Heroic Friendship
Dennis & Miranda, Part 2
Dennis has received permission to spend time with the clan-head’s daughter. But how well will it go?
About a week after the meeting was the first time that Miranda knew anything had come of the meeting with her father, when he called her aside after their family’s evening meal. She quietly pushed the door to the study open and closed it behind her before saying anything. “I’m here, Father.”
Bruce, for his part, was looking over paperwork by candlelight, which was pretty much what he always did if he wasn’t working out, eating or sleeping. His Trait and Miranda’s were outside: the room wasn’t big enough for Strength and Honor was generally excluded from private meetings. “How would you feel about some cross-skill training?”
Miranda paused; plenty of her siblings had already done such, as it helped the future possible heads of the clan to form a better understanding of the entire group. (It wasn’t generally how things were done in the magic-focused clan. You were supposed to do whatever your Trait most helped.) But Miranda had been excluded because nobody outside of the clan would likely tolerate her taking that position. “Is this… because of Dennis’s request?” she ventured.
“It is,” her father admitted. He restacked the pages, then finally turned to face her. “Leadership is usually not needed in the same situations where Dennis will be sent. The leaders there are those experienced with the job, as only one job is necessary, and you do not need to coordinate multiple divisions. I know that Honor is not suited for bodyguarding, but Dennis has also performed in rescue operations. Will that be acceptable?”
Miranda gathered herself before responding with a solid “Yes.” Even with his own family, her father was intimidating, and he had an aura as though he generally expected people to agree with him. However, that wasn’t to say he didn’t value people who did not. They just needed to have a well-reasoned response, like Dennis had the previous week.
“Very well.” Bruce thumbed through the papers he was holding, picked out the top few, and handed them to Miranda. “Your training in your new division begins in two days.” Unstated: the first day was so that she could pick up the relevant uniform and other materials. And of course, she would still need to work hard while she was there. It was cross-skill training, not a romantic getaway.
There wasn’t any indicator to Dennis that anything came of his conversation after the fact, but he was sure something was happening. It was just way above his station to know about it. However, when he came back from another bodyguarding mission, he found a new face in his rescue operations class. Miranda had apparently been attending it for the past week or so and he simply didn’t find out while he was away.
Well, she visibly noticed him about when he noticed her, and the look she gave him said she wanted to talk after the morning’s classes. It was a bit harder to concentrate with that on his mind, but the great stubborn ox gave him enough trouble that he was still able to get through class unnoticed. Not that Persistence hadn’t learned his part of the lessons: he’d simply made a reputation for himself of being difficult to teach in order to help cover for Dennis when he needed it. Dennis tried hard, but that didn’t make him the brightest student.
Miranda’s uniform matched those specifically in this division (Dennis did both, but his uniform was of bodyguarding), so she clearly wasn’t just sitting in on the class, and Dennis was curious about it whether she wanted to speak or not. So on the way to the mess hall, he asked. “Why did you change uniforms?”
“‘Cross-skill training,’ my father calls it,” she whispered back. “The family needs to know the entire clan, not just where we fit in the most.”
“So, uh, nothing special?”
“For me, it is. Nobody wants me to lead the clan. I probably wouldn’t have gotten to do it without your request.”
Dennis held himself back from asking, “Why not?” because he knew full well it was because of Honor’s ability. The magic might be nice for dealing with those in her own clan, but clan heads had to work with other clans as well. And it might not be well-received with advisors here, either. Instead, he said, “Oh! Well, uh… are you enjoying it?”
The young woman chuckle-sighed such that he almost knew what was coming before she said it. “Haaah—well, I’m so far behind everyone else that I’m not sure I’ll catch up. And the first physical class really hammered it home.”
“Not much of that in leadership?”
“No.”
For a few seconds, the two just walked in silence. “Well, at least Honor can fly. That’s got some use for you,” Dennis said.
“Some,” she agreed.
Miranda was indeed quite far behind, even when you limited the comparison pool to just the other girls in the division. Not that there were a lot of those. Rescuing people usually was from physical danger, and a lot of what went on with the small section of the clan was unplanned: it’s not like you could use magic to predict a building being set on fire. You just happened to be in the area for something else and solved that problem while not neglecting your original purpose. And most people being trained had some sort of relevant ability of their Trait beyond just flight.
Between Miranda’s status and the introductory stated magic of Honor, she found that most of her information on the class came from context clues or asking Dennis, who was certainly not struggling to justify spending time around her. She hadn’t missed his blush when her father asked about him being “better than a friend,” but she still felt that this was more along the lines of him not being afraid of Honor. The other part could take its time. She wasn’t in any hurry. At any rate, the other women here had Trait abilities like strength or creating water or superb hearing, which definitely were much more direct in being helpful. And since they’d always been in this division, they had actually been physically active. Leadership wasn’t all book learning, but you also didn’t have to lift much more than your own body’s weight, and certainly not two people at once.
Her starting point being so far behind others’ current abilities also meant that when others left for tasks, she stayed behind to train. It was certainly a frustrating thing, as she wasn’t a stranger to field missions. She’d probably been on more than Dennis, what with being two years older and all. But she also knew she was far from invincible, and there was nothing that could keep him from coming home eventually, so she did her duties and improved while waiting on her friend.
The word made her pause in her journaling. Friend. That was—it was right. Just unexpected. She hadn’t had one in years, and it was nice to be able to write it again.
I said I didn’t plan to make a follow-up when I had written the first part, but then I thought over what else I have on this stack and realized I have a lot of formed friendships/romances. That wasn’t my goal! But since I wanted to do more with Grooselan before starting into my book, the comment asking for a follow-up was inspiration enough.