Title: Would You?

Fandom/Pairing:Tamora Pierce, eventual Rikash/Junim

Rating:For now G, will go up

Disclaimer: Belongs to TP

Summary: Rikash Salmalín and Junim Crow through the years.

Notes: Admittedly, one of the weirder pairings I've come up with. But I've always wanted to meet Rikash, and Aly's kids interest me.

Prologue

Technically, neither Rikash nor Junim remember their first meeting.

Rikash was an infant, cradled in Aly's arms on his family's very first visit to her in the Copper Isles.

"I'd best start practicing, after all," she said wryly to Daine, and lifted Rikash high enough to look him in the eye. "Nice to meet you," she said with a strange air of solemnity. "Now, this in here," she continued, indicating her slightly swollen stomach, "this is your adoptive cousin of some sort, and I expect you to get along."

Rikash gurgled, or so he was later told, and Aly smiled at him. "But not well enough to cause too much mischief."

"That," Daine said, as her son was handed back to her, "is probably a lost cause."

-

Their real first meeting happened a few years later. Junim was five, and just old enough to realize he was surrounded by girls, so Rikash's arrival came as a nice surprise.

Rikash was six and a half. His mother was on the Copper Isles as part of a diplomatic mission of some sort (which was really no more than a meeting amongst friends at this point, but it was always good to have her along in case of doubt), and had taken her children and her husband along.

Rikash had just successfully learned to read and write, and was immensely proud of his own achievement. Junim was just starting, but they bonded over both that and their intense annoyance at their sisters.

It was both a relief and a constant source of worry to their parents, given that Rikash had inherited his father's Gift, and Junim a strange mix of his father's and his grandmother's abilities.

They kept themselves to themselves, which came as no surprise, because no child wanted to play with grown-ups, but it led to the immediate result that they were both heartbroken when the time came for Rikash to leave.

"Will you write to me?" Junim asked that morning on the docks as the ship left.

Rikash nodded earnestly, and so began a friendship.