"Let me guess… This was where you and the cook Fech lived together, yes?"
Cter snapped back from her reminiscing. "Hm?" she uttered to Kurant standing with a bend to her neck and a smile on her lips and cheek. "Sorry?"
A smile that widened. "Yeah, it is," Kurant commented with a pleased hum. She looked at the two-storied building stood in a dark wood with a few more hums, each one descending. "It looks different in the light of day." Her crutch ground against a small cobble in the road like a frustrated carpenter using a plane on a stubborn branch knot. "You did give us quite the scare back then."
"Me waking up down in the dungeon cold, afraid, and confused didn't really do a lot to help that," Cter replied while waving to the landlord monster of the apartments. She'd met them before on an earlier walk through the city, and finally remembered to apologize for the destruction she and Idyll had done to the place that faithful night.
The castle had paid for the repairs quietly so that things wouldn't escalate, but with so many years between the events Cter felt that it was fine to apologize without the risk of things blowing up and scaring the city further.
And apparently Idyll had apologized before Cter whilst with a jester monster at her side, according to the landlord monster. Even offered a few bottles of Royal Purple for the whole ordeal. Idyll stealing from the castle aside, what the landlord said was that Idyll was walking around Jarasevo with Donial, which had Cter happy. The two were going well together, which always pleased Cter to hear. Must have been the spring in the air.
"Well, things were a bit simpler back then when all we had to worry about was a human mage changing a monster's magic." Kurant motioned to Cter that she wanted to continue the walk. While in motion she could more easily use stasis magic on her crutch and knee brace since it was only applying it periodically when her left leg took on weight. Standing still meant she had to use it continuously which eventually had her soul becoming cranky and her knee hurting more.
"I'd rather be called upon to talk with a human girl because I too was a human female and therefor would have an easier time getting said human girl to talk than whatever I'll be called upon to do in the future." Her first steps were slow as she walked off the magic that had built up in her leg.
"I've not told anyone, but as I walked down to the dungeon after Sir Gerson ordered me to I was debating how much I should show that I was both human and a girl the same as you. I got as far as thinking briefly about opening up my collar and loosen my hair before I realized that it was a very dumb idea."
Cter laughed with Kurant. "That if anything tells just how unprepared you were, don't it?" A laugh that faded quickly. "And how unprepared we are now..." She made an attempt to shrug it off. "Hard to prepare for something you couldn't possible have imagined before though."
"Silver lining," said Kurant while testing some more weight on her knee. Her thin eyes tightened even more, hidden briefly by the passing shadow of one of the irregular roofs of the Jarasevo houses. "At least if we consider how things turned out last time we had to deal with something we couldn't possibly prepare for." The tightness loosened into a friendly, thankful smile towards Cter, who scoffed lightly and looked away. "Don't defy the king's orders now, Cter. Take the compliment."
"Yes, yes," the Fourth Monster Mage agreed to with her scoff cut off. With her look away she caught a small group of child monsters whispering among their varied selves with obvious pointing with feathers, claws, and ghostly appendages towards the Monster Mages Kurant and Cter walking past them. Awed gasps echoed out the alley the monster kids played in, their colors blending together as they huddle together, whispering even louder among themselves. "I know I still need to keep that in mind."
And speaking of things that someone should keep in mind and act more on…
"So have you said anything more to Barbeqa?" Cter turned as if on a swivel back to Kurant, who clutched at her crutch harder with a soured grimace replacing her friendly-turned-teasing smile. "Guess not."
Whilst Kurant was busy trying to come up with an excuse Cter walked over to the group of huddled monster children with crystal magic swirling around her left arm. Once a lizard-like monster bounced up with a stammer, "Sh-h-h-h-e-e-e's-s-s," the entire group began to disperse, but Cter stopped them by revealing a handful of ice cubes in her sleeved hand. As she did, the alley lit up in a dance of colors that had the monster children in an even deeper awe.
"Keep these with you for sunny days like this, okay?" the Monster Mage asked of the monster children, who all nodded with their varied heads before taking one each and skipping away. With a warm feeling inside her soul seeing the happiness in the children's auras, Cter turned back to Kurant pacing to keep her knee in check.
She stopped as she felt one of the children's auras sink though, followed by a worried voice that wasn't old enough to know that the echo from its voice would carry around the alley corner back to the Monster Mage.
"You can still ask if you hurry, Tores. Cter will give you another for your sister."
Scared sobs followed, prompting Cter to flick one more crystal cube down the alley far enough to reach the corner.
"Yeah, Cter is a Monster Mage! She won't… Wait! Look!"
Cter had never felt a wider smile on her lips.
"Monster Mage for the monsters?" quipped Kurant with a slight lean away from the wide smile less it poked her eye.
"Always and forever," Cter answered before gesturing for the two to continue their walk. "Don't think this has pushed you and Barbeqa out of my head though."
"Dammit," followed Kurant's first, slow step which Cter waited patiently for while looking over her shoulder into the alley. She couldn't see the kids, but the brilliant colors beaming from the alley corner had her in faith that the kids would be fine. "Any chance you're gonna let me off the hook on that?"
"About as big as a fish after being caught by a hungry griffon," Cter let know as her cape stretched behind her from her initial step.
"So only if I cover myself with soap?"
The stretched cape flopped down against the back of the perplexed Monster Mage squinting a confused look at her crutch-clutching friend.
"Nevermind," Kurant waved away with her free hand.
It took a few seconds for Cter to let Kurant's question slip her by, and she caught up with a few short skips. "It's come to the point where she's shaping the pieces of fruit in your porridge into the shape of a monster soul, Kurant," Cter then remarked after a shake of her head. "It's been obvious to her for a while now. I mean, you're the only one she actually serves food to, not merely provide in the close vicinity."
Kurant's head bobbed side to side. "It's just how my chair is positioned from the short end of our table. It's exactly her arm length away when she bends over."
"With you staring at her eight fiery abs as she does."
The Second Monster Mage sneezed, but Cter didn't bless it. She wasn't gonna bless Kurant trying to wriggle out of this. "And during lunch when she allows you to stare down her–"
"Yes!" the Second Monster Mage interrupted with a hurried chirp, startling a nearby cat monster who's fur puffed up in response. Seeing that he was baring his arched back at two Monster Mage he immediately deflated and sank away onto another street. Kurant followed the gray-furred cat monster with her eyes for a short moment before reluctantly meeting Cter's again.
"Down her windows to her soul?" Cter finished, very perplexed, which changed into a disappointment that had her forced to check the gutter for Kurant's head. "Oh come on, Kurra," she addressed very informally. "Really?"
"...Yes," Kurant admitted again, defeated.
"But why so defeated?" commented Cter with a shrugging throw of her shoulders. "You're in love with her, so why not?" Were Idyll and Donial outliers when it came to monster love or something? Besides, another shoulder to lean on was good for Kurant. Not for her knee, but for her soul and her heart. Yet still, Kurant's aura felt as if it struggled to explain. Struggled to speak against Cter, but also agreeing with her in a sense. "You to be in love with her, right?"
Just to make sure.
"It's not burning," Kurant said without any hint that her phrasing was intentional. "I...I enjoy her food. I enjoy...her. I enjoy..." More weight sank onto her crutch. "I enjoy." She shrugged with her eyes facing forwards. "I enjoy."
So...not love? Or…
"I don't think I can say that I don't love her," added Kurant after seeing Cter's unsure expression. "At the same time though I'm not sure if I can say that I love her." The two Monster Mages passed by an alley with a pleasant bakery smell sweeping out of it. "Because if I do, then it is as if I want things to be more? That I am not content with what there is between us?"
After a short pause to greet some of Cter's old customers when she was a lower case monster mage who had seen her walk the city earlier but not dared to approach, Cter returned to the thread she saw hanging loose from Kurant's defense, as it were. "You think she is?" It tucked underneath one of Kurant's ribs uncomfortably, making her grimace.
It was easy enough for Cter to read the answer by both Kurant's grimace and the small gust of uncertainty that fluttered through her aura. "You're not sure that she is." That, if anything, would be a good reason for Kurant to talk with Barbeqa, no? "You know that you'd know if you asked her?" Or was it because… "Or is it because knowing and not feeling?"
"I know that she can't lie," began Kurant anew with a throw of her free hand up towards the castle peeking over the varied rooftops of Jarsevo. Its white, reflective exterior was bright enough to be forced to squint at. "Because she is not one to lie to begin with, and even if she did..."
"Her aura, yeah," Cter finished for her sighing friend. "But you'd be sure about it, wouldn't you?"
The sigh concluded with the start of another that had some of the city monsters taking a wider arc to give the Monster Mages room. Cter extended her aura around her friend, keeping quiet the building trouble Kurant felt for herself. "I would," she admitted with a nod and a harder squint to her eyes. "And that's not what I...want."
Not what she wanted? "In what way?" To let her friend have some time to think of her answer Cter stepped off to a frozen treat stall located at one side of the open plaza she and Kurant had made it to in their walk.
The plaza had a more human-inspired layout with a large, deep fountain in the middle of the plaza, almost like a pond. It housed a family of fish monsters that had paid a massive premium for the luxurious location.
From what Cter managed to gather it was a noble family of aquatic monsters who did a lot of exporting of river catches to Xoff. She had helped them move in years past which mostly involved dropping various furniture into the artificial pond at the correct places with some rather-pleasing splashes.
Once treated by the cold shoulder of the snowdrake storing the different flavors from his neck out on his arms, Cter returned to Kurant having found some rest on a bench just out of the distance of the splashing from the spraying water from the fountain's spout depicting water pouring out of Jarasevo Castle and its towers. One of the spouts was out the window at Cter's study.
"In the way that I don't want to know, I think," answered Kurant having had enough time to think as Cter handed her a frozen treat garnished with pieces of peach. She also accepted the small, icy spoon Cter conjured up. A drop of melted water ran down its handle, collecting in the concave while Kurant stared at the frozen treat, still struggling to find her words. "
There has been a lot of...uncertainty in my life." The drop flicked off the magical spoon as Kurant pointed down to her knee brace. "Began when I was born, and hasn't really stopped since then." She dug into the frozen treat, breaking a piece loose by yet another shrug. "A lot of uncertainty ahead of me as well." The peach flavor seemed to sit right with her though, and she warmed a small smile. "So when I have– Ow!"
Not warm enough to not have the cold sit wrong with her though.
"Peaches too cold?" teased Cter while Kurant pushed the base of her palm against her forehead. "Or was it the spoon?" She also made sure to eat her own pear-garnished treat very carefully as to not be suffered the same fate as Kurant's.
The sight of not only two Monster Mages sitting on a bench in their full robes, but with one of them also pressing hard against her forehead while stretching her neck far up collected a fair amount of eyes upon the bench placed so that the cold mist from the fountain caressed its sitters.
Even disregarding the monster with eyes like pimples on its head the amount was still fair. The sight of the two Monster Mage was intriguing, but not intriguing enough for any of the looking monsters to brave walking up to the Monster Mages. Had it been the reverse with the Monster Mages walking up to the monsters, sure, but not the reverse of the reverse.
"Better?" wondered Cter after Kurant resorted to applying a comforting pat of healing magic against her forehead which seemed to do the trick. Before taking another, slow bite of her pear-garnished frozen treat, she made sure to remind Kurant of where she was. "So when you have something that's not uncertain?"
"Yes," Kurant nodded with her spoon which she then dug into her treat again with gentle respect for the danger among its sweet flavors. "I'm used to uncertainty. It's in my knee, my magic, my soul, so why not in my heart as well?" She chewed slowly, letting the cold spread out as much as possible to calm its potential.
"And I guess that I've learned to find hope in that uncertainty while still considering what that hope's shadow may look like. It's what Priestess Frioke told to me when I became the Second Monster Mage and what would be my mission carried with my title. I would consider. I would consider both the future and the past. I would consider both monster matters and human matters. I would make a spectrum of the choices before me and keep in the middle, the same as my soul."
Kurant wiped her mouth with a napkin from her robe's pocket.
"Kry looked to what had been done, I looked to where we were, and Sund looked to where we were going."
"Then I elbowed myself into that, ruining it," elbowed Cter into the conversation while Kurant wiped her mouth a second time to catch a wayward dot of peach. She pointed on her own cheek where Kurant missed another orange-pink dot.
After finding and wiping that dot away too, Kurant continued. "And these uncertainties of mine I'd like to stay uncertain. I don't want to know about my knee and what happened to it when Dr. Sallus and Kry tried to heal it, for that can only be bad. I don't want to know about my soul, for the exact same reason. I don't want to know about how things will be next year with the world."
Another drop ran down the ice-made spoon.
"And I don't want to know about whether or not Barbeqa wants things to be more between us because I am not sure if I want it either. Then if I know that, will I then know the other as well?"
And another.
"And singe my soul, do I not want to know the other as well."
The peach-garnished treat slid out of the fingers loosened with a defeated sigh.
"Things is though..."
Its fall slowed before it had even passed by the knee brace on its way down as if having landed in something viscous. The crumbs and pieces of peach returned to where they had fallen off from the treat, put back by Kurant's stasis magic that filled the lines on her magical sleeve with a purple, hazy color. "Thing is though that I'm sure I'm not the only one with these uncertainties. Like you said, me not talking to Barbeqa is sure to have her feeling uncertain too, right?"
The frozen treat settled back into Kurant's hand as if it hadn't fallen off at all. The faint glow of the stasis magic applied onto it simmered away, leaving its pink-orange color alone again. Kurant carved off another piece off it with her frozen spoon. "I don't want to be afraid of knowing, but it's not just going from one side of the coin to the other with a simple flip, you know?"
She chuckled out her nose just before eating the carved-off piece, hearing what she said.
Cter looked to a monster flipping a few coins into the pond-like fountain on one end whilst walking past it and receiving a newspaper-wrapped package as it reached the other side shot out the water as if from a bow. A tail fin stuck out the back end of the wrapper which the monster tucked in under its wing with a jolly whistle. It was an interesting sight so see.
Almost as if it was making a wish for fish or something.
The Fourth Monster Mage chewed on a small cube of pear for a while, letting the silence between her and the Second Monster Mage settle for a bit. Cter did good in preemptively buying the frozen treat. Kurant seemed to enjoy it, which wasn't the biggest of surprises since Barbeqa had been putting in pieces of peaches into Kurant's morning porridge for years. It wasn't really the biggest guess Cter had ever done that Kurant would like the peach option for her frozen treat.
"It's a very monster thing to be afraid of knowing though, isn't it?" said Kurant after she and Cter observed some more monsters passing by the deep fountain and throwing coins into it in exchange for newspaper-wrapped packages of fish. It was too far away for either Monster Mage to see the date on the waterlogged newspapers though, so whether or not the melted drawing of a monster holding a trophy was from earlier in the week or even earlier wasn't discernible.
"Monsters don't really know things like humans do, like what was demonstrated quite clearly at the trial. Uncertainty is the state a human begins with and has the goal of learning enough to know. Whether that means knowing in the sense of knowing a trade or knowing how another person is I'm sure is still debated within the halls of Soul's Schools even with the reduction of classes. It's a word that means different to each human and to each monster on top of being fundamentally different between the two races to begin with, after all."
Cter just listened while spooning herself some pear pieces.
"Monsters know almost as a collective with how easy it is for us to read another one's soul. It's where hope stems from. Where monsters find hope is that tomorrow they will be able to still know that they have others around them. Where humans find hope is that tomorrow they will be bale to still know that they can see the sunrise the next day. It's a more...direct approach to hope, in a way? Something to act on and have as a goal that is forever driving you. Monsters find that direction in which the ones they love and hold dear move towards."
"Like you making the moves on Barbeqa, perhaps?"
Kurant's lips flicked with her chortle, sending a corner piece of peach out her mouth and bouncing to a dirty stop on the stone ground below the bench. She folded forwards, laughing heartily. Cter was so kind as to take her friend's frozen treat lest she dropped it again. The laughter brought curious looks, but they did not stick for long.
"God." Kurant shook her head while folding her hair back behind her shoulder where it belonged. "I was teetering there, weren't I?" To which Cter nodded despite being fully aware that it made her quite the hypocrite. She was no stranger to making mountains out of philosophical pebbles, and thus was familiar with the sinking feeling when at the top and looking down with vertigo at how far up she'd unwittingly climbed. "Singe my soul..."
"I still think that you should talk to Barbeqa," said Cter after giving Kurant back her frozen treat. "It'll do you good, I promise."
Kurant sighed.
"I know."
Yet still nodded with a smile awaiting another bit of cold, refreshing peach in the nice spring warmth.
"I know."