Story in Continuations (2/?)

Curiously enough despite her reptilian lingual affinity, her best childhood friends were a bear named Arkadidov and a boy named Tom.



Tom

Tom was the stableman’s apprentice; he lived in the stables and slept in the hay stack where all the hunting dogs slept. The stableman found him years ago among a new litter of dogs and gathered that one of the bitches who recently lost a pup had stealthily picked the baby up from around the castle main gate when some nobles where returning from a hunt, he figured she was probably nursing him for three moons before his teething started to aggravate her enough for her to decide that her human should be aware of his presence.

The Princess met Tom shortly after her seventh birthday, at that point her parents deemed her old enough to leave the palace proper on her own as long as she stays inside the castles grounds. She took a likening to the stables and would come down from the palace almost every day to pet the animals in her quiet and serious manner.
Shortly afterwards her parents died, and about a month after that Tom stumbled upon her in a shadowy corner of the stable quietly hugging a sheep, touched by how sad and lost she looked he impulsively offered her to come down to the stables at night to sleep in the hay stack with him and the dogs. The princess accepted and ever since then Tom had taken it upon himself to protect her and cheer her up. he took special pride in knowing that he was among the very few who could put a smile upon her face with his outrageous antics.


Arkadidov

The princes met old-bear Arkadidov when she was investigating the castles' vast underground library and archives.

No one really knew how old Arkadidov was, it is said that in his youth he devoured the favorite scholar of a distant queen and as punishment she cursed him with an insatiable hunger for linguistics. Over the years he had managed to teach himself to speak, read and write in all the languages know to men and several of the lesser know as well. It came to the point where one of the princesses great grandfathers invited him to be the royal archive in return to any and all past and future documents in the possession of the kingdom,
naturally he accepted.

Arkadidov took a begrudging liking to the princes for he was an odd old bear that did not like to sing or brawl or shout - in fact he did not like any noise at all; and she was an odd little princess that rarely smiled, never lied and never joked. That suited Arkadidov and he would allow her to tag along for hours on end, silently holding a light for him while he cataloged and translated ancient script up and down the dusty catacombs of the library.