I do not own Winx Club. Honestly if I did there would be a lot more lore given by the teachers and a lot more focus on the teachers as I just think they are interesting background characters. I do intend for this to continue but if you've read my other stuff you know I post very irregularly and sparcely. However my mind wont stop thinking about this so there should be more chapters eventually. This wont be too long as its mostly a short story focused on the relationship of two headmistresses I adore. I am trying to work more on other stories so hopefully there will be more soon, for now enjoy.
It had been hours, the whole night even. All of her main work was out of the way and now all that sat before her on her desk was just mindless busy work of the small menial tasks that required her look over and approval.
Exhaustion weighed on her mind and body as she set down her pen for a moment. Leaning forward to rest her head in her hands and feel her fingers stretch the tired skin in a brief and far to shallow massage. She needed to keep her focus.
Releasing a sigh, she sat back up. One glance at the crystal ball in the corner of her desk, still dark as when she had checked minutes ago. No calls incoming, none that she missed during her imersment in her paperwork.
"Its fine, everything is fine." she told herself again. Yet somehow the words were even less convincing than before. She looked to the stack of papers waiting for her. Another wave of exhaustion fell over her with a sigh before she once again grabbed for her pen.
Normally, Faragonda would find herself putting off these menial forms for tomorrow, especially when it was already so late. Or just passing them off to her deputy, Griselda, though the woman would scold her for it later after finishing the pile. The thought of her dear friend rose a smile from the woman's lips, and the idea was tempting.
No, she needed this, the distraction of work. She needed something to keep her mind off what happened. Lying awake in her bed seemed fruitless and she had found hours ago that reading was just as useless an endeavor. The fantastical worlds of fiction just seemed like water sliding off a leaf, rather than the immersive escape she had hoped for. But work, work was a distraction she could always throw herself into.
There was always more that needed to be done or some other trivial thing that demanded her attention. Always something else to do, something more. Something to fill her time before one of them broke and made the call for the other.
"Don't think about that." Faragonda scolded herself as she pulled the paperwork in front of her to begin. She lifted the first form to start reviewing its contents.
It was her fault.
No.
She needed to apologize.
No.
What if she went too far? She always seemed to go too far, or at least one of them usually did.
It wasn't her fault this time.
It very much was.
Sign on the line below.
What if something happened to her?
What would possibly happen?
Check here to verify you reviewed the contents listed above.
She crossed the line.
Where even was the fucking line between them anymore?
She needs to apologize.
Please make sure file 387A is attached to this one if you requested the above checked changes.
Faragonda threw her pen upon the desk. It was pointless now. Her worry had taken over her thoughts. She couldn't focus on the pages in front of her as the earlier fight consumed her. Each hateful word echoing as background to the questions of how she should proceed now.
They hadn't ended anything, thankfully. But Faragonda felt they were teetering on that edge. Right at the precipice and any argument next would be their last, at least together, as partners. Future interschool meetings would be permanently ruined by the awkward tension. She didn't really want it to end regardless though.
Griffin was one of the best things that ever happened to her. That stoic witch who seemed to absolutely break into a soft kitten just for her. Who curled up beside her on the sofa, in her office, so they both could fit together and criticize the choices of the main character from a book they would take turns reading out loud. Or would pull her to the furthest reaches of cloud tower, on to the balcony just so they would have the best view of a celestial phenomenon, and then spend the rest of the night with her pointing out constellations and stars. She loved so many things about Griffin.
Yet all they seemed to do recently was fight. So many meaningless arguments about pointless day-to-day things, that somehow always ended too heated, with one of them losing their restraint for a moment too far. It always ended with one of them taking things too far.
This time it was Griffin's prized students who took to their learning like mermaids to the waters of Andros. Advanced senior students, top of their classes, and Faragonda's 5 freshman girls who seemed to hold great talent for managing to hold their own against the witches.
Generally, just a common sore spot for the two headmistresses that started when Griffin had found and provided shelter for the descendants of the Ancestral witches the two had fought against during the war. Then again during the trio's admittance into Cloud Tower. Faragonda had arguably overstepped the bounds of her influence with Griffin there, meddling in her school's affairs and arguing almost demanding Griffin not allow them.
All the feelings from those past arguments had been brought up again when the headmistresses were forced to discuss the two groups' continuous interactions. Past feelings and hurts made all the worse when the argument became a thinly veiled coverup for the events that still haunted them both. The reasons to why the war was so much worse.
Illusions to the treatment of witches that had been a core part of the war, and part of why Griffin had joined on the other side. Yet anger had blindsided Faragonda in the moment, preventing her from seeing the toll that argument had already taken upon both of them. Griffin's taunts, causing common sense to slide through her fingers like sand and to yell in grief the righteousness of light magic, unintentionally condemning all those who wield sinister dark energies like her purple haired goddess.
The war was always so touchy for both of them. But it was usually more so for Griffin considering she had been a turncoat in the middle of it. A witness to the horrors of both sides. Though Griffin never spoke against or corrected Faragonda when she would claim the company had been the heroes triumphing over evil, it was clear the witch didn't hold the company in the same standing.
When the war had ended, things had been tense between them. That was to be expected after the terror they had been through, but Faragonda had found them to be distant. A slight animosity growing between them for a while, neither reaching for the other. Faragonda never wanting to overstep her bounds with the witch who, emotionally, at least, seemed to stay just beyond her fingertips.
Years began to pass before Griffin and Faragonda just slipped back into being friends again. Neither brought up the war, nor what happened to them after it. Simply picking up from where they had left off when it all started. Leaving all the hurts and hidden scars exactly that, hidden. Left to deal with individually in the hopes they would eventually go away. But when something had its hook in you as deeply as the coven had sunken them into Griffin, time didn't seem capable of mending those wounds.
And now, here they were again. Another fight, another time Faragonda had stepped on a verbal landmine. Leaving them both separated and hurting, until one went to try and mend the other.
It was your fault this time.
Faragonda let the thought and her own guilt simmer for a moment longer. She had to make amends, she had to try. Faragonda pushed back her chair and stood, taking a moment to stretch her tired limbs. A yawn slipped through her lips, but rest would not come until she had fixed what she had done.
Glancing to the large window behind her chair, she took in the night. Perhaps it would be better to try in the morning after all, Faragonda thought briefly knowing, disturbing someone's rest often made them only more irritable. Especially, she recalled fondly, Griffin on those lazy mornings, before her tea had even been made. She had loathed being woken early and only cuddles that often ended with her back asleep or a prompt offering of her tea made to perfection would remedy.
But Griffin loves the night.
The thought tugged at her brain, pulling her from the sweet memories and lazy procrastination that almost had her sitting back down to try and rest against her desk. An unfortunate incident that happened far too often for her poor back or her deputy's insistence that she wasn't supposed to be a morning alarm.
There was little chance Griffin would actually be asleep yet. Though how that woman managed to function with how early Faragonda knew she would wake for her school yet still find time to partake in her favored celestial pastime of gazing, Faragonda could never figure out. Griffin would always insist it was something to do with her tea, but Faragonda knew the herbal blends Griffin often used almost by heart and none of them would ever create an effect that would match this mystery of the witch. One of many Faragonda loved to explore, test, theorize and just cherish.
She had to make it up to her witch.
Determination to make things right between them flowed through Faragonda. The memories of her brief reminiscing took like kindling to embers for the passion she carried for the possessor of those golden eyes. Suring herself with a deep breath of the calm atmosphere of her office, Faragonda took one look out the window once more. It seemed like such a calm night, stars hidden from the lights of the room, the moon nowhere in sight, though that was to be expected. With a new moon as it was right now, the best time, according to Griffin, for viewing all the distant stars it usually covered up. Hidden constellations so far away even the moon's light could chase them into oblivion.
Faragonda let herself smile briefly at the thought of possibly finding Griffin on one of the many terraces she knew the headmistress used for her gazing, staring up at the stars with that familiar, stunning look of awe and fascination. She knew that probably wasn't the case but for the brief hope, at least in the seconds of fantasy and imagination, her Griffin was happy.
Faragonda finally looked away from the window. Pulling all her senses in and disconnecting herself to her surroundings as she cast the spell. Calling upon all the feelings and memories she usually did to call her magic, that warmth in her chest. Filling her mind with thoughts, and her senses with the idea of Cloud Tower's hallway, right outside the headmistress's office. Griffin probably putting herself to work far better than Faragonda had managed. It would be rude after all to appear in her office directly unannounced, though, the fairy supposed, appearing in the school overall, unexpected was probably not much better. It didn't matter right now though, and honestly who cares if she did what was always considered polite or rude or what not. She had upset Griffin and making it right was what truly mattered right now.
She imagined the quiet echoing the corridors this late at night, the cold shiver that seemed to always be carried in the air of the school, tingling against her spine. The slight musty smell the school seemed to carry and the living thrum of its magic life she could sense just underfoot, barely noticeable to those not as tuned to the school as Griffin had taught her to be. The purple of the walls that always seemed darker than she remembered, like they were newly stained by the feelings and misery used to fuel the dark magic that was Cloud Tower's atmosphere.
Faragonda let herself be lost to these sensations, let herself dissolve into the memories of the school. That small warmth from her chest bubbled and expanded over her. Reaching out to her arms and fingertips, enveloping her shoulders, back, legs down to her toes, covering her with the feeling of her magic. When the feeling began to fade from her, settling back down in her chest, she opened her eyes to see those same purple walls, smell the musty scent that the occupants either didn't mind or were so used to, feel the oppressive weight of emotions invoked to fuel the dark magic that seemed to recognize her as both enemy and old friend.
A quick glance around let her see she was alone in the corridor, no student in sight, only the door that managed to be large and imposing though it was no bigger than any of the other doors in the school. The door that led to Griffin's office. Another mystery, she supposed and often pondered, if the door was magically enchanted that way or if knowledge of the room behind it gave the door such an intimidating aura.