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By Olruggio’s count, one hundred and fifty three days have elapsed since Qifrey vanished into the spring ether. One hundred and fifty three days, and while it’s not unusual for Qifrey’s spectre to haunt Olruggio’s dreams, he wonders why today, of all days, he wakes tortured by visions of that black tassel as it vanishes into the abyss.
Heart ripped asunder, Olruggio’s eyes wrench open.
Gloom purpled daybreak greets him, air stagnant and chilled. As he breathes in the shrill air, he watches as dawn’s tendrils creep through the imposing leaded window perched above Olruggio’s bed. Light flutters across crumpled sheets, entangles in the tousled strands of his hair, caresses his cold-numbed cheek. It curls in the empty space beside him, manifest of the deep absence he feels every morning.
Despite running warm, there’s something about that early morn cold — holding him in meditative exhaustion as the world stands on the precipice of a new day.
For one indulgent moment, Olruggio’s eyes fall shut.
Chasing silver through the thicket. The tree bark had felt so real under his fingers.
The mind is a complex thing. The gaps in his memory are proof of that.
Could it be that dreams are all they are?
There’s a saying up north. Where there’s a wolf’s ears are a wolf’s teeth. Only a fool would ignore the uncomfortable prickle at the back of his neck, the anxiety nestled deep in his belly.
Birdcall rouses him from his reverie.
What’s he to do about it now? The day beckons. Even if it’s his birthday, there’s work to be done.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Crisp air cooling his back, Olruggio works up a sweat harvesting vegetables before the impending frost. His basket overflows with glistening stacks of zwirlcchini, succulent gem tomatoes, fullmoon legumes he’d intended to collect at their halfmoon stage. A smattering of star peppers balance atop, the ones left unravaged by whatever small creature had seen fit to make a meal of them in the past week.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, he looks out over the modest bounty of green that would soon give way to the brown of autumn. It wouldn’t be nearly as lush without Qifrey’s water system, so diligently crafted to take away most of the hard work. A shame, really, to see it go.
Olruggio kneels before the container of strawberries they’d planted only days before Qifrey had disappeared. It had been a long day of gardening, the last of their plants. Sitting together in the fading sunset, their fingers had brushed together playfully in the loamy soil.
When they’re ripe, Qifrey had promised, hair wind tousled and dirt on his nose, we’ll whip up dessert and eat them together.
Before him grows the last flush of the season.
He hasn’t tasted a single one.
Plucking one ruby red jewel from the stem, the sweet aroma washes over him, tantalizing and ripe.
“Sir witch!” a voice calls from a distance, and Olruggio jumps. If Outsiders knew that witches resided here already, news spreads fast. “Please, there’s been rockfall! A boulder fell! Can you help?”
At the gate, the visitor leans over in a rush, mud caked on his pants and splattered across his ruddy face. Gnarled hands grasp at the fence posts. A true workman.
Fetching his cap and cloak, Olruggio springs to action, fulfilling a witch’s calling.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
When they arrive, he’s relieved to find crisis already averted. Relief soon gives way to concern when they mention a traveling witch who’d come to their rescue soon after they’d sent for help. It’s not the witch themself that bothers him; their proximity to Kahln all but guarantees witches would journey this way for one reason or another.
It's how they’d described him.
White as snow.
A lump forms in his stomach. Was it possible? Had they missed each other?
The Outsiders thank him for the trouble and send him off with cream from the buffashoals idling by, whose barn Olruggio offers to repair since the falling rocks damaged the structure. After all the walking it took to get there, he might as well do some good. If taking the time to make repairs also gives him time to sort out the complex feelings bubbling up in the back of his mind while he works, that’s no one’s business but his own.
The sun is setting by the time Olruggio taps together his sylph shoes and makes his way home. Dusk sneaks up quick in those transitory months, still clinging to one season while welcoming the other. Every day, it feels as if the sun goes down earlier and earlier.
Unease settles in his stomach.
Summer days alone are one thing. Rich with life and boundless energy. The preaching of bugs in the evening, the scamper of animals across the rolling hills. Being alone doesn’t feel so much like loneliness.
Winter nights are a different beast entirely. Cold, dark, long. Introspective. Darkness stretching on and on. Silent, save for the occasional howl of the lone scalewolf, the screech of a prey-starved owlcat on the hunt.
Could he suffer it alone?
The outline of the cottage rises on the horizon. Smoke curls like warning signs from the chimney.
The thought of seeing Qifrey makes him ache. How strange to feel such complex feelings towards someone Olruggio holds so dearly. Love, hate, desire, anger, sadness, pity. A swirling miasma plagues his heart.
What would he say?
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
After hemming and hawing outside of the entrance, Olruggio knocks, and footsteps answer. The door creaks open and there he is, spectacles perched on his nose and robes draped along his hips. The amber glow of the hearth envelopes him in the doorframe, illuminating his fresh washed hair. Even his clothes are clean, pristine compared to the sweat and grime that coats Olruggio’s hair, skin, clothes. A radiant prince against the fast fading twilight.
All at once, Olruggio feels like the one out of place, a long lost traveller come home. So many things he wants to say, all bubbling under the surface.
Where to start?
At his hesitation, a wry smile brightens Qifrey’s face, and he leans his forearm against the doorway. His muscles are taught under his skintight shirt, posture impeccable as he levels a cool glance his way. “A quirk you’ve developed while I’ve been away, Olly? You do still live here, no?”
Heat rises to Olruggio’s cheeks, and he draws himself up in protest. “What’s a man to do when he returns home to find a stranger in his house?”
An unnamed emotion flits across Qifrey’s face, followed by an uncomfortable laughter as he moves out of the doorway and towards the kitchen. “No strangers here, I’m afraid. Just an old friend.” The scent of roasted chrysanthonions and horncaps wafts through the air, followed by the sizzle of saltpork in the pan. Olruggio’s stomach rumbles.
Lingering at the threshold, Olruggio pretends he has a choice before he takes a step inside.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
A phantom dances through his kitchen. How can he look away?
It’s unsettling. Qifrey floats about from one station to the next, pyreballs roaring, kettles steaming, bread baking. Carefree, as if he’s come from the market rather than returning through the Qifrey shaped hole he once blasted into Olruggio’s life.
Satisfied at dinner’s progress, Qifrey’s attention pivots back towards him. With fearless stride he draws closer to the spot where Olruggio’s rooted down and reaches for the clasp of his cloak. Deft fingers work it free with practiced ease, and Qifrey draws the velvet from Olruggio’s shoulders, gathering it into a neat bundle in his arms.
“Wash up for dinner,” he commands, and Olruggio complies not because Qifrey told him to, but because filthy, hungry, and caught up in his feelings is no way to have a civilized conversation.
When Olruggio returns, rinsed off and clad in silk pajamas that drape across his shoulders, he’s thought long and hard about what he wants to ask.
Arms crossed in the foyer, he looks at the bountiful spread Qifrey’s prepared for them — and starts to lose his nerve.
“Olly,” Qifrey says from the kitchen, frozen in his tracks. Aloft in one hand is another platter of food he’s prepared, a dish towel in the other. “Your outfit.”
“From a patron,” he says, heat rising to his cheeks once more with the sudden attention. Facing away, he examines a golden tassel in a show of nonchalance. “I mentioned I run hot and she sent me her favorite style of sleep clothes.”
Qifrey furrows his brow.
The scrutiny makes the back of his neck itch. “If you don’t like ‘em—“
“I never said that.”
“Then what’s the big deal?”
With a click of his tongue, Qifrey sets the platter on the table, swings the dish cloth over his shoulder. Turning towards Olruggio, he crosses his arms in mirror of Olruggio’s own, studying his body as if he were a particularly complex casting seal. “My dear friend.”
Olruggio’s heart pounds.
“It’s clear that she was flirting with you.”
How is it that Qifrey always has him playing defense? “It was a gift!”
“Tell me where it’s customary to gift lingerie for commissions, and I’ll journey there straight away,” Qifrey says with a laugh, now that he’s gotten a rise. “Shouldn’t we have a matching set?”
Olruggio’s indignation shrivels at this new image Qifrey has conjured for him.
With an impatient wave he marches to the table. “Flirting or not, I haven’t seen her since. Seems a poor attempt.” Olruggio drops into his chair and eyes the mouthwatering food before him, stomach growling in response. “Don’t think I’ve forgiven you just yet.”
There’s a momentary pause, and a twinge of guilt prickles along his spine in reply.
“Of course,” comes the voice from behind him, more subdued than before. Footsteps plod away. Before long Qifrey reappears with goblets in hand, the heady scent of silvernectar wine filling the air. A smile sits on his face, impassive as always. “It’s vintage.”
It would be a shame to let it go to waste.
“Stars above that’s good,” he mutters, enjoying the full-bodied, honeyed notes despite his reluctance. There’s a muffled laugh above him, and Olruggio watches as Qifrey shuffles beside him. “There’s only one way through this,” he relents at last. “Sit.”
There’s something in the way Qifrey obeys without question that riles something deep inside him, but he doesn’t have time to unpack that right now. Stiff as a board, Qifrey sits, places his goblet on the table, and folds his hands dutifully on top. “I’m certain you have questions.”
And oh, does he. Hundreds of them. Some of them concerned, some angry. Some sad. Some meant to hurt.
Olruggio swallows the lump in his throat and for the first time all night, meets Qifrey’s eye, fixed on him with an intense, piercing stare. Heart pounding in his ears, he stares back unflinching, and asks the question he values above the rest. “Why’d you come back?”
“For you,” Qifrey says without hesitation, voice tense. Then, soft, as if the air’s been drawn from his lungs, “Of course it’s for you.”
The muscles in Olruggio’s jaw tighten. Taking a long sip from the goblet, he lets the words settle around him in solace before he launches his second salvo. “And did you find it? Whatever was so important you couldn’t leave me with more than a note?”
Venom in his words, even if he didn’t mean to place it there. Qifrey recoils, and Olruggio turns his head away.
“Not quite. But I found—“ He bites at his lip. “Something different.”
“Different?”
Olruggio takes another long sip as he watches Qifrey’s thumbs circle one another. “I found that I…” With a deep breath, his shoulders sag and his head dips down. “That I don’t want to live that kind of life. Away from here. Away from you.” Shaking fingers grip at the table, fingertips digging into the grain of the wood. “Whatever I’d gain from my journey wasn’t worth the price I was paying.”
Qifrey’s mask is deconstructing in front of him, laying bare the unfiltered side of himself. The scared boy he’d chased to the bottom of the ravine, with whom he’d shared countless nights beneath the stars. The Qifrey he’d known before whatever happened in the Librarian’s Trial that erected walls around his heart.
And just when Olruggio thought he’d finally broken through, Qifrey had vanished.
There’s a question that bids him ask, dancing on the tip of his tongue, but his own shame swallows the idea. Instead, “And you’re here to stay?”
Relief flows over tense shoulders, and Qifrey nods. “Yes. I want to stay, if you’ll have me. I have a proposal.”
Another wave of dread calls for another sip of the wine. Acidity pops on his tongue. “Go on.”
Wiry limbs untangle themselves from where they’ve folded on the table. “I’ve taken the fifth test. I’d like to take on apprentices. Here at the cottage. An atelier.”
Olruggio stares for a long moment, trying to wrap his head around this revelation. “Tell me I misheard you.”
“You’ve heard correctly.”
“You never mentioned wanting to before,” Olruggio grumbles, as his stomach growls in return. He can no longer resist the spread on the table. Grabbing a slice of bread and loading it with butter made from the cream he’d brought home earlier, he resists the urge to groan as he takes a bite. How he’d missed Qifrey’s baking. “What changed?”
That polite smile again. “I believe mentoring might suit me.”
There’s a long silence as Olruggio selects and bites into a horncap and chrysanthonion pastry, the burst of flavor rich and balanced with the flaky crust. This time he does groan.
“Is it good?” Qifrey asks, taking it as permission to retrieve one of his own.
“You know it’s one of my favorites.” Bliss.
“My, who knew?”
An apprentice would mean changing their whole lives. What would it meant for his work? “Don’t you need to have a Watchful Eye these days? Someone else would live here.”
“Not if you’d be willing to stand in as one. I admit I already cleared it with Master Beldaruit.”
Olruggio frowns. Seems he’s thought of everything, besides asking permission.
Then again, who was it who’d taught him it was better to ask forgiveness?
“I’ll consider it,” he says at last. “Now let’s eat before it gets cold.”
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
“One moment,” Qifrey sings, drawing the final syllable out for much longer than a second. “There! Open your eyes!”
Before him on the table is a cake blanketed in white frosting and crowned with strawberries around the top. It sparkles thanks to a fine dusting of glowsugar over the top. A pyreball no bigger than pearl swirls above.
“This is—“
“Happy birthday, Olly,” Qifrey says, sitting next to him on the couch and pressing closer. “Go on, you get the first slice.”
Olruggio blows out the pyreball, warmth swirling in his heart. The fire in the hearth roars beside them. On to a less good bottle of wine, they lean against one another for support, touching no further than that. Despite the late hour and his early rise, Olruggio is reluctant to pull away.
Olruggio picks a slice and slips it onto his plate before constructing the perfect bite. Pillowy cake and salty sweet cream greets him, but the real star is the strawberry, bright and sweet as it envelopes his tongue.
“These strawberries,” he says, slicing off more of the ruby fruit. “So sweet.”
“From the garden,” Qifrey says, picking out his own slice now that Olruggio’s had the first bite. “You tended it well.”
A lump forms in his throat. “Had some help with the watering.”
“Even so.” A hand rests on Olruggio’s thigh, squeezes. “I wanted to be here. I’m sorry that I wasn’t.”
It seems so far away, even though it wasn’t. Renovating the cottage, planting the garden, long nights lying out beneath the starry sky without a care in the world.
The question he couldn’t ask at dinner springs forward once more, and before he can stop himself, words are spilling out. “The night you left. Is it— is it because of—“ Covering his face, Olruggio groans. Too late to back out now. “Is it my fault? The night we shared. I thought— I thought you wanted it too.”
Qifrey draws Olruggio’s hand into his lap, squeezes. “No, my dear friend. It could never be your fault.” Qifrey draws Olruggio’s hand up, pressing his face into his waiting palm. His eye falls shut. “There was something I needed to do. And I had to leave to do it. I got scared that if I didn’t leave then, I never would.”
A chaste kiss drops against the palm of Olruggio’s hand. Shivers trail up his spine.
“Can’t I help?” Olruggio whispers, thumb slipping along the curve of his nose, the length of his bottom lip. A beauty too surreal to hold onto, ethereal as his dreams. “We’re partners, remember?”
“I’m afraid it’s something I must do alone. Something I want to answer for myself.” Qifrey looks at him at last. “I’m sorry. If I could tell you, I would.” It’s his turn to take Olruggio’s face in his hands. “I’m here now. And I promise to stay.”
And oh, how he wants to believe him.
Olruggio closes his eyes, pressing his forehead against Qifrey’s. Call him a fool, but he’ll take this over chasing phantoms through the night. “An apprentice means no more midnight delights, you know.”
There’s a gasp, and loving fingers squeeze at his cheeks. “Certainly not.”
“Children are smart. Look how much trouble we were.”
“We were troubled, Olly.”
“My only trouble was following you.” With a contented sigh, Olruggio sinks into him, the day’s events catching up with him. “I don’t suppose I’d prefer it another way.”
A breathy laugh, and soft lips press against his own. “Happy birthday, Olly. I hope your wish comes true.”
If this is a dream, don’t wake him. “I’ll let you know.”