"Two days?"

The fruit-sour stew burned the roof of Cter's mouth as she bounced her head side to side.

"Two days to read the entire series?"

"Yessch I," the Monster Mage attempted, but failed. It was as if the roof between her mouth and nose had melted, with each hurried inhale through her nose burning the roof of her mouth worse akin to blowing air on someone's skin in a hot sauna. She fanned her held-out tongue and melted mouth with her hand, coughing with pain.

The perplexed stare Idyll gave her returned friend deepened. "You want some ice for that?" she offered while holding up a finger like a mother disappointed with her child that done went and did something stupid. A calm mist of ice magic formed at her claw's tip, swirling into a loose sphere with a solid center forming within. "And I did tell you that it would be hotter than normal."

"I schtought you meantch–"

"Just drink some water, dammit!" shouted Idyll with laughter as she flicked the small ice comet into Cter's mug where it landed with a sizzling crack, freezing a thin crust that immediately broke with the splashing waves the comet's impact made in the mug.

"I can't believe you..." the Monster Chef said into her own mug she brought up to the end of her muzzle. Her bared teeth bared even more as her lips thinned with her chuckle continuing as she drank. "And I meant it as hotter as in warmer not hotter as in spicier. I would have said that it was spicier then to avoid confusion."

Yeah about that…

"So, let me try again," said the blue-scaled chef as she leaned back as much as she could on the seating hooked over the roof of the western wing of Jarasevo Castle. Her bright hair parted up behind her as she folded her arms over her chest, letting the deep orange of the setting sun behind her compliment the blue of her scales. "It took you just two days to get through the entirety of the 'Love within' series?"

The way Idyll said it indicated that she had a few things in mind about the fact. Firstly, that she found it hard to believe that Cter managed to get through three books in the span of two days. Secondly, that she found it hard to believe that Cter actually enjoyed the series enough to get through all three books in the span of two days.

And thirdly, that she found it hard to believe that Sir Gerson, of all monsters in the world, alive, dead, or yet to be born, was the one that recommended the series to her.

It had completely shattered Idyll's world.

"The hell happened at that trial for you to resort to reading through the damn 'Love within' series?"

It had shattered Idyll's world correctly though. It had shattered it in a way that Cter could mend easily just by explaining. It was not as if it was shattered because the foundation of the relationship between monsters and humans had been shook to its very core. An inevitability, if anything. All Cter could do was to try and postpone it and ease down the severity of it.

She would protect her friend from having her world shattered in a way she could not be able to mend it. "Later, Idyll." And that meant not telling her anything of it until the time was right. "I'll tell you about it later."

The smugly folded arms unfolded with slight worry in their slow motion. "It was meant to be said in a bit of jest," Idyll explained. "Sorry." She ran her thumb up and down the height of her mug. "But...yeah..." She breathed in, then out, regaining a playful smirk and a teasing glint in her eyes. "Two days for the entire 'Love within' series?" With a giggle and a tilt of her head she drank audibly from her mug. "I guess you've done sillier things though."

Cter was very grateful that her friend made the effort. "It's actually quite well written, the books." It felt a bit weird speaking with a burned mouth, so she drank some of her magically chilled water to soothe it. With some healing magic it would have been like nothing, but then Cter would have had to shove some sleeved fingers into her mouth, and seeing how she was barely comfortable with holding a spoon with her left hand that was rather out of the question. "The characters feel very alive."

She had tried some with trying to read with magic like how that skeleton librarian at Soul's School had said that she did, but to no real improvement. Cter could, but she did not really feel the author's intent from the strokes. Could be because she did not have a lot of sensation in her left fingers.

To say the least.

"Also I quite like how the relationships were written. Reminded me a bit of you and me."

A cold shiver ran up the length of Idyll's spine and aura, contorting her face into a shocked, almost-panicked expression. Her bowl of stew jumped in her hand, and she juggled it between her hand trying to regain a grip on it. She finally did as Cter held it still in the air for her. Even with it not moving it took a small while before Idyll took the stasis-held bowl in her hands, wrapping her thumbs around the chipped lip tightly.

There was trouble in her aura. Conflict. Uncertainty. A sense of foreboding that things were about to fall apart before her.

It was frighteningly similar to how Cter felt.

"Cter..." Idyll almost regretted saying, punctuated with an upset chuckle. "I'm..." She turned away, with another chuckle bouncing her shoulders and bright hair. Her lips descended unevenly over her bared teeth. "Has this been long?" she asked with a glance down into her stew. "Have you...felt it long?"

Cter watched as Idyll fought to not make eye contact. "W-What?" her mouth said without her prompting it to. "What do you mean, Idyll?"

"What do I..." Her curiosity got the better of her, and she turned behind her bright curtain of hair to look at Cter through her reflective strands. It wasn't enough though, so she pulled her hair behind her head. "You said about the character in the book, didn't you? That you felt that it reminded of me and you?" She heard her own words, and her lips closed hard, thinning them out like dough underneath a roller pin. "I mean...I love you like a sister, Cter, but not..."

But not? But not what? What was she...

The Monster Mage's eyes widened enough that they risked falling out of their sockets.

"Oh no no no no no no no!" she waved frantically, shaking her head even more frantically. Her combined braid slapped her in the face, leaving some strands of brown hair in her mouth. She flicked them away with a puff of magical fire that turned them into coiling, charred strands of smoke. "I didn't mean it like that, Idyll! God, I–" Her hands came over her mouth and nose, leaving only her widened eyes exposed. "No, I meant the friendships. I meant the..."

Her heart was about to burst out of her chest.

But not because of love or anything just…

Gaah!

No, she didn't mean it like that! Again!

"Oh," blinked Idyll audibly. Her bowl slipped out of her dazed hands, tapping on the roof slates like very heavy rain until it came to a stop just before the edge of the roof. It did not fall as far down as Idyll's jaw did though. "I thought..." she said with another hard blink to try and see what it was she was thinking, but to no avail. "I thought you meant..." She couldn't say it, she was too relieved. "I mean, I thought you meant that you meant that I meant that..."

She reached for the water.

Cter helped her.

As friends did.

Friends.

Best of friends to the point of being sisters.

But still friends.

Their combined, relieved sighs rustled the leaves in the Royal Garden, and shook loose a few fruits in the process. The two friends sat slumped on their chairs for a long while as they basked in the relief from having cleared up their misunderstanding. It was only when a Royal Guard from below hollered alarmingly about stew dripping onto his helmet that Idyll and Cter met each other's eyes.

And burst into laughter.

"Singe my soul, Idyll!" Cter managed to spurt out amid her laughter. She had to squint through her narrowed eyes filled with tears at her friend doing the same. "You can't scare me like that!" Her head tilted back to try and replace the air she had been coughing out with her intense laughing. "You can't..." She pinched the bridge of her nose, but that only restricted more air.

She snorted due to it.

And the laughter regained anew.

"Oh, golly me," eased Idyll down while wiping away a tear from her eye. "I've not laughed this much with you in forever, it feels." She searched her near vicinity for her bowl before realizing that she had dropped it down the roof. Before she could think to reach for it, Cter lifted it up with stasis magic.

It was the better choice among the ones they had available to them. "If only we could do it more often..." The blue-scaled monster refilled her bowl with some more of her stew, scraping the bottom of the cast-iron pot with the wooden ladle to get some of the best pieces. "Feels great when we manage."

That it did. Adding to the great feeling was that it seemed to take place when Cter came back from a long journey. Be it to another country or a journey she had in her soul or with her magic in the castle. Seeing it like that she did not really want to have it be more often since that would mean that her schedule would become even more packed to the brim with journeys that end up affecting and effecting deeply.

On the other hand, spending more time with Idyll was never something Cter was gonna turn down. Nor would she another helping of her stew. "Could you scrape some from the bottom for me as well, please?"

Idyll pretended to feel disappointed that Cter had spotted her trick. "You saw it..." She pouted overtly, almost folding her lips outwards. "Would you like it a bit more caramelized too?" Her follow-up question had her lips flick back down normally again, smacking audibly in the process.

"Caramelized?"

"Yeah." While Idyll grimaced her lips back and forth to rub away the strange tingling she hovered a claw over the stew with a horizontal flame poking out the claw's tip. "Barbeqa has finally found my fire magic to be good enough to be able to use it more intimately with the cooking process. More than just temperature, that is."

With a small dance, the magical, horizontal flame spiraled down Idyll's finger until it reached her knuckle where it broke into small embers that reformed back on the tip of the claw. A fun little display.

"It's not caramelized per say since it's not sugar I'm letting it boil with, but it's close enough to be called that. The onions especially give a bit more dense flavoring when caramelized and mixed into the stew. I can fish out a fig for the sweet part of the process, should you want? Or do you want to try one of the slices of green apple?"

"Ummm…"

"Or should I choose because I'm the cook?" Idyll caught Cter's brow raised with indecisiveness. "Then I'll fish out a fig for you." Her blue scales became slightly gray as she leaned over the stew with her angled-down muzzle. "Let's see..." She stirred for a few seconds before… "Aha!"

Cter watched with peaked curiosity as Idyll placed the fig on the edge of the bowl and surrounded it with as much onion as she could. "Give it a smell first," the monster cook asked the Monster Mage, who obliged with curiosity overtaking her hesitation.

"Smells like slightly bad onion," concluded the Monster Mage with a wrinkled nose. "As in, the sweetness does not fit with the onion smell yet."

Idyll kept an eyebrow raised to her friend for a second just to be annoying. As she lowered it to be genuine once more, she carefully drew a perimeter around the onion-bundled fig with her claw. She made four fiery rings, one vertical, one horizontal, and then two angled ones to fill in the gap between.

"This is to make sure that the heat is applied evenly."

Cter nodded.

Then, with a slow curl of her finger, Idyll let the fiery rings contract around the onions and fig. As the rings came close to the translucent bundle colored by the stew, the inner of the rings extended outwards with flames that began to sizzle against the strips of onion. They reached into the onion layer around the fig, going deeper.

"Steaming the fig has the water inside the onion being replaced by the fruity steam from the fig. This happens on a stove-top normally, but when doing fillings I can now have it cook like this from the inside out so that the tasty center spreads throughout."

Cter could smell that almost immediately. "Oooh..." she cooed, feeling her mouth water more. "I can smell that very clearly."

"We've been experimenting with how I can incorporate my ice magic too." Idyll flicked the fire rings away before blending in the bubbling fig and the softened onions into Cter's bowl. She handed it over to her friend. "But since Barbeqa isn't the most comfortable with that type of magic it's mostly fire magic for now. It'll mostly be me experimenting with ice magic once I get comfortable being creative with fire magic."

A pair of greedy nostrils descended upon the surface of the stew, breathing in appropriately greedily. Cter felt her eyes flicker, partly because of the incredible smell, and partly because of the onion stinging her eyes. "Creative first so that Barbeqa can let you know when you're being too creative then when you know where the limit for too much creativity is you can be creative on your own?"

She hurried through her words so that she could get to eating her onion-fig-infused stew as quickly as possible. If Idyll even could comprehend what it was her friend said before diving into the shallow bowl, Cter would never know.

"Oh...singe my soul and heart!" the Monster Mage wept with her mouth full. She could feel her cheeks tense with the sharp onion flavor mixing delightfully with the sour and sweet from the fig. "God, I love you so much, Idyll."

The Monster Chef hopped slightly to the side in her roof-mounted chair to avoid the bits and pieces of stew that the Monster Mage spat out in her unfiltered praise. "Heh," the monster chuckled pridefully. "I'm glad that I can still surprise you like this, Cter. It's only fair with how much you surprise me with your magic."

Idyll's food was never conflicting though. Her cooking didn't result in an abhorrent bastardization of something that everything she knew dear to her was based on.

And thank all that was good in the world for that!

"You are who I think about when I need to remind myself why I am a Monster Mage," said Cter after having swallowed her first bite. She angled her mouth away from Idyll initially as to not coat with her onion breath. "You and your cooking."

Idyll scoffed. "More the latter, I'm noticing."

Fair, but it was only for the moment. The oh-so-tasty moment!

There was something about how she said it though. Something in her voice, and in her aura. As if...she didn't say it to Cter?

As if she was repeating something she had said to someone else before?

The blue-scaled hand which had so confidently coaxed magical flames with utmost precision swept with it between its fingers an uneven bundle of hair behind Idyll's neck where she scratched at the back of her head while looking down into the slope of the roof as if it wasn't there. "Heh..." she exhaled in a wistful sigh. "Guess it's obvious."

Cter understood immediately.

But only because of the misunderstanding she had just before with Idyll.

"They a Royal Guard?" Cter pried playfully while helping herself to another spoonful of stew. "Is it Sir Gerson?"

A pair of eyebrows heavy enough to go straight through the roof and many floors of Jarasevo Castle turned to face Cter. "Ha. Ha. Ha," stated Idyll with all of her emotion sucked dry. "Eat your damn stew."

Cter was either very close or very far away with her guess. With how Idyll lifted her chin slightly, despite her heavy brow, to look out over Jarasevo it was more the latter that she saw reflecting in the wishful eyes.

"He's a jester monster," Idyll eventually said with a sigh that spanned her entire body. "Name's Donial and is a human-raised monster like I am." Her aura and smile warmed. "I met him a week or so after you and the others had traveled to Xoff. He's a jester monster that works with housing arrangements and extensions. He was hired here to work on refurbishing some of the older guest rooms deep in the castle so that they would be up to snuff with the ones that are closer to the edge of the castle walls and therefor more used than the ones deep in the castle."

Cter crossed her leg and placed her bowl of stew on her lap while waiting for Idyll to finish wistfully sighing and continue. While she waited she split up the fig-stewed onions to better blend with the stew. It still smelled divine.

"Met him when I was on my way to bring food to a room which a Monster Elder was staying in after having traveled from further up north. I did not expect anyone inside, but there Donial laid on the bed with his arms folded over his chest and robe while dictating to a conjured pen writing on paper on the night table next to him."

Idyll mimicked the folded arms, crossing her arms once more over her chest with that signature gentle-scraping sound from her rolled-up chef sleeves. "First thing he did was to raise his finger and tell me that he wasn't dozing off, but instead that he was merely testing how comfortable the bed was so that it would be worthy of a Monster Elder."

Idyll shrugged loose her arms, letting them fall for a moment before catching them and wringing one of her claws in her hand. She looked very much like a schoolgirl finding her first love, but that only made Cter more happy for her friend.

"After I understood that he wasn't the Monster Elder I replied that I wouldn't know anything about that, unfortunately. I was only a chef at the castle and wasn't familiar with the beds the honored guests at the castle were given to sleep in."

"Don't you sleep in my bed when I'm gone when you're able to?" Cter challenged while pointing with her wooden spoon at her friend waxing such woes. "Mrs. Shuey have tried to pry out of me why my bed seems to be perturbed despite my absence."

The Monster Chef tilted her head and eyes up and to the side. "She cleans your room while you're away?" It seemed to take her by surprise. "I mean, I always make the bed after I sleep in it, so I have never really noticed."

"Not to be the bearer of bad news..." said Cter while tapping her spoon on the rim of her half-empty bowl. "But I don't think that what you consider a made bed is the same as what Mrs. Shuey considers a made bed."

"Bah!" waved Idyll off like it was a pesky mosquito. "Anyways..."

Mhm?

"Donial argued that if I try it then he'll get a second opinion about its comfort level." A blue hand swept widely over the orange-drenched roof and castle landscape. "Then we kissed on the bed."

A mist of stew sprinkled with strips of fig-steamed onions cascaded widely over the orange-drenched roof and castle landscape.

"Let me explain..." said Idyll with her palms together and pointing forwards while her Monster Mage friend coughed violently after spitting out her throat, lungs, heart, and soul. "You see..." she tried but couldn't hear herself over Cter's rude coughing interrupting her.

"Idyll," the Monster Mage pleaded with tears in her eyes and rivers of stew down her chin. "Why?"

"Well I'm trying to explain here?" Idyll said as if it was Cter that was the issue. She rolled her eyes and lifted her arms up to begin, finally. "The things is..." Her words trailed to a pause as looked to her arms, one after the other. "Actually," she murmured to herself while a new, more devious smile bared her teeth. Her hair followed behind her head dragged by her raised eyebrow to face her Monster Mage friend. "Why tell..."

"Oh for..." Cter groaned at the blue-scaled arm reaching for her left, sleeved one.

"When I can show?"