"I was wondering why you needed the Royal Guards allotted to me rather than the one stood next to you." The jester monster knocked with his knuckles on the hollow chestplate laid in an ordered pile among its sibling pieces to signal to the Royal Guards at the front of the wagon to get going. "Your magic truly is something, Monster Mage."

With a strange bend to his leg, Donial took a step back from the cloud of dust that the heavied-down wagon wheels kicked up as it traveled along the dry, dusty road. His hand waved away the dust from his face with a few coughs. "Idyll was worried sick about you when you were gone."

She had figured that, yeah. "It's not as if I was away on purpose." Cter only needed one sweep of her hand to make sure she didn't inhale too much of the sandy cloud. "You don't have much say when you're a prisoner of war."

Donial's horns seemed to curl tighter in response, same as the soft fabric on his face. Almost like a set of clothes that had been washed too hard. "I..." His sewn mouth closed up like the final tug of the last stitch. "I don't know what else I expected from that, to be honest." A clumsy, embarrassed smile managed to bend the tightened smile and fabric, yet the horns still sank down further into the head. "God, I haven't done small talk in forever."

It sure was obvious that such was the case. "Been busy?" Cter offered to look past that and instead motioned for him to take the lead for a walk together. "If I were to guess that your hand has been involved busily with this refugee camp, would I be close?" She glanced over her shoulder. "You're working on the storage barn, at the very least."

The inhale prior to Donial's sigh had his horns growing back out his head again. "Oh these hands have been plenty busy indeed." He kept his hands inside his long jacket, however there were some faint wisps of shadowy streaks that poured out his pockets like small chimneys. "Day and night constantly this last year. It feels like I have done more work this year than I have done throughout my entire life previously."

The exhale of his sigh seemed relieving, and the stitching on his eyes and mouth loosened up in a more relaxed manner. "It'll be worth it though, in the end." His cross-stitched eyes gazed above the myriad of tents and shoddily made facilities towards where Cter had last heard monsters hollering after Idyll. "It will all be worth it in the end." A bothered furrow folded the fabric on his forehead as his eyes retreated back over the many burlap-patched tents. "Even if it is difficult at the moment, and has been ever since those damn humans spun on their heels towards us."

"You should still be proud over what you have done though," comforted Cter even though she knew full well that she was being hypocritical in saying it to someone else. "You and Idyll."

Donial huffed a chuckle. "So she told you, didn't she?"

A few things, yes, but none that would have warranted an amused chuckle. "Told me what, exactly?" Was it about the house they had built? Was it about her cooking? About Donial's work? A combination of it all?

Donial searched through the windows to Cter's soul, but did not find what he was looking for. He chuckled again, friendly. "Guess she didn't." The shoulders of his jacket shrugged loosely. "Then I won't either. Sorry for leading you on like this, Monster Mage, but I am sure that Idyll will want to tell you when she feels that the time is right. Just don't..."

Worry soured the expression of the soft fabric. "Just don't hint at it with her, please. Let her tell you when she wants to. For her sake." The plead in his voice was deep with him having just gambled and lost on being coy with Cter. "She will want to tell you when she is ready, you first out of anyone else."

Cter had to shake her head. "You're not really doing a good job of helping me displace it in my mind, you know?" The quiver in his aura was genuine though, so it was not as if he was trying to pull Cter along by the nose. Said quivering was enough to have the threads at the edges of his mouth come loose slightly which only reinforced his realization that he had almost ruined something very important for Idyll. "But I'll do my best to not bring it up to her, whatever it is. If you say that she will be overjoyed once she is ready to tell me then I will trust you on that."

The jester monster bowed so deeply and so quickly that the wings of his half-buttoned jacket almost took flight. "Thank you, Cter. Thank you for being patient with me." He said it as if no one else had been that for him for a long while.

"No one else has been patient with you for quite some time?" Cter's curiosity had her say while incapable of preventing her eyes from looking over to where Queen Toriel was still taking requests and with the armor-loaded wagon approaching her behind a diffuse cloud of dust.

The jester monster scratched at his cheek. "It would be closer to say that the world has not been patient with me." After that, he swept his hand over the fields of tents that looked to be overripe. "I can only do so much with the material and time that has been allotted to me by the world. Should the Monster Royals be in charge then each tent would be outfitted with a furnace and soft beds along with a small garden from which would grow flowers and vegetables planted by King Asgore himself."

His hand shifted to point towards the poorly constructed facilities. "The wood used is from broken wagons, both human-salvaged ones and those that we have lost in the war as well. I only could give the displaced monsters rudimentary instructions, as if I helped too much then it would have them all restless."

What? "What do you mean?" Wasn't it better to build the facilities and the rest to be better for the refugees? Wasn't it better to try and provide for them as best as possible? Why keep them in such a poor state?

The long jacket swept across with Donial's turn fully towards the refugee camp. Cter's robe did not sweep as much, as her turn was calmer. "You see the tents on the third row next to the water pump with a painted sign above? The one with the painted droplet pointing down?" The jester monster waited with patience for the Monster Mage to finish squinting.

"I did not notice that it was painted," said Cter after deciding that putting her hand across her forehead was a better way of fighting the sun than squinting was. "Painted quite well, to boot. Strange." And then there were the tents that Donial wanted her to find which she did after some more surveying. "You mean the tents with the..." No, couldn't be. "With the sewn-on patches looking like Delta Runes?"

With a quick nod, the jester monster agreed. "After the first major wave of displaced monsters there was a lot of scrambling to try and provide accommodations for them, both lodging and sustainment." He threw a thumb over his shoulder up towards the castle.

"Idyll and I were asked to lead the Royal Guard effort in our respective fields as representatives from Jarasevo Castle. Not high enough to be directly blamed for failing to protect the villages from the humans, but with our work being important enough that the refugees will look up to Jarasevo Castle with thanks rather than bitter resentment."

The wording sounded familiar to Cter. "Sir Gerson's words?" she hazarded.

"And the First and Second Monster Mage's too."

She could see that as well. Or hear, in this case.

Donial retracted his thumb back into his green jacket by letting it fall freely into hiding again. "Idyll, bless her soul, saw it as duty to accept what the Monster Royals were asking of her, leaving it up to me to remind that I was still under independence from the Castle, and for that I wanted fair compensation for what they were asking of me."

His cross-stitched eyes swung towards the far corner of Jarasevo in the distance. "During the evenings as the refugees settled in for Idyll's dinners I was, and still am, working on a house for her and me here in Jarasevo. We have lived in it for almost a month now, and soon I feel that it might become a home." A longing, warm smile softened his cheeks. "A worthy home, as well."

Cter would have wanted to let Donial lose himself in the longing warmth that began spreading through his aura, however there was still the matter of him explaining what he was about to in the beginning. "And these homes that are here?" She could have been a bit nicer in her question though.

Strangely though, Donial nodded proudly at it. "Indeed, Cter." He looked her in the eyes with an accomplished conviction. "You're quick to be keen."

Yeah...sure.

"We provide the materials for the refugees so that they may make a home here. A way for them to not just survive, but to be able to live as well." The jester monster indicated towards a group of monsters that were busy enough not to notice that Queen Toriel was standing a few wagon lengths away from them. With a combination of magic they were sewing together a patchwork of different rugged fabrics.

"The refugee camp is self-sustained outside of food and other necessities, and even those two they aren't fully dependable on us for. They might not have a garden at each tent, but we have managed to find a spot for a communal garden not too far from here. It was the refugees that suggested it and built it after we provided them with the tools and material to help set it up. No seeds from King Asgore's personal collection though since the soil is not rich enough to grow anything substantial, but it keeps them busy, and that is the most important aspect of it all."

Self-sustained apart from being sustained by outside means did not sound correct to Cter's ears, unfortunately. From how Donial explained it and the proud flutter in his aura she got the gist of it though. "Can't have too many idle hands lest they become restless and begin to stew?" Cter knew that first hand as she was doing just that when she was kept a prisoner of war at Soul's School.

Idle hands make for rebellious acts, and having an entire outskirt of Jarasevo being in a stage of unrest wouldn't reflect well on monsterkind's war effort. Playing for time was all monsterkind could do, and keeping those that were lost to that time safe was important beyond measure. "Stew not in Idyll's sense, that is."

Donial scratched where his nose would have been. "They deserve to feel like they can still contribute. To still be able to work and make a living even though they have been driven from their villages by the humans. A few have even managed employment within Jarasevo. A seamstress, a cobbler, an entertainer, to name a few. A cicada monster that specializes in throat singing, to name something more interesting."

Cter wouldn't know anything about that. "How exotic," she commented flatly while watching the busy monsters in the distance setting up the sewn-together patchwork fabric over the supporting structure held up by conjuration magic.

"Eh, it's just Humbug," added Donial with a light shrug and pinched cleaning of his curly horn. "He's as far away from exotic as can be when you get to talk to him. His singing though I'll give you as exotic. It brings a nice end to the day of hard work once he gets to his singing on occasions here after Idyll has served dinner. A way to keep up hope that I did not expect, but am appreciative of nonetheless."

He motioned with his open hand in a slow arc over the refugee camp. "Because that is what it all is for. It is all for hope. Without it there can't be no monsterkind. Without hope there is no form to the magic within our souls. Nothing to hold our dust together and nothing to ignite the warmth in our auras."

A cordial silence grew between the jester monster and the Monster Mage with the two observing the goings on in the refugee camp quietly. It was only when the patchworked tent could stand on its own that the busy monsters could breathe out and notice that Queen Toriel was near them.

The surprise had the three of them almost undoing what they had struggled so much with setting up, as a pair of large wings opened wide in surprise, and swept at the loosely balanced tent before the lines had been staked into the ground. With the help of the spider friend among the three they were all able to rescue the tent from falling over, and quickly staked the support lines in with magical stakes into the ground before hurrying off to catch a quick glimpse of the visiting Monster Royal.

Further into the camp, closer to Idyll, Cter saw a few monsters carrying buckets of water on heads, shoulders, and with magic. They were heading in the direction where Cter had last heard that Idyll was heading towards. Drops were spilled as they were stopped in their walking and asked for some of the water, but whether or not they gave any Cter could not see from the distance she stood.

A few more minutes of quiet observing passed by before Cter felt that she had something to continue the conversation with. "We were given a ride here by a monster with a wagon full of hay, Idyll, Queen Toriel, and I." She looked to where he had continued off to, but did not find either him or his wagon. "Might have been another one that has found a job in Jarasevo?"

"Possibly," nodded Donial. "Although I haven't heard of that until you said it. Idyll is usually the one that hears about it first and then relays to me." He tugged tighter the stitching in one of his eyes with a few rigid pinches. "She faces them on a much more regular basis than I do owing to our different duties here."

That so? "More sleeping on the back of wagons for you?" Cter made sure that her tease came across as friendly with a small laughter.

"I don't think that there are any way I can formulate myself so that you wouldn't still have any doubts about it." Donial's eyes shone a smile at Cter. "I'm making up it to her with our house that is soon a home, I promise."

She sure deserved one. Two, even. Three would have been too odd though. "I've no doubt that you are, Donial. Just by looking I can see your effort on display even if it isn't as magnificent or decadent as what you were commissioned to do up at the castle. You've given them a life after theirs were taken away."

The jester monster's mouth shunted to the side in an ashamed pucker with the curls of his horns tightening. "There's more than one can see though, I'm afraid." His cross-stitched eyes narrowed underneath a heavy, sinking forehead. "More than just the happy smiles and cooperative effort to build anew with nothing but memories of how it was."

He looked to want to grab a hold of his thick string making up his mouth and drag it shut so that he wouldn't speak another word ever again, but his hands refused to. He had to tell the Monster Mage. "You see those children that Queen Toriel is walking in the middle of, holding as many hands as she can with her fingers?"

Cter saw. It was hard to miss with the Monster Royal's head and horns sticking up high over the top of the differently shaped tents talking to the children jumping and playing around her among a thick cloud of kicked-up sand that followed her every step.

"You will only need one guess as to why there aren't any adults following along."

The Monster Mage could feel each minute muscle in her face as her happy expression faded from her. A sense of foreboding dread filled her and her aura with a dark realization that colored the cloud of dust around the children's feet in the more magical sense of the word. Her head tilted down heavily, and her shoulders barely rose with her defeated exhale. "Guess I do."

"We take care of them," Donial was quick to add. "As best as we can for them. However, days filled with work leaves little time for play, so they keep busy on their own. The families that managed to flee in their full capacity try and do more to be with the lonesome kids, but since they are already struggling to provide for their own family it isn't enough to substitute the loss. Many of these kids I have not seen happy at all. Some try to help with the adult work, and again while it keeps them busy, we can only give them condescending work at best."

He inhaled to try and rid himself of the bitterness in his aura and mouth. "It is either making sure that another family can live here or giving the children work that will halt everything when they eventually break down in tears and tragedy." It didn't help. "It's not a pretty sight." Not in the slightest. "But that is what we must do to make sure that more can survive. It is what we must do to make sure that those that arrive without hope can find at least some. It has to be rationed out, and that, if anything, is what I have come to associate this war with."

Black, wispy smoke began to accumulate from within the jester monster's jacket. Like a frothing mug it poured over his high jacket collar and cascaded down in viscous, shadowy rivers.

"We have to choose who it is that gets hope. We have to choose who it is that is important to do work for. We have to make choices that should never be choices. We have to look into a child's eyes and grab the plank from them which they promised that they could help with but collapsed crying with after half the way. I can not imagine what they might be going through, but I can imagine what will happen if we do not manage our quotas. That I have lived. That I have experienced, and carried the burden of. It is what I know, so that I choose. Helping a child should never be a choice, but it is one I make every single day, and so very seldom in the child's favor."

The shadowy cascade down the jester monster's jacket faded like fog as a relieved calm took him over. He inhaled freely as if he'd been sick and stuffy for an entire week and was taking his first, clear breath. "So thank you, Monster Mage. Thank you for bringing Queen Toriel here so that I will not have to make that choice today. Long have I wished that if I could just have one day free of this daily choice of mine, so that I could..."

He scoffed, shaking his head tiredly. "Seems that I've forgotten what I wanted to do. I know what I did want to do before, and that I did. Maybe I'm regretting that slightly, or perhaps I'm just nervous that I won't be able to after all I've done." Donial's head shook harder with a disciplinary growl. "No, shut it," he told himself angrily. "Third time now..."

"You deserve a break to same as Idyll had with me yesterday," said Cter without giving thought to what Donial was cursing himself about. The midday sun was warm on her face when she tilted it up. It was bright enough that she had to close her eyes. "We all do."

Even though she couldn't see, Cter felt that Donial did the same as she did. The sound of his inhale and the relaxed sense in his aura made it obvious that he did. A few moments passed the two by with a mildly chilly breeze excusing itself between them. "We still have the sun and sky above us, so there is still hope with those around, no?" In the distance there was the sound of a metallic bell being rung. Cter recognized the sound from when Idyll liked to wake her up too early on weekends, albeit a bit quieter than she was used to it being. That she did not mind though.

"Or that, I suppose."

Not in the slightest.