Chương 75: Chapter 74: Bond training

Most people's bonds remain at L1 because they just keep doing what has been working at the start and get comfortable. The only way you can get to L2 and above is by really building the understanding between each other - Orin Vandeth, Foundations of the Anima Bond The Symbiotics classroom sat behind the main Lifesciences building, close enough to the farm that the smell of turned soil came through the open wall panels.

Kara got there with ten minutes to spare and found five or six people already spread across the benches, along with their partners. He took a seat near the middle and set Waggy on the bench beside him. Waggy looked at the audience around him and made the prompt decision to come down into Kara's lap, tucked his head under Kara's forearm, and stayed there.

"You're fine," Kara said, petting him gently. Waggy's tail curled tight against his own flank and did not uncurl. Kara had thought the eight weeks during the internship had made Waggy bold. Apparently there was a big difference between Waggy being on open ground and Waggy being in an enclosed space with unfamiliar people and animals. A boy two rows over had a fennec fox that kept standing up on the bench to see over the desks, and every time it did, Waggy pressed a little harder into Kara's side.

The room filled slowly over the next few minutes. A girl further along to his left had a corn snake looped around her wrist and was feeding it a small snack, unbothered by the eleven other people watching her do it. Two students came in together with matching terriers already straining at the ends of their leads. Altogether, the class had about a dozen students, give or take, each one with their own partner. A few of them looked at Waggy.

The corn snake girl looked twice, then leaned to say something to her neighbour, and both of them looked again, openly. Overall, it wasn't as bad as he'd have thought. Either the rumor hadn't spread as much as he'd feared, or the rumor did not contain accurate descriptions of him and Waggy, or Vixen had just done an amazing job of making the whole thing sound mundane. Maybe a combination of these. He just smiled and waved at the corn snake girl and her neighbor.

Professor Peaches came through the door a minute past the hour with a boar trotting at her ankle. She spent the next couple of minutes settling in while looking around the classroom. The boar was low, stocky and dark, and its bristles caught the light oddly at the tips. Kara watched closely before he worked out what he was seeing. The very ends of the hairs held colour that shifted, a slow warm amber when the animal was settled, cooling toward something closer to grey when a chair scraped across the floor near it.

Huh. Vixen arrived five minutes late with Vitaly at her side and dropped into the seat beside Kara, Professor Peaches looking along with a patient smile.

"You started without me," she said.

"I pinged you before starting... That was half an hour ago. You said you needed five minutes. Anyway, nothing has started yet."

"Well, then I'm on time." Vitaly bumped her nose against Waggy in passing, and Waggy came halfway out of Kara's lap to meet her, tail loosening for the first time since he'd walked in. Peaches straightened in her chair.

"Hello and welcome to your first class of the year. I suppose we all know each other from Lifesciences last year. Can't say the same for our partners. This is Bramble," she said, tipping her head at the boar.

"Say hello so he stops feeling ignored." Laughter went round the room, along with a chorus of hellos. Bramble's bristle-tips warmed a shade.

"This course is all about learning more about the bonds we have with our partners and how we can deepen it. We'll have one session every other day," Peaches went on.

"Two hours, all out in the open. The rest of your time is yours. I'm not going to tell you how to spend it. This semester is all practicals. So there's nothing to learn in the classroom. If you want to learn something specific, you can always ask me or you can visit the library." While she talked, Vitaly stood up and went wandering. She moved down the aisle at an easy pace, nose working, tail high. Waggy went after her, slowly getting comfortable with the room.

"Vitaly." Vixen didn't raise her voice or turn her head. Vitaly stopped mid-stride, glanced back once, and returned to her side.

"Waggy," Kara tried. Waggy's ears flicked. He continued sniffing under an empty bench.

"Waggy." Still nothing. Kara sighed, got up and collected him, and Waggy allowed it with the mild indignity of a creature who had not, as far as he was concerned, been doing anything wrong.

"That," Peaches said, from the front, "is the first thing everybody in this class needs to be able to do." You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Kara sat back down. Vixen smiled triumphantly.

"Some of you can already do it, and some of you can't, and that's fine. That's what this course is for." Peaches stood, and Bramble rose beside her.

"The first thing we'll learn is to recall under distraction. Your partner is doing or wants to do something interesting and you want them to stop doing it. That's what the exercise is about. If you can do that reliably, it's a good foundation for everything else. It's not about restricting them, it's about them trusting and listening to you." She was already heading for the door.

"Let's go outside." The class emptied out onto the strip of open ground between the classroom and the farm fence. Kara set Waggy down on the grass. Waggy stayed close even though he looked like he wanted to explore, which was some progress. Peaches had walked ahead and was talking to a farmhand at the fence line. Bramble had drifted off toward the turned soil, nose down, following something. She turned her head and looked at him.

Bramble stopped, lifted his head, and came back to her heel, and his bristle-tips ran warm the whole way in. Kara and Vixen shared a look. She had caught it too. Must be L2.

"Right," Peaches clapped her hands to get everyone's attention.

"Watch me and Brambles as I walk him down to that post and back." The farmhand had laid a line of things out across the grass. A dish of what looked like berries that Brambles kept looking at. A scrap of unfamiliar fur pinned under a stone. Two of the farm's geese, released at the midpoint and immediately affronted about it. Something in a covered bucket that Kara couldn't identify but that the terriers could, judging by the noise they started making. Peaches walked. Bramble walked beside her.

He passed the dish without slowing. His head came round toward the fur scrap and went forward again. One of the geese made a sound like a hinge in distress and struck at him, and he stepped once to the side and kept going, and the only thing that changed was his bristle-tips, cooling briefly toward grey at the goose and warming again three steps later when they didn't follow. Peaches never called out a command nor made any gestures.

She reached the post, turned, walked back, and stopped in front of the class, and Bramble stopped when she stopped.

"That's more than a decade of work," she said.

"Do not measure yourselves against it today. Who's first?" Vixen's hand went up before the sentence had finished. She walked Vitaly out to the start of the line and stepped back six feet without saying anything. Vitaly went straight for the dish, ears forward, tail low.

"Vitaly." One word. Vitaly stopped two feet short of the food, looked at it for a long second, and turned around. They made the entire route and back successfully with Vixen calling or clapping at every distraction, but they made it. The class applauded, Peaches joining in with a wide smile.

"Perfect. Looks like Vixen and Vitaly are going to be the benchmark for all of you. Great work Vixen." Others went after her. The boy with the fennec managed it on his second attempt and came back red-faced and grinning. The corn snake girl had nothing much to demonstrate, given the snake had no intention of going anywhere, and Peaches let her try with a borrowed lure out of fairness more than expectation.

The two students with the terriers spent ten minutes between them, got nowhere, and took it well, trading blame back and forth until even the terriers lost interest. One girl near the back, quiet enough that Kara hadn't even noticed her until then, directed her marmot along the path with a series of low whistles. By the time they made it back, the whole class was watching her, and she didn't seem to notice until everyone started applauding. For most of the others, it went the way Kara expected.

Three failed calls for every partial success, animals coming back on their own schedule rather than anyone's command, a steady low murmur of names being repeated with fraying patience. Kara went near the end. He'd had time to observe and think about it. It didn't help. He set Waggy down at the start of the line, stepped back, and said his name. Waggy looked at him. Looked at the dish. Took a step toward it.

"Waggy." Another step. The nearer goose chose that moment to object to the entire situation, and Waggy's head snapped round, ears up, every instinct in him reorienting toward the newer and more interesting problem.

"Waggy, come here." He didn't. He crossed the grass at a trot to investigate the goose at close range, the goose snapped at him, and he retreated three feet wearing an expression Kara had learned to read as personally offended rather than actually hurt. Kara sighed, and went and collected him.

"Practice," Peaches told them once everyone had had a go.

"Some of you are farther along than the others, but that doesn't mean you don't have room to improve. Pair off, use what's left of the session, and swap distractions with somebody else so your partner doesn't just learn the smell of your dish." The rest of the session went the way Kara expected. There was incremental progress, but it wasn't much. Waggy came away from different fur scraps cleanly twice by the end. The geese remained, by mutual unspoken agreement, a problem for another day.

"It's the EQ," Vixen admitted quietly at the end of the class.

"Mine's just as high or maybe even higher than anyone else's in this class. That's most of what you saw."

"Most of what I saw was you being better at this than everyone else out there."

"Meh, maybe. Well, I am a natural when it comes to animals after all." She smiled smugly.

"But the girl with the marmot and the boy with the fennec both read high EQ to me. EQ isn't just for reading people you know. It also comes into play when reading animals - things like small changes in their posture, where they're looking, knowing the sound they make when they're hungry vs when they want to play. EQ helps when it comes to that." Kara thought about that for a moment. Did that mean he'd always be handicapped compared to those who had a higher EQ?

"Doesn't mean you can't get there without it," Vixen went on, almost as if she had just read his thoughts.

"Waggy isn't stupid and neither are you. It might take a little longer, but from what I've seen of you, you do have the right instincts so as long as you put in the effort, the gap will close." She glanced down at Waggy, who was sitting on his haunches and seemed to be paying close attention.

"It goes without saying, but Waggy already loves and trusts you. All you have to do is to learn to really listen to each other."

"Thanks. I won't pretend like I totally understand what you mean by us listening to each other, but I will try. And I know this little guy will to." He looked down at Waggy fondly.

"I know you will." She was already turning away, Vitaly's tail catching Kara's shoulder in passing.

"Day after tomorrow, bring a couple of different dishes. He won't fall for the same thing twice." Kara watched her go and became aware, half a beat too late, that his interface had been holding a notification for the last four minutes. It was from Phinx - Let me know before you start. Gotta keep a chair free.