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The storm comes on fast, and soon it is too dangerous even to fly.
There had been no indication of snow, save perhaps the clear dampness Olruggio had tasted on the air when they’d first stepped from the atelier that morning. I should’ve made note of it , he thinks grimly, remembering the ominous slate-grey sky, the way the sun had been little more than a faint glow shrouded in clouds. I should have known.
“I should’ve known, I should’ve known, I should’ve known,” he hisses now, breath clouding in the cold air. Olruggio knows how the sky looks when a blizzard is on the way, the way the clouds change—even how the air sits heavy on his tongue. He screwed up, too busy joking with the girls out the door, bribing them with the promise of fresh-baked sweets upon returning home if they promised to stay focused in the shops. He was too distracted teasing Qifrey about making it a quick journey, in and out, “the girls have their work to finish; we shouldn’t be out for too long, y’know.”
The signs of an encroaching snowstorm are familiar to Olruggio as the weight of his cloak over his shoulders, the sweet burn of chamomile tea, and the smell of curling smoke—yet somehow, none of it had registered the way it should’ve.
And now his body feels like it’s humming, quivering somewhere deep inside like a glass about to shatter. He needs to move, to do something. If he keeps moving, his blood cannot freeze, a voice whispers in him. So keep moving.
He takes to pacing, back and forth across the length of the cave they’ve sheltered in. Back and forth, back and forth. To one side the yawning darkness of the cavern, the scratch of a pen as Qifrey shows the girls how to alter a fire glyph to emit more heat; to the other, the thin crack in the earth they had crawled through, now a sliver of blinding white against the dark walls. Drifts of snow are beginning to pile at the foot of the opening, blown over the stone like powdered sugar.
Goddamnit.
Olruggio whirls on his heel, resuming his furious march. There’s a sick feeling twisting in his gut, making his skin crawl with something resembling shame. He should be the one doing this spellwork—it’s what he’s good at—what he’s best at, even! But after stumbling into the cave, his hands had shook so badly he could barely hold his pen, the metal clumsy and unfamiliar in his gloved fingers. With each trembling stroke of ink Olruggio had only managed to ruin what little paper he had.
He had to do this one thing—he needed to do this one thing, and he couldn’t. All these years, these decades, and sometimes Olruggio still feels like he never left Ghodrey. He has never been able to redeem himself.
It’s just from the cold, he had assured Qifrey, tearing a fourth failed glyph from his notebook. Just the cold.
But his heart was thrumming in a way that filled his entire throat, pressing against his tongue until he could barely speak. And as Olruggio fumbled his way through the spell, fumbled his way through excuses and explanations, he knew that it wouldn’t matter. Qifrey could always see through him, and Olly had never been a very good liar, anyway.
As if proving his thoughts, Qifrey had squinted pointedly down at Olruggio’s gloves and laid a single, gentle palm over his knuckles. Olruggio’s pen clattered lamely to the ground. He stared up at Qifrey, cold stone digging painfully into his knees, and felt like a child caught in a lie.
We’ll get you some new gloves, Qifrey had said, squeezing Olly’s hand. Once this is all over and we’re back home.
And so Qifrey had taken the girls to work on the fire, and Olruggio took to pacing. Embarrassment worms through him over the mishap with the spell, over the way he’s been steadily coming undone. And in front of the girls, nonetheless! Olruggio is an adult, one of their guardians, even. The very least he could do was put on a show of bravery for them.
But no: barely ten minutes into the storm, now, and Olruggio is already feeling choked and frantic. He just needs to get it together! Get his head back on his shoulders and relax. It wouldn’t do to worry Qifrey, or even worse, the girls. They are surely scared enough right now. He walks faster, the rhythm of it taking his mind from the agitated squeeze of his chest. His heart races so fast you’d think he had run all the way here from the atelier. You’d think he was dying.
It’s fine, though. He’s fine, the girls are fine, Qifrey’s fine. They’re all fine, and—
His boot slips on the damp floor, and slides, and Olruggio’s falling before he narrowly catches himself against the wall. His wrist slams painfully into stone, feet almost falling out from under him. “Son of a bitch —”
There’s a clatter somewhere behind him, and the ambient chatter of the girls’ voices abruptly quiets.
Shit.
“Olly?” Qifrey calls, his voice pitching strangely as it echoes over stone. “Are you alright?”
Olruggio hisses, shaking the pins-and-needles from his hand. With a final wary look at the cave entrance, he retreats further into the cavern, minding his steps this time.
The space swells with light as he reaches Qifrey and the girls, the slick, frost-speckled walls glittering like gold dust. Olruggio flexes his numb hands, relaxing slightly as the cave noticeably warms. Ahead, Qifrey sits perched elegantly on a low stone. The witch's white skirts are gathered up around him as he extends his hands over the small fire, which spits little tongues of light where it bobs in the air. The girls are similarly huddled together as close as they can to the spell, their boots nearly at risk of being singed.
With a heavy sigh, Olruggio lowers himself to sit beside Qifrey. The cold ground immediately starts to seep through his cloak. He shifts uncomfortably and shuffles even closer to the fire, absently rubbing his wrist.
Qifrey tilts his head, the unanswered question lingering in the air.
Shit, he’d never responded! He was more scattered than he’d thought.
“I—” Olruggio starts, voice catching in his throat. He swallows, tries again, and throws in a smile for good measure. He knows it doesn’t reach his eyes, feeling the awkward way it stretches over his face. With the girls as an audience, though, Qifrey might just let it slide. “Nothing, nothing. Just slipped on the floor a bit, is all. Nothin’ to worry yourself about.”
Qifrey lips press into a thin smile, the fire making his eye waver and gleam—sky blue stained the color of honey. “And before that?”
Olruggio starts to scrub his hands over his jaw before realizing how incriminating that looks, instead folding them casually at his sides. Definitely. Definitely casual.
“Before that I was fine too. Just… just startled by it all, I guess. Wasn’t exactly expectin’ to end up hidin' in a cave today, hah!” The forced laugh reverbs loudly off the walls, making the girls look up from their whispers with wide eyes.
For a long moment Qifrey continues to stare at him, his eye searching over the rim of his glasses.
“Okay,” he finally says, so soft it doesn’t even echo. “As long as you are alright.”
Olruggio nods, letting his gaze fall to the fire. Taking the coward's way out, isn’t he? He can’t help it, though—sometimes Qifrey’s probing stares feel like being pinned beneath a magnifying glass. Incisive is a good word for it; he feels like being cut open.
Letting himself be taken care of isn’t something Olruggio is particularly used to. The whole thing really does feel strange, like he’s an animal lying belly-up or a tree with its bark peeled back: over-exposed, unable to shake the discomforting feeling that he’s been tricked into doing something innately wrong. It doesn’t come naturally to give himself up to another’s keeping—the act feels like a failure on his part, somehow, like he’s fallen short of some abstract task. He supposes that’s the Watchful Eye of it all—better suited for extending his own hand than for leaning on another’s.
And as if to echo his thoughts there’s suddenly a hand on his arm, and Olruggio nearly startles out of his skin. Barely reining in a full-body shiver he glances sidelong at Qifrey, who he finds staring daggers into the cavern wall before them, his mouth twisted in thought. Oh —of course. Of course, of course Qifrey would be all—tied up in knots about this, about everything. The storm, the girls, Olruggio, the cave. Qifrey forced underground is more fish out of water than anything.
Gently, Olruggio lays his hand over Qifrey’s, tight enough that the numbness in his fingers almost starts to fade. He wishes then with a sudden, desperate ache that they weren’t wearing gloves—though in weather like this, such a thought is only a quick way to lose your fingers.
Heavens. Weather like this. The real danger of weather like this is that it puts Olruggio in mind of things he’d rather forget: frozen skin and frostbite-blackened hands and the horrible, deadened silence of a town that had always sung loud with life. Olruggio was…eight then, he thinks. Barely even apprentice-aged, having been ushered off to the first test far earlier than most. He was younger than their girls are now.
It’s a terrible, sobering realization, and not one he wants to be having right now. But the thought cuts into him anyway—and Olruggio knows how painful remembering can be, yet in this moment it all feels so much worse than usual.
Jeez, he thinks, trying to stain his thoughts with some sort of levity. He runs his hand up Qifrey’s arm to the junction of his neck, and back down and up and down again. It’s fine. They will be fine, he repeats to himself and staunchly ignores the childish part of him that desperately wants to hold Qifrey’s hand right now, gloves and audience be damned.
Oh, and that reminds him: he waves a hand, getting the apprentices’ attention.
“Girls, gloves stay on. And I know it sounds silly, but the warmest place to keep your hands is in your armpits. Cross your arms like—yeah, yeah, like that. And keep it that way—I don’t wanna see any of you losin’ any fingers.”
Tetia turns a bit green at that. “Can that—can that really happen, Professor?” She looks wide-eyed back and forth between Qifrey and Olruggio.
Qifrey gives Olruggio a look , before leveling a bright smile at the kids. “Our Olruggio likes to keep us all safe—so listen to him and stay warm, girls! We are going to be perfectly fine here.”
Riche fiddles with the hem of her winter cloak, drawing her mittened hands back and forth over the fur lining. “How long are we going to be here?” she asks, pale face twisting into a slight frown. Her long hair bunches up around her face, half of it plastered under a scarf, and Olruggio is reminded again and again how small all of their girls are. They’re just kids, and—and then the wind wails angrily outside, and he is reminded further just how little the world cares about something like that.
Coco nods vehemently, her own hands clasped tight over her raised knees. “But it won’t be for too long, right? Just until the sky clears up.”
“Yes,” Qifrey smiles reassuringly. He is so good at this, at being reassuring despite whatever dangers lie at hand. “Once the storm has calmed enough to travel without risk, we will be on our way. And until then, Olruggio is right: I want you girls to stay together and stay warm. We simply have to outlast the snowfall.”
Olruggio nods numbly, internally scrambling to find some of the confidence and calm he would be exhibiting now were they in any other situation. Qifrey says ‘outlast the snowfall’ like it’s a straightforward, given thing. He says it with such surety and ease, as if storms like this cannot drag on for days—for weeks. As if they are not currently being rapidly entombed in a small slit in the earth, with no food or provisions, four children, and no one outside even aware that they’re missing.
He will not voice this, though. The girl's current absence of fear is a fine, precarious thing; Olruggio will not jeopardize their peace of mind all due to the lack of his own. He sees the way Tetia twirls the buttons of her cloak around and around; the way Coco whispers fervently to Riche; the way Agott has buried herself in her notebook, likely replicating the spell Qifrey demonstrated to them until she can do it eyes-closed. They are all so clearly nervous and trying very hard to act otherwise, to prove to their professors that they aren’t so childish as to be scared of a storm.
Okay, okay. Okay. Despite it all, this is a situation that Olruggio is adept at dealing with: easing the troubles of his family and banishing the cold.
It only takes a few moments of fumbling through his sleeves and pockets, and Olruggio’s hands are overflowing with snugstones. Oh. Perhaps… perhaps he’d gone a bit overboard before leaving this morning. It’s hardly his fault, though! There’s nothing worse than tramping through an outdoor market when you’re freezing, especially if you’re a child (or predisposed to running cold, in Qifrey’s case).
Olruggio puts on a good show of being thick-faced as he begins passing out the dozens of stones, gruffly ignoring the laughter it elicits from their little group. In the end, there is enough for two each; at the sickeningly fond look Qifrey gives him in thanks, Olruggio decides that the extras still tucked in his sleeves will remain there. There’s only so much teasing he can take, really! He at least needs to pretend at stoicism.
“Oh, thank you, Professor!” Tetia beams, promptly shoving them into her gloves. The other girls echo her sentiment, their chorus of giggles and thank-yous dancing around the room.
Olruggio releases a held breath, allowing himself to relax somewhat. His heart still thumps uncomfortably close to his throat, his chest tighter than it should be, but he feels mildly better now that he’s been able to do something for everyone. It feels like a small shift back towards their usual normalcy.
Once again Olruggio feels a hand snake around his wrist. He turns, meeting one of Qifrey’s soft smiles. They’re all fine, they’re all safe. With sharp precision Olruggio stamps down the images lurking at the back of his mind, pressing against his thoughts with ice-hewn claws: images of Qifrey and the girls buried in snow, lips bleached blue.
And then Qifrey shivers—of course, it’s freezing in here—and for a moment the deep, irrational fear Olruggio has been battling all day boils up within him.
“Shit, Qifrey!” Olruggio says, unthinking about watching his language in front of the girls, unthinking of anything, really, and promptly pulls Qifrey tight against his side. After a moment of fumbling the two are both bundled snuggly into Olruggio’s heavy robes.
Qifrey flounders for a moment in the dark fabric, scrabbling in Olly’s grasp and accidentally elbowing him hard in the ribs.
“ Oof , jeez! You’re built like a bundle of sticks, Qif, watch where you put those things!”
“I’m sorry, sorry!” Qifrey cries, looking terribly agitated. “It was an accident, Olly, I—ah—may I ask why….?”
Ohhh. Ah. Olruggio feels his face flush, and hunkers further into his hood to hide it. He ignores the near-constant laughter of the girls now, electing not to chide them on respecting their elders.
“It’s really easy to freeze to death, y’know,” Olruggio eventually mutters, sounding serious enough that everyone immediately quiets around him. His voice patters metallically over the cavern walls, echoing, echoing, lingering over the stone and the girl’s wide-eyed faces like a spray of snowfall. Qifrey shifts beside him, the other witch’s head tilting to look at Olly.
“It— it’s as easy as fallin’ asleep, sometimes,” Olruggio continues, looking carefully between Qifrey and each girl in turn. This is important. It is something they must understand. “You lay down and just don’t get back up. The cold makes you drowsy when it’s bad enough, and you think, ‘Ah, well, if I’m sleepin’ then I won’t feel it for a bit!’ But that’s the problem. You go to sleep, and you—you don’t—”
“...Don’t get back up,” Qifrey supplies. His words puff little bursts of warm air over Olruggio’s neck, and he shivers, pulling his cloak tighter around them.
“Mn. Yeah,” he says, throat tight. “S’just like that.”
Qifrey hums, pressing even closer against Olruggio’s shoulder. “I understand. So that’s why…?”
Oh, stars . Olruggio groans, halfway embarrassed but mostly still just scared. “ Damn. Yeah, I—yeah. I’m sorry. Body heat helps, though, and I didn’t want you fallin’ asleep over there and—well. I dunno. Just didn’t want that.” He looks up at the girls, then, leveling a finger at them. “Same goes for you: it’s good that you’re all huddled up like that, so keep it that way. And if you at all start losin’ feeling in any of your hands or feet or anything, you tell us. Got it?”
The girls all nod hurriedly, looking properly fearful. Not too scared, though, Olruggio thinks; just enough that they understand what kind of situation they’re dealing with. It’s good to reassure them, to ease their anxieties, but letting them misunderstand exactly how serious things are might only risk hurting them down the line.
It’s good. They’re all good, Olruggio reminds himself for the nth time. His own worry has begun to grate at his mind despite all the safeties and counter-measures they’ve put to use. A part of him is still poised in terrified anticipation, anxiously waiting for the shoe to drop. The more he thinks of it and categorizes how his body keeps betraying its fear, the worse it all gets.
Slowly, the room settles into silence, everyone turning to their own thoughts. Slowly, Olruggio feels himself start to unravel.
Olruggio’s heart drums and drums, swallowing him, and soon he can barely breathe around the weight of everything. The cold air burns his lungs with every tight, stuttered breath he forces down. Qifrey is warm next to him, burning, practically, though Olly knows the sensation is just a trick of his strung-out mind. But warm means alive, and that is all that matters right now. He swallows, and his throat has never been so dry—it’s a wonder he can even breathe, he thinks.
His hands fiddle in his sleeves, gloves rendering them stiff and clumsy. He spins one of the extra snugstones around and around and around, smoothing his fingers over the edges of it, over the careful, fine lines of the spell he’d etched into its face. It’s been, what, an hour? Two? Or maybe only half a clock mark. Or maybe even more time has elapsed—Olruggio can’t tell in the strange silent half-light of the cave, the entrance still only displaying an indistinguishable curtain of white. They could be here forever, he thinks, suddenly feeling sick.
Desperate to ignore the distressed twisting in his stomach, Olruggio shoves another snugstone into Qifrey’s hands. The sudden movement startles the other man from what must’ve been near-sleep. Stars, and now Olruggio feels embarrassed on top of it all. He burrows deeper into his cloak, feeling very much like the noble ladies from the houses that commission him—hiding coyly behind fans and trailing sleeves.
Qifrey’s hands fumble around the stone for a moment before trying to tuck it back into Olruggio’s sleeve. Olly quickly swats him away.
Hand over his mouth, Qifrey laughs softly as he gestures at the small pile already arranged in his lap. “Wherever do you keep getting these, Olly? No wonder your robes are so heavy!” He pokes Olruggio’s velvet-clad shoulder good-naturedly.
Even in the dark Olruggio can hear the way Qifrey’s voice colors with a smile, and it makes something in him begin to relax.
He stretches his legs out, having long since gone numb on the hard floor—which is fine. He tries, very consciously, not to worry about it. “Ah, well. I’ve usually got a bunch on me. Can never predict when you’ll need one, y’know?”
(Talking like this is good. It almost makes him forget the way his throat keeps tightening with false suffocation. And most distractingly wonderful of all is the soft press of Qifrey next to him, solid and warm in a way that’s near heavenly.)
“Mm, I suppose,” Qifrey relents. A sly look crosses his face, then, and suddenly Olruggio feels very, very worried— “It’s wonderfully sweet of you, Olruggio dear. I struggle to imagine how any of us would get on without you caring for us.”
Olruggio splutters, his face burning. “Sweet! I’m not—not that sweet, at least. I’m a grown man!”
“You are, a bit,” Tetia giggles.
“Mhm,” Agott hums, at last carefully folding her notebook away. “All those commissions and you spent the time making your snugstones instead; you don’t really need to try denying it.”
Coco nods emphatically. “It’s true, it’s true, Professor! Don’t you remember when we first met? You pretended at being mean, but then you dried my hair with your signet rings! I had thought you were very scary before, but I realized then you’re actually quite kind.”
At that Qifrey’s head whips around to Olruggio, a blinding smile on his face. “ Really? You did, didn’t you! Oh, Olly—this is exactly what I’m talking about. You’re terribly, terribly sweet.”
Olruggio slumps, his head falling into his hands. Teased mercilessly by his own household—did every Watchful Eye have to go through this?!
There’s a light laugh near his ear, and he feels Qifrey give his arm a reassuring pat. “Olly, my dear, there’s no need to act so embarrassed! Kind is not at all a bad thing to be. You should be proud to have such a strong heart making you tick.”
“Arghh, jeez, enough already!” Olruggio peeks out between his fingers, pointedly ignoring the girls’ tittering laughter. “There’s only so much I can take, Qif. Try savin’ me a little bit of face, will you?”
“Fine, fine. You’re horribly cruel and uncaring, and we should really start searching for a new Watchful Eye.”
The girls dissolve into even more laughter at that, practically falling over each other to the ground. Even Agott has a wide grin on her face, turned slightly to hide it from the others. Olruggio just rolls his eyes fondly, enjoying the momentary distraction from his—his everything. His worry.
And soon, the girls huddle closer together, looking for all the world like a little nest of bluebirds in their fluffy apprentice's robes. One by one they quiet, drifting off under the warm weight of the fire. Ah, it must be nearing nightfall, then. Has that much time really passed?
Olruggio stifles a yawn into his sleeve. The panic he’s had simmering beneath his skin all day must have messed with the flow of things, he thinks, making him scattered enough that time hasn’t moved as it should have.
A press to his shoulder, then, and Qifrey’s eye gleams over at him.
“You can rest for a bit, if you would like,” the witch quietly offers. “It’s no trouble for me to keep an eye on the girls while you do. You…you’ve done very well today, Olly. I know this hasn’t been an easy thing for you.”
“Speak for yourself,” Olruggio says, gesturing pointedly at the stone walls surrounding them.
“Ah, touché.”
“Touché is right. It’s kinda funny, y’know, the way you act like we haven’t known each other for decades sometimes.”
Qifrey sighs, smiling weakly. “I know, I know. It’s a bad habit of mine, I’m afraid. But enough of that: I will be fine, truly! I think you had the right idea with all of your pacing, before—if things become a bit too much, I’ll just try to walk it off.”
“Or you can wake me,” Olruggio frowns. “It’s not good to deal with that sort of thing on your own, Qif. Tryin’ to walk it off just makes you all the more frantic—in my experience, at least. And—! And don’t even think about firin’ back with a ‘speak for yourself’— I know I’m bein’ hypocritical.”
“Mhm, I know.”
“You know?”
“That you’re being hypocritical? Yes!” Qifrey laughs. “Though I can hardly blame you, my dear. Like I said: today has been—ah, well. It’s been…”
“A lot,” Olruggio finishes.
“Mm.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” And Olruggio slumps down, tucking his head into Qifrey’s shoulder. “It has been. But I don’t need you worryin’ over me, okay? I’d much rather you focus on keepin’ the girls safe.”
He feels Qifrey sigh against him, a gentle rise and fall of his chest. The fire has stained his pale robes with the scent of smoke, nearly overlaying their usual air of ink and the crisp, clean smell of earth after rain. It’s nice living with a water witch. They always smell like spring.
For the first time all day, the anxious rhythm of Olruggio’s heart finally begins to ease, slowing in time with the methodical movement of Qifrey’s hand skimming up and down his arm. In no time at all, Olruggio takes what feels like his first full breath in hours.
In no time at all, Olruggio is asleep.
—
And just as soon it feels like he’s startling awake, his lungs stuttering with the leftover panic of a nightmare. Olruggio blinks wide-eyed into the darkness, his sleep-addled brain slowly trying to catch up. Whatever dream he’d been having slinks away as quickly as he’d awoken, and Olruggio is left only with the strange feeling that something is wrong.
“Jeez,” he mutters, dragging his hands down his face. “Sorry if I woke you, Qif—”
And he freezes, hands still caught over his mouth. The cave is dark, bearing down on Olruggio with a near-physical weight. The fire has gone out, somehow—and the space next to him is empty.
Olruggio hurriedly scrambles to his knees, almost falling over as his legs tangle in his cloak.
“Shit, shit,” he hisses, drawing his palm quire and quickly inking a spell of his own. The cavern flares into focus, the new flame so bright it’s blinding. As Olruggio blinks away dark spots, his gaze stutters and drags across the room. Even now, even half blind, he can see it is empty. No, no—not empty! He sees it now, a shadowy lump a few feet away. As his eyes adjust, he is able to pick out the sleeping shapes of the girls, all wrapped up together in their cloaks. His shoulders slump, exhausted in his sudden relief.
But the girls are all he sees. There is one noticeable, conspicuous absence: their group of six has somehow fallen to five.
Very carefully, Olruggio looks over the room. His eyes search frantically through the dark for movement, a slumped shadow, anything. And… and there is nothing, other than the girls. Of course there is nothing and no-one, as his luck is wont to turn. They are well and truly alone. At this confirmation, cold unease bursts in his chest, lungs suddenly riddled through with something distinctly panic-tinged. And in the cavern’s awful, heavy silence, Olruggio starts to drown.
He breathes and breathes, forcing himself to do so slowly. Still on his knees, Olruggio clambers to where Qifrey’s spell had been tethered, snatching up the palm quire left dark and abandoned on the floor. Oh, oh—the ink is smudged on one side, still damp where moisture from the cavern has dripped onto the paper. The spell has bled out, its enclosing ring distorted beyond use. Still wet, Olruggio thinks, noting simultaneously the slight warmth lingering in the room. They have not been so long without a fire, then. Qifrey would never have allowed it to go out, and so… and so it must be that he has only recently been gone.
But gone he is. Olruggio hastily places his spell on the ground, feeling a tremor start to rise in his hands. The cave is small—there is nowhere else to go but out.
Olruggio feels so—so stupid, so foolish! In his discomfort, he failed to focus on something as innate to Qifrey as his pale hair or his crooked fingers. Qifrey does not like the cold or the dark, nor does he like talking about his fears, and now he is gone.
Oh, but still! A part of Olruggio still ignites in sudden anger, his hands making a fist so tight he feels the bite of his nails even through his gloves. It is just like Qifrey to do this! To run away instead of reaching out, when Olruggio was right here and scared himself but always, always willing to help him anyway. Yet Qifrey didn’t even think to wake him!?
It’s insulting. It’s humiliating. It threatens to crack Olruggio’s heart in two.
Air tears down his throat like a blade, and Olruggio tries not to choke. He’s frozen, half-crouched in muted terror, the abandoned page of Qifrey’s spell crushed in his hand. In a flurry of movement, his head whips to the cave entrance:
The sun has long since set, though an unnatural white glow still lingers through that thin tear in the earth. It is like a mouth, he thinks. A cruel, gaunt mouth that had hidden its teeth so as to swallow them whole. Olruggio squints, noticing…a disturbance in the snow dusting the cave’s interior. A spray of powder, an indentation, where perhaps someone’s foot had fallen.
Oh, stars. Oh, this was very, very bad. Without thinking, Olruggio crawls over and shakes the nearest girl awake, heart in his throat.
A mumbled complaint, a moment of silence, and then Agott blinks blearily up at him. She shivers as she sits up, looking around herself in confusion. She opens her mouth to—
“Don’t worry,” Olruggio interrupts. He speaks softly, mindful of the other girls and of the way he knows his voice will waver if raised. “Don’t worry, please, but I need you to watch over the others for a moment.”
Agott frowns sleepily— and then her eyes widen at the conspicuous absence next to Olruggio. Her frown deepens as she seems to start fully grasping the situation. “Where did—?”
“Just outside, I think. It’s okay,” Olruggio promises, patting her shoulder reassuringly. “It’s gonna be fine. I—I’m gonna go get him, but I don’t want to leave you all alone here, so I need you to stay awake to keep the fire glyph going.”
Stubborn as always, Agott ignores him. “Where’s Qifrey, professor,” she asks.
“Not your professor. And I just—he just went outside. Don’t worry, Agott, please .”
Don’t worry, don’t worry.
“It’s going to be fine,” he insists, and the words taste like a lie, burning slick and acidic. “I’m going now. It’ll be fine, it— god ,” he wipes a hand over his jaw, feeling his mouth tremble. “Please just promise me you’ll watch over the girls and the spell, okay? I’m relying on you.”
That at last seems to get through to her, and she nods, looking very serious.
He turns to leave, and catches a soft “be safe” whispered after him.
Unblinking, Olruggio stands and stumbles his way toward the cave mouth, towards that sideways smile cut into the earth. His feet trip and catch over every stone, lurching forward on suddenly clumsy and disarticulated limbs. He is separate from his body. He cannot feel his hands.
They had hardly slept for an hour or two, Olruggio thinks, though in that time the storm had only worsened. Snow has piled so high that Olruggio is forced to climb, scratching his way through the drifts, through the tell-tale strokes of Qifrey’s footsteps. Ice and snow seep into his gloves, clinging damply to his cloak. All sensation up to his elbows is lost by the time he finally heaves himself into the open air, and—
And he stops, panting heavily in the cold.
Before him stretches an endless void of white.
(Olruggio had hit his head once, hard, when he was a child. Fell face-first from a tree branch, and for a moment all he could see was white. No sound, no sight. Just white.)
This feels the same, he thinks, reeling as the storm tries to buffet him back into the cave. The absence of everything save snow and wind is overwhelming. Heavy flakes of it swirl in the air, blending the earth and sky into one single, immeasurable horizon. Even the trees are gone, barely thirty feet from the cave's mouth before being devoured away, and Olruggio is left standing precariously on the edge of nothing and the brink of everything.
It’s gone, all of it—everything buried, veiled in this frenzied white haze. And beneath the howling wind there is a quiet so deep and vast that Olruggio’s ears ring, drowning in the sound of his own panicked heart. There’s nothing here. No one. The wind has blown any trace of Qifrey away. What little Olruggio can see of the ground through the swirling storm is smoothly unblemished, sloping away into the darkness in great white drifts.
“Oh god,” he says, and can’t help it as he collapses to his knees. The hem of his cloak is soaked, the wind blowing right through the fabric—biting, tearing at his exposed neck and face. He feels as if he’s made of paper. “Oh god, oh god .”
He’s gone. Qifrey is gone, swallowed by the storm—and Olruggio has no way to find him. No guidance orb, no—no anything. No, no, no —and if Qifrey has collapsed or slipped…if something has happened to him—Qifrey, with his sweeping white robes and pale hair would be utterly invisible.
He could be lying ten feet away and Olruggio would be none the wiser. And worst of all, Olruggio thinks, shaking hands knotted in his cloak— worst of all is that it isn’t always the cold that kills you in snow like this. Piled high and loose around the trees, a single misstep can pitch you into cavities hidden beneath the branches, engulfing you in deep powder. It isn’t the cold that kills you, then. Buried in snow like that, you drown. You suffocate long before you freeze.
(It happened to a man in Olruggio’s village once, years ago now; he had gone into the forest and walked too close to the trees. By the time anyone had noticed his absence, his struggling and the warmth of his breath had melted the snow just enough to fill his lungs.)
He needs—he needs to find Qifrey before it’s too late. Olruggio lurches to his feet, his boots dragging, sinking in the heavy snow. The powder comes up above his ankles, and with every step his heart drops, unable to shake the sense that he’s about to be swallowed.
Olruggio hugs his arms tight around himself, so cold he feels pulled from his body. His vision flashes and wavers. The wind and snow twist into strange shapes, shadows flickering in the distance like ghost-silhouettes. He hates this. He despises having a problem he can’t solve with a well-thought spell or a good conversation. He feels utterly helpless, walking in a pin-straight line so he isn’t lost.
It is so cold his hands and feet burn, the wind slicing over his skin like a blade. Snow is driven against him, stinging like a spray of broken glass, and it is so intolerable Olruggio can hardly see. He feels pulled backwards through time, shoved into one of the scenes that haunt his sleep.
Over two decades and the shape of it is still so terribly distinct. Like no time has passed at all, Olruggio finds himself scanning the snow for exposed limbs, his ears straining to catch cries for help. The image of blackened, frost-bitten hands is far clearer than it should be for a childhood memory. Their specter rises again and again in Olruggio’s periphery, jagged hands grasping at the corners of his vision.
He blinks hard, scrubbing at his eyes, and tries to focus. He must be methodical about this. If he runs recklessly into the woods he is just as likely to lose himself, and then he will be no help to any of them.
“Qifrey! Qifrey!”
Olruggio screams until his throat is raw. The wind pulls the sound away the moment it’s uttered, drowning his calls in its deafening howl, and Olruggio suddenly realizes how useless this all is.
He knows he shouldn’t cry now, that crying will only risk blinding him, but—he can’t help it. Everything has gone wrong. There’s a hollow growing between his ribs, bleeding out cold and empty along each nerve and vein and bone. Tears freeze on Olruggio’s cheeks. His eyelashes begin to crystallize with frost.
He’s a child again. Lost in Ghodrey, drowning in Ghodrey. Yet somehow, it is so much worse now. Things don’t get at all less scary when you grow; its shape only becomes more familiar. The terror of failing, of losing, of making the same mistakes he always does has never left Olruggio. And now he can’t shake the terrible, shattering feeling that he has just lost his best friend.
Qifrey is gone and Olruggio couldn’t save him. He’s failed, again. He always fails.
And now the seconds have faded to minutes, passing and passing and passing, and Olruggio is so frozen he struggles to stand. I’m going to die, he thinks, and isn’t as frightened by the thought as he should be. If I stay here, I will die.
He turns, then, and stumbles back through the fog of white. He feels nothing now. There is nothing left to feel. He—he’ll have to figure out what to tell the girls.
Oh, he thinks, and almost collapses again. What is he going to do? He can’t do this alone. How can he—how is he supposed to—
Olruggio draws himself up, wiping shakily at his nose, and steps forward.
It has always been the two of them.
Another step.
There has never been anyone else.
Another.
They built their life together, planned it out from beginning to end. Since they were ten years old Olruggio has constructed his entire existence around the fact that Qifrey was going to be a part of it. Even before they knew they loved each other, in that way—even before they told one another—it had always been a given that their life would be shared.
Olruggio aches and aches, and feels cut in half.
The mouth of the cave rises slowly ahead, shadowy and indistinct in the blistering snow. A blink and Olruggio is suddenly standing right before it. Once he gets the girls home and the snow clears, he will come back for Qifrey. And that time, Olruggio will be able to find him.
He nods to himself, straightening under the heavy pull of his cloak. It feels like he is floating a thousand miles away. Carefully, then, he slides back into the cave.
At its center the fire pulses, flickers, and drips warm light over the room. The girls gather around it, and—
“Olruggio!”
With a shout Olruggio is nearly bowled backwards into the snow, his arms suddenly—
Suddenly wrapped up in Qifrey.
He can’t speak. He can’t—he doesn’t—
“A minute, I—I was gone for a minute,” Qifrey rambles tearily, his voice and hands panic-stricken as he pulls Olruggio tight against him. “I hardly—it was only a minute. Olly, you could’ve—”
Olruggio can feel him, can feel the rabbit-fast race of Qifrey’s heart where their chests meet, the warmth of his breath as he keeps warbling into Olruggio’s ear.
“You’re frozen!” Qifrey cries, fumbling for a moment with the clasp before pulling Olruggio’s snow-crusted cloak from his shoulders. “Oh, Olly, Olly—I came back in and the girls told me that you—that—”
“...How are you here,” Olruggio whispers, feeling utterly lost. His voice catches at the end, and he can’t tell if the dampness on his cheeks is from tears or melting snow. “How…I don’t understand. I couldn’t see you. In the storm, I couldn’t see you —”
“Olruggio,” Qifrey starts, hands fluttering from Olruggio’s wrists to his shoulders to his face. “Olly—”
“You left.”
Qifrey freezes, his palm still curled warm over Olruggio’s jaw. “What?”
Olruggio realizes, then, that Qifrey has taken off his gloves. He doesn’t know what to think of that.
“You left,” Olruggio repeats, his voice breaking. “You—you were gone, out there, and I thought—”
He takes a great, heaving breath, his throat hitching, and feels crushed under the startling whiplash of grief to confusion to relief to—to something just shy of anger.
“I thought you were lost. Dead. Dying. I thought I’d have to dig your body out—out of some snow drift! I thought you were dead, don’t you get it? And it would’ve been my fault!”
He can barely breathe. He’s so angry—so furious that he’s almost able to forget the way fear had suffocated him not two minutes ago. He knows he shouldn’t be shouting like this, not in front of the now very awake girls, but—but he can’t help it. He’s been strung thin all day, and he finally feels himself begin to snap.
Though… Qifrey looks properly abashed now. He leans closer, then leans away, clearly unsure what to do. He’s wringing his hands nearly to death until Olruggio tightly clasps them in his own.
“I’m so sorry,” Qifrey whispers, his voice trembling, so thin it sounds like a ghost. “None of this is your fault—how could it have been your fault, my dear?” He pulls their joined hands up, up, and presses them over his heart. Olruggio can only vaguely feel its beat, what with the way they’re positioned now, but even this is somehow enough.
With a shaky sigh he leans forward, pressing his face into the fabric of Qifrey’s shoulder. It is cold and damp and smells like rain. It smells like Qifrey, like home.
“I was the one who suggested we leave this morning,” Olruggio confesses, whispering now so the girls won’t overhear. There is no need for them to know how deeply guilt is sunk into every inch of his bones—no need for them to see him this way. “Or yesterday. I don’t—I don’t know how long it’s been. But I saw the sky, and I remember thinkin’ it looked a bit strange, and I didn’t put any real thought into it. I should’ve known, Qifrey. I should know better than anyone, and I screwed up, and—and then you were gone and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t save—”
“Hush,” Qifrey says, sounding choked. “You did just fine, my dear. You did all you could.”
Olruggio hisses, his eyes burning hot and damp. “ No, no—you don’t get it. ”
“Olly, Olruggio, please—I cannot… I can’t stand you tearing yourself to shreds for me. You can be angry with me as much as you need, but please—” One of Qifrey’s hands rises to curl around the back of Olruggio’s neck, a soft, steadying press “—Please don’t be angry with yourself. This was—a mistake. I made a mistake, and you shouldn’t ever put yourself at risk like that for me again. I didn’t need any saving, so—”
“Because you won’t let me!” Olruggio shouts, and over Qifrey’s shoulder sees the girls hurriedly look away, pretending rather poorly that they aren’t eavesdropping. And god, god! Olruggio wants very suddenly— childishly —to bite down on Qifrey’s shoulder. He isn’t listening.
Qifrey has stiffened against him now, yet to speak. He never speaks.
Olruggio will fill the silence himself, then.
“Y’don’t get it, Qifrey, I want to save you! To help, to be there for you and the girls! That’s all I want, all I’ve ever wanted, and you won’t let me .”
His words echo against the walls, ricocheting back and forth and through them. He keeps thinking of the girls and of how they must look, shouting like this. They’re supposed to be a united front, but…he guesses it doesn’t really matter at this point.
“Oh,” Qifrey finally says, and his voice sounds very, very small. “I’m sorry, Olly.”
“I know. I’m still pissed with you, though.”
Qifrey nods, inhaling shakily against Olruggio’s hair. “Next time,” he whispers. “I swear it, if there’s a next time—I won’t go running. I shouldn’t have just gone like that, and I… I ask you to forgive me. Please.”
Olruggio doesn’t say anything, but he knows that there isn’t really a need to. He’s good at forgiving. No anger is more important than everyone being alive.
With careful footsteps, the two return to the fire.
Sinking tiredly to the floor, Olruggio gives the girls a small smile. “Everything’s okay now,” he says roughly. “I’m sorry for worrying you all.”
Qifrey nods, looking at each girl one by one. “You have been very brave, all of you, and I’m so terribly proud. Just a little longer now and we can go home.”
The girls seem to relax at that, their shoulders noticeably slumping as they express their relief in a jumble of voices.
Qifrey has yet to let go of him, Olruggio realizes, still holding tight to his arm. As the girls once again drift off into much-needed sleep, Olruggio lets his arm snake around Qifrey’s waist. His hand fists in the back of the other witch’s cloak, and he can feel him—feel the shaky rise and fall of his chest, the warmth of his hands, the soft press of his lips to the crown of Olruggio’s head. Alive, alive, alive. Their argument doesn’t matter as much as this, Olruggio thinks once more. He looks at their girls, breathing soft and easy. Nothing matters so much as this.
He does not manage to get back to sleep—neither does Qifrey, he thinks—but soon the rush of the wind outside begins to lessen, fading to only a whisper. Soon, too, does the sliver of open air beyond the cave mouth begin to lighten: brighter, brighter, until a ribbon of sunlight has drawn itself across the floor, pooling soft and golden to settle itself just at the edge of their cloaks.
The storm has passed, and Olruggio can finally breathe.