The gray streaks in Romrom's otherwise-black feathers reminded of Kry's hair in the way it radiated wisdom and authority. Her gray streaks bounced a bit more than Kry's slicked hair though, settling down with flowing ripples as she sat down on the bench on the wooden jetty. A cane of ice came ot an angled rest on her side. Her own magical kind of cane, same as Rasliela's, but different in that she had made it herself. She leaned on with curved talons around its chilly handle.
There wasn't any cold fog descending from her ice magic as she did not need to demonstrate and parade it the same as the Royal Mage of Ice did. "Water's nice?" the old monster asked her granddaughter's head and shoulders poking out of the water a few swim strokes away from the jetty's ladder.
"Haven't had much time to have a swim at Jarasevo Castle, I'm assuming? From what I understand, the Royal Garden doesn't have a lake in it. At least, it didn't when I was there last time." Romrom's beak curled slightly. "Although, I never really was there myself, but I did hear from those that were lucky enough to see it."
Cter scratched at her forehead with a nail to try and get away one unruly strand of hair stuck among her eyelashes. With some hope, Romrom wouldn't notice that Cter used her right arm to scratch. Her left arm she kept hidden beneath the water, away from sight. Added to it, she also covered her arm with some reflective crystal magic to hide the idle, white glow of the Fusion-like flesh. Romrom didn't need to see her granddaughter's arm so...injured.
"Yeah..." Cter said with a wet nod. "The nearest lake I can only see at a distance from Jarasevo Castle. It takes the better part of a day to travel there so I can't do it on a whim, unfortunately."
The raven monster nodded in understanding. After the sympathetic nods though, Romrom smacked her beak. "But you can divert carriages from a convoy carrying the royals to take a dip in a lake that is a day or more distance away from Pulsaoder?" Her head tilted curiously, shifting angles like the mechanical movements of a clock handle. "Does that mean that you hold more sway here in Hjearta than you do in Monster Country?" With a smooth tilt back, Romrom's head straightened up again.
"Curious," she savored before her feathers could settle still. "Curious that you're still homesick after all these years, Cter." With some effort Romrom stood up with the help of a flap of her wing. She walked up to the jetty's edge, easing herself down with her thin legs over the edge with the help of both her cane and the top of the jetty ladder. Her cane then melted shorter so that she could lean her hands and chin on it. "Why don't you tell your old grandmother what's been bothering you, grandchild?"
Cter turned to the left, hiding away her carvings more from Romrom. "You know..." she began, folding some wet hair behind her ear with her right hand. "Been busy, that's all." If she could perhaps cut off the conversation before it began perhaps she wouldn't have to talk with her grandmother about all the horrible things that had been going on outside the quaint village which was only put on the map because Cter was born and raised there. "Didn't get a chance to swim here last time I was here."
"Oh was that ever such a long time ago," the monster grandmother breathed out like a lament. She sighed out quietly.
"Golly, I can not remember how many years it has been. Although it must have been longer for you than it was for me, I reckon. You're young, so each year is more to you than it is for me." Romrom blinked a slow, slow blink. "That does not mean that I haven't missed you though, Cter. I have missed you so much that my soul's ached. I want nothing more than to jump in and swim up to you and embrace you, however though..."
She didn't want anything less than to get her feathers heavy with water. It wasn't the most temperate in the water either. For Cter it took a few minutes of gradually stepping down the jetty ladder until she was used to the water. She could not just dive straight in anymore.
She wasn't that young anymore.
"How it warms my soul like no other to see you again though, Cter. How it warms my soul to sit at this jetty to make sure you're not under the water too much." There was a slight hint in Romromr's voice and aura when she said that, but Cter had difficulty pinpointing exactly what that slight hint was, exactly. Was it nostalgia? Was it joy?
Was it a disbelief that Cter still did that damn habit of hers with being underwater for long enough to have everyone worry and jumping in to save her? Was it disbelief in that Cter still did that following damn habit of hers to swim in the lake on her own so that she could be underwater without anyone jumping in to pull her out of her self-supposed help to think better?
"You must have a lot on your mind if you're traveling one and a half countries away just to try and think, child." Romrom kicked her feet in thought. "It has my grandmotherly soul worried for you. A worry that quells the warmth I feel from seeing you again and hearing your voice. Maybe once you feel that you are done in the water and ascend the ladder looking like a dried grape and I can get to hug you again that warmth will be stronger than the worry, but for now?"
A stretched-out claw on the end of one of Romrom's talons touched at the water, making a small snowflake which she sent floating over to Cter. "For now I am worried, Cter." The snowflake melted halfway between Romrom and her grandchild. "For now I want you to tell me why you've come here to this lake in the village you are meant to have left behind to better serve monsterkind so that you can submerge yourself to better think about things."
Maybe if Cter–
"Don't dip your head down again or I'll freeze you up into an ice statue and reel you in like the catch of the day, grandchild."
So much for that idea…
The melted underside of Romrom's cane pointed at the half-submerged head slowly raising up again with the chestnut-brown hair heavy again from the reapplied moisture. "I..." Cter bubbled out before realizing that there wasn't really anything else she could say but the truth. She was naked with her grandmother sitting at the edge of the jetty being fully keen and focused with eyes, ears, and aura sharpened like only a grandmother could have.
For a moment Cter wished that it was Sir Gerson that sat there instead of Romrom, but seeing that in her head had her immediately abandoning the idea. She respected Sir Gerson and had a lot of faith in him, but not enough to have him observing her swimming naked. From Jarasevo Castle it was really only Idyll that Cter trusted enough to be sitting on the edge of the jetty. The others she would trust with keep a lookout though. Easily.
And while they did Idyll would most likely have jumped in with Cter, so perhaps it was a bad pick with her as well.
"You…?" said Romrom gently as Cter stopped herself by placing her mouth under the amber-colored water.
Cter could taste the slight-forest taste of the water as she lifted up her chin. "I...don't want to tell you." After that she leaned her lips down again into the water, shaking her head childishly. "I don't want to," she spurted additionally.
The raven monster sighed with an exasperated tint to her exhale. "Cter..." she began while shaking her head as well, albeit with a more disappointed texture to how her gray-streaked feathers swayed.
"I can tell that you're troubled. Even more so with how different your aura is compared to the last time I felt it. You're here for a reason, a very troubled reason. You've always been one to want to think for yourself, but you've never solved a problem by just thinking about it. Remember when you tried to think your way through how to learn to write when you barely could hold a quill? Remember how horrible your handwriting was because of that? Remember when people assumed it was my handwriting because of much they compared it to crow's feet?"
A few muttered bubbles boiled from Cter's submerged lips.
"And more importantly, remember how much easier it became when you asked me? When you talked about to me when things became difficult and which side 'b' and 'd' pointed towards?"
And a few more bubbles boiled, for Cter could see where Romrom was going with it.
"You think beautiful thoughts, Cter. You consider things and you pause for necessary thought, but always only managed to solve your problems when you talked with others. I saw that all the time when you grew up, and I could read it between the lines with the correctly facing 'b' and 'd' in your letters from Soul's School. That when you talked with others, you found a way. You–"
"I know," interrupted Cter, realizing only afterwards that it was her own grandmother she had interrupted. It didn't sit well with her that she did, but she had to stop Romrom before she convinced her grandchild. "It's not because I don't want to talk about it that I'm not saying it." The Monster Mage grabbed at her hidden left arm, squeezing it tightly. "It's because..." She gritted her teeth. "It's because I...don't want you to know." And sunk down so that she wouldn't have to explain further, stopping with just her eyes peering over the small waves her sinking rippled out.
It took until Cter was forced to tilt up her neck for air for Romrom to blink away from her granddaughter. The breath inhaled by the Monster Mage was more a courtesy rather than a necessity with how despondently she took her breath.
"Of course you don't," Romrom said warmly with a smile to her beak. The gradient of her graying feathers swayed like distant fields of wheat, with waves of bright and dark chasing each other from the breeze finding itself freed from the labyrinth of the surrounding forest.
"You don't want to worry your old grandmother about what is happening around in the world. My shoulders wouldn't manage the weight, and that I agree with. I'm thankful that you're concerned about me, Cter. I'm grateful that you have not forgotten this village despite becoming a Monster Mage. I'm happy that you've become the first monster I've ever had as family, but also that you did not sacrifice my human granddaughter in the process."
The raven monster reached with her growing cane for the brooch on top of Cter's folded robe next to to jetty's ladder. "Never can I thank you enough for being my granddaughter and for being who you are."
Romrom's lean over to reach the green crystal brooch had the supports of the jetty moving as well, sending small ripples on their own, but combining together where Cter bobbed. The ripples reached over her eyelids, and she closed her eyes shut until she did not feel anymore of them.
When she opened her eyes up again she saw Romrom polishing the crystal brooch with some soft down plucked from under her chin. "However, I would not be a grandmother if I did not offer to carry as much of the world as I can for you." From the tip of her icy cane she dropped a few cold drops between two of the brooch's sharp tops before continuing to polish with the plucked down.
"But–"
"No," Romrom interrupted louder and harder than her chick protested. "It is one of the few simple things in life, really. The old help the young. A grandmother helps her granddaughter, especially when the granddaughter has the whole world on her shoulders" She turned her eyes over to the folded sleeve on the folded Xoff robe the same green as the conifer needles gathered at the rim of the lake. "And you've not had anything be simple for you for a long time. I can tell that more than I can tell that you've not eaten enough."
She sure was a grandmother…
"Do they not treat you like a Monster Mage at the castle, Cter? Do they not feed you properly? Do I have to travel there to have a word with them? Share with them my cookie recipe that was the only way you'd eat your vegetables?"
Barbeqa wouldn't have been happy with someone waltzing into her kitchen to tell her how to cook. That would have had Romrom resemble that ancient story about how a monster scholar plucked all of his feathers to refute a human scholar's definition of what a human was, albeit with a bit more soot on her from her burned-off feathers.
"I mean, I wouldn't be opposed to travel back to Jarasevo," said Romrom with a bashful scratch on her cheek. "Especially now that you've fulfilled your promise you made to me when we sent you away there from Soul's School."
Cter tried her best, and at one point in time she might've fulfilled that promise, but with how things were after the Noitaidarr Trial, that fulfillment had receded. One of the many, many things that had receded, but a particularly deep one for Cter.
"I was an au pair in Jarasevo, you see." Romrom's eyes smoothed with nostalgia. The crystal brooch in her care was as if completely forgotten as her aura became flush with her memories. Cter recognized the feeling from when she had worn Romrom's Cooperative Connection and called upon it to be the catalyst for her magic. The memories Romrom gathered didn't feature Cter though. A young girl was there instead, and a younger Romrom.
"I worked for a human family that lived a ways up Castle Hill, taking care of their estate and helping out with their child. Her name was Pilosia, and the family were from Xoff. Really it was serendipity that I was hired by them." A small chuckle danced the feathers on her face. "I found Pilosia sitting on a bench kicking her feet with her head lowered. A human child alone in the middle of Jarasevo was...curious at the time. I had never seen one before, and I'm guessing that was why I sat down next to her."
The tilt of the raven monster's head over to the wooden bench on the jetty was slow, same as the stare she laid upon it for seconds on end. Cter did not need to read her grandmother's aura to know that she saw the child and herself sitting on it again.
"It took me offering her some of my frozen treat for her to talk to me. I asked her if she was a human, and she said yes. She asked me if I was a monster, and I said yes. There were many monsters in Jarasevo, she then remarked with some fear in her voice. She had never seen so many at the same time. Some of them looked like the hyenas that would howl at night outside her village, and that scared her. I asked her if I scared her too, and she shook her head. I looked like one of the birds that would visit her mother's garden during winter."
Romrom's beak clamped shut for a moment.
"I'd all but forgotten how much I despised hearing that..."
A shiver ruffled the dark-gradient feathers from Romrom's tail up to the top of her head.
"Our conversation didn't really go anywhere beyond that since she was quite young and found it difficult to talk with all the crying stuck in her throat. Her parents eventually managed to find us, although to be truthful it was I that saw them first. Two adult humans spinning their necks fast enough to grind wheat in the middle of a capital of Monster Country? It wasn't the most difficult guess in my life. After I reunited them I was invited in for dinner as thanks for helping them find her."
The old monster chuckled with nostalgia in her voice.
"After the meal we talked, and they asked me of my occupation. I sheepishly told them that I did not have any at the time, and after some discussing they offered to hire me as an au pair to help around the house and with Pilosia. She was to grow up in a city of monsters, so having a monster around at all times would help her get used to it quicker. Same for her parents too, of course, but they phrased it to be about her, naturally."
Romrom pricked herself on one of the crystal brooch's sharp protrusions that she had been idly stroking without much attention to it. A she shook the startle away from her wing she looked down at the green crystal she held.
"The father was a jeweler hired by Jarasevo Castle as good will towards Xoff, as he described it. He had his own shop in Jarasevo with a jester apprentice if I'm not mistaken. A bit of a walk, but how could he have denied the house he had found for his family? It had a bigger garden than what they had in Xoff, and a beautiful view over the city which they never got tired of watching at night. I never did too because of them."
Neither did Cter because of Romrom, for that matter. With another slow tilt, Romrom looked over to Cter's inert sleeve which her brow sank down towards.
"I noticed after a year or so that Pilosia had magical potential in her which both delighted and scared her parents. It explained why she felt so overwhelmed in Jarasevo and didn't like being out too much around monsters, but they did not know what it meant for their child to be a potential mage. They had been lucky to have chosen seemingly at random to move to Jarasevo as an exchange of skill per the Royal Decree of Helping Hands, and now their daughter had magical potential too? They asked of me another thing one evening when I was about to begin with the dishes. They wanted me to make a Cooperative Connection for Pilosia."
Romrom sighed.
"I tried, but I couldn't make it work for her. I don't know if it was because of me or because of her, but it did not work. She managed one with a monster neighbor of ours around her age a while later, but by that point she had gotten used to the monster world she was in. Just knowing that she had magical potential was enough for her parents to seek help for it from the Monster Priestess up at the castle. She came to visit one day to teach Pilosia. A wonderful monster, she was. Very intelligent."
That was true.
"Another reason for me to be thankful for you and who you are, I suppose," Romrom hummed towards the folded sleeve. "With you I could make a Cooperative Connection, chickling. With you I know that it was because I did wrong. It hurts my pride, but alleviates my conscience."
There was something else there though among Romrom's words. Something...melancholy.
"It is not the same sleeve I gave you that's lying over there though, and it hasn't been that for a long, long time. Even with its spiraling lines it does not tell as much as your aura does, Cter." Romrom scratched away some dirt from the brooch with a claw. "That you are able to float with it as heavy as it feels is nothing short but a miracle."
She looked over the lake peering with her small, beady eyes around her bushy feathers swaying like untrimmed eyebrows and lashes. "I might even say as far that the lake has sunk a bit from the weight of your aura. It is powerful, Cter. Your aura is immensely powerful. Thinking back, I'm almost sure I could feel it in the village before I left to walk over to here." There was a slight pause. "You keep it concealed and restrained normally when around others, yes?"
Cter nodded, her nose splashing in the water. "I didn't expect anyone to be here, after all."
Romrom looked behind her at the crystal wall beginning to reflect its subdued brilliance on the jetty and one the lake as the clouds above thinned. "That you didn't, no." Romrom turned back. "I walked over it by making ice steps, to ease your mind."
The Monster Mage did slightly wonder about that.
"I shouldn't really be surprised by your magic, Cter. What I've managed to hear from Jarasevo Castle apart from your letters throughout the years have made me fully aware of what you can do. I've known about your crystal magic for a long time."
Romrom held up the brooch to the revealing sun, squinting as her dark-gradient feathers turned into a kaleidoscope of playful colors dancing as she angled the brooch side to side. "How different it is to feel though. How different your magic and aura both is from the last time I saw you. Both powerful and effortless in ways I can barely describe. It is more monster than I am. It is more monster than any monster I have ever met."
It was too late for Cter to restrain her aura. She should have done it as soon as she realized that Romrom was there. Hell, she shouldn't have let it loose as much as she did to begin with. It was too late for that though.
As the smile that shone on and around Romrom's eyes drained away. "It feels..." She looked at the folded sleeve on the folded Xoff robe again, reaching for it with her cane the same as she did the crystal brooch. Gingerly she placed down the brooch a safe distance away from the edge of the jetty to then hang her granddaughter's sleeve across her arms like laundry. "It...feels..." Laundry that needed no special measures applied to not have the Cooperative Connection be scrubbed away during the washing process. "It..."
As it was inert.
"There's no..."
There was no magic in it.
"So how..."
It was all with Cter.
"Why are you turned away from me like that, chick?"