It was so strange…

"Human?"

How tranquil Idyll slept.

"Cter, I mean?"

In a way she looked more dead than she had been on the floor in their apartment.

"Let her take it in for a bit, will you?"

Her hair had turned a slight gradient darker starting from its base at her head. Black to brown to light. As if a faded stroke of a brush had slipped across her many strands. She had an absent smile on her lips, enough to only barely show her teeth underneath. Same as it was when Idyll and Cter had sat on top their apartment building's roof until early morning half-asleep. Held warm by their auras and Cter's fire magic she'd learned. Ice for the wine, fire for the drinkers.

Idyll was in the same stained, sweated, and dusted clothes she had the night before. It smelled something awful. It smelled like...death. "Shouldn't she have nice clothes too?" muttered Cter in a stupor. The confidence she'd felt was as if blown away once she actually saw Idyll. Cter's friend was in an even more of a limbo state than she had been with Cter keeping her alive via magic-lending. Idyll breathed, her face contorted as if dreaming, her mouth opened and closed, but there was no thought behind the motions. No emotion either. Only movement, reflexes of sorts. Cter was glad that Idyll had her eyes closed.

"We don't want to risk anything," answered a monster's voice. "Waking up in another set of clothes and not being instantly reminded of what happened might be detriment to Idyll remembering who she is."

Cter knew that.

But it wasn't what she felt.

There she stood, with her hair washed clean and combed neatly. The dust, blood, and filth from the prison cell hay-sack pillow was nowhere to be seen in her cared-for strands. Her hands were washed of the immediate reminders of what happened. Of what had made Idyll like she was on that off-white bed. Of all the blood and all the dust. Cter's flowing robe was that of fine silk in a sparkling dark-green hue given to important guests of Jarasevo Castle.

From a prisoner to an important guest in the matter of half an hour…

To then see her best friend lie in that lifeless and languid state of existing. Cter couldn't even greet properly, not without her magic which she had lost. The magic that was inside Idyll, fighting to take over. It was Cter's fault that Idyll was on the brink of death, yet she was the one that was given a bath and expensive clothing of which the likes neither Idyll or Cter had ever seen in their life, let alone felt upon their skin or scales.

"Idyll..." sobbed Cter, which prompted first a calming reaction from her vegetative friend, but then an even harsher grimace on her long muzzle. "I'm so sorry."

A pair of long ears quirked up from behind Kry standing one of his steps away from the bed in the middle of the bright, sun-lit room. They bounced forward before a monster wearing a dark-purple robe stepping forward with hands clasped behind its back. "Do refrain from showing any sorrow you might have, human." It was clear that the words hurt the monster saying it, but it was even clearer that it was necessary. She brought forth one of her hands in a similarly blue color to that of Idyll and gestured over with her talons over to the monster she shared her hue with. "As you've been informed Idyll reacts to you, human. We'll need to keep it so that it only serves to calm her instead of agitating." Her head tilted forward apologetically, and her ears followed with the bow. "Trust that we are aware that it will be difficult considering the situation, but do remind yourself that it is for your friend's best."

Again Cter knew.

But again it wasn't what she felt.

Not being able to reach out with her aura and give her friend something to hold onto. More than only a shoulder to cry on, but a human's soul to pour her sorrows into. Even if that was the reason Idyll fell into the state she was, Cter still wished with all her heart that she could do it right there. Just reach out and tell Idyll that it was all going to be alright.

No...no that wouldn't work.

Her lie would've been projected as well…

"Maybe you should sit down while we brief you on what we have found and have come to understand thanks to your cooperation," continued the monster while motioning for either of the Monster Mages to please bring Cter a chair.

"Sure, Frioke," answered Sund who was leaning on a table reading a scroll. He walked past Kurant and Sir Gerson who refused to take his eyes off Idyll even with one of the leg of the chair Sund clumsily lifted over brushed against his flat nose. "Here." Sund placed the chair just behind Cter and made his excuses back to his scroll.

Frioke then nodded softly for Cter to sit down. It was like a mother's caress across her chin that the nod hit Cter with, and slowly she sat down while Frioke began her briefing.

"We'll start off with what we've found out from Idyll."

Cter's heart jumped up into her throat as Frioke gingerly turned Idyll's chin over. The jump had Cter gasping, which pushed one of Frioke's fingers up due to Idyll's mouth frowning defensively. With a stern look to remind the human to control herself, Cter managed to swallow her startle, and the blue mouth faded back into a neutral expression. "This is from the monster that inscribed your sleeve, no?"

Like thick whiskers, black feathers sprouted from the middle of Idyll's cheek which Frioke was tilting towards Cter. Black as coal, and instantly recognizable to the human. She had seen them just beginning to emerge before she lost consciousness...maybe. That they were fully grown didn't bode well though, an even worse if it wasn't the case that Cter had seen them before. It meant Romrom had enough of a presence inside Idyll's soul to influence her body. If it was manifesting itself so independently outside Idyll's soul and on her body then how strong was it inside her soul?

It had Cter shuddering, but without her magical aura Idyll didn't react to it. Silver lining, even if it was on the edges of a raging thunderstorm heading towards her that she had created herself.

Having taken the human's shuddering as a yes to her question, Frioke pushed down and separated the feathers to inspect them further. Even Cter could see that it brought Idyll discomfort, but Frioke didn't seem to care about the quivering Idyll had. It tickled her annoyingly, but she couldn't do anything about it. "These feathers are Idyll's. They're not the other aura's feathers, but it is because of the aura that the feathers exist. It is similar to flowers taking on magical properties after a couple of generations in the Royal Garden. With Idyll, however, it's directly transplanted into her soul. It is from where you said you made your invasive bond with Idyll, correct? Just nod or shake your head as your answer, please."

Cter nodded.

"Thank you."

The wise monster tilted Idyll's head back to how it was when Cter entered, with the feathered cheek out of her view. Cter was thankful for it. Hopefully it was the only time she'd see it.

Although she feared that wouldn't be the case.

"While there's been no more or other physical expressions of the..." The monster priestess had it difficult finding a word that would be enough to describe, yet relaxed enough not to frighten. Her talons knotted together and opened up as she thought, but couldn't for the life of her figure something out.

"Disagreement," offered Sir Gerson after retracting his finger from across his lip only to have it resume tapping immediately after he spoke. Again without moving his observing eyes tightened by the weight of the deep wrinkles present on his forehead. "Her inner disagreement."

"My thanks, Sir Gerson." Frioke cleared her throat. "While there's been no more or other physical expressions of her inner disagreement the same can't be said for how her magical presence is." With her long ears flattened behind her she rounded the bed towards Cter sitting down anxiously with wringing hands. "That you cannot experience right now due to your inert sleeve, human, so we are going to give you a choice here." From inside her robe the priestess produced a sleeve made out of a similar material to Cter's robe. The line-work on it struck Cter with its intricacy. She'd not gotten a good look on any of the Monster Mage's sleeves before. Did they have just as intricate a capacity for monster magic too?

Like presenting an award, Frioke laid the sleeve on the small wooden table next to Cter with its full length displayed. It was both longer and fitted for a thicker arm than any of Cter's. It didn't directly react to her touch either. If anything it reminded her of the practice sleeves she'd used during her studies at Soul's School, but much, much more intricate. Even more so than the one Romrom had given her. "You'll have some time to think it over while I continue explaining." Cter flinched slightly as she was busy admiring the sleeve that the Monster Priestess had just given her. "We want you to feel Idyll's aura as it is right now. I must warn you though that it is a particularly violent one. Internally violent. Inherently, almost."

Cter ran an exploratory finger across the lines. There was...something there. It had her soul feel like it was falling asleep similarly to how her leg would when she sat awkwardly. It was a long time since she'd felt that sensation before. The first awakening of magical potential in a human's soul. That it happened again though meant that Cter was back at the start. Back at her first day in Soul's School.

Oh if she'd known that she'd feel an even more horrid anxiety than how she felt craning her neck up at the large doors she wouldn't have stepped through them at all!

"We'll be here to offer support should the aura be too much for you, human. It is my magic inside the sleeve, and it'll gradually open up your aura more and more to feel Idyll's. Even if that proves to be too much for you we can subdue it, but it might affect Idyll if we do." Frioke held a look against Cter's for a couple of seconds before she concluded that the human had understood. "Once you've gotten used to it we'll proceed with how you feel you can do. This reverse Reaction-Action and Cooperative Connection that you managed to invoke. That you'll have to do once more, but better. You only got one practice shot at it, human." She then glanced down at the loose sleeve. "Second time's the charm with your charm."

With weary eyes Cter scanned the room. The Monster Mages, Sir Gerson, and the Monster Priestess Frioke. There was a simultaneous demand for results as well as a sympathetic understanding in the air. The fact of the matter was clear to all, even Cter. What she had done was not only something that couldn't be forgiven should she fail, but if she succeeded it would be proof of a greater power allotted to human magic.

There was only death or life as a result.

Understandably, Cter didn't speak for a handful of long minutes. She only sat in her given chair, shivering with fear. Inside her mind there was chaos, with flashes of outcomes that made her face grimace and her eyes water. Her breath became rugged as the flashes of death outnumbered the flashes of life.

There was only one flash of life among the many deaths.

However, that flash still held strong even as the widely different ways Idyll's body crumbled into piles of dust to then spill over the edge of the bed surrounded it and attacked it relentlessly.

But it refused.

Cter's ears hurt from Idyll's screams inside her mind growing with such intensity that it made her deaf to the hushed whispers around her.

But it refused.

The single flash still stood tall. It still asserted itself and the life it represented. It was somewhere Cter couldn't reach. Somewhere she had no idea where to find it.

But it was still there.

It was Idyll's smile.

The way the sun reflected off her hair and teeth.

Her secure embrace.

How she felt so human to Cter.

And how Cter felt so monster to Idyll.

"I trust you, Cter."

With her life.

A life which Cter had to give back to her friend!

The soft fabric of the sleeve did nothing to lessen the burn against Cter's skin as she hastily dragged it up her arm. The whispers around her quieted down, replaced by understanding nods between the Monster Mages and monsters. Kurant went around Cter's chair to help fasten the sleeve securely over the human's shoulder. Once it was secure she stepped aside to give Frioke room to stand next to Cter. She opened up her hand for Cter to take.

It was a gentle hand despite the sharp claws and angular knuckles. A monster's hand, through and through.

"Whenever you're ready, human."

She wasn't.

Not as a human.

But as a monster.

Cter took the offered monster hand in her own monster hand.

"What memory?" Which one should she prod? The two just met so it was necessary that Frioke was there next to Cter so that there was a constant reminder to Frioke's magic in the sleeve so that the memory could be acted upon.

"How well do you remember Idyll's meeting with Kurant?" asked Frioke as she grabbed hold of the silk. "If it is vivid to you we can use her as a memory mediator of sorts."

Was...was that even possible?

"Yes," answered Frioke to the doubt that began flowing into Cter's bulbing aura. "You of all humans should be aware now that human magic can be molded in ways you didn't think possible."

True…

"I don't remember vividly," said Cter.

"Probably for the better," commented Kry from the other side of Idyll's bed where he was rolling up his robe's sleeve to expose his proper one. "You're already poised to utilize uncertain usage of human magic to all of us, so you using uncertain magic to then use uncertain magic will only cause confusion."

"More confusion," added Sund as he opened his sleeved hand glowing of white. He pointed it up into the ceiling where it crashed like an inverse fountain and began rolling like viscous water out towards the walls where it broke like waves against a shore and began pouring downwards. There was a rigidity to the magical, gaseous fluid where it hit a corner. At the bend it was a solid, like metal bearings, where the fluid shifted instantly to solid and then back to fluid again.

Once it had covered the circumference of entire room and all of its corners Sund closed his hand and threw it down. A hollow hum began oscillating, and the room turned whiter than anything Cter had ever seen before. There was no form to it. Only pure white, like an infinite void of light. Its hum seemed to breathe as Cter looked around her. A sharp smell permeated from it.

"It's a boundary of aura," said Sund after rolling his shoulder and elbow. "It isolates so that we don't get any outside interference. Or isolates the outside from whatever happens inside here, as was the case when we found the two of you in your apartment."

So that was...three different prisons Cter had been kept within in just one day?

"Focus, human." Frioke's reprimand was instructive, as was the soft look she met Cter's worried eyes with. "We'll begin whenever you're ready."

Cter exhaled.

And closed her eyes.

"What memory?"

"I visited Hjearta long ago. Try and hone in on the Golden Flower fields I found so beautiful."

Cter began her search.

She made herself aware of the tingling in her soul and expanded it so that it interacted with the monster residue grafted onto her new sleeve. As she did she began thinking about her home country. About its name. About its fields of Golden Flowers. How they swayed in the wind. The pattern that emerged when she traveled past them inside her carriage towards Monster Country. How the flowers seemed to bow as the wind shifted and…

Cter coughed a sob as the warm feeling of closeness returned to her. How it reacted to her soul, filling up the empty sense she had inside it. Of magic returning to her. Of being able to have her emotions not only in her head but in her aura as well. Her thoughts, her feelings, her presence.

Even if it had only been hours that she had been deprived of her magical half it was like a cold eternity to her. She didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or be angry that she had lost it in the first place. She knew how to settle those emotions though, and she quickly came to terms again with the added awareness of having monster magic influence and be a catalyst to her thoughts and intent. It was different since she had another monster that reacted to her soul.

Like waking up with her head on the other side of the bed than the one she was used to. Sitting up and being momentarily confused seeing another wall in her half-awakened state. Her bed was still the same though, as was her nightgown. It was enough for her to come to grip with it only seconds after awakening again.

"Watch Idyll," Frioke addressed to Kry. Cter felt that it wasn't to her due to the intent in Frioke's aura not being aimed at her. She tugged a smile at the nostalgic feeling of reading another one's aura. "Now, human," Frioke said to Cter, "summon a fire so that we're all sure that you're ready."

Like so many times before, yet it feeling like the first time ever, Cter called upon the warmth that she had connected to the green monster with. The closeness of Frioke's fondness of the Golden Flower fields gave it a spark, and Cter opened her eyes to a sunset-pink flame igniting in her hand and tinting the white room with streaks of shadows from her fingers and color from her fire magic.

With no crackling to it.

With a low-sounding huff Cter extinguished the pink flame with her closed fist. When she opened it again it was as if Idyll was sleeping in her open palm. Cter held her hand opened and steady as she stood up from her chair. "I want it all," she requested from somewhere she was not sure of. "Idyll's aura. I want to feel it wholly."

A hand gripped her shoulder which caused her to turn around to meet Kurant's face softened into a mentoring shake of her head. "You don't." The Monster Mage coaxed Cter's aura back, calming it down from its spiky rim. "Don't let eagerness become foolishness and impatience, human. You'll lose yourself to it." The firm, yet motherly, hand lifted and retracted all but one finger which spun around to indicate all the other present in the barricaded room besides Cter and Idyll. "We all barely survived it. It was felt across the entire city, perhaps even further out into the countryside, we fear."

With a lowered head Cter caught herself wanting to retort and argue against the Monster Mage, but that was enough to make her realize that she was about to throw herself alone into an icy lake with no sauna to return to. She had to think! For Idyll. Only dip her toes in first and then slowly submerge more and more of herself.

Idyll was at the bottom of that icy lake in the dark. Cter had managed to make a hole in the ice to enter, but that was the easy part. Her breath turned into visible vapor as the cold of her internal metaphor surrounded her. Her eyelashes had become frosted at their tips when she finally nodded. "I'll be careful," she promised with one last vapory breath. "I'm ready."

Feeling the truth and conviction in her renewed aura, Frioke slowly withdrew her connected magic from Cter's sleeve so that it would act more a catalyst to the human's magic instead. She stopped as Cter gasped with a face contorted in confused disgust. "Let me know when it's settled for you."

How…

What was that?

Cter sank back into her chair again with her hand pushed up against her mouth. Her eyes faded into darkness as her fringe fell over her brow. "Idyll..." she whispered through the slits between her tensed fingers. "Romrom..." Her soul churned like her stomach couldn't. Like the sensation of a startled fall in her magical half, sinking to a bottom Cter never knew existed.

A bottom where Idyll was.

Chaos. Turmoil. Of feeling two as one, but knowing they're not. Separating and coming together like waves flowing and ebbing against each other during a storm. Cter was both overwhelmed by the familiar auras of her friend and grandmother, yet at the same time that familiarity made her fearful. The faux calm, only masquerading as such having heard Cter mention both Idyll and Romrom's names as well as her connecting with the distraught auras, washed over Cter uncomfortably. She flinched, but didn't retract her aura.

It was...curious...to her. Mesmerizing.

She knew she wasn't in any danger. She knew that Idyll and Romrom would never hurt her. She could sense that, even among the ebb and flow of both of their souls climbing over the other to only meld together for the other one to climb, repeating all around her like warm honey not made by bees. A macabre display of something unnatural and repulsive that Cter couldn't help probe at curiously, like a child opening a rabid wolf's mouth to examine its tongue.

"More."

This calm pair of monsters on top of a swaying pillar of unstable rocks jumped with joy unsynchronously as Cter's aura embraced the two further. The human gazed into a middle distance that wasn't real, that was forming and breaking only for her. Where were the two one? Where were they two? Cter couldn't feel. She needed…

"More."

And there it was. Through the ice which had become clearer was Idyll, and next to her was Romrom. The ice made them two. It allowed Cter to see the two as the two they were. Change it from one to two, but not by adding.

But by subtracting!

Not a Reaction-Action, but a reverse Action-Reaction! Opposite of the coin, but no coin ever has two exactly similar sides. Going from one to the other wasn't the same as going from the other to the one! A right hand turned over only looks like the left hand in direction of the fingers, but the side facing isn't the same. Flat, not palm. However, if the left hand is turned as well the hands become the other's back as well. A mirroring without the context of knowing which side is the mirrored one!

Not an inversion, or a reversion, but a combination of the two!

Almost as if in a trance, Cter stood up from her chair. Her aura was now fully hers again, and the full and naked distraught inside Idyll's soul filled the magically barricaded room. There was something in the way though for Cter as she approached Idyll's body. Something that didn't allow Cter to dive down into the dark and icy water. A tether which tugged at her, hindering her from diving deep.

Her sleeve.

"I'm still here," Cter assured Idyll and Romrom as she began unbuckling her sleeve. "We still have a promise to uphold." The silk bundled into an uneven pile at her and the bed's feet. The air between Cter and Idyll's body became cold as the height of winter, and the vapor turned into thick clouds as the two breathed in rhythm. It was Romrom's ice magic, no doubt about it. Cter leaned forward and nestled her robe's arm underneath one of Idyll's hands. "I can't do it without you, Idyll."

Dark, yet darker as Cter dove deeper. The hum and smell of Sund's magic disappeared just as rapidly as its bright light did. She reached out for Idyll, but before she could drag her out of the icy lake she paused for a brief moment.

In that brief moment Cter sensed the worries of the Monster Mages around her. Why did she stop?

"Your magic, Idyll," Cter called out to her friend. "What do you want it to be?"

The answer reached Cter's soul loud and clear.

She smirked.

"That we'll do."

And turned to her grandmother.

"Together."