Chapter Text
The only atmosphere hanging in the atelier was the pitter-patter of rain outside, drowned out by the narrow concentrations of a ravenette witch. Her senses would soon chirp alight when an astonishingly hard thump echoed against the window overlooking the kitchen.
Agott paused from slumped head to stretched toe, even without looking away from her work. Though she couldn’t help but wince when whatever bumbling object collided with her window hit the ground with a mushy thud soon after. She sighed, long hair trapped in a ponytail cascading along her back as she straightened. What could possibly be causing such a ruckus in the occupied air of a rainstorm?
She cleared her throat—
A cloak lined with drying spells secured her shelter as she ventured around the perimeter of her atelier. What could be seen of the sky from a peek up pass the hood was a dull gray. The rain had staked its claim over the landscape fervently. There was no reasonable explanation for whatever sort of winged creature to be anywhere but under a roofed dwelling. No reasonable explanation, for anything but.
—an unfortunate owl, perhaps.
Owlcat, specifically. A magical beast. Agott had read about them once or twice before—out of aimless curiosity, of course, when she was very very small. They were meant to be gracefully silent creatures that leaped or soared around at night for simple prey. For that reason, Agott once dreamt of them as a perfect pet.
Her secluded atelier housed only herself, now. Nevertheless, beyond the characteristic winter coat and other features the one in front of her bore, little differentiated the creature as an owlcat at all. Not with how it clumsily rolled minutely on the grass, enjoying(?) the relatively dry ground under the arching exterior roof of the dwelling. Also, unless it was a trick of the light, this one wore a strangely green-gold color.
Agott stared in consideration at the lamp she held, counting the moments before the critter would notice her. There was no way she could bring herself to leave it all alone outside, not in this weather, but that did little to negate the twist of bitterness she held at the thought of sharing her living space with another. Who knows what she would have to makeshift to accommodate the poor animal.
The poor animal…
A moment later, Agott sat cross-legged in the center of her kitchen. A spare pillow and blanket she spun out of the attic newly housed the leaf-like owlcat, chewing on a cooked fish tail she hoped was approximate enough to their raw fish diet.
This was horrendous, in her honest opinion. She’d never be able to get back to work at this rate with a full living creature to attend to. She knew the species in and out—as solitary woodland hunters they weren’t particularly needy until they were kept in a stable home for at least a week. But Agott had no idea how long the rainstorm could last, when it only started a little after noon that day. In the area she settled it could go on and off for 3 days at a time. Due to how isolated she was, however, the intermediate was hardly enough time for the owlcat to find its own natural shelter to move on to.
She was not ready for this kind of commitment. She tossed another tail to the creature: having them catch food was one of the best ways to keep them from getting too comfortable and-
“No.” Agott grumbled, to nobody in particular. Her head whipped away to a window, where she could see that the gray sky had already subsided to a deep ink color. She swiveled further to gaze longingly at her workstation before falling backward onto the flat steps of her depressed kitchen. “Fine, then.”
As quickly as she decided, the owlcat’s arrangement was shifted over to the fireplace. Then she resigned to her own quarters. Without, obviously, sparing a final look at her new companion. Temporary companion. It couldn’t possibly stay a pet.
Especially, Agott would realize the next morning, if it wasn’t a pet at all.
A leaf-haired girl, seemingly about as tall as her, in a plain white shift, laid curled up at the base of Agott’s fireplace. She didn’t stir when Agott descended the stairs, nor at the undignified “what?!” that slipped out of her mouth at the sight. The sleeping arrangements she’d given her (it??) last night were wholly unmoved even as their inhabitant had clearly tripled in size.
“What… on earth?” Agott whispered aloud, no closer to awaking the person than before. She approached at a serpent’s pace, the closer and closer view doing little to answer her countless questions. Breathing deeply to steady herself, she administered a light kick to the girl’s back.
Finally, she shifted around in the fetal position she’d been sleeping in. But all she did was creak open an eye to Agott’s overhead figure and then curl further into herself before falling back asleep.
Agott felt a little as if she’d gone insane. How could she just? Ignore the fact that she’d transformed overnight??
“Alright, this is- ridiculous!” Agott huffed insolently. She knelt down to yank the girl awake, nearly startling herself with the force manifested out of her frustration. The girl rolled over with newfound conscious and stared up at Agott with wide eyes that complimented her hair.
“How did you get here?” Agott interrogated. “What even are you meant to- hey!”
The girl embraced Agott completely out of the blue, giggling as she did. The shock of it almost made her collapse directly onto the floor. Agott shook out of the touch.
“wwWWOAH.” Agott said, not shrieked. Certainly not.
“I’m Coco!”
“Wh- That doesn’t explain anything?!”
The girl—Coco, she supposed—let go of her abruptly, at which Agott really did fall onto the floor. She bowed her head erratically, mumbling words of gratitude for taking her in and of apologies for being such a burden. Agott found herself shaking her head slightly back and forth at the ordeal.
“What,” Agott interrupted for what felt like the umpteenth time, “are you.”
Coco blinked. “My name’s Coco.”
Heavens. “And last night you were an owlcat, so?” Agott gestured with her hands for a reply, but Coco’s eyes never left hers.
Coco brought a hand to her head, twirling the locks there probably without even realizing. “Oh, right… it’s transformation magic.”
Agott stilled. Magic interfering with the human body was notoriously forbidden, had she let a criminal into her house?
Or—“I can’t remember when, by now, but when I was little I picked up a book of spells from a witch with a weird hat. They told me it was a picture book, but when I drew one of the circles a few years later while bored on the road, I turned into… that.”—a victim.
The air appeared sucked out of the room. Coco’s eyes remained fixed at a random spot on the hardwood floor and Agott felt unable to move. A victim of forbidden transformation magic, flown right onto her doorstep.
But something just didn’t seem right, something tugging at her rapid mind. “But… why are you able to turn back?” Coco finally looked at her again, tilting her head, and Agott shrunk back. “I mean, most times when you hear of transformation magic they’re horrifically permanent. When it’s turning a person into an animal, they become it so completely that you can barely even communicate with them anymore.”
Agott held out a hand without thinking, enclosing in her vision Coco in her palm. “Yet, right now, you just look like a normal girl.”
“Are you a witch?” Coco asked. Apparently, direct answers were impossible to get out of her.
Agott thought the answer would be obvious. But the girl must’ve been an unknowing, once, if she confessed the horrific spell was self-inflicted. She nodded.
“I met another one of your kind before. I asked them for help when I turned, in their living room, and they threw me out as soon as they saw me.” Agott swallowed. “Can… can this not be helped?”
Agott resisted the immediate urge to shake her head. Forbidden magic was just as illegal to reverse as it was to cast, at the end of the day the body involved would be the test subject of either. It was just too unpredictable, but it also seemed entirely too cruel to shun this girl away like just another witch determined to fail her.
This was awful. All Agott could’ve ever asked for, since the moment she departed from the Great Hall and took up her own atelier, was peace and solitude. Complete and utter detachment from the encroaching conflict that seemed to litter every person wearing a pointed cap in such a dense civilization. Here in the mountains, nobody could accuse her of something she never did, or snark about what she did do in her minute free time, or remind her to sit up straight and still as she worked—nobody ever would, she’d hoped. And now she’d become the primary witness of the cruelty of the Brimhats.
Coco was still looking at her, and a twinge of something stabbed at Agott’s heart at her line of thinking. Here, she was giving up her isolation, but Coco had already given up any semblance of a normal life. How could she be so… selfish?
Agott reached out a hand, and pulled them both up when Coco took it. With grave sincerity, she looked back at Coco’s helpless eyes.
“We can try.”
Coco smiled, and something inside of Agott burned.