on weathering

Coco's face was focused, the tip of her tongue poking out from her mouth as she thumbed through the wrinkled papers before her. The curve of her cheek was a round, clear expanse of skin, like the empty page of a palm quire. Though she could not see it now, on the other cheek, the next page, was a splatter of ink — a raw, angry pink. She looked no less Coco with the injury, but the thought that she suffered a blow like that in the first place made Agott’s stomach flip.

It gnawed at her: brilliant, kind Coco — the girl who flipped her perspective of magic, of the whole world, upside down — being so often pushed straight into the storm.Agott helps Coco clean up her brushbug-terrorized desk and realizes she still has some worry for Coco left to give.