Archive of Our Own

Night falls slowly these days. They’re currently caught somewhere between seasons— not quite summer yet, as the season can't seem to decide whether to jump fully into sunlit fields or keep hanging onto the biting, mist-filled mornings it’s favored for so long. Winter clings to the downs like a limpet, stubbornly dreary and dragging its feet on the way out.

But tonight seems different. There’s a bite to the air— or rather, a lack thereof. 

The night creeps ever on, and carried on its winds is the clean, green smell of summer. 

Agott had started working when this night was still newly-born. The sky was a deep blue, and the moon had yet to rise from the backbone of the hills. 

And now, as she always does when the atelier falls asleep, Agott draws.

Her pen scratches away as the sky dips gently into night, the evening softening to a velvet darkness that presses densely against the glow of the atelier. Her candle flickers, licked by that soft breeze that sneaks in from the window: light, and tasting faintly of the forsythia that sprawls just outside.  It’s just reaching the end of its bloom, which is a shame. She likes the yellow. 

Lines dance across the page. Ink spins like spider silk, careful rings and sigils spiraling over the paper. She draws with a fluid hand, a measured one. She draws expertly . Her pen scratches smoothly across the page, one hand gripped tight– fingertips nearly white with the pressure– right above the shining metal of the nib. 

Her other hand plays out an uneven rhythm on the desk, tap tap tap , as the candles gutter and her eyes grow steadily drier. Wetness gathers at the corners of her eyes. She blinks. 

Sometimes she forgets to do it when she’s drawing– blink, that is. The pen, ink, and the magic it draws out become so all-consuming that every part of the earth, every part of her body, fades away until only the glyphs that steadily appear across the page— and the hand that creates them— remain. 

It’s the only thing that makes sense, sometimes. The magic. It’s strange and undefinable, but oddly… calculated. It’s magic , so obviously it sometimes has a mind of its own. But it makes sense. She understands the parts of it, if not always the whole. She understands the parts, and so she can put them together and make things that she understands, things that work, that obey the swipe of her hand and say, look at what I’ve done, look at what I’ve made. 

Look at what I’m able to do. 

Look .

She nods off with the pen still in her hand, her mind fading into the same soft darkness as the world beyond the window. 

She dreams of paper spiders, their delicate bodies spinning dripping nets of inky silk. 

❀

Agott wakes to a soft shuffling noise when the sky is just beginning to lighten. 

The rustling of paper— sheets carding against each other. 

The sound shifts in a way that’s clearly meant to be quiet but resonates loudly in the early-morning stillness. Someone shifts their weight from foot to foot, and the wood floor creaks softly in protest. 

Agott sighs heavily, momentarily burying her face in the pillow with a barely contained groan, before dragging herself from the bed. 

(When had she gotten up to move to her bed? Unimportant.

But probably— if hazy memory is correct— sometime in the late night when her aching neck forced her awake, the grain of the desk indented into her cheek).

It’s going to be a hot day. The air is still, the room slightly grayish. It isn’t light enough outside to brighten the room yet, and the space is left feeling cold and blue despite the taste of humidity in the air. 

Agott is too tired for this. 

It’s barely morning, too early even for her . Despite the late hours she keeps— 

( there’s been many a night where she tip-toes downstairs for something-or-other, only to run into Olruggio just dragging himself to bed )

—she likes to make a habit of rising early. Coco, surprisingly, is the same. It’s probably some leftover habit instilled by her mother. 

Agott grits her teeth. She tries not to think of Coco’s mother. They all do, she thinks. Even Coco sometimes.

Coco, who Agott suspects—

(knows)

—to be the culprit of the noise in the room beyond. 

The girl in question is bent over her work desk. The watery light from the window paints her fair hair glassy, leaving her looking washed out and strangely fragile. Strangely quiet . 

Agott hesitates in the doorway. 

But then Coco suddenly turns, messy sheaths of paper in hand and dark crescents beneath her eyes. She startles when she sees Agott, then visibly exhales as her face quickly dissolves into a tired smile. 

“ Good morning, ” she says in an overly loud whisper. 

Agott stares quietly for a moment. 

“It’s very early,” she finally responds. The unspoken why are you awake? sits heavily between them. 

Coco must sense the unasked part of the question and glances away sheepishly, pressing the papers to her chest. “I was, ah, working.” She nods at the paper with a slight smile. 

Agott blinks. 

Coco blinks back, shuffling slightly.

They stand there in silence for a moment longer before Coco can’t stand it anymore and throws her head back to sigh overdramatically. Her fingers flex against the paper, the edges bending slightly against her nails. 

Agott watches the paper crease as Coco swings her head back down.  

Agott watches the paper.

She watches. The paper is littered with seals. Most are glyphs for earth, for stone, for repetition and reversal. She frowns. Coco has started talking again, but Agott can’t hear what she’s saying anymore– her words are muffled by a sudden pounding in Agott’s head. 

Stone? Reversing… stone? 

Something tightens in Agott’s chest, and she suddenly strides forward, ripping the paper from Coco’s hands. Coco’s mouth falls open, staring in shock and confusion at Agott as she frantically flips through page after page, the sheets falling to the floor in a nervous flutter as soon as she’s looked them over. 

All of a sudden Agott’s hands are empty, and she stands surrounded by a snowfall of crumpled pages. The dark seals scored into their surface stare up at her like something awful, like something evil. 

And they aren’t even forbidden spells. 

They’re just spells, regular spells, but still— still Coco’s trying— trying to do something she shouldn’t. 

Clearly, that is what she’s trying to do. Trying to throw away everything she’s ever wanted— throw away her entire life here trying to do something that— that probably isn’t even possible, Agott thinks with no small amount of guilt. 

Coco tries to speak. “Ag—”

“What are you doing?” Agott asks, her voice sounding strangely hopeless. Her fallen hands twitch at her side, twisting in the fabric of her nightdress. She thinks she might be glaring. Or frowning, or— or something. 

She just hopes she doesn’t look as scared as she feels. 

Coco takes a step back. Agott hadn’t even realized how close they had been standing, barely two hands apart. Paper crunches beneath her feet as she retreats. 

“I’m not doing anything bad, I just—” 

“I know.”

“You know?”

Agott’s eyes burn into the pages. She can’t look away. “I know,” she repeats. “It’s just— I don’t— this is worrying .” It feels terrible admitting that. Her thoughts boil , seething and awful. She wants to stomp on the pages, crush them beneath her feet, rip them to shreds and burn them to ash. 

She settles for glaring at them instead. 

Worrying . Agott can’t just say that she’s worried? It has to be the situation that’s worrying, doesn’t it? Stupid. 

Her mouth twists up. “You can’t do this ,” she spits. Coco frowns at the biting tone, looking sheepish and confused and a whole bunch of other things Agott can’t name. Doesn’t want to name. Agott’s heart squeezes painfully; things always come out sharper than she intends. 

“You’ve heard the professors, you know you’re not ready to help her yet. You don’t know how! You shouldn’t— argh ,” she groans, pressing her palms into her eyes. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” she mumbles. Mumbles . She never mumbles , yet here she is, coming undone with stupid, needless worry over a stupid, needless girl. 

Her hands drop, and she finally looks back up at Coco. 

The other girl’s staring at her, wide-eyed, something unplaceable in her gaze. 

Agott swallows. She doesn’t— she doesn’t know why this is making her so upset. Why does she even care?

Coco keeps looking at her. 

Agott’s about to turn away when—

“Okay.”

Agott frowns. “Okay…?”

“You’re right, it’s… silly. I’m being silly.” Coco stares somewhat blankly at the pages strewn across the floor. Her voice is soft, thin as the faltering light that falls through the window. She toes one of the pages with her foot, and her mouth twists downward. “I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

Coco sighs and looks up at Agott. She smiles, but it’s weak and trembles at the corners. 

Agott’s chest flutters in turn. It feels like a bird is caught within the cavity there— flinging itself against the arch of her ribs, wings a flurry of frantic… something . 

Fear? 

She doesn’t think so. She doesn’t feel afraid– not for herself, at least. And that realization in itself is… shocking. She feels unsteady, like the room might start swaying. She thinks this must be how it feels to be at sea– left slightly reeling as the horizon dips in and out of your vision.

Unsteady. 

She thinks of Silver Eve: of standing on a platform with Coco, their hands held tight, her heart l eaping leaping leaping — of magic exploding around them in arcs of shining water. Coco’s magic. Magic that Agott had helped make, cheeks flushed and hands shaking, the hundreds of people below melting away in the face of Coco’s eyes— of Coco’s eyes on her !— all the thoughts of her mother and shame and worthlessness burned away by Coco’s blazing smile. 

Agott’s hands fist in her skirt. There was a solution to that, so there must be a solution to this. There’s a solution to everything .

She thinks. Her mind turns, thoughts wheeling across it like passage stars in the night— fast, bright, there and gone. She thinks of a hand in hers, of Coco’s face being so close Agott could count her eyelashes. The shouts of the crowd, her breathless words, the strange, sudden need— it had just snuck up on her, really! — to help . She thinks of Coco’s spells from that night; wholly, undoubtedly Coco’s, but helped along by Agott. 

Helped along. 

Agott’s fingers itch— to snap, to tear, to snatch up a pen— to do something .  

Well, that’s what she’ll do. Agott won’t just do something ; she’ll help . The same way she did at Silver Eve, the nights before, and the many, many nights that have come after. It’s not quite so hard to do things for other people now. She doesn’t always feel the need to prove that she can, that what she’s making is worth the time it takes to look— ( it’s easy, too, she’s found, when who she’s doing these things for is this strange little family of hers ). 

Sure, Agott’s still a bit cynical and reckless and often crushed under the idea that her magic is all that matters of her—

( she’s depressingly aware of this )

—but she’s good at drawing. It’s undoubtable. 

So that settles it. 

“I would like to help you. If I can.” Agott’s mouth pulls into a slight frown as she thinks her words over very carefully. “Well, of course I can. With time. I reckon it’s just a matter of whether you’ll let me.” She looks up again— she can’t recall when her eyes had fallen back down to the floor. 

Coco’s mouth falls open into a little o , her face painted in shock— and then it changes, brightening with the rising sky outside, and she smiles. This time it reaches her eyes, and something in Agott’s chest clicks neatly into place at the sight of it. Coco’s smile slips beneath Agott’s skin, and that little bird resting pressed against her heart gives another nervous thrum. 

Coco’s eyes crease into little crescents, her cheeks round and pinkish and speckled with dapples of soft sunlight. They’ve finally passed from the soft light of dawn into the true beginnings of the morning. 

Coco steps forward lightly and grabs Agott’s hands. 

The other girl freezes, mind guttering like a candle— the bird beats its wings faster and faster. 

“Thank you, Agott,” Coco whispers with words that drip with honey. She’s so bright — celadon hair shining in the light. She’s the color of spring, the color of the yarrow and daisy that curl up just outside her window. Agott feels like she’s blinded. 

She nods, throat too tight to speak, strangely overwhelmed. 

Coco’s hands are warm. Agott can feel calluses on the pads of her thumbs, pressing against her knuckles. Coco gives a quick squeeze, body scrunching up with another smile, then drops Agott’s hands and bounds off to her adjoining room to get dressed. The door closes with a quiet click, and the room is suddenly silent again. 

Agott just stands there for a moment, palms prickling, before she leans down and quickly gathers up the mess on the floor. Her head is spinning. Her hands are too cold and– and they shouldn’t let the Professor see these papers. 

❀

The day grows in strength, sunlight ripening from a faint stripe of pink at the horizon to a full, heavy gold. It drips across the drowsy hills, turning the air hazy and sweetly honey-colored. 

It’s hot, almost stiflingly so. The air moves in the faint stirrings of a breeze, drifting lazily over the rolling sea of grasses and doing little to quell the sun's syrupy, overpowering light. 

The window panes are soothingly cool against the pads of Agott’s fingers, but she can already feel the stickiness of sweat growing against the back of her dress. The sun’s barely risen and she already feels ill. It’s not a good feeling— a sort of sick twisting in her gut. She pulls back her hand and swipes at her brow, exhaling an exasperated huff. 

Agott thinks about Coco’s papers, shoved—

(neatly stacked)

—beneath her bed, pushed as far back into the shadows as they’ll go. She can’t let Professor Qifrey see them— he’s odd about those things, about forbidden magic. She never quite knows how he’ll react, disregarding that even when he does act normal, it feels… flimsy . Sometimes his smiles are too thin, his bright air just on the edge of forced, and sometimes Agott suspects she’s the only one who notices. 

Well, Professor Olruggio probably does too. But he never says anything, only ever giving Qifrey a strange, quiet look whenever the other man turns his back. Like he’s thinking very hard about something and doesn’t know how to say it to the Professor. But again. He never says anything, and he’s known Qifrey the longest. He doesn’t seem terribly worried at all , really, or else he’s just very good at hiding it. 

But again — Agott doesn’t want the Professor to see the papers. She didn’t want to destroy them, though—

(she’s lying)

— so under the bed they go. 

She tugs at her collar. The heat’s already unbearable; her neck aches from falling asleep at the table, and between the sickly weight of her argument with Coco and the spells curled beneath her bed– it all feels like a bad omen tying her mind into knots. 

It’s going to be a long day.

❀

Agott makes her way downstairs and immediately learns that the day will be useless in terms of lessons, as Qifrey is nowhere to be found. Instead, Olruggio stands at his usual spot in the kitchen. 

“Where’s the Professor?” She asks, sliding into a seat beside Riché. Tetia’s talking animatedly about something to Coco, whose eye Agott can’t even make herself meet. 

Riché sits silently beside her with the brushbug cradled absently in her lap. She pets him with gentle hands, the curtain of her hair slightly tousled in the back from sleep. 

Even Tetia looks tired, stifling a yawn as she fiddles with her fork. Agott starts to think that maybe Olruggio didn’t hear her, and—

A hefty slice of toast suddenly drops onto her plate. Its center is cut away to hold an egg— simple, but it is one of Olruggio’s usual go-to breakfasts when Qifrey’s out, and neither prepared something the night before. Speaking of which:

Olruggio yawns, too, as he slides the last piece onto Coco’s plate. “Qifrey went into Kalhn. He needed some components and didn’t wanna bother dragging everyone out into the heat.” He glares pointedly out the window and tugs on the damp collar of his shirt. “You’re lucky it’s so damn hot out, you all get a day off.” 

Tetia perks up noticeably at that, and Olruggio slumps at the obvious, ‘ and I don’t’ that he leaves unsaid. Then the color abruptly drains from his face as he processes what he’d said before. “Ah, wait— don’t tell Qif— the Professor I said that. You’re not supposed to hear that stuff.”

Riché stares up at him with her wide, glassy eyes. “Hear what?”

The man only slumps further, dragging a hand down his face. “Nothing, nothing… I’m going back to my work. I’ll be around to make lunch, but besides that, don’t do anything stupid when you’re on your own.” He holds up a finger, looking at each of them pointedly. “No messing around when Qifrey’s out.” His eyes dull: “I’ve got a commission to finish, or else I’d be here to watch. Just— don’t wander too far. Maybe practice some spells or somethin,’ that’ll make your Professor happy.”

Agott nods. She has things to do, glyphs she didn’t get to perfect last night before falling asleep. 

Olruggio releases a heavy breath and drags himself out of the kitchen, a plate of toast clutched in his hand like a lifeline. 

Tetia’s gone in seconds too, breakfast already finished somehow (?), and Riché glides after her once her own plate is stowed carefully in the sink. 

Across from Agott, Coco hums absently, eyes darting around the room as she pokes at some egg with her fork. “So,” she starts, and Agott’s breath catches. 

“Tetia told me about some spells she and Riché are working on together. Is there anything that… you want to work on?” Her eyes are fixed on her plate, eyebrows raised at the eggs like she’s asking them rather than Agott. 

Agott’s hand twitches where it rests on her lap. “Like what .”

Coco’s eyes widen questioningly. “Uh… spells?”

“What type of spells,” Agott grits out. She’s too tired for this. “I have some things I want to work on.”

“Oh! Okay. Well, um, I thought that– maybe– we could start experimenting with glyphs for that thing we talked about.”

Agott gives her a bland stare. “I know what you mean. I’m saying that I have other spells I’m working on first.”

Coco brightens. At the sight of it, something in Agott unconsciously warms— before promptly chilling at the notion that Coco has clearly just gotten the wrong impression about something. 

“That’s great!” Coco smiles, and Agott just stares confusedly in response. “We can study together and then work on our project.” She returns to her plate and smiles again, mostly to herself, and Agott can only stare. Coco… baffles her sometimes. In more ways than one— for more reasons than she even dares to put a name to. Why does the idea of just— of simply doing their work in the same vicinity make the other girl so unreasonably happy? It doesn’t make any sense! 

Agott ignores any excitement she feels just beginning to stir in her chest, stamping it out like a sudden fire. She finishes her meal as fast as possible and strides ( escapes ) from the room. 

❀

Agott sits cross-legged on the floor, a field of paper strewn around her. Her pen scratches away, entirely focused on the line after line of notes she’s taking. Practice spell after practice spell, the sigils within shaky and unfamiliar but growing steadier with every new page thrown to the side. 

She briefly pauses to look at Coco. The other girl gave up on her work a few minutes ago. Now she’s flat on the floor, cheek pressed flush to the cool, smooth flagstones beneath her. Agott thinks she might be asleep— she hasn’t moved in a few minutes, and the only sign that she’s even still alive is her back’s slow rise and fall every few moments. 

Agott can’t even blame her. 

She leans back against the wall, each breath expanding heavily against the stiflingly high collar of her dress. The few pieces of hair long enough to reach are stuck to her neck with sweat, and her bangs sit plastered to her forehead. She exhales deeply.

The cold stones of the atelier are doing little to fight off the roaring heat outside. The air is thick and heavy, sitting on Agott’s chest with a near-tangible weight. It’s the type of heat that digs straight into your skin, leaving you feeling flushed and drowsy. Any kind of movement seems too much, so Agott settles for not moving at all. 

The windows are cast wide to catch any passing breeze, but whatever draft slinks through is thin and trembling. It’s more teasing than anything. 

Agott sighs again, eyes fluttering closed, and fans her face weakly with the page she’d been working on. This is terrible . 

“ Agott ,” comes a muffled groan from the floor. 

Oh, so she is awake. Agott doesn’t respond, too tired to even open her eyes. 

“Are you awake?”

Agott hums in acknowledgment. 

“It’s too hot , Agott.”

Agott drags her eyes open. Coco’s cheek is scrunched up against the floor, her body still completely sprawled across the stone. 

“Mm, I’d hardly noticed.”

“ Ughh . How is that even possib– wait, you’re joking, aren’t you,” Coco says, her voice laced with equal parts suspicion and disbelief. “How are you joking about this? How do you have enough energy to joke about this?!” Coco says indignantly. “Is it always this hot here?”

Agott nods. She’d forgotten— Coco’s only been here a few months. That… it doesn’t make sense. Well, it does , but it’s hard to wrap her head around the fact. It feels like Coco’s always been here. She can’t even really remember the time before now, when she’d had the room all to herself, and there wasn’t– well, when there wasn’t Coco . 

“My old house was near the mountains,” Coco says in place of nothing. “Not in the mountains, just… near them. You’d probably like it. The summers are much milder there, and there’s always a nice breeze from the upper hills! Now it feels like...” she thinks for a moment, “…soup.”

“Soup?” Agott scrunches her nose. 

“Hot and damp.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. Not the most poetic metaphor, though.”

Coco rolls onto her back and stares blankly at the ceiling. “I’m too tired for good metaphors.”

Agott nods again, feeling too drowsy to formulate any other response. 

“Agott?”

“Mm.”

“Do you want to have a picnic?”

Agott’s eyes fly open, face scrunching in confusion. “ What? ”

“Do you wanna have a picnic?” Coco repeats, now sounding slightly unsure as she resolutely pins her gaze to the ceiling beams. 

Agott sits up from her undignified slump against the wall, smoothing her skirt over her legs. She thinks about it carefully, listing the pros and cons. 

Pros: Coco’s nostalgic ramblings are correct; it is cooler up in the hills. Their atelier rests cupped between the rises surrounding it, hence why they’re stuck just… stewing , as Coco would put it. It’ll be nice to get out of the stuffy house, and the change in scenery might lend to some new ideas. Maybe she’ll even have a spell-making breakthrough!

Cons: Agott will 100% not get any work done with Coco there.

She sits. And thinks. There are definitely more pros than cons, but heavens… is it a big con.

Coco watches Agott from the floor, her head resting on her crossed arms as her legs kick impatiently in the air. “Well?” she says.

Agott shuffles the papers in her hand. She lines up her pen to sit parallel with the stretch of her leg. She can’t look at Coco right now.

“ Welllll…? ”

Agott drops her head back against the wall so hard it almost hurts. She blinks back stars and stares blankly somewhere over Coco’s head– she feels all fuzzy with heat, exhaustion, and whatever else this annoying feeling is.

She nods. “Fine. Yes. We can go on a picnic.”

❀

Agott shields her face with her hand and squints beneath its makeshift visor. 

The Naakiwan Downs stretch out before them. It’s a patchwork of grass and stone, with a single small dirt road threading neatly through the hills. Everything’s so dry – with every step, Agott’s shoes kick up a new cloud of dust, which sticks to her legs and dress and grits metallically on her tongue. Coco coughs somewhere to her right. Agott doesn’t look up, just keeps her eyes focused on her feet and away from the sky’s burning glare. It’s almost a shame they aren’t Brimhats— she could really use the shade right now. 

She looks back to squint over her shoulder. The atelier is a faint grayish lump in the distance, rippling in the heat. They’re not too far, then. Olruggio had said to stay within sight, and they are ( technically ) still within those bounds. 

Her eyes start to water from the glare. She cups her hands back over her face and looks down again. Ugh . Her shoes are coated in a fine layer of dust, creeping up to speckle her leggings. Suppose she’ll just have to wash it all once they get home.

Coco coughs again. She’s got something in her hand– grass? It’s too bright to see. It’s definitely green, though. 

There’s a surprising amount of that, actually, despite the dry air. The sky is pale with heat, but everything else is green . Green on green on green. The endlessly rolling grass and shrubs stand strangely still in the windless air. Even the wispy clouds above them are motionless, caught in that burning midday sky.

Agott’s curls stick messily to her forehead with sweat. She’s glad she decided to forgo bringing her hat— the thought of wearing anything more than necessary right now makes her want to collapse. 

Coco wheezes, stumbling slightly as they finally reach the top of the path's slight incline. 

“I think— hah , I think we should’ve just stayed at the atelier,” she wheezes. She drops her basket and sits down right there in the dirt, leaning back onto her hands and taking a few gasping breaths. Her face is very red. 

Agott sets down her own basket and sits on top of it. No need to get her dress even dirtier. She draws a quick glyph, conjuring a gust of wind from the paper.

Coco’s hair suddenly whirls around her head as the breeze hits her. She slumps even further, her face now framed with a disheveled halo. 

“Thanks, Agott!” She smiles tiredly. Her eyes shine, though, latching eagerly onto the pen marks drawn over Agott’s outstretched palm quire. Even now, even after living as a witch for months , she still glows with excitement at any type of magic. No matter the spell, no matter how simple. No matter if it’s something that Coco herself has already mastered. The whole… well, the whole magic of it never seems to fade. 

Magic is something so… ordinary to Agott. It is to most witches, she feels. It’s a tool that they’ve grown up with. It’s always been there, as steady a presence as the sun, as the caps on their heads. 

Every witch is excited, of course, at those first spells they create. The first time magic and possibility are drawn out from their pen is unforgettable. It’s seared into Agott’s mind: that first blaze of light, the leaping joy and pride that exploded in her chest. 

But it’s common after that. She can do almost anything with magic, so what remains to be excited about? It’s become work . Work she loves, of course— there’s nothing Agott loves more than drawing. But it’s ordinary. It can be challenging, and surprising, and rewarding— but still ordinary. She’s a witch. Magic is just what she does . 

( It’s why she likes strange spells. Those archaic, beautifully impractical ones that create something unexpected. No one else can really do them as well as Agott. No one else really bothers. But she can make creatures of light and sun bloom beneath her pen, exploding into the night, banishing dark corners and creeping shadow with their feathery incandescence. She showed them to Coco once. She wasn’t really sure why at the time, but— she’s glad she did ).

And now Coco’s eyes track the careful lines of Agott’s breeze spell like it’s something extraordinary too. One-of-a-kind. Cause to stop whatever she’s doing and just look , taking the time to commit each dash and line of ink to memory. 

Agott— gods, her heart leaps at that silent show of happiness. It always does. Coco gives her praise so easily, and yet it always seems to strike Agott harder than anything else. It makes her want to draw and draw and draw . Conjure up as many beautiful, wonderful things as she can from the paper, filling the sky and fields with light. 

Her hands curl around the edge of the palm quire, heart racing. She doesn’t say anything. What can she say? 

You make me want to create .

Agott swallows that thought immediately , pulling the notebook to her chest protectively. She finally just nods at Coco, not trusting herself to speak. 

“We should keep walking,” she coughs. “There are some trees beyond this hill that we can sit under.” She waves her hand in that direction, too lost in thought to do much more.

They eventually manage to pull themselves up and stumble down the other side of the hill, picking through the sparse brush until they reach the trees Agott had spotted. They stand thin and willowy, not offering too much in the way of shade but still better than sitting right out in the open. 

They’re off the path here— the meadow at first seems to stand tall around the trees, though after a few steps, it’s revealed to quickly give way to a wide swath of earth devoid of grass and covered instead in a thick blanket of creeping speedwell. 

Agott steps over it, her feet sinking into the small, darkly green leaves. Tiny periwinkle flowers wink up at her, dusting over the ground like sugar atop one of Qifrey’s pastries. 

Coco makes her way carefully beside Agott, hop-scotching across the ground on light feet to avoid crushing any flowers.

It’s such a stupid gesture. The flowers aren’t going to last forever, anyway— and there are hundreds of them, or something else will eventually come along and crush them, but— but Agott’s chest feels funny at the sight all the same. 

Coco’s very careful. She’s silly and childish and overly excitable about boring, everyday things— but she’s still careful . She fills the space she’s in very delicately, very intentionally. 

Hm.

Agott finds herself staring at her feet, stepping in odd patterns around as many blossoms as she can. 

❀

They end up camping beneath some kind of willow tree. It’s a great, old thing, towering, towering, towering above them in a mess of gnarled trunk and branches. The boughs hang down like a veil, cresting over them in spindly, blossom-dotted arches so long they skim the tops of the grass below. 

Agott pushes aside the curtain to enter the space within. It’s a bit cooler here— the shade is thin, but appreciated all the same.

Beneath the branches, beneath the tree, thick roots twist out of the earth, plunging and resurfacing like some great sea beast. The soft grass growing between it is dappled with flecks of amber sun— it’s nice to be out of the dust, away from the oppressive glare of the sky. Agott sets her basket at the tree's feet and carefully leans against the dark trunk. 

The grass is cool beneath her palms. There’s a faint sweetness to the air, carried in spinning loops of white-pink blossoms from the swaying, shifting willow. The afternoon sun falls through those weeping branches like a blade, cutting narrow stripes of gold into the earth’s skin. Agott spreads out her papers and inks beneath the light, the pages stained coppery with the glow of it. 

Coco flumps to the ground, lying on her back. She raises her hand and squints an eye, watching the sunlight fall through her fingers. The light dances through the tree and settles in a lacy curtain across her. 

Agott looks away. 

“We should start working,” she prompts. 

“I guess you’re right,” Coco says with a sigh, her hand flopping back down beside her. “I’m just taking a little rest.”

Agott raises an eyebrow. “Or—” she taps her pen against her palm quire in time with the words— “we could start working now so we can rest after . You were the one who wanted to come all the way out here to, you know, work .”

“Ugh!” Coco swings her legs to roll herself back into a sitting position. “Yeah, yeah. Oh! I’d nearly forgotten—” she suddenly grins and grabs one of the baskets. “We have lunch too! I’ll set it up, just wait for one second!”

Agott starts drawing as Coco fumbles to arrange the supplies. Her pen jumps across the paper, making short, half-formed spells, more sketch than fully-fledged magic. She leaves the outer rings only half-closed; she’s really just thinking on paper, so there’s no need to cast anything real right now. 

She chews on the end of her pen, squinting at the page. It’s difficult. There’s a part of Agott— a rather large one, she’s almost ashamed to admit— that knows that none of these spells will ever work. You can’t undo a forbidden spell with your average, run-of-the-mill glyph. Magic is an art. It’s deliberate, the parts of it carefully calculated. And forbidden spells are— despite everything— a lost art. They work by their own rules, their own components, and the signs and glyphs scattered across Agott’s page right now won’t do anything . It’s like trying to sketch something she doesn’t even know the shape of. She’s drawing blind. 

Agott nearly glares at the seal she’s working on, the unfinished mountain-like symbol of an earth-crushing sign poised expectantly, tauntingly, beneath her pen. 

She exhales sharply, her hand tightening around the pen until her knuckles blanch white. This is, in all honesty, infuriating . Spellcraft is her thing . It’s what she’s best at. Every waking moment is devoted to drawing, to learning about drawing, to thinking about drawing. And yet her page remains scattered with clumsy, half-finished, ineffective spells. 

The page glares up at her. Agott glares back. 

It isn’t fair, really. 

If the… issue they’re trying to solve was anything other than what it is, Agott could devise a spell for it in a heartbeat. And Coco is creative like nothing else! She could come up with something. She would do it in a way no one could anticipate, cast something strange, something new. 

But here they are. Facing an impossible task, and their only tools aren’t nearly fit for the job. They’ll fail, and fail, and fail. It’s Sisyphean. 

…but, she supposes, looking at Coco smiling to herself as she arranges their plates… 

It doesn't hurt to try. 

Agott snaps her notebook closed decisively, and shuffles over to Coco. 

The girl in question looks up at the noise, eyes darting from Agott to the notebook and back to Agott. 

“Did you come up with anything good?” she asks. 

Agott shrugs. “Not really. I was just trying to get a feel for things, none of it is anything particularly impressive.”

Coco nods sagely, and then cracks an almost teasing grin.  “Well, we can make impressive spells once we finish this!” She gestures at their picnic, practically bouncing with excitement. “Doesn’t it look nice?”

“…Yeah, it does, actually.”

And she’s not lying.

Dish after dish has been laid out by Coco, pulled from their seemingly bottomless picnic baskets. They’re painted in bright colors, adorned with looping flowers and decorative scrollwork to conceal the glyphs scrawled into the bottom. Olruggio had set it up for them— his confident, delicately precise linework keeping the food inside delightfully cold. 

Before they’d left, Agott had sat crouched on the kitchen floor so long her legs had gone numb. She had turned the basket this way and that, peeking at the sigils almost imperceptibly drawn into the painted weave of the fiber. It was a work of art (as most of Olruggio’s deceptively simple-looking contraptions were). 

Agott glances sidelong at the baskets now— set snugly on the dirt, dust from the road creeping up their wicker sides. The glyphs on the bottom are likely all covered up by now, hidden beneath dust and grime instead of paint. What a shame, she sighs to herself. 

She looks back down at their picnic. Coco seems to have had a lot of fun arranging it all on the blanket she’d spread, lining everything up under the shade. The other girl is vibrating with excitement and pride at the whole set-up. 

She looks happy. Agott smiles a bit at that. It’s small and private, just the tiniest quirk of her lips. It’s just— after everything, everything that’s happened— it’s nice to do something so mundane. Feeling so quietly happy about such an easy thing is nice. 

This whole thing , this picnic, is simple. It’s nice to do simple things, Agott has realized. Not everything has to be a… big show. It’s okay to just do something for the sake of doing it, or because it makes her happy. 

Well— she’s still realizing it, she supposes. She’s realizing a lot of things. 

Agott’s chest suddenly feels funny, all fluttery and almost embarrassed . It’s not like Coco can read minds or anything. Agott tucks some errant curls behind her ear and hunches over her knees. She itches for the comforting grip of her pen. She pictures it, imagining the press of the wood grain against her palm, and certainly not anything else, realizations or otherwise. 

There’s so much else to think about! Like this picnic that Coco has so graciously prepared for them, all while Agott was glaring moodily at her paper.

And what a picnic it is!

There’s almond cake, with pots of honeycomb and jam. They have half a blackberry pie left-over from the day before, sandwiches, and even a cold jug of homemade mountain-apple cider. 

(The cider especially was a treat. They made it the autumn before, gathering as many mountain apples as they could carry in their skirts. The whole atelier had gathered to prepare the cider: cleaning and cutting the apples, then pressing the fruit ‘till they bled sweetly golden. They’d been working through the cider for the past two seasons, taking a little out at a time and freezing the rest. Agott’s pretty sure Olruggio set some aside at one point to make some “grown-up cider,” as he’d called it. She’s not an idiot. It was a rather embarrassing conversation for him).

Coco smiles up at her. “Isn’t this great! A whole little lunch just for us. It’s perfect picnic weather too, and oh—  have you seen the glyphs on these baskets?!” Her eyes gleam, pointing excitedly at the wicker hamper. “It’s incredible! I wish we’d had these for the picnics I went on as a kid.” 

And Coco goes on and on, spreading honey and butter over a slice of bread as she rambles. “I love little spells like these, it’s always such a simple idea at the core of it, but the magic is so wonderful! It’s so neat. Master Olly should really sell these.”

Agott just nods along, dazed by the sudden burst of conversation. It takes her a moment to realize that she’s not annoyed by it— Coco’s rambling on and on with no end in sight, and Agott is just.. okay with it. Oddly.

Again, again, again , Agott just feels…. happy. Here, in this moment. Doing these things with Coco. It’s gentle and boring and mundane , but gods, she feels so perfectly at home right here. 

Oh. 

Hm. 

That’s an interesting thought. 

‘At home.’

But she does, doesn’t she? She feels…. at ease. Peaceful, despite everything they still have yet to do. 

When was the last time she’d felt at ease back hom— at the Arklaum estate?  When had she ever felt at ease there? Had she ever?

She cuts a slice of almond cake, needing to do something with her hands besides abusing her poor pen or fretting at the sleeves of her dress. 

The cake is good. It’s all good, as all food made by family is. The professors really put their entire hearts and souls into the things they make, even if it’s just a loaf of bread. 

Agott blinks hard, swallowing around both the cake and a sudden lump in her throat. 

Eventually her plates are clean, her cider drunk… but Agott doesn’t return to her notebook quite yet. Her pen gleams invitingly in the warm sun— but she doesn’t take it. Instead she watches Coco. 

She’s doing something with flowers. She pulls them up from the grass around her, laying the tiny blossoms in her lap. 

Agott watches her string them together, a kind of unconscious deft rhythm to the way she does it: a split in the stem with her nail, then the stem of the next flower threaded needle-like through the gap until its petaled head gets caught at the too-small crack. And on, and on. She moves fast and precisely, and all the while, she keeps up a steady flow of words toward Agott. Agott genuinely has no clue what she’s saying, too focused on the movement of her hands. And Coco isn’t even looking . Just threading and threading until she abruptly runs out of flowers on her lap, and seems to suddenly come back into herself with a confused little noise. 

A long, long chain of clover is draped over her hands, loops and loops of tiny pink and white bells strung across their thin line of green. 

Agott crawls closer, leaning over her hands to look at the garland better. “How’d you know how to do that?” She asks. 

“Hm? Oh, well, my mom taught me.” Coco smiles a bit wistfully, her eyes not quite here , like she’s remembering something well-loved. “I don’t remember when specifically. But I— y’know how with some memories, you can feel them? I can feel this one. Her hands over mine. The sun, the grass, and the smell of clover. She showed me how, and I’ve just always made them since.”

“Oh,” Agott says. Oh. She… well. Her mother certainly taught her things, but nothing like that. 

…

( …she wishes she had ). 

But Adina Arkrome would never dirty her hands in such a way. And Agott Arkrome certainly didn’t play outside; she studied with her tutors and didn’t even dream of sitting in sun-swept fields with flowers in her hand. 

She was happy with her books, and her pens, and the weight of her mother’s hard-earned nods of praise. 

The clover is so tiny beneath Coco’s fingers. They would seem so much larger in the hands of a child, the flowers comparatively big between small, clumsy hands. They say that things are easier to learn when you’re young. Languages, reading, everything. It’s why children start learning magic so early. It’s just easier. 

Agott wonders if she’d ever be able to learn how to weave flowers like this, or if it’s the type of thing that’s lost to those without sun-lit childhoods and mothers who cared. 

She clears her throat, gently picking up the end of the flower chain and fiddling with its stem. “I like it,” Agott finally says. “It seems a bit complicated, though.”

“Oh, not really,” Coco says. “I can… show you? If you’d like.” 

She sounds almost hesitant , and tucks her hair behind her ear in a way that betrays her nervousness. 

“Okay,” Agott agrees without even thinking. Her face feels strangely warm. “But— but we should work on our spells right after, okay?”

“Mmhm! Got it.”

Coco grins, and scoots close enough to Agott that their knees bump together. Agott fidgets with the hem of her dress. 

“So… what do we do?” She isn’t used to taking instruction like this, especially from Coco. Usually she’s the one teaching the other girl things, about magic and witches and whatnot. 

Coco reaches around her, pulling up more white clover from the grass at their side. 

“It’s easy, I promise. You take these here, and I’ll show you what to do.” She drops half the flowers in Agott’s lap. “Did you see what I was doing with them before, at all?”

“Hm? Oh, yes,” Agott looks up from the clover, nodding at Coco. “I saw some of it.”

“Alright, good,” Coco smiles. And then— suddenly— her hands are on Agott’s, placing a flower in her grip. Agott stiffens. 

“You wanna use your nail to make a little hole in the stem, like this, see?” Coco presses her thumb against the flower in Agott’s palm, lining it up with the seam running down the stem’s length. “You have to do it really carefully, though, because the stems are tiny and might break if you make the hole too big. See, like this-” Then she pushes down, the stem fraying beneath her nail. “This one’s no good now.” She tosses it into the grass behind them and leans back on her hands. 

Agott at once realizes how close they are , and it takes everything in her to not scramble even further away and run all the way back to the atelier. The shade doesn’t seem to be working anymore.

Coco gestures expectantly at the clover scattered across Agott’s skirt. “Now you try!”

Agott nods, leaning over and raising a flower up to her eyes. The stem is so thin, barely the width of a piece of heavy twine. She digs her nail into it, careful not to press too hard. That seems good. She looks up at Coco, offering up the flower for her to see. 

“Good! Next you do this—” 

And then Coco’s grabbing Agott’s hands again (!), positioning them in just the right way, pulling them close so they can both see, and showing Agott how you’re supposed to thread the next flower's stem through the tiny hole. 

“See? And the petals are too big to fit, so now you’ve got two stuck together! Then all you have to do is keep repeating that with the newest flower you’ve added until you’ve got a whole long chain of them. There are other ways to do it too, but this is the easiest.”

“ Wow ,” Agott breathes, squinting at the tiny chain dangling from her fingers. “What do we do with it now?”

Coco smiles so brightly that Agott almost has to look away. “I’ll show you, I’ll show you! This is my favorite thing to do with them— just make yours a little longer first, okay?”

“Mhm,” Agott hums, already entirely focused on adding more flowers. It almost feels the way drawing does, quiet and repetitive. It would be nice to do this again sometime.

She quietly looks at Coco from beneath her lowered gaze. The other girl is wholly absorbed in her own flower chain, her hair falling in front of her eyes in a curtain of sage strands. Her hands move so precisely , so careful and practiced in their movements– the flower stems never even come close to snapping. 

“You—” Agott suddenly starts, speaking without even really registering what’s coming out of her mouth— “You’d make a good teacher, you know. You explain things well. You’re very… careful. Clever. You never make people feel stupid.” 

You never make me feel stupid, she doesn’t say. 

Coco looks up, eyebrows raised in shock. “...you really think so?”

Agott digs her nail into the flower’s stem. Her words are all jumbled up in her head, tying themselves up into knots of clover-chain. “Yeah. I think you’d be good at it. You’re very good at coming up with new solutions— thinking outside the box, I guess. And—” she gestures at the string of flowers in her lap, not meeting Coco’s eye, “—even if it’s something unfamiliar, you make it easy to understand.”

She finally lifts her gaze to look at Coco. 

The girl’s cheeks are flushed softly pink, and she clutches her flowers to her chest, frozen. “That’s…” She swallows, twisting the plants around in her hands. “That’s really nice of you, Agott.” Coco smiles, her cheeks dimpling, eyes squinting up at the corners with delight. 

Agott flushes. “It’s nothing,” she says under her breath, eyes darting away to thread another clover into the chain. 

Coco laughs softly, the sound light and almost disbelieving. “I think I’d like that a lot, actually. It’s nice to help people.” She smiles down at her hands, seemingly lost in thought. “Anyway— look! I’ve finished mine.”

Coco holds up her flowers, which she’d somehow connected the ends of to make a ring. 

Agott leans closer eagerly, inspecting the circle. “It’s like a necklace, then, isn’t it?”

“A crown, actually,” Coco laughs, promptly dropping the ring atop Agott’s curls. 

Agott feels herself blush all the way down to the soles of her shoes. She feels like a pyreball , just burning burning burning . Why— what— Coco made it for her?!

Coco brushes some of Agott’s curls aside, fingers ghosting warm over her skin as she arranges the crown to sit straight. “There,” she says, leaning back to survey her work. “That looks pretty!”

The flower crown weighs almost nothing, yet Agott can feel it pressing over her like a braid of iron. She— what? What does she even say after that?!

Her palms itch, and she doesn’t know what to do. Her own ring— crown — that she’d been making sits forgotten and unfinished in her lap. She feels weirdly giddy , her fingers trembling slightly with whatever this feeling is.  

“I– thank you,” Agott coughs, scratching at her cheek to hide her face. Oh , if only she could just sink into the ground… bury herself beneath the willow roots, maybe. Then at least Coco wouldn’t see the awful blush she knows must stain her face right now. Heavens . This is terrible. 

( is it really? )

Definitely. Absolutely terrible. For certain. 

( Agott ignores the way her heart is unmistakably leaping right now . She doesn’t think about the flowers in her hair– or how Coco put them there– or how when they get back to the atelier, Agott is going to carefully press every single blossom between the pages of a book )

Agott abruptly stands, petals raining out of her lap in a shower of pink and white. Coco looks at her in confusion. 

“We should start working,” Agott says hoarsely. 

Coco raises her eyebrows, pressing her lips together in a way that’s clearly trying to contain a smile. Agott resolutely looks away. 

“Okay, okay,” Coco finally says, biting back laughter. 

Heavens. 

Coco crawls over to the picnic blanket, flipping open her notebook as Agott settles herself back against the tree. 

She takes a deep breath. She needs to get a grip . This was no way to work— with her head spinning, heart clenched almost painfully in her chest. How on earth is she supposed to come up with even half-usable magic when all she can think about are the flowers in her hair?! 

Ridiculous. 

She turns to her book, and her pen, and her spells. She turns to what she knows the outcome of. Familiarity is safe, no?

Agott draws. 

A hot summer wind dances through the tree, the lacy boughs swaying and trembling in the breeze. Agott inhales the light scent of cherry blossom, the taste of the willow lingering in the back of her throat with every breath. 

A bird calls somewhere deep in the branches, tittering about with playful whistles and trills. There’s an answer from a neighboring tree, and they go on, exchanging songs above them as the girls work. 

It filters gently through Agott’s awareness as she draws. She was using earth-crushing signs before, but those won’t do, would they? They don’t want to destroy Coco’s poor mother, after all. Agott shudders and hastily scribbles over those spells. 

A time-reversal glyph, then? Or a modified one at the very least. Something drawn with specific parameters in mind, most likely something that targets flesh. Or, well… maybe not. That’s veering a bit too close into the territory of forbidden magic. 

Agott crosses out the beginning sketches of that one too. 

Even if she did use that one, there’s no telling what effect it would actually have. Is it really just the flesh that’s affected by the crystallization spell? Or does it affect everything , the mind and consciousness too? Oh gods , is Coco’s mom conscious in there?!

Agott almost recoils from her paper. What an awful thought. What a terrible, terrible thing, to not be in control of one’s own body like that. 

( She doesn’t think of Romonon. She doesn’t think of the people there, freezing and unfeeling, transfigured into gold. She doesn’t think of the choking pull of Sasaran’s cloak and the sharp dig of stone against her cheek. She doesn’t think of the press of a pen tip into the flesh of her arm, of the searing pain, of the single line of ink still carved into her skin. Awful. Painful. Permanent).

(She doesn’t think of what almost happened ).

Agott’s grip tightens around her pen. She doesn’t think about it. She just draws. 

She draws and draws and dra—

There’s a sudden sharp exhale to her right. 

Agott looks up, snapped out of her thoughts.

Coco is hunched over her notebook, the papers propped up on her knees. Her shoulders sit tense, and she doesn’t move at all save for the anxious tap of her pen against the book cover. 

Every couple of seconds she’ll start to draw something, then frown, and promptly cross it out with so much force Agott can hear the scrape of the pen. They’re both stressed, clearly. 

Agott slumps further back against the tree. It’s not as hot as before, but the air still feels uncomfortably thick all of a sudden. She tears out a page and draws a quick seal, a tiny tower of ice blooming from the page. She watches how it glitters sharply in the sun with a small, pleased smile.

She squints at it. Hm.

That— well, it’s a dumb comparison, and it’s dumb that she’s reminded of it now , but—

“Coco?”

“Hm?” the other girl hums distractedly, busy fiddling with the nib of her pen.

“What about the Tower.”

Coco’s fingers still, and she finally looks up to meet Agott’s furrowed frown.

“Ah… what do you mean?”

Agott huffs. “The Tower of Tomes, Coco. What happened to that plan? To the search for your— for the Brimhat’s book there? Why—” she breaks eye contact, suddenly feeling far too grave. “Why are you looking into all these spells when you already have a solution right there?”

Agott prides herself on being practical, on coming up with sound solutions. But now that she sits here, pen primed expectantly on paper, she realizes that Coco— technically— already has a solution. Why does she even need her here? Why did Agott even offer to help? 

( All of a sudden she’s overcome with that awful, twisting, familiar feeling of incompetence ).

Agott presses down harder on her pen. It digs into the paper, indenting the skin of it with a barely-there pockmark. 

Ink coils over the copper nib, dark and shining, welling into a large drop where it meets the paper. It’s too much . Thready veins of ink bleed into the crisp white, and— 

Ah . She’s ruined it. 

“Well,” Coco starts, returning to fiddling with her pen nib. It’s become a little misshapen now, so she presses the metal against her shoe and uses the leverage to bend it back into shape. “I guess… hm. We’re not… entirely sure that the Tower will work. It’s kind of a faulty plan, because if the books were destroyed, or we can’t find them, or– well, you know…” she sighs. “I like having something else, just in case. It feels like I’m trying, at least, instead of just waiting for months to take the test.” 

Agott silently tears off her ruined page. She folds it smaller and smaller and smaller until it refuses to bend anymore, then shoves the whole mess deep into her pocket. It makes sense. Agott would undoubtedly trust her own spells over anything she could find in that tower , anyway. 

“I guess you’re right,” Agott says, uncharacteristically soft. Something about the air feels very solemn. The sun still beats down heavily over their backs, the air thick with heat and the hissing of cicadas– but it feels different, suddenly. Agott watches the tiny ice sculpture slowly slump over in the sunlight as Coco still fiddles with her pen. 

It takes Agott a moment to realize that Coco’s stalling. 

When Coco can’t think of what to draw, she fidgets, messing with her desk and supplies to distract herself from her unresponsive creativity. She always does this, as Agott’s come to notice.

Coco’s always a flurry of movement, fluttering hands and broad smiles, bouncing on the balls of her feet whenever she’s around magic. Whenever she’s even thinking of magic. 

But the way Coco moves now…. it isn’t like that. It’s more subdued, somehow. Less excitement and more nervous energy. 

Agott sets down her pen, clearing her throat. She looks up— and meets Coco’s eyes. It seems the other girl had never looked away. 

“Coco, I…” Agott pauses. Her voice stumbles a little, getting caught on everything she wants but doesn’t know how to say. How is she supposed to reassure someone else? She never even reassures herself , just keeps moving until the worry is buried. She thinks of Coco messing with her pen— trying to hide the trembling of her hands. The laughing cadence of her voice, masking the way it shakes. 

“I don’t think you need to…. to worry . Your magic is good–”

Coco perks up a little, eyes widening at the rare praise. 

“—you’ve improved a lot since you’ve got here, you’re…. you’re moving fast . And like I said,” Agott twists one of the buttons on her cuff, feeling fidgety herself, “like I said back at the atelier, I’ll help you. We all will, the professors and Riché and Tetia.”

Coco’s smile stutters, slipping a bit. “All… of you?”

“Well, yes,” Agott says with a frown. What was unclear about that? Why wouldn’t they want to help her?

Coco’s hands twist in her lap. She’s silent. 

Well, if she’s not going to talk, then Agott’ll get back to work. She pulls out her palm quire again to start drafting spells, and—

(SKRITCH)

—Coco suddenly grabs Agott’s wrist, jerking her hand away from the page and leaving a sharp, jagged slash of ink across it.

Another page is ruined.  

Agott fumes . 

She yanks her hand back, clutching the pen to her chest. “What the hell , Coco?”

“I changed my mind.”

“ What? ” 

“I changed my mind. I don’t— I don’t want— I don’t need your help anymore.” Coco’s chest heaves. Her hands are clenched over her knees, her skirt crunched and wrinkled under the bruising grip.

Agott’s eyes dart from Coco’s trembling shoulders to the ruined page before her. The ink glares at her like a scar, a thick slash of night against the paper’s skin. What the hell?

Agott frowns in confusion. “Why not? Didn’t we come out here to do that? I don’t get why you’re changing your mind all of a sudden— don’t you want to save—”

“ It’s not important, ” Coco says, the words uncharacteristically flat. Her voice is very small, and she still hasn’t let go of her skirts, her knuckles blanching white with the strain.

None of this makes any sense. Agott grits her teeth and sets the pen and palm quire aside to shuffle closer to Coco. She tries so, so hard not to sound angry, but– “Why won’t you let me help you?!” The words come out just as sharp as they always do.

“Agott—”

“My magic is good enough! I know we can figure something out, we just have to–

“AGOTT!” Coco shouts.

Agott’s words die in her throat. 

“ Agott ,” she repeats desperately, her voice wavering. “We— you don’t have to— to do any of this. There’s nothing you can do. We both know it. This was a stupid idea.” Her eyes shine, and her hands shake where they grip the hem of her skirt. Coco just stares and stares and STARES and doesn’t say anything else, just looks at Agott with such a shuttered expression, with exhaustion draped over her shoulders like a heavy coat. And then she slumps— burying her face in her knees. 

She’s— she’s crying, isn’t she? Agott’s heart sinks through her chest like a stone. 

“It’s stupid, right?” Coco laughs weakly. Her dress muffles her voice, but Agott can still hear the way the words catch wetly as they tumble out. “I dunno what I was thinking. There’s no— there’s no spell that can fix what I did. At least not one that I can cast.” Her hands scrunch up in her hair, tugging on the strands. “I ruined my first life with forbidden magic, and now if I want to fix it, I— I’m gonna have to destroy my new one too.”

“Don’t say that–! ”

“ It’s true! ” Coco sits up, hair flying around her face. “You’re smart! You know it’s true! Any spell I could possibly cast to save her, it would just get my memory wiped and— and cast off to wherever all the other Unknowing witches are sent! And…” her voice trembles, “Anyone who helps me will be treated just the same.”

Agott’s heart clenches. She had thought that, hadn’t she? When she was drawing before, made suddenly hopeless by their lack of everything— tools, and knowledge, and— and any real chance of making a difference. Coco can’t be sent away— it’s not fair . It’s not fair for her, or her mother, or Eunie or Custas, or anyone else who’s been trapped like this in an impossible situation. Agott won’t allow it. She can’t allow it.

Coco shouldn’t be like this. She should be happy and excited and— and hopeful about magic. Optimistic. She tries spells, again and again and again, even when it’s going terribly, even when she has no faith in herself, even when— even when Agott says something sharp about it. Even when they first met and Agott was so, so cruel— she nearly shudders at the thought— even then Coco loved it all so dearly. She always just smiles . Shrugs it off. Picks up her pen and TRIES . 

But now she’s slumped and shaking and curled up into herself. 

Now she’s crying . 

And Agott…

Agott doesn’t know what to do. 

Coco’s crying goes against every law of the universe that Agott knows. She swallows against her suddenly hollow chest, against the sharp ache at the back of her throat. Her eyes burn, and it’s not from the heat or the dust or the sun— it’s Coco . It’s always Coco. It feels like Agott’s coming undone. This is just– it’s wrong and she has to fix it.

She shuffles a little closer. How does she help? What is she supposed to do in this type of situation?! Oh, Tetia–! she always jumps in with a hug when someone’s upset. Agott could try that, right?

But she hesitates. She’s not good at hugs. And now her hands are just raised sort of awkwardly above Coco, and she can’t move them any closer. She can try talking… say something reassuring, maybe?

“Ah, uh, Coco….” WHY IS SHE STUTTERING?

Coco doesn’t respond. Oh , gods.

There’s no time to think about it. Agott swallows, takes a deep breath, and wraps her arms around Coco.

Coco freezes. Her body still shakes minutely with tears, but she’s somehow managed to hold herself rigid. Agott swallows again. She’s all stiff, boney limbs awkwardly held around Coco, her chin resting on the crown of the other girl’s head. She feels lightheaded. 

“ Agott? ” Coco mumbles under her.

SHIT. Agott panics, heart racing. “I— I’m sorry, I thought that would help.” She starts to pull back. “I’ve seen Tetia do that, so I thought–”

Coco suddenly tackles her to the ground.

Agott’s head hits the grass so hard she sees stars. Her flower crown is knocked off her head. It takes her a moment to process that Coco’s wrapped her up in a tight embrace, her face buried into the crook of Agott’s neck. Her thoughts jump and leap like rabbits, too quick and scattered to make sense of. She smells like chamomile, Agott thinks dazedly, and numbly loops her arms over Coco’s shoulders.

Coco lifts her head. Her face is splotchy and streaked from crying, but her eyes shine as brightly as ever— even if they’re still swimming a bit with unshed tears.

Agott can see freckles on her nose. They spiral over the arch of it like little copper stars, warm in the sun. She’s never noticed freckles on Coco before. Her eyes track them, subconsciously counting. One, two, three, dozens and dozens…

Coco blinks. The movement draws Agott’s eyes back up, and she finds herself meeting the other girl’s gaze. Coco’s eyes are green and glassy, mirroring the sky. Agott wouldn’t be surprised to see clouds drifting across her irises. 

“Agott?” Coco says softly.

Agott nods for her to continue. Somewhere between hugging Coco and falling backward onto the grass, she somehow lost the ability to speak.

Coco just stares for a moment, her brow creased slightly. “Thank you,” she finally says.

Agott clears her throat. “What for?” 

“Everything. Being here. And helping me. Just— thank you.”

Agott laughs a little, soft, barely enough to cross her lips. Coco’s face brightens at the sound. 

“Don’t you usually save all the ‘thank yous’ for Tetia?” Agott asks (albeit a little hoarsely).

Coco’s nose scrunches up with her smile. “I don’t think she’ll mind me giving these ones away.” She squeezes Agott’s hand. “They’re for a good cause.”

“Okay.” Agott’s mouth quirks up a little. Her heart leaps and leaps and leaps in her chest– she’s sure Coco must be able to feel it.

“I’m sorry for… ah, well, all of that. That reaction was a bit silly, huh? I’m sorry for yelling at you.” Coco averts her eyes, pursing her lips. “I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. You’re just trying to help.”

“You don’t….” Agott thinks for a moment. “You don’t need to apologize. It’s terrible, what happened, what you have to do. It’s terrible. You’re allowed to cry about it.”

“Would you cry about it?”

“Oh, well— uh—” Agott struggles, flushing a little. Coco’s face is very earnest, and the whole of her weight presses down on Agott in a way that leaves her breathless. “I… maybe. I think. If I was alone.”

Coco cocks her head to the side a bit, reminding Agott of a sparrow. “Then how can anyone help you feel better?”

“I… make myself feel better, I guess. I always feel better eventually.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

They go silent. Coco’s still splayed across Agott. It’s very warm— Agott’s face feels all hot. Coco folds her arms over Agott’s chest, resting her head on them and gazing up at Agott through her eyelashes. Her hair is half tucked behind her ear, falling in front of her eyes in a messy curtain. 

Agott has to remind herself to breathe. The air is heavy with the scent of flowers and coppery earth; below is that faint, lingering hint of chamomile. Agott feels like she’s floating. 

“Next time—” Coco starts, and Agott practically flinches at the sudden break in the silence— “next time, if you wanted, you could come and talk to me. When you feel sad like that. It’s okay if you’d rather be alone, but you shouldn’t have to be.”

Agott blinks. Oh. Okay. 

Her mind is gloriously blank for a moment. Grass brushes coolly against the back of her neck, and she feels— distantly— the faint tickling of an ant as it walks over her ankle. Coco waits patiently for a response, her face— hair— everything dappled in soft green light. 

Agott clears her throat. She nods, then worries that isn’t enough, so she— “Yeah. Okay. I’ll think about it.”

Coco grins. “I’m glad.”

And then she suddenly rolls off Agott to lie next to her on the grass, her hair fanning about her head like fallen petals. Agott looks away– it feels like her heart’s trying to skip right out of her chest with how hard it’s beating.

Cicadas buzz somewhere in the trees above them, a rattling tsa-tsa-tsaa-tsaaa that rises and falls so rhythmically that it could probably put Agott to sleep if she let it. She pulls at the grass beneath her hand, digging her fingers into the earth. She wriggles them. It’s strangely cold.

“This trip has been very unproductive,” Coco sighs, sounding almost vaguely sardonic.

That sounds like something I’d say, Agott thinks. She suddenly laughs at that, curling up on her side to try and smother her giggles in her dress.

“What?!” Coco says, staring agape at Agott. “What is it? What did I say?!” She sits up and shoves Agott’s shoulder, who finally stops and collapses back onto the grass. Coco stares at her with a dazed, almost starry-eyed expression.

“I just— gods , that sounded like something I would say.”

“ Huh?! ”

“We’ve been spending so much time together that you’re starting to talk like me.” Agott softly laughs again, draping her arm over her eyes. The sharp afterimage of the sun stands out in ghostly orange across her eyelids.

She hears Coco huff through her nose, a kind of half-laugh. “Hm,” the other girl says. “I didn’t know that was something that could happen.”

“Mn. It just happens by accident sometimes. You’re around someone so much that— without realizing it— you keep little bits of them in you, like how they talk or gesture. I notice it a lot with Tetia. She’s so expressive that it’s easy to see what she’s picked up from the others. The professors do it too, probably because they’ve known each other for so long— they’ve got a lot of the same mannerisms, I guess.”

“Ohhhh,” Coco says, sounding deep in thought. “Huh. You’re so attentive, Agott!”

Agott blushes. “I—”

“ Well ,” Coco continues, “I think it’s nice. The stuff you described before.”

Agott drops her arm back to her side, looking up at Coco. She has to squint a bit— the sun’s right behind the other girl’s head, peeking through the trees and making her edges glow, casting the rest into a warm shadow. 

Agott pushes herself up. “You do?”

“Yeah. It’s kinda… romantic, almost. That person’s a part of you, all spread into little pieces. You almost start to blend together, like tea and honey.”

Agott flushes and tears up some more grass. “I guess. I didn’t— I didn’t mean it like— like that , but, yeah. I guess.” She stares down at the clumps of grass in her palm like they’re suddenly the most fascinating thing in the world, narrow-eyed, and wishes that her hair was long enough to cover her burning face. 

She feels Coco shift beside her. 

“Agott—”

“Well!” Agott leaps to her feet. “We should start heading back. It’s past lunch, and—” She makes a show of looking at the sky, pretending to calculate the sun’s position, “the Professor will probably be back soon. Let’s get our things and go!” 

“Ah— okay? But wait, Agott—” 

Agott shoves her pens and inks into her pocket, grabs the picnic basket nearest her, and practically flees back to the path.

“ Agott—! ”

She hears Coco fumbling with her own things behind her, the clacking and rattling of bottles shoved hastily into pockets, and then the tapping of her shoes on the grass as she bounds after her. 

“Wait, Agott!” Coco starts, huffing a little from the effort of keeping up with Agott’s longer strides. “I have—”

And then Agott suddenly jerks back in surprise as Coco steps directly in front of her, shoving something right under her nose. She stumbles, looking at Coco with wide eyes.

Coco stands frozen, arm extended, holding a small bouquet of wildflowers. Violets, buttercup, daffodil, and aster— all cupped together in a little bundle between Coco’s slightly trembling hands. Her eyes are very wide, pink blooming across her cheeks. 

“Ah…” Agott says, eyes widening. She suddenly thinks of that first meeting with Coco, of the Diadem Herb she offered with a small smile. And how— how Agott stormed off before Coco could even open her mouth, angry and jealous and—

Well. 

And . 

“Oh,” she says.

Coco doesn’t move. Her cheeks are still flushed and very pink.

“I picked these on the way,” she whispers. 

Agott swallows. Her hands twist together. “Are they—”

“They’re for you. I picked them for— for you.”

Agott nods, swallowing again. Her throat is suddenly very dry. Her limbs feel all staticy, her heart leaping and fluttering like a flock of sparrows in her chest.

She reaches for them. Coco doesn’t let go. Leaves and petals move gently from the wind, from the faint shaking of the two pairs of hands they’re clasped in. The flowers are held between them, petals glazed gold in the sun. 

The crescents of Agott’s nails are stained green from the grass. She can see the callouses on Coco’s thumbs, the spray of freckles across her knuckles, the faint traces of ink smudged around her fingertips.

Agott looks up. She feels dazed. The fields are a blur around them, bleeding away like a dreamscape— it’s present, it’s there, but it’s inconsequential. The details don’t matter. 

Agott never sees the places she’s in when she dreams. She knows where she is, but she’s aware of it more through a feeling, from an inherent understanding. Only the people are clear. Their edges are hazy, but she knows them— standing out in crisp focus against the landscape’s foggy, swirling, incomplete reality. 

She looks at Coco, now. The girl— the witch — is draped in sunlight like a coat, gauzy light settling over her gently snow-like. It’s fitting, Agott thinks, for the seamstress’s daughter to be dressed so, to be manteled in draping sheets of incandescent tulle and chiffon— light as spiders silk, her hair crowned in glowing gossamer, her eyelashes flecks of sun. 

This feels like a dream. 

But it’s real. So real. Agott’s hands over Coco’s, they’re real— they’re here, right now, standing among windswept hills and dancing grass, the entire world narrowed to the place their hands touch. It’s warm. It’s electric. It shouldn’t be real, this can’t be happening, but it is, it is, it is. And Agott’s heart blooms , her soul pressing right up against the edges of her skin, leaking out through the cracks in her face, and now she’s smiling , dazed and hazy and nervous, but smiling. 

She looks at Coco. She looks and looks. 

Coco’s eyes are— are so wide. So wide Agott might fall in. Her face is burning. She’s afraid to move, afraid to speak, afraid to breathe. She just stares and stares and stares into Coco’s wide spring eyes.

Coco slowly removes her hand, fingers curling back one by one until they’re falling away, slipping out from beneath Agott’s hands until Agott’s the only one left holding the bouquet. She distantly fears that the stems might snap with how hard she’s gripping them. 

“Why?” Agott whispers. She knows why. She can’t hear anything but her heartbeat. 

Coco shuffles, staring at her feet. “You know why…” she says softly, voicing Agott’s thoughts. Voicing the thoughts she’s afraid to have voiced. 

Afraid . Agott’s never afraid. 

No, that’s a lie— she’s afraid quite a lot, actually. She’s just gotten very, very good at hiding it. But somehow— somehow! — Coco always manages to pull that out of her. Not the fear, necessarily… just the things she’s used to hiding. Agott can’t ever remember smiling so much since she met Coco. The other girl feels like spring and clouds and lily-of-the-valley, like warm tea and late nights and the comforting scratch of a pen against paper. 

She feels familiar. She feels like so much. She makes Agott feel so much. 

It’s a warm feeling. It’s a soft feeling. It’s wavering and gauzy and flits through her ribs like sunlight, so bright it might just shine right out through her skin if she’s not careful. 

‘You know why,’ Coco had said. 

Agott knows. She knows, and she’s scared of that, because now that they both know, what are they supposed to do? It’s very different when it’s just a private feeling, a little thing held close and careful like a secret. It’s different before it’s put into words. But now— now it’s solid and real and held in Agott’s hands in the shape of a wildflower, small and green, and so easily crushed beneath her palm.

“I— I don’t, ah,” Agott tries, her words heavy and jumbled as a handful of stones on her tongue. “I mean— I do— ” she bites her cheek. Her hands are shaky. “Sorry, I, I don’t know what to do.”

Coco frowns a little, her hands twisting nervously in front of her. “What do you mean?” She frets. 

Agott’s face burns . “I mean, I’ve never done this before! Obviously! Had— had someone—”

“Give you flowers?” Coco smiles a little, just on the edge of teasing. 

Agott huffs. “Obviously. But more than that. I’ve never— never had someone like… you.”

“Like me?”

“Yeah. You’re my—,” and here she stumbles over the words— “...friend. But… more than that, too.” 

Gods, this was going terribly. 

Coco blushes. She tucks some hair nervously behind her ear, but it just falls right back out again as soon as she pulls her hand away. “Well, yeah . That’s why I gave you flowers. You’re supposed to give flowers to people you…. you know . That’s what my mom told me once...”

“Ooh,” Agott says. “Okay. I suppose that makes sense.” She rolls one of the flower stems between her fingers. This conversation feels far too clinical to be a confession, she thinks. Well… now that she thinks of it… they haven’t really said anything yet, have they? Nothing has actually been outright confessed . Just lots of pointed pauses and ‘you knows.’ They’re jumping right over the main point here!

Well. This is certainly a matter that can be fixed. 

She breathes, readies herself, and— LEAPS , as Coco’s made her prone to do. 

“I like you!” Agott says. Practically shouts, more like. Her heart is so far up in her throat she can’t breathe around it, just beating away with the thought oh god, oh god oh god —

Coco’s face gets even redder, with wide eyes and a surprised half-smile on her lips. She laughs, and Agott pretends to sulk. 

“Well, yeah!” Coco says, smiling, smiling, smiling . “I thought that’s what we’ve been talking about this whole time…” She tugs on her hair in thought. “Ah, well, I thought it was obvious, at least with the flowers.”

Agott nods sharply, unable to really say anything. Her head's spinning. It feels like she’s going to float right up into the sky— if this floaty, dizzyingly light feeling keeps up, she’ll probably never need her soar shoes again. “Okay,” she says, “okay.” 

This is embarrassing. Agott wants to— to run away, or hit something, or— she doesn’t know. Cast a spell, maybe. Draw. Her hands itch for her pen, for the feel of paper, the sharp smell of ink— but instead she’s clasping these flowers, gentle-like, and now finds herself pinned beneath Coco’s gaze. She really likes being around Coco, doesn’t she? It’s taken a while. It’s taken a long , long time, but heavens above is she happy that Coco’s here now. 

She’s happy. 

Agott tries to smile a little. She can feel the way it comes out: falling off her lips crooked and wavering, forced up with everything she has. 

But Coco beams , eyes like stars, and in a leap has her arms twined around Agott, looped over her neck and shoulders. She presses her lips to Agott’s cheek for just a moment— just a touch! there and gone! — and pulls back to look at her. 

Agott inhales sharply. She almost pulls back— it’s instinctual, to duck away, to avoid such overt affection like the plague—  but she doesn’t. She’s dizzy, blinded by sun and smiles and the overwhelming, delicately gentle residual ghost-feeling of Coco’s touch. It unfurls like petals across her skin, a carnation softly unspooling across her meridians, folded warm within that hidden spot that dimples when she smiles. 

“Oh,” she says, while those birds tucked away in the willow whistle with bell-song that dance through her ears, and one of her hands is around Coco’s arm, and it burns burns burns with the contact. 

The pale linens of their skirts swirl around them, cloud-like petals of fabric billowing in a frenzy of cream and white. 

Agott’s curls glance across her face, feather-light as a kiss. Her cheeks burn. Their skirts are tangled, snapping in this sudden wind. And her flowers— oh gods, her flowers — are squeezed tight between her fist, crushed up against her chest from Coco’s sudden embrace.

This is— a lot. 

Agott holds the flowers tighter. She imagines that they’re grounding her, taking root, threading through her bones and nerves to tether her to the meadow. 

She wishes she was sitting back in the grass, so she could dig her hands deep into the earth and hold on to keep from floating away. Feel the cold dirt get caught beneath her nails, the snap of grass and roots as she burrows her fingers in. The smell of dust and iron. 

She swallows. She smiles. 

She—! 

Coco— Coco likes her. 

She likes her. 

Everything today has been so simple. So quiet . So easy. This is just life now, she guesses. They had a picnic. They drew together. The sun shone. Coco likes her. 

It’s perfect, really. 

All Agott’s ever wanted— so much, so much of what she does— is because she wants to be liked. She wants to be worthy. She doesn’t want to be seen as a waste, a failure, or worst of all: ordinary. 

But today was ordinary. 

And Agott loved it. She’s glad it was ordinary. 

She wants this to last. She wants this to last for a long, long time. 

Even if it’s ordinary, even if it’s simple. Even if she’s done nothing to deserve it. 

It’s okay.

❀

For a long while everything’s still, save the crickets humming in the high grass around them and the wind that sweeps through the fields. 

Agott can hear her heartbeat, can feel it in her throat. She wants to move— not in the usual way, though— her hands don’t crave her pen for once. But she still wants to hold , to fill her empty palms. Affection’s a funny thing, isn’t it? It’s nice to have a name to this fondness. 

Agott grabs Coco’s hand. Why not? Their fingers tangle, warm and ink-stained, and Coco’s eyes dart back and forth from their linked hands to Agott’s face. She’s pink-cheeked, her eyes shining with disbelief and such overt joy that Agott feels almost burned by it. 

Coco squeezes Agott’s hand. “Do you want to head home, now?” 

There’s so much ahead of them, isn’t there?

“Please,” Agott says, her heart glowing , crackling with light and warmth like its been seared with that bird of light she’d cast all those months ago. It thrums through her bones, echoing, echoing, so deep it feels as though it’ll swallow her whole. She feels full, complete; a glyph with a circle drawn neatly around it. A line of clover woven into an even ring. A hand with another nestled close to it’s palm. 

Agott glances at the flowers in her hand. Small specks of delicate color, clasped within her palm. Greens and whites and purples. Yellow, like the forsythia outside her window. 

She breathes in the green smell of wind, and growth, and summer. She smiles.

“Let’s go home, Coco.”