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The golden light of late afternoon bathed the fields surrounding the atelier, casting long, stretching shadows across the grass. It was a rare, quiet moment of respite following the harrowing incident with the Dadah Range and the encounter at the market, a time for the girls to simply breathe.
Nearby, Agott was meticulously practicing her drawing lines, while Tetia and Richeh were occupied with their own magical experiments. Olruggio sat a short distance away, his watchful gaze sharp and vigilant, ensuring the perimeter remained secure while still allowing the apprentices their freedom.
Coco, however, was still. She stood at the edge of the field, her gaze fixed not on the ground, but on the vast, open expanse of the sky above. Her fingers subconsciously traced patterns in the air, mimicking the motions she had seen witches make to draw the spell of flight and levitation.
She had traced the spell with her finger from the books Agott had reluctantly let her borrow. She had copied the spell over and over again on Agott's still seal-less shoes. She had stared at the seal, as if she wanted to burn it in her memory to fix Agott's shoes properly.
She was so absorbed in her internal visualization that she didn’t hear the soft crunch of boots on grass until a shadow fell over her.
“The clouds look particularly inviting today, don't they?”
Coco jumped slightly, turning to see Qifrey standing beside her. His expression was calm, though his eyes held that familiar, analytical sharpness that softened only when he looked at his apprentices.
“Master!” Coco started, then looked back up, her cheeks flushing slightly. “I... I was just thinking. About the sylph shoes…” She started, fiddling with the cloth of her gown. “How… do they know exactly how high to go? And how does it feel to… to really be part of the wind?”
She looked at him then, her eyes wide with a raw, unadulterated curiosity. It was a look so devoid of guile, so filled with the wonder of a world that had only just opened its doors to her, that it caught Qifrey off guard. For a fleeting second, the image of his own mentor, Lord Beldaruit, shimmered in his memory, the way he had once looked at the older wizard with that exact same curious, searching expression, hunger for information about the huge and wide world around him.
Qifrey felt a strange tightening in his chest. The recent turmoil had reminded him just how fragile this life was, and how precious Coco’s budding talent truly was. He wanted to bridge the distance between them, to offer her something more than just lessons on paper.
“It is a feeling unlike any other,” Qifrey said softly. He reached into his satchel and produced a pair of worn, comfortable-looking sylph shoes. “Here. Put these on. Just in case.”
Coco blinked, surprised, but quickly scrambled to exchange her boots for the enchanted footwear. As she stood, she felt the familiar hum of magic radiating from the soles.
“Master?”
Qifrey stepped closer and, with a grace that spoke of years of practice, placed a firm, reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Hold on, Coco.”
Before she could process his intent, he drew upon his own magic. With a gentle pull, he lifted them both from the earth. The world tilted, the grass fell away, and for the first time, the wind wasn't just something that brushed against her skin, it was something she was moving through.
Coco let out a gasp of pure delight, her hands instinctively clutching Qifrey’s sleeve. High above the fields, with the rest of the atelier looking like a miniature set below, Qifrey looked down at her. He saw the same wonder he had felt decades ago, and for the first time since the incident, the heavy, lingering tension in his shoulders finally began to ease.
The higher they ascended, the smaller the world below became, until the atelier was merely a splash of color against the verdant expanse of the landscape. The wind whipped at their cloaks, but Qifrey’s magic held them in a steady, protective embrace.
Coco didn't struggle. She simply tilted her head, letting the exhilaration of flight wash away the residual, creeping anxiety and reliving the thrill of her own flight spell working of the recent Dadah Range.
It was a stark, beautiful contrast to the day he had first found her, when the air had been thick with the frantic energy of forbidden magic and the cold dread of losing someone who had only just begun to see the beauty of the world. Back then, he had carried her because she was broken and afraid. Now, he held her because she was ready to learn how to touch the clouds.
Qifrey maneuvered them toward a jagged cliffside that overlooked a sprawling mountain range, the peaks catching the dying light of the sun in a display of gold and violet. As they hovered, he watched her face, searching for the terror he had seen so many times before. Instead, he found only a brilliant, unshielded curiosity.
The silence between them was no longer heavy with secrets or the weight of the Brimhats, but was instead a shared, quiet space where they could simply breathe as a mentor and his chosen pupil.
He pointed toward the horizon, silently showing her how the wind currents shifted near the mountain ridges, treating her not just as a student, but as an apprentice being invited into the inner sanctum of a master's secret joy.
He tightened his grip slightly, sensing the way she leaned into him, a physical manifestation of a growing bond that transcended mere instruction and stepped into the realm of found family.
This was the antithesis of the shadows that had previously defined their relationship. By sharing the height of the world with her, Qifrey was offering her the one thing she lacked most. A sense of safety that didn't require her to hide her identity or her magic.
He remembered Beldaruit, who had shown him that magic could be a tool for wonder rather than just a weapon for survival, and he saw that same lesson taking root in Coco now.
“Look closely,” Qifrey murmured, his voice barely audible over the rush of the air. “When you feel the magic in your shoes pulling against the draft, don't fight it. Trust the flow. Trust the magic. Trust me.”
Coco nodded, her eyes wide as she reached out a hand toward the swirling mist below. She was finally beginning to understand that the dangerous, forbidden power she possessed could, under the right guidance, be a source of liberation.
For the first time, she wasn't running from a nightmare. She was flying toward a future she was finally starting to believe she deserved. In the vast, silent blue of the sky, Qifrey realized that he wasn't just teaching her to fly, he was learning how to be more than a mentor to a girl who had once lost everything, only to find a new world in the palms of his hands.
The flight took them further west, where the rolling plains eventually gave way to the vast, shimmering expanse of the beautiful, azure colored sea. The salt spray caught the light, turning the mist into a cloud of sparkling diamonds as they hovered over the breaking waves.
Qifrey, his usual stoic composure replaced by a rare, playful light in his eyes, caught Coco’s hands. He began to spin, slow at first, then faster, until the horizon became a blur of blue and gold. Coco’s initial surprise melted into pure, pure laughter, the sound ringing out over the crashing surf, a stark, beautiful departure from the heavy silence that had followed the incidents that happened.
Abruptly, Qifrey slowed, his expression turning solemn as he leveled their flight. He looked into her eyes, the wind whipping his hair back.
“Do you trust me?” Qifrey asked, his hold on Coco tightening for a brief, intentional second.
Coco, still breathless from the spinning and buoyed by the absolute safety she felt in his presence, beamed at him. “Of course, Master!”
With that, Qifrey smiled softly, and then he dropped her.
The drop was sudden, violent, and terrifying. The air rushed past Coco's ears with a deafening roar as gravity reclaimed her. A sharp, instinctive scream tore from her throat, but even in her panic, the core of the magic she had been practicing surged to the surface.
Her instincts, honed by the desperation of their past, kicked in. She reached out, frantically adjusting her stance, her feet searching for the rhythm of the wind.
With a frantic, desperate snap of her ankles, the sylph shoes caught the air. The terrifying descent shuddered to a halt, leveling out into a frantic, wobbly hover just a few dozen feet above the churning tide.
Qifrey was there instantly, drifting effortlessly alongside her, his eyes shining with pride. “Exactly like that,” he said, his voice calm, encouraging, and utterly unbothered by the sheer danger of his method. “You held your nerve, Coco. Well done.”
The adrenaline of the fall began to transmute into a wild, bubbling joy. Coco, still trembling from the shock, began to giggle, a sound of genuine triumph. She realized with a jolt of exhilaration that she was doing it. She was flying.
Without a second thought for the "questionable" nature of Qifrey’s teaching style, she propelled herself forward and tackled him in mid-air. Qifrey laughed, catching her easily as they collided. She buried her face against his chest, her arms wrapping tightly around his neck in a fierce, thankful embrace.
“Thank you, Master! Thank you!” she cheered happily, her voice muffled against his robes.
Qifrey held her close, his arms encircling her in a protective, fatherly hug as they drifted together above the ocean.
They remained there for a long time, two specks of light suspended between the deep sea and the endless sky, anchored by a trust that had finally, truly taken flight.
A sickening, loud rumble came from the ocean, as Qifrey stood at the seaside.
Qifrey’s lungs seized. He saw the trajectory, saw the cold, calculated malice behind the spell, and roared a warning that was lost to the thunder of the magical discharge.
“Master!”
But it was Coco who moved. In a split second of selfless, desperate instinct, she used her sylph shoes to lunge. To intercept the blow meant for her master. To push her master away. But she missed, and the impact was sickening, a sound like glass shattering.
The force of the assault threw her backward, her small frame curling into itself as she crumpled against the cold sand of the battlefield, trembling with an intensity that defied all previous lessons in composure.
Qifrey immediately exploded into action. The world around them blurred as he summoned an overwhelming torrent of water, a desperate, deluge-level command of fluid magic that rose like a tidal wave to engulf the area. The water slammed into the surroundings, dissolving Engendale’s ink lines and drowning the battlefield in a thick, suffocating curtain of steam and mist.
He didn't care about the combat anymore. He didn't care about the danger. He only cared about the small, broken figure on the ground that was his apprentice.
A hollow, devastating realization hollowed him out from the inside. He stared at the wound, his mind flashing to his own past.
The memory of his own missing eye, the scarlet reminder of a debt he could never repay, and the agonizing realization that he was an outcast, forever marked by the very world he sought to protect.
He had promised himself, sworn in the silence of his own heart, that he would be the shield that prevented her from walking his path. He had wanted her to be a witch, to be free, not to be a sacrifice.
‘No… No, no, no… This is what I feared,’ he thought, his chest constricting with a grief so sharp it felt like a physical wound. ‘I am watching her mirror my own tragedy-!’
He pulled her into his arms, ignoring the way his own robes were soaked in the spray of his water magic and her blood.
‘She is so young, so full of a future I fought to preserve, and now she bleeds for my sake.’
He tucked her head against his chest, shielding her from the chaos of the battlefield even as his own composure threatened to fracture under the weight of his mounting panic.
‘If she loses her sight, if she is branded by this violence, the guilt will be the shadow that haunts her for the rest of her days. And… and it will be my failure.’
He was supposed to be the master who taught her to fly, who showed her the beauty of the horizon, yet here he was, failing her in the most fundamental way imaginable.
The air in the mist felt thin, suffocating, and for the first time in his life, Qifrey the witch felt entirely powerless against the inevitable cycle of tragedy he had hoped to break.