Title: Watch and ward
Fandom: Uprooted
Rating: General
Length: 1000ish words
Content notes: None
Author notes:Mid-book
Summary: Kasia loved Agnieszka better than anyone else in the world, but she had never solved the mystery of how she could make so loud a noise or so great a disturbance without even trying.

Well, maybe they knew now; maybe it had been magic all along. Only the Dragon was standing the other end of the kitchen table - had prompted the loud noise, in fact - staring at Agnieszka like he couldn’t understand, either.

oOo

Agnieszka fell into the kitchen with all the grace of a startled chicken, and a squawk to match. Kasia loved Agnieszka better than anyone else in the world, but she had never solved the mystery of how she could make so loud a noise or so great a disturbance without even trying.

Well, maybe they knew now; maybe it had been magic all along. Only the Dragon was standing the other end of the kitchen table - had prompted the loud noise, in fact - staring at Agnieszka like he couldn’t understand, either. His was a horrified look of fascination, Kasia privately decided, as the three of them made a momentary awkward tableau: Agnieszka grabbing the wall to keep from tipping over, half her hair falling from its untidy knot with the force of her halting. The Dragon, who had been fetching some herb from the storeroom, paused halfway through shredding the leaves of it neatly into a jar he’d brought with him. And Kasia, still silently stood with her hands on the lump of bread dough she’d been attempting to knead.

She’d been in the kitchens alone for maybe five minutes after Agnieszka ran back up the tower to hunt for something (Kasia hadn’t asked what. Half the fun of being about Agnieszka was seeing what she would do next; after her time in the Wood, Kasia was trying hard to remember the good things, from before. Only she’d been asleep most of the time so far, and Agnieszka, dear Agnieszka, fretting and tending to her so earnestly, wasn’t something which had ever happened before, not like this. A few minutes when they had thought Kasia had cut her knee badly, when they were very young, was about all the memory which came to her… though remembering Agnieszka’s hands pressed down on her skin, the way it hadn’t looked as bad as they’d thought, when she took her hands away… had that, too, been her magic?)

But she’d been there, trying to learn the strength of her terrifyingly strange new flesh, determined to master this, when the Dragon stepped off the stairs. He checked when he saw her, and gave her a silent but measuring look. When she’d merely bowed her head a little to him in return, he had gone about his own business again without a word.

The bread had been Kasia’s idea. She’d tried sewing a stitch or two, with the scraps from the mending box in the bedroom. It hadn’t started well; she’d broken a needle against her skin without even scratching herself, and the needles were so slender it was hard to keep hold of them without pressing too hard. Bread might be more forgiving. Even though Agnieszka apparently needed no help to summon up a feast, now. She’d seen her mutter a word absently to fill a plate with something for herself after painstakingly feeding Kasia a soup which she had made the normal way - splashes on her dress to prove it.

When asked why she didn’t do that for the soup, rather than charging up and down all those stairs, she’d just shrugged. ‘It doesn’t nourish people the same way, I think. You need something better while you’re healing.’

A thin and lovingly but inexpertly made soup should have been no equal to what Agnieszka could produce with a word. But Kasia had the uneasy feeling that she understood, somehow. The soup was real, in a way which would have stood up to the light they’d used to tear her from the Wood. She got the feeling the other would seem insubstantial.

She’d had eyes for nothing but her Nieshka, reaching out to her, facing down all the ugliest human truth of herself and giving Kasia courage to do the same, to keep fighting, and reach back. But the Dragon had been there too, in the corner of her vision. She’d seen his reaction to what she’d thought of him, seen it strike him so badly he’d had to hollow himself out before horror pushed all the magic away and the spell failed.

He had let Agnieszka save her. More than that, had helped her.

So she hadn’t been afraid, when she’d seen him in the doorway, for all that he’d looked imposing as ever. She’d seen enough, facing the both of them, to understand a good portion of that imposing appearance was his own kind of armour. And to spot when Agnieszka flailing in showed a crack in it, one which went deep, a bewildered fascination Kasia could understand.

Agnieszka in turn stared at him with tension singing through every line of her body, no artifice at all to hide it, and the air in the room rang with it. The two of them had done something Kasia had never heard of, casting that spell together. Handing spells from one person to another happened in a very few stories, but to cast one spell at the same time? That, too, seemed to hang in the air, the faintest echo of the light they had called seeming.

Kasia shifted, deliberately, and the moment broke. Agnieszka turned anxious eyes on her, away from where the Dragon was gathering outrage about himself like a cloud.

“Have you made some new hazard of the stairs, or is there some other reason for you to flail down them?” he snapped, and Agnieszka blinked at him again, the insult finding no grip on her. She was nervous, but not afraid of him; Kasia noted that to think about later.

Agnieszka shrugged. “I didn’t expect you to be down here?” she said, tone making it a question.

She even got an answer, however impolitely expressed. The Dragon picked up his jar of herbs as if to brandish it, then seemed to remember that would be below his dignity, and merely held it, glaring. “This is my tower, he reminded her, loftily, and stalked past her to ascend the stairs.

Agnieszka watched him go until Kasia moved again, and then she was back at Kasia’s side, where she’d been for days, all thought of him and his strangeness apparently dismissed.

Kasia, however, did not dismiss it. She turned it over, instead, even as she turned the dough in her hands and tried to press into it without tearing. She got no pleasing results from either, and while Agnieszka’s magic saved the dough from an undignified end, Kasia rather thought it was half the cause of the other problem.

Well, there was nothing she could do now. Nothing but wait, and watch, and try to conquer her changed form so she could be there for Agnieszka, however she was needed. She would try the sewing again tomorrow.

oOo