Making Friends, Part II
Roshil fell out of her chair and stumbled back. She curled up and buried her head in her arms.
“Leave me alone!” she screamed.
Aonva stared at her. Her mind ground to a halt. She wanted to help Roshil. She wanted her to stop screaming, to smile again. Aonva loved it when Roshil smiled. Should she try running to her? Would that help?
Master Dordir ran across the room to Roshil. He checked her over, then covered his mouth with his hands. He whispered something, then blew on his palm. Snowflakes appeared and fluttered through the air on his breath.
A messenger spell.
“No!” Roshil backed away from Master Dordir. “No more! Please! Leave me alone!”
Roshil’s screams mixed with sobs. She trembled and recoiled from Dordir’s touch.
“Apprentice Roshil, can you hear me?”
Roshil didn’t answer. Aonva wanted to rush over to her friend’s side, but what then? What would she say? Would it make things better or worse? What if she only got in the way? What was happening? Why didn’t she know?
Roshil continued her fit until help arrived. Two people dressed in white tunics bearing a pattern of three green arcs arranged in a bigger arc, the symbol for the hospital.
Roshil hates the hospital.
Aonva could only imagine how upset Roshil would be when she calmed down and realized she was in the hospital. Should Aonva say something? Perhaps His Lord High Artisan would know what to do? Or Master Ekla? How was she not right there the one time Aonva needed her?
Before Aonva could make words come out of her mouth, the two attendants carried Roshil out of the room. Aonva watched her friend leave, then wondered if she could go with her. Maybe it’d be better if Roshil had a friend with her.
It’d be better if she weren’t there at all.
Master Dordir stood up and returned to the front of the classroom.
“Is everyone else alright?”
Aonva became aware of the whispers between people around the room. Many of them glanced back at her. She caught words like “crazy” and “wrong”. There was nothing wrong with Roshil, she’d been attacked. Even Aonva didn’t know most of the details. She suspected she wouldn’t know any of it if she hadn’t been there when Roshil learned about her condition. Aonva was always too afraid to ask.
That night, Aonva had been researching the origin of magic and the dragons that had taught it to humans. It made her smile to think that if she’d been anywhere else, she wouldn’t have bumped into Roshil. Or if she’d left, she wouldn’t have made a new friend.
Roshil’s eyes were hard to look at sometimes, and Aonva could feel a sense that there was something not quite right about Roshil, but her friend never cared that Aonva was different too. And no one else stood up for her like Roshil did (even if it wasn’t always helpful). Her parents had always dismissed her ramblings and ignored her questions.
The whispers died down, and Master Dordir continued with class. Aonva copied down everything he said. Roshil would need to know what she’d missed. While she was writing, Aonva looked over her notes, wondering what had set off Roshil. It had to have reminded her of the dragon, but what?
They’d been copying down words at the time. What word was it? She looked at the list while Master Dordir talked about the importance of understanding the words. They were emotions. Had the dragon used them a lot? Had it been part of the spell he’d put on her?
Shorarl (love), Melyuk (hate), Keska (hope), Valign (fear), Vorum (courage). The list went on, but she couldn’t tell what it had been without talking to Roshil. Was it safe to bring it up? What if she made it worse by asking? What good did it do either of them to know what had happen?
Aonva tried to put it out of her mind, but she was worried about her friend. Unlike Roshil, Aonva couldn’t do anything to help. Roshil didn’t always make a situation better, tending to have the opposite effect, but she tried. She was right there to stand up for Aonva, but when Roshil had needed Aonva’s help, she’d froze.
Aonva focused on taking notes. That would help a little, so Roshil wouldn’t have to miss anything.
If I’d done something sooner, maybe she wouldn’t be missing anything.
She hardly thought about anything else the entire time she was in class. By the time she was finished, she was determined to figure out what had happened. After class, she found somewhere out of the way and sat down.
She closed her eyes and went into her library. The massive, organized collection of books materialized in her head. It wasn’t perfect, of course, because it wasn’t real, but it was good enough that she could usually find what she needed.
She walked along the rows of books, heading for the same section she’d been in the real library the night she’d met Roshil. The section on dragons. Nothing else bothered Roshil. In the weeks Aonva had known her, nothing phased her. They’d been picked on by people in the corridors, everyone gave them both dirty looks, and she was sure Master Udra was carrying a grudge. But Roshil ignored all of it.
Unless dragons came up. She was uncomfortable talking about them. She’d growl under her breath while working on any classwork involving dragons. Aonva never asked about her attack, but there must’ve been something about it in the library. It’d been five years ago, she knew that much. So she must’ve read something about it.
She walked along the rows of books until she came to the section on dragons. Once she’d found where she’d put the history of dragons, she took the book and went through it in her head.
Years ago, she’d happened upon a book about remembering information. It’d said that anyone could remember anything, so long as there was a path to it in your head. Aonva had spent years working on it, and once she’d gotten good at it, she’d tried to absorb as much information as she could, filing away every piece of information she got her hands on.
She had information on the history of dragons in Skwyr Court, so there must’ve been something about a dragon taking someone prisoner. Magic wasn’t easy to do on the spot, even for dragons. It must’ve taken her somewhere, and someone would’ve written about it.
She picked through every piece of information she had, but she didn’t find anything on an attack on Skwyr in the last five years. Instead, she found attacks on other places. Nelaro Court, followed shortly by a brief reference to the Lapurela tribe, a group of nomads outside the kingdoms wiped out by the same dragon.
I grew up outside the kingdoms.
But when she reached for the name, she came up empty. It wasn’t there! Why wasn’t it there? Was it not in the real books? Had she somehow forgotten it?
Without the name, she couldn’t dig any deeper. She picked through everything else she knew, but there wasn’t much more than that. She still didn’t know what had upset Roshil so much. She was back where she started.
“Lapurela.” It was the arcane word for “family”. That name was something she hadn’t had before, but it didn’t tell her why Roshil was upset. She still couldn’t help her friend. Roshil had always tried to help her, even when she didn’t want it. When it was Aonva’s turn to help her, she was useless.
Maybe there’s a reason I’ve never had friends. Maybe I’m not supposed to have friends.