Beside

Beside learned it in the village where she grew up, from a family of what the villagers called walkers-alongside. When someone was grieving, or sick, or simply weighed down, a walker-alongside would come and walk with them. Not talk at them. Not hurry them. Just walk, one step to the side, ready if wanted and quiet if not.

As a small kit, Beside used to trail her grandmother down the lanes on these walks. She remembered a morning when old Miller Hen had lost her mate, and Beside's grandmother walked beside her all the way to the river and all the way back and said, as far as Beside could tell, almost nothing at all.

"Why didn't you say something?" Beside asked her grandmother afterward, puzzled. "You didn't help."

Her grandmother crouched to Beside's level. "I did help," she said gently. "I was there, and I wasn't in the way. That's a hard thing to do, little one. You'll see."

For years Beside turned that over. Being there, and not being in the way. It sounded like doing nothing. But she began to notice that the neighbors her grandmother walked beside came home with their shoulders lower, their faces softer. The walking-alongside was doing something after all. It was just quiet about it.

By the time she was grown, Beside could sit beside almost anyone. When she came to the academy at the foot of the mountain, the old teacher Cyan met her at the gate and asked her a simple question: "What do you know about staying near someone who's overwhelmed?"

Beside thought about her grandmother on the river road. "That you stay near, but not on top of them," she said. "You sit to the side, at their level, both of you facing the same way. Close enough that they feel you. Not so close they feel crowded. And you're willing to be quiet. Sometimes the sitting is all of it — no words needed."

Cyan studied her a long moment, then stepped back and let her through. "Then you belong here," he said. "Come and teach the others."

On the first day of her class, Beside did not lecture. She sat down on the floor beside a nervous young student named Pip and, without a word, faced the same window Pip was facing. Their shoulders were about level. She left a hand's width of space between them.

Pip fidgeted. Then, slowly, stopped fidgeting.

"Aren't you going to tell me to relax?" Pip asked.

"No," Beside said, still looking out the window with her. "I'd never say calm down — it doesn't work, and it makes a person feel more alone. I'm just going to sit here. Right next to you. Not in front of you."

"That's it?"

"That's it. Watch what happens." Beside kept her breath slow and even. She did not shift closer or crowd in. She stayed at the exact distance where Pip could feel a friend nearby but never feel trapped by one. "When someone's storming inside," she said softly, "more noise doesn't calm them — a steady body nearby does. You don't have to say the right thing. You just have to stay, and not be in the way."

Pip leaned back, just slightly, until her shoulder nearly touched Beside's. She let out a breath she'd been holding. "Oh," she said, surprised. "I feel a little steadier."

"That's the whole lesson," said Beside.