(Pronunciation: Dargon: emphasis on the first syllable, which rhymes with "bar" -- the second syllable is pronounced more or less like the word "gone". Quix: Just the way it looks. If "quick" were a noun, his name would be pronounced like its plural form.)
Dargon and Quix would never admit that their friendship and rivalry developed over a girl -- least of all over a completely platonic relationship -- and they may not even remember that it's true. They were apparently-unexceptional children lost among hundreds of others in the largest orphanage in Venighas on the Fire Coast, and had no more interest in one another than in any of the other children until the stranger showed up on the ophanage's doorstep with a baby in her arms. She was beautiful and graceful and self-possessed, younger than either of them, but seeming -- not only to Dargon and Quix but to everyone at the orphanage -- like a higher order of being, a childish heroine out of a fairy tale. No one knew whence she had come, or how, or why, and she never spoke of her journeys, but rumors swirled endlessly -- not only rumors of noble birth, but the stuff of fantasies. Her boots and cloak were muddied with the soil of half the kindom, and the baby was alive and healthy because of her care, though she was only seven years old when she came to the orphanage. She had come the long way from lands unknown without the help of any grown companion, and it was soon known throughout the orphanage that the babe she had helped along the way, still too small to walk on his own, was as much of elvenkind as human.
From the moment of her arrival, she was the most popular child in the orphanage, with no rival worthy of the name. She had a way with the adults that no one else could match, and the novelty of her appearance never wore off as she retained her independent ways of thinking and her casual, almost-unwitting leadership throughout her time with the other children. Her approval, her attention, were the chief prizes to be won in the little world in which Dargon and Quix lived, and they strove like all their peers for the twin prizes ... and earned them, again and again.
Neither could say just why it was -- she herself might have had no inkling -- but the beautiful storybook heroine whose arrival had brought new life to the drab orphanage was drawn to Dargon and Quix more than any of their playmates. She spent time with them, and smiled at them often, as though they were old friends, and as they triumphed, they turned more and more of their efforts to outrivaling each other in her eyes -- and to cementing their positions as the only significant rivals for her attention. Everything at which each excelled, the other strove to match; Quix learned to play King's Men to compete with Dargon at the game; Dargon developed his own form of wit to compete with Quix's own; they drove each other to learn to write more beautifully, to read with more expression, to dance with grace and skill. Everything of which she approved, that won more of her friendly attention, became an opportunity for each to prove that he was the best in the orphanage at the things that -- to her -- mattered most. The little part-elven child developed two staunch and clever defenders, conspiring with each other to keep his infant mischief from getting him into trouble with the other children or adults, then telling the story together to the child's first protectress, each emphasizing the things he did, proudly pointing out the ways he cleared things up or planted false evidence to point in the wrong direction or at least away from the far-from-innocent child. They went on daring raids together to sneak cookies and other treats for her or for the child when neither could devise the means of succeeding on his own. As they saw the way her eyes shone when they cooperated and described the ways they helped each other, as her smiles accompanied their signs of friendship, her quiet frowns their signs of mutual distrust, they came to work together more and more -- at first purely as a false front, then more and more out of habit and as almost second nature as they grew together and found they could depend on one another, both when working together to increase the standing of each and when competing as rivals driving one another to improve just to keep up the pace. As time passed, and the beautiful new girl became less of a novelty, the boy who came with her less of a helpless child and more simply the smallest in a group of four fast friends, the friendship between the four them grew, as -- increasingly for its own sake -- did Dargon and Quix's rivalry. As the girl who had awed them changed in their thoughts to just a close friend, a child at the orphanage on whom they could count when it mattered, they became still fiercer rivals, as the judges of their success became their surest friends and harshest critics: One another and themselves.
Thereafter, though they always stuck by the pair that had brought them together, Dargon and Quix were more in each other's thoughts than the girl who united them. Even in adolescence, though one or the other gave her long looks from time to time -- for she was very beautiful still -- and they developed an interest in girls as objects of desire and conquest, they never again competed over her. She knew them well enough that she would never have given in to their suits -- knowing half of their wish to attain her might come from showing the other up, and wishing to be loved only for herself -- and they knew her well enough to see that it was so. Besides, by that time, they had other things on their minds, especially where she and the little boy over whom she still watched were involved: Hopes and opportunities for such power as put mere mortal desires to shame.
But that is another tale, for another day.
