Rodion: He is her dearest companion. She can barely remember a time when she didn't know him, and the idea of a life without him in it seems...lacking. The relationship is a relic of...not happier times, but more innocent ones. She simply does not form the sort of connection they share anymore. He has her complete trust and her unwavering devotion. He is the one Ziotea confides in, and she does so willingly. She keeps few secrets from him, if any -- though one such was how she'd run away when he was caught. It ate at her for years before she was able to discuss it with him, though they've since gotten past that hurdle. While she does laugh, Rodion is the only one who can make her smile -- her usual expression of joy and cheer is either a fierce, defiant baring of teeth that really doesn't merit the term "smile" or else a gentling of her hard eyes and a slight upward curve of her mouth. Truthfully, she isn't happy all that often.
He is best able to disperse the worst of even her darkest foul moods, and there's a certain gentle affection in how she treats him that she shows nobody else. "Friend" doesn't begin to cover it, and even "family" falls short of explaining what for Ziotea is a unique and treasured relationship. Even when she wants to be alone, there is always room for him as well, though it's only in the past year or two that she's started realizing how much she's taken his presence for granted. For her the question is not so much whether she loves Rodion -- she's known that to be a yes for almost as long as she's known him -- but rather just what sort of love it is, and asking didn't even occur to her until they started approaching Culmination and a future outside the walls of the Seminary.
Ragnar: As small and as childlike as he is, Ziotea is still smaller. His perpetual cheer annoys her if she spends too much time in his company, in large part because she just isn't happy like that, and sees no reason to be. His (apparently) genuine affection was not something she trusted in their early years, and when they were both with Rodion in the metalworks she would be an angry, glowering little raincloud in Rodion's shadow. She's since come to realize that he really /is/ that kind and compassionate, and she has
no flaming idea how to respond to it. She's amazed that he hasn't gotten himself killed yet, or failed out of training. She's even more shocked that he's escaped the seminary without becoming jaded. She sees him as childish and naive, his constant optimism incomprehensible, and his honest compassion as asking for people to hurt him. Even at his most irritating, there's something precious about someone that can maintain the sort of outlook Ragnar has despite all odds, and in a way she wants to protect that innocence.
She does consider him a friend and even enjoys having him around -- though not for too long, or she ends up even grumpier than usual. They still clash, and though she is no longer actively vicious feelings and egos do end up bruised. Still, he's someone she can relax around, and if someone hurts him you'd better believe that they will have slightly over 100 lbs of pure, vicious fury in their face (and possibly in their gut, as that's a better target). Of course, when Ragnar tries to take Ziotea herself on she shows him no mercy. This generally ends with him on the ground, though she has taken to giving him bluntly factual advice on what he did wrong and how to do better afterwards.
Yerokhin "Stina": giant even as a child, he towered over little Ziotea, and initially she avoided him out of pure fear. As she began to conquer her fear of various things, this included him, and she has seen him as someone worth beating. He rapidly became one of the standards against whom she measured herself, and defeating him in single combat is a longtime goal of hers that she has yet to achieve. His ability to take even the worst of her magical misfires makes him a good opponent for her, and their styles bear passing similarities. Her complete inability to faze him was infuriating at first, but he was always matter-of-fact about handling the bubbling rage that came from her insecurity, and eventually she realized that she actually liked testing herself against him. For a while, he was one of a very few people that could get away with commentary on her appearance -- particularly her size -- without her flying at him in a fury, though sometimes she would anyhow just to have an excuse to fight.
Their dynamic has turned into a very strange sort of friendship/rivalry. Ziotea makes a habit of trying to goad Stina into debates about almost anything, particularly religion. She enjoys contradicting him, and there's been occasions when she'll come in at the end of a conversation he's having with someone else and just plunk herself down and start seeing how long she can go before her arguments loose cohesion and fall apart. She insults him regularly, but in a casual, offhand way that is more habit than anything else. Going up against him, physically or verbally, is a great way for her to let off steam.
She's made no secret that her faith in Lord Varya is perfunctory at best, and she goes through the required motions of worship with no particular reverence. She knows her life and the lives of all Varyans is in his hands, but that doesn't mean he's a good guy, and she feels no personal connection to him. Stina does not approve, but he blames her lack of devotion on her inner turmoil.
Hassan: He bothers Ziotea on an very basic level. He doesn't always realize when he uses his spoken power -- he does it often -- and she doesn't always realize that she's having to counter it, but something about the man just
really bothers her, and it has since the day they met. The idea of someone able to twist people to their will isn't something she sees in a positive light, and it doesn't help that her reaction to humor from those she's not close to is a negative one, and that his constant goofing off gets on her nerves. On some level she's jealous of his cheerful nature, and without Ragnar's accompanying naivite there is nothing to smooth over the rough edges. Where her fighting with Stina is good-natured and enjoyable, with Hassan she has an actively adversarial relationship.
He is one of the many people she injured severely in her early years at the Seminary. Father Gregoroth matched the two of them in an unarmed and unpowered spar, hoping to teach the girl that she could not run from everything larger than herself.
She waited for Hassan to make the first move, he made some inane joke about the situation, they went at it, and while she tried to do as instructed she soon panicked, and a violent burst of force flung the older boy clear across the room. Up until that point she'd never stood her ground against an opponent that frightened her so, and Ziotea was shocked and horrified at the way he slammed into the wall and crumpled into a heap. She dashed over to see if he was okay, just in time to watch him pass out. He'd suffered a concussion and a broken arm, though nothing permanent.
That day marked the first time she was seen as anything other than a helpless waif with unpredictable ether good for breaking things and little else.
Astraea: The full-blooded Lanostran is not someone Ziotea likes. The way Lanostre and its Lady surrendered and just abandoned who they were leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, all the more because she's half Lanostran herself and primarily identifies as such. Part of her bitterness comes from a personal grudge against the goddess for failing to protect the mother she knows only by name and her two childhood caretakers, and seeing Astraea take pride in that same heritage twists a knife in her gut. Some of it is congealed resentment from a time when the fair girl was everything fiery Ziotea was not. A lot more is animosity Astraea herself fostered by constantly trying to knock the smaller girl down. And some of it is a growing jealousy for the fact that Rodion seems to like having her around. They're more evenly matched now than they were at first, though their fights were always emotionally charged if not just plain intense. The first time she put Astraea in the dirt was a major triumph for Ziotea.
Viveca: She's Omestrian. Ziotea...doesn't even know where to begin processing that. She feels a strange kinship to Viveca, but she's never made any move to approach the other person who shares her heretical heritage, especially one so openly proud of it. ||NEED TO DISCUSS FURTHER
@Scout, see notes below.
Oren: Another Omestrian. She can sense, in a vague sort of way, that he's conflicted, but beyond a certain mild curiosity she really doesn't care. She noticed, of course, when hestarted his downward spiral. It's not like the Semenary has all that many people, and the kind of mess he became, people noticed. He seems to have gotten past it, though with him joining the Phoenix Warband she has had it come to mind again. There's something he's hiding, she thinks, but none of her admittedly sparse memories of him give indication what that might be. He at least appears to view Lord Varya with respect and gratitude, and she can't reconcile that sort of perspective with the cruelty of the Remnant's teachings, but then he does seem conflicted about his heritage, much as she is. In the end her opinion of him is mostly neutral. ||Unless @CollectorOfMyst would like to add to this?
Ilya: He is egotistical and with an inflated head, and Ziotea has never seen a need to look past the surface of this one. She's heard his reputation, and she doesn't buy it. She's seen how he scrambles to adapt when something unexpected happens, and she's occasionally entertained the perversely pleasant thought of going toe to toe with him and overwhelming his flimsy plans. Competitive?
Nah....Tatiana: Ziotea doesn't mind Tatiana's lighthearted nature nearly as much as she does Hassan's, perhaps because the other girl likewise uncertain where she belonged. It also helped that Tatiana was never particularly good at fighting, so Ziotea could use basic skills against her and never felt particularly endangered.
Galahad: Ziotea didn't even know his name until several years into her training. By the time they found themselves in any sort of competition, she was able to hold her own without feeling overwhelmed. He seems like more of an intellectual than a melee fighter to her, and there's little to be gained in fighting him. He is Lanostran, a mark against him, but he's not as in-your-face about it as Astraea and so he's far less of an irritant. They have clashed when she was less certain of herself and took the criticisms of perceived equals poorly, but she's learned to recognize him as an intelligent and capable individual, and she has a quiet admiration for his superb control of his ether. || she'd see him in what amounts to a default neutral mode. Up to you,
@Vietmyke, if you've got more stuff that could complicate things!
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