Work Text:
Hurried footsteps break Agott from her hyper-focus on re-attempting the spell in front of her. She winces as she raises to look towards the shut door, her neck and back sore from the poor posture she’s been holding since this afternoon. It hasn’t even been that long, so it could not already be time for dinner, could it?
A few more rash thumps, ones that she could not decipher their reason behind, and she tosses any possibility of returning to her work.
“Seriously, why are they so loud,” she grumbles while stretching her arms behind her. After making sure that the ink pot is properly shut—doing otherwise would be a fatal mistake ever since Coco brought home that brushbuddy—Agott sluggishly walks to the door.
For a time, Agott laments when she was the only one in the atelier with Professor Qifrey and Olruggio of the Watchful Eyes.
She had arrived in a breezy autumn day, sent alone to knock on a suspiciously shabby building in the middle of nowhere. Later, Professor Qifrey admonished Lord Beldaruit about sending her to journey towards them instead of them to pick her up at the Great Hall, but Agott had yet to know him enough to expect such an argument from him.
Embarrassingly, Agott hadn’t even knocked on the wooden door before it opens wide. Before she is greeted with even wider smiles, if a bit hesitant or awkward at first.
“Welcome!” Professor Qifrey greeted first. His cloak has been the same since those years ago, an ever constant presence like himself. “You must be Agott Arklaum, yes? Come in, come in, we’ve been expecting you!”
Agott blanched at the name. It didn’t feel right to be called that, immediately after being sent to become an apprentice. A witch’s apprentice, unlike a librarian’s to which she’d been expecting her whole life to grow up as. It was a silly thought, given that librarians are witches, but it’s one that still remains lingering atop her head.
“Just,” her voice happened to be softer than it was now, requiring the two to subconsciously lean forward to hear properly. But to Agott, it only felt like towering figures leering over, judging her for simple stumbles of the tongue. “Just Agott is fine.”
Much has changed since then, she’ll admit freely. Master Olly helped cut her hair short. She stopped wearing fuchsia as much as sea foam green. They’d tidied up the atelier, adding more rooms she initially didn’t know what for until Tetia joined them. Then, Richeh and Coco.
Outside of the window, Agott spots a neat garden that hadn’t been there when she first arrived, half-filled with crops ready for harvest. The other half is either bare or newly wet from Professor Qifrey tending to it just a few moments prior. She questions why he always chooses to do it in the peak heat of afternoons, but like many things, she doesn’t actually voice it out.
Like asking why he and Master Olly stopped sharing the same bedroom.
Laughter pierces through the wall, bringing her back to reality and her annoyance over the interruption. Her eye twitches. Silence was something they’d lost during the time since then.
As if mimicking that moment of being welcomed to the atelier from years ago, the door of Agott and Coco’s workshop slams open while her hand is hovering around the door knob. This time, it opens inwards, smacking her right in the face before she could take a second blink.
“Ow!”
A deep gasp and another burst of laughter sounds above her, louder than they were when the door was shut—Coco and Tetia. Agott groans, finally unwilling to get up and berate the source of the noise.
“I’m so sorry, Agott!!” Coco quickly says, flustering over her defeated body. “Are you alright!?”
She remains frowning with her eyes closed to fight off the sharp ache across her face. First, her neck and back, and now, her nose bridge. On top of the third test quickly approaching, Agott constantly finds herself unable to rest in a cursed building like this one.
“No, Coco,” Agott groans. “You’ve killed me.”
The deadpan statement causes Tetia to crack up laughing again. She heavily leans a hand on Richeh’s shoulders for balance, a sentence that brokenly sounds like “First of us to actually kill someone,” wheezing out of her. While Richeh may appear impassive over the whole incident, her face is clearly red with holding in her own laughter.
Coco nearly sobs, bowing widely by her side. She does it so forcefully that her forehead smacks Agott’s—a loud thunk demolishing Richeh’s poker face. “Not again– I’m so sorry!”
“Pew?” The brushbuddy panics as Richeh’s grip on him tightens. “Pew!”
It easily escapes, finding more solace towards Professor Qifrey who has finally arrived at the scene of the crime.
“I heard a noise,” he says with urgent concern, “is everything alright?”
Agott finally cracks her eyes open, though still hesitant from the pain of being ambushed by Coco. And while her vision is watery, she can easily tell the tall figure of Professor Qifrey. From her time spent studying under his wing, the action of someone observing her feels less like a cage and more like an offer for an embrace. In fact, it does remind her of something.
“Goodbye,” she says while placing a hand over her eyes. “I see an angel to take me away.”
Coco wails, though there’s no terror to it. What makes Agott freeze, however, is the way her palms touch her cheeks lightly. They’re cold in comparison, undoubtedly from having a candle close to her work and face that entire time Agott has been revising her work. Above all, they are so soft that she restrains herself from leaning too much into them.
She’ll learn to thank the stars after, because Coco doesn’t let the touch linger. Quickly shifting her hold to Agott’s shoulders, she forcibly shakes her eyes awake. “DON’T FOLLOW THE STUPID ANGEL,” Coco screams. “AGOTT, PLEASE!”
“She Agotta-go,” Tetia laughs out as she turns to Professor Qifrey. He looks at the two, absently petting their brushbuddy as if to calm himself down.
“Now Coco,” he says slowly. “Why would you call me stupid?”
His carefully dejected tone makes Agott cackle.
“Yeesh,” Master Olly stretches his lips in a wince. “I thought you were just going to get her, not beat her up for overworking.”
Coco blushes, stuttering again. “I already said I was sorry!”
Agott murmurs into the magic ice pack Coco drew for her. It has the slightest of changes from the one she made Professor Qifrey, way back when. “I wasn’t overworking…”
As they head down the stairs, Tetia skips every other step until she jumps into Master Olly’s arms on the last one. He wasn’t expecting it, which causes him to stumble backwards. “H-Hey, careful over here, I’ve got important baggage!”
With her nose covered with the cold compress, Agott almost missed the object held in one of Master Olly’s arms. It’s an ornate box, with a metallic cone sticking out from the top and gold detailing all across the sides. Given his precaution and Tetia’s uncontrolled enthusiasm, Agott can only assume that it’s a box of jewelry or rare stones he often returns home with from the north.
Only, in the corner of her eyes where her vision is free from the ice pack, Coco is equally beaming up at the item. The earlier trepidation on her face has seemingly melted away, too overpowered by the same thrill that led her to smash their door into Agott’s.
The expression is a similar one, telling Agott exactly what the box is. “Another contraption?”
Coco nods excitedly. “It’s– It’s a music box!”
Agott would raise an eyebrow, but it still hurt to move her face too much. Instead, she weakly squints her eye between the box and Coco. “It’s way too big to be a music box.”
She’s being nit-picky, because Agott knows full well that music boxes come in many shapes and sizes. In fact, there had been a large one right in the center of their living space when she first arrived. It looked like dark cherry-colored wood, though Master Olly once explained that it was just a common oak stained as such. As one of his first magical contraptions, he had been too afraid to use more expensive–
Oh.
“You don’t remember, Agott?” Professor Qifrey finally descends from their upper floors. Hanging on his outstretched arm is Richeh and the brushbuddy, swinging as if they were enjoying a day outside in the sun. “Ah, I suppose it has been some time.”
Now that Coco has motioned them closer to sit around a table, Agott is able to see the box better. It had been hard to at first—she’ll blame Coco for that—but a dark cherry hue is clearly under a layer of gray that have inevitably stained the outside of it.
‘Or did the stain fade?’ Her eyes squint further, unsure of how wood stains actually work. Ink stains are easier to expect, especially with the rest’s constant clumsiness in spilling them across their workbenches or accidentally soaking some drops on their sleeves. She would have picked up on Professor Qifrey’s preference on dark colored shirts to hide the stains, if she could endure the lasting, metallic scent of conjuring ink.
Though already dark before, the cherry used to be more vibrant. Now, it looked as dead as a, well, dead Silverwood tree.
Tetia’s jaw drops, stunned at the implications of Professor Qifrey’s question. “You mean Agott has seen this thing before?” She huffs with a frown before gently pulling the music box to trace her fingers over its engravings. “It’s so beautiful. That’s so unfair!”
“How would it be unfair? We didn’t actually use it back then,” she explains lamely. Sitting at their place at the table, Professor Qifrey and Master Olly look at each other briefly.
She says it honestly enough that it placates Tetia into rambling about the motifs decorating the box, and how important it was to have been gilded with gold. Agott doesn’t listen, too busy pointedly ignoring that matched pair of fleeting glances.
It was no full lie of hers to say that the box was more for decoration than anything else. The first few weeks of her arrival to the atelier had been so hectic of trying to figure out its rules—of which she eventually learned that there were none, other than staying safe—that it left her frustrated and quick to temper at any little comment passing her way.
Master Olly had tried to show it off, explaining why he chose dark cherry as the stain, but she became too flustered when he tried to get her to hold it.
“No– I’m gonna break it!” Agott had gotten incredibly close, curious over the fanciful item like Tetia is to jewels or Coco is to contraptions. It was a strange sight to find in the simple homeyness of an atelier at the center of nowhere.
He snorted in jest, but Agott saw it as another daunting test. “If a seven year old can easily break it, then I’m a sham of an inventor.”
“No!” She shoved the box back in Master Olly’s hands before running back to her room. Agott nearly barreled into Professor Qifrey, who was returning from the kitchen while holding three mugs of hot chocolate. At the time, she was sure that she had failed the surprise test they set out for her. Regardless of if she touched the box or not, she still ran away, too terrified to think.
At least in the cold comfort of a room they promised not to barge into, Agott could practice forcing her hands to not shake while drawing.
“Oy, pass it over.” Richeh nudges Tetia with her foot; she clearly intended it to be done covertly, but Tetia overreacts and bangs her knees on the underside of the table.
“Hey!” Tetia holds her hands down on her knee, eating up a grimace. “Don’t try to copy Coco’s thing!”
“Oops,” Richeh says. “My bad, Coco. I’ll try to be more original.”
“I already said I was sorry!” Coco cries into her palms again, her face quickly turning red. Being just at her side, Agott can see her neck getting red too.
At the realization that she was staring right at it, Agott flinches her back straight. Ahead of her, Master Olly raises an eyebrow.
‘Like you’re one to judge,’ she grumbles to herself.
Professor Qifrey laughs at the sight of them before pulling the box to face him. “You’re right, Coco, it’s a music box we used to play before, but it had gotten, ah. Lost in time, almost.”
‘Like you’re another one to judge!’ Agott screams inside. ‘You’re the one who hid it!’
The memories begin flooding back to her, saturated as if it were yesterday and their music box was still a dark yet vibrant cherry red. Among it all, she remembers the more pressing reason of why she was so hesitant to touch the thing.
“Stop,” Professor Qifrey laughed freely and openly. “Stop! You’re going to make me trip!”
Master Olly merely smirked and twirled him faster. “Move your feet, or I’ll move them for you!”
The three of them didn’t use the music box much before Professor Qifrey suddenly found the times reasonable enough to wedge it into a dark corner of one of their cupboards, but the two of them did. Silence evolved into a common thing when a pair read each other’s minds and the third refused to talk, but the faint melody coming from that old box became just as constant at nights when they assumed she fell asleep before they did.
Like scheming kids running away from their professors in the Great Hall, they would stifle their laughs and raise the volume of the music just enough to be louder than their footsteps. If she recalled correctly, the first excuse had been made by Master Olly, who requested for help in refining his waltz for an upcoming gala.
“You know I barely know how to dance,” Professor Qifrey lamented after accidentally stepping on the other’s foot for the tenth time. “I’m sorry, Olly, you should be resting–”
Master Olly cut him off with a well-natured laugh and a guided twirl. “At least I’m practicing on how to keep a straight face if I get paired with a poorer dancer.”
“I don’t think there can be a dancer any poorer than I.”
“Trust me,” he said while shuddering, clearly from an unwelcome memory. “Trust me, there will be. Also, ow–”
“Sorry!” His nervousness makes the other smile.
As the night passes and Agott is lulled close to sleep by the soft padding of their feet, their motions slow until they were unerringly standing. So close together, still in a waltz hold, but teetering towards a closer embrace. If Agott had been less awake that night, she would have missed the way they whispered between themselves.
“You should join me. Just like old times.”
“No,” Professor Qifrey replied at first without any elaboration. Master Olly appeared content by his reply, almost as if he wholly expected nothing else. Yet, there was something larger clawing between them, and he continued to fill the silence with an excuse. “No, we can’t leave Agott alone here.”
Between them, he would always be the first to separate himself from the waltz hold.
Master Olly shifted his eyes downward, missing the chance to give a proper bow as one does to their dancing partner. “I understand.”
Presently, the box has returned to its spot in the common room, even if its surroundings have changed with time and three new occupants. Professor Qifrey carefully opens the box with practiced movements, having done it a hundred times before. Everyone watches with a bated breath, even Master Olly, leaning over to see what’s inside.
Everyone, except two.
A poke very, very slowly taps Agott’s side. Coco must have seen how exaggerated Tetia’s reaction to Richeh trying to get her attention had been, and wanted to be extra cautious.
Wordlessly, Agott lends her her ear. The whisper tickles on her skin.
“How come Professor Qifrey and Master Olly keep looking at each other like that?”
Agott whirls her head towards her. It’s a motion everyone else misses over their astonishment on the carefully drawn seals intact inside the box—and one she personally regrets herself. One, for not being able to also see the insides of contraption, another quiet sign of genius Master Olly developed on his own.
And two, for having to face Coco’s wide, dazzling, and innocent pair of eyes.
Agott swiftly presses the cold compress back to her nose, finding it incredibly hot again. “No reason,” she hisses a whisper out. “Don’t question it.”
Only the stars know how much she’s agonized over the same question.
“…and the notch over here,” Master Olly explains with a pause to point at a component of the music box, “makes sure that the tone doesn’t distort through the wood or the cone. It only has five specific songs, unless I’d want to transcribe new sheets into it.”
Trying to keep her head blank, she listens into Master Olly’s impromptu lecture on balancing contraption materials with the appropriate network of drawn spells. He explains it so easily, that it’s hard to believe that he didn’t simply wake up one day with the idea fresh from his dream and instantly jotted it down in a jewelry box he happened to have.
As if reading her mind, Master Olly lifts his head up to wag a finger at the girls. “It’s hell of a work, so don’t think I pulled this one out of my ass, girls.”
“Olly!” Professor Qifrey reprimands him with his ‘teacher tone’ typically reserved for them.
“Sorry,” he says disingenuously. “Out of my butt.”
Richeh snorts before asking the question heavy on the girls’ minds. “Who’d you make it for?”
Despite the question being evidently shared around the table, Master Olly looks at her, confused. “Huh?”
“I mean,” Coco continues for her, “why do we have it instead of whoever commissioned it? Usually my mom keeps– kept her drafts and mock-ups, but this seems like the final version.” She drifts a fingernail across the, albeit dulled-colored, outer walls of the music box. Coco must be thinking about her mom from seeing the delicate craftsmanship of Master Olly’s contraption. “You’ve mentioned it before too, I think. It’s so unique, unlike the link rings or the glowing path we use constantly.”
“Ah, y’see.” Master Olly coughed into his first. “The one who requested for it coincidentally lives here as well.”
At that, everyone turns to Professor Qifrey simultaneously. He blushes, flustered at the sudden attention being thrown up on him. “W-Well! I didn’t exactly request it per se–”
Richeh gasps. “Master Olly, did you make Professor Qifrey pay for something like this?”
“So that’s why you two still live together,” Tetia says with a laugh. Her ominous phrasing makes the pair pale. “You’ve been trying to pay back your debt to Master Olly!”
“Hey! Do you see me as a scam artist–”
Master Olly launches a tickle attack to Tetia, who ends up bumping her knee harshly on the table again. “Ow, c’mon! Ease up on the Coco plagiarism– Pfft– stop!”
Agott leans back, ending up closer to Coco’s side. Under her breath, she can hear her mutter while also keeping her laughter inward, “I genuinely didn’t know she was about to leave when I did it.”
“Alright, alright,” Master Olly raises his arms up in surrender. “You need to tell me what happened earli–”
A sly look shared between Tetia and Richeh is the only warning given before they launch themselves to his sides and choke him with rapid tickling. “Get wrekt, old man!”
“Pff– Ahaha!” Master Olly falls over, trying to hug himself tighter to block their attack. The two of them are highly skilled, however, and it does little to assuage the tiny fingers digging into his stomach. “Time out, time out! Qifrey– Qifrey help me!”
Agott pushes Coco and the music box a bit further away from the commotion, so that they aren’t caught up as collateral. She’s laughing, no longer tentative from briefly mentioning her mom.
However, there’s one person in their atelier who isn’t smiling as genuinely.
With his hands clasped together as they frequently do, Professor Qifrey holds a strained smile that almost matches the jolly of everyone else. Almost, if you weren’t paying too close of an attention like Agott did.
Glancing at the box kept safe in Coco’s hands, Agott faintly recalls what Tetia mentioned just earlier. Its design was based both on Master Olly’s hometown, the northern town of Ghodrey, and the Great Hall. Which, if you squint, is technically Professor Qifrey’s. The flowing, golden frame on the box had been weaved it a way of a union between the two. A Pact. Alike in one, where the two sets of motifs have always been used together.
So, why stain it dark cherry red, when the Great Hall is unfailingly washed with silvers and blues while Ghodrey in olive greens?
‘Because it used to be Professor Qifrey’s favorite fruit,’ Agott nauseously answers herself.
It became an odd coincidence as well, on why the man who loved devouring on the bunches of cherries Master Olly brought home from his field work unexpectedly stops at the same moment that box went missing.
Agott squints her eyes at him for the fifth time that day. ‘Suspicious…’
The second excuse used to open the music box was one he carefully orchestrated. It’s an interesting disparity between them, because where Master Olly simply needed to pull the other close to start a waltz, the other specifically planned and timed it on top of their other activities in the atelier. Where one had spontaneity, the other had build up.
“Didn’t you cook dinner already?” Master Olly asked while patting his hair dry with a towel. It’s true, they had already eaten a meal together just a few moments prior. Before they had two separate tables, one for the pair and the other for the girls, they only had one. It made it easier for either of them to sneak more food onto Agott’s plate.
“Yes, well,” Professor Qifrey said lazily, unlike his energetic morning voice used to encourage Agott in her studies. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Agott watched Master Olly narrow the distance between them, until they were practically touching, from her hidden spot by the stairs. She had also been drawn by the smell of roasted carapace yams and cheese, if only because she forgot to close her door before pressing her face on her covers.
Seeing the two of them talk so lowly again, she hesitates. Professor Qifrey did have the tendency to spend quiet nights preparing meals for the two of them. Though, it was usually in dawn mornings as opposed to midnights such as this one. He cooked a large portion, appropriate for maybe five people, but the scene looked too intimate for her to interrupt.
“You’re fattening me up,” Master Olly sighed while placing his chin on the crook of Professor Qifrey’s shoulder. Agott quietly snorts when he uses the other’s hair to further wipe the damp out of his. “Not fair.”
His hands raised only to abruptly stop and fall to his sides, as if he planned on embracing Professor Qifrey’s stomach before thinking better.
‘Ew,’ Agott blanched and quickly shifts her weight to her other foot to run back upstairs. ‘Definitely should not be here for this.’
Yet, she froze at Professor Qifrey’s evening suggestion. Agott had, after all, gotten soft over the pleasant music from the box. From her spot on the staircase, it was easy to see the way he pinched the other man’s arm. “How about a dance? To shave off that weight.”
Maybe in some other moment of Agott’s life, she would have expected Master Olly to say no. To say that he was tired—because, let’s face it, he always is—and he’d rather have the quick midnight snack before heading to bed. But by this time, Agott had gotten fairly close to the pair and can sense the knowing they sent each other through their eyes.
The song they played that night was much faster than a waltz, sharp with beats and loud if their laughs hadn’t been the ones to cover the magically-produced strings and drums. Even Agott began tapping her feet by the staircase, keen to see how the song progressed from there.
Their dance felt like one they practiced constantly; the often foot-stepping Professor Qifrey committed to his dancing partner had vanished, replaced by a more confident, effortless glide across the room. Master Olly kept his eyes leveled, in no manner stiff or uptight one needed to be for a formal waltz. This time, he followed the other with their fingers intertwined.
With only Professor Qifrey still wearing his cloak and the pair swirling around like on a roundabout, it billowed around them in encirclement. Their eyes sparkled, if only for themselves.
The music box can only play a song on loop, so it did end up being a sharp change of pace when they chose to eat with it still running in the background. Once they sat, the yam and cheese were cold yet neither complained. They fixed up the extra portions into boxes for the following day before even touching their plates.
“This would taste really good with cherries,” Professor Qifrey sighed with longing.
Master Olly sprinkled a bit more cheese into his and took a fuller bite. “Really? Then I’ll pick some up again when I go out to the Great Hall.”
“Oh Olly, you don’t need to do that on my account. I’ll just purchase some at Kalhn.”
“But they don’t have those dark red ones, do they?” He rolled his eyes, as if it were an obvious thing to say in response. “I know you like them better than the brighter ones.”
However, Professor Qifrey totally didn’t expect it. “What? How did you know I like them more?”
Master Olly snorted while taking another spoonful of his plate. “Do you think me for a fool? You only eat the dark cherries at when we visit Lord Beldaruit. It’s why I stained the box the same color, y’know.” He fiddled with the back of his hair, now dry after their tossing and dancing.
And the moment that comes from it—Agott is sure. It’s the first time she spotted Professor Qifrey absolutely confused over something related to Master Olly. Because gone were shared glances they fully knew the meaning behind, replaced by a repeated question that only garners a raised eyebrow and a simpler reply.
“What?”
“I made it for you, so obviously it should be in a color you like.”
When Agott blinks out of the memory, she finds Coco way too close and staring back at her. She inhales sharply, flinching away like she touched something hot. Her face certainly feels hot.
“Did you have a flashback?”
Agott feels the hotness spreading in her face. She only hopes to the stars that it doesn’t reach her neck and Coco happens to see. “Don’t say stupid things!”
Coco sticks out her tongue and shimmies her way closer to whisper with a hand covering the both of them. “Come on, tell me! I found the box and showed Master Olly– and he was so excited! But when I told Professor Qifrey, he turned sooo pale. Look at him, he’s barely even smiling!”
The deep feeling of jealousy begins bubbling up again in her stomach, until Agott realizes its presence and viciously stomps it down. So what if Coco has learned to read their two guardians faster than Agott had in the past? Both Tetia and Richeh had done so as well!
True to her words, the rest has moved on from the 2-v-1 tickle battle between themselves. The music box is playing the waltz, while Master Olly corrects Tetia’s and Richeh’s form on a common witch dance. Professor Qifrey, however, merely sits to the side. The brushbuddy is purring into his thumb, but he doesn’t pet him back.
He looks sad.
‘Ughhh,’ Agott groans. ‘It’s exactly like last time.’
The third and final excuse to use the music box had been close to some time in summer, just before they welcomed Tetia into the atelier. It was so hectic that she wondered if they had been this messy in anticipation for her—and how they could have possibly survived through it with just the two of them. It also became so hectic that they held back their habit of midnight dances.
Instead, Master Olly would just leave it playing in the background, trying to fill the busy silences lingering in the air. Agott was comforted by it as it lulled her to rest better than any dream could. She could even hear it through her sleep, at many times.
That is, until it disappeared one day.
“Where’s–” Master Olly stumbled into the common room, waking up in the late afternoon after finally finishing his mountain of work for the Golden Eve festival. Even though it had been months away, the Wise of Friendship brought the typical deadline much closer in preparation. He even personally requested for Master Olly’s work, after gaining more fame from his submitted inventions to a reputable competition.
It ended up being a whirlwind of events in the atelier, and one that fascinate Agott to secretly observe how Master Olly conceptualized and created his contraptions. She easily got bored, however, when it simply entailed was waking up, eating Professor Qifrey’s meals, staring out into the sunset, rushing pages of spell work so fast that she couldn’t catch what he was doing, then falling asleep quickly after. The routine felt odd, as if descending into disappointment when he realizes that the chance to dance had passed and all he could do now was go to sleep.
“Where’s the music box?” At this moment, Agott had been sitting on the couch with the fireplace lit at her side to illuminate the seal she was trying to perfect. The next test—though Professor Qifrey kept saying that would be years away—would require her to draw without a desk supporting her, so she planned on practicing constantly on her lap.
“I dunno,” Agott huffed when Master Olly collapsed on the couch, causing her lines to wobble. “Aren’t you the one who uses it?”
Master Olly apologized for the mess. He tucked his legs into himself and brought a blanket to encase himself with, as if he was planning to continue his hours-long nap. “Qifrey uses it too. Where is it now?”
Lifting his head up, Professor Qifrey had a conflicted look on his face. Agott knew it was partially because he didn’t actually use it since the last time they talked about cherries over carapace yams and cheese. Another reason—was because he was the one to put it away. Not that Agott will admit that fact for him.
“I’m not sure,” he said before swiftly returning to his work. They were sketches, but not of spells for Agott’s lessons. Professor Qifrey used graphite and regular ink to re-draw mock-ups of an apprentice attire. “Sorry, I’m– busy.”
Master Olly shrugged, not wanting to be too much of an intrusion to Professor Qifrey’s growing mountain of work for their next apprentice. “‘Dunno, it’s easier to sleep with it on…” He said that, but he’s snoring as soon as the words leave him.
As she stretched her fingers, Agott softly laughed at their Watchful Eye’s behavior. “Why’d he even come out if he’s just going to sleep again,” Agott joked to Professor Qifrey.
On a usual day, he would respond with a fond laugh and a comment like Oh, you know Olly. He doesn’t want us to feel lonely. Or He really can’t help himself—but this should show you just how important a proper night’s rest is! What time did you fall asleep yesterday?
But from Master Olly’s notice of the box disappearing, Professor Qifrey kept quiet. He looked sad, which made Agott see him as a hypocrite.
Eventually, Tetia arrived in the atelier and the silence from the box’s absence was replaced by her laughter. It didn’t stop Master Olly subconsciously seeking it out, but he never outwardly said anything aside from humming some of the melodies from the songs he etched into them. To someone like Tetia, the box neither existed nor was something to miss.
One night, instead of their previous tradition of dancing with Agott watching over, she listened in on their conversation with a bated breath.
“Ah, Olly, sorry, but can we talk about our sleeping arrangements…”
“No, I know what you’re about to say–” She couldn’t see them directly, being in the restroom while brushing her teeth, but she could sense an argument brewing from miles away. “I snore too much, don’t I?”
Well, an argument might have been the case, if Professor Qifrey, Master Olly, and having a fight hadn’t been an odd trio to begin with. Even when Master Olly left behind messes for Professor Qifrey to clean up when he gains a flash of inspiration, or when the other accidentally threw out his emergency supply of snacks, the two never argued. They never raised their voices to target it towards each other.
Professor Qifrey didn’t answer immediately, as if he were recollecting his thoughts and adjusting his steps around the man in front of him. “No, that would be a stupid reason. It isn’t that, it’s– It’s just.” Agott heard rustling of cloaks through the door, and she nearly barfed at the thought that they could have gotten closer to each other for him to explain it. “It might be better for all of us if we slept in separate beds.”
“Holy smokes,” Agott swore. “Did they just break up?”
‘Well,’ Agott thinks in the present, ‘I said that, but what’s been happening now…?’
They didn’t just stop with Tetia, but continued to invite Richeh and Coco to the atelier too. They added a new garden, they adjusted each other’s cloaks for things they could have missed, and they suggest new recipes to try in their free time. Master Olly still brings home dark cherries, though Richeh ends up devouring the bunches before Professor Qifrey could even catch a glimpse of them.
At the Great Hall after their second test, Master Olly vehemently refused to leave the other’s side until Sinocia coaxed him with the logic of getting his spectacles fixed. Once they’ve all arrived home since then, they had a discussion outside—and enjoyed a bit of the Passage of Stars together without calling the girls.
So why the separate bedrooms? And the long, dejected face on Professor Qifrey?
“Agott!” Coco calls out with a beaming smile. It makes her cheeks redden again, though she tries to hide it with her sleeve. Coco laughs harder and tries to pull the palms away and into her own grasp. “C’mon, let’s dance!”
In her whirling thoughts, she’d missed the way that everyone began dancing in pairs. Even the brushbuddy is swaying to the velvety melody of the song, sitting atop Richeh’s head who twirls Tetia around. Professor Qifrey and Master Olly also dance, though with a looser hold.
Coco pulls her up, still giggling as she stumbles after her. In a whisper, she admits, “I have a plan to get Professor Qifrey smiling again. Do you wanna join in?”
Slightly smirking, Agott rightens herself up in her position as a dance partner. “Obviously.”
It wouldn’t take much. The music box has a fourth song, after all.
While no one’s looking, Coco smoothly sets the music box from a waltz to a slow dance. With the mechanism Master Olly put in place, it transitions without a skip in any beat.
Richeh and Tetia spin to a stop, throwing themselves onto the cushions laid on the floor. They heave a few breaths, bodies sore from the dancing, and holler at the two remaining pairs at the dance floor. Tetia gives an encouraging whoop. “Battle it out!!”
“Fuck them up, Coco!”
“Richeh!” In Professor Qifrey’s place, Master Olly admonishes the swear. “I did not teach her that one.”
“Hm?”
Professor Qifrey tightens his grip. The subtle, albeit aggressively-charged, motion makes Coco giggle into Agott’s ear again. “It’s working…”
“Hey.” Coco sends a hum towards her, signifying she was listening. But it still ignored the larger issue with her so-called plan to get their professor to smile. “Why are we still dancing?” Agott carefully restricts herself from curling her fingers as heavily as Professor Qifrey seems to be doing. She lets Coco guide their feet in slow steps along with the song.
Coco tilts her head in a cute– no! Not cute! In a so not cute way, because it usually implies that she’s about to make trouble for the rest of them! “If we stop, then they’ll stop. Look at them, they’re so perfect together.”
Agott returns her focus to Master Olly and Professor Qifrey, who are now gazing into each other’s eyes—or eye—as if they were the last persons on earth. ‘What are we, chopped liver?’
Professor Qifrey lowers an arm to Master Olly’s waist, which brings their bodies closer than ever before. If she strains her ears, she could possibly hear them whispering It’s been a while since we’ve done this, huh?
She doesn’t, though. ‘Let’s just. Leave them be for now…’
“Let’s give them a mix of company and privacy, is what I’d say.” Echoing her thoughts, Coco pokes her hand to unwind them, then fixates her own fingers to weave alternately with Agott’s. “And I am sorry about the door earlier. I just got really excited to show it to you, but I guess you’ve already seen it before?”
Their hands link as one. Ink stains from when she was practicing her seals have transferred to Coco’s, but her dancing partner pays no attention to it.
“I wasn’t lying,” Agott grumbles.
“Hm?”
She has never admitted this fact to anyone else, but she begins to find Coco someone worthy to know. “I wasn’t lying when I said that we didn’t use it that much. This is my first time dancing to it.”
Coco grins and Agott wants to pinch herself. “Let’s enjoy all its songs, then.”
“What’s gotten you in a rut?” Olruggio frowned at Qifrey. His friend tightly held a cushion over his ears, his fingers pale from how hard he was holding the thing. Off to the side is an abandoned pile of papers, which have ruined and wobbly spells drawn over them.
His reply came out muffled, but Olruggio’s able to decipher it easily. As the others tend to say, he’s a bit prideful to be the only Qifrey-whisperer around. “Beldaruit’s playing that horrible, shrilly song again. Can’t you hear it?”
“His songs really do suck. They’re like, old man music.” In truth, he couldn’t actually tell that the song was playing or from where; Qifrey had always been the one between them who had more sensitive ears. And while he promised to tell no lies, Olruggio is a bit of a hypocrite too. “Actually, I think all music sounds bad under the sea.”
“Really?” Qifrey kept the cushion over his ears, but he turned just enough for his eye to be peeking out and staring into Olruggio’s. “There are some songs I actually like here…”
“Oh. Well,” he coughs into his fist. “like what songs?”
“How about the one you sing sometimes?”
“I don’t sing,” Olruggio straightened immediately. His face felt warm, considering the thought of having his singing be one of the few things Qifrey liked hearing.
He snorted at the strange reaction. “How about the time at the salt-water bath?”
At that, Olruggio blushed for a completely different reason. “I didn’t know that the bath echoes!”
“You should,” Qifrey hid his eye again under the cushion, though his ears were also red, “sing it again. I like hearing it.”