The days became longer for Cter after her discovery of not only her own ice magic that had been molded and influenced by Romrom, but also her discovery of how to expand upon her repertoire of magic that she could conjure up in her soul and hand. It began with the roaring and fiery anger she'd managed to subdue into a cooperative flame that she could wield, and she was ever grateful to the green monster who'd given her that lesson in humility.

Even if it was as harsh as an arm of rough scales down her throat when he said...screamed...it.

It was that rightful anger though that gave her a comparison to put his fire magic into context. While she was inside her own soul and felt all that heat around her it was the seeds from the green monster, both his fiery anger and warm calm when she'd apologized, that let her summon fire of her own. To ignite her first fire magic.

Not out of Romrom's memories, but of her own. Her own memories of the green monster.

Why she never asked for his name she would never figure out… Could be that she felt that it wasn't necessary?

Either way, she was very grateful for what he'd help her realize, and he'd come to enjoy her lowest fee for her magical services for the rest of the time that she worked in Jarasevo. Even against his protests which weren't really protests, but more reminders that he appreciated the gesture very much. However, he didn't appreciate it enough to push it further and really insist on her taking more of his money.

Not that Cter blamed him.

The green monster was a working family man, he had mouths to feed and his own life to think about. While he could think more about it while smiling more than he could ever remember doing thanks to Cter's showers of cleansing ice, which he'd refer to them as, he also made it clear that it was as far as their relationship would go. Cter didn't really have any interest in pushing it further despite him helping her figure out something that was taught to her to be a milestone worth of celebration. To her he was a customer, one of many in time. A frequent customer she respected and was thankful to, but a customer nonetheless.

The only real interest which nagged at her mind was why he needed her human magic to help him. It would've been just as well with monster magic, wouldn't it?

Yes, yes it would.

To a certain degree.

Cold as cold, it didn't matter to the tar that stuck to his fur. The degree, low as it was with Cter's magic, was for the green monster's fur. It felt the difference. He'd already asked for help from his wife, and while she was able to get it off him somewhat well without ruining too much of his fur, it also left a bit of a presence of her in regards to tar in his soul. Coming to work the next day and associating burning up his wife when he began heating the barrel of tar was a shock he never wanted in his life again.

For monster magic brought with it a piece of the monster into it. It was connected. One and the same. While the way they could fall in love so vividly compared to humans, and how much more of a close bond they could form with their friends and family it did mean that the magic they weaved into their surroundings, be it another monster, a human, or an object, there would still be magical residue that would feel exactly like the monster that cast the spell.

It was great for sealing letters between kingdoms to confirm that it was indeed sent from whom it was said to be said from, or for adding just that extra spice into a dish.

Not so great when instead of feeling tar becoming less viscous with heat a green monster instead thought he'd incinerated his wife.

Human magic, on the other, more skinny hand, and what really gave it such a widened usage apart from monster magic, was that its nature wasn't in projecting emotion, although that was how it was taught to help understand it. The lessons at Soul's School were held by monsters, after all, and that really was the only way for them to explain how magic worked. What each human mage student had to do then was to apply the thinking to how they themselves experienced emotions. With monsters around them to help feel and steer the human's aura.

In using their magic, human mages didn't have to care about it once it was out of their souls. Out of the monster soul inscribed upon their clothing providing a foundation in the same sense to a house. What was built and with which materials was up to the human's soul. Even the grandest of castles needed a foundation, the same with the grandest of human magic.

Once the house was done though the human's soul could do whatever with it. Live in it, sell it, brag about it, whatever it desired. The human mages didn't have to put themselves into their magic, only its creation and application.

And that was why the green monster wanted Cter's help with getting the tar off of him.

"Can't you just melt it off with your fire?" she stupidly asked as he was handing over his first official payment that Cter had to declare in her Monster Taxes. Had she waited for when the money was firmly inside her hands out of his reach it would've been a better time to ask, but again the nagging in the back of her head continued even after she'd gotten an answer before about her magic being necessary or not.

She still had some self-doubting to overcome, which she did in time as she grew more accustomed to her customers and self-made job. With the green monster though she'd always have her knees bend even if just the slightest, speaking loudly with her body language about the humility he brought upon her like a hammer onto self-heated metal from its own shame and the debt she felt towards him from having helped her magic become more hers.

Why the green monster couldn't use his own fire on the tar though was similar to his reasoning about why he couldn't use ice magic to freeze it off. It was extremely convoluted though and clear that the explanation he gave was much shallower than what the truth actually was.

"How do you mean?" prodded Idyll when Cter told her of it.

"It's like..."

Her mouth hung open very tiredly late that weekend night when Idyll suggested the two enjoy some wine and cheese on their buildings rooftop at the end of their first summer as roommates. The sunset made the jagged, uneven rooftop landscape lean their shadows back to relax after having housed for the entire week similarly to how slouched down Idyll was with her hands knotted behind her head and hair. The deep orange on the side of her cheek facing the setting sun bled over her face and hair. How it glistened both crystalline in her hair and matte on her scales distracted Cter in how strange it actually looked to her. She was used to the different shine Romrom had with her feathers, but both human and monster shine at the same time had Cter pause just to look.

And then Idyll smiled with her yellowed teeth turning as orange as her magic. "And here I thought monsters were the lightweight ones when it comes to alcohol," she joked while nodding towards Cter's emptied mug in regards to her seemingly blanking out on the question the same way she blanked her mug by drinking it dry. "Aren't you supposed to be hearty drinkers in Hjearta? Maybe some more will help refresh your memory? Hahahaha!" She appreciated the attention though, that much was certain. The sun's glimmer in Idyll's eyes hidden behind her harp-like hair layered thick over her long muzzle and down her shoulders wasn't what shimmered during that last hour before the sun would tuck in for the night despite it being very young for the two friends on the slightly angled rooftop. The shimmer was that from her very soul.

Cter would swear that she saw Idyll's iris turn just a bit more paler before she blinked it away.

"You know what the strangest event has been with us as roommates, Cter?" Idyll asked with a sigh that quivered as she exhaled it. "Besides us somehow deciding to come up here?"

Cter had her guesses. Too many, actually. She was partial to one particular morning though when she woke up with spiders in her bed. The scream she forced out fiercely was probably heard all the way back to her village in Hjearta. It summoned the strong heel of Idyll through the door followed by the rest of her alarmed form breathing deeply through her clamped teeth.

The gentle whistling singing multiple tones at the same time through the differently sized gaps between her teeth had the spiders turning away from being confused of why they were in Cter's bedroom to being confused of why they were being whistled at physically rather than magically which Cter had been doing during her sleep. Her last costumer had been the Spider Butcher the evening before who had her working her soul and body into a lulling tiredness which made her sleep so deep she didn't realize the spiders were on her until she woke up.

He'd managed to get himself a rather large order of Hjearta meat which he needed Cter's help keeping on ice both during the day and during the night due to the size of it. He'd over-ordered just the slightest. Like getting enough stone to build a church rather than a low wall.

Just slightly too much.

Not only that, but he also needed her help in moving it across town to where she could actually surround it with ice. Normally he could carry both the meat and the ice delivery by himself, but not with the Hjearta order. Cter's suggestion of a wagon to help carry was quickly dismissed by all of his hands waving in unison. The wood that the wagons were built from were not the same wood as the Hjearta meat had been smoked in and would therefor infect the meat with a clashing flavor. It wouldn't sell at all then!

Cter was both hesitant in believing that to be the case and impressed that the monster knew such a medical term. Infected. Although in his line of work he was most likely to know about it compared to other monsters. It was why he used spider substitutes for meats he couldn't store properly. Even if monsters couldn't get sick the quality of spoiled and infected meat wouldn't be sellable even if he reminded them of that fact. The spiders that consumed the meat adopted the flavor of it though, and all he had to do was rearrange them via his magic into the shapes of the original meats. Those spider meats became fewer and fewer with the help of Cter's magic, and with his business improving so did his usage of Cter's magic increase, so for both it was a mutual beneficent endeavor.

His spiders had become more restless though with not being used that much besides putting up posters advertising his business, and even though they were all very eager to move several animals worth of meat across the town, they were a bit too restless for him to have full control of them which was necessary for that operation. He suggested that Cter would lend some of his magic, which she was more eager about than the skittering spiders were.

Not as first though, as the request seemed preposterous and just another thing that the Spider Butcher had gotten wrong about human magic. The more his request traveled around in her mind though the slower her explanation for why it wouldn't work became.

Until it stopped mid-sentence when her right hand covered her mouth as she began thinking. Her left hand flickered between ice and fire as she sought to find a feeling between the two. In one moment, sharp flakes of snow howled around her sleeve, and in another they were chased by some weak flames that were just enough to melt the flakes. They'd grow thicker with the next frosted whirl and fall down as half-melted drops of slit onto the cobblestone as her next fire wouldn't be enough to turn them into steam.

While she was thinking the Spider Butcher took it upon himself to prepare for the travel, leaving Cter alone with a chair that a couple of handfuls of spiders graciously brought to her from a nearby balcony.

It was in her explanation of how it wouldn't work that she caught herself speaking something her tongue halted to say because she felt that it wasn't true. About how a monster couldn't just give its magic to a human mage like that just because.

But wasn't it kinda how Cter learned how to conjure fire?

It was from the green monster's magic that she had copied the feeling of fire and applied it to how she felt about his memories and the metaphorical fire within his chastisement towards her. From that she felt a heat which she ignited within her soul and made shine in her hand. She had lowered herself to that of a monster, to use the parlance that set him off to begin with. She had allowed the monster to make the first action, then for her soul to make the reaction, but then turn around and make that the initial action for another reaction which she used the monster's magic as a basis for.

Inverted, to then reverse back.

The principle was the same with the Spider Butcher willingly lending out his magic to her, right? The same inverse Reaction-Action method but instead of seeding magic from memory and making it her own Cter could just have the seed be the entire tree!

The Spider Butcher had to be nearby though for her to siphon it off of him though. There would be some residual magic left from him since he was casting his monster magic all over her continuously for the duration of the moving of the meat, which led to her waking up covered in confused spider.

In the moment her mind and soul fit the pieces together she roared with jubilation rather than fright, knocking over the chair behind her that she hadn't realized she was sitting on and getting a few well-chosen words from a monster on the balcony where it came from shaking a balled tentacle in anger.

Luckily Cter could project the misunderstanding through her aura since technically it wasn't her that took the chair from the balcony. She only sat in it, which the tentacled monster was forced to concede on and agree that she was innocent through one of its mouths. The other one was clamped down hard so that more obscenities wouldn't spill out of it.

With that anxious trial over Cter followed some spiders through a couple, human couple not monster couple, of alleyways until she found the Spider Butcher. She explained to him that yes, she could borrow his magic since it was just another application of that inverse Reaction-Action she'd used to first learn to summon fire!

"Sure."

The less-enthusiastic answer did drain her beaming smile into a sunken expression with how little he understood how big a discovery this was for her. In any case she'd found a way to do it and she explained to the Spider Butcher with the easiest terms she could formulate. Since she wasn't really knowledgeable on the subject it was more said than...said...but it was somewhat similar to how she was explained how emotions tied into magic the first couple of lesson in Soul's School so she leaned on that explanation a bit to help her along the way.

And away they went after that.

And it would prove another boon to her mage business once she got a grip on the procedure. It took a while for her to have it be natural, but with the feeling of discovery and the inner gloat of figuring out more about her magic the first time she borrowed magic from the Spider Butcher went smoothly. The actual transfer across Jarasevo was quite the opposite, as the cobble was felt double for her. Both under her feet and in her soul from the myriad of legs that she had to keep single-minded onto her goal. It was the same sensation as if her leg had fallen asleep, but all over her and her aura. The percussion of the thousands and millions of feet tapping like trickling rain echoing both inside her head and inside her soul.

Despite the alien feeling with magic that wasn't hers using her soul as a catalyst Cter felt a sense of being comfortable with the sensation when she was in the moment. Thinking back on it had her body shiver, but when she had the Spider Butcher walking beside her and leading her along a few-too-many alleyways where she had to concentrate something fierce not to have the meat in tow touch anything, she felt at ease with it. Most likely it was his own confidence and pride seeing his magic be so powerful that seeped into Cter's emotions which she had to let in since she was borrowing his magic for the first time. Later she'd be more aware of how to single-out the emotions the monster used for its magic.

The pride and joy she always let inside her though. The different ways each monster felt their own unique way of happiness was like discovering a new favorite flavor of tea each and every single day. From the way a jester's uncanny and permanent, too-hollow smile she felt form on her own face with a comforting darkness akin to the enveloping tiredness just before sleep, to the fizzy and sparkling laugh of a skeleton constantly shown teeth making her move away her lips a bit more than usual.

It felt good to Cter. A novelty that wouldn't run out anytime soon for her with how word of mouth, or mouths, began spreading about her and her magic.

She didn't feel as good when she first had the brilliant idea of having some of the spiders walk on the wall and provide a barrier between the meat and its alleyway surroundings. At first it was pride in her adapting to new magic so quickly, then nausea as the skittering and tickling noise inside her soul turned sideways without her doing it with her body.

That her stomach didn't like one bit.

Not. One. Bit. At. All.

"You're not even just under the table, Cter!" Idyll's guffaw had the entire building shaking as her loud snap in front of Cter's horizon-appreciating stare had the human flail around like a Whimsun being told it was about to hold an unprepared presentation in front of an angry crowd. "You're in the depths underneath Mt. Ebott for crying out loud! Come back to me!"

Cter rubbed her eyes tiredly while shaking her head in an even tired rhythm. "Been a lot today. Sorry." She felt the reassuring hand of her roommonster rub her back gently with the large fingers bent slightly back as to not accidentally stab or scratch.

"Don't worry!" she cheered happily. "It's just that I was prepared to be the one to have my eyes flying off into the horizon and not you."

"Did I ruin the moment?"

"Nah! You didn't." Idyll returned her hand to the rounded top roof tile for support. "I'm gonna ask you again though." She raised an eyebrow behind her hair. Even with the impenetrable veil falling like lava down her cheek and muzzle Cter could tell by the way the scales on Idyll's face stretched. "Promise you'll not disappear over those hills again?"

Cter promised with a nod.

But Idyll held her eyebrow higher for another second before letting it fall with a snicker that bared her teeth. They opened slowly, letting in sharp angles of light into her mouth that illuminated like a cave. "You know what the strangest event has been with us as roommates, Cter?" the enlightened cave breathed out in a distant whisper. Idyll inhaled through her nose deeply before answering her own question with her eyes tilted down. The way her scales were tugged though weren't somber or melancholy though despite the tilt down. They were squished tight like they were when she was smiling.

Smiling only with her eyes.

Idyll's aura felt like another sun's worth of warm when she brushed her hair behind an ear she didn't have. "The strangest event is that we've never actually said anything about the castle ever since we moved in together." Her thumb caressed the side of the mug as if it was a lamp to make a wish from. "And I guess I'm the one to ruin the moment now..." With a glance over to the human sitting with her legs tucked into her chest to further comfort herself in her monster friend's aura, Idyll breathed a sigh of relief. "I bring it up because you've become such a great mage, Cter."

Cter made sure to let her aura be filled with such love and friendship that Idyll could ball it up in her hands and keep in her pocket forever. She moved in to accept her friend's hug before either of them knew that the other began moving.

They felt it.

Not even in the other's aura.

Because they didn't have to project it to instantly feel it.

"It means a lot coming from you," Cter said despite it being superfluous to say it to a monster. With Idyll though, and her human upbringing, Cter could indulge in her more physical needs for closeness.

The monsters did give their thanks through their magic and aura, and it was more than a human could express themselves. While it gave her enough to feel respected and thanked for her work and services, and even bashful with the amount of praise some of the monsters gave her for showing them how strong their magic could be in a human mage's hands, none never shook her hand.

None never put their arms around her.

Or snuggled their warm muzzle into her neck to show how much of a friend she really was to the monster.

Hugging more tightly as Cter did with tears flowing down her eyes when she realized how much she needed it.

"Thank you," she coughed through a choked sob down Idyll's back. "I've missed this so much." Idyll said nothing back. She just let the human stain the back of her tavern dress that smelled of spruce sap and wheat. Reacting only by hugging Cter equally harder back as the human did, minus the clawing and tugging to be closer.

That would've probably sliced Cter's back clean open with the size and sharpness of Idyll's claws.

Not really what friends should do.

Once Cter had cried enough, and once she had confirmed that she was done even as Idyll assured her that she could cry more if she wanted, the monster said that she wanted to share one more thing.

"A toast."

With a smile that quivered with giddy Idyll filled up Cter's mug and handed it over.

"No, not that hand."

To her left one.

Cter took the mug with a bit of suspicion. Idyll knew Cter didn't want to risk spilling onto her sleeve, yet she insisted on her taking it in her left hand. Pushing the handle into Cter's hand, even?

"I want this toast to be a special one, Cter," said Idyll while pouring the bottle she borrowed from her work into her own mug. "To show how far we've both come with our promise to each other." Once she sat the bottle safely on the flat top of the nearby chimney she reached out for Cter's sleeve.

It was instinctual to Cter at that point to let the monster grabbing her sleeve to pour its magic into her, and before she could react her arm lit up with orange magic that was transparent when she lifted it up to the last remnant fingers of the sun. It had the exact same color to it.

Idyll's arm holding her mug was set ablaze as well, vibrating excitingly as she moved her elbow back. She looked up at the castle. "We'll crush that place, together! You and me, human! You and me, Cter!"

Cter felt her smile grow until it was identical to Idyll's. The uneven puzzle that clamped the varying width of space between each tooth with pure, unadulterated grit and conviction. She saw it exactly how Idyll saw it, through her hair with her head lowered mischievously, and she gripped the handle on her mug even harder with the help of Idyll's gifted, orange magic. "You and me, monster!" You and me, Idyll!"

In unison only two best friends could understand without a single word spoken or aura touched, the human mage and the monster cook threw their gripped mugs together in distant view of the castle, yet still clear for it. The white marble disappeared behind the shattered splinters of wood and foaming waves of Xoff ale as the toast thundered its impact throughout the neighborhood.

A monster pair out on a walk ducked and cowered against the thunder from a clear sky, and conjured a thin magical plane about them out of their combined effort that began sizzling as the drops of raining ale hit it. They scurried off together while beset behind them by the interwoven laughter of a human and a monster drenched in ale.

Which they continued throughout the night.

Together.