Feeling good about how things had gone so far, I “asked” her how she did multiplication, using her numbers and writing out: “2 x 3 = 6”.

She understood right away, drawing out the equation like for addition, but with a double line. Easy enough, I showed her I could multiply big numbers too. Well, uh, kind of big numbers.

As I did, my mind flooded with bits of maths I remembered. How impressed she would be if she knew I knew algebra, trigonometry—calculus. Not much, but enough to write down.

Just that those things all had letters and words and other symbols involved….

Slowing to a stop, reed still in the dirt, I swallowed my excitement. A deep breath, then I finished the equation.

Why was I doing this? I didn’t really know. I could come up with ideas, but the truth was I’d just felt like I had to. I wanted to be close to her. It sounded funny when I put it like that, but that was kind of it. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted her to know how useful I was, wanted her to want me around. A friend.

Those thoughts rattling around my head, the reed slipped out of my hand, clattering. Snapping out of it, I stared at the reed for a second and then quickly stood up. She looked up at me, eyebrows bunched, and the first thing that came to mind was to mime drinking and point at the spring.

Before seeing her reaction, I rushed off. Needed a moment to collect myself.

Head a mess, I was there, knelt down, cupped hands scooping up water. Bringing it to my mouth, I—and she knocked my hands away. Caught so off-guard, I just stared for a long moment, refusing to believe what had happened, but it had. It had and now she strode over to her “camp”, faster than I’d seen her walk so far, where she took something out of her backpack and then strode back.

A step away from me, she stopped and squatted down. The thing she’d brought over was a metal cup. Empty, empty until her other hand came up, both hands around it, and a stream of water appeared out of thin air, filling the cup.

Saying a word, she offered me the cup. Maybe the word meant “here” or “drink”, maybe something else, but I didn’t remember it, sounds going in one ear and out the other. Even took me a second to realise she was offering the cup to me.

“Thank—” I said, catching myself there, as I took the cup. Switched to a smile instead.

She smiled back.

I wasn’t actually that thirsty, but I once again had to lie in the bed I’d made and drank the whole cup. When I gave it back, she had a handkerchief in hand which she used to wipe the rim, maybe someone who worried about germs. Well, that would maybe explain why she didn’t want my food.

When it came to her, it felt like all I really had were maybes, but that probably wouldn’t change any time soon. Maybe time to stop thinking about maybes.

For now, we stayed like this. Close, but not too close, squatting down by the edge of the stream. The sound of flowing water, especially as it struggled through the rocks I used to keep the reeds from drifting off when I made threads. Leaves rustling in the wind, heart pounding in my chest, so loud when I swallowed.

“Um,” I said, the sound just slipping out.

She turned to look at me. Trying to hold off the panic, I lowered my head and blindly followed the first idea I had.

So I pointed at the stream. Glancing up, she looked confused. That made two of us. But then a thought came to me and I reached down, cupping one hand. Barely any water in my palm, I pointed at it, asking, “Hyraj?”

Maybe she understood, maybe she didn’t. Either way, she said, “Oult.”

An easy word for once, I repeated it. “Oult.”

She smiled and said, “Pris.”

Did that mean “yes”?

I felt a headache tingling, probably for the best I drank that water. If only I had some painkillers too….

Regardless of how I felt after only learning two words, she decided I wanted to learn more. So I did. I mean, was I going to tell her acht? No way. Whatever she wanted to do, I’d do it.

That didn’t mean I would be good at it.

“Hichjalt,” she said, aggressively pointing at what I’d called a carrot. Her sharper tone might have had something to do with my failing to say it right after trying like ten times already. This language seemed to really care about throaty sounds and I could barely tell the difference, even when she emphasised them.

Maybe getting bored of teaching me words, she sighed, then tried something else. She pointed at me, then at the carrot, then waited.

Oh, there was something I wouldn’t do. “Acht,” I said, shaking my head.

“Louise,” she said, pointing at me, then pointed at the carrot.

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But I refused. Maybe there was no harm in it, maybe I should have just gone along with her. She would probably learn English faster than I learned her language. I didn’t want to waste her time, though. Didn’t want to waste mine.

So I said, “Acht,” again.

She pursed her lips and, for a moment, I worried I had ruined everything, that she would go back to her camp and ignore me. But she didn’t. Thankfully, she didn’t.

“Hich,” she said, slow and clear.

We spent the rest of the day practising words, feeling painfully long. “Yes” and “no” stuck in my head easily enough, but the rest, well, I needed more time to stick them in. She sighed a lot, her thin lips very expressive despite how little they moved, or so I’d learned.

But I was happy. To talk to someone after months, even so little—I felt like a person again. While the same routine, over and over, had keep me numb enough to keep going, Hyraj reminded me why people lived in villages and town and even cities. Why a plant needed the sun.

I didn’t think about it too much, not when she was still teaching me new words. However, the sky grew darker and the wind colder and, any moment now, I expected her to leave me for her camp.

“Hichjalt,” she said, the word both familiar and alien to me.

Well, I didn’t need to know what it was to repeat it. “Hijchalt,” I said, hoping the extra confidence would cover up any mistakes.

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Hichjalt, grumkle,” she said and kept saying more, but I was still stuck on the first two.

Did she really expect me to repeat them all? I hesitated, wondering if two would be enough to keep her from getting upset.

Before I even spoke, she sighed again and then pointed at the rocky outcrop. Frowning, I tried to see what she was pointing at, belatedly realising she meant my larder. Still unsure what she meant, I looked at her and said, “Yes?” in her language.

Apparently waiting for that, she strode over and I followed, hard to keep up without jogging.

Once there, she sort of gestured with her chin to the larder. I guessed she wanted to remind me of the names for foods—ah, hichjalt was carrot. Smiling over remembering that, I dutifully opened the larder for her. She was quite polite to not open it herself, I thought, already thinking she was raised well for her elegant handwriting and, well, general elegance.

Made me all the more curious what she was doing out here by herself, but she was ready for it, her backpack full of useful things.

On the other hand, my larder was just full of food. She glanced over it and started collecting some—two of every vegetable, it looked like. Her arms full, she turned around and strode to the fire pit. I hesitated a moment, then shut the larder and followed her, jogging to catch up.

She wasn’t done. After putting the food down on my chair, she went over to her camp for something. A pot. It wasn’t huge or even large, but a generous size for the one person she was. She had some other things in the pot too that I only saw once she put it down by the chair and took off the lid.

Something about how she moved, I knew she didn’t want me to interfere. Had helped in the kitchen enough to know. How she didn’t glance at me, kept everything close to herself, focused.

That was fine; I was mesmerised just following everything she did.

First, she filled the pot with magic water, then she put on leather gloves—a thin leather and a good fit, not at all clumsy with them on. Next, she washed the food one by one, using a cloth to scrub them and resting them on another cloth afterwards.

Once finished, she emptied out the water and put some more in. Taking a trip to her backpack, she brought back four metal stakes which she stabbed into the middle of the fire pit, then balanced the pot on top.

Guessing the next step, I broke from my trance enough to bring over some reeds. She didn’t look upset when I offered them. “Felsinneo,” she said, a softness to her voice that made me think it must mean “thank you”.

I smiled back.

Her gaze slid down, unhurried, and she arranged the reeds under the pot, setting the last aflame with her magic, then placing it in a good spot to catch the rest. I would have done it differently, but didn’t want to interfere. Her way was probably correct when using sticks and branches.

Water set to heat, she put the lid on and then turned her attention back to the food. Or rather, the ingredients, a knife in hand. It was more like a small cleaver, the blunt side thick, and she used a piece of leather as a chopping board. The carrots went on, her knife came down, chopping them up into dice-sized cubes. The rest suffered similar fates, all cut to the same sort of size—except the peas which were just removed from their pods.

Pot not that full of water, it was already about to boil when she opened the lid and slid everything in. Again, I wasn’t going to complain, but I could only think everything was going to end up a mushy mess.

Of course, I would still happily eat it….

So long since I had seen a pot of water boil, I watched it, a bubble coming up here, a stream of tiny bubbles there. How funny it was that I could feel so envious over a metal pot. Maybe not this kind of stew, but idea after idea fluttered through my thoughts of what I could cook with it. Porridge, for starters, finally get a good use out of all the grain I kept.

Lost in thought, idly stirring the pot with a large, metal spoon, other end wrapped in leather to hold, I didn’t notice her go off, only noticed when she came back. Picking up her knife again, she had a large lump of something brown in her other hand. I stared for a moment, confused, almost like a piece of wood, a grain to it.

Then I realised.

“Acht!” I said, lurching to my feet.

Her swing faltered, coming to a stop atop the dried meat. She looked at me, not upset, but with a wrinkle between her eyebrows.

“Louise no,” I said in her language, pointing at the meat. “Louise no.”

Her face scrunched up for a moment, the first time I had seen her make such a confused expression, but she eventually put down the knife. Holding up the dried meat, she asked, “Louise acht helvith?”

I didn’t know if that meant meat or maybe it was like pork and beef and meant a certain kind of meat. Regardless, I didn’t want to eat it. Instinctual.

“Louise no meat,” I said, trying to copy her.

No clue how well I did, but she understood. Taking it with her, she stood up and took it back to her backpack. I started to feel bad the moment she started walking. She was the cook, she was going to eat it too, it wasn’t like I had never eaten meat before.

But the more I beat myself up over it, the more I pictured that slab of meat and felt my stomach turn. If it wasn’t a stew, I could have ignored her eating it… but it was a stew.

As much of a mess as I felt, she looked normal when she came back. Maybe vegetarians weren’t unusual here… or she was too polite.

Nothing else came up for the rest of the cooking. She had metal bowls and spoons for us to use, not the fanciest, but I had spent a few weeks eating off a rock using my fingers, so wasn’t really one to talk.

And it tasted like vegetables that had been left in boiling water until they turned to mush along with a soup that tasted like, well, the water used to boil vegetables until they turned to mush. I didn’t have the words to complain even if I had wanted to.

The sun set, fire burning low, just the two of us in this world. I didn’t know if she would still be here in the morning. At least for now, she was.

At least for now.