Hestadil Shorts

Realization

Sorry a lot of these were from a little mini series I wrote a while back about how the individual characters found out about Hestadil being real. Hopefully this is one of the last ones about that, sorry if it's getting repetetive :)

Dot's heart ached when she saw how Anadil curled into herself, holding her rat's body to her chest. She had never seen her cry before. She wasn't sure anyone had.

But Dot knew how important the rats were to Anadil. She played with them every night when she thought no one was looking, and she would smile. A real smile. The one that didn't show up on Anadil's face very often.

"Anadil, it'll be okay..." She heard Hort mumble, with as much optimism as he could muster. Dot felt the need to chime in. "Yeah, it's gonna be okay!"

Nicola added on, "Don't cry, it's not going to fix anything." She said it like she was trying to be comforting, but Dot thought it was the wrong way to approach the situation. None of it was working- in fact, Dot could tell that it was getting worse. After Nicola's comment, Anadil's shaky breaths turned into heaving sobs. She moved further into the cold corner of the dreary dungeon they'd been thrown into.

She looked around the room. Dovey was looking pointedly away, eyes almost stormy. Nicola was scanning the room for a way out (again). Hort was twisting his hands nervously. Tedros was still collapsed. The others were lining the floor, defeated.

Hester was standing, arms folded. She was watching Anadil. There was a look in her eyes that Dot wasn't used to seeing. Instead of the usual sparks of ambition and anger, Hester's flinty eyes were softened, her eyebrows knit together. Dot couldn't decipher what the look was, exactly. Something between worry, and sadness.

Hester took three steps before bending down to sit on the stone floor next to Anadil, who had her knees hugged to her chest. To Dot's surprise, Hester's eyes remained soft as she wrapped her arms around the other witch, twisting so Anadil's head was rested against her shoulder.

Dot was even more shocked when Anadil leaned into the embrace. She murmered something Dot couldn't hear, and Hester responded back quietly. She had her chin resting on Anadil's head. It looked so... familiar. And Dot had never seen Hester show anywhere close to this amount of affection. She hadn't seen it from Anadil either, except around her rats.

She watched Anadil look up at Hester, who used the torn sleeve of the pastel dress Dovey had forced her into to wipe the tears off of Anadil's face. Anadil leaned back into Hester, head once again rested on her shoulder. Hester wrapped her arms tighter around her friend, whispering something only Anadil could hear.

And as Dot watched Anadil's sobs dwindle to sniffling, she realized that nothing about what was happening in front of her was platonic. She may be a never, and she may have little to no experience with romance, but even she could tell that the way Hester was looking at Anadil wasn't the way someone would look at their friend.

She thought back to the way they cackled at each other's jokes. How the only person Hester never got truly angry at was Anadil. How the only person Anadil would let her guard down for was Hester.

She remembered how Anadil never left Hester's side after she was stabbed by Aric. After this realization, she recognized what she'd been missing in Hester's eyes. She was worried, and sad. But the main emotion was love.

How had she missed it?