Work Text:
The sun filtered into the room, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air of a bedroom that felt entirely too ordinary.
Coco stretched, a yawn pulling at her lips. She felt rested, as if she had slept through a long, strange, and heavy dream. The kind that leaves behind an ache in the chest, but vanishes the moment you open your eyes.
She sat up, rubbing her temples. Everything felt clean and reset.
Beside her bed sat a bag she didn’t recognize—a sturdy, worn thing made of fine leather.
She frowned, tilting her head. She had no memory of owning it, but it looked familiar in a way that made her pulse flutter, a gentle, unrecognizable rhythm.
She assumed her mother had placed it there, perhaps a gift from a visiting merchant, or a souvenir from their new life.
She unbuckled the strap. Inside, the bag was a treasure trove of oddities.
A beautifully carved wooden bird, a collection of dried, pressed flowers that smelled faintly of old parchment and rain, and a bundle of folded papers.
Coco pulled out one of the papers. It was covered in neat, slanted handwriting, the ink a bit faded as if it had been handled often.
“Agott, I don’t know if you’ll ever read this, but I have to put these feelings somewhere. You were always so cold, but lately, I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I’m not paying attention. I wish you knew how much I admire you. Maybe, one day, I’ll be brave enough to say it to your face.”
Coco stared at the name. “Agott…” She whispered, the name rolling off her tongue. It felt familiar, like she'd been saying for years.
She blinked, her confusion mounting. She didn't know an Agott, nor has she encountered anyone named Agott.
And the handwriting… she traced the letters with her thumb. It looked unnervingly like her own, yet the words felt like they belonged to someone else entirely. She had written this? To a girl named Agott?
She frowned, the confusion blooming into a dull headache. She tucked the paper back into the envelope, feeling a sudden, unexplained wave of sadness, and pushed the bag aside.
She stood up and walked to the kitchen, where the smell of fresh bread was wafting through the house.
Her mother was there, standing by the stove, healthy and vibrant, humming a tune. The sight of her mother wiped away the last of the lingering fog from Coco’s mind.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” her mother said, beaming. “Sleep well?”
“I think so,” Coco replied, her voice steady. “I had the strangest dream, though.”
“Well, let it go,” her mother said, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Today is a beautiful day. You have so much to do.”
Coco nodded, pushing the memory of the letter into the back of her mind. She had a day to live, a life to enjoy, and for the first time in a long time, everything was normal.
Months bled into one another, turning the sharp edges of Coco’s confusion into an accepted reality.
She lived in a world of seamstress patterns and the steady, rhythmic life of her village.
The leather bag, with its wooden bird and mysterious, unsent letters, had long been pushed to the back of her closet, a relic of a dream she had decided not to analyze.
However, she couldn't shake the feeling of missing something.
The day the two witches arrived, the village was bustling with the mid-afternoon trade. Coco was in the sunroom, hunched over a heavy linen tunic that her mother had tasked her with reinforcing.
The light was golden, catching the dust motes as she threaded her needle with practiced, graceful movements.
She heard the door chime, a sound that always announced visitors, followed by the murmur of her mother’s voice.
She didn't pay it much mind until the heavy, measured cadence of a man’s voice, accented with a distinct warmth drifted into the room.
-frey
The incomplete name flashed in her mind like a lightning strike, bright and sudden. She didn't know why she knew that name, but the sound of it made her heart skip a beat.
She stood up, smoothing her apron, and stepped toward the doorway just as the figures appeared in the hallway.
There were two of them. One was a man with a shock of silver hair and a cloak that seemed to swallow the dim light of the hall. The other was a girl.
She was tall, with short dark, curly hair untied in a way that looked severe but elegant. She moved with a tension that seemed to vibrate in the air around her. She was currently looking at a display of herbs, her posture stiff, her gaze guarded, with a brooding expression resting on her face.
Coco stopped in the threshold. The girl wasn't looking at her, but Coco felt an inexplicable jolt of electricity down her spine. The name from the letters.
She didn't know why, but-
“Oh! Agott,” the man said, turning toward his companion. “Could you hold this while I check the quality of these dried stalks?”
‘Agott…?’ Coco thought.
Agott turned. Her eyes were sharp, dark, and filled with a reserved, analytical intelligence. But as her gaze swept across the room and landed on Coco, her expression shifted. It was subtle, a tiny tightening of her jaw, a blink that lasted a fraction too long.
Coco felt her stomach flutter at the mere sight of the girl's beautifully soft purple gaze.
Coco, fueled by a sudden, reckless impulse she couldn't explain, smiled. It was a bright, genuine thing, the kind she usually reserved only for her mother.
“Welcome,” she said, her voice sounding clearer than she intended. “I hope the village has been treating you well.”
Agott stiffened. She seemed momentarily paralyzed, her hands clenching at her sides. Her eyes searched Coco’s face, not with malice, but with a raw, agonizing intensity that made Coco feel like she was being scanned to her very marrow.
“We... yes,” Agott finally replied. Her voice was cool, clipped, and deeply guarded. She didn't offer a name, but she didn't look away either. “The village is… fine.”
The air between them felt suddenly crowded with unexplained tension. Coco felt the urge to ask who she was, to ask why that name, Agott, felt like a key trying to turn in a lock that had been rusted shut.
But the girl’s eyes were so closed off, so deliberately detached, that Coco felt a sudden wave of shyness.
“Are you... traveling?” Coco asked, taking a small, tentative step forward.
Agott glanced toward the man, Qifrey, who was busy inspecting a shelf of jars on the other side of the room. She looked back at Coco, and for a fleeting second, the guard dropped.
There was a flicker of something so profoundly sad in her eyes that Coco’s breath caught in her throat.
“We are just passing through,” Agott said, her tone softening just enough to be dangerous. “My Master has business. I am only here to ensure it is concluded.”
Coco smiles a little more.
Coco felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to bridge the distance between them, a desperate need to say something, anything that would make the girl’s rigid shoulders drop.
She didn't understand why, but the way Agott stood there, so poised and yet so withdrawn, made Coco’s heart ache in a way that felt eerily familiar.
“You're a witch, aren't you?” Coco asked, her voice hushed. It wasn't a question of suspicion, but one of pure, childlike curiosity.
Agott’s fingers twitched at her sides, her knuckles turning white. She barely glanced at Qifrey before shifting her weight, her gaze flickering to the floor. “I… am,” she murmured, the admission seemingly torn from her. “I am studying to be one.”
“That sounds incredible,” Coco said, stepping closer, drawn in by the aura of hidden knowledge the other girl carried. “I’ve always thought-”
“Agott, I’m finished here,” Qifrey’s voice cut through the air, smooth and decisive. He had tucked a small pouch into his cloak and was already turning toward the door.
The spell was broken. Agott’s head snapped up, her professional mask sliding back into place with practiced, icy precision. She didn't look at Coco again. She didn't say goodbye. She simply turned on her heel and followed Qifrey, her movements rigid and swift.
Coco stood in the doorway, watching them leave.
The door clicked shut, the small brass bell ringing a final, hollow note. She stood there for a long time, watching the dust motes swirl in the space where the girl had just been.
That night, the house was silent, save for the rhythmic chirping of crickets outside the window. Coco lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, but sleep was a distant, unreachable shore.
The image of Agott kept resurfacing in her mind. The sharp line of her jaw, the way her hair caught the light, and that look. That brief, devastating fracture in her composure when she had looked at Coco.
Agott.
The name felt like a song playing in a room she couldn't enter. Was this the same Agott she had written those strange, melancholy letters to? It seemed impossible. How could she have written letters to a girl who was so clearly a stranger?
She sat up, pushing back her blankets. She walked to the closet and pulled out the old, dusty leather bag. She opened it, the scent of lavender and old ink rising to meet her like a greeting from a ghost. She pulled out the bundle of papers, her heart hammering against her ribs.
She spread them out on the floor. One by one, she began to read.
“I’m terrified, Agott. I’m terrified that if I leave this room, I’ll see how much you all care for me, and then the forgetting will feel like a death.”
“I love you, Agott. I love you more than I love magic. More than I love the atelier.”
The words were not just ink. They were memories she didn't possess. As she read, a dull, aching heat began to spread through her chest. It felt like she was reading the diary of a person she had once been, a person who had loved this cold, guarded girl with a ferocity that scared her.
She looked at the letters, then at the wooden bird, then at the pressed flowers. They were pieces of a life she couldn't remember living, a connection that had been severed so cleanly it left no scar, only a vast, empty space.
“Who… are you?” Coco whispered to the empty room, her brows furrowing in a different type of frustration that doesn't hold any malice. “And why do you… hurt so much to look at?”
She didn't have an answer. She wouldn't find one tonight. She eventually gathered the letters, bundled them back into their envelope, and laid back down.
She tried to tell herself that it was a coincidence. That “Agott” was just a name, and these were just the ramblings of a lonely girl’s overactive imagination.
But as she closed her eyes, the last thing she saw was the flicker of pain in Agott’s eyes, and the last thing she felt was the crushing, inexplicable weight of a promise she had already broken, a thousand times over. She fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, the letters waiting for her in the dark.
Tomorrow is another day.
The days following the encounter settled into a rhythm that felt increasingly off-kilter. Coco found herself distracted by the most mundane things.
While she worked on her patterns, her needle would pause, her eyes drifting toward the window as if expecting to see that severe, elegant figure walking down the village path again.
Her mother, usually so preoccupied with their quiet, peaceful life, began to notice. She watched Coco stare at the cooling tea, watched her finger the worn leather of the mysterious bag, and watched the way Coco’s shoulders seemed to slump whenever the village bell tolled.
One evening, as they sat in the dim amber light of the kitchen, her mother set down her mending. "Coco," she said, her voice gentle but probing. "You’ve been miles away lately. Is it... is it the dream again? That girl you mentioned?"
Coco jumped, nearly pricking her finger. She offered a quick, practiced smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. “Oh, I’m fine, Mom. Really. Just... work, I suppose. It’s been busy.”
“You’re working half as much as you used to,” her mother pointed out, her brow furrowed in concern. “You seem like you’re waiting for something. Or someone.”
“I'm not waiting for anything,” Coco lied, the words tasting like ash. She stood up quickly, needing to escape the weight of her mother’s scrutiny. “I… I think I’m just tired. I’ll head to bed early.”
She fled to her room, but sleep remained a stranger. She reached for the bag under her bed, a habit she had developed over the past few weeks. She didn't open the letters every night, but just having the weight of them near her brought a strange, agonizing comfort.
The following weeks were a slow descent into a peculiar kind of longing. Coco found herself taking long walks toward the edge of the village, toward the road that led to the city.
She would sit on a stone wall, watching travelers pass by, her heart hammering every time a figure with dark hair or a cloak appeared in the distance.
She was haunted. That was the only word for it. She felt like a puzzle with missing pieces, and Agott was the shape that kept appearing in the negative space.
One afternoon, while she was helping a neighbor organize a shipment of goods, she found a book tucked away in a crate of old donated items. It was a primer on basic magical theory. Nothing forbidden, just the kind of thing a young apprentice might study. She opened it, and her breath hitched.
In the margins, there was a small, smudged ink drawing of a bird, the exact same design as the wooden charm in her bag. Beneath it, written in the same neat, slanted hand from her letters, were the words: “To practice, until the day.”
Coco traced the drawing.
A memory, or something like it, pushed against the inside of her skull.
She felt the phantom weight of a hand holding her own.
She felt the cold, crisp air of a high hill at night.
She felt the grass rubbing against her as she laid down.
She felt the crushing, devastating warmth of a pair of arms holding her, a voice whispering, “I’m here. I’m yours.”
She dropped the book as if it had burned her.
“Coco?” her neighbor asked, looking at her with concern. “Are you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost.”
“I'm fine,” Coco gasped, clutching her chest. “I just... I think I need to go home.”
She ran. She ran all the way back to her house, her lungs burning, her mind spiraling. She burst into her room, locked the door, and ripped the bag from under her bed.
She dumped the contents out, the wooden bird clattering on the floorboards, the letters spilling everywhere.
She gathered the letters into her lap, her hands shaking violently. She needed to know. She needed to know who this Agott was to her.
She picked up a letter at random, the ink blurring as her vision filled with tears she couldn't explain.
“I want to hide us somewhere the Knights can’t find me, Agott. I want to build a new life with you. But I can’t.”
The words hit her with the force of a physical blow. She didn't just feel sad, she felt a profound, bottomless grief for a loss she couldn't name. It was confusing, to feel grief for a person she never knew.
She realized then that these weren't just letters. They were a map of a heart that had been broken, a heart that belonged to a girl that she didn’t know had existed in the first place. She felt sorry for the girl who had walked into her house and looked at her with such agonizing sorrow.
She curled up on the floor, surrounded by the ghosts of a love she couldn't remember but could feel in every fiber of her being.
She wasn't just missing a friend.
She was missing the person she was when she was with ‘Agott’.
She was merely just another girl in a body that did not belong to her.
And for the first time, in the cold, quiet dark of her room, Coco didn't brush it off.
She didn't tell herself she was fine. She let herself cry for the girl she had forgotten, and for the girl who was still out there, carrying the weight of a memory that Coco had been forced to leave behind.
The door creaked open, the sound muffled by the thick carpet of Coco’s room. Her mother stood in the threshold, her face illuminated by the soft, golden glow of the hallway light. She took in the scene at once.
The scattered letters, the wooden bird lying discarded on the floor, and her daughter, crumpled into a heap, her shoulders heaving with a sorrow that seemed too large for such a small space.
Her mother didn't say a word. She simply crossed the room, her movements practiced and gentle, and sank to the floor beside Coco. She reached out, pulling Coco into her arms, tucking her head against her shoulder and stroking her hair with a steady, rhythmic hand.
At the touch, something in Coco’s chest snapped.
The warmth of her mother’s arms, the way she held her, the way she offered a quiet, stable sanctuary, triggered a sudden, violent flash of recognition.
It wasn't a memory of her mother, but a mirror image of something else.
She saw a flicker of a room. A tall, cloaked figure with silver hair, sitting on the floor with her, pulling her close in the exact same way when the world had felt too heavy to bear.
She felt the ghost of a figure that was too parental for a stranger, and too much of a stranger to be really seen as family, gently placed a hand on her head, heard the echo of his voice promising that she was loved, even as he prepared to let her go.
"I-” Coco choked out, her voice barely a whisper against her mother’s robe. “I remember being held like this... but it wasn't you.”
She looks up at her mother, eyes desperate like a small child. “Mom, why can't I remember…?”
Her mother didn't pull away. Although a bit confused, she tightened her hold, rocking Coco back and forth as if she were a child again. “It’s alright,” she murmured, her voice a soothing balm. “Whatever you're feeling, whatever you've lost... you don't have to carry it alone tonight.”
Coco sobbed, the sound raw and guttural. She felt as though she were grieving two lives at once. The life she had now, and the life that had been scrubbed from her mind like ink from a slate.
The mirror of that earlier comfort, the way she had wept into the man’s shoulder while he mourned her in advance, made the present grief unbearable.
She realized then that the comfort she was receiving was a bridge to a past she couldn't return to.
Every touch, every soft word from her mother, was a reminder that someone else, someone named Qifrey, someone named Agott, had loved her enough to let her go, had loved her enough to let her be this version of herself.
“I’m so sorry,” Coco wept, her fingers bunching into her mother’s fabric. “I don't know who I am anymore. I feel like- I feel like some book that’s missing all its pages…”
“You are exactly who you are meant to be,” her mother said, though her own eyes were wet. “You are my daughter. And if there are parts of you that are hurting for people you can't name, then those people were lucky to have known you. They are lucky to be remembered, even if only by the shape of the pain they left behind.”
Coco buried her face in her mother’s neck, the sobbing eventually mellowing into a ragged, hollow exhaustion.
She felt anchored, held together by her mother's strength, mirroring the way she had once been held by the people who had taught her the very magic she was no longer allowed to speak.
She stayed there for a long time, the letters and the wooden bird silent on the floorboards around them.
She was a girl who had been given a second chance, but in the quiet, she knew one thing for certain, she would spend the rest of her life searching for the people who had cared for her enough to break her heart.
The morning light felt different today. Not the bright, innocent sunshine of a fresh start, but a soft, filtered glow that seemed to hold the weight of yesterday's revelations.
Coco woke with a heavy heart, her eyes still puffy from the night’s tears, but for the first time in months, the fog in her mind felt thinner, permeable.
She didn't get out of bed immediately. Instead, she reached down under the bed and pulled out the leather bag.
This time, she didn't read the letters. She didn't have the strength to navigate that particular ache just yet. Instead, she pulled out the physical things—the tangible, solid fragments of a life she couldn't account for.
She took the wooden bird, its surface smooth from being held by someone who had clearly spent hours carving it, and placed it in her palm.
As she ran her thumb over the delicate wing, the silence of the room was suddenly pricked by a phantom sound.
It was faint, like a memory muffled by layers of velvet, but it was unmistakably a voice.
“Take this,” a gentle, melodic voice echoed in her mind, sounding like a girl who had once been a constant companion. “It’s a reminder. Even if you don't know who gave it to you, keep it. Just... please, keep it.”
Coco gasped, clutching the bird to her chest. The voice- she didn't know the name, but she knew the kindness behind the words. She knew the girl who had spoken them had wanted her to be free.
She reached into the bag and pulled out the dried flowers, their scent still clinging to them despite the passage of time. As she inhaled, another voice cut through the static of her consciousness, this one sharper, more earnest.
“These are from the garden,” the memory whispered, clear as a bell. “They smell like home. Whenever you find them, just take a breath. That’s us.”
Coco closed her eyes, trying to catch the image of the speaker, but it remained just out of reach, a blur of color and laughter.
Then, as she touched the edge of the bag, she felt a shift in the air, as if someone were standing right behind her, speaking with a gruff, protective warmth.
“Don't you dare give up on yourself,” a voice grumbled, but underneath the rough exterior, there was a tremor of deep, abiding care. “You’re stronger than you think, kid. Even if you don't see it, we do.”
The voices didn't stay. They dissolved back into the silence of the room as quickly as they had arrived, leaving Coco trembling.
They were ghosts. Fragments of conversations from a life that had been meticulously erased.
She sat on the edge of the bed, the objects spread out before her like a collection of holy relics. She didn't know the names. She didn't know who Tetia was, or Richeh, or the gruff voice that belonged to a man called Olruggio, but she knew they had loved her.
Her mother knocked softly on the door before entering with a tray of tea, her expression carefully neutral.
She saw the objects on the bed, and she saw the look on Coco’s face, not the blank, confused expression of the past months, but a look of deep, searching intent.
“Sweetie, I heard a voice,” her mother said softly, setting the tray down. It wasn't an accusation. It was an observation. “Are you feeling... better?”
“I… I’m feeling like someone,” Coco replied, her voice trembling but certain. She looked up at her mother, her eyes wide and wet. “Mom, I don't know who they are, but they sound like they’re waiting for me. Somewhere, in the parts of my head I can't reach, they’re still there.”
“Then we will find them,” her mother said, her voice resolute despite not knowing what her daughter was talking about. She sat on the bed and took Coco’s hand, the wooden bird still tucked between their palms.
“If these things belong to your life, then your life belongs to you. We won't hide from it anymore.” her mother reassures, squeezing her hand to ground her daughter.
Coco nodded, a fragile, determined smile touching her lips. The “normal” life she had been living felt like a costume she had finally decided to take off.
She felt as if she wasn't just a seamstress in a village.
She felt as if she was a girl who had been part of something grand, something magical, and something deeply, profoundly loved.
And she was going to remember every last bit of it, even if it was painfully vague.
Once her mother left, the room returned to its quiet, expectant stillness.
Coco sat alone, the wooden bird still cool and solid in her hand. The echoes of those phantom voices, a girl’s gentle encouragement, another's earnest warmth, and a man’s gruff protection, had faded, leaving behind a silence that felt heavier than before.
She looked down at the letters again, but this time, her mind drifted toward the one person who wasn't a voice in her head, but a face etched into her soul: Agott.
A sudden, sharp wave of insecurity crashed over her, leaving her breathless. She pressed her palms into her eyes, trying to rub away the image of Agott’s guarded, icy expression when they had met in the hallway.
‘Why am I doing this?’ she asked herself, the internal monologue jagged and raw. ‘Why am I so desperate to chase a witch?’
She thought about the girl she had seen that afternoon. Agott hadn't looked at her with recognition. She had looked at her with caution, with distance, and with that brief, devastating flicker of pain, but that pain could have been anything.
It could have been pity. It could have been a memory of a disaster Coco didn't even know she had been a part of.
‘She probably doesn't even know me,’ Coco realized, the thought stinging like a physical wound. ‘To her, I’m just a girl in a village. I’m just a seamstress’ daughter. I’m nobody.’
And yet, the desperation remained, clawing at her throat. It wasn't just about memory at all. It was about a fundamental part of her being that felt missing. She felt like a tapestry that had been unraveled, and every time she thought of Agott, it felt like someone was trying to pull a loose thread.
She looked at the letters again. “I love you more than I love magic.”
The words were so bold, so absolute. She couldn't fathom how she had been that person, the girl who could say something so profound.
The Coco of today felt small, cautious, and defined by the safety of her mother’s home. The Coco of these letters was brave, reckless, and deeply, achingly in love.
‘I’m not just chasing her,’ Coco whispered to the empty room, a tear tracking through the dust on her cheek. ‘I’m chasing the girl who was capable of loving her. I’m chasing the version of me that was brave enough to stand by her side.’
She was desperate because she felt if she was without Agott, she was trapped in a beautiful, hollow shell. She felt like she was living in a painting of a life, but the colors were all wrong.
Agott held the key to the missing pages of her story, and even if Agott didn't know her, even if Agott looked at her with indifference, Coco knew that the feeling remained.
She stood up, walking to the mirror. She looked at her own reflection, the same face, the same eyes, same scar on her left cheek, but she looked for the shadow of the girl who had climbed a mountain in the dark to hold someone she loved.
‘I will make myself remember,’ she thought, the resolve hardening in her chest like stone. ‘Even if it breaks me.’
She didn't know if it was madness or destiny, but she knew she couldn't stop. The silence of the village was no longer enough. She had to find the truth, even if the truth was that she had been forgotten by the only person who had ever truly seen her.
The first month of their proximity was drawing to a close, a quiet, tension-filled affair defined by stolen glances across village stalls and the persistent, throbbing ache of Coco’s curiosity.
That night, Coco sat at her small desk, a single candle guttering in the breeze from the window. She had been tasked with a simple writing project for her mother, but her mind was entirely elsewhere. Her hand moved almost of its own accord, not toward the task at hand, but toward the corner of a scrap of parchment she had salvaged from the back of her sketchbook.
She wanted to write to her. She wanted to bridge the canyon that existed between them, the strange, invisible barrier that seemed to keep Agott wrapped in her cloak of silence.
“To the witch who visited,” she began, her ink dark and unsteady.
She paused, the quill hovering over the page. How could she address her? She didn't know if Agott would find this offensive. She didn't know if Agott even cared to be spoken to by a girl who didn't understand the world of magic, a girl who only knew the sharp, stinging memory of a dream she couldn't place.
“You look like you are carrying the weight of the entire sky,”
She wrote, then quickly crossed it out, the ink splattering the fibers of the paper.
“I don’t know who you are, but when you look at me, it feels like I’ve left something important in a room I can no longer find. Is it strange to feel like I’ve already met you? I feel like I owe you an apology, though I don’t know for what. Every time you leave, I feel colder.”
She stopped again, her breath hitching. The words were too raw, too vulnerable for a stranger. She looked down at the scrap of paper, her heart pounding in her chest. Who am I to say these things? she wondered, a wave of self-consciousness washing over her.
She wasn't the girl from the letters. She was just Coco, the girl who did embroidery and helped her mother.
She set the quill down, the ink still wet and shimmering in the candlelight. She couldn't finish it. It was too much, and it was too little all at once. It was the draft of a confession she didn't yet have the courage to deliver, a fragment of a soul trying to find its other half.
She folded the paper into a tight, jagged square and shoved it into the bottom of her drawer, beneath her sewing supplies.
It would stay there, a hidden testament to the first month of her new life, a life spent watching, waiting, and wondering why the sight of a dark-haired girl in a cloak made her feel like she was finally starting to wake up.
Agott,
I’m sorry I ran past you. I’m sorry I locked the door. It feels like the world is ending, and I don't know how to exist in a space where I’m going to be a stranger to the people who became my entire family.
I know you’re angry—or maybe just hurt. You always try to push people away before they can hurt you, but please, don't push me away now. I’m scared, Agott. I’ve never been this scared. But even in this panic, the only thing I can think about is making sure you’re okay. I’m so sorry I’m the reason for this grief.
Please forget about me Agott. I don't want you to be miserable because of me.
Draft 1
The second month arrived with the relentless pace of summer heat, and with it, the return of the two witches.
When the chime of the door signaled their arrival, Coco was deep in the throes of a complex pattern, her mind a tangle of half-remembered dreams and the persistent, nagging shadow of the girl named Agott.
Qifrey’s presence in the shop was a sudden infusion of poise and measured calm. As her mother attended to the business side of their visit, Qifrey drifted toward the sunroom, his eyes landing on Coco with a familiar, lingering scrutiny.
“The cut of that tunic is quite sophisticated for a village shop,” Qifrey noted, his voice a smooth, low hum that seemed to vibrate in the quiet room.
Coco glanced up, momentarily flustered. “Oh!- It’s... it’s just a standard design,” she murmured, turning back to the table.
She picked up her shears. Her mind went blank, the distractions of the past weeks falling away as the tactile reality of the fabric took over.
She felt a sudden, sharp clarity, a focus that felt like a reflex. She didn't simply cut. Her hands moved with a grace that seemed to defy the simple task. The blades slid through the heavy linen like a hot knife through butter, a perfectly straight, clean line that left no room for error.
She worked with a rhythm that was almost hypnotic, her posture shifting into something effortless and sure.
Qifrey watched her, his expression softening into a look of profound, bittersweet nostalgia. The way she held the cloth, the way her eyes tracked the line with such instinctive precision, it was exactly as he remembered from that first, fateful day. Same place, different people.
“Incredible,” he whispered, stepping closer to inspect the edge. He looked up, catching her eye with a warm, knowing smile. “This… is real magic.”
Coco flushed, the heat rising rapidly to her cheeks. She stumbled back, waving her hands in a frantic, self-deprecating gesture. “Oh, no! Not at all! It’s just... it’s just fabric, really. I’m just an ordinary girl, I don't know anything about magic, truly! I just practice a lot, sometimes I feel like I'm doing it in my sleep- but please, you're giving me far too much credit-!”
She was rambling, her words tripping over themselves, her face a mask of mortified humility.
Qifrey let out a genuine, low laugh. A sound that was rich with the history of the girl he had taught and the girl he had been forced to let go. “Still the same,” he whispered to himself, his eyes crinkling. “Some things, it seems, are not meant to be forgotten.”
Coco tensed at the statement. Qifrey seemed to notice, and suddenly he was aware of what he had said. “I-”
“What is the same?” a voice cut in, sharp and precise.
Coco and Qifrey both froze. Agott had drifted into the doorway, her arms crossed, her eyes darting between the two of them with a keen, analytical intelligence.
She looked as severe as ever, but there was a distinct lack of the distance she had held previously.
“Just the nature of talent,” Qifrey said, smoothing his expression, though his eyes remained bright with pride as he watched Agott venture into the conversation. “It reveals itself, even when we try to hide it.”
Agott walked a few steps into the room, her gaze lingering on the cleanly cut fabric on the table. She looked at Coco, then back to her Master, her voice dropping into a quiet, almost hesitant register.
“It is precise,” she acknowledged, the words clipped but clearly offered as a concession of respect. “I suppose... it is the only way to ensure the structure holds.”
Both Qifrey and Coco stared at her, caught completely off guard by the unprompted commentary. The silence that followed was heavy, but for the first time, it didn't feel like a wall. It felt like a bridge.
Qifrey looked at Agott, his heart swelling with a quiet pride.
He saw the way she had actively chosen to engage, to acknowledge, to participate in the world around her instead of retreating into the armor of her own isolation.
He offered her a small, almost imperceptible nod, a silent acknowledgement of the progress she was making, one step at a time.
Coco feels like she's intruding something.
The air in the sunroom seemed to hum, charged by Agott's rare, unprompted remark. Coco felt her heart hammering against her ribs, not just from the embarrassment of Qifrey’s compliment, but from the sheer, staggering fact that Agott had spoken to her. Not at her, but to her.
Qifrey’s gaze flickered between them, his expression one of calm, satisfied warmth. He knew better than to push. He knew that with Agott, progress was often measured in inches rather than miles. He cleared his throat gently, bowing his head in a polite dismissal.
“Well,” Qifrey said, his voice light. “I believe that is all we require for today. Agott, shall we?”
Agott didn't move immediately. Her eyes remained locked on the fabric Coco had just cut, the perfection of the line clearly echoing in her own mind.
When she finally shifted her gaze to meet Coco’s, the intensity of it was like a physical weight. There was no warmth there, not yet, but the icy barrier had thinned, revealing a core of profound, focused curiosity.
“The tension,” Agott said, her voice barely a whisper, yet firm. “You didn't fray the edges.”
It wasn't a question, but Coco nodded anyway, feeling as if she were under a microscope. “I just... I feel where the fabric wants to be cut. It’s like it talks to me, I suppose.”
Agott stared at her for another heartbeat, a flicker of something. Recognition? doubt? Whatever it was, it was crossing her sharp features.
Then, as if realizing she had lingered too long, she blinked, her posture hardening back into its usual, rigid poise. “We are leaving,” she stated, more to herself than to the room.
She turned and followed Qifrey toward the door. Coco watched them go, her hands still resting on the linen. She felt a strange, tingling sensation in her fingertips, a phantom memory of holding a staff, of weaving light into form.
That evening, the village was bathed in the soft, bruised colors of twilight. Coco sat on her porch, the wooden bird from her bag resting on her lap. She felt a strange, fluttering hope in her chest.
‘She spoke to me,’ Coco thought, the words a silent prayer. ‘She actually looked at me.’
Her mother stepped out onto the porch, carrying two cups of tea. She sat down beside her daughter, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“They seem like interesting people,” she observed, her voice casual. “That girl... she has eyes that have seen too much, doesn't she?”
Coco looked at the wooden bird, its carved feathers smoothed by Tetia’s touch, though Coco didn't know that.
“I think she’s lonely, Mom,” Coco said quietly. “I think she’s been waiting for something for a long time.”
"And you?” her mother asked, her tone shifting to something more searching. “Are you waiting, too?”
Coco looked out toward the road that led to the outskirts to the forest, the road where they had disappeared.
She didn't have an answer, but for the first time, she didn't feel the crushing weight of the unknown. She felt the spark of a mystery that she was slowly, methodically, beginning to solve.
She stood up, her decision made. She went inside, retrieved the draft of her first letter, and smoothed it out on the table.
She wouldn't send it, not yet. She wasn't ready to bridge the gap that widely. But she took her quill, dipped it into the ink, and began to write a new one, not a confession, but a bridge.
“To the witch who visited,”
She began again, her handwriting steadier than it had been a month ago.
“You noticed the cut of the fabric today. I wanted to tell you... I think I’ve noticed the way you hold yourself, too. Like you’re afraid the everything might break if you let go. You don't have to be.”
It was a small start, but in the silence of the night, it felt like a beginning.
The following week, the air in the village was heavy with the humidity of a brewing storm. Coco was in the front room, sorting through a delivery of heavy silks, when the shop bell gave a sharp, frantic ring.
It wasn't the measured entrance of the previous week. It was hurried, bordering on desperate.
Agott stood in the doorway, her cloak drenched from the sudden downpour outside. She looked frazzled, a word that seemed entirely wrong when applied to her.
Her satchel was torn at the strap, and a handful of star-charts and ink-stained vellum scrolls were clutched tightly to her chest, shielded from the rain by nothing but her own body.
“Agott?” Coco gasped, dropping the silk she was holding.
“The strap,” Agott breathed, her voice tight with suppressed frustration. “It snapped in the wind. I-I was nearby, and I couldn't risk the parchment getting ruined by the moisture.”
She looked overwhelmed, the composure she usually wore like armor completely eroded by the simple, chaotic reality of the weather. Coco didn't hesitate. She ushered Agott toward the workbench, clearing a space with a quick sweep of her arm.
“Put them here,” Coco said gently. “I can fix the strap, but we need to dry these out first.”
For the next hour, the shop was a sanctuary of soft clatter and shared intent. They worked in a comfortable, focused silence.
Coco laid the scrolls out, carefully blotting the edges with absorbent cloth, while Agott stood over her, hovering with an anxious, bird-like intensity.
When Coco finally moved to repair the leather satchel, she had to thread a needle with a thick, waxed cord. She needed to hold the leather taut against the table.
“Here,” Coco murmured, gesturing for Agott to hold the heavy flap down. “If you press right here, I can get the needle through the old holes.”
Agott reached out, her fingers pale and steady, pressing down on the tough leather. Coco leaned in, her eyes focused on the stitch. The shop was quiet, the storm rattling the windowpane, isolating them in a small, warm bubble of golden light.
As Coco pushed the needle through, her hand slipped, her knuckles grazing the back of Agott’s fingers.
The contact was brief. A mere second of skin against skin, but it felt like an electric shock.
Agott flinched, her breath hitching, and her hand jerked back as if she’d been burned. But she didn't leave. She didn't retreat to the doorway. She simply froze, her eyes widening, staring at the spot where Coco’s hand had brushed hers.
Coco felt the heat rising in her own throat, her heart stuttering in a way that had nothing to do with embroidery. She looked up, catching Agott’s gaze. For the first time. There was only a raw, startled vulnerability.
“I-I'm sorry!” Coco immediately says, the apology feeling inadequate for the sudden, shifting landscape between them.
Agott didn't look away. She slowly lowered her hand, her fingers trembling just a fraction. “It’s- it’s… fine,” she said, her voice unusually soft, stripped of its sharp edges.
The silence that followed wasn't the heavy, awkward silence of their first meeting. It was a slow-burning, expectant thing.
Agott remained standing there, even after the satchel was mended, watching Coco with a look that felt like she was memorizing the shape of her hands.
It was the first thread. A single, tentative connection pulled taut between them, neither of them daring to pull it, neither of them wanting to let it go.
The storm outside intensified, turning the sky a bruised purple and rattling the shop’s shutters, but inside, the air had gone strangely still.
Agott remained by the table, her hands resting near the now-mended satchel. She was staring at Coco, not with the analytical detachment of a witch-in-training, but with a quiet, devastating confusion.
“You,” Agott started, then stopped, her jaw tightening. She looked down at her own hand, the one that had been brushed, and flexed her fingers as if trying to recapture the sensation of the contact. “You handle that needle as if you've done it a thousand times before.”
Coco wiped her own hands on her apron, her heart still racing. But a smile crept in her face. “I told you, it just… feels right. It’s like the thread knows where it needs to go.”
Agott looked up, her dark eyes searching Coco’s face, and tracing the line of her cheek, the hesitant curve of her mouth by simply using her gaze. “You speak of it as if it were… magic," she murmured, the words so low they were almost lost to the thunder. “But you don't even know what that is.”
“Maybe I don't,” Coco replied, emboldened by the way Agott wasn't pulling away. She took a half-step closer. “But I know what it feels like to be missing something. And when I work, or when you’re here… the feeling of being empty just gets a little quieter.”
Agott went rigid, a flicker of panic crossing her face, the fear of a truth being spoken aloud too soon. She grabbed her satchel, her movements sharp and clumsy in her haste. “I should not have come here. Qifrey said-” She cut herself off, her eyes darting to the door.
“Qifrey said what?” Coco asked, her voice soft but insistent.
Agott looked back, and for a fleeting, heartbeat-long moment, the mask broke completely. The ice thawed, leaving behind a raw, aching loneliness that mirrored Coco's own.
“Nothing,” Agott whispered, shaking her head. "Just- just forget I said it..."
Without another word, Agott turned and pushed through the door. The chime rang out, a sharp, dissonant sound against the roar of the rain.
Coco watched from the doorway as the cloaked figure vanished into the deluge, her heart heavy with the weight of the girl’s words.
She wasn't just a stranger to Agott. She was a threat to Agott’s own sanity, a walking, breathing echo of a past that the witch was desperately trying to outrun.
Coco looked down at her hands—the same hands that had brushed Agott’s, the same hands that were beginning to remember the language of stars and silver ink. She knew then that this wasn't just a slow burn; it was a collision. And neither of them was going to walk away from it unchanged.
Later that evening, Coco found herself back in her room, the leather bag pulled out from under the bed. She didn't look at the letters. She looked at the wooden bird, and then at her own hands.
‘She… She looks like she saw me as someone dangerous,’ she thought, a small, sad smile touching her lips.
‘From the looks of it, I don't think I'm dangerous, Agott. I don't know why, but I guess you'd rather die with whatever you want to keep from me.’
She sat at her desk, the candle casting long, trembling shadows. She pulled out a fresh sheet of paper.
She knew, with a certainty that settled deep in her bones, that this letter would also never be sent. It was merely a place to put the thoughts that threatened to consume her.
She wrote until the candle flickered and died, her words a testament to the girl who was beginning to realize that, in the world of witches and broken promises, the most dangerous thing she could do was to start remembering.
“You may have indirectly said I was dangerous through your actions, but it is you who carries the storm inside your cloak.
Every time you look at me, I feel like the ground beneath my feet isn't quite solid. You are so afraid of what I represent, of the memory of who I was, or perhaps, the memory of what we were to each other.
Do you think I don't feel it?
I am not just a mirror, Agott. I am a person. I am a girl who is tired of living in a house of secrets, tired of feeling the phantom weight of a heart I don’t own.
When I touched you, I don't just feel skin. I feel… a history between us. I feel a promise, broken or kept, that belongs to both of us.
I think I’m beginning to understand why you kept your distance. It’s easier to be cold than to face the fire. But I am no longer afraid of the heat. Are you?
I will keep waiting. Not for you to change, but for you to finally see that I am standing right in front of you, and I am not going anywhere."
She folded the paper, the crease sharp under her thumb. She slid it into the leather bag alongside the first letter, resting it atop the wooden bird.
The leaves on the trees were starting to turn, and with each passing day, the distance between the girl she was and the witch she used to be was closing, one letter, one glance, and one heartbeat at a time.
Agott,
I saw you pacing the hallway again today. I know you were waiting outside my door, and I heard you talking to Master Olruggio. I wanted to open it, I wanted to come out and tell you everything will be fine, but I couldn't bear to lie to you. How can I promise it will be fine when I’m about to vanish from your memory?
I’m a coward today. I’m sitting here, watching the shadows stretch across the floor, and I’m trying to remember the way you look when you’re teaching me a new spell—the way you get so focused that you don't even notice the rest of the world. That’s a memory I’m terrified of losing. Please don't hate me for how quiet I am, and don't hate me for staying in here. My heart is just... it’s so heavy right now. It feels like it’s made of lead. I just need you to know that your presence, even just hearing your footsteps outside is the only thing keeping me restrained to this room.
You look at me with such exhaustion, Agott. It’s as if you’ve already mourned me, and now you’re just waiting for the rest of me to catch up to the grief you’ve been carrying. It isn't fair. It isn't fair that you have all the pieces and I am left here, trying to build a puzzle with missing edges.
I won't remember your touch. I won't remember the sound of your voice whispering my name. But when I am near you, I hope my skin remembers. My pulse remembers. The air between us is so thick with things I’ve forgotten that I can barely breathe.
I hope you stop looking at me like I’m a ghost. I’m still standing here, I’m warm, and I am trying so hard to find my way back to you. If I am a threat to your memory, then I am sorry, but I think I would rather be a threat than a memory you’ve locked away in a box.
You think you’re protecting yourself by being cold. You’re only ensuring that the next time you see me, you'll be even more desperate to hold me closer.
Draft 2
The moon hung high and uncaring over the village, casting a silver, sickly light across Coco’s desk. The shop was deathly quiet, but inside Coco’s mind, the silence was shattered by the screech of realization.
She sat hunched over her papers, her quill hovering like a trembling needle.
‘What am I doing?’ The thought hit her with the force of a physical blow, leaving her chest tight and aching. ‘She’s a witch. She has a life, a Master, a path that doesn't involve a village girl who can’t even remember her own past. And here I am, practically forcing myself into her orbit.’
Her hand shook so violently she had to set the quill down before she ruined another sheet of parchment.
‘I’m distracting her,’ she thought, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. ‘Every time she looks at me, she’s not looking at her studies, or her magic, or the future she’s building. She’s looking at… whatever it is I am. A relic. A mess. A mistake.’
The guilt was a cold, iron weight in her stomach. She pictured Agott in the borrowed tunic, the soft, vulnerable look she’d worn by the fire, and then the stiff, guarded way she had walked out into the night.
‘She was doing fine before I started pushing,’ Coco told herself, her eyes stinging with hot, frustrated tears. ‘She was composed. She was strong. I’m the one who broke her rhythm. I’m the one making her question things she had already buried.’
She slumped over, burying her face in the pile of letters, the drafts she hadn't sent, the words she hadn't spoken.
‘Or maybe… maybe it’s worse,’ her mind whispered, a frantic, paranoid thought spiraling out. ‘Maybe she’s just pitying me. Maybe I’m just a charity case because I don't know who I am, and she’s just… enduring me until she finds a reason to never come back.’
She felt her composure fraying at the edges, the mental breakdown bubbling up as a sob she caught in her throat. She gripped her hair, her knuckles white. ‘I am a complication. I am a crack in her perfect, rigid world.’
She stared at the blank page, waiting for the ink to explain it all, to give her the perfect words to fix the gap between them. But there were no words. There was only the hollow, aching feeling of being fundamentally, hopelessly lost.
She looked at the clock. It was nearly dawn. She was exhausted, her body felt like lead, and her mind felt like it had been shredded and stitched back together a hundred times over.
‘I can’t do this,’ she thought, the sudden, sharp clarity of defeat washing over her. ‘I can’t figure out a puzzle when the pieces are shifting every time I look at them.’
With a shaky, trembling hand, she pushed the stack of papers to the side. She didn't tuck them into the bag. She didn't smooth the edges. She just left them there, a tangled, messy heap of her own heart.
She stood up, her limbs feeling heavy and uncoordinated, and stumbled toward her bed. As her head hit the pillow, she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the image of Agott’s dark, searching eyes.
‘I give up,’ she whispered into the darkness, her voice breaking. ‘I’ll stop. Tomorrow, I’ll be different. I’ll be just a shop girl again. No more chasing. No more questions.’
But even as she drifted into a fitful, dreamless sleep, the last thing she felt was the phantom, lingering warmth of a hand brushing against hers in the rain, and she knew, in her heart, that tomorrow was a lie.
The following morning, the sunlight felt too bright, too clinical.
Coco moved through the shop with a mechanical, stiff-backed focus, determined to prove to herself that she could simply exist without the magnetic pull of the witch who had haunted her dreams for months.
She was measuring fabric when the bell chimed. It wasn't the frantic ring of the previous week, nor the composed rhythm of Qifrey’s visits. It was hesitant.
Agott stood in the doorway. She was back in her formal attire, every button fastened, every fold of her cloak perfectly aligned. She looked like a fortress.
Coco’s heart gave a traitorous, traitorous leap, but she remembered her vow from the night before.
She didn't drop her shears.
She didn't stop to look up with wide-eyed adoration.
She kept her gaze fixed on the pattern she was tracing. “The orders aren't ready, Agott,” she said, her voice sounding thinner than she intended. “I’m behind schedule.”
“I am not here for an order,” Agott replied. Her voice was clipped, the vowels rounded and distant. She stepped into the shop, but she didn't approach the workbench. She stayed near the door, her hands clasped tightly behind her back.
Coco finally looked up. The sight of her, so rigid, so consciously armored, sent a pang of grief through her chest. Agott’s eyes were shadowed, her expression locked in a neutral, professional mask that Coco recognized now as a barricade.
‘She’s running,’ Coco realized.
“I see,” Coco said, carefully setting the measuring tape aside. “Then... why are you here?”
Agott looked around the room, her gaze skittering over the walls, the shelves, the stacks of fabric, pointedly avoiding Coco’s eyes. “I find that I have a surplus of… research notes,” she said, her tone stiffly matter-of-fact. “And I thought I might return them to you. In case they were of any use for your… craftsmanship.”
It was a lie, and they both knew it. There was no practical reason for a witch to offer research notes to a village tailor.
“You don't have to do that,” Coco said, stepping away from the table. “You don't owe me anything, Agott. Not after yesterday.”
Agott flinched, the slight twitch of her jaw the only crack in her composure. She stepped further into the room, her movements stiff. “I am simply being… thorough. There is no need to make this into something else.”
‘She’s trying so hard to keep the wall up,’ Coco thought, a wave of empathy washing away her own hurt. ‘She’s trying to keep me at a distance because she thinks it’s the only way she can survive.’
“You're right,” Coco murmured, walking toward her. She stopped a careful, respectful distance away. “It doesn't have to be anything. We can just be… people who happen to live in the same world.”
"Yes," Agott said, her voice dropping to a near-whisper. "Exactly. That is the only logical path."
But she didn't leave. She stood there, anchored in the center of the shop, her hands trembling almost imperceptibly behind her back. She was trying to start a new page, to file the 'old' Coco away into a drawer she would never open again, but the empty hole in her heart, the one shaped exactly like the girl who wasn't there, was screaming.
"The rain has stopped," Coco said, soft and gentle, offering an olive branch. "Would you like a cup of tea? Just for the road."
Agott hesitated, the war between her coping mechanism and her heart playing out in the tension of her shoulders. Finally, she let out a sharp, ragged breath and nodded. "Just... for the road.”
The tea was brewed in silence, a mixture of steam and ceramic that filled the space between them.
Agott watched the liquid swirl in her cup, her movements precise and contained. Every gesture she made was a barricade, a practiced attempt to keep the 'new' Coco separate from the 'old' one she couldn't stop silently mourning.
“You're very quiet today,” Coco observed, keeping her voice light. She was fighting the urge to reach out, to pull the mask off Agott's face, but she forced herself to respect the distance Agott was frantically trying to maintain.
Agott took a slow sip, her eyes fixed on the shop floor. “There is much to consider,” she stated, her voice formal. “Witchcraft is a matter of discipline. Deviation from one's focus leads to… inefficiency.”
“Is that what I am?” Coco asked, the question slipping out before she could check it. “An inefficiency?”
Agott looked up, startled. For a flicker of a second, the mask slipped. The raw, aching hole in her heart was visible in the way her gaze darted across Coco’s face, tracing features that were identical to the girl she had lost, yet entirely new.
She saw the girl she had spent four years with, the one who had shared meals, studies, and late-night worries, and she felt the crushing weight of the gap between them.
“You are… an anomaly”" Agott corrected herself, her voice trembling slightly. She stood up abruptly, the stool scraping sharply against the wooden floor. “And anomalies are dangerous to the structure of things. I am trying to… adapt. To the current situation.”
Coco stood up as well, sensing the fragile, panicked energy radiating from the witch. “Agott, you don't have to adapt to me. You don't have to do anything except be here.”
Agott turned toward the door, her hand gripping the edge of her cloak so tightly her knuckles were white. “That is the problem, isn't it?” she breathed, more to herself than to the room. “The temptation to simply… be here.”
She walked to the door, the bell chiming a sharp, dissonant note as she pulled it open. She didn't look back, but she paused on the threshold, the cool air from outside washing into the room.
“Do not mistake my presence for acceptance, Coco,” she said, her voice strained, caught between a desire to run and a desperate need to stay. “I am trying to find a way to exist in a world where… where things are not as I remember them. That is all.”
She stepped out, leaving the shop quiet once more. Coco stood by the counter, the half-finished tea still steaming on the table. She could feel the lingering tension in the air, a sense of unresolved, agonizing friction.
Agott was trying to start a new page, but the ink from the old one was still bleeding through, staining everything they tried to write.
Coco looked at the space where Agott had been standing, the silence feeling heavier than before.
She knew the distance Agott was creating was a shield against the pain of remembering, but looking at the shop, she felt a quiet, persistent spark of resolve.
‘Fine,’ she thought, the ache in her chest turning into a determined, bittersweet rhythm. ‘If you need to build a new page, I will help you write it. But I am not going to let you stay empty.’
The moon had long since reached its peak when Coco finally sat down, the shop around her submerged in the cool, blue shadows of deep night.
Her hands were tired, her eyes aching from the strain of the day, yet the words wouldn't stop humming behind her eyelids.
She didn't pick up the quill immediately. Instead, she sat with her hands clasped on the scarred wood of the workbench, thinking of the way Agott had looked standing in the doorway, so perfectly composed, yet so visibly brittle.
She pulled a fresh, crisp sheet of paper toward her. She knew this wouldn't be a letter for a reader; it was a letter for the void, a place to hold the pieces she couldn't show the girl who was so terrified of them.
"You walked out of the shop today trying to convince yourself that we are just strangers, but I saw how your hand shook when you reached for the door. You are trying to build a new page, Agott, but you are writing it with ink that belongs to a different story.
I don't know what you see when you look at me. I don't know if you see a person, or a hollow shape, or a ghost that refuses to leave you in peace. But I am not a threat to the memory of who I was. I am the only one who knows what it feels like to be you.
The loneliness, the fear of the void, the way you try to measure the world in rules and discipline just to keep from falling apart.
You think you are keeping me at a distance to protect yourself. But all you are doing is leaving us both in the cold.
I will not force you to remember. I will not force you to love this version of me. But I am not going to stop being here. I am not going to stop being the one person who looks at you and sees the person underneath the cloak, not just the witch.
If you need to build a new page, then let us write it together. Even if the ink is messy.
Even if the words don't make sense yet. Just… stop pretending I’m not standing right here."
Coco set the quill down, the ink dark and wet against the page. Her heart felt quieter, the frantic, panicked buzzing of the day finally settling into a steady, rhythmic ache.
She didn't fold this one. She left it open on the desk, a silent, fragile confession left for the morning light to find.
She turned to her bed, the silence of the shop feeling less like a burden and more like a space she had finally claimed.
Tomorrow, she would see Agott again. And for the first time, she felt like she might have the courage to just be herself, without the performance, and without the fear.
Agott,
I’m sorry for what I said through the door. I was so wrong. I was trying to protect you from the pain of losing me, but I didn't realize that by shutting you out, I was just making the loss happen sooner. When I finally opened the door and saw you... it felt like the first time I’d been able to breathe in days. Seeing your face made the terror feel a little smaller, even if only for a second.
Thank you for being stubborn. Thank you for not letting me stay in the dark. I love the way the light catches your hair when we’re working in the workshop, and I love the way you’re so incredibly brilliant, and how you try so hard to hide how much you actually care behind that stern expression. I feel so safe when I’m near you.
Please, let’s spend tomorrow together. Just us. I want to memorize the sound of your voice before I lose the ability to know why it’s so special to me.
Even if I am leaving soon, Agott. I have realized that as long as I am here, as long as I am standing in front of you, a mirror that only shows you what you’ve lost, neither of us can move forward.
I am tired of waiting for you to see that the person you are mourning is not gone, she has just changed, just as you have.
Do not look for me. I am not disappearing.
I will love you, in whatever life this was. I think I always will.
Draft 3
The forest was a cathedral of filtered light and moss-covered stones, a place Coco knew better than her own home. She had been coming to this specific part of the woods since she was small, back when the world was wide and full of wonder. She moved with practiced ease toward the lake, a hidden, crystalline pool that possessed a strange, ancient property: it could draw the grime from anything, returning it to its original, pristine state as if the dirt had never touched it.
She knelt at the water's edge, humming a soft, wordless tune, and began to wash the heavy fabrics. The water swirled, taking the muddiness of the village roads and vanishing it into pure clarity. She was so absorbed in the rhythmic, hypnotic task that she didn't hear the approach until a soft, dry twig snapped under a boot just a few feet away.
Coco spun around, her heart jumping into her throat.
Agott stood at the edge of the clearing, her dark hair catching the dappled sunlight. She looked startled, her hand hovering instinctively near the pouch at her waist, clearly not expecting to find the village girl deep in the woods.
For the past few days, Agott's visits were becoming frequent. She'd come over by the weekdays for "research", "observations", or "important errands", which dissolved into small conversations and short walks around the village. Even her mother started to accept the witch, often talking to her with the same warmth she always had towards Coco, and Coco would notice the way Agott tensed but sounded eerily calmer. Coco has no idea why Agott suddenly wanted to view her as an acquaintance, but she wouldn't have it any other way.
“I-I apologize,” Agott said, her voice unusually stiff, though her eyes softened when they landed on the shimmering, pure water of the pool. “I didn't think anyone came this far out.”
“It’s alright,” Coco exhaled, snapping out of her thoughts as her pulse slowly returned to normal. She gestured to the lake. “I’ve been coming here since I was little. It... helps with the laundry.”
Agott stepped forward, her gaze fixed on the water as the suds from the clothes dissolved into nothingness. She looked at it with a mixture of professional interest and personal longing. She sat down on a mossy rock a short distance away, maintaining a careful, respectful space.
“It’s a natural filtration,” Agott murmured, her sharp tone replaced by something more observant. “Witches have spent decades trying to replicate the enchantment of this water, but they always fail to account for the mineral memory of the stones beneath.”
Coco looked at her, surprised. “You sound like you've studied it.”
“I have,” Agott admitted, her gaze drifting toward the horizon. “Master Qifrey and I... we come to these woods sometimes to collect samples. I didn't know this lake was here.”
For a long while, there was only the sound of the wind in the trees and the gentle splash of the water. It was the most relaxed Coco had ever seen her. There was no Qifrey to appease, no shop to buy things from, just two girls in the quiet heart of the forest.
“Do you ever come out to sit?” Coco asked, rinsing a shirt and wringing it out.
Agott hesitated, then slowly leaned back against a tree trunk, her eyes closing for a moment as she breathed in the damp, pine-scented air.
“Rarely. There is usually so much to do. So much to memorize. So much to forget.”
Coco nods in understanding.
“Sometimes,” Coco said, her voice dropping to a gentle, conversational tone, “you have to let the water wash the rest of it away, too. Not just the dirt.”
Agott opened her eyes, turning to look at Coco. The intensity of the gaze was there, but it wasn't harsh. It was searching, deep and quiet, as if she were trying to see the girl who had once been her companion through the hazy lens of the present.
They stayed by the lake until the shadows grew long, a tentative peace settling between them like a fallen leaf on the water's surface. It was a small, secret moment, a bridge built of moss and sunlight, and for the first time, Coco didn't feel like a threat to Agott, she felt like a memory being rediscovered. The silence at the lake had been companionable, a stark contrast to the frantic energy that usually defined their encounters.
Coco was busy wringing out a linen shirt, her voice light as she reminisced about the forest paths she had wandered as a child, explaining how the moss grew thicker near the north side of the pond.
“It’s funny,” Coco said, looking over at Agott with a small, genuine smile. “I used to think this place was magic, back when I didn't know what magic really was. I suppose, in a way, I wasn't wrong.”
Agott was sitting on the rock, her gaze fixed on the ripples Coco was creating. For a brief second, the tension that usually tightened the corners of her mouth flickered away. Without a word or any warning, she suddenly flicked her hand toward the pool, sending a spray of cold, clear water directly onto Coco’s face. Coco gasped, wiping the droplets from her eyes, completely stunned. She looked at Agott, who had a faint, almost mischievous glint in her eyes, a look that felt like a glimpse into a version of Agott that had been buried under years of study and duty.
“Oh, you think that's funny?” Coco laughed, the sound bubbling up before she could stop it.
She didn't hesitate. She cupped her hands and threw a generous wave of water back at the witch.
Agott let out a sharp, surprised sound, scrambling to shield herself, but she was already laughing, a genuine, breathless sound that made her look years younger.
“Oh, so you want a duel?” She asks, with an uncharacteristic but perfect smile etched on her face.
Coco giggled, responding by throwing another wave of water.
What followed was a sudden, chaotic release of all the months of repressed longing and stifled questions. It wasn't a conversation anymore, it was play.
They splashed and ducked behind the roots of the trees, the water in the lake turning from a quiet mirror into a frantic, shimmering blur.
Every time Coco managed to soak the hem of Agott’s cloak, the witch would retaliate with a well-placed splash that left Coco dripping.
For those few moments, the world outside the forest, the atelier, the letters, the pain of forgetting, ceased to exist. There were no secrets to guard, only the cold shock of the water and the sound of each other’s laughter echoing against the trees.
Eventually, they both slowed, coming to a breathless halt by the shore. They were both soaked, hair plastered to their foreheads, and chests heaving from the exertion.
Agott stood there, her hands resting on her knees, her face flushed with color. She looked at Coco, not with the analytical eyes of a witch, but with a look of pure, unadulterated astonishment, as if she were surprised to find that she could still lose herself in something so simple.
“You,” Agott panted, a playful edge to her tone that Coco had never heard before, “are remarkably difficult to get the better of.”
Coco grinned, wiping water from her chin, her heart feeling fuller and lighter than it had in months. “I told you, Agott. I know these woods better than anyone.”
The cooling air of the late afternoon began to wrap around them, turning their drenched clothes into a heavy, clinging weight.
The manic energy of the splash fight had faded, leaving behind an intimacy that felt almost dangerous in its intensity.
Agott stepped closer to the edge, the water dripping from the tips of her dark hair. Her usual rigid posture was gone, replaced by a tentative, open stance.
She reached out, her fingers hovering near Coco’s cheek as if to brush away a stray, wet lock of hair, but she hesitated, her hand trembling slightly in the air before she pulled it back, tucking it into her sleeve.
“I haven't…” Agott started, her voice sounding raspy, stripped of its usual defensive sharpness. “I haven't breathed like this in years. It feels like... like my lungs are finally expanding.”
Coco leaned in, drawn by the sudden gravity between them. She reached out, her own hand finding the fabric of Agott’s cloak, gripping it lightly. “It’s not just the air, Agott,” she whispered, her eyes searching the witch’s face for any sign of retreat. “It’s being here. With you. It feels like the static in my head is finally quiet.”
Agott stared at her, her expression caught between confusion and a profound, aching yearning. She didn't pull away. Instead, she leaned into the space between them, closing the distance until their foreheads were almost touching.
“Everything… it tells me to stop,” Agott breathed, her gaze fluttering down to Coco’s lips before darting back up to her eyes. “But… thank you for stopping everything to be with me, Coco.”
Coco simply smiles. “Youre welcome, Agott.” Her voice was barely audible, but Agott could hear her clear as the stars in the sky.
“You're… different, for an unknowing” Agott mutters, the confession slipping out like a secret she could no longer keep.
The weight of her words hung in the damp air. They stood there, oblivious to the dampness of their clothes or the gathering darkness of the forest, trapped in a bubble of their own making.
It was a silent, devoted closeness—a soft, lingering touch, the way Agott’s hand finally settled on Coco’s shoulder, the way Coco leaned into her—yet neither of them possessed the language to name it.
The veil of memory that separated the girl who was and the witch who remained, kept them in a state of suspended animation.
They were dancing around the edges of a truth they were both terrified to touch, fearing that if they admitted they were falling, the delicate reality they had built would shatter.
Agott’s thumb grazed the line of Coco’s collarbone, a slow, unconscious gesture that made Coco’s breath hitch.
“I don't know who you are in this... Place, Coco,” Agott murmured, her voice filled with a desperate, tender confusion. “But I think... I think I’m beginning to care for you,”
Coco smiled, a small, sad, and hopeful thing. She reached up, placing her hand over Agott’s, holding her steady. “Maybe that’s enough," she whispered. "For now.”
A moment of silence.
“Wait…” Coco's eyes lit up almost immediately. “You're softening up!”
Agott's smile fell, and a loud groan escaped her. But she didn't stop the fact that her cheeks were reddened, which made Coco's heart flutter a little.
They stood there for a long time, held together by the gravity of a past they couldn't see and a future they were too afraid to name, simply existing in the quiet, damp silence of the forest, tethered by the brush of their hands and the rhythm of their shared breathing.
The transition from the wild, liberating atmosphere of the lake back to the practical reality of the village felt jarring. As the sun began to dip behind the treeline, casting long, golden fingers through the canopy, the temperature dropped, and the chill of their drenched clothes finally took hold.
“You’ll catch your death of cold before you even reach the atelier,” Coco said, wringing out the hem of her skirt.
She looked at Agott, whose dark hair was plastered to her face, her cloak heavy and sodden. “Come to my place. I have a hearth, and I keep spare clothes for visitors. It isn't far.”
Agott hesitated, the familiar wariness flickering in her eyes, but a shiver racked her frame, and she conceded with a small, stiff nod.
The walk back to the village was quiet, the forest seeming to hold its breath around them.
Once inside the small, warm shop, Coco hurried to the back room, pulling a bundle of soft, simple linens from the cedar chest she kept for guests. She ushered Agott toward the small changing alcove.
“Take your time,” Coco said, her voice warm. “I’ll get the tea started.”
When Agott emerged a few minutes later, Coco was standing by the hearth, stoking the fire. She turned, expecting the severe, buttoned-up silhouette of the witch she had known for months. Instead, she found herself completely breathless.
Without the rigid, protective layers of her heavy cloak and the somber, restrictive colors of her witch's uniform, Agott looked younger, almost ethereal.
The simple, soft-colored guest tunic hung loosely on her frame, and with her hair pulled back loosely as it dried, the stark, sharp lines of her face were softened by the firelight.
The contrast was startling. She didn't look like a distant, intimidating scholar of magic, but like a girl standing in the glow of a home fire.
Coco felt her heart skip a frantic beat, a flush creeping up her neck. She quickly shook her head, forcing her focus back to the kettle.
‘No Coco, you're not going to run away with this mysterious witch you've been eyeing for months now,’ she commanded herself, though the image of Agott in the soft light remained burned into her mind’s eye.
“The tea will be ready in a moment,” Coco managed to say, her voice only slightly unsteady.
Agott walked over, sitting on a low stool by the fire. She seemed equally unsettled by the change in her own appearance, her fingers nervously twisting the fabric of the tunic.
“This is... very kind of you,” she murmured, her voice stripped of its usual defensive armor.
They spent the next hour in a state of quiet, fragile ease.
The conversation didn't return to the heavy topics of memory or the past. Instead, they spoke of small things, the way the forest changed with the seasons, the odd habits of the village kids, and the simple, grounding pleasure of a warm fire after a storm.
For once, Agott didn't look at Coco with suspicion. She listened, her head tilted, a faint, genuine smile touching her lips when Coco told a story about a baking mishap.
It was a slow conversation, one where every word felt like it was etching a new, deeper path between them.
Eventually, the warmth of the hearth dried Agott’s hair and clothes completely. The moment of departure loomed, heavy and unwelcome. Agott stood, smoothing down the borrowed tunic, her expression shifting back toward that familiar, guarded poise—though the softness in her eyes remained.
“I should go,” Agott said, her voice hovering in the space between them. “Qifrey will be wondering.”
“I know,” Coco replied, walking her to the door.
As Agott stepped out into the cool evening air, she turned back, looking at Coco with an intensity that held the weight of everything they hadn't said.
“Thank you, Coco,” she said, her voice so soft it was almost a whisper. “For today. For... everything.”
Coco watched as she turned and disappeared into the shadows of the road, the chime of the shop bell still vibrating in the quiet room.
She stood there for a long time, the warmth of the fire still lingering on her skin, and for the first time in months, the future didn't feel like a void. It felt like a path she was finally, tentatively, beginning to walk, with the glow of each step guiding her.
The shop was silent again, save for the rhythmic noises of the cooling hearth.
Coco had retreated to the workbench, her legs dangling off the side as she slumped forward, pressing her palms hard against her face.
She felt like she was buzzing, a residual charge of electricity from the forest, from the water, and from the sight of Agott in that borrowed tunic.
The shop door creaked, and her mother stepped inside, shaking her umbrella. She stopped dead when she saw Coco, her brow furrowing with sudden, sharp concern.
“Coco, dear? Are you hurt?” Her mother crossed the floor in three swift strides, her hand coming to rest on her daughter's back. “What happened? You’re soaking wet, and you look like you’ve seen a dragon.”
Coco didn't look up. She just let out a long, shuddering breath, her voice muffled by her hands.
“I haven't seen a dragon, Mom.”
Silence.
Her mother was about to say something, until-
“I’ve seen… I’ve seen everything!” She bursts, her hands slamming on the desk in front of her which made her mother jolt a little at the sudden sound.
“I-I-It was Agott- She was at the lake, and we were talking, and then we were laughing! I-I don’t even know how it happene- and then she was here, and she looked so different without the cloak, and I think I might be losing my mind because the way she looks at me makes me feel like I’m supposed to know her, but I don't, and I’m terrified that if I stop chasing this, I’ll never be whole again!”
The words spilled out in a frantic, incoherent rush, a dam finally breaking. Coco finally pulled her hands away, her eyes wide, glassy, and searching, her cheeks flushed a deep, frantic pink.
Her mother stood still, her hand frozen on Coco’s shoulder. She opened her mouth to offer some practical, motherly wisdom, but the words faltered. Her eyes widened, a flicker of dawning realization crossing her face.
“Oh… okay,” her mother started, her tone shifting from concern to a strange, measured stillness.
‘It’s just my daughter, and the witch…’ She thought. Then she paused.
’Wait a minute.’
She pulled back slightly, her gaze softening as she scrutinized Coco’s disheveled hair, the flushed skin, and the way her daughter was literally vibrating with nervous, yearning energy.
Her mother didn't say the words, she didn't label the frantic, lovesick mess in front of her, but the pieces clicked into place with a quiet, undeniable clarity.
“Coco,” her mother said softly, pulling her into a firm, grounding embrace.
Coco leaned into her, the tension in her shoulders finally beginning to ebb.
She expected a lecture, or at least a confused question about why she was so fixated on a traveler who was technically a “stranger.” Instead, she felt her mother’s hand rhythmically stroking her hair.
“You’ve been carrying so much, haven't you?” her mother murmured, resting her chin on top of Coco's head. “It isn't easy, trying to find your own heart when you don't even know where you left it.”
“I don't think I can just stop,” Coco whispered into her mother’s apron.
“I know,” her mother replied, her voice steady and warm. “And I’m not asking you to. But you’re shivering, little bird.”
She pulled away, cupping Coco’s face with both hands, her thumbs brushing away a stray tear. Her expression was thoughtful, a touch amused, and deeply protective.
“Go change into something dry,” she commanded gently. “I’ll make more tea. And then… maybe you can tell me more about this witch of yours.”
Coco looked at her, surprised by the lack of judgment, and felt a wave of relief so intense it nearly brought her to her knees.
Her mother turned toward the kitchen, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips, one that suggested she knew exactly what kind of fire her daughter was playing with, and that she intended to be there to help her handle the heat.
In the kitchen, her mother sighed, shaking her head with a soft and tired smile and let out a whisper.
“Kids today and their love stories…”
The frost had arrived, etching intricate, crystalline maps onto the windowpanes of the shop. Inside, the hearth was the only thing that kept the creeping chill at bay.
Coco was hunched over a particularly stubborn piece of embroidery, a pattern of swirling leaves that required a steady hand. She didn't look up when the shop bell chimed—she didn't have to. She knew the measured, deliberate footfalls.
"You've reversed the stitch on the third leaf," a voice said, low and steady.
Coco looked up, grinning as she saw Agott shedding her heavy winter cloak. There was no hesitation now; Agott didn't linger in the doorway, and she didn't armor herself in silence. She simply walked to the workbench, her movements fluid and unburdened.
"I think it gives it character," Coco teased, sliding the hoop across the table.
Agott picked it up, her fingers grazing Coco's, but the electric shock that used to make them both flinch was gone, replaced by a warm, grounding familiarity. Agott sat on the stool beside her, the stiff, protective posturing of the previous months melted away into a quiet, companionable ease. She picked up a needle, her movements practiced and graceful.
"It lacks structural integrity," Agott murmured, though the corner of her mouth quirked upward in a genuine, playful smile. She began to undo the knot with surgical precision. "If you’re going to mimic the movement of the wind, the thread needs to follow the tension of the fabric, not fight it."
They worked in the kind of silence that only friends share—the quiet comfort of two people who no longer felt the need to fill the air with forced conversation. The shop was filled with the soft snip of scissors and the scratch of needles.
"I found these," Agott said after a while, reaching into her satchel to pull out a handful of pressed wildflowers, their colors muted by the autumn. "They were near the lake. The ones with the blue centers. They reminded me of the fabric you were working on last week."
Coco took them, her heart swelling with a simple, uncomplicated joy. "They’re beautiful. Thank you."
They spent the afternoon drifting between lighthearted debate over embroidery techniques and stories that had nothing to do with magic, memory, or the past. When they finally broke for tea, they didn't sit across from each other with a guarded barrier of ceramic. They sat side-by-side, leaning into the warmth of the hearth.
"You know," Agott said, her voice dropping to a contemplative murmur, "I used to think that peace was something you had to earn through mastery. I spent so much time studying how to keep the world in order that I forgot how to simply be in it."
Coco leaned her head against Agott's shoulder, a spontaneous gesture that she would have been terrified to attempt a month ago. She felt Agott stiffen for a fraction of a second, then relax, the witch’s shoulder softening beneath her touch.
"Maybe you just needed to stop looking for it in books," Coco whispered.
Agott let out a short, soft laugh, a sound that was becoming more frequent, less guarded, and infinitely more precious. She didn't pull away. Instead, she rested her head against Coco’s, their shoulders pressed firmly together.
For the first time in their long, tangled history, they weren't ghosts of a forgotten past or threats to a structured future. They were just two girls, warmed by the same fire, content to let the world outside continue to freeze while they built a small, quiet, and profoundly steady home in the middle of it.
The transition into winter brought with it a grueling, daily ritual of intimacy. They had become inseparable in the quietest, most mundane ways: Agott arrived at the shop every afternoon, and they spent hours in a rhythm so perfectly synced it felt like a heartbeat. But for Agott, it was a fortress built of "friends", a sturdy, impenetrable label she used to keep the terrifying depth of her own feelings at bay.
One evening, as the fire crackled, casting dancing gold light across the workbench, they were sorting through spools of silk. Coco reached for a spool of deep indigo, her fingers brushing against Agott’s palm.
Agott didn't pull away, but her hand went perfectly still, her thumb tracing the line of Coco’s wrist in a gesture that felt entirely too tender for "friends." Coco felt a jolt of heat climb up her neck, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She looked up, desperate to see a flicker of recognition, a sign that Agott felt the same ache.
But Agott’s expression remained carefully, deliberately neutral. "This shade will hold the tension better for the hem," she said, her voice steady and professional, though her eyes remained fixed on the silk.
Coco retreated, her hand falling back to the table, her stomach twisting with a familiar, hollow yearning. She watched Agott. From the curve of her eyelashes, the way she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and felt the silence grow heavy.
‘She’s so close,’ Coco thought, the yearning feeling like a physical weight in her throat. ‘She’s sitting right here, she’s touching me, she’s laughing at my jokes, but she’s also miles away behind that glass wall she’s built.’
"You're very focused tonight," Coco remarked, trying to keep her voice light, though it wavered.
Agott glanced up, a small, polite smile gracing her lips. "I find that when things are… stable, it is easier to work. I appreciate this, Coco. Your friendship. It is the only thing that has made these last few months bearable."
The word friendship felt like a cold stone dropped into the well of Coco’s heart. It was a compliment, she knew, and a testament to how far they had come, but it was also a boundary. A polite, gentle shove that kept Coco firmly on the side of the line where she couldn't reach Agott’s soul.
"I’m glad," Coco replied, forcing a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. She reached out and gathered the silk, making sure not to let her fingers linger. "Me too."
She spent the rest of the night watching Agott work, yearning for the courage to shatter the glass wall. She wanted to grab Agott’s hand, to hold her face, to tell her that she was tired of being a sister-in-arms when she wanted to be the one Agott turned to for everything. But she stayed silent, tucking her hands into her sleeves to stop them from shaking, enduring the slow, agonizing burn of being exactly what Agott needed, while starving for what she actually wanted.
Agott, oblivious to the storm raging in the girl beside her, simply hummed a soft, wordless tune, finding comfort in the safety of the box she had constructed, never realizing that the very person she was trying to keep safe was the one she was hurting the most.
The candle on the desk flickered, low and guttering, casting long, wavering shadows that seemed to dance in sync with the turmoil Coco couldn't quite contain. Agott began to pack away her needles, her movements deliberate and controlled, as if she were tucking away pieces of herself into a velvet-lined case.
"The wind is picking up," Agott noted, her voice detached, as if she were commenting on the weather rather than the suffocating tension in the room. She stood, smoothing her skirts, and for a heartbeat, her hand brushed the edge of the workbench, just inches from where Coco had her own hands tightly balled into fists. "I should return to the atelier before the paths become difficult to navigate."
Coco stood up, her legs feeling unsteady. "Of course," she said, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the quiet shop.
She followed Agott to the door. As Agott reached for the handle, she paused, her profile illuminated by the soft glow of the last embers in the hearth. She looked back, and for a fraction of a second, the 'friendship' mask faltered. Her gaze softened, a look of profound, aching vulnerability breaking through the starch-collared composure she wore like armor.
"You are tired, Coco," Agott said, her voice barely a whisper, lacking its usual crisp edge. She reached out, her fingers hovering for a fleeting moment near Coco’s arm before she retreated, clutching the handle of the door instead. "Do not stay up too late. It… it would be an inconvenience if you were unwell."
It was a clumsy attempt at care, wrapped in the protective language of practicality. Coco felt the sting of it, the way Agott was terrified to name the warmth between them, lest it burn down the carefully constructed 'friendship' that was all she felt safe enough to offer.
"I’ll rest," Coco replied, her heart twisting with a mixture of affection and frustration. "Goodnight, Agott."
Agott nodded, a curt, sharp motion, and slipped out into the biting cold of the winter night.
Coco stood in the doorway long after the chime of the bell had faded, watching the silhouette of the witch disappear into the darkness. She was left alone with the silence, the warmth of the room suddenly feeling very hollow.
She looked down at the workbench, at the space where Agott had been sitting, and felt the familiar, agonizing burn of being held at arm's length by the very person she longed to pull into her arms. She knew she was hurting, but looking out at the snowy path, she realized she was beginning to understand the depth of Agott's fear, and she wondered how much longer she could be just a friend when her heart was screaming to be the reason Agott finally stopped running.
The following morning brought a biting, crystalline cold that turned every breath into a plume of white mist. Agott arrived not for work, but for a walk, a concession she made once a week, a structured break she insisted upon to ensure "proper circulation."
They walked along the edge of the frozen forest, the ground crunching rhythmically beneath their boots. Agott spoke at length about the composition of the frost on the leaves, her voice academic and precise, a safe distance away from anything personal.
Coco listened, nodding at the right intervals, but her mind was elsewhere. She watched the way the winter sun caught the sharp, aristocratic line of Agott’s profile and the way she unconsciously pulled her cloak tighter against the wind. It was such a small, human motion, and it made Coco’s chest ache with a sudden, sharp clarity.
‘She is avoidant of me,’ Coco thought, the realization settling into her bones like the winter chill. She talks about frost and mineral structures because if she stops talking about the world, she might have to talk about us. And if she talks about us, she might have to admit that this 'friendship' is just a cage she built to keep from breaking.’
"The ice here," Agott said, pausing to point at a branch encased in a translucent sheath, "is more resilient than it appears. It protects the wood underneath from the extreme drop in temperature. It is a necessary hardening."
Coco looked from the branch to Agott. "Do you think everything needs to harden to survive, Agott? Or is that just what you tell yourself?"
Agott went still, her gaze fixed on the branch. The scholarly mask didn't fall, but it trembled. She didn't look at Coco. "Some things," she murmured, "would shatter if they didn't."
Coco felt a desperate, clawing need to reach out, to take Agott’s hand and tell her that she was safe, that she didn't need to be made of ice anymore. She wanted to bridge the gap, to be the warmth that melted the hardening, but the fear of shattering that fragile, tenuous peace held her back.
‘I am right here,’ Coco thought, her internal yearning becoming a dull, rhythmic throb. ‘I am standing inches away from you, and I am the only person who knows that you are shaking. Why won't you let me hold you?’
"You're very quiet, Coco," Agott noted, finally turning her head. Her eyes were searching, guarded, yet filled with a flicker of something so raw it nearly made Coco look away. "Is the cold bothering you?"
"No," Coco lied, pulling her own cloak tighter, mirroring Agott’s posture. "I’m just... thinking. About how much things change when you aren't looking."
Agott stared at her for a long moment, the silence between them thick with everything they couldn't name. Then, she looked away, her expression settling back into its calm, cool mask. "Yes," she whispered, the wind stealing the word away. "Change is inevitable. It is the only constant."
They continued walking, side by side, their shoulders nearly brushing with every step. It was the closest they had been in weeks, a perfect, agonizing proximity. Coco kept her gaze forward, her heart heavy with the weight of her secret, wondering how many more winter walks it would take before the ice finally gave way.
The walk back to the village was marked by the crunch of frozen earth and the biting nip of the air, a physical manifestation of the distance Agott insisted on maintaining. As they reached the edge of the tree line, Agott stopped, her posture pivoting into that familiar, rigid stance of a teacher concluding a lecture.
"The path is cleared from here," Agott said, her voice polished and void of the tremor it had held in the woods. "I should return to the atelier. Qifrey has requested a report on the containment of local ley lines before sunset."
Coco looked at her, searching for the person who had rested her head on her shoulder just days prior. Instead, she found the silver-eyed perfectionist, already folding herself back into the architecture of her life as a witch. The suddenness of it felt like a door slamming shut.
"Right," Coco said, her voice tight. "Of course. The reports."
As Agott turned to leave, she caught Coco’s arm, not with the casual grip of a friend, but with a firm, grounding pressure. It was meant to be a parting gesture, but her hand lingered for a heartbeat too long. Her eyes searched Coco's face with a desperate, hungry intensity that contradicted every cold word she had spoken all afternoon.
"You look..." Agott started, her breath hitching in the frigid air. She squeezed Coco’s arm once, hard, before abruptly letting go, as if the contact had burned her. "You look tired, Coco. Please, ensure you eat. Do not let your work consume you."
It was a boundary, a gentle shove back into the 'friend' category, but the lingering ghost of her touch on Coco’s arm said something entirely different.
Coco stood frozen as Agott walked away, her footsteps disappearing into the white expanse of the path. She stood there until her skin turned numb, the yearning in her chest rising like a tide.
‘You are drowning, Agott,’ Coco thought, the realization bittersweet and sharp.
‘You are terrified that if you let me closer, you’ll lose your anchor to the world, but you don't realize that you’ve already let me into the center of your heart. You’re just too scared to look.’
Coco turned back toward the village, the weight of the "friendship" pressing down on her. It was a beautiful, agonizing game of inches, Agott would offer a moment of vulnerability, only to recoil and hide behind the safety of their roles.
And Coco, trapped in the silence of her own realization, continued to play along, waiting for the day Agott would finally stop fighting the gravity that was pulling them together.
Back at the shop, the silence was no longer peaceful. Coco paced the small floorboards, her fingers tracing the spot where Agott’s hand had been, as if she could still feel the phantom heat through the wool of her sleeve.
She sat at her workbench, not to work, but because it was the only place she felt restrained. She pulled a fresh sheet of paper, but her hands hovered, trembling. The friendship was working, it was keeping Agott coming back, keeping her anchored, keeping her safe, but it was killing them both in the slowest and most quiet place possible. Coco isn’t sure if Agott was aware, but a part of her selfishly hoped that Agott chooses to be with her.
‘She is so close. The silence between us feels like a scream,’ Coco thought, leaning her forehead against the cool wood of the desk. ‘She thinks she is protecting herself from the pain, but she doesn’t realize that the distance is what’s hurting us.’
She looked at her reflection in the darkened windowpane, a silhouette against the snowy, unforgiving world outside. She looked like the same girl who had started this journey months ago, but the interior was entirely rearranged. She was no longer just the curious shop girl who stumbled into a witch’s life. She was someone who carried the weight of Agott’s unspoken fears like her own.
“I am tired of the safety,” she admitted to the empty room, her voice barely a whisper. “I am tired of being 'just a friend' when I know exactly what kind of look she hides when she thinks I’m not paying attention. I am tired of the way we dance around a truth that is right in front of us.”
She didn't pick up the pen. Instead, she stared out at the frosted landscape, watching the flicker of distant lights in the direction of the atelier. She realized then that if the thaw was ever going to come, she couldn't keep waiting for the winter to end on its own. She was going to have to be the one to push, the one to break the ice, even if the cold shattered her in the process.
For tonight, she would hold the silence. But she knew that with every passing day, the 'friendship' mask was growing thinner, and the woman underneath, the Agott who looked at her with such desperate, aching hunger, was running out of reasons to keep hiding. Coco closed her eyes, the yearning settling deep in her chest, a quiet, stubborn flame waiting for the right moment to catch.
The cold was sharp, biting through her layers as Coco pushed open the attic hatch and shimmied onto the pitched roof of her shop. The air up here was thin and smelled of pine needles and distant frost. Below, the village was a collection of shadowed, silent humps, but above, the sky was a sprawling, infinite inkwell shattered by light.
She huddled into herself, knees pulled to her chest, her breath blooming in front of her like small, ghostly sighs. She wasn't looking for constellations or the geometry of the heavens; she was looking for a single anchor.
There it was. The brightest star in the eastern sky, burning with a cold, steady intensity that seemed to pulse in time with her own racing heart.
‘It’s just like her,’ Coco thought, a sad, quiet smile touching her lips. ‘Brilliant, untouchable, and so far away it feels like it’s looking down from another lifetime.’
She traced the star with her eyes, letting the silence of the night soak into her skin. In the quiet, the boundary between the ‘friend’ she played for Agott and the person she actually was began to blur. Looking at that star, she felt the same ache, the longing to reach out and touch something that felt destined to remain distant, no matter how much she yearned for its light.
‘If I reached for you, would you burn me?’ she whispered to the night air. ‘Or would you just continue to shine, cold and indifferent, because you don’t know how to be anything else?’
She kept her gaze locked on the light. It was the only thing that felt real, a constant, unwavering presence in a world where everything else, especially her feelings for Agott, felt like it was shifting under her feet. She stayed there until her fingers were numb and the stars began to pale against the encroaching gray of the pre-dawn sky, clinging to that one point of light as if it were the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth.
How much longer can she keep up before the burden of her love becomes too much for her soft heart to hold in silence?
Unbeknownst to her, a girl reached for the same star.
Her heart felt fuller than it had in months.
The month had been a steady reclamation of joy.
They had spent their days laughing over the complexities of embroidery patterns, finding quiet amusement in the small absurdities of village life, and sharing long, aimless walks that felt less like chores and more like a shared orbit.
Agott was still guarded, still firmly placing the label of ‘friend’ over everything they did, but the edges had softened. The fortress was still there, but now, there were windows, and sometimes, the light caught Agott’s eyes in a way that made Coco’s breath hitch with hope.
She took up her pen, the paper under the candlelight looking soft and inviting.
"We spent today laughing at the way the wind caught your cloak, and for a moment, you didn't look like a witch burdened by the weight of the past. You looked like you. Just Agott. The Agott who finds comfort in the structure of a stitch and the quiet company of a friend. I know you think that by calling us friends, you are keeping the world in balance, and perhaps you are. But I have realized something, the balance doesn't scare me anymore.
I feel that you are so afraid that if you look at me too closely, you’ll see a ghost instead of a person. But I am not a ghost, Agott. I am right here, in the present, living for the way your eyes light up when you describe something that fascinates you, and the way you always make sure I’ve eaten before you leave.
You’re still running, and you’re still hiding behind that wall of logic and 'friendship.' But the wall is getting thinner. Every time we share a laugh, or a walk, or even just the silence of the shop, you are letting me in, one brick at a time. I am going to keep being here. I am going to keep being the person who sees you, truly sees you, until you realize that you don't need to be so afraid of the warmth.
We have finished seasons together. I think, if we keep going, we might just survive the winter."
Coco laid the pen down, her hand steady. She didn't feel the frantic, breaking urgency of the previous months. Instead, there was a quiet, enduring patience, a resolve that was as deep and steady as the star she watched from the roof.
She folded the letter and tucked it away, not to be sent, but to be kept as a marker of how far they had traveled, and how much further she was willing to go.
Agott,
It’s raining so hard outside today, but in here, with everyone, it feels safe. I spent all afternoon watching you. You were laughing at something Richeh said, and I felt this sharp, beautiful ache in my chest because I realized that even if I forget everything else, I want to keep the feeling of being happy with you. You were so beautiful in the firelight today—you looked so calm, and for a moment, I almost believed that time had stopped.
I don't know what’s coming tomorrow. I don't know who I’ll be when the sun sets again. But I know that I’ve learned so much from you. You taught me to believe in myself, and you taught me that it’s okay to need other people, even when I’m scared. You’ve given me more than I could ever repay. Even if I don't know your name tomorrow, I hope I still feel this warmth in my chest when I see you. You are the most important part of my world, and I’m going to hold onto that feeling until the very last second.
I’m sorry for the way that I had pushed you away that morning. I’m… glad that Master Qifrey snapped some senses into my thick head. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the way your voice breaks whenever we argue.
You are trying so hard to keep us in this safe, designated space of 'friendship.'
I wonder if you realize that the more you see me as your 'friend', the more you are actually trying to ground yourself to me. You think you are protecting your heart by keeping it in a box, but the box is made of glass, Agott. Every day, I see you looking through it. And every day, I think about how it would shatter.
And yet… you still wrap a blanket around us. Like it would stop the day the knights arrive. I have been pushing every one of you away, and… you are still willing enough. You’re willing to look at me in the eyes, to accept the way my fingers curled around yours, to sleep next to you.
The ink is drying on the page, just as my time here is drying up. But the feelings aren’t going anywhere. It’s the only thing that’s grown through the frost. I will wait for the next time our paths collide. I am no better than a scalewolf.
Draft 4
The air was no longer biting, but carried the damp, earthy scent of mud and waking roots. Their dynamic had settled into a rhythm that felt almost dangerous in its comfort, a soft agreement that they would keep walking this path, even if neither was brave enough to name the destination.
They spent the afternoon in the shop, but the atmosphere was different than the winter months.
There was a lightness to Agott, a willingness to let her guard down that made the shop feel less like a sanctuary and more like a home. They spent hours simply sorting fabric, their fingers brushing as they reached for spools of silk, the electric charge of those moments now accepted rather than feared.
“The light is changing,” Agott remarked, looking toward the window where the sun was casting long, golden rays across the floorboards. She hesitated, her hand clutching her satchel with a nervous, uncharacteristic energy.
Coco looked up, sensing the shift. “It’s a beautiful evening.”
Agott turned, her purple eyes catching the dying light. The 'friendship' mask was still there, but it was thinner than it had ever been, worn away by months of shared tea, shared silence, and the quiet weight of their lingering gazes.
“I thought... the sky is exceptionally clear tonight,” Agott said, her voice dropping into that soft, private register she only ever used with Coco. “The moon is in a perfect phase for stargazing, and the ley lines are calm.”
She stepped closer to the workbench, her posture lacking its usual defensive rigidity.
“I was wondering,” Agott continued, her words careful but sincere, “if you would like to go for a walk tonight. After the village has quieted. Just to... see the stars.”
Coco’s heart gave a violent, joyful lurch. A night walk, outside the structure of ‘circulation’ or ‘observation,’ in the intimacy of the dark.
“I’d love to, Agott,” Coco replied, her voice steady despite the way her pulse was hammering against her collarbone.
Agott nodded, a small, genuine smile playing on her lips, a smile that reached her eyes and stayed there. “Good. I will come by around midnight. Wear something warm.”
She turned to leave, but before she reached the door, she looked back. For one breathless second, the air between them felt charged with everything they hadn't said in the months of yearning, the agony of the label, and the quiet, stubborn hope that perhaps, finally, they were moving toward something else.
“I'll be waiting,” Coco whispered.
As the door closed behind her, the shop felt suddenly, wonderfully different. The air was humming with the anticipation of the night to come. Coco leaned against the counter, closing her eyes, feeling the warmth of that invitation settle deep in her chest like a promise. It felt like the ice was finally, truly breaking.
When Coco opened it, she found Agott waiting under the pale, silver glow of the moon, her cloak billowing softly in the night breeze. She looked less like a witch of the atelier and more like a girl stepping out of a dream.
“The air is clear,” Agott said, her voice hushed to match the sleeping village. “The path to the ridge is well-trodden.”
They walked in the velvety darkness, their boots crunching softly on the dew-damp grass. The village lights receded, leaving them in a world defined only by the towering silhouettes of trees and the expanse of the sky. As they climbed the gentle slope toward the crest of the hill, the horizon opened up, revealing a vista of rolling shadows and scattered stars that seemed close enough to touch.
At the summit, the wind was a gentle sigh. They stood side-by-side, their shoulders brushing with every breath, watching the heavens. The silence was not the heavy, awkward thing it had been months ago. It was vast and resonant, filled with the presence of the other.
“I used to find the stars overwhelming,” Agott murmured, her gaze fixed on the shimmering tapestry above. She hugged her arms to her chest, not for warmth, but for gravity. “There is so much chaos in their movement. So much that defies order.”
"Is that why you like them now?" Coco asked, turning to look at her profile. The moonlight washed over Agott’s features, softening the sharp angles of her face and turning her eyes into pools of liquid amethyst.
Agott turned to her, and for the first time, she didn't look away. “I think… I like them because they stay in their place, even when they’re burning.” She paused, her voice trembling slightly. “But sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to simply let go of the gravity. To drift.”
Coco moved a step closer, the distance between them feeling like a fragile, precious thing. “You don't have to drift alone, Agott.”
Agott breathed out, a long, shaky exhale that sounded like a surrender. She looked at Coco, really looked at her, and the protective, clinical mask she had worn for five months finally shattered. In its place was a raw, aching vulnerability that Coco had been waiting for since the very first day.
Agott reached out, her fingers finding the sleeve of Coco’s cloak, gripping it with a desperation that mirrored her own. “I have spent so long trying to keep you at a distance because I was terrified that if I let you in, I would lose the only thing that felt real,” she whispered. “But you are the only thing that is real, Coco. Everything else… it’s just noise.”
The yearning that had been a silent, painful flame in Coco’s chest suddenly flared into something blinding and bright. She reached up, her hand gently cupping Agott’s cheek. The skin was cool from the night air, but under her palm, she felt the rapid, fluttery beat of Agott’s pulse, a frantic, living rhythm that matched her own.
"I’m not going anywhere," Coco promised, her voice barely audible over the wind.
Agott closed her eyes, leaning into the touch as if it were the only anchor she had left in the world. The ‘friends’ title lay broken at their feet, abandoned in the grass.
In the quiet of the hill, under the indifferent watch of the stars, the agonizing quiet devotion in their hearts had finally reached its end, leaving them exposed and entirely beautiful together.
Agott lets a rare, soft smile appear on her face. Agott’s fingers lingered against Coco’s cheek for only a moment longer before she pulled back, a newfound, playful glint igniting in her amethyst-like eyes. “Stay right there,” she murmured, her voice losing its edge of sorrow, replaced by a quiet, mischievous warmth. “I want to show you something. Close your eyes.”
Coco felt a flutter of anticipation, her heart still racing from the weight of Agott’s confession. She obeyed, darkness swallowing her vision, leaving her only with the sound of the wind and the soft, rhythmic scratching of ink against parchment. She heard Agott humming, a low, melodic sound she had never heard before, and the faint, crackling hum of magic gathering in the air.
“Almost finished,” Agott whispered, her voice close enough that Coco could feel the heat radiating from her. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Coco breathed.
As she opened her eyes, she gasped. Agott had finished the final, sweeping stroke in her palm quire, and the air before them erupted in a soft, golden luminescence. Tiny, glowing figures began to coalesce from the light, the distinct, mischievous and adorable shapes of owlcats, flickering into existence like fireflies. They zipped and darted around them, their spectral forms shedding a warm, amber glow on the hillside.
Coco let out a genuine, bright laugh, the sound catching in her throat as she reached out to watch an owlcat loop through the air before dissipating into soft stardust. She was mesmerized, her eyes wide as she watched the magic dance in the dark, a visual manifestation of the wonder she had been chasing for so long.
But as the magic swirled, Coco’s gaze naturally drifted away from the lights. She looked at Agott.
Agott was standing only a few feet away, her palm quire still open, her face illuminated by the dying glow of the spell. She wasn't wearing her mask, she was smiling. It was a bright, genuine smile, soft at the edges and entirely unguarded, showing a side of herself that felt more luminous than any spell she could ever cast.
Watching Agott in that moment, the realization hit Coco with the force of a tidal wave.
She didn't need to look at the lights to see magic. The magic was standing right in front of her. She felt her entire being melt, the last of her defenses dissolving into the night air. She wasn't just falling in love with the girl who could conjure wonders; she was falling in love with the girl who had finally allowed herself to be the wonder.
“Do you… like it?” Agott asked, her voice soft, her eyes fixed entirely on Coco, ignoring the fading sparks of her own creation. Her voice was small, like she was seeking approval. Specifically her approval. If only Coco could get the words out of her mouth, to say that she loved it, loved every second of it and how Agott had that beautiful smile when the spell played on.
Coco could only nod, her heart so full it felt like it might spill over. “It's… beautiful, Agott…” she said, her voice thick with emotion, “but it’s not the most beautiful thing here.”
Agott’s smile faltered for the briefest of moments, her composure wavering as she processed the quiet intensity in Coco’s voice. She shifted, closing her palm quire with a soft noise that seemed to emphasize the sudden, intimate shift in the air. She tucked her palm quite back in her satchel, the last of the owlcat sparks faded into the night, leaving them alone in the cool, blue moonlight, but the glow in the space between them remained.
Agott stepped forward, closing the final few inches that separated them. She didn't look at the sky or the hill, she looked at Coco, her expression stripped of every artifice she had spent the last five months perfecting.
“I've spent so long,” Agott began, her voice barely a whisper, “believing that magic was something to be contained, something to be measured and controlled so that it wouldn't hurt anyone. Least of all me.”
She reached out, her hand trembling slightly as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind Coco’s ear. Her touch was hesitant, testing the weight of the moment. “But tonight, watching you watch my magic... I realized I have been wrong about almost everything.”
Coco felt her breath catch. She leaned into Agott’s palm, the warmth of the witch’s skin grounding her, anchoring her to the hill, to the night, and most importantly, to this girl.
“You aren't... a complexity to be solved, Coco,” Agott continued, a flicker of that genuine, soft smile returning. “And this-” she gestured vaguely between them, “-this... isn't something I can study in a book. It’s the only thing I’ve found that actually makes... sense.”
Coco didn't want to talk anymore. She didn't want to analyze the mechanics of the feeling or the history that had led them here. She simply reached out, her fingers tangling in the fabric of Agott’s cloak, and pulled her closer.
There was no hesitation this time, no protective boundary, no title to hide behind. When Agott leaned in, the world seemed to hold its breath. As they finally crossed the distance, the ache of the previous months dissolved, replaced by the startling, overwhelming reality of being exactly where she was meant to be.
Under the vast, uncaring watch of the stars, the girl who had been made of iron and rules finally, completely, surrendered to the warmth.
Agott’s hand dropped from Coco’s cheek, but instead of retreating, her fingers interlaced with Coco’s, their palms warm against each other despite the night chill. A faint, uncharacteristic flush tinted Agott's cheeks, mirroring the heat radiating from Coco.
“The stars are not the only things meant to move in rhythm, you know,” Agott murmured, her voice laced with a newfound, playful confidence that Coco had never heard before. She tilted her head, a soft, teasing glint in her purple eyes.
“My star,” Agott softly spoke, her gaze making Coco shiver from it alone. “My kindest, most radiant star,”
Coco felt the blood rush to her face, a warm, prickling sensation that made her heart stutter.
“It seems a shame to waste such a perfect, silent stage on mere standing. Shall we?” Agott offered.
“A dance?” she managed to whisper, her pulse thumping wildly in her throat.
“Unless you've forgotten how,” Agott teased, her thumb brushing a slow, deliberate circle over the back of Coco's hand. “I’ve spent months perfecting my discipline, but I think tonight, I should like to practice something... less structured.”
Coco felt her knees turn to water, but she squeezed Agott's hand, meeting her gaze with a bashful, wide-eyed smile. “I don't think I've forgotten,” she replied, her voice breathless. “I'd like that very much.”
A small, genuine smile bloomed on Agott’s face, transformative and soft. She tightened her grip on Coco’s hand, pulling them both upward. They stood up together, the rustle of their cloaks breaking the stillness of the hilltop, their shadows stretching long and tangled across the grass under the watchful, brilliant stars.
Agott took a step forward, her movements deliberate and fluid, and placed her free hand firmly, yet gently, on Coco’s waist. It was an invitation, a bridge built of touch rather than words. Coco, her breath hitching in her chest, mirrored the movement, her own hand resting shyly but steadily against the small of Agott’s back.
They began to move, a slow, tentative swaying that mirrored the silent music of the cosmos above. There was no orchestra, no rhythm other than the beating of their own hearts, which seemed to sync in the quiet dark.
As they circled, Coco looked up and truly saw her. The moonlight caught the dark curls of Agott’s hair, turning it into a halo of starlight against the ink-black sky. But it was her eyes that held Coco captive. Those eyes that had once been guarded and clinical now held a depth of softness that felt like a secret whispered only to her.
In the dim, silvery glow, Agott looked less like the formidable, perfectionist witch who lived by rigid schedules and more like a girl who had finally dared to step out of the shadows.
There was a quiet intensity in Agott’s gaze, a scrutiny that felt like a caress, tracing the features of Coco’s face as if she were committing them to memory, as if she were finally allowing herself to appreciate the person she had spent months keeping at arm's length.
Coco, in turn, felt Agott’s eyes mapping her, the way her own face flushed, the way her smile, however nervous, grew wider and more genuine.
Agott’s hand on her waist tightened, drawing her just a fraction closer, and Coco let out a shaky, contented breath. She leaned in, her gaze dropping to Agott’s lips before returning to her eyes. She wanted to say something, to articulate the sheer, overwhelming joy of this moment, but the words died in her throat, drowned out by the gravity of Agott’s focus.
In the silence, they communicated everything they had stifled for five months. It was in the way Agott leaned into her space, shedding that last vestige of her rigid posture, and the way Coco leaned back, trusting entirely in the support of Agott’s hand. They moved with a newfound, intuitive grace, stepping in and out of the moonlight, their bodies swaying together as if they were the only two things in the universe that mattered.
Minutes passed, or perhaps hours, time had lost all structure on the hilltop. The dance was long, a continuous, spiraling motion that allowed them to drink in the sight of one another.
Every time their eyes met, a new wave of understanding passed between them, a silent admission that the walls were down, the simple label that separated them was gone, and the devotion growing in their hearts that they had both been avoiding was finally, undeniably mutual.
Coco watched the way Agott’s expression shifted, the slight softening of her jaw, the way her brow relaxed, every trace of the 'atelier's pressure' had evaporated. She looked radiant, exposed, and above all else, content.
Agott, conversely, seemed mesmerized by the simple fact of Coco’s presence. She watched the way the moonlight played across Coco’s skin, her gaze lingering with an intensity that made Coco’s skin tingle. It was a long, beautiful, and profoundly vulnerable exchange, a silent conversation where the only language was the steady rhythm of their feet on the grass, the warmth of their interlocked hands, and the unwavering, mutual adoration that finally had the freedom to exist in the open air.
They were no longer two girls trying to bridge a gap. They were no longer witch and seamstress. They were two people who had finally arrived at the same place, standing in the moonlight, content to let the world continue to spin while they simply, finally, held each other.
They pulled apart slowly, the night air rushing back into the space they had occupied. Coco, still caught in the lingering daze of the moment, didn't retreat. Instead, she leaned forward, her forehead resting against the curve of Agott’s neck, her breath hitching in a soft, contented sigh.
“I love you,” Coco whispered. The words were small, stripped of all the artifice and the labels they had hidden behind for so long.
I am writing this as the sun starts to rise. This is it. The last day.
Is it foolish for me to want more? I’ve spent months building a life inside the margins of your world, Agott. I have learned the way of your breathing, the exact way your brow furrows when you’re thinking about a spell, the way you look at me when you think I’m not watching. And every time I think I’ve reached you, I find another wall.
My hands are shaking so hard I can barely hold the pen. If this is the last time I write to you, if this is the last time that my love for you is enough, then let this be the truth. I am not her. I am the girl who left. I am not the girl who stayed. And if that isn't enough for you, then I don't know how you will survive the loss.
I’m terrified. I’m just so terrified.
I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can leave you and everyone. I’m so scared. I don’t want to leave the life I’ve built in my four years of living with all of you.
I love you Agott, never reach out to me.
The impact on Agott was immediate like a sudden, jarring shift in the atmosphere.
The warmth that had been flowing between them seemed to evaporate, replaced by a cold, sharp realization.
The spell of the hilltop, the romance of the dance, and the vulnerability of the kiss all crystallized into a terrifying reality.
She had done exactly what she had spent five months trying to avoid. She had let the boundary vanish. She had let herself feel, and in doing so, she had shattered the very cage she had built to keep herself safe.
Agott’s body went rigid beneath Coco’s touch. The purple her eyes, once soft and dark with longing, widened with a frantic, jolting awareness. She looked out at the vast, silent horizon, the realization crashing over her that the ‘friends label was completely, irrevocably gone.
She wasn't just a witch, or a peer, or a companion anymore, she had become something else entirely, something that made her chest ache with a fear as profound as the love she was beginning to recognize again.
She stood there, frozen, with Coco still leaning against her, the weight of the confession hanging heavy in the cool night air. The silence of the hill, once comforting, now felt suffocatingly loud.
Agott looked down at the top of Coco’s head, her hands trembling as they hovered in the space between them, caught between the instinct to push away and the desperate, aching urge to hold on. The wall was gone, and she was terrified of the blinding light.
The words continued to hang in the frigid air like shattered glass, jagged and cutting. Agott had wrenched herself away, her back turned, shoulders heaving with the effort of holding herself together.
Coco stood frozen, the warmth of the kiss still ghosting over her skin, now replaced by an icy, hollow numbness that seeped into her very marrow.
“Coco, please,” Agott’s voice was strained, thick with a jagged, splintering pain. “S-Stay away from me.”
“A-Agott, I-” Coco started, reaching out, her hand hovering in the empty space where Agott had been held just moments before.
“Just stay away, Coco!” Agott spun around, her eyes, those violet eyes that had been so soft and inviting, now wide, frantic, and filled with a raw, ugly desperation. “I hate how you're always like this. How you're so-you're just so…!” She choked on her own words, her hands trembling as she pressed them against her temples.
“Agott…” Coco whispered, the name feeling like a plea.
Agott’s breathing was erratic, shallow gasps that seemed to tear at her throat. She looked at Coco, but it was as if she were looking through her, staring at a ghost that lived somewhere behind Coco’s eyes. “Look, Coco,” She started. “I… I just- I can't bring myself to love you.”
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. The wind howled around the hilltop, but it was nothing compared to the deafening silence in Coco’s ears. “...what?”
“I can't. I can't do it,” Agott said, her voice dropping to a jagged, broken whisper. “I should've stayed away from you. I should've left you alone. I should've stayed in the atelier and moved on from you. But now I'm here, and I'm going to be a mess again when I lose you. I can't bring myself to love the new you.”
Coco’s heart felt as though it were being slowly crushed. “So you're still clinging to the old version of me...?”
“Yes, Coco,” Agott sobbed, the tears finally cutting tracks through the cold on her cheeks. “Every time I look at you, I wish that somehow, you would regain your memories. Regain what we had. But... I was too stupid. Too foolish. I never truly let go. And now I'm facing the consequences of my own actions.”
“Then that means I'm just another girl to you, Agott?” Coco’s voice shook, her eyes brimming with a hurt so deep it felt insurmountable. “Another girl's consciousness? A new, different person that took your Coco?”
Agott went deadly still. The silence that followed was heavy, stifling, and suffocating. She didn't look at Coco. She didn't deny it.
“Wait-” Coco’s voice cracked, a sob catching in her throat. “You didn't even deny it.”
“Listen, Coco…” Agott started, her voice hollow, devoid of the passion from just moments ago. “It's just-”
“I'm not what your old Coco was,” Coco cried out, the pain finally bleeding into anger, her fists clenching at her sides. “I'm not... not the same one, Agott! But I've been wanting to know you. To be with you. I don't know why, but ever since the day we met, I felt like I was complete!”
Agott’s expression hardened, a mask dropping back into place to hide the raw, bleeding ache underneath. “Go away, Coco.”
“No, Agott! You aren't running away-” Coco took a desperate step forward, needing to be heard, needing to be seen.
“Leave!” Agott snapped, the sound cracking like a whip against the night.
“Agott. I love you, please…” Coco choked out, her entire body shaking, the confession now feeling like a burden, a heavy, unwanted weight.
The wind swept over the hill, carrying nothing but the biting cold. Agott remained turned away, her posture rigid, her hands balled into white-knuckled fists. The silence stretched, agonizing and eternal, pressing down on them until Coco thought her heart might simply stop from the sheer, crushing weight of the rejection.
Then, barely a whisper, carried away by the indifferent stars:
“I loved the girl before you.”
The silence that followed was not merely an absence of sound. It was an unforgiving abyss, vast and freezing that swallowed the remnants of the life they had built over these five months.
Coco felt as if her lungs had been emptied of air. The confession, which she had delivered with such desperate hope, now sat between them like a tombstone. She looked at Agott’s back, the line of her shoulders, the rigid set of her head, and realized with a sickening clarity that the person she was looking at wasn't just grieving. She was protecting a memory so fiercely that she had blinded herself to the beating, breathing, loving human standing right in front of her.
“I loved the girl before you,” Agott repeated, her voice lower, trembling with the weight of that final, devastating anchor.
Coco took a step back, the jagged rocks beneath her boots feeling unstable, much like the ground beneath her heart. The 'friendship' they had cultivated, the shared walks, the laughter, the subtle warmth of their connection, it all suddenly seemed like a cruel deception.
Was every smile Agott had given her merely a reflection of someone else? Was every moment of shared vulnerability just Agott trying to find a ghost in the machine?
“So, that was it,” Coco said, her voice hollow, stripped of all its earlier fire. “This whole time... all the 'friendship,' all the visits, all the nights we spent together... you weren't looking at me, were you? You were just waiting for a sign that I was someone who died a long time ago.”
Agott didn't turn around. She couldn't. If she looked at Coco now, she knew the dam would break, and she would be forced to admit that the girl standing before her was not a ghost. She was something new, something terrifyingly vibrant, and something she was far too cowardly to lose twice.
“You are a memory of a life I wasn't allowed to keep,” Agott whispered, her voice barely audible over the wind. “And I... I simply cannot bear to watch that memory change. It is too painful, Coco. It is too much to lose you again.”
“But I am here, Agott!” Coco cried, her voice cracking as fresh tears blurred the stars above. “I am here! I am not her, I am me! How can you look at me, touch me, hold me, and not see the person who is actually standing here trying to love you?”
Agott finally turned. Her face was a ruin, eyes swollen and red-rimmed, the purple light in them fractured and dim. She looked at Coco with an expression of such profound, agonizing helplessness that it stopped Coco’s breath.
"Because," Agott choked out, “I-If I let myself love you- if I acknowledge that you are here, then I have to admit that the girl I lost is truly gone forever… And I am not ready to let her go.”
She wiped a hand frantically across her eyes, turning back toward the path that led down to the village. “Do not follow me,” she commanded, her voice regaining a sliver of its old, sharp authority, though it failed to mask the tremor beneath. “I need to... I need to be alone.”
As Agott turned to walk away, a desperate instinct overrode Coco’s heartbreak. She lunged forward, her fingers closing tightly around Agott’s wrist, pulling her back with a sudden, jarring force.
“Wait!” Coco cried out, her voice raw. “You don't get to just walk away from this! You don't get to erase what we've been to each other because you’re scared of a ghost! Look at me, Agott! Look at me!”
Agott jerked her arm free, her expression twisting into something frantic and wild. She didn't look at Coco, she looked through her, her eyes darting toward the horizon as if searching for an escape. Her hand dove into her satchel with trembling, desperate speed, her fingers brushing past vials and tools until they clamped around her palm quire.
“A-Agott, what are you-?!” Coco’s voice faltered, fear replacing the hurt in her eyes as she saw the way Agott’s hands flew across the parchment.
Agott’s pen moved with a blur of unnatural, jagged motion, skipping over the usual intricacies of spell-casting to slash directly into a forbidden, ancient page. The ink glowed with a sickly, fading light, the signature of a memory erasure spell, a deep and jagged wound in the fabric of magic.
“I’m sorry, Coco,” Agott whispered. The words were not an apology for the hurt; they were a benediction for a death.
“Agott, stop! Don't do this!” Coco backed away, her hands raised, but Agott was already breathing the incantation, the sound of it hollow and cold in the night air.
With a final, decisive stroke, Agott slashed one single, sharp line to complete the circle of the spell.
The warmth of the connection they had shared. The laughter, the walks, the touch, the confession, was unspooled and incinerated in a heartbeat. Her knees gave way, and she crumbled to the ground like a broken marionette. Silence rushed back into the world, colder and heavier than before, as Coco collapsed into the grass, her consciousness dissolving into nothingness.
Agott stood over her, the quire trembling in her hands, her purple eyes hollow and devoid of everything but the crushing weight of the silence she had just manufactured.
The hilltop was silent again, save for the rhythmic, ragged sound of Agott’s own breathing. Coco lay still, a fragile, sleeping doll caught in the aftermath of a spell that had unmade their last five months. The stars continued their indifferent, cold dance, unaware that they were now the only witnesses to the wreckage.
Agott knelt beside her, her hands shaking so violently she could barely gather her robes. She didn't let herself look at Coco’s face. Not yet. She couldn't bear to see the peacefulness of that expression, knowing she was the architect of that emptiness.
With a strength born of sheer, desperate necessity, she gathered Coco into her arms. Coco felt impossibly light, a ghost in her own life, her head lolling against Agott’s shoulder with a weightless, terrifying grace.
The walk back to the village was a blur of shadows and sharp, jagged memories that Agott was already trying to bury. Every stone they passed, every path they had walked together, felt like a condemnation. She moved through the darkness like a wraith, slipping into the shop and up the stairs to Coco’s room without a sound.
When she laid Coco down upon the bed, the moonlight filtered through the window, painting silver lines across her features. Agott hovered for a long, agonizing moment. Her hand, trembling, reached out to brush a stray lock of hair from Coco’s forehead. Her skin was still warm, still impossibly soft, a tactile reminder of the life that was currently unraveling within her.
Agott’s touch lingered there, a tremulous, desperate caress that served as a final, silent farewell. She traced the line of Coco’s jaw, her fingers hovering over the lips that had spoken “I love you” only minutes before, words that had now been rendered meaningless by her own hand.
"I am saving us," Agott whispered, though the lie tasted like ash in her mouth.
She leaned down, the space between them closing one last time. Her kiss was not a romance, but a grief-stricken vow, it was slow, trembling, and saturated with a finality that tasted of salt and moonlight.
It was a goodbye to the five months of warmth, to the girl who had made her feel something other than the weight of the past, and to the version of herself that had briefly, foolishly dared to be happy.
She pulled away, her eyes stinging with tears she refused to shed. She couldn't stay. To stay would be to shatter, and she had already destroyed enough for one night.
Turning toward the window, Agott paused, looking back at the silhouette of the girl on the bed one final time. Her heart felt like it had been carved out of her chest, leaving only the cold, sharp ache of the void.
With a choked, stifled sob, she climbed onto the sill and stepped out into the night, vanishing into the darkness of the village, leaving nothing behind but the silence and the cold, unyielding echo of what might have been.
The morning light hit the room with a cruelty that felt entirely out of place given the hollow ache in Coco’s chest. She stirred, her head throbbing with a phantom, splintering pain that felt like the lingering echo of something forbidden.
Her eyes snapped open, and as the haze of the spell’s residue cleared, the memory of the hilltop, the light, the dance, the confession, the cold, clinical sting of Agott's magic, rushed back into her mind.
Coco sat up, her breath hitching, waiting for the emptiness to take hold. She waited for the void, for the erasure of their five months together. But it didn't come. The warmth of their shared tea, the laughter, the feeling of Agott’s hand on her waist—it was all there, vivid and burning behind her eyelids.
A jagged, hysterical laugh bubbled up in her throat, spilling out into the quiet room. "She really thought it would work," Coco whispered to the empty air, her voice thick with a mix of betrayal and bitter humor. "She… she actually thought she could just... abandon me… That she could cast me out like I was nothing more than an error in her story..."
The humor died as quickly as it had arrived, replaced by a seismic shift of rage and crushing, suffocating despair. The betrayal, the sheer audacity of Agott trying to delete her existence, their existence, was too much to hold.
Coco stood up, her legs trembling, and scanned the room. Her eyes landed on her satchel resting on the desk. Without a conscious thought, driven by a violent need to break the silence of the room, she grabbed the bag and hurled it against the far wall with every ounce of her remaining strength.
The sound of the bag striking the wood was sharp and hollow, followed by the clatter of its contents spilling across the floorboards.
Coco stood there, chest heaving, her hands gripping the edge of the desk until her knuckles turned white. She stared at the wreckage of her belongings, the frustration slowly giving way to a bone-deep exhaustion.
As she leaned down to gather the scattered remnants, a flash of white caught her eye. An envelope had slipped from the side pocket of the bag, sliding across the floorboards like a quiet secret. Coco froze. She crawled toward it, her heart hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against her ribs.
She picked it up, her fingers trembling as they traced the writing on the front.
‘To Coco.’ It was written in a familiar, delicate, and agonizingly precise cursive, Agott’s hand.
The room seemed to tilt. She turned the envelope over, her thumb hovering over the seal, her breath hitching in her throat.
Every instinct screamed at her not to open it, to throw it into the fire, to walk away from whatever last remnant of Agott’s logic remained inside. But the pull was magnetic. With shaking fingers, Coco slid her nail under the flap and hesitated, the paper crinkling in the silence of the room.
To the girl who is still my everything,
I don’t know if you will ever read this. I don't know if you will even remember who I am by the time you hold this paper. But I have to write it anyway, because the truth needs to exist somewhere, even if it’s only in the silence between us.
I am so sorry, Coco. I am sorry for the way I treated you when you first arrived at the atelier. I was so arrogant, so desperate to prove that I was the best, that I looked at your kindness and mistook it for weakness. I was cruel to you because I was afraid. Afraid that you were everything I wasn't allowed to be. You were open, and you were brave, and you saw the wonder in magic that I had let grow cold inside my own heart. I was a jealous, foolish girl who didn't know how to handle the light you brought with you.
I need you to know what I admired about you, what I will always admire about you. It wasn't just your talent, or the way you learned spells that took me years to master. It was the way you looked at the world. Even when it was cruel to you, even when the laws of magic tried to break you, you never lost your softness. You reached out to me when I was trying to push you away, and you never stopped being patient, even when I gave you every reason to walk away.
You were my anchor. I never thought I would be the kind of person who could love someone this deeply, but you showed me that it’s possible. You made the atelier a home instead of just a classroom. You made me feel seen, not just as a student, but as a person.
If you are reading this, and you don’t know who I am, please just know this: you were loved. You were cherished by someone who spent every day trying to become better just to be worthy of your friendship. You were a miracle in a world that often tries to snuff out anything that shines too brightly.
You are the brightest star in my life.
Don’t blame yourself for forgetting. Don’t blame yourself for anything. Just live. Please, find the things that make you smile again, and know that somewhere, in a life you might not remember, a girl with too much pride and a heart that was only yours thought you were the most beautiful thing that ever happened to her.
With all my love,
Agott
Coco’s vision blurred, the words swimming into a sea of ink. She clutched the letter to her chest, a strangled, wounded sound breaking from her lips. The apology was there, the admiration, the vulnerability, it was everything she had wanted to hear for five months.
But the tragedy of it was so sharp it felt like a blade. Agott had poured her soul into the paper, only to turn around and try to erase the person she was writing to.
She collapsed onto the floorboards, the letter pressed against her heart.