star light || star bright
star of great and boundless might
my beloved Academy now restore
make it as it was before

⁂

Watch with me. How the starlight trickles between Ada Cackle's fingers, soft as a memory and twice as slow, how it works its way down the scaffolding, fills it all back solid from the outside in. Let's listen to how the witches gasp. How the past rebuilds itself.

And while we're not looking—there! (here) then! (now) it happens (it—)

— is. again. Joy herself, caught in the last beam of light. You don't need to hear the details, or at least not from me. Ask her herself sometime. How the wrinkles smoothed, how her hair came loose, how those shoulders became new again. It's all terribly corporeal. She'll tell you, I'm sure, if she can. No harm in asking.

And when Ada turns to smile at her, she's smiling back, but it's all gone and changed. Back is a good word there. But thirty years do something to the fingers. In any case, Joy always jumped to it too. She snaps, and in a swirl of absence, they are in Ada's office.

⁂

"Hecate—" Ada begins, and Joy flinches at the name.

"We can't," she says, "I can't. I can't teach."

"No, Hecate," Ada agrees, and there it is again—that wound.

"Don't," she says, "not like this, don't—I can't hear it."

"Joy, then," Ada assents, placid but for the bite behind it.

"Thirty years," Joy says, "just like that. I thought—"

"You can stay, of course. There's always a home for you at Cackle's."

"I've been here for thirty years," she says. I've been yours for thirty years. "I thought that meant something. I thought we—meant—"

"We did," Ada agrees, too calm, "and we can again. We are witches, Joy. We have patience in our bones. But not now."

"I'm eighteen again," Joy says, like a realisation. Having each been eighteen at least once before, neither of them interprets that as an argument.

⁂

"You can't just—" begins Indigo Moon, and then stops herself because Joy can, she fucking can, and they're touching fingers again, they're holding hands and it's new and strange and exactly the same all over again.

"I know," says Joy, "I know," and her bones are aching to dance, have been for years. "I failed you, Indi. For decades. For weeks."

"Oh, failure," shrugs Indigo, trying to feel older and farther past herself than she is. "We can do better than that, Joy."

"We can," says Joy, we can, and they are holding hands, they are not letting go.