True Friends, Part I
Aonva sat in history class, writing down every word the teacher said. Most of it was familiar to her; she’d read through her textbook three times already, in case a quiz was thrown at them without warning. While Sirshi insisted she didn’t need to be that prepared, Aonva didn’t think there was such a thing as “over prepared”.
“After the war, and Torpn became part of Skwyr, more cities came under the court’s rule. Word spread of the possibilities, the safety, and the opportunities the court could provide. Until then, most of the cities had been under the rule of tyrants. This caused the cities to seek out the court’s aide.” Master Rondin stopped talking, and Aonva reviewed everything she knew in anticipation of another question. “Naxta, there were three cities that joined the kingdom next. Name one of them.”
A boy toward the back of the class stood up. His face was always on the brink of a smirk. “I don’t know.”
Master Rondin glowered at him. “Guess.”
Aonva didn’t know how Master Rondin managed to pack so much frustration and exasperation into a single syllable.
The words you speak are just as important as the tone with which you speak them.
Without hesitation, Naxta said, “Zensin.”
Master Rondin’s gaze didn’t ease any. “No. While the acquisition of Zensin was invaluable in establishing a relationship with the other kingdoms, it wasn’t one of the first three to seek the court’s rule. Apprentice Aonva, would you please tell us what they were?”
Aonva stood up and addressed Master Rondin to avoid anyone else’s gaze. “Moud, Bimun, and Sarona.”
“Very good.”
The chime of bells sounded throughout the school. Students immediately began rushing to gather their things.
“For next week, I want an essay on the reasons the cities gave for joining the kingdom. You need to include at least five reasons.”
Aonva gathered her notes and put them back in their place in her bag. If everything stayed organized, she wouldn’t waste time finding it, and she needed more time to study.
She had only just left the classroom when someone called to her.
Naxta walked up to her, still with that same half-smirk on his face.
“You know this stuff, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
She wished she had something to hide behind. She wanted to shrink away from him. Few people who weren’t teachers ever paid direct attention to her, and she didn’t care for it. She didn’t want Sirshi’s extreme of rejecting most human contact, though, so she had to get used to it.
“Then you can help me out with it.”
“Oh. Um… I guess.”
“Great. Tomorrow after class. We can work on the essay together.”
“Um… Okay. We can meet in the library, if that’s okay with you. It’s fine if it’s not, though. We don’t have to do anything, I guess.”
“Great. See you there.”
Naxta walked away with his friends, smiling and laughing with them. Aonva hoped they weren’t laughing at her. No, they wouldn’t be, would they? Maybe it was her hair. Roshil liked it, or maybe she was only being polite. Maybe it was ridiculous. It must’ve been. Her parents were right; no one would like her unless she fit in better. Being a complete neurotic mess was enough to drive any normal person away.
Roshil would’ve told her that normal was overrated. Even after everything they’d been through over the past year, Roshil was always nice to her. And Sirshi didn’t care one way or another how Aonva did her hair. Or that she overreacted to everything and couldn’t stay calm to save her life.
Aonva started toward the door to the castle in a daze. Her mind and head were so rarely in the same place. Just another reason why she didn’t have friends apart from Roshil. Sirshi was sort of her friend, but she was more Roshil’s friend than Aonva’s. Maybe she could make friends with Naxta. She couldn’t think of a time he’d made fun of her, unlike some of her other classmates.
As she reached the doors to the castle from the school, she met up with Roshil coming from natural sciences.
“I never realized how many plants could kill you,” Roshil said. “Don’t worry, though; most of them don’t grow around here. How was history?”
“It was okay,” Aonva said, trying not to launch into a lecture on everything Master Rondin had said minutes ago. “Um… I won’t be at the library tomorrow after class. I mean, I will be, but… but I’ll be helping one of my classmates with his work.”
“That’s fine, he can hang out with us.”
“No, I mean… I’m helping him… alone. The two of us.”
“Oh.” Realization came over Roshil. “Like… Like a date?”
“What? No! I mean, I don’t think so. Not that I would say no to one, but I don’t know him that well, although he seems really nice, and he doesn’t make fun of me like some of my classmates, and—”
“Who’s making fun of you? Let me know, and Sirshi and me will take care of them.” She emphasized this point by punching one hand with the other.
“No! You—” She paused as they stepped into the castle and a tingling spread through her body. “You don’t need to hurt anyone.”
“I’m not going to hurt them,” Roshil said. “Father says never do anything directly. If it can’t be traced back to you, you can’t get in trouble.”
Aonva had long since learned that trying to dissuade Roshil from anything her father had told her was pointless. According to Lord Grund, the best way to handle that was to distract Roshil.
“I asked Our Lady Arch Mage about a spell to read books,” Aonva said, hoping that was a good enough distraction. “She said there has been some work on it with Essence Magic.”
Roshil scowled for a moment, an expression that to a passerby might look like anger, but Aonva knew to be her “thinking” face.
“Never heard of it.”
“She said it was still theoretical. The idea is sort of like weaving. You can use weaving to learn something attached to a person’s ‘essence’, like their name or gender identity. Something that’s at the core of who they are. The theory is that a book’s contents are at the core of what they are, so if a thread could be attached to a book, it could be used to read the book. The problem is, we can only attach threads to living things, and even then can only get basics from them, not emotion or anything.”
Roshil shrugged. “So what? Mother used to say that something was only impossible until it wasn’t.”
Aonva paused to file that away. Roshil rarely spoke of her mother, so any information Aonva was lucky enough to get was valuable.
“I have to go to the forge,” Roshil said. “Are we still eating dinner together?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t we be?”
“I didn’t know if you wanted to eat dinner with your new friend.”
“Oh no, he’s not an apprentice. We couldn’t eat together.”
“Okay.” That seemed to cheer up Roshil a little. “I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah. See you for dinner.”