Whispers of distant leaves rustled from the faded wind that navigated through the surrounding forest. The gentle chime of crystal magic like far away piano keys pressed down gingerly. The careful touch of the amber-colored water exploring the sturdy logs holding up the newly varnished jetty where laid a neatly folded robe of Xoff making.

Sounds that washed over Cter more than the water she laid half-submerged in, floating along the whims of the small waves made by the few gusts of winds that managed through the dense labyrinth of trees and shrubbery that stretched out around the copper-like lake-clearing a few minutes walk away from the Fourth Monster Mage's village of birth.

It was only her and the nostalgia around her.

She breathed out into a passing gust smelling of fresh rain and sweet sap, imagining her loose hair weighing her down like an anchor, and letting it do so. The sounds around her disappeared with a deep, gurgling snap as her ears descended underneath the waterline, making deaf the nostalgic sounds of the forest above the water, but making audible the nostalgic sounds of the forest below the water.

Where above the water she could only hear the surface of the small, wind-perturbed waves exploring the log legs of the jetty which she had entered the lake from, below the water she could hear the entire depth of the waves touch and push against the algae-covered logs. The few gusts that managed their way over the lake were muffled, a difference even more striking than the difference between Queen Toriel and King Asgore's voices.

It was a completely different world below the water, one dulled of the commotion from above, and replaced by commotion less hurried. At the most she could hear the whip of a pike's fin among the reeds tucked away in a corner of the lake, but all else she heard was calmer, gentler, duller, and slower. Everything was calmer below the lake's surface.

The only violent act she had to do was breathe out a short huff out her nostrils so that the water wouldn't rush in too quickly, but that was it. She didn't even blink as the cloud-grayed sky became distorted, nor as the forest-fed lake water stung at her eyes similar to the sun peeking out suddenly from behind a cloud.

A leaf touched at the tip of her nose, darkening her vision with its close silhouette. It must have blown in from the sawdust-laid path she walked along to get to the lake, Cter reckoned as the trees surrounding the lake were all conifers. It must have blown in before she created the crystal wall across the path to make sure no one else disturbed her. Did that mean that her wall had failed before it had even been created?

Cter wandered her eyes with the leaf floating between the world above and the world she slowly descended into. It became smaller and smaller, its ripples thinner and thinner, as she let herself sink deeper and deeper into the dulled world where she could find some peace.

Deep enough that the gray sky was colored with the color of diluted tea. Only a hint of the amber color which was plenty when looking into the lake she could see when looking out of it. Was it enough for the color of her eyes to have changed should anyone have peered down from the world above?

A question without an answer, unfortunately.

As Cter had barred off anyone who could answer that with her crystal wall.

Although, perhaps the leaf could answer? Or maybe it already did? If the color of her eyes would have changed then the leaf wouldn't have continued to float away so disinterestedly as it did, right?

Did it mean that she had to sink deeper in the world below? Sink deep enough for the change of color to be noticeable?

Doing so would have her ears hurt though. Sinking deeper would necessitate she pinch her nose and pretend to sneeze out of it to make her ears not hurt anymore.

But Cter did not want to move.

She only wanted to float quietly inside the dull world where there was only her. Where she could try and only feel and think and not have either affect anything around her. Her body she did not have to think about. It was only her thoughts and her soul. Her hair was spread out around her like an unkempt loom and the weight of her body was taken away from her. She only had to...be. She only had to be, only exist. There was nothing.

And nothing was what she needed.

Nothing she could only have for a few seconds though as her disconnect from her body she only wanted to be temporary, and not permanent. She only needed to shift her body slightly to disrupt the delicate equalizing of sinking and floating she hovered between. She only had to arc up her torso and down with her shoulders for her to float up to the surface again, but yet still she did not want to move.

So instead she made the lake move her instead.

Two options she could have chosen between. Either she could have made ice below her to float on top of to return to the world above, as during winter ice would be on top of the lake's surface and not on the bottom. Or she could float on top of warmer water like the bubbles rising up from the bottom of a boiling pot.

Both were equal in choice when it came to magical effort spent, so it was mostly a choice between feeling a cold slab of ice on the back of Cter's bare back or a warm upstream pushing her up against the same bare back with the same wave of comfort like drinking a cup of hot cocoa held warm inside a Vulkin after a long day of winter activity?

Well...it wasn't really a choice at all, was it?

The orange-red glow from Cter's bare arm diffused through the water in wobbling streaks, swaying more and more as the magically heated water below her rose up around her floating body, lifting her up closer and closer towards the lake's surface. For a slight moment she could feel the water surface not wanting to let her go, not wanting her to break through back to the world above. Whether it was trying to keep her inside the lake's world to help her or to imprison her, she did not know.

Once above the water she let it drain away from her face before taking a breath, tasting the faint thick of sap that the passing gust brought with it. Her exhale through her nose flew over her relaxed jaw and trickled a slight crater into the disturbed water surface. She inhaled again.

"Singe my soul..."

With her arms spread wide like the griffon Royal Guards parading their airborne division, Cter swept up the leaf which had tried to float away from her. It got caught between her white-fleshed fingers, but she only felt it once its stem poked at the web between her ring and pinky finger. She squeezed them together, hearing the wet crunch of the leaf, but again feeling nothing.

The touch of the water soaking her surrounding barrier magic around her left fingers made it difficult to feel anything else. Like trying to hear a conversation during a solo number from a Shyren. Didn't matter how important the conversation was, or how different it was from the singing, it wouldn't have been heard.

Cter hummed disappointingly, her grumble propagating through the water enough to feel its vibration on her chin. She splashed away the leaf with a weak wave of her hand.

After a long, quiet minute of staring through the wobble of the water on her eyes it had drained away enough for her to notice that it wasn't the clouds that were moving strangely, but instead that it was her that was rotating slowly. She must have been lazy with her fire magic when she had it ascend her up. She did not project or conjure the fire underneath her directly, but instead had the fire magic originate in her hand and then moved it down under her to lift her up. The movement of the fire from her left arm to underneath her back must have given her some rotation and–

A small wave broke against Cter's cheek, splashing sharp drops into her eye and forcing her to blink the first she had done in over a minute. The remaining water that she had over her eyes ran down her slightly flush cheeks like thick tears as she sighed.

It was just the wind that had her spinning gently rather than her magic…

Simpler explanation and all that.

Too much complexity in Cter's life that she could not think about acknowledging the simple case without a literal splash of water in her face. It was why she went to the lake, dammit! She went there to stop thinking! To have her mind and soul rest for a second or two! Why did she go about deliberating still?

The Monster Mage huffed out a disappointed exhale which had her sinking back down into the water to try and calm her down.

Again.

She couldn't stay there for as long though since she exhaled, so she had to calm her down quicker and more efficient and–

"–nge my soul!" exploded like the splash from a heavy rock as Cter broke through the surface with an angered sputter. It rained down on her face, again hitting her in the eye. This time though her grumble bubbled like a boiling kettle just underneath the lake's surface, muffling her swearing into a foam of bubbles.

And she was also rotating the other way opposite of how the clouds were moving…

Fantastic.

A last burst of bubbles the Monster Mage sighed out with a hefty huff, sinking her down so that just her nose was above the waterline like a strange type of fin that would have any seasoned fisher very perplexed. She was too riled up to sink any lower down. Too everything-but-calm to be able to hold her breath long enough to make it worth descending down.

Her heart was thumping too much and her soul the same. Thoughts abound despite her best effort not to prompt any, for thinking about not thinking was also thinking, and too easy to slip into thought while in a full sprint not to think. She could do nothing but just accept that she was thinking and try and move those thoughts into less and less excitement.

Like the spout from the fish market inside the large fountain near Time's Square in Jarsevo letting the customers know that their order is ready, Cter spat air out her mouth just below the lake's surface. The slight perturbation had the resulting wave reaching just barely below her nostrils. She wasn't going to do it again.

So what could she think about then to ease her mind and soul down? The war that drew closer as she lay alone in her home village's lake? The Royal Mage of Ice she abandoned among the gathering villagers to greet and to adore as their carriage arrived at the village square? The shape of the clouds distorted through the water indicating that there would be more rain in the coming days? The dull, busy sound of either a school of fish or nearby leaf trees rustling in the wind?

Ripples formed from the Monster Mage's tired exhale, making wiggles once more out of the light-gray painterly strokes against the blue sky. It almost looked like Rasliela's hair the way the ripples distorted Cter's vision. Fittingly, in a way. Rasliela had distorted quite a lot, so it was no wonder that it required distortion to see her.

Or...something…

It wasn't easy to try and not think about not-thinking hard enough so that she wouldn't think, Cter...thought. She needed something. Not the something she had tried to force out into something cohesive, but something actual. Something she could feel. Something she could...do.

Do was the last thing she wanted though. Do was what she went to the lake to get away from, what she insisted that Terri would exit from the carriage for. The long walk along the wood-chip and sawdust-strewn path that Cter's father still maintained for his transporting of cut wood. It warmed Cter that he still was healthy enough to work, but she didn't want to meet him.

Not when she was the way she was. Not during a war. Cter wanted to see her mother and father when things were good in the world. When she could talk to them genuinely about gossip in the village rather than what she had to go through. Cter wanted her home village's world to be only that, only the home village. No mentions of deposed kings in foreign countries or how she was chosen to be a political scarecrow to bolster the part of the Hjearta army that stayed behind from the war.

Although since her father was a former soldier perhaps that meant that it was her duty to help him with his lumbering? Provide his worker's gloves with a Cooperative Connection focused on strength magic? Doing so though would necessitate that Cter tell her father that he would need to think about her as a monster all the way from his soul in order for it to work. For all the truth that had been revealed about the Cooperative Connection, the fact still remained that it needed a monster for it to work for a human.

She didn't want to ask her father to think of her as a monster. She didn't want him to think of her as a Monster Mage. She wanted him to think of her as his daughter, and for that she could not meet him. She could not help him with her magic.

There was a chance that he wasn't aware of what the past years had been between the humans and the monsters, and that Cter wanted to preserve for herself. She knew what happened every single time she went to talk with someone. She knew that each time it ended up with either her or her conversation partner bringing things deeper than what they meant for it to be.

Heh. Perhaps that was a clue to what the color of her soul was?

Podium-brown? Or journal-brown? Or parchment-yellow? Had she truly been a monster it would have been paper white, guaranteed. A faded white like the last, reluctant snow to melt during late spring. Not a white as magnificent as the fur of the Monster Queen or Monster King, nor as playfully white as the pale of Kurant's skin.

Would it be as strangely white as the Fusion-white on her fingers and carvings on her left arm though?

The pressure of the water moving against her left arm felt odd as Cter dragged it through the water like a weird swim stroke that had her rotating a bit faster. Her carvings and fingertips had a slight tint to them from being underwater, but they were still unmistakably white. Still unmistakably like the Fusion was. Still unmistakably wrong.

Wrong that she used. A wrong that she showed everyone else as a right. Her right. Her right on her left arm. Wrong was right to Cter, as it was her magic. The magic of the most powerful mage in the world was wrong, and that was what made her the most powerful mage. She had her own wrong magic fueled by her own wrong Cooperative Connection given to her by a creature so wrong it continued to do wrong even after its death.

A wrong that Cter contained akin to jam within a jar. She had never opened up the lid to that jar though. Never stuck a knife in and painted some on her breakfast sandwich. No, she had only kept it within that jar because she did not know what mixture of berries the jam was made out of. She knew the two types of berries used, but together they formed something poisonous. That was why she needed to keep it in the jar. That was why she also covered the jar with fabric so that no one could see it.

Within the lake though it shone its strange, textured, and viscous white among the amber water softly lit by the cloud-covered sun. It moved like drops of oil in water, like the paint shaken off an artist's brush inside a cup of water even though she kept it from touching the water with barricade magic. Would it...feel different?

It did when she stroked the wrinkled faces of her right hand's fingers with her right hand thumb compared to the smooth faces of her left hand's fingers and her left hand thumb. There was a difference since her right hand was in direct contact in water whereas her left hand wasn't.

So what then if she made them equal?

Cter breathed in deeply, and before she could float up from the inhaled air inside of her, she began to slowly exhale it again. She returned down into the world below the lake's surface, with all her senses dulled once more. The Monster Mage was deeper down than before, bobbing calmly, surrounded by the world below.

She couldn't dismiss the barricade magic around her carvings and fingers immediately for it had become an unconscious effort for her. So much effort she had put into it being something she wouldn't have to think about.

It was necessary for every moment in her life apart from the one she had put herself into. Within the depth of the lake though it was quiet. It was quiet and calm, and she could recognize what had become an everyday habit for her. It would be some time afterwards to return it to being a habit though, so was it worth it?

That...she didn't know.

Yet she did it regardless.

The slosh of the rushing water breaking against her left arm's carvings like jagged rocks on a beach had her grunting a bundle of bubbles out her mouth and nose. It tensed her arm, the slosh echoing as deep as her bones up to her shoulder like a struck anvil. She could feel the water deep within her bones, more than she ever could with her right arm.

It was an intense feeling even as the water settled against her carvings. Just the touch was intense. Cter had not felt anything against her carvings for years, only vague pressure from putting on her inert sleeve to hide them. It didn't bleed or leak any of the Fusion-White Flesh, even if it looked exactly like oil within water with how it swirled.

It didn't...hurt. Cter didn't feel like it was hurting. It was something else. Had she forgotten? Did it remind her of something that she didn't know how to describe anymore, or was it something new entirely?

The same was for her fingers, but as she moved them closer to her for a better look she could see trails of the white, snot-like Fusion flesh drag behind in the underwater motion. Like melted cheese her fingers looked to meld together even as she spread them out as best as she could. A startled yelp escaped the mage seeing her left hand starting to meld together into one, wide, white finger, and she quickly restored the barricade magic to form her fingers back again.

Her heart thumped like drums within her chest, and an icy chill ran up her spine.

Then...stayed there…

Stayed there against her back and…

Lifting her?

Before Cter could fully realize what was going on she was approaching the surface again, breaking through it with enough force to flip her upright. Her wet, heavy hair whipped over her head, splatting hard against her face like a dense whip. She spat and sputtered from her wet hair finding its way through her lips, and the calm tranquility of the lake shattered among her coughs and flailing with her arms to both vacate her face of her hair and also to keep her disoriented balance.

"Been a while since you swam, Monster Mage?"

As Cter managed to brush away her wet hair matted to her face she discovered a thick piece of ice floating in the wake of her flailing.

Was it…

Was it Terri?

With her arms covering her bare torso, Cter spun her head towards the voice she heard from the wooden jetty, her hair whipping in her face again as she did. "I'm naked!" she shouted as a threat.

A laugh followed.

A laugh that she recognized.

From a long time ago.

"It's fine, Cter!"

A crow-like laugh in its intensity.

"I've seen that plenty already, my dear chick."

Cter wiped away her hair from her face again.

"Besides, I'm nearsighted. Don't you remember that?"

And swallowed some water from her surprised gulp.

"It should be I that forget things, not you, chickling."

It was…

"...Romrom?"