A bump awakened Cter with a startling jolt. Her wild flailing to regain balance had her tangled up in the purple cloth of her mantle, causing a vocalized yelp and subsequent tumble down onto the carpeted floor of the carriage she found herself back within. She landed on her left side with a dry cough and a drier grunt that tickled the long hairs of the carpet before her own unkempt strands fell before her eyes.
"Singe my soul," Cter cursed through gritted teeth. The memories from Bonny Sallus hadn't settled down her mind yet, and for a moment she thought of her cascading hair as her bunny-like ears. The confusion from the memories as well as the dazed disorientation she experienced from falling while rolling had her stomach grumbling with an extremely strange sound. She curled up to quell it.
"Golly!" a familiar voice called before the conjured light shining through Cter's ruffled hair shifted with hurried movement. "Cter? How are you feeling?"
"I'm–" A burp from the depths of her intestines had the light backing off a step or two. "I'm fine. Just need a moment for everything to settle." Her head, her stomach, her everything.
"I'll ask the driver to stop for a minute or two."
"To stop carefully."
Since abruptly would've just made everything worse.
Kurant's knocks on the forward-facing window and quick argument with the driver of the carriage became as noise to Cter's ears as she curled up further to give her enough clarity to figure out which memories were hers and which weren't. It was her third time doing it, but initially it felt like her first time in all of the confusion.
It became different than the few times she'd done it before though after a short while. How much she tried to sort everything out, the more it seemed to want to blend together again. She had no long ears though. She had no whiskers. No fur. No fluffy tail. Why didn't they want to go away?
Why was there a sense of permanence to them?
Permanence…
Like pulling out the bottom plate from a stack of dishes, Cter forced out her left arm out from below her weight, finding a trail of glowing lines that spiraled up her sleeve, shining with such an intensity and complexity so great that they looked like blurred letters. On the back of her hand the furred Delta Rune had been completely overtaken by the glow of the lines that ran around its circumference like stitching around a patched piece of clothing.
"The driver's slowing down now, Cter. Is it bett...er..."
Kurant's awe filled the air and her aura with an excited savor like just before a strike of lightning. Her conjured light over her shoulder followed her down as she sat in a kneel in front of Cter. "May I?" she asked with a timid hand extended. Cter handed her left arm over to Kurant, who took it like it was her own firstborn. "Cter..." the Second Monster Mage whispered with a breath so wondrous and hopeful that it outshone the excited burst of light from her hovering candlelight. "There's a pattern to it, Cter. A pattern to your lines. It's amazing, Cter. This without even summoning any magic yourself. It's just resting. No wonder you were out for so long if it resulted in this complex a pattern."
Out for…
"How long?"
The question was quick and completely ignorant of the awe and wonder that radiated off of Kurant. If it was cause enough for Kurant to bring it up then that scared Cter. Scared her enough that the bright glow of her sleeve began to damper. Her head flinched to the side as another worry crept up from her soul. A worry that had Cter snapping her view towards Kurant's thumb.
"It's not extended..."
A confusing sentence to anyone else, but when Kurant heard it, the tone of her aura changed within less than a moment. The soft and rounded wonder in her eyes transformed into a sharp and concentrated look that pushed away any and all emotion like a powerful gust through her aura. "Why did you say that?"
Why? "B-Because..."
"No," Kurant almost accused. "Why did you say that, Cter?"
The addition of Cter's name at the end of the question had the answer that lingered on Cter's tongue vaporizing into nothing. The thread that could have been pulled enough to lead to an answer vanished from Cter.
She had not yet gotten Bonny's memories in order, that much was clear.
"I'm gonna sit you up, Cter." The emphasis on the name made it obvious why. "This complexity might be too much for even you, Cter. Just sit for a while and focus inwards while I try to keep your aura in check, you hear, Cter?"
Cter heard.
"Thank you."
"Maybe you were brought out of your sleep and memory-induced trance a bit too early," Kurant continued while casting a quick and narrowed glance behind her towards the driver.
"How long?" Cter repeated while her vision darkened at the sides from her head being lifted upright. "How long, Kurant?"
"A day and a half."
A...day?
"A day," Kurant said again to Cter's slow head-tilt and even slower squint. "Let me fetch you something to eat and drink. You must be too exhausted to even feel that you're parched and starving."
Cter didn't feel hungry or thirsty though.
…
Wait wasn't that just what Kurant said though?
…
Okay maybe Cter was starving and parched.
"We'll continue when I say that we'll continue, my dear driver. If we're late we're late. Cter is more important than anything else on this carriage."
Huffed steps came back towards Cter with water and fruit which Kurant sliced into manageable pieces with a floating, cyan knife. The pieces were then hovered over to Cter while Kurant poured water into a cup. "Open your mouth, Cter."
She did.
"You have to open it more."
She did.
"More."
She did.
"More."
She couldn't.
Was that...bad that she couldn't? Kurant's worried furrow said so, if nothing else.
"Don't drown, Cter."
She would do her best.
Cold, refreshing liquid made Cter aware of how dry and swollen her tongue and throat was. Even being a liquid the water had trouble navigating down her throat. It hurt. Cter wanted to say to Kurant that it hurt, but that wouldn't be possible. It hurt all the way from the top of her throat to the depth of her stomach.
Hurt.
Pain.
It needed healing to remove the pain.
Kry healed. He knew healing magic. How did it feel again? His aura? How did Bonny feel it? How was it to him?
"Don't fall asleep, Cter!"
Cter had to focus. Had to bring back the memories she had just tried to push to the side.
"Cter!"
A viscous mist of shimmering green had danced around Kry's sleeve. Through the lines of his sleeve the green had begun as emerald at the top of his shoulder, turning a lighter green the further down it went. A serene and calming tone to his aura…
"Cter?"
The green remembered how it was without pain. How it was before pain happened. A return to life. Like the new green of spring.
A pressure formed from Cter's left arm into her hand which she placed just below her throat. For a brief second she let the pressure push against her throat and hand before she forced it inside of her. The pressure dissipated with tendril-like tingling up and down her throat and chest with a cold and flow reminiscent of the cold water Kurant had just given her. Its flow surged throughout Cter, filling her limbs with a newfound awareness that flickered from pain to relief instantaneously.
"Singe my soul!"
Kurant jumped backwards to avoid Cter throwing her head and body upwards with eyes about to bulge right out of her skull. It was as if she'd been dropped sleeping into a lake of icy water. The shock was so sobering it made her mind fuzzy again with too much focus and intense contemplation about what was happening. From being barely aware to beyond aware in the blink of an eye.
She had trouble keeping up with how her own mind!
"Okay!" Cter shouted. "Okay! Okay. Okay." She dragged at her nose. "Yes. Okay, I'm here. I'm in the carriage."
What had happened?
Bonny gave Cter his magic.
Okay.
What next?
It caused Cter to go into a memory-induced sleep again like with Frioke and Idyll.
Okay.
What next?
She was awoken too early before her soul had sorted out it all.
Okay.
What next?
Next was to come.
Okay.
Cter exhaled.
It made her head spin again.
"Cter?" poked an understandably confused Kurant.
"Yeah, I'm just..." Cter replied while pushing the base of her right palm against her forehead with her eyes closed hard. "Can I have some more water?" She grabbed air with her left hand until she felt her fingers wrap around the handle of the cup. With one rapid sweep she drank the rest of the water.
It wasn't enough.
So Kurant poured some more.
But that wasn't enough.
So Kurant poured some more.
And that was enough for the moment.
"Some fruit too?"
"Please."
Like desperate breaths after almost drowning, Cter inhaled the cut pieces quickly enough that they bounced on the back of her throat before falling down into her stomach. It was a rather unpleasant feeling, however there was still some lingering healing magic left that it disappeared instantly afterwards.
A few long minutes passed by before Kurant felt it was time to ask again. "How are you feeling, Cter?" The needles shot from the driver's eyes in front didn't faze her at all.
"I'm...fine. I'm fine now."
In a remarkable display of trust of Cter's words the driver had the carriage moving immediately after she said it. Kurant's unbalanced kneel was thrown into disarray, and she was forced to take brace on Cter's sofa with a hard grimace against the awkward bend her braced knee underwent. With a backhanded slap glowing with purple the front window was shut with a rattly slam. "Idiot," Kurant cursed towards the window as she fell upwards onto her own sofa with a heavy seat. "Not you, Cter."
Cter knew that, but it was always good to clarify. She too jumped up on her seat with some more flicked pieces of fruit shot into her mouth. "Can I bother you for another fruit?"
Without looking up from her caressing of her braced knee, Kurant tossed over a pear to Cter with some stasis magic to it. Cter caught it with some stasis of her own. It was different than before. The purple was a bit deeper, and the haze surrounding it looked to be out of a cloud of flour rather than mist. Thicker, more reflective, and almost casting shadows of its own. As Cter took her first bite from the pear she held in her right hand she again studied the new lines on her sleeve.
It seemed like the spiraling line was acting like a stem of sorts, with spreading lines similar to that of an exotic leaf outwards with fractal-like patterns that retracted into the stem with fading intensity to their purple glow.
Cter's chewing paused for a second as an explanation popped into her head. With her brow furrowing she began forming an ice cube in her hand. Strangely enough the fractal pattern turned more into a blood-vessel pattern as the icy core was formed, carving an icy-blue into the fabric of her sleeve. As Cter shifted her magic to more monster-based for the outside shell the fractals again began to grow from the tips of the magical vessels.
She swallowed her chewed piece of pear before she nonchalantly threw the ice cube into her empty cup where it landed with a soft clang.
"Neat."
"Hm?" Kurant reacted with a tilt up from her massaging her knee. "Neat?"
With a turn of her sleeve, Cter displayed the icy lines that had already begun to fade as she had finished her magical ice cube. "Patterns," she said. "They change depending if I base the magic on human experiences contra monster ones. It looks rather interesting. Seems to fade quickly though, so it has to be reaching out to further funnel inwards more potential rather than reaching out to expand and have enough room to act that potential. More resources allocated, so to speak."
Cter first summoned a crackling fire similar to the bonfire back in her home village at winter solstice to demonstrate. Again there began to grow thin blood-vessel-patterned lines from a point in her sleeve's stem in a fiery orange. With a switch to a more clean-burning fire that was completely magical and artificial the fractals began again, confirming Cter's theory.
Kurant's sleeved hand found itself under her chin tapping in thought with its thumb on her lip curled inwards. "Can you give the flame a bit more intensity, please?"
Cter looked up at the ceiling of the carriage. It was a bit too short for her to be comfortable increasing the flame's intensity with any proper magnitudes. She couldn't let the fire run down her sleeve either since that would just conceal the lines. The driver would not have been any happier with their carriage burning from inside, even if Kurant most likely would. "I'll switch to something else."
But what, really?
Another ice cube, perhaps?
Cter would need a bigger bowl to put it though.
"Just something," Kurant answered with a careless opening of her hand before returning her thumb to tap on her lip. "I think the texture of the lines might change instead of the speed they increase in size."
Could be.
Maybe if Cter made the ice just from memory? Just the vessel pattern? She nodded to herself before beginning.
The pattern began on the back of her sleeve in view for Kurant which was lucky. That way Cter could just focus on making the ice comprising the cube more intricate and complex, raising magical intensity needed for it that way rather than just size and making it bigger and cumbersome. She sculpted the ice crystals in strange and confusing patterns which ranged from different types of ice Romrom had told her about to different types of knots her dad had taught her. Mixing human memories without making them magical and artificial was another layer of effort needed for Cter's magic. Two natural things didn't naturally become natural on their own when blended together as naturally as possible.
Keeping track of that too was another smaller layer on top.
"Yup," Kurant said with an inhale, "texture rather than speedier growth. See for yourself."
The soft clang the second ice cube produced against the metal cup was different as it landed with its earlier sibling. "Oh, I see," Cter agreed as she turned her sleeve to inspect the texture. She had made ice in her magical veins. Not solid though, more liquid to it, but not liquid in the sense of its viscosity. "I...see." Cter felt less convinced that she knew the longer she looked. Even when she touched the lines with her naked fingers she was less in the know than when the lines were hidden from view.
The texture of solid ice with the behavior of a liquid, yet with the viscosity of a gas. Silt, perhaps? No, not really.
"Fair enough that we find out something new, don't you think?" shrugged Kurant at Cter rubbing the strange...glob...between her fingers. "It was why we set out to get your permanent magic, wasn't it?"
True…
The magical goop vaporized in conjunction with the lines fading away on Cter's sleeve, leaving only a slightly oily feeling behind. She could feel her tongue push against the back of her teeth, but there was no way she was gonna let it out to get a taste. Cter was curious, yes.
But there were still lines that should not have been crossed despite the many new ones founded on her sleeve.
"Can I have a third fruit please?"
A large, red apple landed in Cter's hand from Kurant's magic which she quickly took a bite out of. It didn't sate her tongue though, strangely enough. Quite the pickle.
"Do we have spices with us?"
Kurant's hair only settled after her rapid turn of her head after a long handful of seconds she spent staring at Cter with perplexed blinking. "Spices?" she mouthed but didn't say anything. Her words were stuck in her throat for fear of being said and giving credence to the question. "What? For the apple?"
"Otherwise I might lick my finger."
Honesty perhaps wasn't the best choice, although that Cter only realized after she'd spilled it. Like a puddle of questionable origin it stained the conversation.
"Lick your..." Kurant mouthed again with her eyes even more narrowed in confusion. "Do you feel fine, Cter? Be honest, please." She even felt at Cter's aura with her own. Almost like a doctor prodding for where the pain is.
But honesty just put her in the situation, didn't it?
"Maybe you should still lie down, Cter. At least drink some more water when you're done with the apple." Kurant went back to her knee. "And no, we don't have any spices at the ready."
Bit of a shame.
More of a shame that the window of the carriage door was facing away from Mt. Ebott as Cter turned to look out of it. Meant that they were heading back to Monster Country though. Back to Jarasevo, and back to Idyll.
Wait!
Dammit!
"Kurant?" Cter asked hurriedly while almost throwing herself at the Monster Mage. "Did Sarbor Fech finish his letter to Idyll?"
Please please please please please please please please please.
"He did."
Phew!
"He insisted that he give the letter to you though, but since you were unconscious I had to deny that. He...wasn't the happiest about it. My guesses are that he wanted to give you some instructions too and perhaps talk with you for a bit about it."
Cter nodded. "I see." Talk with her about Idyll, no doubt. His reaction was quite dipole. Pulled between his own duties and promise he'd set for himself against wanting to see his little sister again. His mustache alone gave him an air of dedication that he surely applied to his work too. Perhaps he didn't want to see Idyll before he'd figured out what killed their parents? Perhaps he had to get revenge before he could see Idyll as his sister again?
Damn, talking with him would've given Cter at least some hints about it.
"I added that if he was so keen to talk with you he could travel to Jarasevo. There's a human population there that's only bound to grow in time, which of course means that there's a risk for the same epidemic to begin there as it is in Xoff. He'd be close to his sister too if he did that." Kurant shook her head with an angrily bemused scoff. "Never seen a heel spin so fast in my entire life. Almost sliced my face open with that mustache of his."
Kurant reached deep into her robe with her naked hand.
"It reminds me though."
Her tapping thumb made it look like her heart was beating outside of her body through the purple fabric.
"About what you probably saw through Bonny's eyes as you slept through his memories."
A letter with cursive writing addressing it to Idyll Fech was handed over to Cter who took it with her right hand.
"About what you saw about...me."
Cter turned the letter around. On the back of was stamped the shape of the stone heart of Bonny's. The same rough shape of the Delta Rune.
"Cter?"
She looked up from the letter to Kurant resting her sleeved hand on her chest.
"What do you think the human soul is?"
