Ekanu's friendship with Denifar is interesting to me because they have such different personalities, backgrounds, and expectations... and yet they both love learning and have a drive to excell in their chosen fields. And they both feel isolated, for various reasons, so they latched onto each other before they knew each other very well, and in some ways have been doing a running patch job on that unstable foundation ever since. In other ways, of course, they know each other better than anyone else, and each will always be the person the other can rely on in times of trouble, whatever the current official status of their relationship.