"Or you can just tell me?"

Cter thought about how she had said it as she sat inside the opened window in her room up in the castle tower. The steam from the hot cup of tea she had made with magic bent at a right angle as she exhaled her disappointment in how angrily she had spoken to her friend.

And more so how far she had leaned back with her left shoulder, yanking away her left arm from the blue hands that reached for it. She did so with a sudden drop in the warmth of her aura, becoming cold enough to have Idyll retreat her extended hands as if she had done something truly offensive.

She hadn't though. It wasn't offensive.

It was just…

Just something she wasn't to do. She could not touch Cter's left arm with the intent of sharing her magic with the Monster Mage. It was dangerous in ways Cter wanted to spare Idyll from, but in doing so she couldn't explain why she scared her friend with her low, grumbling comment and angry yank back of her sleeved arm. It was a moment where the playful warmth between two good friends crashed down into tense, uncertain flinching from both parties.

The Monster Mage warmed herself up with some tea from how cold thinking back on it made her feel. Even in the warming, early rays of the rising sun painting her silhouette purple on the stone wall opposite the window in her room, the Fourth Monster Mage felt a cold shiver run through her spine as the vivid image of Idyll's increasingly worried expression filled her mind.

Idyll even retracted her aura from mingling with Cter's…

On top of it all, Cter did not feel like she had to apologize to Idyll in the moment. She was protecting her friend, even as she heard how low and dismissive her own tone was. She was protecting her friend, but from what exactly she did not know.

If her soul hungered so much for Idyll's memories without being touched by the fusion, then she would not dare in the slightest to risk anything with Idyll. Cter could barely control her soul when she was making a conscious decision about diving into a monster's memory before the tragedy at Clinic Hill.

Doing it after the tragedy at Clinic Hill was out of the question regardless of who it was that asked. Not Priestess Frioke. Not a Royal Guard.

And definitely not Idyll!

Cter drank some more tea.

Yet still it didn't warm up the cold shiver up her spine.

For not only did she dismiss her friend with the most low and angry tone she had ever uttered, she did so when her friend was the most eager to share something so wonderful in her life. So eager that she wanted to share it in the most intimate way she knew. She wanted Cter to understand fully why Idyll fell in love with Donial, the jester monster hired to refurbish the less-used guest rooms of Jarasevo Castle.

Which at least gave Cter a good reason to explain herself why she tugged away her left arm.

"I don't want to also fall in love with him the same way you did."

Idyll knew that it wasn't the true reason, but it was a reason she could continue the conversation with. She wasn't gonna bring up why Cter yanked her arm away. She wasn't gonna question her Monster Mage friend why she sounded like she meant both death and decay with how angry she dismissed Idyll's approach. If there was any chance for the moment to be saved it was up to Cter to show where she wanted the conversation to continue.

Which it did.

The cold shiver up the Monster Mage's back leaning against the window frame eased into a melancholic echo of its sudden, cold jolt as she chuckled at Idyll continuing on as if nothing happened. Cter truly didn't deserve Idyll.

Said undeserved Idyll would never agree to that though.

Agree to smooching after just a minute of meeting someone, perhaps.

But not that Cter did not deserve the best of friends.

"As if you'd have the slightest chance in the world when compared to me," the Monster Chef immediately huffed through her nose while pointing to herself with the claw of her thumb less than a beat after Cter had broken the ice cold silence. "No way in hell that you kiss as good as I do."

She wasn't…

The surface of the tea broke into scattering splattering as Cter sighed deeply into it.

Idyll wasn't wrong in that. Cter had never really...kissed someone else. It was blatantly clear to Idyll, for as soon as Idyll mentioned it, Cter's cheeks blossomed as if she was doing Monster Mage level magic as a first-year student at Soul's School.

Oh and what endless amusement ran through Idyll's aura when she noticed. "You've never kissed anyone, have you, Cter?" she exclaimed just loud enough for it to be on the edge of too loud to not be teasing anymore. "I guess it's hard to learn how to kiss when you're at the top of the ladder and everyone is kissing up to you instead?" Idyll's teeth bared fully as she laughed at her own joke.

"Oh you're just the best, Cter. You know that? The best of the best when it comes to weaving together what makes a human and what makes a monster, but you have never kissed someone." She lifted her arm up with her palm flat. "You're all up here." Then she lowered it down next to her head. "And none down here." She pouted her lips. "All important with you and nothing unimportant. Nothing you can not afford not to do, Cter. It's something I feel for you. Even things that are less important than you not knowing how to kiss."

Cter scoffed through her nose into her tea the same she did into her half-empty bowl the evening before.

"It's why I want to make good food for you so that you can do something that's not important to the world, but important to you instead." Idyll then knocked a knuckle against the pot simmering with her flame magic. She knocked quickly, for while it was her own fire magic, the heat in and on the pot still burned. "Something that you don't have to think about or have to worry that it might upset the political balance between humans and monsters. Good food that lets you relax for a minute. Lets you lean back and cross your legs without worrying that it'll lessen the value of the Monster Mage image."

Cter tried to while in her window, but crossing her legs had her feeling that her balance was a bit too poor for her taste sitting with the height of the castle tower on one end.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want you to become like Sir Gerson, you know? I know that you're dedicated fully with your heart and soul to being a Monster Mage, but sometimes it seems like you don't have a life outside what is essentially your job. You have me and your other colleagues in the castle as friends, but do you have anything outside the castle? You have your family back in Hjearta, but otherwise?"

Idyll lowered her head with a serious grimace. "I know it sounds like I'm talking down to you, but I do not know how else to say it." The grimace was broken up by a small chuckle as Idyll raised her flat palm up again. "I've not been up here at all before so..."

And for that, Cter was grateful.

Because Idyll was completely right in that Cter didn't have a lot, if anything, outside the castle. She had her human family back in Hjearta, but when was she gonna be able to visit them again? She had sent letters and such to Romrom talking about the promise and whatnot, but never really talked about anything that she would only want to keep within the castle walls, or the walls to Sir Gerson's office, for that matter.

Writing letters wasn't the same as talking though, even despite Cter's best efforts to try and replicate the magic the skeleton librarian used to read with. She wasn't gonna write to her monster grandma and ask her to put in some of her magic into the pen or ink so that her granddaughter could feel like home more.

Because she'd do it if Cter asked her to.

Immediately without question.

But she'd do too much of it. She'd do too much of it for her granddaughter so homesick and so far away in another country. Too much to the point that she'd exhaust herself magically the same she had done when she made Cter's first sleeve.

Maybe if she wrote with a quill of her own feather it would be enough though?

Cter leaned into her room and made a note of it using stasis magic on the quill sitting in an inkwell on her desk. It was natural ink in the well rather than ink from the large octopus monsters living in the more larger lakes of Monster Country. The color of it didn't sit good with Cter, and it dried much slower.

"And maybe it's out of my element and position to ask you what you are doing on your free time," Idyll had then said with her flat palm curling into a fist that bounced against her thigh. "God, do you even have any free time to begin with? With all you have to do as a Monster Mage… What am I even thinking?"

"About me," Cter replied as quick as she could. "You're worried about me, Idyll." She motioned over her person. "I mean...I would too if I were you. I mean...I was, but...you know..." She then ate some more stew to shut her mouth before it spoke more straight from her soul and heart without going through her head. "In a way, I think that you kissing that jester almost immediately is good for us," the Monster Mage had then said with her wooden spoon still in her mouth.

It had caused her friend's brow to understandably furrow with some slight uncertainty in what Cter meant. "Good for us?" her mouth spoke yet it looked to be her forehead that talked. "Me spending more time with someone else is good for our friendship?"

When she put it like that…

"Yes," Cter answered hesitantly while shifting awkwardly in her chair. "In the sense that you'll have someone else to worry about and stuff, you know?"

She didn't.

And neither did Cter as she sat the morning after with her tea. She tried to think back as to how she could have said something better, but really, how could she have done so on her first go at it?

"I'm not saying that the solution to you worrying about me is to care less about me, Idyll."

"That's...kinda what you're saying though."

Yes, yes it was.

So Cter tried again after a long, awkward silence of her thinking hard on it.

"You know how time seems to move faster when you're not thinking about it? It'll be kinda the same with your worry about me when you have Danio–"

"Donial."

Right.

"Your worry about me when you have Donial by your side shouldn't be as much as with me by your side because you'll be thinking of him. Not as a replacement, but more as a...alternate path of thinking, let's say. You know that I'll be fine because I'm not alone in what I do. I am with my Monster Mage colleagues and I have the immovable Sir Gerson too next to me to help. You know that I'll be fine in the end, but it might not be what you feel because you're not there with me, Idyll. With Donial you'll be busy feeling other things with him so what remains is just you knowing that I'm fine which will then be what you feel too when we meet again."

The sunset-painted face Idyll gave Cter would never leave her. It was as if each word the Monster Mage said had an increased density of garlic in it, scrunching up Idyll's face more and more until it was all wrinkles. Her balled hand became a flat palm once again, and as she raised it over her head that she shook with more and more disappointment fluctuating the wrinkles into deep grooves.

"You are too high up for your own damn good, Cter."

Yes.

Yes, she was.

But…

But she did not know where else to be…

Where else could she be?

Where else could she be as a Monster Mage who was there when the fusion formed? Where else could she be seeing the human soul of a dear friend of hers? Where else could she be when defending a tragedy that the humans wanted to use as an excuse for throwing away their fear onto the monsters?

Where…

Where was she, exactly?

She was in the window facing out the top of a tower situated at Jarasevo Castle with the warming morning rays caressing her face with gentle strokes. She was high up.

And where had she been, exactly?

With her best friend on the castle roof trying to explain in her own words how she was over the moon that said best friend had found love, apparently. Trying to explain in her own words how she was nothing but glad over the fact.

But while she and Idyll were on the rooftop together…

Cter was still too high up.

"I know," she admitted to her best friend with a groan to her sigh. Why couldn't she just say that she was happy? Was it because she knew that her aura was speaking it clearer than she could with words? She knew that Idyll felt it since Idyll's aura embraced Cter's while the Monster Chef laughed at the absurdity that was the Monster Mage Cter. "It's just..."

"You sure know how to get me on other thoughts, Cter," Idyll then comforted by reaching over and patting Cter's closest shoulder. She would have hugged had it not meant her long, bright hair getting dipped into the pot of stew on the roof-mounted table between the two friends. "It's good that your aura is more monster than I am because by golly do I need to get you to lower yourself to be able to understand you."

With that said, Idyll leaned behind the cast-iron pot and lifted up a bottle of Royal Purple from underneath it via a claw in the cork. "Should I splash some into the stew, maybe?" she asked under her breath as she observed the simmering pot with a sideways pout to her muzzle. A decision arose when the pop of the cork prompted an armor-rustling reaction from the Royal Guards down the inner castle wall. "Maybe just a little splosh."

It was more than just a little.

"No I don't mean that you need to be drunk for me to understand what it is you're talking about," came a quick comment over the pouring wine into an appropriate glass. "I meant more that I need to help tug you back down before you go floating up into the clouds high above when I can, y'know? Like when you tugged at me when we lived together in our apartment in Jarasevo when I added too many spices, in your opinion."

Well...she did add too many spices, in everyone's opinions. An entire herb garden into the pot had she been allowed too. Soil included. Many a times Cter had come home tired from her walking and magic usage during the day only to be met by a wall of sharp smells as soon as she entered through the door. It was really a miracle that the slime landlord didn't notice that the wood in the walls and ceilings had a burnt rosemary smell to it.

Cter felt slightly nostalgic thinking back on the smell. Fang Shuey made sure that her room in the castle tower smelled neutrally as to not distract, but it didn't came to her mind that no smell as to not be distracting was inherently distracting as well.

"Oh and could you please have some stasis magic on both of our glasses?" asked Idyll after pouring some Royal Purple for herself too. "Barbeqa will have my head should I bring back any if all shards instead of the two glasses."

"I could make two glasses out of crystal magic instead if you want?" offered Cter with a thin layer of purple-reflecting crystal building up on her inert sleeve. "Then you don't need to worry about them breaking?"

Idyll considered the proposal while she swirled her wine-filled glass while tapping one of her claws against the glass a bit too hard for her to be actually worried about it breaking. She dismissed the idea with a short shake of her head. "Nah." She moved her claw to tap a few times on the rim.

"Barbeqa will be asking me why I then brought with me the expensive glasses if I didn't use them. Don't think she'd be equally angry, but still." The claw finally ended up pointing at Cter. "You doing stasis magic on these two glasses is like asking a large boulder to flatten snow though, isn't it?"

True enough, Cter agreed. She just thought to ask. She gave the two glasses some stasis magic to not be weightless, but to only be moved by Cter and Idyll's auras. If their auras weren't with the glass, then it would hover in the air. Enjoying a fine wine, especially Royal Purple, incorporated all senses, not only taste and smell.

How the color looked through the glass was important, so a purple haze, even if translucent and weak, would naturally interfere with that. How its weight settled in the hand was important too, so using stasis magic to make the wine weightless was taking away not just from the weight, but from the enjoyment of the wine too.

The wine was to be enjoyed with only the specific type of glass between it and the enjoyer. The glass' specifications were made to allow the color of the wine to be seen the most clearest, to allow the weight of the wine to settle on the most sensitive places on the hand, and for the smell and taste of it to be unaltered as it was made from the same glass as it was bottled in.

For being a magical wine made by magical means from a vineyard grown via further-magical means, Royal Purple was meant to be enjoyed as magically inert as possible. There were other wines made to be enjoyed with a spritz of magic to it, of course, but not Royal Purple. The magic of the wine was in how it was made, and not how it was enjoyed. A sophistication that was magic when bottled, but natural when uncorked.

"You know I kinda prefer the other wines in the Royal Cellar more, to be honest."

Cter should really have conjured up a crystal monocle so that she could have it pop out of her eye with disgust at the indignant, crass comment from whom she believed to be her best friend come storm and calm. "You what?" her mouth reacted before she did. "And you kissed Donial with the same mouth that you say these things with?" The Monster Mage felt faint. "Idyll...I can't believe you."

She still couldn't the morning after with calming tea in her hands.

"Listen," Idyll stated clearly while pointing to her overly dramatic friend with the entirety of her free hand not holding the expensive wine as if was a common mug of cheap ale. "Each time I taste test I pout my lips around the spoon. Each time I confirm that the taste is indeed heavenly as is all my cooking, I kiss my hand. This I do each day at each of the hundreds of meals this castle eats without any squabble whatsoever." She moved her free hand forward just the tiniest. "So I could denounce King Asgore and Queen Toriel and still take home the Nose Nuzzling Championship, no problem."

Before Cter's facade cracked, Idyll angled her pointing hand awkwardly to the side, curving her fingers backwards to indicate towards the simmering pot of wine-sploshed stew. "And don't you come acting like your wrist puffs are the puffiest and most sophisticated in the land when you didn't flinch at me infusing my stew with the wine you hold in such high regard."

Idyll widened her smile as she raised her expensive wine filled with expensive wine. "To me managing to bring you down to my level, at least momentarily."

Cter raised her cup of tea at the memory, letting the morning sun's rays filter through the gentle steam reach out the window. To the memory she replied the same she did the evening before.

"Just not too far down so that I begin asking you for kissing lessons."