An eternity passed in the human-made house decorated to be a monster home without the slightest change to the reluctant rays of the setting sun streaming in from the window into the quiet child room. Just below the retreating rays lay the small monster child sleeping, lulled to its slumber by magic, as was evident by the influence of its mother in the child's aura.
"I gave it to her when she came down earlier," explained the blue monster to break the eternity between her and the Monster Mage. "It helps her sleep when either Donial's or my presence is with her in her aura. Donial told me that it is how monster children are usually lulled to sleep." A difficult swallow had the blue monster gasping sharply after struggling to force it down.
"I did not know," she said with a pained chuckle that knocked a pair of tears from her eyes. One of them got caught on one of her raven-black feathers for a few seconds before dropping off. "My parents told me stories instead. Fairy tales, where I always asked if the fairies were monsters like me. In some they were, in others they weren't. I don't remember in which ones they were monsters and which ones they weren't."
The Monster Mage only then came to understand why her grandmother would only sit by her bedside instead of reading stories like her mother would during the nights where the shadows outside her windows flushed her imagination more than her child mind could ignore.
"I can barely remember any of them at all, to be honest." Quiet and small shakes of the blue monster's head were still enough to have her hair break apart and cascade down her shoulders. Without looking she lifted them back over her shoulders as if slinging a towel over them. "Can't think of any story to tell her." She inhaled deeply with a slow, methodical exhale that followed ruggedly. "Not that it would do her any good to hear human stories."
Her head slumped.
"This is as far as I want to remember my parents, I've found. She is where those memories stop. Where I don't want them to continue on any longer. I wanted to, at first. When I first came to know that she was on her way into this world I wanted for her to know, but when she entered this world I would not want to see anything human within her. I could not see anything that I wanted her to be human about. I have already tempted fate once by making her dust warm into this world still reeking with cold dust. Where each passing wind also brings with it whispers of the horrors of those monsters that I do not have to feed."
The anger and bitterness did not suit the blue monster's voice, screamed the Monster Mage's ears, not in such a serious and unforgiving tone.
"Tempting fate once is already one too many times, and tempting it twice by telling her about my parents and putting a line in the sand at nine years of age for me to outlive my parents is just..." Uneven teeth bared as a quivering curtain of raven-black feathers arose. "No, she's better off without knowing about them. She is where I leave my parents behind. Where I leave everything that is human to me behind."
A forlorn sigh rolled out of the Monster Mage with deflating shoulders leaving her heavy forehead to fall into her naked palm to pinch at.
"And I ask of you to please help me make sure that there is nothing human about or around her when we are sealed in the Underground. It is the last thing I want to ask of you. The last favor of a friend."
More eternities filled each second of the Monster Mage holding her eyes at the blue monster's pleading expression. She only was stood up because kneeling down to beg would creak the floorboards and risk waking up the monster child. "So that you can think of me fully as a human." The underlying reason was deep enough to reach over the Monster Mage's knee-high boots. "You still can't shake off everything we've done. It's still there with you."
The blue monster averted her eyes, but it only made true what the Monster Mage said. "I am a Monster Mage, and while I was once human, I am now a monster. The balance between the two races the humans disrupted, so I am fully monster for monsterkind. That you see me as human is not because you hate who I am, but hate what I had to do."
"And is that different?" replied the blue monster with a narrow to her eyes. "Is it not our actions that define us?" She nodded her narrowed eyes towards the sleeping child.
"I did not become a mother out of the blue. It was because I made a choice along with Donial that I became I mother. It is something I did, and she is living proof of that. I am reminded each waking moment of each day that I made that choice." Her inhale through her nose marked a change in the tone of her voice. "Just the same as I have been reminded each waking moment of each day of the choices that you made. If I am to call myself a mother then I can not ignore what it is that you have done."
"You can though." The reply to the reply was without thought and purely reactionary, but it was what the Monster Mage felt. "You can completely ignore what it is I did. You did so when you disassociated my name, didn't you? You took my actions," the Monster Mage swept with her hand, "and moved them aside." She then shrugged with it. "Is that not ignoring what you say are those actions forever enshrined into that name?"
A shudder of cold denial rushed through the blue monster. "Please," she said with plead to her voice. "Can you just–"
"No," the Monster Mage said direct and factually. "No, I can not. I will not." Her robe fluttered like a raised flag in the wind as she threw her arm towards the sleeping child. "You're asking me to force myself into your daughter's soul and take away her name from her." The angry whisper was filled with a blend of confusion and utter disgust, as well as worry about how low the blue monster had sank for her to even begin considering such a proposal. "Do you not hear how disgusting that sounds?"
Uneven teeth bared in a way that the Monster Mage had never seen before. A sharpness slashed from the blue monster's eyes enough for the Monster Mage to take a startled step backwards. "It should tell you enough that I have considered it in the face of what you have done."
Through the gaps between the uneven teeth poured the vicious, poisonous words without any stopping to them. "I will not ever talk down what it is that you have gone through. I can not imagine it, and never do I want to imagine it. I have sympathy towards you and I understand your reasoning. But..."
The uneven gaps clamped together as the angrily wrinkled muzzle clenched hard together. "But doing so is pushing aside what it is that I have gone through. What those I have met have gone through. What my family has gone through." A hard nod had the blue monster's head almost detaching from her tensed neck. "What she has gone through."
The Monster Mage did not look towards where the blue monster was nodding. She held her eyes still, unblinking. "All because of my name? Because you made the choice to give her my name?"
"Had you not done what you have done I would have been utterly disgusted by myself with even the passing thought of asking something like this." Wrinkles and shadows deepened on the blue monster's muzzle.
"I do not want my child to grow up with the knowledge that the Monster Mages that were supposed to protect us brought us all together in one place for the humans to imprison us. I know she do not want that either. She has asked me questions that no child should ever ask. About death, betrayal, and why I decided to give her the name of the one that a third of all monsters that travel here talk about with scary auras and sad voices. Even as I tell her that this was not how it was when I gave her the name, to her it's been like this her entire life. Her entire life has been her with a cursed name that everyone around her has come to hate."
The Monster Mage did not flinch no more. "So why did you not change her name earlier then?"
"Because to me this has not been my entire life." A hard bite had the blue monster grimacing. "I've still had hope. All up until I saw you I still had hope." Through the closed window bathed in the deep orange of the late sunset the blue monster stared through the many houses between hers and the distant festivities.
"We were on the way to it, her and I. I wanted it to be a surprise for her. That perhaps if she got to meet you then things could be better. Seeing you being welcomed back might have helped me as well, I reckoned. We met up with Donial halfway there, but not long after I came to realize that what was happening was not you being welcomed back."
It...wasn't? It was not welcoming back the Monster Mages? The parade and all its celebrations were not welcoming back?
"You were being celebrated. As a hero of our people you were celebrated when you returned from that journey of yours."
The Monster Mage felt perplexed wrinkles fold on her forehead. "What do you..." Even that was too much. "What?" Anything more would have just squandered the Monster Mage's confusion. What was it the blue monster meant by speaking with such a disgusted tone at the people of Jarasevo celebrating the Monster Mages? Was it because…
"But they were celebrating all the horrible deeds you have done."
It was because.
"Look," sighed the Monster Mage with a pinch to her wrinkled forehead. "I truly am heartbroken over all of this. You can feel it in my aura. In my monster aura. But, this is getting a bit too..." Emotional words got caught in the ones she were already choking on.
"You can't say it like that. You can't explain it like you're angry at those in the parade being happy about us returning. There are monsters in Jarsevo that are...well excited is probably the wrong word, but they are more focused on making the best out of the Underground than they are lamenting the fact that it will happen."
With an extended arm the Monster Mage pointed down the spiraling staircase at the end of the upper-floor hallway.
"Donial's done fantastic work despite cursing the human during every single breath of his. Why is it wrong for you for the monsters to be happy that we have returned? Because they are celebrating the ones that condemned them to the Underground? Because we are human because of our actions? Have you thought about what would have happened had we not done that? If we had let the humans bring back all the monsters? If a squad of humans came up to the monster villages and told all of the monsters to leave their home and return to Jaraeevo?"
"Course I have," countered the blue monster with a betrayed quiver to her dragged-back lips. "But lesser evils are not a positive. It's less negative, and going from us all being killed to us all being locked away forever without any sun or stars for our children to enjoy might be in the veneer of mercy, but there is no mercy to be found at all in these last four years."
A growl followed her cursing exhale.
"For the humans to then dare to suggest that they want to follow us monsters down into the Underground to help us. To make us feel better. To sacrifice their freedom on the Surface for us to feel better about their betrayal."
Humans, she said.
Humans…
"Like me?" the Monster Mage postulated with a vacant air to her expression. Her left arm came up to point at her chest. "Humans, like me, according to you?" Throughout the whole conversation it had been hinted at, and finally it reached a point where the Monster Mage had to address it. The pot had boiled over, and the sizzle of it vaporizing against the fiery anger was too loud to ignore. "You don't want me down in the Underground, do you?"
The blue monster blinked down her eyes, struggling against keeping them open. She wanted to close them shut. Close them shut to not look at the Monster Mage as she gave her answer. There was a sliver left in her that had respect for the Monster Mage though, something she had tried to coax out of the blue monster, but failed to. The blue monster had saved it for this moment. The moment where there would be no way back.
When she finally would be ready for the Underground.
So she shook her head. "No." She told the Monster Mage what had been in the air between them, solidifying it into a truth heavy enough to have them tumble through the wooden floor. "No, I don't want you in the Underground with us. Not you, nor the other two. You shouldn't follow us down there. It is for the monsters, and not you."
Despite Cter's plans, hearing the blue monster say it out loud to her what she had already decided would happen was…
"You should not be a part of the future of monsterkind."
It was impossible to process.
"You are part of this time in history. This time in history where the relation between monsters and humans fell apart. You are the beacons of how it once were, and also how it all fell apart. You are humans that played monsters, a game which we were all in on, with all of our souls as stake. For you to follow us into the Underground would be bringing with you this degradation that you embody, whether you meant for it or not. A tool does not choose if it builds a house or a weapon, but the ones the weapon killed would have still been alive had it not been for the tool."
A slow turn of the blue monster's head had her yellow eyes glimmer as if on fire from the setting sun.
"You Monster Mages were created to keep the uneven balance between humans and monsters. A balance that was unspoken of, but which you personified and acknowledged just by your mere existence. Once that balance shifted though..."
The blue monster found it difficult to keep her words as still and clear as she could. She was speaking above how she usually did, and the effort it took out of her for the sake of making sure that every. Single. Word! That she said was without doubt had her leaning more and more of her weight against the door frame, same as she did on the ground floor.
"Us monsters need a clean slate for us to be able to accept this new home of ours in the Underground. Everything that we bring with us that is not us will be a reminder of how it used to be and how much we have lost." The blue monster motioned above her. "Possessions." To the side of her. "Homes." Towards the sleeping monster child. "Names."
And finally towards the Monster Mage. "Humans." Her hand then fell down in defeat. "The weight of Mt. Ebott will be upon us already, so why should we add the weight of the Surface onto it as well? The Surface will be for the humans, and the Underground will be for the monsters. Forgetting is the best we can do. Forgetting means that we won't try and go back."
But if that was the case… "Then why haven't you asked me to make you forget as well? To make Donial forget too?" The Monster Mage pointed very directly at the sleeping monster child. "You want me to do this to your child, but not you?"
The glimmering fire in the red eyes fizzled as the blue monster glanced back at her child. "She can forget, I can not. It is all too ingrained in my soul."
"And her name is not?" replied the Monster Mage with a deep disgust to her words. "I know your soul. I have been in it. I am more capable of making you forget than I am making her forget." That she had to say it out loud was just…
"Use the aura I placed on her. It should be easier for you to go through it. She is also half me, so... You've explained it before about your temporary Cooperative Connections. Making the recipient soul quote unquote trust that your magic is something familiar to it." The blue monster nodded her head sideways into the child room. "She trusts me." Her arms tightened around herself. "I'm her...mother."
A pained smile holding in a thousand cuts stretched her lips unnaturally. "It's for her best." Each blink wettened her eyes more and more, leaking down both her raven-black and sky-blue cheeks that shook with the pain of keeping her smile wide. "And I need to remember that I did it. I need to remember what I had to do to her. To forget what made me do it, but remember what I did."
"Like...me?"
A hoarse chuckle had the blue monster leaning her entire weight against the door frame. "Yes," she nodded, tapping the back of her head against the grainy wood. "Just like you." The glimmer of the fire failed to rekindle in the yellow eyes, which instead closed shut tiredly and heavily enough to have her head slump once more.
"For as much as I want to tell myself to forget I know that there will still be a part of me that will remember you. A part of me that will look up to the Barrier and wish that you had followed us down into the Underground. Perhaps I'll even approach it in hopes to feel your magic as well? To feel you in the only way that I want to know you of. To feel only your magic, and nothing that makes you human."
The pained smile turned tragic.
"But do not do it for my sake, please. My sake is that of monsterkind's, and for us you have to make sure that it will never be able to be broken. Give it your everything." The last time the blue monster looked into the Monster Mage's eyes hers were pleading. "Both your soul, and your heart."
The forest-green eyes were the ones to avert that last time. They were the ones to not want to acknowledge.
"You have to."
"I know."
But it wasn't…
"You care about us."
"I know."
But it…
"From this war. From the humans."
"I know."
But…
"Please."
…
"Set us monsters free."
No, it was.
It was how the Monster Mage felt too.
Since the first mention of it, she felt that it was exactly what she had to do. Not for her friend, but for monsterkind, as her friend had told. Told more than the Monster Mage had expected. Despite them being further apart than when Cter was at the furthest edge of Hjearta, the two were still close.
They still thought the same, more so than they did when their souls had almost fused on that faithful night so many, many years ago. It had been the Monster Mage's words that the blue monster had said about humans and the Underground. Everything was true. About the Monster Mages not following for the sake of monsterkind. For them all to forget.
For Cter to be the one to make sure it all came to be.
But the Monster Mage wasn't Cter. It was no longer her name. The sleeping child had it. The Monster Mage had to take it back. To become Cter again so that she could help monsterkind with her final act as their protector against the humans.
However though, despite all that the blue monster was correct in, she was wrong in one detail. An important one, the most important of them all.
It was not the monsters that needed to forget for them to know peace.
The sleeping child underneath the silk cover taken from Jarasevo Castle had to though. Again, she was the one that had Cter's name, and that the Monster Mage needed.
"Idyll."
The yellow eyes squinted as harsh white emerged from the sleeve that the Monster Mage was pinching loose each finger of.
"What name do you want your daughter to have?"
Before the blue monster could answer, the Monster Mage raised her barely morphous hand to stop the answer from being spoken. "Actually, don't tell me," she dismissed as she kneeled down gingerly next to the bed frame to not wake the sleeping child. As she neared the exposed head with her left hand, the White Flesh began to shift within the barrier magic holding it in shape.
Slowly it dissipated, allowing the White Flesh to react directly with the child's aura and soul. The Monster Mage let the White Flesh absorb the aura left with the sleeping child by the blue monster, and as feathers of ice, fire, and strength magic began to decorate the White Flesh like exotic plumage, the procedure could begin.
"I'm a human, after all."