Work Text:
The context behind these are that after Qifrey’s apprentices have all graduated, Coco goes missing. The stress of not knowing what happened to her has the ironic effect of keeping Qifrey alive longer than he expected to live. His vision fails and he has to retire when he can no longer draw, though he still acts as an advisor to Tetia who has taken on apprentices of her own.
Meanwhile, Coco has joined the brimhats so that she can learn medical magic. The initial focus of her research is de-petrifying her mom, but the more she learns on the subject, the more she sees the endeavour as hopeless. She turns her attention to studying Qifrey’s condition instead, believing that she might be able to make a difference in his case. It becomes something she pursues obsessively.
Eventually she returns to Qifrey’s atelier to reveal to him what she has been up to. He’s simultaneously relieved she’s alive and devastated that she’s joined the brimhats. But he promises to keep her secret for her. So he continues to live under a new kind of stress (it’s good for him!) and keeps meeting Coco in private, partly because he thinks he can get more information about the brimhats from her, and partly because he just misses her. And from there their attachment to each other evolves and gets weirder.
(Fleshing these ideas out further in writing feels a bit beyond my grasp, but that’s the gist of my vision and the basis for these drawings! Qifrey isn’t wearing his spectacles because he’s blind now.)