"Nettles? Soup from nettles?"

"Yeah, actually."

"Guess you have to make do with what you have when it's dark all the time."

Idyll sent a look underneath her squinting brow and above her teasing grin to the ex-Hjearta native sitting on the horizontal roof slates next to her, slowly enjoying her bowl of warm stew.

"I mean, I guess that even I would consider eating spiky nettles if I became hungry enough and if everything outside was a desert of snow and ice."

"As opposed to the fertile desert out of sand?" Try as she might, and did, Idyll didn't get the Fourth Monster Mage to break. On the sunset-bathed castle roof nothing could get to Cter. With good food, good company, and finally coming home from being away for so long, there was really nothing Idyll could say to her to prompt an adverse reaction from her. "Mhm," the Fourth Monster Mage hummed under her breath without any emotion in her tone to the teasing grin showing the uneven smile. "If you say so."

"You've matured," Idyll commented with a playful raise to her eyebrows before she returned to reading through the recipes her friend had brought her back. "How unfortunate." She leaned further back with her elbow resting on the small table weighed with the pot of orange-based stew simmering from her fire magic lit underneath. "Guess I gotta be a bit mature too then."

Sensing a bit of loss in Idyll's tone, Cter caught herself not relaxing as much as she told herself that she would. While that didn't really bother her as much, it did bother her hearing Idyll's sigh. "Sure put a lot of that maturity into your stew."

Idyll's palm that she was leaning on curled into a fist so that she could peer over it better. "Maturity in what way?" she challenged against her friend with a peaking eyebrow. "And are you being mature in saying that about my maturity?"

Cter audibly slurped for effect before smacking her lips.

Before she could make do on that effect though, Idyll shook her head with pretend disappointment and disgust. She clicked her tongue as she turned a page disinterestedly. "Uncouth of a Monster Mage to slurp her stew, wouldn't you agree?" Interest flowed back to her though like a warm pancake flung on her elongated face. "Bark bread?" Non-trusting interest. "Surely," she sneered at Cter while smacking the copied notes with the back of her hand. "Surely this is where you're plucking my feathers."

Plucking her…

"Your feathers?" Cter asked with her soul moving her tongue. Her stare at the right side of Idyll's face wasn't subtle in the slightest, and would've only been more subtle if she had shone a light onto it too. Her exhale tugged at her lips, forming a smile that was relieved and humored at the same time. "Romrom uses that saying too." It was soothing hearing Idyll use that saying too. Must have been something that she figured out on her own after getting more used to her feathers. Another step Cter knew that Idyll had taken.

"She does?" The news were...well...news to Idyll, who scratched underneath her feathers with a claw. The rustling of the raven-black leaves looked natural on her, as did the slight blush that Cter caught between some of the moving feathers. "Maybe I got it from her then?" She said it in an admiring manner, with a glance towards Hjearta. "Although..." The glance she averted as if it was looking back at her. "Well, I mean, I don't want this to sound rude to her or anything, but they're mine now." Her hand stroked over the black, overlaid layers. "My feathers, from my magic."

It was a tender moment.

"So I guess I'll just send back the tincture for moisturizing feathers then."

Which Cter shattered like thunder on a quiet, serene night.

"Oh I hate you!" Idyll tried to have sound genuine through her laughter while she assaulted a higher officer with the notebook given to her by said higher officer. "Fluffbun, you're such an insufferable oaf!" Despite her best attempt, Idyll couldn't keep a pout towards the Monster Mage smiling like a complete idiot. "You've been alone in that carriage for too long, Cter," Idyll spat and sputtered with her shaking head in her hands.

"I've missed you too, Idyll," Cter at least let the dramatically sighing monster have. "And your tincture has been delivered to your room. Hopefully it has been delivered, I might add, since it does have a very interesting smell to it. We'll see how long it takes for the Royal Guards to stop sniffing it and actually deliver it." She took another bite of her stew as it had been some time since she last had one. The tang of the orange mixed well with the succulent and savory of the meat. "So if you're unlucky it might be next week with it."

Idyll settled back into her lean with her cheek resting on her open palm. Her eyes closed to enjoy the last warming rays of the setting sun in the far distance. "Barbeqa taught me very early to assume one and a half of what the Royal Guard estimates for delivery as a general rule of thumb." She snapped hers alight. "A fiery rule of thumb, that is." With her other thumb shimmering with frost, she put her two thumbs together to form an extinguishing and melting sizzle. "Although when it comes to foods that are meat or have interesting smells to them it's more like twice the given estimate." Idyll shrugged, moving her two smoking thumbs away. "If you plan for it then it's not really a problem. Instead of ordering when you have a tenth left you order when you have an eight left. It's exactly the same."

Cter wasn't gonna challenge that. As long as Idyll had it under control and could cook for Cter that was all fine by her. "So how long did you have to wait for the..." She suckled through her teeth and lips to try and figure out what that spice was that she could taste rather subtly. "Is it a kernel of saffron I taste?"

"Nah, a mace."

"No I'm just slightly curious."

"What?"

"What?"

The two friends' stare hung while they tried to figure out what it was the other meant. Even with their auras connected they still were confused as to what the other was on about. Eventually the two decided to just let it slide them by, and returned to their bowls of stew amid a mutually agreed silence.

It was only until the shadow of Cter holding out her bowl for another helping reached the top of the castle roof that they said something again. "Some more, please."

Idyll ladled in another helping.

"With one more piece of meat, thanks."

And one more chunk of meat as well.

"Nutmeg?" Cter hazarded again with her half-chewed food shifted and filling one of her cheeks opposite of where she spoke out of. "It has to be nutmeg."

"It's a mace, Cter."

Yeah, Cter had to give up on that because it just became more and more confusing. Did Idyll stir the pot with a weapon or something? Just silly. "Anything happen here at the castle while I was gone?" she tried instead with a vague gesture below towards the castle which roof the two were sitting on. "Did you manage to not have Fang Shuey reorganize my scrolls or did that fall through just like how she does through my locked door that's locked for a reason?"

"I've not managed to be as feared as Barbeqa yet, no." Idyll's hair glistened in the lower angle of the sun as she shook her head. "It's getting there though." Similarly to Cter, Idyll gestured with the back of her wooden spoon down into the Royal Garden. "One of the Royal Guards flinched when I furrowed my brow at him asking for me to maybe relax on the spicing next time."

Cter shuffled her seat to be bit more comfortable with some stasis magic on one of the slightly loose legs to properly enjoy what was about to explode from her friend. It heated like a hot coal being blown on. "First off," Idyll prefaced while calmly placing her bowl and spoon onto the small table between her and Cter. The calm movement just furthered Cter's eagerness for what was to come.

Idyll then put her index finger and thumb together hard enough to drain some of her sky-blue color. "The spices help with keeping things fresh and healthy." She bounced her hand towards Cter to make doubly sure that she was listening. "Isn't that right?"

The Fourth Monster Mage had no qualms about that. "No reason as to why that wouldn't be the case."

"Exactly," Idyll huffed through her clenched, uneven smile. "There were no damn reason which the Royal Guard had in his court about why I should have seasoned the dish less than I did. He has no experience about cooking for an entire castle, and he doesn't see me complain about the lax happenings in the guard portion of the Royal Guard."

Took her only one hefty breath before she slipped into hypocrisy. Great! Cter was going to love it! Oh she had missed Idyll so much!

"I served him a piece of my mind, and he choked on it instantly. Too much for him to stomach, so he just walked away with his tail tucked between his legs." Idyll whipped up a finger which she waggled towards Cter. "Don't you dare express any woe against him. You're my friend, so you outta be in my court about this. He did wrong, and I set him right! Nothing else to it, right?"

"Perish the thought had I it, Idyll."

The bright hair painted long streaks of glittering hair in the sunset reflecting off the strands as Idyll nodded with gusto. "Exactly." She returned to her bowl with a spin of her spoon. "Never in a thousand years!" Her muzzle was both smiling and furrowing at the same time, with the two expressions being at their strongest at the back and front of the length of her muzzle respectively, and blending together in the middle.

Another agreed silence took its roots between the friends as they continued eating while watching the deep-orange sun bid its long farewell down the curvy horizon. The two never did say it to the other, but they had missed the other with all of their soul. However, they didn't have to say it. They knew each other enough that they could tell that the other knew that they knew that they could tell.

They hugged when they saw each other again at the bottom of the staircase leading up to the roof access, of course. They hugged like only long lost friends could do. No crying though. Crying would have meant that they didn't think that they would see the other again, and that they didn't doubt for a second.

Even when Cter was awash with her own thoughts and worries pushing her down alone in the carriage, the thought of returning to Idyll and eating again with her kept her spirits up. She even humored the thought of making a conjured copy of Idyll to keep her company.

Would've just done worse in the end for her though. It was better to leave the hope as a hope rather than to have it be a thin, hollow copy of what the hope represented. Would've been like drinking a cup of cold water with a dirty rag in it when she was longing for a cup of warm Golden Flower tea. Besides, she had exhausted the magic she had loaned without asking from the Royal Mage of Ice and the Royal Butler, so the thought was moot even before she gave it any thought.

"So," said Idyll as she saw her friend's brow dip a bit deeper than what was good for her, "your journey?"

The question took a few seconds to get through to Cter. "Hm?"

"Actually, no." Idyll motioned towards Cter's hair with food still on her wooden spoon. "Tell me about this first. It's fantastic, Cter. Fits you perfectly. Did you do it yourself?" More importantly though. "Can you do it one me too? Just for this evening?" Idyll brushed away her hair on her right side instead of her left side, collecting it in her hand. "Can you do it on this side? That way we mirror."

"Sure," Cter agreed before thinking. While she was comfortable doing it on her own hair enough that she could probably do it while running down a flight of stairs, doing it on someone else meant she had to think more about it. Mirrored too, which was another thing she had to think about. If she were to turn around facing the other way it would've been on the same side, but then it would've been necessary for her to convert it back to forth rather than the forth that was her back but not Idyll's and–

"Cter?"

The Monster Mage snapped out of her self-inflicted confusion like a soap bubble popping with a petered fart. "What?" She blinked at her friend looking over her shoulder while waiting for Cter. "Oh, right."

First off, Cter magically lifted away the table with the food on and placed it on the top of the roof so that she could scoot closer to Idyll. The sound of her angled seat scraping on the slates reminded her, painfully, of when Professor Leraull dragged the plates on his tail against the chalkboard back in Soul's School to have the class quiet down before a lesson. A chill reverberated up her spine, causing her to wince.

"What?" Idyll reacted with another turn over her shoulder. "Oh no!" She squeezed at the bottom of her hair with her hands frantically. "Did I put my hair in the stew?"

"No, no you didn't," Cter calmed before conjuring a brush to get a better feel for the thickness and texture of Idyll's hair. "I'm just internalizing how I should go about this."

"Why is–" Idyll flinched from the conjured brush twisting her hair from her turning her head yet again to talk to Cter. "Why is that?" she tried again with her head still looking forward.

"I do it magically."

"Oh?"

Idyll's hair was much thinner than Cter's. She knew that from how much the sunlight played in Idyll's hair, but running the magical brush through it really made Cter understand just how thin it actually was. If Cter's hair was rope then Idyll's hair was...well...hair. Would it even be able to be put up into braids and not just unravel itself immediately? With stasis magic it wouldn't be a problem, but that Idyll didn't know. Cter could do it for the remainder of the evening though.

"You're thinking again, Cter," chuckled Idyll, sending waves down her thin hair. "I can hear the steam out your ears again. There is something about you doing it with my hair, isn't it?"

"You hair is so thin." It wasn't something dismissive, so why wouldn't Cter mention it. "I've never really felt at it before. Never ran my finger through it. Even when I was...you, I didn't really get a good feel for it. It's pleasant." She ran one finger down its length. "Like long strings of thin silk."

"The oil gathered from the day's cooking rinses off much easier than had it been thicker, so I'm not complaining. Barbeqa just inflates her flames and burns everything off at the end of her shift. Even with how easy it is for me it is much easier for her, and I'm very jealous about it."

Cter moved the collected right side of Idyll's hair that she had in her right hand over to her left, sleeved hand. Even if it would be more to think, it still was less uncomfortable for Cter to make magic that she had to think more about out her left hand rather than magic that she had to think less about out her right hand. "How many braids? The less the bigger and the more the smaller."

"One less than you have, that way you can make the combined braid a bit looser, right?" suggested Idyll rather quickly. "I don't know why, but I think I want it more looser, if that's fine with you?"

She was a monster, so Cter knew why.

"Anything you ask is fine by me."

Within reasonable assumptions, of course.

"Then–"

Reasonable assumptions that Idyll were about to make light about.

"No," Cter stopped before her friend could. "I know you, Idyll."

"Then can't you be a stranger for just a second or so?"

She didn't mean to, but it hit Cter deeply. "I've been a stranger for months though." She spun some of Idyll's hair around her twirling thumb. "Months."

Enough months that she had forgotten the greeting bullets Idyll and her had promised to do to together...

"You're here now though," Idyll had to remind with an arm bent awkwardly behind her to help comfort. "Back home, Cter." Before things got too melancholic though she took a hold of Cter's sleeve and tugged it down like a church bell. "Back home to your friend who is waiting for you to do her hair."

Yes, that she was.

Cter began by parting Idyll's hair in the middle properly, just like she did with her own. Instead of left she had to do right though, and it took her a moment to mentally shift what had started to build as habit to her. It was similar to her forcing herself to make her ice magic more and more different, so strangely she had experience with it, come to think of it. "Just let me know if I'm tugging a bit too hard. My hair is a bit thicker than yours, after all."

"I've seen it sway," snickered Idyll. "I'm fully aware of that. I've had a few close calls with it knocking me unconscious during the years."

She didn't have to agree to that extent, the sassy chef.

After having parted the hair, Cter then began to stroke stasis magic to cover its entire length. From the roots on Idyll's head to the many thin tips at the base of her back. She didn't need to do such an extensive cover on her own hair since it had become habit to her, but with the different properties to Idyll's hair it was necessary to begin again, so to speak.

"My right side, wasn't it, Cter?"

Yes, true. It was a good idea to do the magic on the right side of Idyll's hair too, in both senses of the word. "I was just getting a feel for it," the Monster Mage excused very flimsily.

"Mhm?"

Once Cter shifted her magic over to the right side of Idyll's hair in a way that wasn't indicative of her mistake at all, no sir, then she could begin in earnest. "One more braid than I have?" Since Idyll was a bit of a stickler in holding Cter responsible to what she promised to do, it was a good idea to make doubly sure.

"One more than you have, yes."

Perfect.

Cter divided up the right side of Idyll's hair while counting under her breath. With the sections in decreasing volume from the top and separated akin to hairy tendrils, Cter began to weave each section together. First the largest one that would be at the top to get a feel for how Idyll's hair interacted with itself and how much it could hold itself together. Even with her weaving tighter and in a more knot-like pattern to have it holding together stronger, Idyll's hair still gave her trouble even at the biggest braid. Slippery due to how thin the strands were, almost like rubbing together bars of soap. No friction to keep it together naturally. It needed some more magic.

After a sweep of her left hand inside her opened mouth, Cter bit down on a perpendicular row of long and conjured sticks to use in Idyll's braids. With some tension on the slippery braid from her hands rather than her magic, Cter felt around before inserting some of the long sticks. To her delight the braid stayed in shaped!

She had to stop Idyll from reaching up and feeling though. "In a bit." It was only a very temporary solution.

Unless it worked.

The rest of the braids Cter could do at the same time since she knew how they would act. Straighten out, twist, tuck, repeat, and with a few magical sticks to hold them in place. Collecting the remaining right-sided hair and tying it together loosely was as easy as could be, in comparison, and with a happy "There we go," Cter tossed it across Idyll's neck and over her left shoulder where it settled nicely. "You didn't happen to bring a mirror, did you?"

"The serving plate?" Idyll suggested halfheartedly. "It's not the best, but it is what we have. Maybe I can see my outline?"

Cter reached over for the metallic serving plate. It was very scratched and weathered from previous use, both its front and backside. No way would Idyll be able to see how her hair looked in it. "Can you do ice magic that's reflective, perhaps? On the back of this since it's a nice, flat base?"

"What about your crystal magic, Cter?" Idyll turned her head slightly but stopped when the sticks in her hair rustled. "It bounced around a lot of color from where I saw it."

Yes, unfortunately she did.

She had a point though. Cter could make her crystal magic reflective, she only had to not give it any color and make the entire structure out of thick core. Well, dense was probably a better descriptor since she only painted a thin layer on the back of the serving plate. In it she saw herself, and smiled at her only-slightly-distorted reflection. "One order of mirror served up."

The small surprised jump Idyll did once she saw herself filled Cter with warm happiness. The way she slowly and timidly touched the contours of her braids and explored the loose tail they were tied up in on her left shoulder had Cter proud. "You like it?" she asked despite knowing fully that Idyll did. She only asked to hear herself be praised.

But who would blame her for wanting to indulge a bit?

"It's nice," Idyll answered with a nod. "Not something I'd want to wear everyday because I'm too lazy and it would just be ruined by the oily steam in the kitchen, but it looks so very good, Cter. I've never looked this...proper, before."

"You could always put a slight layer of ice on it to keep it shielded." Cter reached out to show, but curled back her outstretched fingers as Idyll shook her head.

"Don't get me wrong, Cter, I'm ever so grateful about this. I've never had my hair worked on before. Mom and dad didn't know how, and Sarbor even less. Seeing my hair like this is a bit...strange, to me." Idyll had to pause to make sure that what she said wasn't in anyways against Cter in the slightest. "It looks good, but it doesn't look like me."

Cter's eyes moved on their own to the reflection of Idyll's feathers in the crystal mirror.

"Yes, I know," said Idyll as she caught her friend's eyes in the crystal. "I know, Cter. It's just..." She tried, but she couldn't. "I don't know. I can't explain it. I love how it looks, and I love how it looks in the mirror, but it feels strange that it is me that it looks on."

With a warm and comforting hand, Cter put weight onto Idyll's right shoulder before the monster knotted her own aura in trying to explain. "It's fine, Idyll." Really, it was. "Can you have it for the rest of the evening though? For me?"

"That I can."

"Thank you."

Something had to be done about the sticks though. They worked, but they didn't look good. Cter had to replace them with something else.

And she knew with what exactly!

"Ow, you're scraping against my scalp, Cter."

"Sorry."

A thin, spiraling length of crystal on each braid to hold them together. The same as the spiral on Cter's sleeve, but on her friend's one-lesst-han-hers braids. It held the braids together, and it looked good.

"Oh, I see what you were going for!" With a claw Idyll traced along the spiral length of thin crystal magic along her top braid. "Is it good though that I'm feeling just the tiniest more convinced about it?"

"Well that's up to you," Cter chuckled. "I'll make it go away later."

Idyll picked up on how Cter formulated that. "Go away?" She turned around, finally, with a feathery brow raised over her feathery half. "It doesn't go away on its own? It's permanent?"

Cter wouldn't have used that word exactly. "My crystal magic is...as close to permanent as I could make it."

"Yes, but you didn't really put a lot of effort into this," Idyll countered with a point to the crystals on her braids. With how she was so brash with how she said it, it was clear that she didn't mean anything against Cter, despite how very backhanded it was to Cter's ears. Her aura was the complete opposite, just full of warmth and encouragement to her friend. "Have you tried to put in effort for it to be permanent?"

"Haven't figured what I want to make permanent, so not yet, I haven't."

After a few long seconds of Idyll looking into Cter's eyes, she cracked up in a titter out her long nose. "Oh you know exactly what you want to make, Cter." Her fingers flared with ice and fire that she danced into the shape of a brooch that she leaned over and fastened into Cter's loose side. Then she reached for the crystal mirror and held it up for the Monster Mage to realize what her friend had realized before her.

"You. Know. Exactly."