I don't own the Harvest Moon franchise or Starbucks Coffee.

Sometimes he stayed awake for days, rereading sentences in one of his thicker books on a more obscure subject over and over and listening to the ringing in his ears. Eventually the coffee grew tasteless no matter how strong he brewed it, and he saw spots and his head sang with new blood when he stood up.

Witch had gone undercover a couple days ago and relayed the message accordingly, incorporated cleverly into one of her absurd pranks.

This time it had been in his mail, (a really rather lacklustre method of delivery given her history of proficiently in complicated charms) a lumpy manila envelope full of fortune cookies containing the segmented parts of her report.

It was unlike her to set up such a simple trick. Generally, her style was to not only cause an inconvenience, but also to embarrass or annoy him as much as possible. She was all about the biggest show for the least effort, a hallmark of her sadistic streak.

This could have been sent by any common joe with access to the Internet and the postal system. Very un-Witchlike.

There were eleven slips, and piecing them together was no big task.

He laid the sequence on the table. The message's ink was purple.

Hello, Wizzy!

I went in disguise and did some recon.

Just like old times, eh?

So I found out

That the harvest sprites

Are in on the trouble.

They're expecting that

Will take her power once she dies.

P.S

Her condition's worsening

inflicted wound

And on the back of the last fortune, she had signed her name in pink with a scribbled star beside it.

He checked the envelope, then the floor, and finally the mailbox for the final notes. He came up empty, and enjoyed the feel of the other eleven empty cookies as he ground them to crumbs under his fists in frustration.

What did the sprites expect? And what kind of wound had the Goddess suffered?

This was very unlike Witch. She took great pride in perfectly executed schemes, and to forget two cookies would be sloppy in her books. Perhaps the wound mentioned in the message actually referred to her. Maybe she had neglected yet another potion and it had exploded. Or had it just been another accident, one of her famous misfired spells?

She certainly didn't do it to force him to visit her. The only times they saw each other were at the MASCA meetings (He would rather have skipped them all; they interrupted his reading, but they were, alas, a strict obligation), and she made it clear in her childish manner that she had no desire to interact with him outside of them. Often, she would exclaim loudly that she hated him, and that he was only good at acting as a target for her tricks.

In her much younger fledgling days, shortly after charging off into the unknown world (outside of what their Master had shown them) in her usual fashion, she had shut herself off from the rest of MASCA.

She had simply packed her bags and left, and he could still remember what she had said to him that day.

It had been a beautiful morning, the kind poets would write about later in his life, with sunbeams streaming in the windows of his Master's stone tower, where he had lived for most of his life.

It had been later in September, with an appropriately cool breeze wafting in, smelling of frost and damp leaves.

She had stopped cold when he had caught her about to leave. Her heels had been just on the doorframe.

In a way, he hadn't wanted her to go. His Master had been called back to wherever it was that wizards went when they died, and he didn't want to lose the last shard of his former life, the last living slice of 'family' he had left.

"I'm leaving to get away from you. I need out of this place."

Her voice had been hard and flat. Evidently she had never shared his sense of family. She had said it without turning around and hadn't waited for a response on his part before leaving.

The life he had lived with Master and Witch was the only one he had ever really known. Maybe he had never quite loved her as a sister-figure, but he certainly had grown used to seeing her mill around in the mornings in her night-dress, half-asleep, had become accustomed to finding his research tampered with and hearing her cackling down the hall.

He remembered very clearly how stiff and straight her back had been, and the padding of her feet against the cobblestone path, how they stirred up the locusts in the gardens.

That had been before her hair had whitened permanently (she could never find the spell to colour it back and was unwilling to let anyone else do it for her, and she refused stubbornly to dye it). It had been a rich dark brown then.

He remembered watching those damn locusts jump, fly a short way with their vile dark wings out, and land, clicking, for a long time after she had left.

He himself had gone out on his own a while after that, unable to live in the melting-pot of memories (some very unpleasant). He had taken some of the grand library with him and wandered about the lonely world, learning languages and telling fortunes for bread and pocket change.

He hadn't been to the old tower in centuries, and he was sure that most of its spells and charms had worn off and it had succumbed to erosion and fallen into the sea.

But despite his memory-musings, he had to visit her, no matter how unpleasant the visit would probably be.

He needed answers.

He'd take a pie, and maybe that'd appease her.

I hate how Wizard has some sort of mystery past with Witch in the game that's never explained, so I'm making one up, to be elaborated upon in coming chapters.

Also, do you think I should write a (sort of) past for Wizard in a different story? Something to full in the blanks a little, or my interpretation of events.