Fantasy with Friends: Fantastical Sidekicks

Start of a new week, and time for Fantasy with Friends! All the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about fantastical companions: Who are some memorable fantastical sidekicks? Animal familiars or anything else that fits the prompt welcome! Prompting about “animal familiars” mostly makes me think of Nighteyes in Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings books, mostly. Nighteyes is a great character, deeply loyal, sometimes quite funny, and providing a great foil to Fitz’s wavering and uncertainty. Life’s a lot more simple for Nighteyes, not because he is simple, but because he doesn’t see such a need to complicate things. I’m also for some reason thinking of the fire demon Calcifer, in Howl’s Moving Castle: snarky, curious, not half so devilish as he’d like to make out. Admittedly some of his lines in the (very different, but still fun) Studio Ghibli adaptation are the most memorable, when Sophie bullies him into letting her cook on him:…