My Starseed Meets Me In A Different World

CHAPTER XXXVI

Andrew

If I don't say it now, when will I?

"My mother has fallen very ill." I turned to Jodis the moment those words left his lips. We were both studying law and government together in my lesson room while the instructor had excused himself momentarily to have a conversation outside with another individual.

I had spent a lot of my time—the majority if I might say with the son of the chancellor since he had come into my life. If it wasn't him around me, it was my brother so there wasn't much I didn't know about the shy and quiet child. But this piece of information he had assumingly sprung up from nowhere caught me off guard.

His mother was sick? I don't think I ever met the chancellor's wife. Jodis's presence always just came accompanied by maids and servants, even some knights but I never much saw a mother figure in his life so long as I had been in the palace.

"Your mother?" I reiterated.

He nodded slowly, his gaze was still peering inside the thick hardcover law book of this country that we were being taught and tested on. I had noticed he seemed a lot more down than usual but chalked it up to his personality since he wasn't the kind of person to express himself.

He was hard to read even as a child.

"Has she been treated by any doctors? Or perhaps some high priestesses?" I inquired.

He nodded again, "The priestess was able to use some divine rite to help her body regain strength, but she is still mostly weak and now barely gets up from the bed." He sat back in his chair, his shoulders slumping.

"Father loves mother a lot, but her sickness makes him distant." He finished.

I'm sure he was telling me a lot of this stuff, not necessarily because we were "friends" but more so since he didn't really have anyone else to speak to. His parents were adults, his father with a serious and fast-paced occupation and now his sickly mother was bedridden. Jodis had no siblings as an only child and as far as I was concerned, most of his time was spent with me.

I guess he needed someone to vent to.

I turned to him and shifted my weight on the exquisitely adorned chair to face him. "If you feel sad about that, it's normal. I don't want to give you any false hope and say she's going to be okay because I don't know that for sure. The best thing you can do for her now is there for her. And if you need someone to talk to, I am always willing to listen." I assured him.

Jodis looked over and gave me short smile, "I am not inconveniencing you, Kiraz?" He asked.

I shook my head, "No, why would it? You're my friend right?" I asked.

"As father and the king ordered." He replied.

"No... I mean a true friend, not because our fathers said we have to be companions." I stated.

He thought for a very long moment.

"Okay then. Friends for real." He agreed.

I smiled in return.

When Melinda had told me she made a friend from another noble house. A young girl about our age physically, she beamed with happiness. I knew how difficult it was for her to connect with people on a deeper level; a lot of individuals didn't understand her, or they didn't try to. I didn't like to think that Mel was a complicated person, everyone was complex but at times she was treated as an outsider because her thought process differed from many.

Despite her being decades older than the girl she fond companionship with, she still befriended her and I assumed the same could be said for me. I could still be a good friend to Jodis despite my mental age; it'd be hard at times to relate when kids did want to play around a lot, but who can deny healing the inner child that I didn't necessarily get to be in my previous life was therapeutic for me.