I woke up at dawn, pushing myself up before the dreams had even faded. One breath, two, then everything that had happened yesterday flooded back to me. Crawling out, my heart pounded, not daring to hope she was still here, yet I couldn’t imagine what I would do if she had already left.

In such a rush, I shoved the door enough to send it clattering. Outside, I shot up, gaze snapping over to her camp.

She wasn’t there—my heart clenched—but her backpack was—my heart relaxed, albeit aching over that brief moment of, well, fright? I wasn’t sure how else to describe it. Growing up like I did, I lacked a lot of words for expressing how I felt. No clue how to describe the sharp pain of thinking someone had left when you wanted them to stay. A fright seemed closest.

At the orphanage, it had always been an ache. Adoptions weren’t as sudden as waking up and they were gone, instead this slow period of knowing what was coming, then waking up one day to find it was finally time. You got to spend the day putting on a smile and congratulating them, telling them how happy you were for them. No matter how I felt, that was what I had to do, what I had always done.

Lost in melancholic thoughts, a nearby crack snapped me out of it, turning to the sound. Like yesterday—how long ago yesterday felt—it was Hyraj, emerging from the forest in her dark clothes, not quite as stained with dirt as yesterday. Different clothes.

After so long wearing the same thing every day, I forgot people usually had more than one outfit.

I raised my hand in a wave, already smiling. “Hyraj!”

She returned my wave in that odd way she had when greeting me yesterday, elbow bent and hand sticking up like a wave, but she didn’t actually wave, holding it like a salute. “Louise,” she said, clear voice cutting through the stream’s trickling and distant birds twittering.

I fought the urge to run over to her, awkwardly standing where I was with fidgeting hands. That was my goal from now on: think first. I didn’t need to run over, so I didn’t, letting her walk over.

She didn’t walk over to me, though. Went back to her camp.

An uncomfortable feeling swirled around my chest, smile strained, but it wasn’t like she’d done anything wrong. Thinking it over more, I realised I probably felt like that because I had eaten a lot yesterday.

I fretted for a moment over whether to excuse myself, but she hadn’t told me she was leaving, not like we, well, had any connection. So I went off and did my business and that honestly did help me feel better.

Coming back to the camp, I wondered if we would have breakfast together. Breakfast wasn’t as serious as dinner. At least, I was pretty sure that was right. Maybe it was different here.

Face scrunched up, I reminded myself to stop thinking like that. Did me no good.

If I wasn’t sure about breakfast… if I wanted to have breakfast with her, I should ask. But I didn’t want to make her cook again. Struggling over what to do, I arrived back at my camp and mindlessly walked to the larder out of habit.

Fortunately, I had sort of come up with something by now, opening up the larder. Between thatching my room and making kindling, I had grown a lot of wheat. With how awkward it was to cook, I hadn’t eaten much of it either, a reed basket full of kernels. One of the meals I had thought of after seeing her pot was porridge. A good breakfast food.

So I picked up the basket, hands underneath to support the weight—I didn’t have that much faith in my weaving skills. Walking over to her, she noticed me almost right away. Good awareness.

Once I was closer, I tried to say, “Water,” in her language, hoping I remembered.

Her lips pursed for a second before she replied, “Oult?”

“Yes, water,” I said, hearing her say it refreshing my memory.

Now her eyes narrowed and she rose to her feet. Her gaze fell to the basket, seeing what was inside. I presumed she knew what it was because it was one of the words she had taught me yesterday. I didn’t remember the word, but I remembered she’d taught it to me.

Her expression still not easing up, I thought she might not understand, so put the basket down for now. Gesturing, I pretended to hit the kernels and then said, “Water,” while pretending to stir them.

That seemed to make some sense to her, the wrinkle between her brow flattening out. She squatted down and went into her backpack. Not just the pot, she took out the leather piece she’d used as a cutting board and the knife that was like a small cleaver, as well as the large metal spoon with a leather grip that she had used to scoop out the stewed vegetables.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

We walked over to the fire pit together. While she filled the pot, I brought over a bunch of reeds. She tried to take them from me, but I didn’t let her, feeling braver since I had taken the initiative. So I laid out the reeds the way I thought was best and then rushed to prepare the wheat, leaving her to light it.

If she had any complaints, she didn’t tell me and I was too scared to look. Busied myself using the flat side of her knife to squash the kernels, picking out the seeds from the chaff, pretty quick from all the practice.

By the time I finished, the water was boiling and so I poured in the seeds. It was at this point I realised I had no clue if this was how porridge was made. With oats, maybe it would work, but “wheat”?

I took in a deep breath and glanced at Hyraj. If I had done something stupid, at least she didn’t seem to know either, staring at the pot, maybe curious.

Not like I could take the seeds out, I just stirred. It looked bad at the start, but, after a minute or so, the seeds started to swell. A few minutes and it looked pretty much like porridge. Very runny, though, so I kept stirring and let more water boil off.

Focused on that, I didn’t notice when she’d left to get us bowls and spoons. Seeing them there when I turned around, though, I smiled. It felt so nice to not be alone.

I served up and we sat close, her using one of the rocks I’d moved over to be a windbreak as a chair. Bowl hot, I rested it on my reed plate, while she had a folded cloth on her lap, using the corner of it to hold her bowl steady. She seemed comfortable with the arrangement, like she’d eaten that way many times before.

Again, I was left wondering how long she’d been out here, blowing on my first spoon of porridge. Once I felt like it was cool enough, I tentatively tried it. Hot, but not burning hot, so I put in the whole spoon.

It tasted like you’d imagine porridge with no milk, sugar, butter, or even salt would taste. Almost like cardboard—not that I remembered ever eating paper or cardboard. Still, it was something new, hopefully with a lot of vitamins and minerals and carbs.

Afterwards, she insisted on cleaning up. That was fair since, last night, I had taken on the job. Most things metal, she rinsed them in the stream water and then used fire magic to sterilise them. At least, I guessed that was what she was doing, no reason I could think of otherwise. Guess I was lucky I hadn’t been sick yet.

Such a slow, comfortable start to the day, something so nice about sharing a meal with someone… that I had forgotten entirely what would be coming next.

“Unt felpouns orst Hyraj,” she said, pointing at herself, then said something similar-but-different while pointing at me, obviously swapping my name for hers.

Vocabulary was bad enough, but grammar too? She repeated it a couple times and, my mind spinning, I guessed it meant something like: “My name is.” It could have also been, “Is name my,” though? Learning French had taught me that other languages could be very different.

Still, I wasn’t going to get anywhere if I spent all day doubting myself. “Unt felpouns orst Louise,” I said, thankful there weren’t any throaty sounds.

She clapped… like I was a child. What was worse was that I actually did feel proud of myself.

Once she started testing me on the words she’d taught me yesterday, that pride shrivelled up. Eyes narrowed, lips pursed, she gave me a long look that made my heart pound, feeling oh so very judged. In the end, she let out a sigh and stood up.

“Reeds?” she asked, that one of the easier words that had sunk in.

“Reeds,” I said back to her.

“No,” she said, then said another word, one I hadn’t heard before. It took a gesture from her where she was pointing at the stream for me to realise that word probably meant “where”.

Pointing, I said, “Where reeds,” and set off walking—she had probably asked for a reason. Sure enough, she inspected my reed farm once we got there. When she went to draw her sword, though, I had to stop her: “No.”

She was a good listener, keeping her sword at her side as she turned to me.

I picked out a group of them that had grown seeds and sort of gestured at them for her. She caught on, taking her sword to them. A very sharp sword. Like they were made of jelly, her sword cut right through, no swing, no sawing, just a slide as she pushed it forwards. Six reeds fell to the ground from that. Another slide and more fell, and more, making a pile about as big as what we’d used, which was maybe why she stopped there.

A lot faster than using a rock.

Whether she wanted to “make up” for what she’d used or she was curious about my life here, she asked me where other things were, so I showed her my other farms, the inside of my home, where fruit trees grew around here—including the ones I’d planted to make an orchard.

As we went around, she kept drilling the vocabulary into me. Rather than settle with once or twice like yesterday, she made me repeat every word at least ten times, more if I fumbled. Not that I had a problem with that. If anything, it was exactly what I needed and would have done if I had a textbook or dictionary for it.

Still hard, though, my head a mess by lunchtime. The situation only grew more dire after eating: she decided I could learn to read too.

Her book had a small print, but the characters were clear enough, black ink with a hint of maroon when it caught the light, and I was relieved that a lot of the letters looked the same. It wasn’t like Chinese with thousands of complicated symbols.

The way she taught me these letters, they each had their own sound. I guessed there would probably be more complicated stuff once we were done with the alphabet—like “ch”, for starters. To my surprise, that didn’t seem the case? There were more letters than in English and that included the throaty sounds. The words she read to me were all, well, written as they were spoken. “Acht” was made up of the letters “a”, “ch”, “t”.

It wasn’t easy to remember everything so quickly, but she was patient with me, at first reminding me of the letters when I hesitated, then more coaxing, pointing at words I knew to help me remember myself.

My days had felt so long before, dragging out my routine to keep me away from my thoughts. Now, the day still felt so long, hours lasting forever as we sat beneath the tree, side by side, softly speaking as the wind whistled, leaves rustled, the stream flowing.

Such a long day, but I wouldn’t hate many more like it.