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The snow came down wet and heavy, the flakes forming into clumps as the wind blew them sideways into his eyes. It hurt, a constant barrage of pinpricks melting and re-freezing against his skin. He tried to keep his eyes down, to keep walking. If they could reach the woods, shelter in the trees, they might be okay. He clenched and unclenched his hands in the folds of his cloak, his fingertips burned without gloves but he couldn't draw with the gloves on, and the village boy had needed them—
The village boy. He'd been on Olly's right, but when he turned there was only empty space and swirling wind. Olly wanted to call his name but he hadn't had time to ask him for it. Where had he gone? The adults were looking at him blankly.
"Where'd he go?"
"It's all thanks to you!" Their voices were cheerful, grating against his ears. "You did it, Mr. Witch! You saved us!"
"What was his name? The boy with my gloves?" They didn't answer. He stumbled forward—the trees, get these people to shelter, go back for the boy, that's what a witch would do—and tripped over something rigid, buried in the snow. He dug, hands burning with cold. He uncovered a face, lips blue, eyes shut like he was dreaming. He needed to wake him up. They needed to keep moving. He needed to wake up—
Olly jolted awake in a cold sweat, freezing despite the pile of blankets he'd managed to tangle himself in as he fell asleep. It took him a few moments to realize where he was—his own bed, his own atelier, hundreds of miles from Noz and Ghodrey.
He groaned. The sound echoed in the quiet of his room. He got up, moving automatically, and took off his sweat-drenched clothes. If he was judging correctly, it was a few clockmarks past midnight. Much too early to give up on sleeping altogether, but the nightmare was clinging too tightly to get back into bed and he still felt so cold. He put on clean clothes and left his room for the kitchen. Tea would help, maybe.
A lamp was still burning at the other end of the atelier, so he wasn't surprised when he stepped into the living room and saw Qifrey, legs folded up under himself on the sofa, quietly reading a book.
He looked up when Olly stepped down into the living room.
"Oh! Hello, Olly," he said.
"Hey," Olly said, avoiding Qifrey's gaze. He knew that he probably looked awful. He felt awful. He made a beeline for the kitchen, but common courtesy made him pause on the steps. "Tea?
"Sure," Qifrey said. Olly heard a rustle and Qifrey was up, leaning over the low wall that separated the kitchen from the living room and giving him an inquisitive look.
"What kind?" Olly asked, ignoring the look.
"Whatever you're having is fine," Qifrey said. "Wait. You're not making thornbark, are you?"
"Willowgrape," Olly said. It would be soothing, and he really needed soothing.
"In that case, that sounds lovely," Qifrey said. He watched Olly fill the pot with water from the vapor bubble. There was no need to draw a pyreball, there was a seal in the lid that would boil the water for them. "Can't sleep?"
Olly rubbed the back of his neck. "Bad dream," he admitted.
"Mm," Qifrey said. "Willowgrape tea should be soothing, at least."
Olly smiled up at him gratefully. Qifrey already knew about the dreams—they'd been happening ever since they were kids, after Olly had first come to the Great Hall. They'd become less frequent over time, but they'd never really gone away. Qifrey knew that, too. It was nice not to have to explain any of it. "That's the plan."
While the tea was steeping, Qifrey went into the pantry and reappeared with some shortbread biscuits.
"Hang on," Olly said. "Where have you been keeping those?"
Qifrey gave him an innocent look. Olly didn't buy it. "Top shelf," Qifrey said. "By the soups." Then he grinned. "Hidden inside of an empty flour box. They were an experiment, anyways, I wasn't sure if the girls would like them." He put a few on a plate for them to share.
Olly picked one up and examined it. There were flower petals mixed in, woolpuff and lavender. The aroma of both mixed together nicely, like a warm summer day on the downs. He took a bite and it fell apart in his mouth the way a good shortbread should, rich and buttery, melting instead of crumbling. It wasn't too sweet, almost savory from the toastiness of the woolpuffs until the lavender came back in at the last moment, delicately lingering on his tongue.
Qifrey was watching him expectantly.
"Qifrey, these are amazing," Olly said. "The balance is perfect, I never would have thought to combine woolpuffs and lavender like that. And you're right, the girls would not appreciate them at all."
"Coco might," Qifrey said. "She loves woolpuffs. But Tetia and Richeh would ask if I forgot the sugar, and Agott would call them childish for it even though she'd be thinking the same thing." He laughed. "That's alright though, they can be just for us."
When the tea was done steeping, Olly set the pot on a tray with two cups and carried it back out to the living room. Qifrey brought a few more biscuits on a plate. They both sat on the sofa, sipping their tea.
"You can keep reading," Olly said. The combination of Qifrey, tea, and biscuits was helping to settle his nerves, but he still felt shaky and sweaty and wrong somehow. "Not sure if I'm good for much conversation right now."
"Are you sure? I'm happy to distract you," Qifrey said. He presented the cover of his book—an encyclopedia on gardening—to Olly like a sommelier presenting a bottle of wine. "I could read it to you. I'm sure you'd be interested to know about the various composting methods available to the home gardener."
"Gripping stuff, but I'll pass," Olly said. "Don't mind me. I'll just sit here and finish my tea. Anyways, these biscuits are distracting enough. They are really good."
Qifrey smiled—the small, shy, genuine Qifrey smile that only showed up when he accepted a compliment. "I'll have to make them again, then," he said. "Just for us."
They both drank their tea in comfortable silence as Qifrey continued reading his book. Olly leaned back against the sofa after drinking the last few dregs of his tea. Eventually, he'd have to return to his bed, but he was happy to stay within this quiet stillness, with the soft warmth of the tea spreading through his chest. The silence was only broken by the occasional rustle of a page turning. Olly didn't have to open his eyes to watch, he could picture it: Qifrey tracing diagrams with the tip of his right index finger, leaning in attentively to the passages he found the most interesting, occasionally flipping back to read an earlier section with nervous, delicate hands. It was nice to have him here. It was nice not to have to talk about why Olly felt better with him here.
His hands shook, fingers thick and clumsy as he tried to draw the seal. He could feel the villagers' eyes on his back, probably wondering what was taking him so long. He didn't understand what was wrong with his hands, this was one of the first spells he learned, why couldn't he draw it? The first pyreball was weak, wavering for only a few seconds before snuffing itself out. The second was too strong, catching the edges of the paper before he had a chance to stop it. He was a witch, he was supposed to be able to do this—
"Olly."
Strong fingers grabbed his forearm, jostling him. Didn't they understand he was trying to draw?
"Olly, wake up."
He startled awake, back in their warm, dry living room, with Qifrey's hand on his wrist. He blinked away the feeling of ice melting on his cheeks and sat up, rubbing a hand over his eyes.
"You seemed distressed," Qifrey said. He released Olly's arm. "I thought it would be good to wake you before it got worse."
"Yeah," Olly said. "Good call." The respite from the tea and biscuits was gone, the shaky-sweaty-wrongness was back in full force, made just a little worse by Qifrey's hovering concern. He hated this feeling, hated the helplessness of it. He leaned forward to set the empty teacup on the floor and then stayed there, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped behind his neck.
"Can I get you anything?" Qifrey asked.
"No, I just—" Olly trailed off, then gritted his teeth in frustration. "I don't know why this is still happening. It was so long ago. And usually it's not too bad, it doesn't get in the way of things, but then sometimes it just comes back as fresh as the day it happened. I don't get it."
There was the light pressure of a hand on the back of his shoulder. Qifrey, trying to comfort him. Olly resisted the urge to lean into it. He'd gone down that path before. It would only lead to Qifrey retreating.
"Maybe I'll never sleep again," Olly said. "That'll work, right?"
"Of course," Qifrey said, drily. "And with no negative side effects, I'm sure of it."
"Hah," Olly said. He was so tired. "Sometimes I wish there were more selective memory spells," he said, rubbing his temples. "Just to take away the worst parts, you know? I wish I didn't have to hold onto this stuff forever."
He realized the hand on his shoulder had grown still, and turned to look at Qifrey. His face had gone still with shock, like Olly had turned around and slapped him. With a rush of horror Olly realized what he had said, and who he was talking to.
"Not like that," he said, quickly. Qifrey opened his mouth to say something but Olly rushed ahead. "Hells, Qifrey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean like—like what happened to— I just meant you know, optionally, if I could just sort of write down the worst ones so that I knew what had happened and then get them out of my brain, so I could sleep better, that wouldn't be the most terrible thing, you know?" He ran out of steam, watching Qifrey's face return from somewhere very far away.
Qifrey smiled at him—small, tight, placating, not real— and said, "I know you didn't mean it like that, Olly."
"Okay," Olly said. "I really didn't though. I'm sorry."
"You don't need to apologize," Qifrey said. He still looked upset. There was something hollow in the way he was looking at Olly.
Olly thought about letting it slide, thought about what it was going to feel like not talking about it with that expression on Qifrey's face festering in the back of his brain, and dug his heels in instead.
"I do though," he said. "You're upset."
Qifrey blinked. "No I'm not." He caught Olly's skeptical look, and sighed. He frowned down at the ground, like he was struggling to formulate something. "I just—don't you feel like, even if you're only removing certain memories… that's part of you, isn't it? Part of you that's gone. Even when they're painful memories, don't you feel like erasing them is erasing part of yourself?"
"Oh," Olly said. "No?"
"No?" Qifrey looked at him like he was insane.
"I forget stuff all the time," Olly said. "A lot of my childhood memories are pretty foggy, and I can't remember half of my teacher's names. There's tons of sigils I have to look up every time I use them. Even when I wish I could remember those things better, I don't think losing them is like losing part of myself. I'm still me without them."
"But none of that's important," Qifrey said, exasperated. "None of that has had an impact on you the way Noz did."
"I don't want to forget that Noz happened," Olly said. "I just—the parts I get stuck on are the details." What it felt like to touch a body that had been frozen solid. The way someone's lips turned blue when they ran out of oxygen. The smell of burnt flesh. "In the dreams I always think that someone else is there beside me and then when I turn around they're gone, and I go looking for them. And I find them buried under the snow, so I try to dig them out, because they're still alive, but when I do they're just—" Sometimes they were frozen, sometimes they were charred beyond recognition, sometimes they just looked like they were sleeping but wouldn't move. "And it's not just people who were there, sometimes it's you or the girls instead. Those are the worst ones."
"Oh, Olly," Qifrey said. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay, I shouldn't have—" Olly couldn't believe he'd wished to have his memory wiped in front of Qifrey, of all people. He'd always been more likely to put his foot in his mouth when he was tired. "You're probably right. It'd be disrespectful, wouldn't it? To forget what happened. People died, it's—it's my responsibility to remember them."
"I don't think it's disrespectful," Qifrey said, quietly. "I can understand not wanting to relive the worst parts over and over." Olly looked up at him, but Qifrey was looking away at the opposite wall of the room, his expression distant. Then he blinked, and his normal, mild-mannered mask came back. He turned to Olly. "I think I understand better now, what you meant. I'm sorry for reacting the way I did."
This was, of course, suspicious. In the way that Qifrey was often suspicious. Sometimes Olly wanted to turn him upside down and shake him to rattle all of his secrets out, or at least dislodge whatever was still blocking Qifrey from trusting him, despite all the years Olly had spent proving himself as, you know, trustworthy.
But you can't force trust. And Olly was very tired.
"Thanks," he said, deciding not to press it. "For listening to me complain about it."
"Any time," Qifrey said. He did sound like he meant that, at least.
"Why are you still up, anyways?" When Olly's sleep schedule got messed up he at least had the ability to sleep in. Qifrey needed to be up to make breakfast for the girls. He was better than Olly at getting by on only a little sleep, but he was still human.
"When else am I going to learn about composting?" Qifrey said.
Olly snorted. "All right," he said. "I'm going back to bed. You should go to bed."
"I will once I finish this chapter," Qifrey said. Olly doubted this. "I promise. It'll be a good stopping point. Besides, breakfast is pretty much sorted, I'll just need to bake it tomorrow morning."
"Alright," Olly said. He got up and stretched his back—it made a concerning amount of noise—and cleared away their tea things.
"Don't bother washing them," Qifrey called after him. "Just stack them in the sink. I'll wash them with the breakfast dishes."
Olly accepted this—the willowbark tea had helped but he was starting to get a headache—and made his way back across the bridge to his side of the atelier. Qifrey had turned his attention back to his book, and Olly took the opportunity to watch him for a moment, tucked away in his warm, quiet bubble of lamplight. He looked content. Happy, even.
You can't force trust, but you can give it room to grow, Olly thought. Maybe someday he'd be able to make Qifrey feel safe enough to stop lying. Maybe someday they could both be honest with each other.