose curiously, looking at him through the foggy glass side. "There's… one more doll I'm not finished with yet. I'm having a hard time with this one."
"Oh?" That got Olly to push the boxes back under the bench and lever himself up to sit on the furniture correctly. "What's the hitch?"
"Well…" Coco hesitated until he patted the bench beside him, smiling gratefully as she sat down. "It's… okay, so, you know how Richeh doesn't really smile?"
"Mmhm."
"And Tetia always smiles. And Master Qifrey has that, you know, just a little smile, but it's a peaceful one."
"I know the one," Olly said wryly.
"And when I met you, I thought you didn't smile much, but when you do, it's bright, you know?"
"I'll take your word for it."
"But… Agott…" Coco looked down, spinning her thumbs around in a way she knew she picked up from Qifrey, just one of many things she'd learned under his care. "…does she smile?"
"You don't know if Agott smiles?" Olly looked amused.
"She smiles at me, all the time now, but… I don't want to make her doll smiling if she's only smiling at me…"
"Ahh," Olly said, nodding solemnly. "You want to know if other people will think it's weird if her doll is smilin'."
"Yes!"
"What are you gonna do with the dolls?"
Coco blinked, taken aback by the question. "Um…?"
"When you're done with them, do you plan to keep them? Are you givin' them to the person they're made of?"
"Oh, I…" Coco bit her lip. "I thought… maybe keep them in the living room…" She hadn't thought much about it, though. "Do you think I should give them to everyone?"
"Totally up to you what you do with 'em," Olly reassured her. "Just sayin'… do you think Agott would rather have a smilin' doll or a serious one?"
"I don't know…"
"If you kept it, what would you rather have?"
"I'd want her smiling," Coco said immediately, and blushed at her prompt response.
"I think you should make her doll the way you like to see her, then," Olly said, like it was simple. Like maybe it could be simple.
"Do you want your doll?" Coco ventured.
"Nah, I think the livin' room idea works for mine. Keep the Watchful Eye on duty, right?"
"…do you want Master Qifrey's doll?" Her voice was very quiet. That didn't keep Olly's cheeks from turning pink, though.
"I think you should let Qifrey decide what happens to his doll."
"Okay." Coco nodded for a second, thinking it over, and then looked up at Olly with a smile. "Thank you, Master Olly. That really helps."
"Great, glad to be of service. Now scoot, I got work to finish."
When Coco glanced back from the door of his room, it looked like he was still blushing. She was still blushing, too.
"Keep them closed," Coco ordered as she arranged the dolls on the kitchen table, each in front of its model. She felt lucky to catch everyone having a snack at the same time when Olruggio had been scarce for days. When she sat back down and straightened out her own doll in front of her, she said, "Okay, open your eyes now!"
Tetia's popped open first, and she squealed loudly. "Coco! You made Tetia a Tetia doll!!" She picked up the doll eagerly, petting the pink curly hair with one finger. "Wow, it's soft, and so pretty!"
Richeh tilted her head to inspect her doll, pinching the hem of the tiny cloak between her fingers before she noticed the unique decoration. "This is why you asked for that ribbon," she said. "Cool."
Olruggio's eyes went first to Qifrey's doll, not his own; he caught sight of the miniaturized glasses held to the doll's face with two tiny stitches and grinned. "Nice job, Coco." He picked up the doll of himself and traced the lines of the beard with a fingertip, then flicked a nail against the miniature snugstone. "Love the details. Very well done."
Qifrey held his doll between both hands for a moment before lifting it, thumbing the miniature notebook held in its hand with the tiny star painted on the front of it. Behind the full-sized glasses, his eye was wet; behind the tiny one, it was clear blue and wide open. "This is lovely work," he said, "How long did it take you to do all of this?"
"I started the first one not long after the passage stars fell," Coco said, "I've been working on them about as long as I've been teaching Tetia and Master Olly."
"You've been keeping this secret for that long?" Agott sounded surprised. She turned her doll around in her hands, noting the detail of the tiny clothing, the ruffle of its hair, the pen in its hand, and the smile stitched into its face, then looked up at Coco with bright eyes and the origin of that stitched smile. "They're amazing, Coco."
Something in Coco's chest that had felt tight suddenly eased at the sight of Agott's smile, and Coco beamed back at her. "Thank you! Everyone should look at all of them, not just your own…"
Laughter and chatter as the dolls were passed from one person to another, warm in the sunlit kitchen, each one admired aloud. Tetia loved the way Coco had done the hair on each of them; Richeh noticed what each doll held (which Coco had thought long and hard on, and was gratified by the approval); Agott was fascinated by how Coco had simplified each person's usual clothes in the reproduction, and which details she chose to preserve. When Olruggio mentioned aloud that Coco had spelled the glasses on Qifrey's doll, all of the dolls ended up set aside for an impromptu lesson on spells of reduction that occupied the rest of the afternoon.
Coco made sure that each person knew the doll was theirs to keep before the night was over. Tetia was delighted with hers and said she'd never part with it, while Richeh mentioned she'd install it as her own Watchful Eye in her hideaway. Qifrey and Olruggio both put theirs atop the bookshelf that held most of the books the girls studied from— but by the next morning, Olly's was gone, and the day after that Qifrey's wasn't there either.
(Qifrey didn't have much in the way of comfort on his hard bed, and he kept the tiny Olly hidden away when it wasn't being held through the night. Olly had a little too much in the way of comfort, and the doll of Qifrey was usually found in whatever pile of pillows he'd last passed out into.)
Agott took her doll back to her bedroom, or so Coco thought, until she left the living room and came into their shared study to find Agott sitting at her desk with her doll propped against a stack of books. "Coco," she said, rising to her feet, and hesitated.
"Is there something wrong with it? I can fix it," Coco said, because why else would Agott be waiting up for her like this?
"No! No, there's nothing— it's very nice," Agott said, "but I'd rather— I mean, if you— agh!" She dropped her head into her hands, took a slow breath, and lifted her head on the exhale. "If it's all right with you. I would rather have the doll of you than the one of me." After her initial flusterment, she'd regained her composure, aside from the vibrant blush staining her cheeks as she stared at Coco.
"Oh…!" Coco's doll was in her hand already; she was before Agott and offering it to her a heartbeat after her exclamation. "Yes, if— can I have yours, then?"
"That was intended by my request, yes," Agott said stiffly, reaching out but not taking the doll from Coco's outstretched hand.
"Then yes, this one is yours now." Warm and bright inside as Coco felt as they exchanged dolls, she might as well have been full of Agott's owlcat light spell, radiant and floaty.
Agott smiled down at the green-haired doll, and then smiled up at Coco as she held the doll to her chest. "Thank you," she said. "It's lovely."
"I'm… very glad you like it," Coco breathed, enchanted by the smile she'd spent so many hours agonizing over faithfully reproducing. "I don't know what to do now," she added, "I've been working on the dolls every night since last year, it feels strange to be finished with them!"
"You could ask Master Olly about another hobby to try," Agott joked. "Or you could start keeping a diary…"
"I don't know anything about keeping a diary," Coco said. "Would you let me look at yours to see how to do it?"
Agott spluttered for a moment, shook her head firmly twice, and then said in a rush, "I think I'm going to bed now goodnight Coco!" and disappeared down her stairs, the Coco doll still cradled in her arms.
"Good night, Agott," Coco called after her. She tried not to giggle as she set the Agott doll on her desk to watch over her, reaching into a drawer for an unlabeled book. She didn't know anything about keeping a diary, but today was definitely worth a page or two of space in her journal. She'd never had a plan go as well as this one; she wanted to remember forever how happy she'd made her magical family that day.