The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. Carl Jung (1875 – 1961).
The name of the first friend Helene Marshal made after her father moved their family to Italy was Dino. Dino Cavallone, to be entirely precise. Despite being slightly less than two years older than the skinny foreign girl who barely spoke a word of Italian the first time he met her, the rather clumsy blond thirteen-year-old had latched onto her with all the ferocity of someone who has never been able to keep a friend for very long and within weeks the duo are inseparable. Of course, at that point each could barely understand a word the other was saying but Dino's irrepressible cheer and Helene's implacable drive for improvement enabled them both to muddle along well enough.
Of course, by this point Helene was already bilingual, being the daughter of Anglo-Japanese parents who had ensured both their daughter and their son were properly educated in all matters proper for one of her birth and status; her father was a younger son of landed gentry and her mother's family was ridiculously wealthy. Helene had not realised until attending primary school that most children only speak one language at home, which at five they had not yet learnt to write. Her little brother Titus was similarly ahead of the curve for his age, being able to read and write hiragana fluently and decipher basic kanji at five as well as read English.
Dino, who was very intelligent despite his rather vacantly amiable appearance and persistent inability to avoid tripping over his feet, had swiftly realised that his new friend was both a match for him intellectually despite the age gap and a source of new and interesting knowledge. Within a month of meeting Helene for the first time he had learnt to read hiragana and was borrowing her baby brother's manga so she could help him read and understand them. In return he taught his 'little cousin' –as he would ever after refer to her– Italian and lent her his comic books. He also persuaded her to help him with his English holiday homework and pronunciation in exchange for less well-defined lessons on games, habits, cultural norms and the other mysterious ineffables of his native culture that Helene was unaware of.
The two initially met on a June afternoon in a park within walking distance of both children's homes; by September, when Helene joined the second year of the middle school Dino was about to begin the third year of, Dino's English had improved dramatically and Helene was capable enough in Italian to make herself understood, if neither fluent or particularly grammatical. By Christmas sheer necessity had brought her to adequate competence and she was dazzling her teachers with her performance and had made several more friends. Dino however remained her best friend.
Dino's reasons for clinging so tightly to 'Elena' –he had difficulties pronouncing her actual name– were simple: every other friend he'd ever made had drifted away from him in a matter of weeks of never really bothered to get close. People within his Famiglia universally treated him with the due deference his position as heir seemed to require; people outside the Mafia either thought him an idiot, feared him for his connections or both. Helene was either blissfully unaware that he was heir to a large and influential Mafia Family or didn't think it mattered. He suspected the latter; she herself was of impeccable birth and breeding but he'd only found out by accident eavesdropping on his father as his minder was presented with the inevitable background check all the people he talked to more than once were subjected to. Helene never mentioned her background to him in anything but the vaguest of terms, seeming to think instead that it was the quality of a person's mind and character that mattered most. Her other friends exemplified this perfectly, running all up the scale from the daughter of a maid to the younger sister of a nobleman through a few businessmen's daughters. When someone told her to her face that Dino was the son of a Mafia man Helene had just asked, "and so?" with all the superior boredom of a queen. It was that indifference, that thoughtless acceptance that led Dino to swear to himself that he would never, ever let this friend go.
He had started calling her 'little cousin' very early on, vaguely aware that, while the people he had befriended outside his Family inevitably vanished forever, those who belonged would at least stick around and talk to him for a bit. So, in a subconscious attempt to ensure his Elena wouldn't be made to stop talking to him, he 'adopted' her. When introducing her she was always "Mia cuginetta Elena", my little cousin Elena. Helena never objected and her parents seemed to find it adorable, so they never corrected him either. Dino's own father and various minders all tried at least once but his stubborn refusal to refer to her as other than his 'little cousin' eventually wore them down. He even introduced her as such at school with such nonchalance that everyone from the head teacher to the youngest student took it as fact.
By Helene's third week at the very swanky private middle school they both attended she and Dino had developed a routine that would last them to the end of the school year and considerably beyond, much to the disgruntlement of various third parties. Every morning Dino and his bodyguard would arrive at the house the Marshals were renting to collect Helene and whichever smartly-dressed Mafioso was keeping an eye on Dino that day would then accompany the two to school. When lessons ended at one in the afternoon the bodyguard would return and accompany the two back to Helene's house where the two children would do their homework, hang out and play with her little brother, who at just six had barely started elementary school.
Dino learnt a lot from his exposure to adults outside the Mafia and came to adore Helene's forceful, dutiful yet unabashedly loving mother and see her as the maternal influence he had been missing for as long as he could remember. Helene's father was more a figure to respect than love, but the dry humour and subtle, mocking wit that Hugo Marshal allowed to permeate every aspect of his life eventually infected Dino as well. Helene's father had a habit of posing him particularly tricky moral dilemmas then listening intently as he stumbled his way through the preconceptions the young teen hadn't even realised he had in search of an answer. His own father had little time for him due to work but he soon learnt that Mr Marshal was no less busy yet always made time for his children and Dino. It was his making time for Dino that cemented his best friend's father in his mind as the perfect role model: making time for your children's friends as well was definitely the mark of the perfect parent.
Helene was Dino's friend because Dino was the first person to ever inform her that they were going to be friends and not mess up on the follow-up. He had not demanded from her things she couldn't give, let her ramble and remembered what she'd said last time, reassured her when she was confused and helped her when she was having trouble. He didn't have any standards she had to meet and seemed willing, no, eager to give back as much as possible whenever she did anything for him at all. He was also very touchy-feely and would often wrap his arm around her when they sat next to each-other or grab her hand when they were walking together. True, this was often out of necessity –she had long ago lost count of the times she'd prevented him from losing his balance– but it was still nice. He also hugged her whenever they met or said goodbye, which was nice.
Her mother had informed Helene early on that Dino was mildly dyspraxic, so the preteen did her best to help her friend overcome his problems and counter them whenever possible. She had almost infinite patience for his persistent spatial awareness problems, was never cruel about his difficulty at placing one foot in front of the other and suggested various little coping strategies, some of which were successfully implemented, such as the ambidextrous calligraphy lessons. She even badgered her mother into teaching them both to dance, which had been by turns hilariously funny and dizzyingly successful: by the first anniversary of their friendship Dino was able to coordinate with her perfectly no matter what activity they were engaged in. However whenever he tried anything on his own he inevitably tripped over himself, which was just weird. Helene just shrugged it off as part of the wonderful mystery that was Dino and was perfectly happy to accompany her best friend anywhere he wanted to make a good impression.