"And that's just the damn start of it all!"

Cter wasn't planning on saying anything even though she was quite tempted to. Was that genuinely the reason Idyll was called to give a testimony about her older human brother? Him using the wrong fork? Granted, Cter wasn't that invested in the goings-on of the kitchen and which forks were to be used at which part of the meal.

At the banquets earlier in the week she looked to the ones seated next to her as to which fork and knife she was supposed to use at the many courses during the long meal. It had worked when she was an honorary guest at Fenkeep Castle, and it worked just as well when Jarasevo Castle had the honor of honorary guests.

Hell, Cter had no clue which of the multitude of forks even was the fish fork! She could have gotten an idea of which it was from reading the fumes rising from Idyll like the steam from a boiling pot, but that would certainly have scorched her had she tried.

"I didn't care when he did it when I made the dinner for us three way back then," Idyll chuffed with a self-accusing shake to her head. "I didn't care because I knew that he had barely had time to use a fork with all the work he did at Clinic Hill. I was just so happy to see him and to finally fulfill the promise I made him!" She bit down hard. "But he hasn't learned during the time he's been at Noitaidarr Castle! How? Why? Don't they serve food on plates at Noitaidarr Castle? They did at our village, so why not in the damn capital!"

The hair-matted shoulders were harder than rocks when Cter put her hands onto Idyll to help her breathe out. It scorched like holding onto a casserole just taken out of the oven without any mittens as Cter covered her friends aura with hers too to help the Monster Chef breathe out some more.

"Steady on, Idyll," said Cter as gently as she could. "I know you're upset, but this won't help." True, she was talking about her brother which was what she was supposed to be talking about, but it wasn't really the faux pas of fork usage that had Idyll summoned by Queen Toriel to talk about her human brother. "Let's leave the cutlery talk with Rasliela, alright?"

There was reluctance in letting it go. "I should have noticed earlier." Cter could feel the scales on Idyll's shoulder churn underneath her hair and burlap shirt, tighten along with her expression. "Should have noticed that things were wrong and that things had changed for the worse. Even back then I should have noticed. I just..." The scales loosened with the Monster Chef's defeated sigh. "I just wanted him to..." She paused for a second, looking into her empty cup. "I just wanted him."

Cter kept her hands on her friend's shoulders for a long, quiet minute so that she would not fall over. Once she felt that Idyll could keep her own weight up, she gave the tensed shoulders a careful squeeze to let her know that they had to continue. "Why don't you begin with when you first saw him arriving here with the Xoff delegation?"

"Or how I didn't, remember?" Despite that, Idyll nodded. "Those damn wigs and overly fancy hats those human nobles wore made it barely possible to see you through all of the turning heads admiring your Monster Mages' magic outside and the zhuzhed-up interior Donial had spent so long time planning and decorating."

Like a child fearfully approaching a strict parent to ask for more candy, Cter ducked her head down deep to get Idyll's attention. "I'm sorry," she prefaced with a sheepish smile. "Zhuzhed?" She'd never heard that one before. A miracle that she managed to copy the pronunciation.

"Xoff expression," answered Idyll. "Might just be locally in my county though, but it essentially means tarted-up. I don't really use tarted since it's too close to cake in Hjearta, and also a taste."

"Zhuzhed..." Cter let the word settle on her tongue. It felt...zesty, in a sense. "Sorry," the Monster Mage then apologized after the settled zest from the word had faded. "Continue."

"I did like that dress I was give to wear though," Idyll took the opportunity to say while they had already slid away on a tangent. "Donial said that he would try and pull some strings so that I could have it as my own." She looked to where the entrance of the castle was where she had kneeled with her purple dress highlighted with a subtle orange-gold color that both looked regal and brought out the blue of her scales. After a long inhale through her nose she sighed wistfully. "Hopefully he manages to pull the right ones."

There was a hopeful serenity in Idyll's eyes that Cter felt delighted to see. "And if he doesn't manage you let me know, alright? Might be that I can try if he doesn't manage." If anything she felt that it would be making it up for Idyll for having to talk about her human brother like this. "Queen Toriel I guess will be our last chance."

A slight chuckle danced through the uneven teeth. "I'm sure Donial have enough strings to pull, Cter." Idyll hugged her aura around Cter. "I appreciate it something immensely though."

Cter touched her forehead with Idyll's, "Always and forever," and held it there for the good part of a minute before bending away. "I'd like to see you in that dress again. It fit you really well."

"That it did," said the Monster Chef while again looking towards the entrance of the castle through the many trees and flowers in the Royal Garden. As she did, her blinks each lowered the bend of her lips down to a passive frown which she held through a few breaths. "Maybe Sarbor will get to see it too one day?"

A final blink had her eyes looking down.

"I so wanted him to see me wearing it. I wanted him to see his sister wearing a dress that a Monster Royal had worn before. Mom always said that if I did my best at what I did best that I too could wear such fancy dresses as what the fairy tales told." A nostalgic smile broke through the frown. "I had all but forgotten that she had told me that until I saw myself in the mirror wearing it. Maybe...maybe it'll help Sarbor remember too how mom was before she got sick."

Maybe so…

"He'll see it one day, Idyll. You managed to make him the meal that you had always wanted. You've already done all the work. If anyone deserves to feel pretty for her brother for one day, then that one should be you." Cter wouldn't mind to feel pretty one day too, but that was for another time. "I promise you," she said with her hands on top of Idyll's.

They curled almost immediately. "Don't go make promises for him, Cter," the Monster Chef replied low and with a grit to her mouth. "He didn't show himself when he had the chance. He did not have to do anything and he would have seen me. Yet, he didn't." A grit that had her curled hands tightening further. "He didn't see me because he decided not to. He made a choice. He made an effort not to see me welcome him to Jarasevo Castle while in that dress. He did not get a proper welcome when he arrived her with you, so I wanted it to be a welcome for him that would be enough for both times. Yet..."

He didn't…

And the worse part of it all was that he didn't for a reason that is good enough to properly explain and excuse him for making that choice. He made a choice that must have weighted more on him than it did for Idyll which was saying a lot and a half. The only real solace to the whole situation was that he did not know how much it meant for Idyll. How much him not seeing her in the dress their mother promised she'd wear one day meant for Idyll. So much hope drained from her that her scales began to look colorless even outside the moving shadows from the canopies above.

And the even worse part was that Cter was in the middle of it…

She knew both sides, and was stuck in the middle of it. She couldn't in good conscience tell Idyll why Sarbor had to avert himself from her. The reason that he could not meet her was too important, but it left Cter in a dilemma that she struggled with trying to rationalize for herself.

On the one hand she did not want Idyll to find out about Sarbor's aura. Like Sarbor, she wanted Idyll to see her brother as unchanged because that is what she wished that her cooking did to him. A meal so good that he forgot that everything had changed for the two. Should his aura be found out then everything would still be changed, but differently. Differently in a way that no home-cooked meal could fix…

"It took until the banquet until I saw him," continued Idyll with her thumb circling the rim of her porcelain cup. "And by then I had changed from that dress as it wasn't the most nimble to move in when scooting sideways between tables carrying trays filled with food and drinks." With a quick glance she hummed at the tray with the ornate handles. "He barely acknowledged me when I scooted him by, almost to the point where I had to spill wine into his lap for him to realize tat I was standing next to him." A glare from the tray's metallic surface forced Idyll to abandon her glance. "Was he ignoring me on purpose?" she asked while blinking away the purple dots in her vision.

"He had..." Cter's mouth spoke before she could think. It prompted a turn of her friend's head quick enough to have her bright hair separate like a reverse loom, coming together only when she stopped with her eyes peering through the strands that began to gather together into a wide curtain.

"He had what?" asked Idyll with her eyes clear of the hair that she swiped off her face. As seconds began to accumulate in the silence that formed between the two friends, her swept-aside hair began to slide down her fingers.

"He had..." Cter repeated, cursing her tongue underneath her breath for putting her in a situation that had her forced to say something. "He had reasons," she had managed to say by the time half of the hair Idyll had swept aside with her hand had cascaded down from her loosely-held knuckles. "He had reasons which he explained during the council."

A necessary white lie.

"Know that those reasons were so that you would not be involved in this, if he could." Even if it was necessary it did not feel good saying it. "I'm sure once all of...this," Cter gestured vaguely all around her with her sleeved hand towards Xoff, Hjearta, the mountain pass between them, Clinic Hill, Fenkeep Castle, everything. "Once all of this is over I'm sure he would want nothing more than to talk with you about everything there is, was, and will be to talk about, but right now..."

Cter's mouth grimaced with how deep she dug the necessary white lie. In her soul she hoped that the soil she haphazardly excavated while digging deeper didn't land on the white lie, staining it. "Right now he needs to be a big brother by the way of protecting you from knowing things that he wouldn't wish upon his worst enemy."

A bitter shadow descended over Idyll's face as she blinked her head down, letting go of her remaining hair on her hand to hide her face behind her hair. "Protect me, you say?" came from within, slightly perturbing her curtain of hair like a fish monsters curiously testing the surface of a still lake. "That what he told you?"

From the tone of her voice Cter could tell that the white lie hadn't soothed as much as she wanted it to. "That was what he told me, yes." She did not have to lie for that as it was what Sarbor had said to her at the bench at the edge of Castle Hill. "He still loves you, and will always do. He just..." The Monster Mage managed to catch her tongue in time.

"He just wants a way to have control again, I know."

But it was for naught that she did catch it.

"He wants a way to have control in life," Idyll continued with a sigh. "He's lost it and feels like he has to do something drastic to regain it, going so far as to put everything that has even the remotest of connection to how he lost control behind him with a shove if he has to." Her golden hair danced in waves as she shook her head. "Once he has regained control he can make amends and good again, so it does not matter who or what it is that he shoves behind him. He can make those amends once he has control again."

It only took Idyll looking for a moment out from her hair-walled dominion to confirm what she said from the stunned expression painted on Cter's expression. "D-Did he tell you?" asked the Monster Mage with startled surprise for she felt a slight familiarity to what Idyll had described. She felt that she had heard it before, but it was vague to Cter where exactly she had heard it before.

Another wavy dance followed. "No, he didn't." As did another shrug that rustled the blonde hair like a whip. "He has already done it once though, so why shouldn't he again?" Idyll raised one claw. "First time he pushed behind him just one monster." Then she opened up her entire hand, spreading wide her four fingers. "And this time he has pushed behind him all monsters."

First time he…

Oh…

Oh no…

"Yes," Idyll nodded to her friend's realization. "You remember too, don't you?"

The day that Sarbor left Idyll behind in the village the two grew up in. When he first felt that he did not have any control of anything in his life. Pushing his little sisters behind him so that he could find a way to have control again.

"Have control again so that he could protect?" Cter said with her thoughts elsewhere. The memories she had from Idyll washed over her, bringing a sense of discomfort that she had not felt in a long, long time. A feeling of hopeless abandonment.

Like when she stood outside the three-storied house on Clinic Hill after Sarbor had asked her to step outside for the sake of the monster nurses tending to Sund.

"To protect who, exactly?"

The Monster Mage found herself back sitting next to her friend in the Royal Garden. "Sorry?" Having been pulled from one memory to another so rapidly to then be pulled back to reality even quicker had her a bit disoriented. "Protect who?"

"Isn't he making it harder for himself to protect by pushing away at first?" said Idyll with a frail scoff. "Ask him and he'll probably tell you that he didn't travel back to me after having found a cure for our parents illness because by being one of Dr. Sallus' apprentices he could protect me more than he could in our village with me." Her muzzle wrinkled deeply. "Ask me a handful of years ago and you would have gotten the same answer."

"And what if I ask you now?"

Idyll averted her head and hair away from her friend, inhaling deeply. Her exhale she let go on for a long while, causing turbulence for a few insects navigating through the Royal Garden. "I yelled at him," she stated with a nod to confirm to herself that she did. "I yelled at him when he tried to explain why he did not want me to make something just for him and I. He explained that he had to go be with the Xoff delegation so that he could protect me better." Idyll turned her head back to Cter with a deep look into the Monster Mage's eyes. "He explained it to me exactly the same as he did when he traveled away from our village to become one of Dr. Sallus' apprentices."

Cter did not blink.

"So I yelled at him," continued Idyll without blinking as well. "I yelled at him that he was doing the exact same that he was doing before. I told him that it wasn't fair the first time he did it, and that it was even less fair that he was doing it now." Her eyes began to quiver. "Why couldn't he just be a big brother near me? Why did he have to be a big brother so far away? I gave him a chance for him to make a better effort. I gave him the benefit of my doubt when he told me that we'd see each other much sooner than last time."

Cter did not interject while her friend inhaled through her gritted teeth.

"Was me running into him in one of the hallways the same as us seeing each other again? Was me breaking down in front of him the same as us rekindling our siblingship which he had promised we would do after he had made sure that the disease that took our parents did not take another one's parents away? Wasn't the Council of Three Counties to repair what had been broken during these last years? Why then did he not want to see me? Why did he not want to meet his little sister?"

Idyll did not yell her questions to Cter. She did not have the strength to. To boot, she had already yelled them once to Sarbor. She had already done it, so there was no need for her to do it again.

"Was it..."

She had not cried over it though.

"Was it because that I'm..."

She had not cried over that she had to yell at her older brother.

"Was it because that I'm...a..."

She had only been so angry.

"A..."

So very, very angry!

"A mo…"

But with her friend she could cry.

"A monster?"

With her friend she could cry tears thicker than the largest waterfalls in Xoff.

"Why!"

With her friend she could shout what she could not with her brother.

"Where is he!"

With her friend she could lament.

"Why is he!"

Lament the loss of her brother.

"Why did he turn away from me!"

Who walked away from the monsters.