“And then wham, I hit him over the head with a log!” Enna mimed smacking Baruun with a rolled-up napkin and he obligingly fell over, landing on a laughing Fuse. “And he was like, aaaaagh my head, and while he was rolling around on the ground we grabbed his bag and rode on out of there! But when we got back to camp-” Enna unrolled the napkin and looked at it with dismay- “all the fuckin food was gone cause his goddamn rat had eaten it! And that thing was sitting in the middle of the bag, stuffed to the brim with pastries, so, I did what anyone would do!” Madison gasped in mock horror while Sap pounded the table in wheezing laughter. “Sweetest rat I ever ate, I tell you what.” Enna shrugged, smiling. “So technically, yesterday was the second time I ever had apple turnovers.”
“That doesn’t count!” Sap shrieked, gasping for air. Enna was about to launch into a spirited rebuttal when she saw Dany’s face. She wasn’t laughing like the others at the table. In fact, her eyes were wide and her mouth was a tiny ‘o’ of concern. She saw Enna looking at her and looked away, doing that awkward smile thing you do when you make eye contact with someone on accident. Enna shrugged and chimed in as Baruun made the spirited rebuttal for her.
“Hey,” Enna said, coming up to Dany as the others were getting ready to head out. “You doing okay?”
“Fine!” Dany chirped, getting that deer-in-the-headlights look she often did when Enna cornered her. “Why do you ask!”
Enna rubbed the back of her neck. “Dunno, when I was telling that story you seemed…” Shocked? Concerned? Freaked out? “...a little upset? I just wanted to make sure that like, I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have? Just, you know, checking in.” Enna smiled benevolently. She was so good at this emotional stuff now.
“Oh! Um.” Dany looked away from her, fidgeting with her hands. “It’s just. You talk about the bad stuff that’s happened to you a lot. Which is a good thing! Talking about things is good. It just seems like, uh, you don’t take it very seriously?” Her face was a little sad when she looked back at Enna. “It’s kind of upsetting. Because you deserve to have the bad things that happened to you taken seriously! And they were pretty bad.”
Enna’s brow furrowed. “Hm. Which ones were bad?”
Dany opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, looking a little put off. “Hmm. You know, I don’t have an exact answer for that! I think it might help if you, um, maybe went through the things that have happened to you, maybe with someone you trust, and figured out what was bad. Because it seems like maybe that was more things than you think!”
“Ohhhh.” Enna’s eyes widened. “That’s a great idea, Dany! I’m gonna go do that right now!” Leaving Dany openmouthed, Enna turned on her heel and raced out of the tavern.
Dany didn’t spend a lot of time at the palace, but sometimes she went there to visit Baruun and (most importantly) Lady Madeline. Which was why she was walking down its richly-carpeted hallway when she heard what sounded like her friends arguing behind a door. Concerned, she opened the door just a little.
“I just think,” Enna was saying, slapping her hand on the table for emphasis, “that my dad dying should be worth more points than Andromeda faking her death, on account of Andromeda didn’t actually die.”
“Yes, but you didn’t even like your dad,” Emiel replied, tapping a quill on a long piece of parchment, “so it evens out.”
“Um.”
Enna and Emiel both turned to face her. They smiled, Emiel in that cool aloof way they always did and Enna with a big cheesy grin. “Oh, hey Dany!” Enna waved her over, and she cautiously stepped inside the room. “I took your advice!”
“Dany,” Emiel implored, batting their eyelashes at her, “you’re a dwarf of reason and intellect. Can you please explain to Enna that she is wrong about her ex breaking up with her being worth more points than the Recent Incident?”
“You made a points system?” Dany squeaked.
“Yeah, uh, you told me I should go over the things that happened with someone, right?” Enna explained. “So I was like, better talk about it with Emiel, they know shit, and then we were like, this is boring, what if we made it more interesting!” She beamed at Dany, who was really regretting her choice in friends. “Right now Emiel is winning, but I think that’s cause they’re the one writing the rules down and they know I can’t read them to reference back to it. Do you wanna be on my team?”
“No, no, no!” Emiel frowned at Enna, tapping their quill and leaving a big blot of ink on the parchment. “You can’t have a team, that’s not how this works, and if you CAN have teams then I want Lyle on mine since his village burned down or whatever.”
“Is that worth more or less than my dad’s blacksmith cart burning down with him inside? Since like, he wasn’t related to his WHOLE village.” Dany was starting to back out of the room.
“Yes, obviously it’s worth more, since more people died!” She was almost to the door. If they were absorbed in their argument, she could probably make it out without them even noticing.
“Okay but if it’s going off how many people died then my dad dying is worth more than Andromeda faking her death since she didn’t even die!!” Dany didn’t hear Emiel’s reply because she was too busy sneaking the fuck out of whatever was happening in there. Thank the gods that dogs didn’t act like this. At least animal companions were normal.
Author's Notes:
Written 6/13/19. Relatable!