"It's funny, heh."

The anxious exhale told differently.

"Barbeqa joked about this earlier this morning."

As did the quivering hands holding the cup of freshly poured tea.

"The only way either of us were gonna get away from cleaning up in the kitchen after this last week would be if the king or queen personally requested our presence."

As did the half-dragged-back lips baring a set of uneven teeth failing to produce a smile.

"Maybe she knew?"

And the crooked eyebrows folding in on themselves.

"Maybe she said it to ease my worries?"

Cter sat with the same hunch-over that her best friend did on the lonely bench a few bushels away from where King Asgore and Queen Toriel sat with their Royal Councilors, minus one. It was just the two of them with the vast, dense greenery of the Royal Garden dotted with blossoming colors here and there. Where they sat not even the curious gusts rustling through the Royal Garden could reach. It was just the two of them.

"I don't know..."

Just how she had requested.

"My q-queen...I..."

Requested as she stood shaking the same as the aspen leaves behind her. Stood shaking in front of the Monster Royals as well as the Royal Councilors. She was not her usual self. The confidence and wide-brimmed smile that Cter often told was too high and too smug respectively had vanished without a trace from the half of her face not covered by her raven-black feathers.

Even the feathers seemed to have a smaller bend to them, looking more flat than usual. Might have been due to her having combed them down to look more proper for the human guests, but usually they curved back up within a day or so. Her hair she had let loose again from braiding them and combining them like Cter's.

"Yes, Ms. Fech?" Queen Toriel said to Idyll with a motherly concern in her expression and voice. "Is anything the matter?"

Had to be, no? Otherwise she wouldn't have been there.

"It's just..." Idyll had replied while her hands had gripped harder on her stained-washed apron over her legs. "M-May I only speak to Cter about this, please?" While she did sound afraid requesting that she be excused from the Monster Queen that had summoned her, it took courage to be brave enough to just ask for that.

Cter noticed it with an encouraging nod to her friend. "I'll relay all of it to you afterwards," she said to her colleagues and royals. "Only if we may, of course, Queen Toriel."

"You may," the Monster Queen allowed with a gentle nod. "I understand that it is a sensitive subject for you, Ms. Fech. I remember vividly how much you thanked King Asgore and I when we agreed to let you work here in the castle." She stood up carefully as to not startle, making her way around the glass table to the tensed-up Royal Chef.

"Your brother means a lot to you," the queen continued while stroking away a small leaf that had gotten caught on one of Idyll's feathers. "And that you agreed to tell us what he said to you yesterday is plenty enough already. That you tell Cter who then tells us is the same to me. I trust the both of you with all of my soul." She looked over her shoulder to the table, eyes narrowed to be sure that her words came across as clearly as possible. "And so do the rest as well."

No disagreement.

None in the slightest.

Nope.

The Monster Queen's eyes softened again, reaching a white, fluffy hand for Cter to take and be helped up from her seat. "You two take as much time as you need, yes?" She motioned to the tray Idyll had brought with her arranged with pastries and two more kettles of Golden Flower tea. "And would you kindly carry this instead of her while the two of you find a good place to talk, Cter?"

" T-Toriel," Idyll protested as she saw the queen's hands lift up the metal tray by its ornate handles, "I c-can still–"

"It's not a question if you can," the Monster Queen interjected while handing the tray over to Cter who found it a bit heavier than the queen had. The growing tug down on her shoulders as Queen Toriel released her fingers from the metal handles had the Monster Mage quickly applying stasis magic onto the tray so that its kettles would not tip over. "It is not a question at all, should I say. We asked you to come here, so we should be the ones accommodating you."

That was one way to impose that one was the Monster Queen and would therefor not be questioned on such important matters. Maybe not the most orthodox way, but it got the point across to Idyll, who bowed her head with gratefulness flowing thickly through her aura.

"Thank you, my queen," she thanked with a waiver in her voice.

While Idyll's head was bowed Queen Toriel gave Cter a sideways nod to let her know that she should be the next one to say something. After clearing her throat after her own, slightly quicker bow of her head, Cter raised her stasis-aided metal tray like a shrug. "There is a bench nearby among a thicket of rose bushes, Idyll," she suggested to her friend. "Shall we?"

Idyll stood up from her bow, wiping away a relieved tear from her feather-covered eye. "Yes," she said after a steadying inhale. "Yes, after you."

"And while the two discuss Sarbor Fech," began Queen Toriel after Cter had passed her by with the tray, stealing away a pastry by a quick, stabbing claw, "the rest of us should discuss the Royal Mage of Ice and his choice to continue the Council of Three Countries after Rasliela's reveal to be the Princess of the Lineage."

The Monster Chef's first step were interrupted by her hearing Rasliela's secret title, blinking for a few, long seconds, before walking alongside Cter. "Is it strange that I feel that I had already guessed that?" Idyll asked her friend hushed and with her cheeks hunkered down between her shoulders. "It just...doesn't come off as a surprise to me?"

"Which itself is surprising?"

The raven feathers bounced with Idyll's quick nod. "Yeah." Her brow collected with some quick thinking. "It's surprising that it wasn't surprising." Thinking that went on for longer than she expected, further deepening her brow's angle. "It was the way she held her fork during the welcoming banquet, I think?" In her thinking Idyll walked into a small branch that bent off her forehead, but she didn't seem to notice that it did. "She was sat next to the Royal Mage of Ice, remember? He had requested that I be the one to serve and attend the two Royal Mages so that he could ask me a bit more about my magic."

With her unoccupied hands, Idyll then clapped her concave-held hands together to form a smooth-shaped ball of ice with a living flame burning carelessly within it. She held it in her cupped hands, looking, and feeling pride over it. "He found it interesting how I combined fire and ice, especially by being a monster."

Cter reacted to that, but her friend eased the Monster Mage with a whiffed wave of her hand. "He said it genuinely, I promise. Gave me a few hints as to how meld the two better as well." The Monster Chef then lifted up the ice-blended-fire magic to her friend to completely remove the suspicious look Cter had. "Hence this."

It looked almost like glass with how transparent it was. Clear, core ice that Cter had only seen a few times when the lake in her Hjearta village had frozen over. Ice so see-through it was almost invisible. From afar it would be as if Idyll was only doing her fire magic. "Impressive," said Cter after inspecting the ice sphere lit from inside.

"For a monster?" came a slight chuckle as a reply with Idyll's raised eyebrow looking through the magical ice without the slightest ripple to it. So clear was the ice that Cter could see Idyll's pupil change from looking at her friend to looking at the sphere in her hands.

"He told me that I should try and think of my ice magic as something small coming together as something big instead of making it big from the beginning, similar to how fire magic works. Since ice is a structure, building it up from smaller gives you more awareness of where things might go wry. A lake does not freeze in an instant, instead it grows from the corners and come together to then make it one continuous piece."

Idyll had the flame inside her ice sphere grow, sizzling the clear ice away into invisible steam.

"And it is only from that big, continuous piece that ice can be called ice. When it becomes a structure is when it is ice."

"Quite the philosophical way to think about it," nodded Cter to Idyll's smile. "Although I guess that is to be expected from the Royal Mage of Ice, after all." There was this one thing though. "Weren't you gonna say something about Rasliela though?"

With an embarrassed flutter, Idyll's fire magic poofed out of existence. "Oh, right..." she faltered with a small, bashful chuckle. "Sorry, it's just..."

"It's fine," assured Cter. "It's just that it is not the Royal Mage of Ice that revealed himself to be a pretender to the throne."

"Right, yes." Idyll nodded backwards. "The others were to discuss him."

"That too, yes," agreed Cter.

The Monster Chef retraced her thought process in her mind, looking up into her lowered brow with a slight pout out her feather-covered side. "Well I did not really pay much attention to her per-se because of the Royal Mage of Ice talking to me about ice magic and how I saw it differently than he did. He with his structure from smaller and me making from bigger."

"Idyll," Cter reminded as best as she could with her hands busy carrying the metal tray while making sure she stepped on the stepping stones and not between them. "Rasliela." She didn't enjoy reminding her friend not to talk about something she seemed to have enjoyed discussing, but she had to do it. Cter would make sure to ask doubly about Idyll's new angle to her ice magic the next time they found time to have dinner on the castle roof.

The sky-blue lizard monster shook loose a few dark feathers with her hard shake of her head, whipping her bright hair back and forth. "Yes..." she said again through an inhale through her nostrils. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize." Please, don't. If anything Cter should have been apologizing. "Just...tell me what you noticed, okay?"

Idyll closed her eyes for a moment. "I noticed..." She bared her teeth. "I noticed something about how she used her fork and knife." With her own hands she tried to show it, but there was a small issue. "Could you...um..." Her hands closed and opened with disbelief that she was about to ask what she needed to. "Could you give me another pair of fingers?"

With an uncomfortable grinding sound, the cups slid off their saucers on the ornate metal tray as Cter stopped in the middle of her step with a hurried turn tilt of her head at her friend. "Give you what?"

Said friend had to crane her muzzle back a bit not to be hit by the sweeping braid arcing from Cter turning her head so quickly. "Another pair of fingers," Idyll repeated while holding up her scaly palms in front of her. "Humans have five, and it was the ones that I am missing that I noticed."

Five on each hand, Cter assumed that Idyll meant. "Wouldn't it be easier if I gave you the tray and–"

"And how then would I show you?"

Good point.

"Okay," said Cter without any thought to how she would be able to do the magic whilst her own hands were busy. "But how would you know how to move the fingers the way you saw them?" Realizing that she sorta answered her own question, Cter began to curl her arms under the tray so that she could balance it while still getting her hands angled out of from below it, but that had her arms crossing over to keep her balance which meant that she had to turn at an awkward angle and–

"Crystal magic?" suggested Idyll with palpable confusion as to why Cter didn't just make a magical table to put the tray onto. "You'll just drop it otherwise."

The Monster Chef was correct that Cter was being quite silly. The Monster Mage could have tried to explain away what she was trying to do, but that would have just taken time and not really solved anything. "You're right," she conceded, painting the underside of the tray with crystal magic that grew into the shape of a simple table standing on one thick, refracting leg that danced the sunlight between the shifting leaf shadows onto the green of the bushes flanking the gravel path. "There," Cter concluded with both her hands free and ready to magically finger her friend.

She blinked away the thought with mild disgust in her aura for having phrased it that way.

"Something the matter?" quirked Idyll while holding out her hands with her palms up, receiving a quick shake in return.

"No, nothing," Cter answered a bit too quickly. "Alright." How was she gonna go about this? Conjured fingers were easy enough, but Idyll would preferably be able to control them so that she could show exactly how Rasliela used them differently, right? How would it be the simplest? To just have the conjured fingers hang there on the sides of her hand and let her move them like the joints of a puppet?

Or…

Cter looked to her left forearm.

A look that Idyll recognized fully. "Thinking about giving me your feeling of how to use five fingers?" She put her four into Cter's five. "I know you are capable of it. It'll be fine, I promise. I trust you."

That Cter knew.

"I trust you trusting you as well, Cter."

That…

That she did not expect.

"It'll only be temporary, just a small thing." The raven-covered part of Idyll's mouth chuckled into a smile. "I can pinky promise with you that I trust you once you give a pair to me, if that's an incentive?"

How could Cter not break into a similar chuckle at that? "Idyll..." she still tried to hold back. "You can't say things like that."

The Monster Chef shrugged at it. "I can't say that, true, but after you've done the magic I can." Her smile turned teasing, earning herself a playful push from Cter. "I can give you one back too when–"

"Alright!" surrendered Cter with her sleeved hand rubbing her forehead through some more chuckles out her nostrils. "Singe my soul with you, Idyll." It felt good, despite Cter's not feeling that it was the best course of action. Specifically it felt good to laugh the way she did. It felt good to have Idyll be...well...Idyll. Her brashness and just overall...her! Cter needed a reminder that despite everything, it was still her. Despite the Fusion and trials and councils, Cter still had someone she could be so casual and loose with. A friend beyond friends.

"Do you pick your nose with the pinky finger to get deeper or..."

Even if that friend was an idiot beyond idiots too.

Cter quelled the desire to tell Idyll to not push it further as that would have most likely resulted in her taking that to mean about the nose again. "Give me your hands." Cter knew her friend. "Only in the physical sense, thank you very much." Which was why she had to add the caveat which had Idyll rolling her eyes disappointingly.

"You're no fun," she pretended to mutter, but her titter gave her away. "Can you make doubly sure to not give me the feeling of being boring, please?" Both of her wrists Idyll placed into Cter's sleeved hand with her fingers limp. "You need me to do something with my fingers? Move them around or something?"

The Monster Mage shook her head while she closed her eyes. "Should be fine." She focused inwards to where her soul remembered how it felt to change Idyll's magic. Cautiously she approached the memory within her akin to a nearing a campfire with her face. At the slightest spark she would retreat away.

It was the first time she had changed magic in someone else for a long, long while. Technically it was the first time too since she had gotten her magical carvings, and that she could feel. It tingled differently in her arm as she took in Idyll's aura in order to blend hers to be similar. It felt more...intimate, the different aura she took in to make a temporary Cooperative Connection. "Hang on."

Different enough that she gave Idyll back her hands for a moment. "Still four?" the Monster Chef wondered, a bit unsure. "Something wrong?"

"...No," came an answer after a pause that was a bit too long for Idyll's comfort. "No, nothing's wrong," Cter answered a bit clearer in tone, but not so much in her pronunciation as she spoke through her teeth biting carefully onto the tips of her sleeved fingers in order to loosen them up. "I'm only curious, I promise." She removed her sleeve from her left arm, tucking it in under her right armpit, catching a faint change in color on her magical carvings. "Hmm..."

Once she reached for Idyll's hands while still occupied with her left arm, she grabbed only air the first time.

And the second.

And the third.

And the–

"Cter..."

The Monster Mage looked up from her arm with an accompanying "What?" to find her friend with a reluctant expression and step back. "What's the matter, Idyll?"

"Your..."

Arm.

Cter's arm.

"It felt different when I took in your aura, Idyll," Cter explained while trailing her right-handed fingers over the carvings. All five of them. "I want to see if it is visible."

"...Do...do you have to?"

It was only then that Cter looked up properly from the carvings on her left arm to properly see the worried curl of Idyll's lips. "I..." she said with a scratch on her left cheek. "I want to." Her loose shrug and chuckle out her nose did not go home as much as she intended it to be with Idyll.

The edge of the neighborhood at the closest.

"If that is what you want then..." Idyll struggled with keeping her reluctant expression at bay, ending almost up with her hiding her face behind her blond hair. "Then sure. I shouldn't be..."

It wasn't the prettiest things to look at, that Cter understood. "Was similar with me and your feathers," she replied, meaning only good. "It'll take time, but it'll fade from you that it looks bad to you." The Monster Mage plucked a loose feather away from her friend's face. "I promise."

Perhaps she should have done the gesture with her human hand instead as the pluck was more from Idyll leaning her head away than it was Cter plucking at it. "It'll take time," the Monster Chef repeated. "I'm sorry that not enough has passed already." She closed her eyes hard in retribution. "Go ahead though. I'm fine."

Cter could easily tell that it was a lie, but the quicker she did her magic the quicker she could put on her sleeve again. "Give me your hands again, Idyll." So she began anew by focusing inwards into her soul, still cautious about it. As she took in Idyll's aura into her magical carvings, there formed new, faint lines on top like the warm shimmer over a road during high summer.

Faint, new lines that were the temporary Cooperative Connection that Cter created with her friend's aura. The tingle came from them lighting up with the magic Cter wanted to transfer back to her friend, pouring from her elbow back out towards her hand holding both of Idyll's.

"Oh..." the Monster Chef uttered with a sour furrow. "That's different." A cold shiver ran through her aura, as if her fingers had been dipped into icy water.

All ten of them.

"Oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!" Idyll continued while trying to shake loose her hands like there wasn't a towel nearby to dry them. "Oh it's weird. It's weird, it's weird, it's weird!" Her eyes were closed, not daring to open up and look at her hands. "Why is it so weird? Cter, why? It's so strange! Why didn't you give me how you are used to them too, dammit!"

She was about to, but someone tugged away their hands from her before she could.

"Uhhhhh, I don't like it!"

While Idyll was busy with feeling pinky about her new pinkies, Cter looked at her left arm again. Amid more uncomfortable sounds and whining from Idyll, she could not find any trace of the temporary Cooperative Connection she had made. There was no faint lines above her carved ones, nor any other trace of Idyll's aura. The temporary Cooperative Connection was indeed temporary.

Which Cter felt relief over.

"Uuuuuh! They look weird too!"

Relief that she probably should have given over to her friend after first putting her sleeve back on.

"Uuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh."

Or maybe not.

"Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"

Because she hadn't seen something this funny in so, so long.