"We'll be making a final stop for some supplies when we cross the border. Tralala~ You can wait for me at The Flipping Heart. Lalala~~"
Cter nodded in acknowledgment to the hooded driver peeking in through the front window of the carriage. "Will it be long?" she asked back just as a mean of conversation. It had been quite lonely during her last couple of weeks spent inside the carriage all by herself, even more so than how she felt during the final exam which result she had yet dared to open. The scroll laid inside her luggage fastened on the other side of the felted ceiling above her.
While the scenery had been nothing short of breathtaking rolling by the windows with Hjearta's many rivers and forests occasionally opened up with stretching fields of wheat and Golden Flowers, Cter had seen those fields alternate so many times that she'd managed to find an explanation as to the differing golden colors of the two. The fact that she'd found enough time to come up with said explanation by only watching from afar and in motion did only remind her of how long she'd spent inside the walls padded for comfort and luxury. As much luxury a Village Elder could afford, that is.
Or perhaps not afford...
"I'm paying off an old promise I made, Cter," Romrom rebutted when Cter understandably had questions as to why she decided to spend so much on Cter. She'd managed to convince her monster grandma to let her take care of her education on her own, if only as a way to fully dedicate herself to it even more. The fruits of that conviction she had not dared taste yet though. How much she doth protested against her grandma giving her another gift on top of a mage's sleeve already inscribed with memories had the monster grandma only shoving her human grandchild harder into the carriage. Alas though, that Cter's father protested against without doth.
Only to lift his child into the carriage himself easily with his strong arms.
As the soft seat of the carriage halted her for just a second against standing up, Romrom leaned her head into the window, her extended head-feather flicking the top of the window frame as she did. Shortly following her was the heads of Cter's parents filling up both windows on either side of the carriage to the worry of the hooded driver humming and singing with vocalized anxiety about the weight pushing down on their human-built carriage it was to drive across two countries with its magic.
"You'll find ways to become a great mage in Jarasevo, my child," Cter's mother spoke with pride choking her words. After a steadying grip of her hand by her husband's she managed to finish what she wanted to wish her mage child. "Once you visit us as such we'll become richer than any amount of money could ever make us. You're the one to put our village on the map, Cter. That'll be your legacy, and that will be what we'll look forward to."
"We don't expect it of you," her father chimed in with a melody in his gruff voice that Cter had never heard before. "Because we can't expect if we already know that it'll happen. Bring back some Royal Purple for us, will you?"
"I...will..." Even though Cter didn't have the faintest of a clue what Royal Purple was she felt compelled to agree to her father's request. The way his gently smiling expression held such longing behind it without cracking was almost terrifying to Cter. She'd been gone for so many years and then he only got to spend a day or so with her before she was off again. She felt bad for leaving so soon, but she also knew that they understood why she was so eager to travel to Jarasevo. How couldn't she be? She wasn't even questioning if it was her grandmother's memories urging her further towards the Monster Capital.
An apprenticeship was a given to her. Maybe she wouldn't have it in Jarasevo, but it was there she would find one. Perhaps it would be closer to Xoff too? She'd always wondered about that other human country, as well as the monster one. Same beginnings, but different culture. Two halves of the same coin, just like with human magic.
"Maybe half an hour. Lalalala~" answered the driver as it opened the carriage door for Cter, scaring her slightly as she was snapped out of her thoughts. It waited for its human passenger to step out before continuing. "I'll come to the tavern once I'm done."
Cter looked around her, inspecting the buildings and fields in standstill rather than the motion she had come to think of as normal. As her head swiveled less and less excitingly though with each familiar sight, she began to doubt. "We've crossed the border, right?" Judging by all the human-looking houses around her she wasn't so sure. Shouldn't it be more monstery? More magic? More of those rounded shapes and strange forms that could only be supported by magic and not practicality?
"That we have, lalalala~," the driver informed while bouncing its hooded head side to side with each implied step invisible underneath its robe. There was no movement from the lower part of its obscuring cloak. Without the bobbing head it would've looked as if it was floating along the ground. "We're no longer in Hjearta, human. We're in the Monster Country. Main Road Three 986." With the most minute movement the hood angled to the side as if looking over its shoulder back at Cter. "It'll become more monster-like the more we approach Jarasevo, I promise you~" The promise ended with a teasing flair to it that called out Cter's unfamiliarity with the world.
She wasn't sure whether to blush or say something against that notion, and that uncertainty gave the driver enough time to head-bounce out of earshot. If anything Cter was happy her driver did so as it meant she had a good enough reason to let it go. She turned around on the gravel below which still was very much paved by humans towards the tavern across the width of what was just half an hour ago the road Pulsaoder in Hjearta, but now apparently Main Road Three in Monster Country.
"Nine eight six," Cter read from the house numbers, again blatantly human. If she were to guess then Jarasevo Castle would be number one, if not zero? She still had ways to go, didn't she? Was it to be as uneventful as the border-passing was? She didn't even notice and the driver didn't even ask her for any documentation to forward to a guard or something. The sound of the gravel underneath the wheels didn't change, the scenery didn't change, the houses didn't change. Nothing had really changed.
It's gotta be because Cter was so close to the border though, right? Closer to the human country so therefor it's closer to human culture. Perhaps once she gets closer to the Monster Capital the landscape will become more magical like the driver monster said? Guess she had to weather more Golden Flower and wheat fields passing by her window with their golden-yellow and yellow-golden hues.
With the Golden Flowers' colors golden at heart and tinting yellow along the area of their leaves and wheat being yellow at its stem and tinting golden along its bulbs. Easy to see as Cter was standing still and gazing over the fields which must surely did reach across the border. Whether it was reaching across from the west into Monster Country from Hjearta or vice versa she couldn't tell, and she had a sneaking suspicion that no one could either.
Apart from the large mountain region that divided the three countries apart, that is. Impossible to traverse even with monsters and humans working together. Cter had seen quite a lot of trade already, but unfortunately she seemed to have slept through most of the glacier ice transports passing by, and with the rest she had been busy reading or being bored out of her skull and soul to notice.
In a way she shouldn't really be surprised about the lax border as she was considering she had spent almost every waking hour and second of her last four years bridging the gap between human and monster, but seeing it outside of her soul and in practice it looked sorta...wrong to her? No, not wrong. Wrong was the wrong word.
It looked sorta not right.
Yeah, that's how it looked.
And she was supposed to be a human mage, the culmination of human and monster cooperation? Cter glanced uneasily up to her luggage, realizing that supposed was very much the operative word.
Maybe she was just tired and lethargic from having to sit still for so long inside that carriage that the mere fact of standing outside in the sun and feeling the wind brush across her face and move away her hair to massage her cheek was alien to her. She hadn't seen anyone yet despite it being close to lunch. Close to lunch according to her own clock, that is, which had been as weirdly winded-up as her sense of normal was.
Cter's eyes detached from the human-built numbers, wandering across the human-built wall, doors, hanging sign with a glowing heart, and…
Wait!
A glowing heart!
That's magic!
Without looking both ways, Cter took a couple of hurriedly long steps across the road. A fragrance not too different from the King's Garden back at Soul's School asserted itself more and more inside her nose the closer she got, but the sight of the glowing heart distracted her enough to not notice the smell until a couple of seconds later. It was still a footnote in her mind even as she caught wind of it.
"The Flipping Heart," the now excited human read out loud. 'Home of the Accustomed's Ambition' was inscribed underneath in the same gently pulsating white letters as the tavern's name. Between the two rows of text was the depiction of an upside-down monster soul pulsating just as gently and just as white.
Why upside-down though? It shouldn't have been that way. The pointed tip pointing down instead of up? Was it implying that the Accustomed's Ambition was the source and The Flipping Heart was the culmination? That seemed very...contrived. Did it really have to do such contrived advertising being the lone tavern in this border town connecting Pulsaoder to Main Road Three?
If a monster enchanted the sign then surely they'd known that it was wrong. What with it having a monster soul of its own to check with. If it was a human mage then they'd surely know too that the sign was wrong as well since they would have been pretty well-versed to be able to keep it as permanent as it looked.
...
Or maybe it was because the name is 'The Flipping Heart'?
Cter's palm collided wetly with her forehead, the impact reverberating throughout her body and forcing her to sigh deeply. She moved down her pushing palm over her eyes until finally pinching the bridge of her nose with a quiet groan.
She's been in that carriage for far too long…
She can't even read properly!
Can she even remember what the number was?
Nine three eight?
Cter looked over again to check.
Nine six eight.
Dammit.
Wait, nine eight six.
Double dammit.
Disappointingly, she shook her own head now with both of her palms pressed against her face, dragging her skin down as she let them slowly slide off and flop against her legs. "Singe my soul," she swore underneath her breath before sitting down on the bench next to the wide door. It wasn't as wide as the main entrance into Soul's School, maybe the size of one of the smaller side entrances. It was very clearly widened after the fact as the hinges on one of its sides were fastened in the middle of the horizontally-laid logs instead of on their ends.
"Nine eight six," Cter tried again, earning herself a minor victory as she guessed right the second time she guessed firstly. Not really something she woykd carry with her though, as even as she confirmed that it was correct she felt that it was a hollow victory. She inhaled deeply through her nose. "The Flipping Heart." Correct again. Seems like what she needed was some sun and a harder seat.
"Yes, welcome to it, human."
Cter flinched away from the large figure suddenly appearing beside her. "Gaaah!" She almost fell off the wooden bench in her startled flailing, only managing to stay on it by grabbing the swirled leg in the nick of time.
The gray hedgehog-like monster chuckled to herself with her small hand barely covering her thin lips. She stretched out her other hand towards the folded-over human to help, and Cter took it a bit too quickly. "Anything you wish to order?" the hedgehog monster inquired after producing a magical quill onto a small notebook made out of what looked to be soft wood. "Anything to drink? To eat?"
With eyes widened in the temporary terror and somewhat blinded by the late morning sun Cter ran her gaze over the hedgehog's clothing. Distinctly human with its layers emphasizing the threading instead of the more free-form fabric patterns that is allowed with magical techniques as opposed to craftsmanship. It doesn't look bad on the hedgehog. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Cter's not really knowledgeable with tailoring, but it doesn't take a master seamstress to see that the clothes make the monster, in this case.
"Eh...human?" the hedgehog meekly protested as if not sure how to feel about Cter's suddenly intricate and inspecting stare. "I-Is something wrong?"
It took a couple of blinks before Cter gained control back over her eyes. "Um..." spilled out of her mouth like drool. "No. I was...I was just intrigued by your clothing, monster." The explanation did little to help, especially with Cter accidentally putting to much flair on her being intrigued. She quickly decided to append a bit more as she saw the monster's expression churn like old butter left out too long in the summer warmth. "It is human-made, right?" She leaned forward while rolling her wrist inquisitively to perhaps nullify the emphasis she spurted out.
The hedgehog ever so slightly glanced over to Cter's arm with a furrowed brow for just a moment before returning to its well-trained customer service smile it wore just well enough to not look forced. "It is tailored by a human," explained the monster somewhere between annoyed that the human was wasting time and relief to be talking about something else. "I'm guessing you're not from close-by here."
Cter shook her head before brushing away an unruly bang from her eye and behind her ear. "No, I'm traveling from a village a week or so further than Foermak." She motioned over to her carriage. "Well, Soul's School to be exact, but before I began studying there I traveled from my village." The human nodded to herself as the bittersweet longing for her family ran up her back to remind her that she missed them. She'd become used to the feeling, but with her having hugged and spent as much time as she could near her family for the week after her quote unquote graduation it was still the last physical touch she'd had. The last faces she saw. Jumping directly from drowning in familial love to sitting alone for numerous weeks…
She dried away a tear before it could form itself fully in her eye.
"I...see," the hedgehog acknowledged. If it was out of genuine or professional courtesy Cter couldn't tell. "From Soul's School?" was pried further while still being ambiguous between genuine or professional. "Where to, human?"
"Jarasevo," Cter answered distantly while looking down the numbers of Main Road Three. "I still got a ways to go, don't I?"
A slightly longer pause than usual passed between the human and the monster before an answer was uttered. "Yes, you do." It had completely leaned into a professional response with a couple of impatient taps with the magical quill onto the notebook. "So would you like your order to go along? We get a lot of passers by here so it can be arranged. Doggy Bag."
What bag?
"Doggy Bag," the hedgehog repeated as if saying it again would make it clear for the human who'd never heard of it before. Maybe if the monster had inscribed it on a sleeve then it could've been translated, albeit poorly since the two just met and were not really aiming to be good friends. "A tavern in Rivellige on the border to Xoff also had a lot of traveling customers who couldn't finish their meals before setting off again. The owner then began putting the leftovers into conjured bags so that his dog staff wouldn't eat the leftovers clean off the table." The hedgehog monster pointed with the feather of her magical quill over to a stone tower in the slight distance inwards the Monster Country. "We had a similar situation with the local Royal Guards choosing to patrol and do inspections where your carriage is standing now, human. They'd come in for routine inspections every half an hour or so to again inspect the leftovers and eat them. Once the Loe, the owner here, got wind of the Doggy Bag he adopted it quicker than the name of his tavern."
"The Flipping Heart?" Cter said in reflex.
"Yes," the monster answered in reflex.
Then the question hung for a couple of seconds before Cter realized that perhaps she should say something else so that the hedgehog understands that even though she said it in reflex she meant it as an actual question that she wanted an answer to.
"Where did the name come from?" she said after a nod towards the calm magic painted upon the sign almost like glue to the loose boards swaying independently of each other in the calm breeze. "The Flipping Heart?"
"Hm?" was expelled out of the hedgehog's nostrils and closed mouth as she was expecting the human to finally order something. "The name?"
After the slight surprise that the monster could not only hum but also speak words through its three nostrils and closed mouth Cter nodded reservedly. "Yes, the name. You said the owner adopted it very quickly?"
"Well…it took a month or so, from what I understand."
But… "But you said he adopted the Doggy Bad much quicker than the name?" Cter could barely see through her brow lowering over her eyes like they were attached to anchors. "Didn't you?"
The sharp and dark-orange quills on the monster's shoulders straightened as she shrugged with her three arms. "A day is much quicker than a month, innit?" An accent slipped through at the end of the haphazard shrug, but it was quickly subdued by a couple of small coughs. "Anyways, Loe bought this tavern a while or so following King Soulay's death and decree about the open border towards Monster Country to incentivize human and monster cooperation. Since this village already had a rather large monster population and with the humans that we could wave at daily over the border it just made sense that he'd commission some of them to build his tavern on the cusp of the removed border."
Cter broke off her eye contact with the hedgehog to let it wander over the many houses of the village. "And these?"
"Same story," the hedgehog said quickly without inhaling from her previous sentence. "In exchange for the monsters helping with the wheat and Golden Flower fields, some of which you can see are growing across the border." She pointed with her third unoccupied hand towards where Cter had noticed it before. "In exchange the humans helped build the new village here. Families have come and gone on the other eastern side of the border, but here on the western side many of the monsters who first moved here are still alive and helping with the farms. Even Sir Gerson visited here once and left his kind words which Loe hung up on his Accustomed Wall."
"...And that is?" Cter was very much pushing her luck by continuing to pry. She knew that fully well, but with each word the hedgehog waiter told with patience that ran as thin as her quilled lips dragged into a neutral smile Cter felt as more and more of what she'd learned in text was painted real to her. Even if she had trouble reading and understanding it back at Soul's School it began clicking to her as the hedgehog monster continued with her story.
Could've been the ever-more impatient tapping of the monster's magical quill, but Cter chose to believe it was her instead. As the hedgehog again sighed her quills softened almost like large strands of soft hair down the length of her body. It was as if someone had dumped a large pot of overcooked noodles over her. The sigh hit Cter with all its tiredness and annoyance, but she weathered it like the storm it was, as well as the following hard stare from the monster who now radiated the disgruntled exploitation that Cter was forcing upon throughout her monster aura. Had Cter been a monster instead of a human she would have probably felt that disgruntled was too weak a word.
"The wall which Loe puts up the expressions of the ones that are allowed the Accustomed's Ambition," the monster waiter let fly through her lips like a harsh blizzard, whistling in its hurry as she exhaled angrily from her three nostrils. "So!" She slammed down the metaphorical foot and leaned in close enough towards the annoying human customer that Cter found out that the eyebrows on the hedgehog monster had tiny quills instead of hair. Equally sharpened and raised in contained, for the moment, anger. "What. Will. It. Be?"
The quill almost penetrated the many pages of the notebook it was pushed so hard. Since Cter's body was very close to the backside of the notebook where it would surely have shot out had the hedgehog leaned in closer, she decided that it would be best to perhaps be a good guest and take the angry hint steaming off the monster. "I'll have a–"
"I've returned now, human! Tralalala~~"
The hedgehog and the human both turned at the same time towards the hooded figure gently bouncing across the gravel road. It's jaunty whistling was in stark contrast to the tense mood built up between the waiting waiter and the not-accustomed customer, but whether it actually realized the situation was impossible to tell as the hood was dragged deeply over its head as it ever was. "Come now so that we can continue our travelalala~"
"Now listen here!" the hedgehog protested with its quill dissipating with an angry hiss to mirror its own. "This human hasn't ordered anything!"
"Then we'llala be off then~"
The response had the many raised and primed quills on the hedgehog fall down with audible slaps against its body while its face scrunched up into rage so vast it turned into confusion as it didn't even understand it could get so mad! Like a blind human in another room the carriage driver didn't read the situation at all and instead just motioned for Cter to follow it without as much as a wrinkle to its dark-blue robe. Out of sheer bewilderment as to how that was actually achieved, Cter stood up to follow. "Thank you," her manners spoke without her input before she again neglected to look both ways before crossing back towards her carriage.
It took until the burning rage of the hedgehog monster's aura faded into a distant simmer that Cter snapped her fingers in realization. Of course! The driver spoke and motioned magically through its aura. That's how it worked!
She'd not realized it if it wasn't for that hedgehog waiter. She felt that she would thank her and…
And then the carriage started rolling. Cter had entered and seated herself while chuckling to herself about not realizing about the driver monster's magic.
Her hand hung on the handle that she gripped without thinking. Outside the window were more yellow-gold and golden-yellow fields passing her by. "Oh..." rolled out of her mouth. "Right." She let go of the handle and returned her hands clasped onto her lap. After a couple of seconds of impatient rolling of her thumbs she carefully peeked outside the open window back towards the tavern.
"You!" was screamed with such raw emotion yet to such low hearing to Cter that she instantly retracted her neck into her shoulders and ducked back inside the comfort of the carriage. Her bark-brown hair swept behind her retracting neck returning to its normal length as she exhaled out into the confined room she was to yet again inhabit for days and weeks to come. Its comfort were to only be temporary as the sound of the wooden wheels underneath her scraped at the road gravel.
Cter sank down into the cushioned bench again, lamenting its soft fabric and stuffing. She'd only been reminded about rigidity for a brief moment compared to the long, lone time she had spent surrounded by comfort, and that not only reminded her that she was almost a prisoner in a way, but also about her home village. About the bench she and Romrom used to sit on during those early spring days waiting for the lake to melt.
Perhaps...perhaps that's why Cter felt that she understood magic better when she sat there in front of The Flipping Heart? She glanced up through the roof to where her sleeve was in one of the coffers fastened on the roof and closed her eyes to try and feel the connection she did when she first probed it for its sewn memories, but she didn't feel any reaction that she could turn into action. Then it must have bee her own memories that made her feel that way.
That was not bad though. It could have meant that all of her studies would click because she had something familiar to reference it to? She sure hope so, because soon, relatively soon, she would be at the place where she had to put that all into practice.
Where she would keep the promise of her monster grandmother.
Jarasevo.