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“Olly?” Qifrey calls, tugging his cloak over his shoulders.
Olruggio looks up from where he’d been hunched over his workbench, and Qifrey tries his best to ignore the way that his best friend had startled upon seeing him in his doorway, body held rigidly. He’d only just told Olruggio the truth about his memories a week ago, and his best friend had been skittish around him ever since. Qifrey always tried to pretend that it didn’t hurt.
(Witches don’t have a religion, but he prays that Olruggio will forgive him anyway.)
“Qifrey, did you need something?” Olruggio asks, and Qifrey shakes himself out of his thoughts.
“I’ll be going to the Great Hall for a while, and will likely only be back in a few hours.”
“The Great Hall?” Olruggio asks, blinking. “What d’you need to go there for, you hate the place.”
Qifrey looks aside, not wanting to meet Olruggio’s eyes. “I owe Beldaruit an explanation for the way I’ve acted my whole life.”
“Ah. Do you need me to join you, Qifrey?”
Qifrey’s heart aches in his chest, a tight, numbing sensation so unlike the silverwood’s throbbing pain that Qifrey almost fails to recognise it as the heartbreak that it is. To think, that even in this horrible stalemate that they are in, Olruggio is still kind enough to offer his presence when Qifrey needs aid.
Qifrey, with the practice of nearly two decades, pushes down the ache and shakes his head. “No, I’d prefer if you could stay to keep an eye on the girls, please. I’ve given them some self-study to do, but it would be good if there was an adult around.”
“I can do that,” Olruggio says, pushing his chair back and standing. “Nothing I’m working on currently’s too dangerous to do around the kids, I can bring it down to the living area to continue.”
Qifrey’s chest twinges again. Oh, his kindest, most caring star…
“That would be great,” he says instead. “Thank you, dear friend.”
Olruggio waves away his thanks, and starts packing up his desk. Qifrey takes that as the dismissal that it is, and turns to leave. He already has one painful conversation planned for today, and is in no way willing to risk having another so soon.
There is a knock on the door, and Beldaruit pauses in the middle of brewing his tea. He sets his cup down on its saucer, smile tugging at his lips as the little water dragon whirls into its rightful place once more, then sends a smoke sculpture to check on who his unexpected visitor is. Riliphin is out currently, having offered to stock up on the stationery and groceries that they needed, and Beldaruit doesn’t expect him back for at least another few hours.
Besides, if it had been Riliphin, his shy apprentice wouldn’t have knocked- he had a key, after all, and much preferred entering so quietly that Beldaruit sometimes didn’t even notice him.
He blinks smoke-formed eyes open to see a head of white hair, grey cloak and that ever-amusing black ribbon, and immediately throws the door open.
“My dear first apprentice!” He cries, letting the elation in him bubble out genuinely in his tone. It was so rare that Qifrey came to visit, especially unprompted, and Beldaruit would always, always have a special place in his heart for this man who he’d raised, who was as close to a child as Beldaruit would ever have. “What brings you to your poor, lonely master, hm?”
“You’re hardly alone,” Qifrey snipes, and oh, there is the prickly young man that he knows and loves. “Where is Riliphin, anyway?”
“Out, restocking our supplies,” Beldaruit says, waving a smoky hand as he leads his dearest first apprentice to the sitting room where he is. “But don’t think you can change the subject quite so easily, my dear boy! What brings you here on this rare, rare visit?”
“I would prefer to tell you in person,” Qifrey says, and Beldaruit is too pleased by the sudden visit to tell his boy, as he usually would, that his smoke sculpture is as much him as his person is. Besides, he is fairly certain that this is just another one of Qifrey’s small rebellions that he’d never really grown out of, given that Beldaruit has given Qifrey this same lecture countless times throughout his apprenticeship. Instead, he simply smiles and continues on his way, blinking when Qifrey pushes ahead of him.
His dear ex-apprentice, it seems, does not need his guidance as he walks towards the sitting room, opening the door without so much as a by-your-leave. Beldaruit laughs, and dissipates his smoke sculpture to smile at Qifrey in person. It warms his old man’s heart, really, that no matter how many years it had been, Qifrey still remembers his way around this house.
(No matter how directionally challenged his dear boy was, Beldaruit thinks fondly.)
“Sit, sit,” Beldaruit enthuses instead, gesturing effusively to the low sofa beside him. He reaches for the marktea set that he’d pulled out the moment he’d seen who was at the door, along with the little wooden box of marktea slips that he kept in stock specially for this particular visitor. “You still enjoy a good willowgrape, don’t you?”
Qifrey settles himself into the indicated sofa, but there is a gentle shine to his eyes, a crinkle at their corners that Beldaruit has hardly ever seen despite raising this boy for more than two decades. There is a softer air about his boy today, less tense, his shoulders slanting down where they would normally be held tight against his body.
“Here, let me,” Qifrey says, and he is reaching to slide the willowgrape slips into their places. Beldaruit sees him pause momentarily at the intricate layout of the willowgrape leaves that immediately gives away the marktea manufacturer and summarily their exorbitant prices, but Qifrey says nothing as he begins pouring hot water over the slips.
For his cup, Beldaruit feels his heart grow fond as Qifrey gently places a slip of pressed green lemon under the willowgrape without even a word from Beldaruit himself. It has been a decade since Qifrey had graduated his care, and years since they have sat down to tea together, and yet his first apprentice still remembers the way Beldaruit takes his tea.
They settle into their seats, tea cups in hand, and Beldaruit watches as Qifrey’s lips twitch up at the corners as his gaze follows the slow swirl of a water dragon in a tea cup. There is something soft and aching in Qifrey’s eye, in his expression, that Beldaruit had never seen before in all his years of knowing and loving this boy turned man.
Qifrey sighs, and tears his gaze from the swirling dragon. “The spell might be fading, after so many years. I’ll make you a new one soon.”
Beldaruit’s heart skips a beat, just a single one. Is this really the apprentice he’s known? Yes, Qifrey had mellowed considerably from the sullen, stubborn anger and fear of his youth, and yes, it was not always that he treated Beldaruit like one treated a prickly inconvenience, but Qifrey seldom, if ever, expressed his care in words.
In the two decades that he had raised his boy, Beldaruit does not need more than one hand to count the number of times that Qifrey had had caring words for him.
“Qifrey,” Beldaruit begins, settling his cup down to take a closer look at Qifrey. “Are you feeling quite alright?”
Qifrey jerks a little, expression closing off once again, and the man that Beldaruit had expected to see reappears. His first apprentice reaches down to pick up his teacup, dispelling the swirling dragon, and cups it between his palms. Qifrey’s shoulders draw in on themselves, and his gaze drops to stare into the still depths of his cup.
“I’m fine,” he says, not sullen enough to be the boy that he had been at twelve, but too emotionless to truly be fine. “I just-”
Here, Qifrey closes his eye, and takes a long drink from his cup before visibly steeling himself. “I- Master, I have so much to tell you.”
Master. With one word, Qifrey had set Beldaruit’s chest alight with joy, that familiar word that he hasn’t heard in this voice for a decade, this voice that had been the first to ever call him that, and only ever infrequently and often sarcastically.
Today, it is not sarcastic, and Beldaruit would do far worse things than to listen to his dear apprentice speak to hear himself addressed that way once more.
“Go on, my dear boy. You know this old master of yours loves a good tale, and I always have time for you, hm?”
Qifrey stares at him for a long moment, but the rueful chuckle that he lets out is not lacking mirth, so Beldaruit thinks that he must have said something right.
(It had always been hard to tell, growing up, what his boy would and wouldn’t accept.)
Qifrey sets his teacup down, and it doesn’t escape Beldaruit’s notice how his hands tremble before he tucks them into the folds of his skirts.
“How much do you know about the life cycle of silverwoods?”
The story that follows has Beldaruit’s heart breaking. Beldaruit gets the feeling that there are many details that Qifrey has not shared, least of all what he had found himself doing to keep himself in a constant state of stress, but Beldaruit thinks that it is not information that he truly wants to know, at least not enough to press at what must be a deep trauma for his dear boy.
“So, I lived that way for close to twenty years, after I found out,” Qifrey says, and his hands have progressed from trembling unseen in his skirts to being wrung against each other. “You must understand, that any modicum of comfort, of safety, would have made it grow. Sometimes I think that you keeping me in the Great Hall throughout my childhood must have saved my life, actually. With whispers behind my back everywhere I went and the heavy mist… it must have been just enough discomfort to keep the seed at bay.”
“Oh, my boy…” Beldaruit says, sentence trailing off as his words desert him. He has always been a gifted speaker, but right now there are no words to be found. What can he say, in the face of a trauma so great that his dearest boy has not known safety and comfort for the entirety of his remembered life?
What can he say, knowing now that every favourite meal he’d had the chefs prepare, every dragon plush that he’d had commissioned and left decorating Qifrey’s childhood bed, had only ever pushed his boy closer to oblivion?
Perhaps, he thinks, knuckles white around the horns of his sealchair, it had secretly been a blessing that Beldaruit had not been, and still is not, all that competent at general parenting.
Beldaruit forces a shaky laugh, and says as much.
Immediately, Qifrey’s bright blue eye, the eye that had once gazed upon his spells with such wonder, that had watched him avidly from his bed as Beldaruit read aloud fairy tales and legends and folktales alike, shoots up to pin him under its gaze. There is something frantic in Qifrey’s actions as he reaches abortively for Beldaruit before withdrawing yet again, and then long, pale fingers are curled back around a cooling cup. His first apprentice shakes his head slowly, then says, very, very carefully, “Other than Olly, you were the person who made it sprout the most.”
Beldaruit wonders how many times his heart can shatter in a single conversation. How could it ache so deeply, to learn that he had, in fact, been the parent that his boy had wanted, but yet not the one that he’d needed? And yet, to be compared to Olruggio, to the one person who Qifrey had always blindly, unerringly followed, the one person who everyone knew Qifrey loved- to see Qifrey place him on the same winners’ podium as that man, to be only a step below him- Beldaruit blinks back the tears that form, aching and tender and loving all at once.
And yet, he knows that this is a podium that neither himself nor Olruggio would want to step on. Not when being on it had only increased the danger that Qifrey’s life had been in.
He chuckles wetly, and takes a sip of his tea to clear the way his throat feels like it is closing in on itself before setting his cup down to give Qifrey his full attention. “My dearest first apprentice, I cannot imagine that you think it would be a comfort to me to hear that.”
Qifrey shakes his head again, and his gaze drops to the floor. “But it’s gone now, and I always promised myself that I wouldn’t lie to the people who mattered once I didn’t have to.”
Beldaruit cannot help himself -who would ever have guessed that Qifrey would admit, out loud, that Beldaruit meant something to him- and reaches out to ruffle his boy’s hair in the way that he’d always wanted to, in the way that he had long since trained himself not to since the first time that Qifrey had shied away from it.
This time, Qifrey does not shy away. Instead, his dear boy leans into the touch, all but melting into it, and it is only now that Beldaruit finally realises that it had not been his hand that Qifrey had pulled away from all those years ago.
There is the dull clink of ceramic, and Beldaruit only realises that Qifrey had set his cup down when his boy drops to the floor, folding his legs under himself to lean into the side of Beldaruit’s leg, weight half against the sealchair and half against him. Qifrey’s fingers curl over the horn of his sealchair, brushing Beldaruit’s own, and Beldaruit is brought back two decades ago, when Qifrey had still been new to magic and small enough to sit in Beldaruit’s lap, listening wide-eyed to each new tale of magic that his master had woven for him. Qifrey had been so small then, easily impressed by legends and myths no matter how he’d tried to hide it, and Beldaruit still remembers the way small fingers had curled against his own, aimlessly sketching out formless shapes with his fingers against both the horn and the thin skin of Beldaruit’s arm.
When he’d been a little bigger, and even more standoffish but still with that same wonder in his eye, Qifrey had enjoyed perching on the horn of Beldaruit’s sealchair and listening to his stories that way.
Now, Qifrey is too big to perch on the horn any longer, and definitely too big to sit in Beldaruit’s lap, but Beldaruit instead savours the weight of Qifrey’s head resting on his thigh, and cards his fingers through the fine, fluffy white strands atop Qifrey’s head instead. Qifrey hums at the rhythmic stroke of his fingers through his hair, and Beldaruit’s chest goes warm. He laughs softly when Qifrey goes limp under his ministrations, melting further into Beldaruit’s side, and thinks to himself that this is more than he’d ever thought he’d have. It makes his heart feel ten times larger in his chest, and Beldaruit silently laments that he doesn’t possess the flexibility to lean down and press a kiss to that head of white hair.
Qifrey does not speak any further about the topic when he finally pulls away from Beldaruit’s side, nor does he continue to put words to his feelings, but Beldaruit knows that Qifrey has always had a limit to how much he could share before he felt that he had to close himself off once more. He will not push, does not wish to push, and Beldaruit had already heard what he’d always wanted to hear. Besides, in spite of the tragedy of Qifrey’s story, in spite of how they had come to have this conversation, there was nothing that could deflate the joy in his heart at the confirmation that his boy had brought to him.
The rest of their visit goes about as normally as can be expected, enjoying the last dregs of their marktea while Qifrey updates Beldaruit on his four grand-apprentices and their progress, and oh, how Beldaruit wishes that normalcy could be like this everyday.
Eventually, Qifrey has to leave, having left his atelier and students for longer than was wise, but the promise of a new and improved palm dragon teacup, and the sight of unburdened shoulders and a smile, freely given, is more than enough to buoy Beldaruit through the departure, and for the rest of the week.
It is a great balm on his soul, Beldaruit thinks, to finally have confirmation that he means as much to Qifrey as his son means to him.