The wind was cold against Cter skin as she hadn't really thought ahead about her little excursion to the lake to be all alone to think.

Or...not to think, really.

"Chickling...your arm."

Luckily her grandmother had thought ahead in her chickling's stead and had brought with her a towel for Cter to use. It had almost escalated to Romrom having to use the towel with force as she threatened to jump in and swim up to Cter to see her arm if Cter didn't swim back to the jetty immediately.

The change in Cter's aura had turned from curious to frightening at the snap of a finger, and the warmth in Romrom's aura was as if whisked away by the gentle wind pasing by the lake clearing. Cter had never seen her grandmother so afraid. Never seen her plumage rise on end like it did. Never seen her beak clamp up like a vice and with a similar sound to boot.

It was frightening for Cter to just watch, and added to it how Romrom's aura plummeted down through the ground, it had Cter wanting to swim away from the jetty. She wasn't afraid of getting yelled at like she would have been in her younger years. Instead she was afraid of what Romrom would do other than yell. The tightened aura, the clamped beak, and the teary glimmer in her beady eyes gliding down and off a black feather.

Cter didn't want to see her grandmother so afraid and on the verge of letting the worry take her over, so she swam back to the jetty, grabbing the ladder with her right arm first, but keeping her left one under the water for a little while longer to gather her courage.

Different from the usual case of gathering courage to go down into the water instead of up out the water.

"Don't...don't touch it, please."

Romrom was still a grandmother though even if she was afraid beyond measure. She gasped a caw and hid her bright beak behind her dark wing as Cter lifted up her left arm to ascend the ladder. The breathless stare she gave the magical carvings were like needles, but it could also have been the water drops running down Cter's upright arm that stung so badly. The Monster Mage glanced down at where the drops landed in the water to look for any oil-like puddles growing. It had happened once or twice before that there had fallen some white-like drops from her elbow which had run through her carvings while she was cleaning herself.

"Does it hurt, Cter?"

At the top of the ladder Romrom stood with the towel stretched wide for Cter to use as the Monster Mage finally ascended out the amber-colored water. At the top of the ladder her grandmother waited to take care of her, even while afraid in a way she had never been before. She wrapped Cter up in the soft towel, tucking it in so that it hung itself on her frame.

With her talons and claws she made sure that there wouldn't be any watery knots in the loose hair of her granddaughter, running through the water-clumped strands like a sturdy brush. She did so without any change or measure to her aura, only with her grandmotherly instincts. Romrom had even folded back the sleeve onto the robe and placed back the crystal brooch like she had never picked it up at all.

"No, no it doesn't hurt."

Then she stared at the left arm that her granddaughter wore from her slim shoulder. Romrom stared with a welling helplessness within her soul which took all of her to suppress. She looked at the intricate pattern on the mage sleeve unlike any there had ever been, her beak quivering with fear and the drops of helplessness she couldn't suppress.

The wet squelch from Cter's fist clenching tight sent another startled squirm through the thick and dark plumage. Not only her granddaughter's arm, but her granddaughter's hand as well. Her fingers. The same fingers that had been inside the cookie jar before dinner rooting around greedily...gone. Replaced by viscous swirls like melted wax held into a somewhat-solid form by magic, and not skin.

"That's a lie, Cter. I can tell."

It didn't hurt in the way Romrom meant. It wasn't pain that pricked. Besides, that wasn't the reason Cter didn't want Romrom to touch at her magical carvings. She didn't know how it would react to another monster touching at it. Would it wake up at the feel of another soul on it? It was a question that Cter had struggled with ever since the Fusion carved them into her arm, but it wasn't something she could actually test. She had to assume the worst case to protect those around her from the Fusion, even if it was dead.

"I don't want you to touch at it, Romrom. I'm not sure what it'll do to you." How could Cter make sure that the Fusion was forgotten if she let others touch and explore it? It didn't make sense to her. The truth of the Cooperative Connection has led to naught but discourse ever since it was revealed. It was better off hidden away, same as her magical carvings. "I am only confident in it being safe for me, not others."

Romrom's reaching wing flinched, giving Cter a moment to hide her left arm behind her back. Romrom saw and felt it with her aura, and that was all that she needed. She did not have to touch it. She did not have to risk being infected by the Fusion-like flesh. It was all she needed, if even she needed it in the first place. It was done and done, and Cter wanted to put on her sleeve to hide her left arm again. Romrom still held onto the sleeve, clutching it hard with a tight grip of her sharp talons.

A similar flinch had Cter's hand opening hesitantly as Romrom moved the sleeve out of the way of Cter's reach. "No," the raven monster stated factually. "No, this isn't right, Cter." She blinked away her flinched stupor with hard, determined blinks. "You're afraid."

Of course she was afraid. There was war brewing between the human countries fueled by the very creature that she had a constant reminder of on her left arm. She could use it, and she could stomach others looking at it, but she didn't want to parade it. She didn't want others to touch at it. If it was on her own terms then it was fine, but this wasn't on her own terms. "I want my sleeve back, grandma."

A wash of conflict took over Romrom's face and aura, rising her plumage with a hard vice on her beak. Had she any lips they would have been curled like milk churned by Barbeqa on a bad day. "I know," she managed through a small gap on her beak, almost like a whistle. "I know you do." Her grip relaxed on the sleeve, but it took her immense effort to do so.

"And you should hide it, Cter. You're correct in doing so. If you don't feel confident in others touching at it then that is you saying what is best for you. You know that, and I trust that you do." Even though she said it with a direct and robust voice it didn't manage to convince her. Romrom still tugged the more loosely held inert sleeve away from Cter's reaching hand with a disappointed look to her eyes. She averted them away from her chickling, pushing the sleeve closer to her chest as if trying to hide it among her puffy plumage.

"Please, grandma?" Cter pleaded again with her hand opened for Romrom to give it to her. It was the only way as clearly Romrom wouldn't let Cter take it from her. "It's mine, and I need it." It was the same ordeal with everyone she had shown it to. The same shock at what it was and what it entailed. The same empathy at something they could only express said empathy at, but not come close to understand.

And that was fine.

It was fine to Cter that they did not understand. She did not want them to. She did not want more to know how it was to use something that threatened to kill you as a source of magic. It was different than the concepts of death that humans and monsters had which laid the groundwork for the Cooperative Connection. Death was inevitable, and a part of life.

Killing others though, and being threatened to be killed wasn't a part of life though, not a peaceful one. Lerjung had seen death around her from the family she didn't give enough time to in the pursuit of her own goal, but that she could reconcile. She didn't kill them, time did. Time that she chose to not spend with them, but time nonetheless. She used the memories of her monster mother in her Cooperative Connection, and thus she had to relive that she didn't spend enough time with her. It was the closest situation to Cter's, yet still it was vastly different.

For Cter's source of magic tried to kill her actively, not passively.

The raven monster shook her head. "It's unfair that you need it." A reflective glimpse of the white glow of Cter's carving flashed in the black, beady eye succumbing to its curiosity. "You shouldn't have to hide it, even if you need to, Cter." She knew why. She knew why so, so well. Yet still… "You shouldn't..." Yet still she couldn't give Cter back her sleeve to hide her left arm. "You shouldn't have to hide that."

"Romrom...please..."

"Because it is so beautiful on you."

Romrom's words hung between her and her granddaughter, settling worse than trying to farm during deep winter. It was as if Cter's skin had turned into the same crystal as her magic was. It was hard, holding against Romrom's earnest, warm words and her equally earnest eyes resting calmly on her granddaughter. There was an inherit brittleness to it though, something that Cter had managed to overcome with her magic.

"It really is, Cter."

But not on her skin.

"Your aura is different from last time, and I can tell that it isn't due to a good reason that it changed." Romrom reached up a wing to her granddaughter's cheek, letting Cter rest her head into the soft feathers.

"I truly lament what you have gone through, child. It truly breaks my soul to see that your arm has been so defiled. Cut up like you've ran through the densest of rose bushes, but white like dust. I dare not imagine what befell you for your arm to be like this, and I fret even more asking you what happened. For this..."

Romrom laid Cter's left arm in her left wing like a feathery cradle, spreading each feather out so that none touched at any of the carvings, only the flush skin between. "For this unimaginable magic to exist something even more unimaginable must have been for it to give it to you. I know what it was that did, Cter. Even to here the tale of Clinic Hill has reached."

So Cter failed in protecting Romrom before she even got there…

"The truth of the Cooperative Connection has also reached here like the miasma it is, sickening the minds of the humans with its poison, making them turn on their heels against the monsters they had spent their life with and come to trust. A trust that broke like roaring ice clashing and shattering into a long, deep crack between humans and monsters." Romrom caught herself drifting away on her tangent, and she shook her head back. "Forgive me." She hardened her brow against the village past Cter's crystal wall.

"I had to be robust when the word reached the village about the truth of the Cooperative Connection. Being the Village Elder I had to make sure that the inhabitants still trusted me, and for that I had to make more extreme both sides of the ruling coin. I extended my love to all to show that they could still trust me, but also extended my stoicism to make sure that those that visited did not bring with them any whispers about it being a threat that a monster was a Village Elder. It was a delicate balance that I...did not manage that delicately from time to time."

With a rough craw Romrom harked away her talking about herself. Her beady eyes softened once more as she returned to her granddaughter's forlorn ones.

"Seeing you wield what you have on your left arm makes me certain that you've managed an even more delicate balance than the one I was forced to walk on, Cter." She stroked with a calming feather over the tensed cheek beginning to flush. "For you have found strength from this tragedy that has befallen upon you. You have found a way to make something good from the Fusion, and that is not something I think anyone else has managed besides you."

Romrom didn't know about Rasliela, evidently.

"You could have just as well given up, but you didn't, Cter. You didn't give up, the same as when you didn't give up after the troublesome first year you had at Soul's School. I remember those letters you sent back home. I remember how some words were illegible due to stains of tears loosening the ink and then drying into a jumble by the time it arrived at the village. The words I could read spoke of how much you struggled and how far behind you were compared to all others."

Romrom knew about Cter though, evidently.

"How you could not understand how to feel at your soul like you had to. It was different to you, you wrote. Call me nostalgic and hopelessly hopeful, but I'd like to believe that perhaps that was the reason you could overcome and make this tragedy your strength. Your own way of seeing magic was the reason you did not give up, Cter. Your own way of seeing magic that you, and only you, can understand."

Cter looked away. "I did give up." She tried to tug away her left arm again. "I gave up when the Fusion carved these into my arm." Romrom held fast though. She had managed to get a hold of her granddaughter, and she wasn't letting go until she was done with being a grandmother. "I gave up and let the Fusion into me."

"No." Romrom refuted that. "No, you didn't give up." She could tell there was something else to it. "If you had given up then you wouldn't be standing here with me. I wouldn't have gotten to see my chickling again had you given up. I wouldn't get to feel that she was indeed the most powerful mage in the world had you given up at Clinic Hill. Something else happened. You did something else rather than giving up."

Her voice was teetering on chastising, fishing for a confession similarly to her talking to Cter as a child with cookie crumbles around the pouting lips that claimed innocence. On the jetty dotted with the falling water from Cter, Romrom was fishing for another confession, an inverse confession. Cter's lips claimed guilty, but Romrom knew that she was innocent. She knew her granddaughter. "Something else happened," the old raven monster repeated while searching the windows to Cter's soul.

What she found she both flinched and smiled at. What she found had her forcing her head away to not have her curiosity take her over. Romrom was correct in that she could not imagine what Cter went through. "Chickling..." was whispered out of her stunned beak. "Such trust."

No, such desperation.

"Such bravery."

Cowardice.

"You believed fully that your sacrifice wouldn't be in vain. You knew. You knew that you made the right choice. You fully believed, from both your heart and soul."

It wasn't a choice, for how else would Cter have done to kill the Fusion? The only way was for her to become fully monster so that the Fusion could be fully human, and thus be killed by Sarbor.

"You put your whole being for monsterkind."

Cter…

What?

Romrom blinked in thought, trying to condense what she felt through the windows to Cter's soul into speakable words. "You gave up all that was human about you in that moment. You allowed yourself to become fully monster. Not as a Monster Mage, but fully a monster, even in your soul. That's what's different! That's why your aura feels so much like a monster's. Your soul was a monster's for that brief moment. Your soul was a monster soul, sacrificing its humanity to save everyone from the Fusion. Chickling...I..."

Like how Manny dove for Ralsei once her cane broke, so did Cter dive for her grandmother as the icy cane Romrom leaned on with her elbow shattered from her angling it between two of jetty's planks. It's violent crack shook the jetty, but not as much as what Cter's hurried step did to catch her grandmother.

The dark plumage was warm to the touch, tickling Cter like it had always done with the soft feathers deep inside it. Feathers tickled at her jaw from her startled breathing pushing hard against them. Cter let the nostalgia flow her over. It had been so long since last she embraced her grandmother…

It had been so long since…

"There there, child. Good."

So long since…

"Let it out."

So long since she had cried into the water-repellent plumage.

"You've done so much good for us all, chickling."

So long since she had cried without leaving any trace of it.

"I'm here for you."

So long since could feel like she could cry and it would be okay for her to do so.

"I'll always be here for you, chickling. Always, and forever."

Was this what Manny felt with Rasliela? Was this why he rushed to save her from falling? This feeling of not having to worry about anything else in the world? That grandma would take care of it? That Cter didn't have to do anything anymore. That she could just be in the lake for as long as she could and grandma would make sure that she wouldn't be disturbed?

Even if it was said grandma who did disturb?

"You've always wanted to know more, Cter, and it breaks my soul that you've gone and known too much, and not by your own fault." Romrom stroked her feathers through Cter's hair.

"Still though, despite of that, and in spite against the fault thrust upon you, you've become stronger. You've gone through the deepest hell, and found strength in the struggles you overcame. Your soul was a monster's, Cter. You were a monster mage. You were a mage with a monster soul, and that moment your human soul remembers. It remembers the hurt the Fusion forced upon you, but it does so because it knows that from it you can call upon magic that no one else can. It doesn't let go of the moment because it knows that you're above it. It knows that, and it feels that."

Was it...was it really true?

"You defeated the Fusion, Cter, and you keep on defeating it every single time you use magic. With each glow of your left arm you defeat it and what it meant to the world again and again and again. You are proof of the Cooperative Connection. You are a Cooperative Connection, all on your own. Your soul knows what it means to be human and what it means to be monster. I saw that, Cter. I saw that in your eyes. I've seen it ever since you were little."

It...it sounded true, the way Romrom said it.

"It was there I saw that you had magical potential. I've seen it grow as you did. I've seen it learn as you did." Romrom gently coaxed her chickling away from her, correcting her lost balance and returning her eyes to Cter's. "And now I see that it is both human and monster. This is...something beautiful. Your arm is something beautiful. They're scars that tell of hurt, but shine with love. Shine with wonder and with radiance unmatched."

Romrom's voice lowered as she looked at Cter's fingers. "You have to make sure that you keep that balance though, Cter. You are a human, and that I don't want you to lose that part of yourself. I love that you are monster, but I love equally as much that you are human. I don't want one to take over the other."

With her wing she folded down the Fusion-fleshed fingers.

"Embrace that which is monster within you, chickling. Embrace it with the love and warmth you embraced me, but do not let it take you over." Cter could feel the feathers tighten. "I don't want you to fall the same that Pelosia did. Remember to not seek that which is not possible, chickling. Seek that which is impossible, for that you can change. That which is not possible you have to remove entirely, leaving vacant instead of changed."

Cter nodded.

"I think you should swim some more now, Cter."

And again.

"I'll be here waiting."

She unfurled her wrapped-around towel and descended the ladder, hearing the distinct woosh of chilled magic coalescing into ice.

"I'll always be here waiting for you, dear chickling."

As she pushed away from the end of the ladder into the amber-colored lake, she couldn't help but titter.

"I'll always be your grandmother."

For it turned out that she knew her soul's color all along.

"And now the sun's out too."

It wasn't among the colors that the tiny drops painted as they hung in the air above her like a fine mist.

"I should've brought with me some lemonade now that I think about it."

It wasn't among the rainbow of legends where the souls of the humans travel to.

"I'll make sure you get some with you for when you continue your travels."

It wasn't a human color.

"And some for your boyfriend as well, of course."

It was white, like a monst–

"WHAT!"

It was white, like the foam kicked up by the startled flail of four, slender limbs.